Coding for the World's Trickiest Chip – SEGA's Saturn DSP [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8plen8cLro <comment><USER2> Back in the day, I managed to figure out a way to get into SEGA's dev site by guessing a URL beyond the login page. It wasn't secured in any way. The username and password would just pass you into a hidden URL, so guessing a URL was functionally identical to logging in with proper credentials When I figured that out, I downloaded the entire contents of the site. Lots of PDFs with "SEGA Confidential" watermarks, header files and small executable utilities.

Luckily I was working at an ISP and had lots of bandwidth to get it all before they closed the hole a few days later.

I tried to write an emulator, and wrote a CD reader/debugger that worked pretty slick, but never got anything to a place where I could release anything.

I've always kind of wondered if I have anything that hasn't made its way into the general SS emulation community...

<comment><USER3> I am involved with the community, I would be very happy to help you figure out what is or is not out there. My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER2> Contacted

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Sega Saturn is my go-to favourite console to write homebrew for.

I spend some free time reading and re-reading technical documents regarding the infrastructure of the system, and the functions and features each chip has.

With it's vast complexity but incredible feature set, it's not a wonder that average console programmers at the time could absolutely not wrap their heads around making the most of the console, and yet dedicated enough teams like Traveller's Tales, with Sonic R, and Sonic Team, with NiGHTS and Burning Rangers, were able to get some unbelievably beautiful effects and performance from the system.

Jo-Engine ([https://jo-engine.org](https://jo-engine.org)) is a fantastic, open-source homebrew development kit that enables an incredibly simple and effective starting point for anyone wishing to code for this fantastic and overlooked system.

XL2's fantastic Sonic Z-Treme is an example of the insane levels of creativity and performance this engine is capable of.

<comment><USER5> I do Dreamcast homebrew ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uZP9iOQc6E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uZP9iOQc6E)) ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlFu-y1LDbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlFu-y1LDbs)) and I've thought about trying Saturn homebrew, but getting code to run on a Saturn has been more difficult than running it on a Dreamcast.

With a DC, I just connect it to a computer through serial or ethernet, pop in a CD-R with a loader program, and I can easily upload and run code on it.

On the Saturn, getting a loader to run it much more difficult since it requires some kind of console modification (like disabling the disc-door state detection in order to allow disc swapping, or getting hold of a sold-out disc drive replacement) or an ISA-only PC Comms Link card and a Pro Action Replay. (I do happen to own a PAR, but not a Comms Link card and would rather avoid setting up ISA compatible hardware just for one purpose.) Testing on an emulator is a terrible idea, because you have no idea if it will work on real hardware, and I like trying to come up with ways to break emulators anyways, so that option's no good.

And... I was going to ask if you had any ideas for how to upload code in my situation, but I decided to search for "pc comms link saturn" while typing this and found a Bluetooth adapter for the PAR's comms port, so... I guess I just ordered one.

Actually, I've been working on an SH-2/3 assembly blitting library to run on the HP Jornada 690, a palmtop computer which has a 133 MHz SH3-DSP as the CPU. One of my goals for the library is for it to run on a 32X (which I actually don't own), and a Saturn is much closer to a 32X than the Jornada, so I'll be able to get a better idea of it's actual 32X performance this way.

And the Jornada really does use the DSP variant of the SH-3. I was disassembling the hardware initialization code of the boot ROM to figure out what it's memory timings were (to compare them to the 32X) and found it executing DSP instructions. I wrote a test program to double check, and it passed. The Jornada has a software modem, so the DSP capabilities are probably used for that.

<comment><USER4> Oh, for me, I absolutely use emulation, for obvious reasons, debugging and RAM/VRAM viewing/mapping being the obvious ones - I then use a tool provided by jo-engine that does all the tough work of creating an ISO file that I simply burn to my drive-door modified Model 1 NTSC Saturn when I want.

It's not ideal. Nor, however, for me, is the Dreamcast's need for either an outdated serial port, or an expensive and rare broadband adapter.

Furthermore, the Dreamcast just seems like one of the first systems that seemed extremely close to a PC. I love that I can still fiddle with assembly in very logical ways with the Saturn. I'm not sure if that's the case with the Dreamcast. (The DC, is, incidentally, one of my favourite consoles ever in terms of software!)

For the Saturn, there is a new piece of software that can be uploaded to certain times of common/inexpensive Action Replay/Backup RAM carts that allows you to run standard burned CD's. I've meant to buy one for a while now, but sadly I haven't had the time I've wanted to prioritize Saturn dev in the last while due to adulting. :3

<comment><USER5> Well, not many DC emulators will run my code anymore, and eventually none will. :P On the DC, I used to use serial port with a USB adapter that manages 384k baud, but upgraded to a BBA several years ago.

I really, really, don't like the idea of doing a bunch of development on an emulator, then finding out it doesn't work right on real hardware (either not at all or with unexpectedly terrible performance) and having to figure out what all is going wrong. Doing it all on a real console means you find out immediately where any problems arise.

The Dreamcast tries to pretend to be like a PC, but treating it like one will seriously limit performance. The SH-4's terrible cache needs to be babied to get the most out of it, and there's a lot of unusual things you can do with the 3D hardware since it works very differently than other GPUs.

You can definitely do assembly on the DC, and it's really important for performance critical code. GCC can't use the SH-4's SIMD instructions effectively, so you have to use at least inline asm or true assembly. I'm not totally sure what you mean by "in very logical ways". I guess optimal SH-4 code doesn't look logical! Rendering-type code is harder on the SH-4 than the SH-2/3 because it's superscalar and FPU instructions have longer latency than ALU instructions. You have to spend more time figuring out how to hide latencies, and software pipelining becomes more important for performance. Optimal SH-4 assembler code ends up much messer looking than optimal SH-2/3 code.

For example, normalizing an array of 3D vectors in C, using inline assembly to use the inner product (FIPR) and square root reciprocal (FSRRA) instructions, you'd be lucky to get around 24-28 cycles per vector (it'd be even worse if you used pure vanilla C). But with software pipelined assembly, I can manage 8 cycles per vector.

But it's much more complex, not just because it's in assembler. The optimized main loop juggles normalizing 4 vectors at the same time (The loop is 32 cycles, with 4 vectors it averages 8 cycles per vector), and there's code to prepare the loop and exit the loop, and special case code for if there are fewer than 4 vectors to transform. The resulting machine code for the entire asm version is probably around 10 times the simple version.

Another example would be transforming a bunch of 4D vectors by a 4x4 matrix. C with inline asm will take about 16 cycles per vector, but optimized pure asm can do 4 cycles.

A 3D rendering engine I'm working on for the DC does software vertex shaders by basically copy & pasting optimized assembly loops into a single function and adding a bit of glue code between them.

<comment><USER6> Is your code inspected by emulator writers? I guess there would be a lot to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although the video is short and may not reveal everything about the chip, the chip appears anything but tricky or complex. Seems like it would be fun to optimize for.

<comment><USER8> Did you skip the part where he told that 6 instructions are being executed in parallel per cycle or is this not tricky in your opinion?

<comment><USER9> Is this really under control of the programmer? Sounds like a "we need a smarter compiler" problem...

<comment><USER10> Writing a smart compiler for such a special application would have probably cost more time. This unit was specifically used (from what I can gather) for matrix multiplications, so the average Sega programmer didn't actually touch the code it was running.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Not sure why I was downvoted. What is this, stack overflow?

<comment><USER10> I don't know either, people are judgmental I guess?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A little off topic: I do not have any old consoles, yet I would love to program for them, especially 3DS, PS3, Saturn or Dreamcast. Is using an emulator the right option?

PS: I also live in a place where it is very hard to find and buy them.

<comment><USER12> An emulator would be the right option anyway, as that's how development was originally done for most of them. It's too difficult to write to physical media every time you change your program.

<comment><USER13> I don't believe this is actually true for many consoles. Game Dev Kits where normally a more open version of the hardware that was either hard coupled with a PC, or able to connect to one and have game data essentially streamed too it.

See this video for an example; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH94fKtGr0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH94fKtGr0M)

Not that I'm trying to discourage developing for emulators. Just see how machine accurate the emulator you're using is first :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There were also DSPs in some computers in those days (eg NeXT hardware). Using DSPs to accelerate GP computation tasks seemed to have much potential, which was never realised.

<comment><USER15> These days, we accelerate DSP tasks using GPUs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a Java developer, that video reminded me of the luxury of high level languages.

I don't think I could have managed a professional career working with assembly day to day.</comment>


Flash getting native Direct3D & OpenGL GPU Hardware-accelerated 3D support - <AUTHOR> http://www.flashrealtime.com/max-racer-multiplayer/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just announced and demoed at this morning's Adobe Max 2010 keynote by CTO Kevin Lynch. Another big demo for Flash gaming/gamedev is native support for gamepads/joystick controllers.

<http://max.adobe.com/online/monday/></comment>


Ask HN: Docker Swarm Experiences:  Advantages or Disadvantages? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone had any experiences putting Docker Swarm into production?  What did you use it for and what was your experience? <comment><USER2> I have experience running production stacks on Swarm, Kubernetes and ECS. I think the best way to talk about running Swarm stacks in production is to compare it to other orchestration runtimes.

Swarm has a really low learning curve. You can simply write a docker- compose.yml that defines your stack and then run it. The syntax of a docker- compose yaml is likely familiar to many developers who have been using Docker, so that is a huge advantage when adopting. It's a version 3.3 YAML, not the standard docker-compose, but the changes are pretty minor.

Swarm stacks come with a built-in overlay (software-defined) network. Services can be identified using in-cluster DNS that round-robins to all containers running that service. This mostly works well, but it's been a challenge to depend on at scale. When a service is rescheduled due to failure, we've seen some instances where requests are dropped.

Swarm services are just less specialized than k8s ones, which is the tradeoff for a more approachable, easy-to-use runtime. There's no deployment, service, load balancer, etc. You just run services that depend on other services.

Swarm's "depends_on" syntax is simpler, but less robust than what Kubernetes offers.

Swarm's secrets are amazing, and really great, but you have to build for them. The idea is that a Swarm Secret doesn't just exist in an unencrypted environment variable, but it's a secured file on disk in the container. The team at Docker did a great job here.

While I'm a huge fan of Kubernetes and continuing to push Kubernetes adoption for some of our services, we also use a decent amount of Swarm and plan to continue.

Finally, I do worry a little about the Swarm scheduler's future. If anyone from Docker is around, it would be great to hear from them on this. Since they are pushing Kubernetes also, it does make me hesitate to recommend Swarm for a new service, with the risk that it will be end-of-lifed soon.

<comment><USER3> Swarm isn't going away, and in fact, Docker has stated it publicly multiple times on their blog since K8s announcement, and has continued to add new features and fix bugs. Their Kubernetes integrations in Docker EE takes advantage of Swarm's built-in security for node setup. Lots of improvement in the last 6-9 months on Overlay and zero-downtime updates, but true, compared to the first year of SwarmKit, this last 6 months has slowed down in terms of PR's for new features, likely due to focus on K8s integration. Your rolling update issues were likely related to bugs that are (hopefully) now fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> "It does make me hesitate to recommend Swarm for a new service, with the risk that it will be end-of-lifed soon."

This was my exact concern. With the announcement at the end of 2017 that Docker EE would be integrating Kubernetes, it gave me pause as to whether to put Swarm into production now, when there is the possibility Docker could be moving away from Swarm entirely in the near future.

Do you have any sources that there will be continued investment in Swarm?

All recent blog posts I see are hyping of the features of the Kubernetes integration.

<comment><USER3> Nov 16h, 2017 Docker creates a blog post covering why Swarm is key to the future of Docker EE and K8s integration: [https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in- docke...](https://blog.docker.com/2017/11/swarm-orchestration-in-docker- enterprise-edition/)

March 9th, 2018 Docker creates a blog post highlighting a major new feature coming to Swarm in Docker EE 2.0 (alongside K8s integration). [https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/enhanced-layer-7-routing- swa...](https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/enhanced-layer-7-routing-swarm-docker- enterprise-edition-beta/)

There's a lot more evidence that I hope to put into a blog post soon. No company will guarantee they will always make a product, but we've got years of enterprise support for Swarm as it is, and they keep adding functionality so I have no evidence of them stopping or even hinting at such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did. Experience was generally good. Swarm pros: simpler, much shorter configuration files. cons: authentication requires paid version, not possible to divide a Swarm into independent virtual swarms. Another con: even though I am a fan, I fear for its future since development seems to be slowing.

<comment><USER3> Swarm isn't going away, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771118)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work almost exclusively with people learning Swarm, and companies deploying Swarm. In Sacramento, CA today at MuraCon conference listening to stories of teams I've never met, taking Docker Swarm CE into production. Most I see start out deploying it for web services, web sites, worker jobs, then maybe dipping into persistent data containers with something like REX-Ray for shared storage. 18.03 is the latest Docker CE release and solid afaik. The dev-to- prod workflow is pretty great woth docker-compose to Swarm Mode. See my DockerCon talk [https://dockercon.docker.com/watch/WdAeLaLuSCNQwEp61YVXUt](https://dockercon.docker.com/watch/WdAeLaLuSCNQwEp61YVXUt) and my YouTube Channel on stuff I just started doing [https://www.youtube.com/c/BretFisherITPro](https://www.youtube.com/c/BretFisherITPro) and I also have articles and courses at [https://bretfisher.com](https://bretfisher.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks some really great stuff here at [https://bretfisher.com](https://bretfisher.com).

Again do you have some further support/sources that Docker will continue investment in Swarm?

I found this tweet from Solomon Hykes stating Swarm isn't dead, but also provides a vague answer without much detail to specific plans. "Docker will continue to support both Kubernetes and Swarm as first-class citizens, and encourage cross-pollination. Openness and choice create a healthier ecosystem for everyone."

[https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/941080802607222784](https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/941080802607222784)</comment></comment>


When the Soviets Banned Rock Music, Teens Used X-rays to Bootleg Records - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-hipsters-bootlegged-banned-music-bone-records-180957505/?no-ist <comment><USER2> The title interested me in that I was curious how X-ray images of records could be re-rendered as audio or vinyl discs ...

But no! They took old x-ray prints and pressed the records right into them! It's an excellent idea and one my just-awoken brain could not get to on its own.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if X-ray images of records _could be_ decoded as audio.

It's been done with regular pictures, there was a really good article about this that I can't find anymore. However it should be more complicated with x-ray images as they are a different mapping between the disc and the image.

<comment><USER4> For science I'm currently trying to get someone to x-Ray an LP. Let's see. Direct digital though, let's skip that film screen rubbish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a surprisingly good movie called стиляги about this culture: [http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1239426/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1239426/) \- highly recommended for anyone who thinks Brooklyn invented the hipster :)

<comment><USER6> > _highly recommended for anyone who thinks Brooklyn invented the hipster_

Heh, this reminds me of a few years ago, when my cousin was visiting us from Russia, and was absolutely ecstatic to meet my friend who looked very much like a hipster stereotype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, that was probably the case in Leningrad and maybe Moscow, but definitely not the rest of the USSR (1/6th of the world's land at that moment). And the situation was not that grave. There was even a magazine printed as blue plastic LPs called Krugozor, with rock bands. I owned a collection of many rock bands on tapes, and no one chased me for that. There was completely otherer problem - Soviet music was banned in the US, you could not buy LP of Pesnyary anywhere in the US.

<comment><USER8> Krugozor/Kolobok are from the mid to late 60s, after these things were first invented and traded in the 50s.

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грампластинка#.D0.9A.D1.83.D1....](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грампластинка#.D0.9A.D1.83.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B0.D1.80.D0.BD.D1.8B.D0.B5_.D0.BF.D0.BB.D0.B0.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B8.D0.BD.D0.BA.D0.B8._.C2.AB.D0.9C.D1.83.D0.B7.D1.8B.D0.BA.D0.B0_.D0.BD.D0.B0_.D1.80.D1.91.D0.B1.D1.80.D0.B0.D1.85.C2.BB)

<comment><USER7> Pink Floyd are the 70-ies, if memory serves. I had tape of the Dark Side of the Moon in 1977. That is a bit late, yes, but could any US resident claim ownership of the 1976 Belarusian single of the year in 1980? [http://youtu.be/0rHjakawG8M](http://youtu.be/0rHjakawG8M)

<comment><USER8> What does that have to do with the article? It sounds like a classic case of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)

<comment><USER7> The article claims the hunger for American bands among the Soviet teenagers and describes the exotic method for satiating it. I only pointed that situation was more complicated. There were 'voices of freedom' and anticommunism from one side and propaganda from the other. And yes, thank you for the link. Just this week I suggested Mr Simmons - the black American cyber cop is better to leave the US if he wants to land a better professional future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Such a neat story! I think the history of the underground market for music, movies, and games is fascinating. I'd love to work on a book about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> > While the vinyl sheets used to print x-rays were much flimsier than records

I doubt the Soviets were making X-rays on vinyl. They would be using acetate like the rest of the world. The record industry was also still using shellac based media in the 50's. Vinyl was not a "thing" back then.

<comment><USER11> Off by one decade. Shellac compound -> LP changeover occurred in the 50's in most of the world.

<comment><USER10> Late 50's. Vinyl wasn't common until the 60's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Information wants to be passed around.

</comment><comment><USER13> slightly OT but: 1) the whole article reminds me of A Clockwork Orange and 2) all those Eastern Europe Warez Collections that found their way to central/west Europe in the early nineties. If it wasn't for 3DStudio 3/4 on DOS, I think my visual/spatial thinking would be way worse, making it even harder to wrap my mind around view/projection matrices etc.. edit: typos

</comment><comment><USER14> As soon as I open the page on iOS it redirects to an unrelated advert. This is why I use an adblocker on my PC.</comment>


Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/ <comment><USER2> I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe this technology will touch _everything_. Real estate markets will shift dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of thousands of people each year will escape death; _millions_ will lose their jobs.

Safe to say I'm really, really excited about the future.

<comment><USER3> You're missing one important factor - many people, me included, just like to drive cars and they don't treat them as "transport vehicle only". I would refuse to use a driverless car even if it would be more economic, more safe and would transport me faster.

<comment><USER4> Would you use an optionally driverless car? On long trips you could just take a nap, but you could have your fun driving any time.

However, at some point the safety factor may force you to stop driving. I wouldn't want you to be driving, when a machine could do it better.

<comment><USER5> Many will not take such a rational approach to the safety issue. Every driverless car fatality will get _huge_ press. No one I know has ever died in an airplane, but quite a few I know are afraid to fly.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, public perception will be an issue. I still have hope that people will get over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Holy shit. Forbes is an absolute cesspool of a website.

There are about three paragraphs of text, and then I have to pony up another ad impression by clicking through to the next page in order to keep reading. All the while, two _enormous_ fixed nav bars follow my every move at both the top _and_ the bottom of the page. Meanwhile a veritable flotilla of fixed- position "social icons" on the left beg me to help Forbes advertise their content. And to the right of the article? Adverts as far as the eye can see. Even within that center column, the content is occasionally interrupted with links to other unrelated content. And below the article text itself are a bunched of "Sponsored Content You Might Like" links doing their very best to look similar to "Related Stories".

What's going on here? Is this what it takes for Forbes to turn a profit?

<comment><USER7> Their print links[1] are pretty good though. Normally, I object to linking to print pages because they usually are formatted in a way that makes them unreadable (e.g., very tiny font and very wide columns), and often provide no way to reasonably find the non-print version if you want to look for things like comments and related articles.

However, the Forbes print link uses a reasonable font and a reasonable column width, and has at the bottom a link to the non-print page. (It does invoke a print dialog, which is a bit annoying).

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten- your...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your- seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/print/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The market is worth trillions... not Google's solution. One thing tech reporters seem to have failed at recognizing is that this research has been taking place at every major car company out there - many many others are legitimately in the race. Ultimately its the manufacturers that get to pull the trigger on how driverless cars will become driverless.

<comment><USER9> Still, I can't help but feel that maybe Google have the final piece of the puzzle. We've had computers and sensors powerful enough for decades, only Google have all of that maps data, polished again and again by android users using maps (and now Ingress) to make it more reliable.

Google almost specialise at crunching massive data into useful products, and building reliable supersystems from millions of unreliable subsystems.

Car companies might have some software knowledge these days but they really are a long way from the capabilities Google has. They solve car problems, but it might turn out that this is an information system problem.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate on how you think that map data is important? I would expect that mapping data at best gives you a route - something the user could supply. Naively, I would think that the hard problems are responding to obstacles in the road, cross walks, stop lights, etc., where map data won't help much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even Google's own data isn't perfect. A couple of years ago someone even tried to sue Google for "getting her on a highway" and then having an accident. I think she was walking, and obviously she can't blame Google for not noticing the highway!

But with self-driving cars, it's different. A car landing on a highway, when it's not supposed to be there, and then getting into an accident, is not good news. So that's why I think accurate map data will be very important for this.

<comment><USER11> Mapping data will be important, but not to prevent accidents. Maps will not be 100% accurate, so even with perfect maps, cars will end up on roads they think aren't highways while in fact, they are. There also will be newly one-way streets that aren't in the mapping database yet, roads closed due to construction or accidents, etc. Yes, both will be rare, but multiplied by millions of cars (necessary to get the 'worth trillions' part)? Not so.

So, let's say you are driving a vehicle that isn't allowed on the highway but incorrectly takes one. How do you think maps will help with the "and then getting into an accident" part?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The world will be a better place:

Blind people, disabled people, people unable to drive in any way will be more independent.

No need for expensive parking in a city. Car can go somewhere else cheaper. Expensive land used for parking can be better utilised.

You can rent your car out to others while you're not using it. No real need for personal car ownership. Why pay to own when you can rent whenever you need from car manufacturers or rental companies? Get the car that best suits your needs for a particular day at your door when you need it.

Cars spend a lot if their life doing nothing. The car will be fully utilised and always in service making the most of the valuable resources used to build it.

A car no longer needs to be car shaped. You can have cars for specific needs. A bar car if you want!

Traffic efficiency when everyone has them. The road network can be utilised more effectively as the cars will be able to share data and calculate the best route.

You can spend more time doing other things like looking at their adverts.

They will be safer. Computers won't make the mistakes caused by humans doing stupid things like sending text messages while driving. Drink driving. The won't break the speed limit etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the implications are huge, but I question the 90% reduction in cars figure.

While it's true that most people don't drive their car most of the time, when they do drive, most of them are driving within a relatively small time window.

I could imagine a 25-50% reduction in the number of cars, but I just don't see 90% happening unless it's accompanied by a huge increase in people working from home or working non-standard hours.

<comment><USER14> You haven't taken into account car pooling. Driverless cars can do adhoc car pooling. I can even see things like local 4 seater driverless cars picking you up, and taking you to another 10 (or more) seater vehicle for the rest of your journey. (By definition the congestion is because a lot of people have overlapping routes.)

Additionally you are no longer to blame for your commute since the driverless system would be responsible for timing, in much the same way trains are to blame for timing now. I'd also expect the driverless system to have variable pricing - need to get to work by 9am instead 9.15am and it is $5 more out of your pocket. Ultimately your employer is paying that and they have an incentive to only do so if it is valuable.

<comment><USER15> Many people don't like sharing a car with strangers; I doubt this will change as quickly as the technology.

<comment><USER16> It wouldn't be long before every car used in this way became like a small limousine. The efficiency of driverless cars would easily outweigh the cost of such a redesign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to disagree with other posters that Google is not going to own this market. It's hard to think of another company that is even close to being able to execute on this. It's the ultimate big data problem. The in-house experience of Google at running computing infrastructure is a must-have for this type of system to work.

<comment><USER18> Rio Tinto.

Not for general public driving, of course, but for fleets of trucks and excavators that operate globally 24/7.

At various sites they are already operating driverless equipment using tech developed in house.

For what it's worth, oil & gas & mineral exploration work drove a large part of the civilian development of tools like Google Earth / Google Maps in the decades prior to the first public offerings by Google (who acquired their tech from others (the chaps from Sydney for Maps, Keyhole for Earth)).

<comment><USER17> I still see it as orders of magnitudes off in complexity. You're talking about a system for autonomously controlling every motor vehicle in the U.S., or even the world -- that's effectively the end game. Google is among the handful of companies that has the computing infrastructure to have a "pulse" on the world at all times, and within those companies they are heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of being able to implement large scale, distributed information processing algorithms with low latency at that scale. It's a very rare, maybe completely unique cross section of capabilities. Google is better suited to solving this problem in many ways than any other problem they're currently solving.

The point is the capabilities I'm talking about have nothing to do with cars and everything to do with computing. Pointing to another company doing autonomous vehicles as a counterexample is kinda-sorta missing my point.

<comment><USER18> > You're talking about a system for autonomously controlling every motor > vehicle in the U.S.,

Not _a_ (single) system, rather one such system _per_ car - standard protocols for inter system comms are yet to arrive and each vehicle needs to react to local changes such as pedestrians w/out reference to an external global computing infrastructure.

It's not a big data, massively interconnected problem at all - the elegance comes from local smart behaviour - even for broader problems like optimal pooling.

Others can enter the driverless vehicle market and there are companies like Akamai Technologies that could provide any required interconnect. Google is a player, but by no means the only player.

<comment><USER17> It's both. Its hyperlocal real-time understanding and eye-in-the-sky big data analysis to keep everything running smoothly. Think about where you end up 10-15 years after this technology comes out: "cars" driving on multi-level, many-laned highways travelling 150-200mph a few meters apart, traffic flow coordinated to optimize energy usage and minimize time to destination. It's a hard problem and not solvable via local agents alone.

<comment><USER18> > It's a hard problem and not solvable via local agents alone.

Oh, Really?

Ants seem to do okay.

Following your, umm,, solution of critical external hyper networked global oversight it seems there'd be the mother of all traffic accidents if the servers went out.

Biologically emergent local behaviour seems wonderfully adept at converging on globally optimal solutions via local agent actions. Perhaps you're right, maybe Google is the only company capable of replicating the efficiencies of termite mounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's why the CA legislature pssed legislation to allow self-driving cars on public roads with such unusual alacrity - this is a technology we want to ensure gets a foothold in California, both for direct revenue flowing to the state and for the second order economic gains that would result from wide deployment - environmental improvements, lower accident rates, and new service markets. EDIT: as well as the ongoing perception of economic and technological leadership, which has taken a bruising after our per-student educational funding fell to an embarrassing 49th in the nation.

<comment><USER20> _after our per-student educational funding fell to an embarrassing 49th in the nation_

I had heard that funding levels in California, as ranked against other states, had fallen in recent years, and that is surely embarrassing to Californians, who historically have taken pride in generous state funding for schools up to and including universities. But of course even more embarrassing to California in the years that I have been an adult have been the poor results in California schools, even compared to funding levels there that were higher than in some other states. I wish the school administrators in California well in learning how to spend their resources better. I note that the Gates Foundation studies of effective schooling practices often include schools in California in the study samples, and I hope actionable data lead to better results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Combine driverless cars with electric motors. Add a few driver-free high speed tunnels which connect to the existing road network (I assume tunnelling will eventually be cheaper than building new roads). Then we'll have a growing, backwards-compatible high speed freight distribution system which delivers to the doorstep. And as cars get quieter and pollution free (locally) our cities will suddenly become civilised places to walk around in, breathing freely. Maybe we'll hang out like philosophers in the market squares of Athens or Florence :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> So how many years are we talking until we see them in the US? Europe? Asia? Not seeing 1 or 2 with millionaires in them but when I buy any car I have the option, or, even better, it's mandatory driverless (which makes sense as the roads would be safer with only driverless cars there)?

For me, this would actually be a solid reason to move to the country they have it first. I find driving an absolute waste of time, but busses and metros and trains are just not a good substitute unless almost empty and comfortable (which most are not).

<comment><USER23> Sergei Brin of Google has promised < 5 years for an average joe. And that was 6 months ago.

<comment><USER20> Sergey Brin's actual statement was "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this" as transcribed from an interview.

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231707/Self_driving_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231707/Self_driving_cars_a_reality_for_39_ordinary_people_39_within_5_years_says_Google_39_s_Sergey_Brin)

That is an ambitious prediction, and I wonder what that suggests about the cost of the self-driving system, as fewer and fewer cars look affordable to many "ordinary people" these days. I think Brin, being a billionaire for several years now, may have a warped sense of what "ordinary people" can really afford, so I give it ten years till I'm likely to be able to buy a car with self-driving features. But that means I can buy at most just one more car without self-driving features (to replace a car that threatens to fail at any moment, after almost 170,000 miles of driving since 1999), and then the next car I buy will be a self-driving car. Cool.

<comment><USER24> "Ordinary people" could certainly afford to ride in driver-less taxis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmm, no mention of the disruptions in employment due to driverless cars. There go taxi drivers, bus drivers and a big segment---truck drivers, so I would expect a large push back from the various unions (I'm extrapolating from _The Box_, a history of container shipping).

<comment><USER23> America still has unions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The next several years should prove "interesting" for the car market. Driverless cars and assorted state DOT departments pushing for black boxes in cars on the basis of tracking milage are both going to see pushback from the general public.

I've bought two new cars (and 1 used) in the last 15 years. The oldest lasted 11 years and 256000 miles. The used was a truck when I bought my house. The newest is a diesel wagon getting 40+ miles to the gallon, I don't plan on selling it anytime soon.

I will be loath to add GPS for purposes of tax calculation (sure it can be done based off registration or other means -- at least the GPS data isn't there). And, I don't predict any incentive to move people from driving their own cars to self-driving cars.

The above is in addition to the "independence" baked into the American culture about the open road and the automobile.

<comment><USER27> _The above is in addition to the "independence" baked into the American culture about the open road and the automobile._

Do you think there is something inherently wrong with the feeling of independence and happiness attained from the car culture in the US?

I am still dubious that self-driving and non-self-driving cars will be able to share a road in the future. If this doesn't happen, I doubt Americans will freely give up their 'right' to drive the way they want.

<comment><USER28> Not the parent, but I do think there is something inherently wrong about it.

I grew up around cars, driving cars (heck, my college job was the stereotypical pizza delivery guy). I live in a metropolitan area where I can go just about anywhere I need to with the swipe of a card and waiting a few minutes on a train platform. The feeling of independence that I didn't need to worry about the CV boots on my axles screwing up and costing me hundreds in a replacement axle. The feeling of independence that I'm not contributing significantly to pollution. The feeling of independence that _getting out and walking somewhere_ gives me. The feeling of independence that I get to read a book on my commute instead of staring at the ass-end of an SUV jettisoning metric tons of fumes while in stop-and-go-traffic.

Do I wish I had a car for getting out of the city and into the countryside sometimes? Well, sure.

That's what zipcar is for.

I _do_ admit that the feeling of driving is exhilarating. Pushing the pedal down, feeling the engine rev, connecting with the road through the tires.

For the majority of uses, I can see driverless cars completely taking over. And for those who want to drive endless country roads? Well, driverless cars will probably be built to drive with the expectation that every other car on the road is being driven by a drunken teenager on a methamphetamine binge. For liability purposes.

And in certain parts of the country, you can still see horse-drawn carriages clopping along the shoulder.

So you'll [the quintessential driver, who just wants to drive because of some ass-backwards ideal of freedom which is actually more crippling than freeing] will be just fine.

If not? Well, we have four-wheeler specific mudding "roads" out there right now, don't we? I could see the blue ridge parkway, for example, being a driver-only road (it is incredibly fun to drive).

<comment><USER29> You're lucky. It's a luxury to live in an area with effective mass transportation.

A lot of people aren't so lucky.

The freedom a vehicle provides those people is quite real.

<comment><USER11> Counterargument is that people exerting their freedom to own a car has built a society where areas without effective mass transportation are common, thus forcing others to also buy a car.

Suburbs would have been built differently if not for private car ownership. LA would not exist in its current form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One overlooked factor is how much marital discord this will save.

"I drove last time, it's your turn to drive." "But they'll be serving just beer. You don't even like beer." etc etc

I also look forward to the day when you will be able to go to the pub, get absolutely wankered, and still be able to get home safely without waiting for cabs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Like some others have mentioned, the title is somewhat misleading. There is no feasible way that Google ends up owning the entire market. And I'm not talking about the actual cars, because they're definitely not getting in the car making business. Even when it comes to the software, they could only be the only provider in the market if it becomes a government regulated monopoly.

As a side note, I think the resistance to driverless cars will be a big psychological stumbling block. I can't ride in the passenger seat of a car without hitting the "brakes" and pressing my foot into the floor. It will be tough to break habits and to trust that the software is safe.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of great ironies of the 21st century is going to be that humanity had to build autonomous flying drones before it could build autonomous cars (to develop the algorithms), and autonomous cars before it could build flying cars (because average people could never be reasonably expected to pilot a flying car.)

But mark my words in 2100 we will, at last, have flying autonomous cars (or something that can be described that way.)

</comment><comment><USER32> "Because people consistently underestimate the implications of a change in technology—are you listening, Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Sears, etc.?"

Um, are you listening Ford, Hyundai, Honda, GM? Can't wait until they legislate their way back to competitiveness with google.

<comment><USER33> All of those companies have had self-driving car projects for a decade now.

Might want to pay attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The interesting part about this is everything mentioned was about saving money on things. It sounds like it could destroy a few trillion in revenue. I don't think it is actually worth trillions to google though. (Obviously it could be worth a lot though)

</comment><comment><USER35> Sensationalist headline but I can conclude that Google and SpaceX are the tech leaders of our generation. Love hearing about companies focused on the future. To think that potentially this guy who has to depend on other people to take care of him and drive him places, or he has to take the bus, won't have to because he can hop into his self-driving car and be independent.

</comment><comment><USER36> This assumes Google will have the market to itself.

Cars aren't like search. It's not a winner-takes-all market.

<comment><USER19> Google's not selling cars. It's selling automotive technology that will soon become standard in cars.

<comment><USER37> The solution is much farther off than Google would like you to believe. As in, we'll be lucky if driverless cars become feasible before fusion becomes commercially viable.

<comment><USER38> Please don't make statements like that without providing your reasoning (whether right or wrong).

<comment><USER37> I've worked on autonomous cars, and no, I am not a crank. I could go into technical reasons why this is nowhere near ready, but there is no need. The onus is on Google to prove that they have the technology (or that it will arrive soon), and proof has not been forthcoming. I'm not even claiming that Google is claiming that autonomous cars are almost here--I am saying that people should take their carefully controlled demos with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pedantry: not "Google's Driverless Car" but rather "Google's IPR on Driverless Cars" ([http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/12/16/google-granted- pat...](http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/12/16/google-granted-patent-for- driverless-car-technology)).

</comment><comment><USER40> honestly, isn't this the future you imagined? it's amazing how we see this for the first time and are initially underwhelmed or blase.

</comment><comment><USER41> _Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions_

Amazing! He studied and compared all other driver-less cars to Google's and came to this conclusion.

I know a writer getting paid for clicks wouldn't forget that virtually every major car company is working on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#History>

<comment><USER42> Xerox's GUI was worth trillions.

<comment><USER43> Just like how Xerox was unable to realize the value of what they had. Its very possible the car makers too, might think on the same line.

Sometimes you need a outsider to show you how powerful your own work can be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> We'll all be dead from toxic smog before Google's driverless cars get anywhere.

I think the idea is extremely shortsighted. It's a technological feat but not a creative one. It just produces more cars, more fuel-burning and more roads. It's more cars and that will produce more pollution.

Ultimately, it solves nothing. You want to stop deadly car crashes? Help save wildlife from excessive roads and urban sprawl? Stop driving. Live and work locally. But that would take _real_ change.

<comment><USER45> > We will need more roads, more cars and that will produce more pollution.

Nope. Less. Cars-per-person will nosedive from almost 1:1 in the US right now to maybe 1:5 - that means the embodied energy wasted on cars will go down. Per-mile energy costs will go down too, if cars are driven efficiently.

It also enables the large-scale conversion of the US car fleet to electric propulsion. Cars can recharge themselves and aren't range limited because you can swap cars rather than waiting.

It's huge. It's as big as the invention of the car was. All the human hours wasted on moving things from A to B will gradually go away.

<comment><USER44> That's a lot of ifs, and making a lot of assumptions. We don't have this kind of time.

For God sakes, _please_ snap out of your delusion.

<comment><USER46> You're deluded if you think car culture in the US can change significantly anytime soon. Call me a cynic, and I'll call you a fool.

If you want to throw around platitudes, why not address the real problem: uncontrolled population. Or does that make you uncomfortable?

<comment><USER44> No Mr.Pot, overpopulation isn't the problem. Greed and misallocation of land and resources is the problem. Too many cars is a problem. And you calling the kettle black is a problem.

I don't drive, you do, therefore you are uncomfortable with the reality that you are destroying the environment and the air and shifting the responsibility elsewhere.

<comment><USER46> No, allocation of resources depends entirely on scarcity, because no working system of fair distribution will ever happen in the real world. Unless you rely on charity to take care of everyone, which I guess is your solution. More likely you haven't thought about it.

Cars don't have to be internal-combustion.

You have no moral authority, just shrill accusations.

Your lack of driving is a lame dodge for your destructive, hypocritical, blind consumerism; which is doing far more damage than a car ever could. Feel free to defend your lifestyle here and pretend you don't shit all over the third world as much as the average American. You're fooling yourself though. Either you work for a company that does a ton of environmental damage, or your parents do, and they pay your bills (more likely). You pay taxes to a government with a massive military machine that destroys the environment and subsidizes the worst companies. But maybe your lack of car makes you special.

<comment><USER44> You don't know what you're talking about. I don't live in the US.

<comment><USER46> I sure wherever you live you're shitting on the third world just as much as the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why don't sports teams use randomization? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/why-dont-sports-teams-use-randomization-a-guest-post/

<comment><USER2> I would love to play poker against that guy. Bluffing should never be random, but should be a calculated move in which you believe that the opponent has missed whatever cards they were hoping for and has a good chance of believing that you have the best hand. To bluff randomly is to throw away money.

<comment><USER3> Actually - what you want to do is bluff randomly with very carefully calculated probabilities.

The problem is - humans are not good at generating random bits on command.

<comment><USER2> Right, but in his essay, all he says is something like, "I look down at my watch, and if the second hand is between 0 and 6, I bluff." To me, that's totally random, and that's not the right way to go about bluffing.

<comment><USER3> Who knows? Perhaps it's not optimal - but still better than human randomness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe for an individual team, there aren't enough games in a season to allow for a reasonable randomized test? It would make sense, perhaps, if your major league franchise controlled enough minor league teams, to use them as guinea pigs. The players and coaches might get a bit upset by being used like that though.

<comment><USER5> There are ~150 pitches/game x 162 games/season = 24,300 pitches/season in baseball. Shouldn't a fraction of those be enough to establish randomization as a useful strategy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What makes him think that sports teams aren't doing this kind of analysis but consider it a competitive advantage to not publicize it?

<comment><USER7> Presumably he sees in the statistics that the teams aren't making the decisions they should be making.

<comment><USER6> Based on what he writes in the article, it doesn't look like he has done any investigation of his own.

Viz. "To my knowledge, no sports team in the history of humankind has ever run a random control trial to figure out which strategies work the best. (I make this extravagant claim in hopes of provoking you all into providing some counterexamples.)"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Splunk Developer Platform (what I've been working on) - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I wanted to share with you what I've been working on for the past few months – the Splunk Developer Platform[1]. We released our Python SDK[2] back in August, but just last week we released our Java[3] and JavaScript[4] ones, and the JS SDK was the one I've been working on.
It was a great learning experience for me – first real foray into JavaScript and Node (the SDK works in both the browser and Node), and was a lot of fun to try different things out releasing it. I ended up building on a couple of open source libraries (and contributing back).
We are building out Splunk's developer platform and do a lot of work with social data like Twitter, Foursquare and GitHub, as well as try and come up with new ideas about how to use Splunk. If anyone has any questions or wants to try Splunk out, just let me know (contact info is in my profile).
[1]: http://dev.splunk.com
[2]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-python
[3]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-java
[4]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-javascript <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

[1]: <http://dev.splunk.com>

[2]: <https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-python>

[3]: <https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-java>

[4]: <https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-javascript>

</comment><comment><USER2> we use splunk in our office and i must admit, it's one of the greatest tools! to move from syslog to splunk has made life so much easier :) kudos on a great product and company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear - please get in touch if you have any requests for the dev platform (or in general). One of our goals is to make it easier for people to integrate Splunk with their other tools and processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So...you work for Splunk?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do - sorry if it wasn't clear.

<comment><USER4> in Seattle?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the Dev Platform team (including me) is all in Seattle.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wikipedia article page redesign (unsolicited) - <AUTHOR> http://www.interfacesketch.com/wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> I like it, it's clean and modern but largely keeps the original's spirit. I'm not so sure about the cyan background on "Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia", it looks very distracting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankyou for the feedback! I wanted to add a splash of colour to the page so it didn't feel too monotonous, but it sounds like I may have chosen too strong a shade of cyan/blue!</comment></comment>


Running my blog on an old Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jandhyala.in/posts/2020/06/rpi-home-server/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found my old Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and 1GB RAM) and rather than recycle it, I documented my effort to get a blog started, up and running, and serving over my home internet. Don't DDOS my (very) barebones setup!

<comment><USER2> You might want to run it through something like Cloudflare to prevent the DDOS problem. It's free, easy to configure and has a couple more perks on top.

I'm not a fun of Cloudflare, but until I'll find time to organize a proper security for my network (I too host a personal website on my home BananaPi m1), Cloudflare is better than nothing / being completely opened to the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great suggestion, thanks! What other steps would you recommend to "organize proper security"?

<comment><USER2> It basically comes down to mastering a firewall on your side and having visibility of what's going on with incoming traffic. I' ll do my stack the old-school way. I've got a nice Mikrotik combo router with a lot of very advanced configuration options for pennies (a pretty advanced ones are like $70, will do for 1Gbps WAN), including a nice firewall) and I already mounted it on the edge of my home network; I didn't have time to tinker with it extensively yet so learning the firewall is yet to be done. I'd like to somehow process at least firewall logs from that device in a centralized way with alerting for DDOS like events (easy to do - the Mikrotik already can send logs to a central server, so I only need to decide which network monitoring software I', going to use). For the incoming traffic analyzing I'll use GoAccess harvesting logs from NGINX, which works as a reverse proxy for all web services on my home Pi.

All of that is easier to do than it sounds. It's all about having visibility over what's going on and being able to react when needed.

The idea of Cloudflare - yeah, I don't like it either, because what they do is basically a man-in-the-middle probing on my personal services, but temporarily, or if one is under heavy attack, it does the job too. This is what that service has been intended for - to make the external IP address for your web services unavailable / not visible for general audience of the Internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense for a more robust setup. Here's my config; do you think there are any obvious shortcomings with it?

\- Port forwarding only 80 and 443 on my router to the RPi. That should be the only incoming traffic allowed through my regular home router. What would a more advanced router add?

\- Setup firewall on the RPi using ufw to allow 80 and 443 to Nginx. Port 22 also allowed for SSH only on the local network (I can't edit my site away from home). I think ufw also allows some rate limiting, so will set that up next too.

\- Nginx only listens to 80 and 443 to serve content.

<comment><USER2> "What would a more advanced router add?" -> A centrally managed firewall integrated with the rest of the networking stack = having cotroll in one place. You also can use the software one on Linux directly. I like to have a central one, because I have multiple servers behind it and I don't want to think too much about hardening them. This how I can make experiments inside the network not risking anything and overthinking the security for partially ready services. Good security is always about the firewall stuff divided into 2 parts - 1) a firewall on an edge; + 2) a light set of firewall rules on a server. It's just much simpler that way. Even if for the sake of reporting only.

PS: You can also buy just a firewall leaving your current router intact. pfSense is great software and it's free! You can install it on almost anything. An old laptop will do the job. Probably you could even run it on your Pi in a Docker container, leaving your Pi to perform 2 functions with additional Ethernet cards: the www server, and a dedicated firewall. Many options are available and tinkering with that is fun!

The config you've mentioned looks fine. The rest comes down to details: is your network going to survive a lot of incoming DDOS like traffic (how beefy is your network edge device, is your system going to block DDOS attempts automatically (with fail2ban for instance)), etc. Good idea with rate limiting on UFW. Try to take a look on the mentioned fail2ban too. It can do wonders combined with UFW. I consider it a mandatory resource on every of my servers, even if for SSH protection only (controlling login attempts).

If that's not clear enough: at this point I'm pretty sure your server is going to survive a flood of incoming traffic, but I'm not so sure about your router. If it's a consumer grade device, the answer is obvious - it's going to freeze when a DDOS is going to start. Too much traffic to handle. Either make it beefy to handle EVERYTHING possible and/or put a firewall before it, so it can put thru only the valid traffic. Otherwise you have a weak spot. As you see DDOS is also possible when targeted to a network edge, not only www servers.

Ok, let's not be paranoid. If you're going to have real trouble with DDOS your ISP is going to intervene. But anything below massive floods is on you. I'm just saying that most home routers are VERY weak to host any services behind them, so they're naturally a weak spot I'd be targeting first knowing your IP. This is why for anyone serving web services from your home it's worth to buy a professional networking equipment. Ten years ago I was selling that kind of stuff for 5k-40k USD a piece (like Cisco stuff). Now I have a $250 beefy Mikrotik which handles 10Gbps and does things on the Cisco level easily. I like where the networking market went! One of those good and cheap companies is also Ubiquity, which might be better know in the US than Mikrotik.

Have fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is incredibly helpful, thank you!

I'm definitely going to add fail2ban and UFW rate limiting to start with, and look into a firewall on the edge in the unlikely event that GoAccess shows a deluge of traffic. I feel a bit better at least knowing now what the weak point is, so thanks!

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. It's easy to forget about those things in the age of cloud computing ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


David Simon: Newspapers could emulate HBO and charge for content - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/david-simon-newspapers-could-emulate-hbo-in-charging-for-content/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this the exact business model of magazines like NewYorker and Economist?

<comment><USER3> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _part of the HBO model is you can't sell crap. If it's not the best out there, no one's gonna put up money for it._

This is exactly why the subscription model will fail. It's practically impossible for the newspapers, even the big ones, to constantly churn out material thats worth paying for.

If subscriptions really do happen, a few people will just get subscriptions and put up their own versions of <http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/> for the rest of the people by rewording, massaging and summarising news without any attribution whatsoever. It's a fallacy to think anyone can really control content delivery online.

P.S. To be fair, the analogy is a slight bit off - not everything on HBO is worth paying for either. But the difference is that noone can rip off HBO shows while anyone can rip off the NYTimes. If there's a need for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> David Simon: Very good at making television, not so great at coming up with business plans for newspapers.

Seriously, if this idea were being proposed by anyone who didn't make 'The Wire,' I find it hard to imagine that Hacker News would find it worth our attention.

<comment><USER3> _Seriously, if this idea were being proposed by anyone who didn't make 'The Wire,' I find it hard to imagine that Hacker News would find it worth our attention._

Yeah, but it _was_ proposed by the creator of "The Wire," so here we are. :)

David Simon was waaaaay out in front of this issue. Way back in 2006 he chose the demise of the newspaper industry as the theme of the final season of The Wire and covered it critically before the whole "Newspapers Are About to Die" meme was getting any traction outside journalism trade circles.

That's not to say he's got all the answers, but the guy's certainly been thinking about the problem for quite some time and it's interesting to hear his perspective.

<comment><USER6> The "Newspapers Are About to Die" message has been repeated over and over again since the mid 90's. Because of the recent high-profile closings/cost- cuttings of newspaper organizations, the last 15 years of gloomy prognostications have essentially become reality (mainly precipitated by the current economy).

Similar to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and global warming, these are train-wrecks that can be seen miles and miles way. Unfortunately for newspapers, it seems they are in the middle of one.

<comment><USER7> Yes, newspaper readership has been declining for some time, but ad revenues didn't really start to tank until the past few years ([http://www.npr.org/blogs/globalpoolofmoney/images/2009/04/pa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/globalpoolofmoney/images/2009/04/papers_big.png))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's getting to the point where proposing a new solution to the newspaper industry's problems is like posting a clever "new" solution to end spam. Odds are it's neither clever nor new.

Someone needs to come up with a Final Ultimate Solution to the Newspaper Problem Response form based on <http://www.claws-and-paws.com/fussp.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Beware of reporters proposing business ideas.

<comment><USER7> They're as bad as the developers!</comment></comment>


Many Wall Street executives says wrongdoing is necessary - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/10/us-wallstreet-survey-idUSBRE86906G20120710

<comment><USER2> There's some badly defined stats here, with no info on overlaps between the various groups. But anyway, so what? even nailing these figures down a bit, would they compare less favourably with any other industry? I doubt it: every business I've ever been involved with or studied has benefitted from tactics or stratgegy ranging from underhand to downright illegal.

<comment><USER3> I'd be very surprised if a quarter of academics believed that falsifying results or plagiarism were key to success in research. Perhaps this is only because fraudulent research is so likely to be discovered and virtually guaranteed to end careers. Still, this shows that a higher standard exists in other fields.

Perhaps it's time that we, as a society, demanded greater accountability from the financial sector. Perhaps those found guilty of insider trading, etc. should be banned from work in finance for life.

<comment><USER4> I think you're right regarding research related academics, but then if you get into the degree machines aka universities these statistics would probably hold true… I remember hearing direct from professors how it was necessary and just part of the program.

Depressing but true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think thing missing from this is a perspective on whether the respondents are happy with this situation, or feel that they are/would be "forced" to commit wrongdoing--to keep up with everyone else's wrongdoing.

This distinction matters because if it is the latter, then it should be possible to take steps to change the culture to something that is more sustainable and self-policing. Most people want to do the right thing, and they just need to feel supported in doing so. This is the essence of "nation building" like what the U.S. is trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But if 25% of Wall St. executives are happy committing wrongdoing, then a much more aggressive and intrusive level of ongoing enforcement will be needed.</comment>


Mailspring: A fork of Nylas Mail by one of the original authors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring <comment><USER2> Hey folks! Mailspring maintainer here — glad to see this on Hacker News. For anyone just catching up, here's the tldr on Mailspring:

\- It's a fork of Nylas Mail with the entire mailsync codebase (~40k lines of JavaScript) replaced with a new C++ core based on Mailcore2. It uses roughly half the RAM and CPU of Nylas Mail and idles with almost zero "CPU Wakes" thanks to new C++11 features, which translates to great battery life. You might not even notice it's an Electron app.

\- It still has the same great pro features, like snoozing and send later, but _doesn 't send your email credentials to Mailspring servers_. All of these features have been re-implemented to run locally on your computer.

\- The pro features still cost money ($8/mo). The goal is to use revenue from subscriptions to pay maintainers (myself, possibly other folks!) to maintain Mailspring indefinitely and/or put bounties on popular feature requests.

\- The roadmap and website are still being assembled, but there's some really cool stuff in the works. Launching it and polishing the new C++ sync codebase is just step 1.

<comment><USER3> Really like it so far, but there is one nitpick that is bugging the hell out of me.

I can't "snap" or maximise the window on Windows (Win7). Because I have a decent sized screen I often just maximise to half screen for most applications, but not having the standard resize tools is frustrating. Edit: This only happens if I have the Reading Pane enabled.

Running version 1.0.1-ba1d6734.

Is this something being worked on? Or just a bug hitting me? Or just not something other people have asked about?

<comment><USER2> Hey! This is a bug—should be fixed in 1.0.2 later today: [https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/17](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/17)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used and loved Nylas Mail (aka N1), so I'm going to be taking a close look at this.

For the record, my needs in a mail client are: GUI, very clean UI, pretty themes, good search, works with gmail, ideally supports snoozing emails (a key feature if you like to pursue Inbox Zero), if at all possible should be a desktop app for OS X and Windows, and I wouldn't be adverse to open notifications and such. Also, I'm explicitly fine with their being an extra server in the mix; this is more-or-less required for snoozing emails to work properly[1], and I'm not really concerned about privacy.

If that describes you, you might like Mailspring too. If not (and I suspect that'll be the case for the median HN visitor), then probably not. :)

Edit: Totally forgot, I also have a strong need for supporting multiple email accounts. A merged inbox view that will automatically use the correct email address/signature for replying to an email based on where the original email was sent is critical.

[1]: At least, every implementation of email snoozing I've seen had relied on a third party server. And once I got addicted to it with Dropbox's much- mourned Mailbox app, I've found it very hard to use a mail client without it.

<comment><USER5> At FastMail we're hoping to implement snooze next year, as a first-party solution that doesn't need the support of a client or third-party server.

There is no established convention or standard for representing snooze over IMAP. There's not yet any consensus on how to represent it in JMAP, the emerging standard that we're backing (and which our web UI will be using fairly soon), either. It'll be a FastMail-specific JMAP extension at first, but it could well be standardised (though not in the core spec) after that. We'll see how things go.

<comment><USER6> Which other parties are currently backing JMAP?

<comment><USER5> I haven't been working on the JMAP stuff (I only started working there this year and I've been focusing on our new product Topicbox), so I'm not aware of all the details; but JMAP standardisation is going through the IETF, so you can see things that are happening with it at [https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/jmap/documents/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/jmap/documents/) and [https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues](https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I gave it a shot. The app is pretty but has some weird things that will keep me on Thunderbird.

* No plaintext support.

* No "Simple HTML View"—my favorite Thunderbird feature.

* No plaintext view.

* Sets a "Sent from Mailspring" signature that isn't straightforward to remove.

* I don't want to track others reading my mail. It's creepy and I'd rather that functionality not exist in my client. It's enabled by default.

* UI is slow enough for me to notice elements pop-in when I open new windows.

<comment><USER8> > * No plaintext support.

Strange, wasn't this one of those security focused clients? or am I mistaking it for something else? This is a big oversight as I find it's the ideal format for PGP emails and I find it forces me to keep things simple and minimal.

<comment><USER9> You're probably mistaking Mailspring for Mailpile ([https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/))

<comment><USER8> I was, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are no Linux download links. The download page just shows image placeholders.

But if you send an invalid download request like ".../download?platform=foo" then you get back a handy JSON error string indicating that the Linux downloads are:

[https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxDeb](https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxDeb) and [https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxRpm](https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxRpm)

Maybe Ben or someone will see this and comment why the links aren't there, since it looks like the github repo has issues filed for this.

<comment><USER2> Hey folks! bengotow here—the linux version is /almost/ ready, though the debian and rpm packages above should work. I'm working with some folks at Canonical to get the app packaged as a Snap (Snapcraft.io) so that Linux users will finally get autoupdates and I can ship a single format to everyone. Back when I worked on Nylas Mail, we had a ton of trouble with Linux because users would download a .deb or .rpm and then never update it, so I was hoping to stop distributing those entirely.

Feel free to grab the version from the link above, just come back and switch to the auto-updating snap when it's ready!

<comment><USER11> Just wanted to express thanks for continuing to support Linux reasonably well. I regularly use all 3 major platforms and hated that webmail was one of the only ways to get a somewhat-consistent interface across them; this is one of the things that drew me to Nylas in the first place before issues with a self- hosted sync engine pushed me away.

I'll definitely be checking out Mailspring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do a favour folks for your non-technical friends. Show them how to turn off image loading by default in their mail client. And how to check link destinations in emails before clicking on them.

People need to know how to protect themselves from abominations like 'Open tracking' and 'link tracking'.

<comment><USER13> I normally suggest reading in plain text, as the default. This may not work for everyone, but I find no use for rich format emails.

It's much better today, but there used to be quite a few vulnerabilities via rich formatted emails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can this so plaintext and operate without contacting a third party? There are a few "features" in this that worry me. One being the Open Tracking.

The client looks great and I'd like to use it but I frankly don't know what I'm getting. With Thunderbird other solutions you know what it's doing and how. Some of the features of this are a little strange for someone like me.

<comment><USER2> Hey! Mailspring maintainer here—the app doesn't support plaintext emails (at least not out of the box), but it's likely we'll add support in the future.

A lot of the features in the app, like read receipts and link tracking, are targeted at sales and business folks that send a lot of email and care about it being read. You can use the app without using them though! Unlike Nylas Mail, Mailspring implements all mail sync on your computer - your email credentials are not sent to the cloud and things like "unsnoozing" happen on your machine, not on a server. (Note that for many people, this is actually a /bad/ thing - if enough folks complain we might add the cloud sync stuff as an opt-in!)

<comment><USER15> > the app doesn't support plaintext emails (at least not out of the box)

What does that mean - only support gpg/smime encrypted email, or only support the html-part of a multipart message, with no option to edit/send or view the plain/text part? (ie: you can't communicate with any sane mailinglist using this)?

[ed: and does it work with text/plain at all - or does it effect not support email, sending empty text/plain parts?]

<comment><USER16> afaik atm it doesn't allow to send a plain text email (but it can display them), the only "output" format supported is HTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nylas (like other apps e.g. Airmail) kept the password on their servers (Nylas ID, now it's Mailspring ID) so basically they had (could have) access to all my data even when it's not lying on my computer.

I asked them about it and they never replied. I wish it was just a native (or not) IMAP client and I definitely want out of those Link and Open Tracking features.

(Edit):

There's a GitHub issue related to it - [https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33)

The dev is very clear about it

\--- but for now Mailspring needs to target paying customers with great pro features so I can continue working on it full-time. The Mailspring ID is a core component of these Pro features and a lot of exciting stuff on the roadmap, like team templates, read receipt analytics and shared folders. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense to remove the Mailspring ID and make the mail client better for you, because it pulls us further away from doing a great job on the pro features for paying users that will ultimately make this a long-lasting open source project.

Hope that helps! I'm going to flag this as a wontfix for now, but I welcome everyone's thoughts and feedback here. \---

So no, not an email client I would like to use.

<comment><USER2> Hey folks! Just to be clear, Mailspring does /not/ send your email credentials to the cloud - all the mail sync is done locally, and your passwords are stored in your system keychain / keyring. I spent a good chunk of time re- implementing things like snooze and send later to work without a backend server.

That's actually mentioned a few sentences before the quote above in that GitHub issue ;-) The Mailspring ID stores metadata for things like read receipts and link tracking, but that's pretty much it!

<comment><USER17> Thanks for replying here.

My bad. I somehow missed it.

Since you are here:

\- What if I am sending an email to a person who doesn't use Mailspring? Can the tracking still be achieved? I am don't know the technical details of how email works but I believe it can't be done unless the mail client adds something to the mail being sent. Right? So how does it work with Mailspring IDs?

\- Can I opt to not track my mails/activities and not be tracked too?

\- What all the meta data leavea my local system and goes to Mailspring? Is there a complete list somewhere? Also how are they stored on your serves?

Apologies again for posting incorrect info about your OSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What makes this better than Apple's Mail? Not familiar at all, just asking.

<comment><USER19> read receipts + link tracking. if you use it for work, it's incredible. all the other solutions are heavy-handed CRM style plugins for gmail.

canned responses + simple mail-merge style things

downside:

because it's not gmail, search is...not as good as gmail. nothing is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Browsing through mailcore2 [1], it looks like this would not support arbitrary IMAP flags. So far I have found only a handful of mail clients that can support them: MailMate, MailTags (brittle extension for Mail.app), and support for flags through folders if you happen to use Gmail as a server.

1: [https://github.com/MailCore/mailcore2/blob/f708ce74e23b61ec6...](https://github.com/MailCore/mailcore2/blob/f708ce74e23b61ec6e5ae958eba0b8bcd8831a1e/src/java/com/libmailcore/MessageFlag.java#L5-L19)

EDIT: added reference.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the UI and some features of Nylas, and thus Mailspring. But the fact I need a third party server worry me. I would love an open source native mail client that do all the syncing locally

<comment><AUTHOR> The syncing is done locally, no credentials are sent to Mailspring for your email accounts.

<comment><USER22> But you are still reliant on your server for some other reason?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Really happy to hear it ! I try nylas when they get out, but i'm not fine to let them keep their email.

I tried then to use their engine but they deliberately let it die/non working, so I did go back to thunderbird.

It's amazing guys, I was waiting for it since a long time, I have no problem to pay for the app but not for lose my email hosting !

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me or is the "onboarding" process too stupid to understand being run on a computer behind a proxy? I can't find any settings so I just get a fairly pointless failure message.

</comment><comment><USER25> SMTP authentication may be buggy. I can't connect to an AppRiver account via IMAP and SMTP, but am able to connect to a more traditional Linux-based IMAP/SMTP setup.

<comment><USER2> Yeah—something is definitely up with SMTP auth on Linux. I have a few test accounts it seems I can connect on Mac which are not working on Linux... stay tuned.

<comment><USER25> I've installed a few updates, but it still doesn't work. Now mail fails to sync with the accounts I had setup, particularly with my NAS sitting right across my desk on a direct LAN connection.

Too bad, I've been wanting to replace Thunderbird for awhile and Mailspring looks promising, but doesn't seem quite ready yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish the license was MIT. The author could then have simply made some sort of an open core model instead of resorting to this ID business.

<comment><USER2> Hey! Mailspring maintainer here—could you elaborate on the "open core model"? I'm not sure I follow. If it'd generate more than $~10k/mo in revenue and would allow me and others at F376 to sustainably work on Mailspring indefinitely, it might be a great alternative to the Mailspring ID and pro features.

<comment><USER27> Open core is generally a base free (as in speech and beer) version, and extended version/plugins that aren't. See Sidekiq and Hashicorp's products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> MailSpring is looking great, I've heard great things from one of my coworkers about Nylas Mail so I'll have to give this a try ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been waiting for this! Very exciting!

Couple of things I'm seeing:

\- The Markdown composer isn't working.

\- I can't install plugins.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wants me to create an account on their service. Why would that be necessary for a MUA?

</comment><comment><USER31> What's mailspring ID? Why do I need such a thing?

<comment><USER32> [https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33#issuecomm...](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33#issuecomment-334632126)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Linux Snap Coming soon!

Soon™</comment>


Ask HN: Personal CRM for individuals? - <AUTHOR> Hey,
My inboxes are full and my phone contacts are overflowing. I have been accumulating (but not curating) contacts and connections. There are a lot of very talented people in my rolodex, and many others that need them.
Trick is, when I promise someone I would find the one person that can help them, I am stuck staring at my email client, managing gigs worth of emails, and I just can't remember that person that I need.
How do you manage this?
Along with name and contacts, I want to tag people by geographic location, talents, and other snippets to help me find them.
For me, messages are immaterial; I respond to email promptly and don't look back at it (if it's a contract or work related, I keep a hardcopy); I want to tag and manage PEOPLE. How?
FWIW, I use Thunderbird with Googl Apps and other accounts. <comment><USER2> Funny you wrote this. Fred Wilson just wrote something similar - <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/the-family-crm-service.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also,

I would like to add "contacts" that aren't email accounts, but could be website handles or twitter accounts.

All I want is Person X is good for thing Y. Next time I lookup either X or Y, I want to find them both.

</comment><comment><USER3> I also have the same need. I tried silentale.com a while ago, but abandoned quickly because it was unbearably slow and missing some basic features. Currently trying networkhippo.com, I'm still not happy with it but it's a bit better. Try them and see if they fit your need.

</comment><comment><USER4> wow. you beat me to it. must be time for this app.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice bouquet there: [http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy=...](http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy=rating&query=crm)</comment>