'Serial,' Podcasting's First Breakout Hit, Sets Stage for More - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/business/media/serial-podcastings-first-breakout-hit-sets-stage-for-more.html <comment><USER2> I've heard that when TV started spreading people thought it would never overtake radio. "Who has time to just sit and watch something?" You can listen to audio while you do other things.

Podcasting is probably my main "media" for the last 5 or so years. I listen to 15-20 hours per week as I commute, exercise, wash dishes…

Right now. As a marginal, unprofitable, poorly understood medium podcasts are amazingly "free." At least some of that stems from podcasting being broken.

Anyway, if anyone is looking for some fertile space to innovate, podcasting is it. Discovery is completely and utterly broken. Even just getting a podcast that you know the name of can be borderline impossible for less savvy users. Podcasting apps kind of suck too. Podcasts struggle to get interaction, which is important for discovery.

<comment><USER3> Any recommendations?

I'm loving Serial, I listened to nearly all of it today. Occasionally I listen to Startups For the Rest of Us ([http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/)) but it's hit and miss if the content is relevant for me. Hardcore History is excellent.

It'd be nice to discover some more.

<comment><USER4> This American Life, the show that created (I think more or less), Serial, is a great show. 99% Invisible is a great show about design. Radio Diaries is interesting. If you're into super thoughtful discussions about religion, science, meditation, and so on, On Being is fantastic. Other ones worth checking out:

* Radiolab

* Stuff You Should Know

* Studio 360

But - Serial is definitely my favourite podcast of all time. I'm not sure there's anything better out there.

<comment><USER5> Does anyone else feel that Radiolab is incredibly over-produced? I've tried to get into it several times, but the fast cuts (after pretty much every sentence it cuts to another speaker) somehow make me nervous. I guess I'm just more into longer talk shows.

<comment><USER2> That's the experiment :)

Radiolab is really an experimental way of doing audio. Jad is a composer and they break all the traditional rules to make it very immersive. Personally, I like it. But, I also like the virtually no production, talk podcasts too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2mxkje/hae_mi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2mxkje/hae_min_lee_memorial_tree_photos_and_tour_of/)

I grew up not far from Woodlawn High, attended a neighboring school. After hearing about the trees that were planted in Hae Min's memory, particularly the second tree which was planted behind the school where "Lee liked to flop after an exhausting practice session with the lacrosse or field hockey teams" I recalled doing exactly that every summer after baseball practice (summer league was at woodlawn high) and I was curious to know if the tree giving me shade all those years was the one planted in her memory. So I decided to stop by after work and take some photos with my phone while I was around.

Side note I also went to Sunday School with Adnan's brother - or at least saw him around the campus - did not know any of them personally however. My only memory from the trial days is my parents telling me "See what happens when you have a girlfriend!" (grew up in a similarly conservative household, personally very liberal)

</comment><comment><USER7> I actively try to avoid 20/20 and Dateline crime mysteries. There are so many of these and they are so engaging, and often without any resolution beyond a "he said, she said". The only conclusion I can draw from them is that crime is often incredibly random and irrational, and everyone has credibility problems, real victims sometimes lie to exaggerate and the justice system is deeply flawed.

But I feel that it's disaster porn; gripping us by appealing to the worst of us.

I was excited for Serial until I realized what it is. I feel for the wrongly convicted, if that's indeed what happened, but I'm not watching/listening to be an activist against injustice. No, I'm just distracting myself without learning anything by absorbing scintillating details and pondering irrelevant mysteries.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, Serial hasn't really taken a side on the matter, at least not yet. It's really been more about figuring out as much as possible, and doing it in an engaging way. Serial feels very much "about the story" to me.

As for just distracting yourself without learning anything, I feel you there, but at the same time most of us do it in numerous other ways such as reading fiction, or watching movies, so I don't feel for you _too_ much.

<comment><USER9> The point of it is, it's legitimate snuff for the masses. Same reason SVU is on its 14th season. Noted psychologist Albert Ellis wrote a book on it in the 50's or 60's, when society's itch was mostly satisfied through gristly pulp detective novels. The reader (or viewer, or listener) gets to indulge in graphic death and horror, but also gets to maintain their view of themselves through a narrative that allows them to think of themselves on the 'good guys' side.

<comment><USER10> I actually think Serial is on the other side of the fence as SVU, Law & Order, and pulp detective novels.

Personally I've had a great takeaway from the podcast, not because of the sordid subject that's at the heart of it, but rather the amount of time and care the creators have spent looking at not just the crime, but also at the system and people that surround it.

Pop crime fiction teaches us a lot of things that Serial has gone to pains to refute - that eyewitness testimony is at all reliable, that people can recall mundane details of their lives at will, that a clear sequence of events is even _possible_ to reconstruct, that the wrongly accused believe passionately in their own innocence, so on and so forth.

Serial has taken the popular notion of interviewing persons of interest, constructing a timeline, and catching people in brazen lies, and turned them upside down to expose the much more complicated behavior of humans underneath, and the fallibility of everything that these detective shows are based around.

The picture that Serial paints is markedly different from that of your typical crime drama, and that is an important takeaway. I think characterizing it as simply a gaudy way to "indulge in graphic death and horror" is overly cynical. In any case it certainly doesn't belong in the same sentence as any of the other crime fiction that portrays police work simplistically.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. In this era of jury pools being trained by forensic procedural shows to want nice animations reconstructing everything, it is very good for us all to hear how hard it can be to reconstruct the past. Even on things that seem like they should be easily knowable, like "was there a pay phone near the Best Buy or not?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some strange reason I thought this was part of Alex Blumberg (also from This American Life)'s Gimlet Media - which he started in August this year, and which he's documenting at [http://hearstartup.com](http://hearstartup.com).

Anyone know if the timing of Serial's debut was co-incidental, or if there's something happening between the two ex-TIL producers that we don't know about?

<comment><USER13> I would believe coincidental, as Serial is underwritten by TAL, and to my knowledge Koenig is still considered a producer for TAL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be one of a spate of recent articles, e.g. [1]. For a skeptical take, see Marco Arment [2]. Then again, he could just be expressing sour grapes because people with actual skill, money, and time are invading his turf.

FWIW, I have listened to a lot of NPR via podcast for many years, and see a podcast-only version of it as a natural step. At this point, the amateur "three nerds and a microphone" stuff is background noise for when I can't sleep.

[1] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind- th...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind-the-great- podcast-renaissance.html)

[2] [http://www.marco.org/2014/11/16/why-podcasts-are-suddenly- ba...](http://www.marco.org/2014/11/16/why-podcasts-are-suddenly-back)

<comment><USER15> I don't detect any sour grapes. The only part of the narrative he has a problem with is the supposed slump with 2010 being the dark ages of podcasting which somehow needed saving from decline. As slow steady rise isn't dramatic, so a troubled history for podcasting is invented to make it more interesting, which is bull.

<comment><USER16> "the supposed slump with 2010 being the dark ages of podcasting which somehow needed saving from decline"

The inability of any coherent narrative to form is evidence of a really big market. If its too big for any individual to see all of it, it must be pretty big.

For me 2010 is the early boom years of history podcasting. Mike Duncan's "The History of Rome" which was really the history of the roman empire not some sort of municipal thing. 2010 was a great year in podcasting, hardly a "slump".

Edited to add, from memory, in 2010 the Wormwood mystery-horror series was in its 3rd year, Lowell's solar clipper sci fi series had just finished its 4th installment with the 5th on the way, and I remember heavy self advertisement on the TWIT network about the new studio that would open in a couple months... for a dead media it was pretty exciting at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A quick plug: for those who enjoy Serial, there's an incredible amount of high-quality discussion about it on the serialpodcast subreddit [1].

The very high level of engagement the show has with some listeners is surprising. I don't think it's typical, but many posters talk about dedicating hours to reading case documents, re-listening to episodes, doing independent research, etc.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast](https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast)

<comment><USER18> As a counter argument I'd say don't waste your time. It is this close -> || to becoming a boston bomber situation with people making wild accusations and speculating to their hearts content about all manner of peoples private lives and those are the posts that get voted up.

<comment><USER19> It's hard to disagree when stuff like this, comparing the death of a high schooler to the a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, is on the on the front page.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2n7m7n/watchi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2n7m7n/watching_jfk_last_night_i_thought_about_why_hae/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love Serial. But I love more the idea that I live in a world where such a show can exist and be successful.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to plug Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak's "No Agenda Show" podcast.

[http://www.noagendashow.com/](http://www.noagendashow.com/)

It's entering the eighth year, reaching its 700th show, and has been entirely funded by producers (active listeners) throughout its history.

No ads. No native advertising.

In the morning!

</comment><comment><USER22> I _loved_ the original episode this series was born out of: the story of a doctor in North Carolina who takes over the practice of a convicted murderer [[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/492/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/492/transcript)].

I have to say, though, I don't enjoy Serial very much. I'm the only person, it seems. :-) Listening to a reporter (not an investigator) guess and gab about a murder just seems like a waste of time. The constant teasers throughout each episode (maybe he did it? but then, maybe he didn't? and maybe this happened, but then maybe it didn't happen?) are infuriating.

This is to say nothing Sarah Koenig. She's obviously done fine work in her career and is a big part of This American Life, and I'm happy to see any podcast get some attention. I just don't enjoy the show, personally.

<comment><USER23> I think this is less about one single podcast than it is about the entire medium. Whether you or I enjoy Serial, it's a huge hit and it's turning a lot of people on to the format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you're in the mood for a podcast recommendation, check out Welcome to Night Vale [http://commonplacebooks.com/](http://commonplacebooks.com/) \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Night_Vale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Night_Vale)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's worth mentioning that This American Life (TAL) went all out promoting 'Serial' with on-air mentions, airing its first episode and using popups on the TAL website e.g.: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives).

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Patreon would work really well for this. I know they can support both monthly an work-released based donation types (with per-month maximums), and being able to pledge a certain amount per episode would make this easy and me very happy that my money was going towards actually producing content.

</comment><comment><USER26> I gave them $20. I'm curious how much money in donations Serial can get.

<comment><USER27> I'm thinking of donating because of how interesting I find it, but for me it will all depend on whether the final resolution is definitive or not. If there's no closure it's going to be the most frustrating experience since Lost for me.

<comment><USER13> You should probably prepare for disappointment and frustration, then.

I made my gift, but primarily to help them break free of their underwriters, and because the show is incredibly strong journalism and a great look at the way criminal justice works. The details of the case, though incredibly compelling, are a side show to how complicated the whole process is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We've had "podcasting" for well over a decade, the iPod is dead, and this is the first "breakout hit"?

<comment><USER29> I think mainly because the top of the podcast charts is all existing public radio shows, so they don't "count" as podcasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd love some data behind the claim that this is podcasting's first breakout hit, beyond the comparison to This American Life's slower initial growth in the form. Is this a legitimate claim to fame, or sensationalism from the New York Times from a writer who seems to be largely dismissive of podcasting in general?

</comment><comment><USER31> Serial has been an immensely satisfying listening experience. I now look forward to Thursday mornings for it to come out.

<comment><USER32> +1 It's a good format. The honesty and genuine voice from This American Life - and the episodes don't give you much resolution at the end. Just feels real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A friend and I are exploring some ideas and around next-generation podcasting (and audio entertainment in general). Early prototype stage. There is a lot of room for innovation, and the market is growing--as this article explains. If you're in the SF area and interested in this area, drop me a line.

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately nowhere near SF (Middle of England, UK!) but am definitely interested in what you're coming up with if you have any further info anywhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this: [http://www.crowdmurder.com](http://www.crowdmurder.com) \- Gamifying the investigation of the case from the Serial Podcast.

"Use Real Court Evidence to Solve the Murder of Hae Min Lee Access Courtroom Audio, Build Time-lines, Maps & Suspect Bios. Team up with fans of the Serial Podcast from around the world to help solve a murder.

Every Court Document and Recording We're Publishing Every Piece of Publicly- Available Evidence from Adnan's Trial and building powerful annotation tools"

</comment><comment><USER36> Wanted to add some other ones I did not see suggested:

Freakonomics Radio - by the authors of the book of the same name

Travel with Rick Steves - podcast by famous travel guide Rick Steves

Dinner Part Download - nice way to learn about interesting facts/random trivia/pop-culture regarding all sorts of subjects which can make for interesting conversation at your next social gathering

edit: meant to post this as a response to the question asking about other podcasts

</comment><comment><USER37> I know this will get me downvoted but I can't understand the fascination with Serial. Overall I found it quite a boring listen. Too many side paths that amount to not much at all, feel like it could have done with a harsh edit.

But it's production qualities are high quality and so anything that leads people to create more content at a similar level the better !

<comment><USER38> "I can't understand the fascination with Serial."

Think JFK assassination for the Reddit generation. I know I'm hooked.

<comment><USER39> I am sorry but that is an awful comparison. Nothing about the two can be compared except the occurance of death. Also there is no conspiracy in Serial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Here in Sweden, the last episode of Filip & Fredriks Podcast[1] was recorded in front of a 16 592 people audience this past June.

To be fair they had quite the career on television before that, but podcasting seems to have become a thing here.

[1] [http://www.filipandfredrik.com](http://www.filipandfredrik.com)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm absolutely in love with this podcast. I randomly stumbled upon it look for something else to listen to while waiting on new episodes of "Stuff You Should Know".

The story is so engaging. Congrats to Sarah and the team on their success!

</comment><comment><USER42> In addition to serial, I began listening to [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/deathsexmoney/](http://www.wnyc.org/shows/deathsexmoney/) which reminds me of a more poignant Terry Gross.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wasn't the Ricky Gervais Show really podcasting's first breakout hit? It got a Guinness World Record and ended up becoming a TV show in both the UK and US.

<comment><USER44> I think another early podcasting success was Bill Simmons from ESPN. In my opinion, his podcasting success helped build his brand even further and allowed him to launch Grantland.

A more recent podcast to big deals success is Men in Blazers. The two soccer commentators spun their podcast into a 10pm Monday show on NBCSN.

I think that sports podcasting in general is quite a mature format. Though, this probably isn't all too surprising as it is basically a more dedicated form of sports radio.

<comment><USER45> What about Adam Carolla? He is the current record holder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If anyone here hasn't listened to The Bugle podcast (I've been a Bugler since the second episode) you are missing out on the world.

</comment><comment><USER46> This popped up while I am listening to Serial. But I am a bit of a podcasting junkie so not surprising.

</comment><comment><USER47> First breakout hit not so sure I heard nightvale name checked on the bus 3 months ago.</comment>


Pale Moon drops ReactOS support - <AUTHOR> https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=12011#p84556 <comment><AUTHOR> in response to this ReactOS team has released "road-map" for adding Windows 7 compatibility

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11757297)</comment>


Ask HN: Any suggestions of materials on Partial Differential Equations? - <AUTHOR> I am especially keen on materials that provide a gentle introduction to the topic with good exercises and answer sheets. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Stanley Farlow's "Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers" would be my suggestion for an introduction. It's a Dover book, so it's cheap. Look at the book as a set of simple introductions to a large number of PDE related topics, many of which have applications beyond PDEs, e.g., the Laplace transform, conformal mapping, perturbation methods, etc. The book would disappoint anyone looking for rigor. You can refer to a more advanced book for that.

The book has relatively few exercises, but the ones present are definitely worth your time. I recall working out a large fraction of them before I took a PDE class as an undergraduate. Dover will also send you a scan of the solutions manual if you contact them. As I recall a few exercises had mistakes in their solutions, but I had no trouble spotting the mistakes as a novice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Consider a book on numerical methods first perhaps, and then something more theoretical to dive into the theory, I went to Berkeley so Evans was a popular book in that regard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, usually, I learned numerical methods after learning the theory, like in linear algebra. Many books follow this order. Inverting the process sounds like a good idea. Specially for people who love programming, like me. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Advanced Engineering Mathematics by K.A Stroud might be of interest. It contains exercises and answer sheets but covers a lot more than PDEs.

</comment><comment><USER5> We used Haberman. I think you can find a solution book. I'm not really sure what constitutes a gentle introduction. Half the class probably flunked or should have!</comment>


Ask HN: What's a good cheap, low-power, high-flexibility home server solution? - <AUTHOR> I want to get a server to stick under the TV, which will automate some of my life.
I'm a Linux power user and software developer, but my hardware skills suck. I can stick together computer parts with matching interfaces, but that's about it.
In my search for something cheap (being a CS student), I tried thinking out of the box. Since Linux or NetBSD runs on pretty much anything, it shouldn't be a big deal to look for things people don't normally think to?
There are some ideas I have had and then ruled out. I'd love nothing more than to be wrong about all of them. These are:
* Commercially available NAS solutions: not flexible enough in terms of software you can run on them.
* Raspberry Pi and similar one-chip computers: bad I/O performance.
* Old laptops: batteries not meant for constant load.
* Used rack server: noisy and power hungry. Might be able to take out some fans and undervolt it but I lose stability at that point.
* Most disappointing: smartphone ARM SoCs. They're amazing but tricky and expensive to turn into general purpose computers.
I'm aiming to have one SSD for most day-to-day usage, mainly for its quietness and low power consumption. In addition, I want two slow spinning drives in RAID-1 for backups; the idea is that these will be parked for the majority of the time. I'm worried about power consumption not for my electricity bill as much as for heat and efficiency concerns.
I need it to fit in a small case, and upgradeability is not an issue as long as "replace everything" is a possible upgrade path (i.e. I want to avoid vendor lock-in). External connections can be limited. If I get a gigabit ethernet port and ideally also an HDMI output I'm content.
I hope these are fairly general demands and we can get a discussion going on modern, cheap, unusual home server/HTPC solutions! <comment><USER2> My advice is to get a Raspberry Pi and tinker with it and don't worry about the low I/O performance. There are some good reasons to go this route.

One of the best is the amazing support the community around it offers. Another is the existing software that's available now to do what you want.

And... not too long ago the Raspberry Pi Foundation made their "Raspbian OS" available to run on both Mac and PC hardware. So you've got a solid path to upgrade your hardware if you feel it's not fast enough for.

A used Mac Mini might be a great choice. Small, quiet, low power consumption, and plenty fast enough. I'm still using my late `09 Mac Mini as my dev work box. I maxed out the RAM to 8GB and installed an SSD drive with 350GB of storage a couple years ago and it runs great.

My plan is to install Raspbian on it when Apple obsoletes it and they're in the process of doing that now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought a cheap dell fx160 thin client (€50 @ 4gb RAM) has no HDMI but works well as a low power home server

<comment><USER4> Yep, I second something like this. I bought a little PC with an Intel Atom 330, and I use it for CrashPlan and as a little file server. With a small SSD and a large harddrive, it works great. Excluding storage cost me around 60 euros.</comment></comment>


Edit Rapportive profiles for all your email addresses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rapportive.com/claim-your-email-addresses

<comment><USER2> Just consolidated my profiles / email adresses on Rapportive. Worked perfectly! Great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great!! I was waiting for this!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great new feature. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> go rapportive team!</comment>


Iran 'foils second cyber-attack in a week' - ga-vu https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/eb0b6u/iran_has_foiled_a_second_cyberattack_in_under_a/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why not submit the original source [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle- east-50799147](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50799147) ?</comment>


Momentum Design Lab just released 2 Free 1000+ icon sets - Matte and Glass - <AUTHOR> http://momentumdesignlab.com/resources/downloads/

<comment><USER2> s/glass/gloss</comment>


Flat Design vs. Material Design – what's it all about? - <AUTHOR> https://areknawo.com/flat-design-vs-material-design-whats-it-all-about/ <comment><USER2> Is there ever going to be a radically new design system that is not an iteration of another design system? I really can't think of anything that could be done fundementally different about UI design but I also can't image that it's going to stay the same for ever. Does anyone know of a design trend that's entirely new?</comment>


It Took 83 Rocket Engines and Motors to Get to the Moon - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/vintagespace/2018/01/15/it-took-83-engines-to-get-to-the-moon/ <comment><USER2> I've been watching a lot of Scott Manley on youtube play through kerbal space program. In the past two weeks I've learned more about rocket science than I would of ever expected. Scott's extremely well informed on the topic and entertaining as well.

In one video he even took a deep dive on how apollo 14 had to reprogram a computer mid-flight due to a faulty "abort" button that would be a problem on re-entry if it triggered. Neat seeing the underlying code and interface. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSmNUl9Snw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSmNUl9Snw)

But anyway it's things like these, where they'll stick a total of 83 rockets & motors to get something done, or the crazyness they did to land the rover, that really speaks to the separation of science and engineering.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sucks that this is all history. It doesn't seem like there has been any news worth breakthroughs in space propulsion since the Apollo era.</comment>


Facebook crushes Q3 earnings, warns that future profit will slow - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-q3-earning-results-2017-11 <comment><USER2> It's insane to have a 47% net profit margin.

<comment><USER3> Also insane that a company with revenue of $36 billion per year is growing that revenue at a rate of almost 50% per year.</comment></comment>


Adobe's Strategic Transformation - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/ukchannelnews/2011/11/18/adobes-strategic-transformation/ <comment><USER2> how is Adobe Air different from Flash? Are they different runtimes?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Adobe AIR is more like a container and functions similar to a browser while it exposes an API to access certain OS functionality (file system etc). Inside this container you can embed either Flash Player or HTML/CSS/Javascript based content.

Another way of looking at it is, AIR allows web developers to create desktop applications using the knowledge they already have.

<comment><USER2> A bit like a UIWebView? How would one deliver flash based stuff on Air on the mobile then, or would the developers have to exclusively work with HTML and js?</comment></comment></comment>


Space Pen: GitHub's Minimalist UI Framework from Atom - <AUTHOR> http://atom.github.io/space-pen/

<comment><USER2> I have a hunch this could be usefully mashed together with the Facebook's React approach... so the space-pen DSL builds a virtual-DOM, and dirties/invalidates for a later batched real-DOM update.</comment>


Which types of startups are most often profitable? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/which-types-of-startups-are-most-often-profitable/ <comment><USER2> Being in Sweden, I'm apparently not allowed to read the full text as it require an "Extra Crunch membership", which isn't available outside a couple of countries. But as a consolation they inform me that they are "actively looking to launch" their membership in other areas. Not impressed.</comment>


Startup Quote: Aaron Patzer, Founder, Mint - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/9572197724

<comment><AUTHOR> Recessions are great because they unlock the best people.

\- Aaron Patzer (@apatzer)

<http://startupquote.com/post/9572197724></comment>


D3 Interactive Visualization of the US Budget – 1976 through 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.solomonkahn.com/us_budget

<comment><USER2> All this animation seriously detracts from the value of the data collected. With the way things switch position and color, it's extremely tricky to compare one year to another, especially when they _disappear_ for a brief interval.

What needs to happen is one year should shift into another without disappearing, the size of the boxes should change.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you click on any cell, you can see a graph of how it changes over time.</comment></comment>


Cyberwar: Why your threat model is probably wrong - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thinkst.com/p/cyberwar-why-your-threat-model-is.html

<comment><AUTHOR> is that $100-500k number really right?</comment>


Scientists create Terminator-style muscle at 1,000 times human strength - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/robotic-muscle-torsional-berkeley-626/ <comment><USER2> Noob question:

How hard is it to then group these micro-muscles together? Is it very far the stage the research is at right now?</comment>


How does SSL work? - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20803/how-does-ssl-work/20833

<comment><USER2> Roughly:

1\. C & S exchange messages to agree on versions, ciphersuites, and nonces.

2\. S->C certificate, which includes an RSA public key.

3\. C verifies certificate against its local cache of CA roots.

4\. C->S random secret encrypted under the RSA key (the "pre-master secret").

5\. C & S derive (the same) set of MAC keys, crypto keys, and crypto parameters.

6\. C & S verify every message of the handshake with the MAC keys.

Other useful things to know:

* SSL/TLS operates over a "record layer" of TLV-style messages. The TLS record layer itself supports fragmentation, which is a little crazy.

* The server can ask the client to send a certificate too; this is common on backend connections and unfortunately not common with browsers, because the UI is terrible.

* Less commonly, C & S can opt for a "DHE" (ephemeral Diffie-Hellman) key exchange, in which the RSA key from the certificate is used to sign a DH key exchange (DH allows both sides to use random public keys instead of long-term fixed keys, but suffers from exposure to MITM attacks --- the RSA key from the cert "breaks the tie" in a MITM situation, making the exchange secure). This has the advantage of ensuring that even if an attacker has been recording all your traffic for years, she can't compromise a server's private key and then decrypt older connections. This is called "forward secrecy".

* The two common cipher suites used on most connections are AES in CBC mode and RC4. AES-CBC chunks plaintext into 16 byte blocks, padding the last block if there are insufficient bytes to fill it. Until TLS 1.1, TLS ran CBC in a continuous stream over the whole connection, using the last block of the most recent message as the IV for the next, which gave rise to the BEAST flaw. RC4 is a stream cipher that encrypts byte-at-a-time --- but nobody trusts RC4 much.

* TLS 1.2 (IIRC) introduces AES-CTR, which runs AES as a stream cipher.

<comment><USER3> I've always wondered if / what is stopping someone from eves dropping or duping the initial handshakes before the communications are encrypted. If you get the cipher and understand the schema used you should be able to decode the otherwise secure traffic.

<comment><USER4> This video explains it in very easy-to-grasp terms:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnD2c4Xovk>

<comment><USER5> I prefer this one by the Royal Institution:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62S8SchxX4>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just finished reading this book: "SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems"[1] and I now have a _much_ better understanding of how SSL works, what security it provides, how it provides it, and when and where to use it.

It is a thorough read and not the easiest, but you can always pick and choose what chapters you're interested in. I highly recommend it. You can buy it from Amazon here (not an affiliate link):

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201615983/>

[1]: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201615983/>

<comment><USER7> >(not an affiliate link)

Heaven forbid anyone but Amazon gains financially from your recommendation.

<comment> k-mcgrady People like to point this out to make it clear they are actually recommending the product because it is useful and not for financial gain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't, according to Moxie Marlinspike and others.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/state_of_ssl_analysi...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/state_of_ssl_analysis/)

If you haven't seen any of Marlinspikes presentations, you are missing out on some fascinating stuff.

Moxie @ Defcon 19: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIiklPyS8MU>

<comment><USER2> That's a misstatement of Moxie's position, which is unfortunate because Moxie's position is important, probably correct, and needs all the credibility it can get.

What's broken about SSL/TLS is the current CA model. Since SSL/TLS was introduced, we've been running with almost exactly the same trust "UX": a hidden browser config panel listing a series of complicated-sounding trusted root CAs, each with the authority to sell or transfer their business to some other entity, or even to delegate the authority to sign certificates to other organizations.

That's absurd; it's a security model that clearly can't work in the real world --- and, more, demonstrably hasn't worked. SSL CA's have been caught red- handing selling their authority for dubious reasons. For instance, Trustwave sold a CA=YES certificate to an undisclosed third-party corporation solely for the purpose of making it easier (not "possible" but merely easier) for that corporation to monitor their own users.

We need a radical rethinking of the UI/UX and trust model behind SSL/TLS, and Moxie's idea of decentralizing that trust --- so that, say, the ACLU could operate a sort of CA root that would vouch for Verisign's signatures on core ecommerce sites but not accept a crazy delegation from Iran.

The protocol, on the other hand, is for all its warts the best-tested crypto protocol in possibly the history of computing. Baby & bathwater, and all that.

<comment><USER9> I remember seeing an interview where someone asked a Chrome team member if they had plans to support Moxie's idea. They said, roughly, that if Chrome supported it, Google would have to run some notary servers, and people would rest assured that Google is running them and not be bothered to run their own, leaving Google with having to support this for the entire internet.

It's too bad, it sounds like a very good idea.

<comment><USER2> Thankfully, the world does not depend on Google to move decentralized trust for TLS forward; since it's mostly a UX change, and it's confined to a very small part of the TLS stack (the verification of server certificates), it can be retrofit over existing infrastructure with neither changes in server software nor major changes to browsers. We can probably do it via plugins.

<comment><USER10> What can those of us who like this decentralized CA whitelist idea do to help it gain adoption? Can I start telling Chrome right now to use a whitelist maintained by an external source? Should I just pick someone's whitelist (e.g. ACLU, EFF, yours) and trim my browser and OS whitelists to only use those?

Also how does this affect SSL certificiate "pinning" as implemented in Chrome? I guess it doesn't since even if you have a pinned cert for a specific domain Chrome will still verify the trustworthiness of the CA that signed it?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I should also have mentioned TACK, Moxie and Trevor Perrin's proposed system of allowing servers to dynamically update certificate pins. As many people here know, Chrome already has a system of pinned keys, which mean that as far as Chrome is concerned, Chrome is the final arbiter of GMail's public key, not Trustwave or any other CA. TACK allows browsers to keep a cached list of pins in somewhat similar fashion to HSTS, which caches a list of servers that must use TLS.

TACK is just a proposed standard right now; I have no idea where it's going. But it's a good band-aid on the existing CA system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aza Raskin posted this on twitter a while back:

The private-public key encryption concept explained through mixing paint: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcDVERzMGw#t=147s> (Starts at about 2:20.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I will never understand why random articles describing well documented commonplace things make it to the front page.

<comment><USER13> Well documented -\\-> Easily understandable. I'd rather read this than an RFC. Can you point me to a better summary of SSL?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks by the way, HN moderators, for expanding the short URL generated by the site to share. Now it didn't keep track of how many people visited the URL, and I missed the Announcer badge. May I ask why?

<comment><USER14> Because the purpose of linking something on HN should be to share it, not to personally gain from it.

<comment><USER15> If it's all about sharing, why do we attribute anything here? Might as well make the submission and all the comments anonymous here as well.

Reputation is mark of making _good_ contributions, and is something that every site has utility for, including HN.</comment></comment></comment>


What shell should I use? - <AUTHOR> http://homonculus.net/blog/2012/11/11/what-shell-should-i-use/

<comment><USER2> I'd probably go back to perl, and in fact I've back-ported some scripts from ruby (part shell, part ruby).

Issue with shell scripts: commands have different options on BSD vs Linux. e.g. date. If I use coreutils packages, I don't know if other users (or my later installs) will have the "g" prefix.

Issue with ruby (I am a rubyist): 1.9 has broken most of my scripts due to the unicode string thing. Some scripts run as both a cronjob which runs a stock 1.8 ruby, and interactive (1.9) so that results in errors with string parsing.

Perl 5.x has remained the same over the years. Just comment your code enough. There's a perl power tools (ppt) project somewhere on sourceforge that might interest you. Python should be fine, too. I'll investigate these 2 shells you've mentioned.

Edit: homebrew supports scsh. you can try installing the brew. Had a look at both. Both are lispy. What is the benefit of something like scsh for scripting over zsh/bash ?</comment>


AI Matches the Accuracy of Trained Radiologists for Identifying Brain Hemorrhage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paralleldots.com/technology/deep-learning/ai-matches-the-accuracy-of-trained-radiologists-for-identifying-brain-hemorrhage-in-a-head-to-head-test/ <comment><USER2> Wow, healthcare industry is getting revolutionized very fast these days. Have been seeing lot of super human work on skin cancer, brain tumor, liver tumors, retinopathy and now brain hemorrhage. Just the breath!</comment>


Can Ultrasonic Noise Make You Sick? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-ultrasonic-noise-make-you-sick-1529147100 <comment><AUTHOR> Here's an interesting research: [https://littlefield.co/the-psychoacoustic- effect-of-infrason...](https://littlefield.co/the-psychoacoustic-effect-of- infrasonic-sonic-and-ultrasonic-frequencies-within-non-lethal-cf05e1fd8673)</comment>


Ask YC: Your VCs &/or Angel Investors of choice - <AUTHOR>

Which VCs or Angel Investors will you go to if you are looking for funding for your start-up? (offer a list of +5) <comment><USER2> In order to raise money you need to have a personal relationship with the respective funders. This is not a system you just waltz into and get capital all of a sudden.

Obviously, you try to get money from top tier firms and people. However, everyone's personal list of connections is different - resulting in different firms taking precedence.

If you are trying to raise money use your network. See who can refer you and at the same time back up your reputation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, but I do not think that's an absolute requirement. I have reviewed the trends on investing alot recently.</comment></comment>


Google misses deadline for high-profile L.A. contract due to security concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-misses-deadline-in-high-profile-la-deal-2010-07-23

<comment><USER2> _"Google comes in with this sweetheart deal that was supposed to be state of the art ... and obviously they haven't performed," Councilman Dennis Zine said during a July 13 council meeting. "I don't see why we are required to take care of their inability to measure up."_

I think that's unfair to Google because, as I understand it, the LAPD brought up their security concerns after the fact. I would call that a change in requirements that resulted in the delay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google, welcome to working with the government! Federal agencies can start getting absurd with their requests. This is why companies like IBM and Microsoft have relatively large teams dedicated just to governments.</comment></comment>


An early Clojure implementation in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/da14d89c1936e9de6eacb9c12dd9e6a0d68a0829/src/lisp/clojure.lisp <comment><USER2> Note that, unless I'm mistaken, this is from when Clojure emitted Java and C# _source_. Check out the * host* variable. AFAIK, CL never "hosted" a Clojure runtime.

<comment><USER3> Yes, grepping for '(format t ' would seem to confirm this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He had DotLisp, a Lisp on the CLR, before Clojure as well.

<http://dotlisp.sourceforge.net/dotlisp.htm>

[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e31b38c8cc...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e31b38c8cc0e6a23)

</comment><comment><USER5> I read the "early" as pre-release and thought someone was trying to re- implement clojure in CL. I'm relieved.

What's the backstory on this, fogus? I've not read about a CL Clojure pre- dating the JVM implementation. Was this just a prototype or was there a plan to platform on CL at some point?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe (caveat emptor) that this was an early prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was looking for reader macros for recognizing {} as hash tables and [] as vectors. To me, that is one of the biggest innovations in Clojure over Lisps that came before, the expansion of the concept of S-expressions.

<comment><USER7> I am not a CL expert, but I was able to whip this up in short time (and I sacrificed a little readability for brevity):

        (defun set-hash-values (hash pairs)
          (when pairs
            (setf (gethash (car pairs) hash) (cadr pairs))
            (set-hash-values hash (cddr pairs))))

        (defun in-place-hash (stream char)
          (declare (ignore char))
            `(let ((hash (make-hash-table)))
               (set-hash-values hash ',(read-delimited-list #\} stream t))
               hash))

        (set-macro-character #\{ #'in-place-hash)
        (set-syntax-from-char #\} #\))

But to be honest, I think this {} stuff is an abuse of the hash structure. People are really looking to make quick anonymous classes/structs; you see this all the time in the perl world, and now we get to see this abuse promoted and propagated in Clojure. In that case, {} should really translate to a MOP- generated anonymous class.

Also, you are stuck with the decision some developer made for your hash's efficiency trade-offs. In my reader macro, I left things at make-hash-table defaults, but that might not be appropriate for your situation. Do you want to be able to read quickly from your hash in exchange for slow writes, or do you want to be able to write quickly to the hash in exchange for slow reads?

On another note, the [] vector reader macro is much easier to create. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could write {}. But this additional syntax is annoying. In practice when programming Lisp, it is easy to slap in a bunch of ))))) until the right alternate parentheses highlights. Now I have to remember to slap in ] and } at the right spots, leaving me with )]}]]}})) noise. Maybe that is why CL's in-place vector syntax is #().

Anyway, I would hesitate to call {} and [] an innovation.

<comment><USER8> 1.[], {}, #{} are not the innovation. 2\. The innovation is that they are on the same level as lists. All the cool list stuff you can do with lists you can do with all of the structures and you can add more yourself if you want. That allows to write stuff really generic. 3\. If you don't like them use (vec ), (map ) and so on. Only the most imported ones have syntax there are many data structures.

P.S. Do you really finish up all your parans yourself???

<comment><USER9> Here is how Common Lisp developers view the question of sequence interface abstraction:

[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/f2065aa0d9fa5d00/84f067175c1d33e6)?

This discussion came up recently over the usage of Christophe Rhodes' generic sequence protocol extension to CL. Pascal Costanza makes a good point about the appropriateness of having an overly abstract interface tower, and I agree with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone else feel like they're looking at baby pictures?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.informatimago.com/develop/lisp/small-cl- pgms/aim-...](http://www.informatimago.com/develop/lisp/small-cl- pgms/aim-8/aim-8.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder what happened to Part 2?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll answer my own question. McCarthy states in _History of Lisp_ , "Part II was never written but was intended to contain applications to computing with algebraic expressions."

Here's hoping he gets around to writing it one day. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I came across JFLI a Common-Lisp foreign-language interface to Java and was surprised to find it was authored by Mr. Hickey. I wonder how his experience with JFLI shaped Clojure.

<http://jfli.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER8> To experiment with the language Rich had Clojure Compiler in CL targeting C# and Java.

Then he took time off work and wrote the Java bootstrap compiler.</comment>


Maintainable mongodb queries in Ruby with query object and mongoid criterias - <AUTHOR> https://www.airpair.com/ruby/posts/create-maintainable-mongodb-queries-in-ruby-with-query-object-and-mongoid-criterias

<comment><USER2> Interesting and well written article.</comment>


Ripple - P2P can cut banks out of the picture - <AUTHOR> http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/06/27/p2p_can_cut_banks_out.htm

<comment><USER2> This seems like it would have a serious early-adopter problem, in that it needs a pretty large network of people that somewhat know each other in order for things to work. Specifically, if I join this service, I can't do anything until someone who knows me joins, at which point we can then lend money to each other. If a bunch of my friends join, then we have our own small complete social graph - but we can't access the greater community until one of us is friends with someone else who has a complete social graph that would act as the bridge between us.

I also don't see what the incentive is for someone to join. Zopa/LendingClub pays interest, Kiva is charitable, this is...what? And how do you get your physical cash in and out of the system - would the service make deals with banks (which would put them under more regulatory oversight), or...?

Lastly, this seems like it would be targeted by anti-money laundering laws real quick. A way to transfer money electronically between people who know each other, across trans-national boundaries with no government tracking of the amounts in or out...what could go wrong, from the perspective of the Feds?

<comment><USER3> It's got more problems even than these.

Bernie Madoff ran on a "network of trust" _and he established a strong track- record over the years_. The problem is that a monetary system requires more than even sophisticated mutual trust. It requires knowledge that the underlying processes are sound - _and most people can't understand that_. That's exactly why Ponzi schemes constantly reappear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maddof was supposed to be an investment manager. Ponzi too. Ripple is just a way of transferring IOUs. Investment and protocol design are entirely different beasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Egads. That's the most obnoxious ad-laden site I've ever seen make it to the front page of HN. I hope this isn't a trend. The obnoxiousness of the ads also makes me assume that whatever this is must be a scam.

Here's the actual ripple site:

<http://ripple.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER5> I only saw a couple of "ads", and I would characterize them more as "navbars": the "Be your own boss in:" text down the left side, and the "Learn more about:" text below it.

But yeah, if I disable AdBlockPlus and tell NoScript to "temporarily allow all this page" (twice) and then click on the Flash thing on the right that FlashBlock and NoScript are both blocking, it is a little annoying.

Maybe get some extensions?

<comment><USER4> I very rarely visit parts of the web that are obnoxiously ad-laden. No need for extensions when the majority of my browsing is at sites that have a bit of respect for their readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems heavily related to "Optimal Account Balancing" from the other day: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=667088>

Edit: I would think that Ripple uses the math behind optimal account balancing to power itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Please note that both articles were submitted by me ;-) I have been interested in reputation systems for a few years, and now I am interested in combining debt and trust. It's a very difficult problem.

<comment><USER7> Are you involved with Ripple?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. I am more interested in the mathematical description of the system than in actually implementing. To be honest, I don't think this problem is ripe for implementation yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I doubt it works. Lots of very smart researchers are looking at the problem of decentralized trust / reputation / economics. It all works fine until people start gaming the system in groups, which is further amplified by zero-cost identity (another tricky problem by itself). The solution is generally to introduce a central authority.

</comment><comment><USER9> Payments is a regulatory problem first, and a distribution problem second. Somewhere around issue 9 or maybe 11 is "we shouldn't have to rely on banks"

<comment><USER10> I agree with the regulatory issues. Ripple is pretty cool though in that it may be able to fly under the regulatory scope for a while.

I gave a talk last week at the Reboot conference about the regulatory issues we face with financial innovation and how to solve them:

<http://www.slideshare.net/pelleb/agile-banking>

<comment><USER9> the easiest way to solve them is to start a new country.</comment></comment></comment>


The Plots to Destroy America - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/23/plots-destroy-america-251123.html

<comment><USER2> Conspiracy theories to destroy America?

Is this another conspiracy?</comment>


Software Optimization Guide ForAMD Family 17h Models 30h and Greater Processors [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://developer.amd.com/wp-content/resources/56305_SOG_3.00_PUB.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> There have been a lot of Ryzen 3 or EPYC 2 discussions recently, so I figured that the community may be interested in the official documentation for how to optimize these processors.

The lingo is a bit hard to get into if this is your first optimization manual, but its terse and a relatively short read. If any "beginners" wish to tackle this text, I suggest Agner Fog's tutorials as starter material. [https://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf](https://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf)</comment>


Should you self-host Google Fonts? - <AUTHOR> https://www.tunetheweb.com/blog/should-you-self-host-google-fonts/ <comment><USER2> We're basically forced to switch to self hosting due to the bizarre way Google implements statistics for Google Fonts. 1 out of 1000 requests will include a "tracking font" which is actually invalid and breaks document.fonts.load. This was an incredibly frustrating bug to track down.

Bug for those interested: [https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2345](https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2345)

<comment><USER3> The guy who is affiliated with Google Fonts who showed up on a thread a few days ago said that he didn't think there was any tracking related to new implementations of Google Fonts stuff.

I guess this says the opposite. Let me try to dig up the thread for completeness...

EDIT: Well that was faster than I thought I'd be able to do. Here's the comment, and the thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22369415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22369415)

<comment><USER2> I actually don't care what they're doing with the data, I care that it crashes the site.

The font that gets loaded once every thousand requests is [https://fonts.gstatic.com/stats/Roboto/normal/400](https://fonts.gstatic.com/stats/Roboto/normal/400) so it's some form of statistics. But again, my actual concern is that it breaks.

Here's the code I used to "catch" it. Here, it took roughly 500 requests: [https://runkit.com/tolmasky/5e49b314ef61f900146c9a3b](https://runkit.com/tolmasky/5e49b314ef61f900146c9a3b)

Edit: To be clear, I'm not implying this is something they try to keep secret, just showing a way to observe it since it purposely rarely shows up.

<comment><USER4> Your users might... But who cares, right?

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's super meaningful data to be gleaned from server-side tracking, especially with browsers increasingly sending little to no information to third party resources. This is CSS, not a JS script that might collect more info and phone home. So yeah, the site going blank is higher priority to me than them knowing if I, the service provider, not my users, prefer Roboto over Open Sans, or if most users now support woff2 vs. ttf. But either way, we're not going to use them anymore.

<comment><USER5> CSS can be crafted to conditionally load additional resources, which means it can be a vector for fairly sophisticated information gathering and tracking. For example: [https://github.com/kkuchta/css-only- chat](https://github.com/kkuchta/css-only-chat)

<comment><USER2> Right but that's not what's happening on google fonts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I could add another point: A software should be self-sufficient (at least to a degree). When user opens the page, the page should not require an external service to function.

Imagine a user who can access your page but cannot access Google, the user then has to wait a long time looking at a blank page before the web browser stopped trying, that is some really really bad experience.

And your users won't blame Google for been too slow, they will just simply close your page, and try another search result instead.

<comment><USER7> The odds of google being down / slow instead of your site are pretty bad.

Unless you build your own data center, pull in all the fiber yourself, make the network switches yourself, build the servers yourself, etc... you are always going to be dependent on a third party or external service.

<comment><USER8> Google has a reputation of shutting their services down. What if they shut their fonts CDN down or change their URLs without redirects?

<comment><USER7> Than a hell of a lot of sites lose their fonts until they update.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, lots of people being affected hasn't stopped Google in the past.

In the case of Fonts though, it's a good source of user and browser data, so it's not likely to be shut down any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have this bookmarked that makes it very convenient to download a font from google:

[https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts](https://google-webfonts- helper.herokuapp.com/fonts)

<comment><USER11> One thing I see is that it by default includes specific support for IE6-IE9, IOS before v5, android before v4.4 which definitely should not be the default these days. It should be an option, but not the default.

<comment><USER12> Creator here. Yeah, you can possibly switch to "Modern Browsers" by now. Haven't touched this project in a while...

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I use your web app for all my projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you have a worldwide CDN yourself, or you only care about local users, or your fonts are small (Latin subset), yes.

If you're using CJK fonts and you don't already have a CDN for your stuff, no. Google Fonts' CDN is going to beat your own server from any other continent.

<comment><USER15> But if you're already loading your entire site from your server, what difference does it make if the fonts come from there too?

<comment><USER14> CJK fonts can be megabytes. The rest of an otherwise lean site can be a few hundred kilobytes or less.

E.g. my site's About page is tiny, but pulls in a CJK font (with delayed load) for one line of text. It would make no sense to self-host that: [https://marcan.st/about/](https://marcan.st/about/)

<comment><USER4> Jesus, why bother we a lean site with that mindset.

If it truly is a must make it a small (self-hosted) png.

<comment><USER16> Eh, then it's no longer text?

Fwiw I don't really think a one-time large font download is much of a problem - considering that improved typography is a very good way to improve how a site looks. And unlike your png - the text will display without the custom font. Fall-back fonts are only _really_ a problem with icon font sets.

<comment><USER4> It will read just fine. But no, I would not recommend it. But much rather that than a multi-megabyte one-liner.

One time. Per site. On slow and/or expensive mobile connection?

The png will also display without the custom font...

<comment><USER16> Png has poor screen reader support, though it can be amended via an alt tag, I suppose. [ed: but breaks copy and paste, which might be bad for an about page listing address and contact information - personally I'd much prefer fallback font to a png].

It's a shame there are no "bandwidth" queries in css, like there are @media queries - the client should be able to say - just content and essential downloads, please.

<comment><USER17> They've been proposed!: [https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-5/#prefers- reduced-dat...](https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-5/#prefers-reduced-data)

You can already do this with JavaScript now: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/NetworkInfo...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/NetworkInformation) though as you can see from the bottom of that link, Browser support is limited at the moment (and experimental so may even be removed/changed!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I read this question more generally as I have just revisited it myself in the past week.

For me this isn't just a question about Google Fonts. It's a question about jQuery and React and any common js lib off a CDN. And it's even a question about DLLs. glibc, zlib, .net. If it doesn't ship as part of your product, but your product can't work without it...

There's the problem of malicious replacement. There's the problem of disappearance. And various other problems.

On the other hand, there are all the positives. One upgrade at one URL and tons of dependent software gets a free security fix or performance fix or what have you. There's better caching. There's the speed benefit of CDNs. There's the lower memory consumption of DLLs.

This time around I have decided to self-host. But I don't think there's one right answer.

<comment><USER19> Better caching is no longer an advantage since they changed how caching works to prevent data leaks [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536058](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536058)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking at this, as an old fart who works in the kernel, I just can't help but wonder:

How is it possible that we have arrived at something this painfully slow? What are we getting from all these zillion resources a page is loading to make it worth the 3-6 second wait?

The static web of the 90s over dialup was faster than this.

I want my 28800 modem, pentium pro running netscape on FreeBSD 2.x, and static pages back. It was faster (with images disabled at least) than today's web with a 1Gb/s symmetric fiber connection, FF/Chrome on a MBP, even with ads blocked.

<comment><USER21> While I take your point about bloated web pages, I think you have a serious case of nostalgia viewed through rose-tinted glasses.

I recall the days of a 14k modem, and they were _not_ pleasant, even for just text. And when you added images to the mix, it was just painful. Let's not even discuss videos...

<comment><USER22> He took it too far, granted, but overall there's a valid point. By coincidence, I'm writing an applicant tracking tool in rails+react now, and I also wrote one in perl about 16 years ago.

The modern app uses so many javascript libraries, 3rd party fonts, and is generally just so... ouch.

I remember demoing the perl app internally at my first job, and in many cases our page could render the page about as fast as it took to click. Our boss thought it was a static html demo just based on how fast it was.

<comment><USER21> I've had similar experiences, except it used to be PHP for me back in the day, rather than perl - I recall a servicedesk system, as well as a purchase order approval system, amongst many others. Not a single line of JS in sight!

But some of us never abandoned server-side rendering - I work a lot with ASP.NET Core MVC, and it's great; I'm very productive with it. But I do add Javascript on top here and there, where it adds value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We ran into a rather large issue using Google Font CDN a few years ago. We were using Rubik font and pages were font was render as blank in certain browser combination.

They had to rollback, but there were a lot of escalations.

You can see the issue here. [https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1137](https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1137)

Self-hosting fixed the problem. We no longer use Google Font CDN.

</comment><comment><USER24> Safari does more than other browsers to prevent cross domain tracking. 3rd party cookies disabled by default, cookies in iframes considered 3rd party (so, blocked), and TIL it maintains a separate local cache for each domain to prevent fingerprinting a user across domains. I have a hunch you could probably drop 3rd party cookies using a <video> element (maybe for DRM stuff? Just a hunch I have because video-ad CPMs are consistent or better on iOS over android/desktop indicating perhaps advertisers know the user somehow). Awesome article, great reference links, super interesting!

</comment><comment><USER25> Good article, but the best solution to the font problem is to simply use native fonts:

[https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/using-system-ui- fon...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/using-system-ui-fonts- practical-guide/)

This solves both privacy and performance problems and this is also what Bootstrap recommends now:

[https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/content/typography/](https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/content/typography/)

<comment><USER26> Long prose does not benefit from those fonts. A system font is usually used for UIs and is optimized accordingly. There's more to font selection than "use the same font as native applications".

<comment><USER27> I'm not quite sure what about e.g. Roboto or SF Pro Text isn't suited to long prose, or if you think OSes ship with just the font used for system UI (and not also dozens of others several of which were pretty much designed for longform text).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a good idea to self-host ALL 3rd party assets. Otherwise you open yourself up to the possibility any one of those contains malicious code.

At the very minimum, always check the integrity hash of third party assets

</comment><comment><USER29> In addition to this, If you have users that live in or travel to China, you want to self host. Unless you like broken websites.

<comment><USER30> Personally I block all third party fonts and have never noticed an issue with a plain old font. The web is so much nicer with a very restricted font set and range of sizes.

<comment><USER31> Only thing I've noticed breaking badly are symbol fonts that try to be clever with ligatures, so that e.g. "arrow_right" gets turned into an arrow symbol. Happens a bunch on Google documentation sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd say that in 99% of the cases, your users would be better off and your site more useful, if you just used one of the standard fonts.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love how this guy thinks. "Why does this font flash on pageload?" and then procedes a 5-page write up on the intricacies of fonts, caches and everything in between. Great write-up!

</comment><comment><USER34> Free fonts aren't sufficiently better than the default system fonts to justify the slowdown. More people will leave your site because of the added microsecond latency than because "the font doesn't look good." You shouldn't use Google Fonts period.

[https://practicaltypography.com/font-basics.html#why-use- pro...](https://practicaltypography.com/font-basics.html#why-use-professional- fonts)

<comment><USER35> That post doesn't come across as anything but pure elitism, it makes no real point and just claims "yeah system and free fonts are just worse".

Fonts like Roboto, Fira, Open Sans, Ubuntu, Merriweather or Vollkorn are all "professional grade" font families with lots of variants and options. Basic typesetting knowledge is going to get you much much further than buying a random professional font if you're designing "a document".

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> A while ago I routed Google Fonts to ::/0.0.0.0 in my /etc/hosts file. It makes pages load a little faster, and shows me which websites thought to provide a sensible fallback and which did not.

<comment><USER37> Some time ago I disabled all webfonts (ublock or umatrix) because I really don't care about stupid individual fonts and I thought I could save some bytes. Unfortunately that broke a lot of video-players (like netflix) because they use font-symbols for play/pause buttons etc.

<comment><USER36> Mm, to me that feels like an abuse of fonts — it's inaccessible at least. It makes me sad that they don't bother using the Unicode codepoints corresponding to those symbols if they exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So the only thing that self-hosting would be missing is all the magic that Google is doing server-side to optimize the served files for the particular browser that is making the request.

Things like encoding (WOFF vs WOFF2) and font hinting need to be dynamically enabled/disabled based on the browser making the request to get the best possible result.

You can't do that with self-hosting without writing some code.... that would be a great open source plugin to have, so that self-hosting could be done without any quality compromises.

Getting the _right_ asset served to every browser was the reason I punted on self-hosting fonts last time I tried.

For example, I care much more about the page looking correct (legible crisp rendering fonts) than shaving 10Kb off the page size. Nothing is worse than the wrong font package causing blurry letters on 20% of your users' devices.

</comment><comment><USER39> So, to counter the point that "fonts only make the web look pretty," consider that font choice has a major impact on how accessible your website is.

For example, most people don't consider that the W and the M in your font must look distinctly different, and not just vertical mirrors of each other. That is a user inclusion choice, not just a "make it look pretty" or "make it on- brand" choice.

<comment><USER40> ...rule one of accessibility is let the user configure how they access your content, and you just chose to override that. So that's a pretty weak excuse.

<comment><USER41> They can still disable custom fonts in their browser if they care. I have them disabled in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Another reason to self-host: Google will gladly change the font characteristics out from under you.

[https://github.com/JulietaUla/Montserrat/issues/60#issuecomm...](https://github.com/JulietaUla/Montserrat/issues/60#issuecomment-342618135)

</comment><comment><USER43> If you use npm, there are packages for most (if not all?) google fonts via the Typefaces project, which makes them trivial to self host. [https://github.com/KyleAMathews/typefaces](https://github.com/KyleAMathews/typefaces)

</comment><comment><USER44> if you happen to use cloudflare, you can do this: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/fast-google-fonts-with- cloudflar...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/fast-google-fonts-with-cloudflare- workers/)

<comment><USER45> Honestly though, this is absolutely ridiculous that you have to do something this complex to fix something so simple. Why doesn't Cloudflare just build this in and let users toggle it on and off under their performance tab?

<comment><USER44> eventually i guess. if the interest is high. this is just an example of what cloudflare workers can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> IMO: don't force your users to load fonts. On slow connections they'll read part of the page until suddenly the font loads and everything gets rearranged. Worse is what google does: hide the text with JavaScript until the font loads so the whole page takes eons before you can read it.

If there's a font with identical metrics that most people have installed then fine, otherwise don't be a dick to people on bad connections.

</comment><comment><USER47> Besides performance and other completely technical reasons, in my view it is mostly a question how dependent an individual or a company wants to be.

Of course it can be technically and operationally convenient but it also means that now you are even more dependent on the fickle choices that Google makes that is per definition in their own interests.

</comment><comment><USER48> Surprised I didn't see that point mentioned: If you self-host Fonts ("Google Fonts" is ultimately just a collection of open source fonts) it's one less thing to care about regarding privacy laws, sharing data with third parties and potentially having to justify due to GDPR etc.

<comment><USER17> From the post: "That leads nicely into the privacy implications of using third-party CDNs. You have no idea what sort of tracking they are doing to your users by using them, rather than self-hosting. And recent legislation means a lot of sites have to explicitly list all the cookies used on the site, which gets more complicated when using a third-party."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Will some of the fonts already be available if you've visited other Google sites?

<comment><USER50> In the past this may have worked. But it won't anymore since browsers have introduced partitioning by origin in their caches. [https://www.jefftk.com/p/shared-cache-is-going- away.amp](https://www.jefftk.com/p/shared-cache-is-going-away.amp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> What's the current thinking on stashing fonts in localStorage for FOUT reduction?

<comment><USER52> Probably better to split your font, and put your critical glyphs somewhere fast. Plus localStorage limits are very low, a couple decent sized fonts will blow your budget.

<comment><USER53> Is IndexedDB bigger? Why not use that?

<comment><USER54> You can. Another thing you can do is setup a service worker and intercept requests to Google Fonts, responding with an entry from cache or indexeddb instead.

<comment><USER53> That service worker stuff doesn't work in iOS Safari though

Can service workers intercept requests to other sites?

<comment><USER55> It does since like 11.1.

Yes, SW can cache all resources. This is how offline PWAs work.

<comment><USER53> Talkin about WebView

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If you're in the EU you might want to self-host the fonts (and other assets!) anyway for GDPR compliance - technically, loading any 3rd party asset exposes the visitor's IP address plus any possible tracking cookie plus the exact URL of the website your visitor is reading to the provider.

Google might say they're not doing any tracking on the fonts, but I don't believe them at all.

</comment><comment><USER57> Should you use Google fonts?

</comment><comment><USER58> Google-Fonts could be made part of Google-Chrome and would never be downloaded ever again for Chrome Users

<comment><USER59> There are a lot of fonts on Google Fonts that are many GB in size if you'd include them all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> You should host everything yourself.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm about to switch to self hosting so the font will load in mainland China.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sure if you/your clients don't want be tracked.

</comment><comment><USER63> Another reason would be to simplify CSP configuration.

</comment><comment><USER64> In a word; yes.

</comment><comment><USER65> At this point you have to self host assets, assuming their license allows that, if you want to comply with privacy regulation. If you don't have a signed legal contract with Google asserting they are not tracking your customers via embedded links, then you must assume they are doing so and you are out of legal compliance.

</comment><comment><USER66> you should self host _EVERYTHING_

<comment><USER67> But wouldn't that stop Google from putting ads into their fonts and AMP into URLs? Does anybody self-host Gmail?

<comment><USER66> Step 1) get a degree to jerk around with docker all day for money

Step 2) realize that this computer shit is hard

Step 3) let google do it instead

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I believe stuff like this is what localstorage was for</comment>


How to Prove It: A Structured Approach, 3rd Edition - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel-Velleman-ebook/dp/B07TBM9LW6/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=daniel+velleman&qid=1564222090&s=gateway&sr=8-2 <comment><USER2> I had a previous edition of that book some years ago when I was a high school student. That book helped me so much, I would recommend it to anyone struggling with their maths high school lessons.</comment>


9 Habits You Need to Stop Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/06/9-habits-you-need-to-stop-now/

<comment><USER2> "8\. Do not carry a cellphone or Crackberry 24/7"

What year are we in?!</comment>


Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108

<comment><USER2> [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa- securit...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security- snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108)

</comment><comment><USER3> Er, is the url right?</comment>


World War II – Not remotely believable (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html <comment><USER2> This is talking about a _show_ on History Channel called "World War II"

Of course, you got me (and probably a lot of other people) to click it because it sounds like an argument for the historical event not being believable.

<comment><USER3> >This is talking about a show on History Channel called "World War II"

No, he was retelling the actual events of WWII in way that would have it seem fictional, highlighting how absurd the whole thing actually was. It's comedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The writers of "World War II" are Shakespeare compared to the writers of "2016 US Election."</comment>


You don't need that Bastion host - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@henriksylvesterpedersen/you-dont-need-that-bastion-host-cd1b1717a9e7 <comment><USER2> Some misinformation here. Using a bastion server does not prevent you from using your tools. Use ssh to setup tunnels that forward through your bastion server to your internal servers and then connect through the local port.</comment>


GitHub shuts down Popcorn Time repositories due to MPA DMCA notice - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/github-shuts-down-popcorn-time-repositories-due-to-mpa-dmca-notice/ <comment><AUTHOR> None of the code in the repository was alleged to be copyright infringing, rather the software is often used by users to access infringing material.

GitHub page: [https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn- desktop](https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop)

TorrentFreak found the dev's DMCA Counter-Notification: [https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/91d5b5715f1c50877652e2...](https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/91d5b5715f1c50877652e2c64e51bb652906a431) (article) [https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-suggests-github-could-be- held-l...](https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-suggests-github-could-be-held-liable- for-popcorn-times-copyright- infringements-200505/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)

Does this mean that developers are going to have their repos shut down if their software is used by pirates? Are they liable? What happens if VLC is the #1 media player of choice for pirates?

<comment><USER2> > Does this mean that developers are going to have their repos shut down if > their software is used by pirates? Are they liable? What happens if VLC is > the #1 media player of choice for pirates?

No. but one thing to learn is that for projects like Popcorn Time who decide have its repository hosted on GitHub, it is a lost cause. GitHub has 100% control over the platform and can do what it likes. i.e, your software can be taken down by them for any reason once it is hosted on their platform; private or not and actively enforces DMCA policy even if none of the code is copyright infringing.

Popcorn Time can appeal, but this fight is bigger than GitHub and Mircosoft is friends with Hollywood. To be continued...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder just how much of Github's recent actions are going to make every major package vendor realize that their source code is now resting in quicksand.

Not that I see GitHub's management going completely goofy a la SourceForge, but the unpredictability has got to be concerning to anyone holding a major repository.

</comment><comment><USER4> Next, gun makers will be tried for murder.</comment>


Trauma in Plain Sight - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/homeless-life-ptsd-overlooked.html <comment><USER2> Facebook is allocating $1B for housing development in the S.F. Bay Area. Google did something similar. But neither of those address the homelessness issue in California, which has passed a crisis point.</comment>


105 Years in Jail for Posting a Link? - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/barrett-brown-105-years-jail-posting-link

<comment><USER2> Relevant:

Crime: Whale Sushi. Sentence: ELEVENTY MILLION YEARS. [http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi- sentence...](http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence- eleventy-million-years/)

<comment><USER3> While it's true that there's no guarantee Brown will get the maximum sentence, it's also true that he's publicly threatened the FBI and has made high-profile enemies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He was directly exposing some powerful people. Much like Michael Hastings.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> specifically, the link was to an archive of the Stratfor leaks.</comment>


Declarative UI Patterns in Rust [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/xH2x99FTY4k?t=385 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a talk I gave last week at the SF Rust meetup, and there's been a fair amount of interest in it. The slides are also available: [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fasP_7rIFZtThdigGYZfMz- tMK...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fasP_7rIFZtThdigGYZfMz- tMKx8q396v-xS4Gg6DeY)</comment>


Activision-Blizzard layoffs after reporting record results - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/activision-blizzard-lays-off-775-people-after-record-results-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this will end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back and leads to unionization in the game industry. I've seen a decent uptick in serious discussion about it already this year after so many other dumb decisions by AAA publishers.

I know a lot of people here don't think there should be unions in software, but I think the game industry is a special case. There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse and just about no one who cares about raising a family can seriously stay in that industry.

I myself spent a few years in it, and even though I love making games, it's just a serious hobby for me because I can't put up with the expected constant crunch, low salaries, and layoffs after every finished project.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee.

Now, people who question the _need_ for unions in dev, I understand where they're coming from.

Software development is rather unusual in its lack of unionization, and IMO, that's because no-one has properly figured out how to commoditise our labour yet. We're the modern equivalent of medieval guilds of craftsmen - we get paid far above the median precisely because we can't yet be commoditized or automated.

Yet.

IOW The lack of a need for unionization in developers shows how lucky we are.

<comment><USER4> _the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee._

... which is why good developers are so against unions.

The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the _employee_ in the software industry that it would be insane to throw that away and form unions. The industry would be happy to pay us all 70k a year with 3% raises based on seniority, and sure, maybe the bottom third of the talent pool would benefit from that.

But the rest of us would see tens of millions of dollars chopped off of our expected lifetime income.

<comment><USER5> > The industry would be happy to pay us all 70k a year with 3% raises based on > seniority, and sure, maybe the bottom third of the talent pool would benefit > from that.

Talk about an inflated sense of ego there. Do you not consider the fact that people make less may have nothing to do with where they stand in the talent pool? You're suggesting there's some sort of logical relationship between income and talent. Does it? Are you sure it's not your own cognitive bias at work?

Scared that your own workers will unionize? I hate to break it to you, but your workers deserve the right to collectively bargain with you for what they consider to be fair. They are people and they deserve to be treated like humans, not your own expendable labor force.

> But the rest of us would see tens of millions of dollars chopped off of our > expected lifetime income.

Who's the "rest of us"? You're arguing that we should all not organize because a handful of people might get rich. I hate to break it to you, but that dog- eat-dog mentality isn't helpful for workers or humanity. We're all in this together, it's not just jasonkester's world you live in. We're all humans living together, not just a salary attached to hands with programming ability.

<comment><USER6> > You're suggesting there's some sort of logical relationship between income > and talent.

Yes, there is. If you have the talent then in the current landscape you can work for about anyone you want and demand about anything you want. Talent is in _extreme_ demand in the software world right now.

<comment><USER7> It is in theory, but companies have no idea how to find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They fired a well know community manager [1] for their World of Warcraft franchise, this after making more promises during Blizzcon in November to increase communication with the community.

Well, seems they fire four and these were the well liked CMs from more than just the WOW property.

As I posted on a previous thread relating to this upcoming issue. Activision / Blizzard has been incredibly tone deaf with regards to the desires of their fans.

The most blatant on Blizzards part was the big Diablo announcement of it going mobile. Which was so badly received you could see the shell shock among the developers

[1] [https://twitter.com/CadenHouse/status/1095450053001371649](https://twitter.com/CadenHouse/status/1095450053001371649)

[2] [https://twitter.com/LashesSashes/status/1095452768364457989](https://twitter.com/LashesSashes/status/1095452768364457989)

[3] [https://twitter.com/jjhill_ii/status/1095451189758455808](https://twitter.com/jjhill_ii/status/1095451189758455808)

[4] [https://twitter.com/hitstreak/status/1095456359594610689](https://twitter.com/hitstreak/status/1095456359594610689)

<comment><USER9> None of the twitter accounts you linked to are developers, just FYI. Apparently the actual dev staff was safe from firings.

<comment><USER10> He never claimed they were - in fact he said "community manager".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's some additional context for these layoffs:

As of June 2018 Blizzard employeed around 9,800 people[1]. So this layoff represents a turnover of ~8% of staff. Depending on Blizzard's base turnover rate, which I couldn't find, they may be better or worse overall than the industry turnover rate of ~15% [2]

Blizzard was considered one of the best companies to work for in 2018, at least by Forbes, though you can absolutely find examples of poor working conditions and unreasonable expectations as is the unfortunate par for the course in the games industry.

The 78 person studio mentioned in the article (Z2Live) was a second degree acquisition (acquired by King who was then acquired by Blizzard), with their last release being in 2012[3].

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/companies/activision- blizzard/#2a4ede...](https://www.forbes.com/companies/activision- blizzard/#2a4ede782599)

[2] [https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team- building-...](https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and- staffing/technology-tops-list-of-industry-talent-turnover- rates-/d/d-id/1331668)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_\(company\))

<comment><USER12> If your company is acquired, it is reasonable to expect that you'll be laid off, no matter how talented. Acquisition = layoffs - general rule of thumb.

<comment><USER13> Members of the acquired company had a 7 year run between King and Activision, so not sure it is fair to attribute layoffs to either acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > In the future, Kotick said Activision-Blizzard will invest primarily in live > services, Battle.net, and esports, with a focus on the following franchises: > Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone.

No mention of StarCraft. This makes me sad. While I don't play video games anymore StarCraft was a big part of my childhood and it had a big influence on gaming and e-sports. I don't think Twitch and streaming would be as big if it weren't for StarCraft and the amazing people around it. Something about this game attracted driven people with great personalities.

<comment><USER15> Blizzard really tried to make Starcraft 2 "a thing" and, while it has a devoted following, I don't think it ever got to the level of success Blizzard was seeking. I can understand why, from a business perspective, Blizzard decided not to pursue Starcraft for the foreseeable future.

I think it's worth saying that, on some level, the social phenomenon of Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 came from the user-created content that came out of the games' full-featured map editors. Now, it feels like that creative energy is flowing through Minecraft-like games and massively improved freely available game engines.

<comment><USER16> > Now, it feels like that creative energy is flowing through Minecraft-like > games and massively improved freely available game engines.

Is it really? I play a lot of strategy games on steam (civ, stellaris, crusader kings 2, eu4) and they seem to have a wealth of mods available.

<comment><USER15> I think we continue to see a broad, general interest in modding using traditional tools.

I'm thinking about the products that rarely get distributed - the MOBA map my friends and I made for WC3 where each one of us got characters. I think a lot of people who might have gotten into the SC2 map editor are now building 4-bit adders in Minecraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like > publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an > entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio > Z2Live.

> The implication is that the positive results reported came thanks to a > fairly narrow bench of franchises, with many of the company's efforts > outside those franchises not meeting expectations.

Sounds like the good properties did great and the second tier properties did worse than expected. I'm not sure why a company would chase bad money with good, sounds like a reasonable choice to reduce properties and downsize in favor of bolstering properties that are working and growing.

<comment><USER18> That's a trend with oligopolies in the entertainment industry. The same reasoning propels movie studios to remake the same franchise movies every year. Costs for AAA are large already -- why take risks?

IMO this is a sign video games are reaching the stage of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," where popular franchises become part of the culture with life of their own.

As a consumer, I'd rather the large players invest in new creative ideas. Create new franchises and more diverse ideas.

But I'm not their audience for video games nor AAA movies...

<comment><USER17> I would much rather have new properties as well. It's unfortunate that economic incentives don't align to make that more common. Although kick starter has helped a bit. Maybe new properties could be like startups and have lottery style exit strategies... I don't just thinking out loud. Great comment.

<comment><USER19> With the availability of Unity and other engines funded by AAA companies, that's enabled startups to pursue new game concepts using AAA efforts as a foundation. That's an ideal model. AAA games are both the standard bearer and the entry level. It's up to gamers to pursue and support a community built on top of that for more experimental games.

Wherever there is attention, someone will monetize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a great thread on Twitter that I can't find right now discussions some of the second order effects of layoffs like these:

* Game dev with family has to choose to either uproot family and leave area to find new job, or chooses to leave game dev and go get a job writing CRUD apps somewhere. Net result is loss of expertise - who's training the junior devs?

Remember, layoffs like these are common in the AAA game industry. I used to want to be a game developer, now I'm sad I didn't pursue it, but also thankful for the security of my "standard" software job.

<comment><USER21> Maybe I'm just heartless but having to "go get a job writing CRUD apps somewhere" to make ends meet doesn't exactly trigger my sympathy response. If that's your backup option you're doing better than 99% of the population.

<comment><USER22> what if they force you to use Java

<comment><USER23> "Yes sir boss, using java, just like you told us to" [https://clojure.org/](https://clojure.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >>In the future, Kotick said Activision-Blizzard will invest primarily in live services, Battle.net, and esports, with a focus on the following franchises: Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone. For those franchises, Activision actually expects to increase, not reduce, development resources in 2019.

While reading I suddenly felt good thinking "luckily my company's primary asset is not "Candy Crush" ". (no specific reason - for an old guy like me it just feels absolutely volatile - on the other hand it does make me feel I'm in the wrong parallel universe)

<comment><USER25> Well, [https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/candy-crush- saga-1-bill...](https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/candy-crush- saga-1-billion-1202908004/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I did not know King was owned by Activision/Blizzard [1]. I wonder if/how it will affect the development of the Defold engine [2].

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_\(company\))

2: [https://www.defold.com/](https://www.defold.com/)

<comment><USER27> Well it's been 3 years, so however Defold has been progressing is probably your answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Activision-Blizzard is a publicly-traded company. In such situations, the priority on "human" or emotional type issues comes second to the quarterly numbers, which investors look at. Is this good, bad? I don't know, but it's one of the perils of working for a publicly-traded company. Having worked in banking for years, a yearly layoff-and-hire cycle happened over and despite profits-reported. Investors care about future earnings more than they care about "community" and "communication," "best companies to work for" and some other words tossed around below. And I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm only reporting what I observe as the explanation.

<comment><USER29> Also despite having a "record year", Activision/Blizzard's stock has dropped almost 50% from where it was in September 2018, which I think was at least started by the PR blunder that was the Diablo Immortal announcement. The article doesn't really give any context into what the CEO meant by "record year" or even when he said it. If he'd said it back in August maybe that would make sense, or maybe it was a business move where you "look on the bright side" when things are looking shitty, but based on their stock price I'm not at all surprised they're having lay offs and restructuring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> before we all get riled up note from the article, notice the non-game- development part

The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live. This is in spite of Kotick saying that the company achieved "record results in 2018." Activision made a statement about exceeding its expectations, but other market-watchers clearly had higher numbers in mind.

</comment><comment><USER31> Jim Sterling goes off on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMAUHXXMHPk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMAUHXXMHPk)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if this is getting a balance sheet looking better before a potential sale to Apple?

</comment><comment><USER33> > The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like > publishing...

> Currently, staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our > current release slate.

hint: they've got nothing on the release slate for _years_.

and no, you don't get a source, because it isn't a URL.

<comment><USER34> Oh, I guess the yearly cycle of CoD games, the Warcrat 3 remake, and periodic patches for WoW do not count as releases.

Thouse are just the once I'm aware off. There seems to be constant stream of things in Hearthstone (or at least it is adverticed constantly in the battle.net launcher) and since I stopped playing Overwatch (about a year ago) they've released at least three new heroes.

If you are talking about actual new games then I guess you are right, but that has never been Blizzards thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As someone who only plays (and watches) Overwatch and Hearthstone... this all seems fine to me.

<comment><USER36> First they came for Diablo, and I did not speak out - Because I was not an ARPG player.

Then they came for Warcraft, and I did not speak out - Because I was not an MMO player.

Then they came for Overwatch and Hearthstone - and there was no one left to speak for me.

<comment><USER37> There is still Candy Crush

<comment><USER24> Lame "influencer"-attempt. You're the Candy_Crush-project_manager, right? :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>