How I Made Porn Video Streaming More Efficient with Python and C - <AUTHOR> http://www.toptal.com/python/how-i-made-porn-20x-more-efficient-with-python <comment><USER3> I sympathize with why the mods changed the title from "Porn" to "Video", but now you've made it so that HN users are unwittingly clicking into an article that talks about porn, in such a way that could be detected by a workplace firewall. That's not an ideal usability decision. Why not use good ol square brackets to maintain the integrity of the title:

How I Made [Porn] Video Streaming 20x More Efficient with Python and C

<comment><USER4> Why do mods change titles of posts? This is frequently complained about on HN, and seems unfortunate.

<comment><USER5> Mostly they make things better, and nobody notices. Sometimes they make things worse, and people complain.

<comment><USER6> >>Mostly

I don't mean to be a hardass, but... citation needed.

Seriously, we have no data on the number of mod edits made vs. complaints voiced. As such it seems premature to conclude that mods _mostly_ do a good job with these arbitrary edits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Agreed that RTMP is an abomination that needs to be exorcised from the Earth as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it is probably here to stay until something like WebRTC gains critical mass.

It's not clear what the article means by "repackaging" a stream or "pointers" to tags (especially in the diagram that shows tag pointers being transported between users). While RTMP is cumbersome, shoving media data (tags) under a per-session protocol header is essentially the standard way of moving data from one session to another.

So I'm not really following this. Is this cutting out the RTMP entirely for receiving clients, and instead sending the FLV down via another transport, like HTTP or whatever? Or is it more of, "I wrote my own RTMP streaming server in C and Python", along with some implementation details which I'm not understanding? (Not that there's anything wrong with doing so. Options are limited in the streaming-server space.)

<comment><USER8> Author of the original post here.

>It's not clear what the article means by "repackaging" a stream or "pointers" to tags (especially in the diagram that shows tag pointers being transported between users).

By repackaging I meant extracting the FLV tags which pretty much travel in the same format as in an FLV stream (.flv file) if memory serves well. Pointers to tags refer to the internal implementation. I took the FLV tags out of the RTMP stream, which resulted in an almost complete FLV stream. With the proper header prepended to it you could save it as a file and play it or stream it and play it. That's just what I did, created a header for every new user, and after that was sent I could just stream the FLV tags from a common buffer. The users had pointers that pointed in this buffer so after the header is sent it was true multicasting.

> So I'm not really following this. Is this cutting out the RTMP entirely for > receiving clients, and instead sending the FLV down via another transport, > like HTTP or whatever? Or is it more of, "I wrote my own RTMP streaming > server in C and Python", along with some implementation details which I'm > not understanding? (Not that there's anything wrong with doing so. Options > are limited in the streaming- server space.)

Yes. From the source RTMP stream I extract the FLV tags, which I could use to multicast. Sending the same RTMP stuff to every user would not work, but I can easily send the FLV tag stream over HTTP if I send the crafted header first.

I hope that helped

<comment><USER7> > I extract the FLV tags, which I could use to multicast

I assume you don't really mean IP multicast (which would, incidentally, be one approach to edge-origin mirroring for the popular marketing campaigns you mentioned, at least within a data center).

Anyway that makes sense, simply sending the FLV is clever. What's the method of delivery -- chunked HTTP? Does it play well with proxies?

<comment><USER8> No, not IP multicast. Imagine it as a web server that serves FLV files which always start at the current stream position. This is what it did.

Actually bringing up the proxy issue is interesting. I'm not sure if it does. Essentially forbidding all caching would make it play nice.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that pretty close to how HTTP Live Streaming works?

<comment><USER8> You mean the apple protocol? Not sure, but I looked at that when I designed it. What I did was just the most intuitive

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I appreciate the effort the mods take in curating titles, I really do - <USER2> please spare articles like this at least?

I clicked on this link at work (part-time at grad-school) and now I have a "how to run a pornographic website faster" link logged in my name.

<comment><USER11> Oh, please. The article uses the word porn exactly three times in the introductory paragraphs. Four if you count the title.

The comments here have double that, including your own use. If you were genuinely that paranoid about being "logged" for having visited a page that used the word porn (really?!) I doubt you'd be using it yourself.

<comment><USER10> I apologize if it sounded that way, but I wasn't insinuating that I'm going to get into trouble.

I'm just saying that it could get someone into trouble.

As far as the "logging" goes, it had more to do with the word porn in the title of the page, because many content-filters just parse the title for blacklisted words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love reading articles about technical issues and solutions in the Porn industry. It's like getting a peek inside a youtube scale company as they grow.

<comment><USER13> Are any of the porn sites larger than youtube?

<comment><USER14> I would rather learn if there was a porn site bigger than Netflix.. as Netflix currently uses around 30% of US bandwith [1]

1\. <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395372,00.asp>

<comment><USER15> Probably. Netflix has the big constraint of availability that only extends to the US. Porn is global. Even though the US has a above-average bandwidth usage (guesstimated) it's still only a small(ish) drop in the global network.

<comment><USER8> EU traffic in our case about ~1.2x the US traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm astonished by some of the responses here, that could be summarised thusly:

> _"I work on workplace, in a modern western society, not some theocratic > backwater, that monitors my web activity and would frown if I visited an > article with the word porn in it. This on 2013. I find this OK, and won't > quit my job or raise hell protesting this degrading treatment, but would > rather complain for HN titles"_.

In an age where people fight for LGBT rights, this is what the American workplace has come to?

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately, the majority of jobs in the United States are run with this kind of degrading treatment. Many even require you to randomly pee into a cup on short notice, to make sure you didn't do any drugs recently. Some of them also monitor your Facebook accounts (as far as permissions allow) to see what you're up to there. A few require you to hand over your Facebook passwords (!) to the boss to make that easier. The corporate world is weird and scary, but not always easy to avoid.

<comment><USER18> >A few require you to hand over your Facebook passwords (!) to the boss

That was a poorly-source, probably-made-up story that now one could verify yet quickly became accepted truth. (Unless it's meant to refer to cases involving heavy security clearances, in which cases it's ho-hum)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >The aggregated bandwidth of the clusters was around 50 Gbps, from which they used around 10 Gbps while at peak load.

Now that is a lot a porn.

Also, the illustrations look really good! How did you make them?

<comment><USER20> Very glad you like those illustrations, first we have created couple of the sketches on the paper and then recreated that in the Photoshop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey this is awesome! Though the admin/moderator changed the title for some unknown reason from the title of the blogpost to their own.

<comment><USER22> Of course because of snobbery. NH visitors should be protected from words, which starts from "p" and ends with "orn".

<comment><USER13> "NH visitors should be protected from words, which starts from "p" and ends with "orn"."

popcorn? preworn?

<comment><USER23>
      % egrep '^p.*orn$' /usr/dict/words

<comment><USER24> I think you mean /usr/share/dict/words.

<comment><USER23> Yep. That's what I get for trying to be clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If anyone is interested in an alternative to the usual RTMP servers (FMS, Red5, and Wowza), I highly recommend EvoStream (<http://www.evostream.com>). Compared to the alternatives, EvoStream is much more efficient. I believe TinyChat published a whitepaper discussing their transition from Red5 to EvoStream, which resulted in a decline in the number of required servers.

EvoStream is a highly scalable streaming media server written in C++ based off of the open source RTMPD (<http://www.rtmpd.com>). The commercial company, also called EvoStream, is a relatively new startup and they do great custom work for those not familiar with streaming media/RTMP.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's easy to underestimate the power of switching to a better language by just doing it - guess at the syntax until it works, then refactor as you start to understand the language and its culture more. In fact I've found I learn faster this way than any other.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this similar to what Wowza (wowzamedia.com) does?

In terms of licensing, it is $55/mo/instance or $995 for a one-time license.

There are also EC2 instances that start at 15 cents per hour.

Much less expensive than FMS

<comment><USER28> You also have Red5 which is open source and rocks very much. It is just a -tad- less reliable than Wowza which you can't really sell to paying customers, but it's much more fun and customizable.

And to answer your question, Wowza is just a cheaper FMS which also supports other platforms next to RTMP. This article is basically taking the more performant HTTP download mechanism for static content (like YouTube uses) and then hacking it to put a live stream in it instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I got hit with a firewall and a "This event will be reported".

Thanks, HN Moderator.

</comment><comment><USER30> Strange how 3/4 of the comments are more concerned with the title link, instead of the actual content.

Very nice post, was an interesting read!

<comment><USER31> To be fair I clicked on the article and immediately came back to the comments expecting the absolutely inevitable sprawl of comments about the title edit. :P

So not strange, methinks. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> LOL at everyone who works at places that fear that the company firewall saw them read an article that had the word "Porn" in it.

Hopefully you get in trouble and fired, it will help your life in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who built the infrastructure for serving porn for Kink.com, I'd say that this was a total waste of time. Spend the money on a third party CDN and serve from there.

<comment><USER34> The article suggests that this is for live streaming shows. Would a CDN based approach work in this use case?

<comment><USER33> Take a look at KinkLive.com. We were the first porn company to do live streaming in HD using a CDN (Bitgravity), all paid for, by the minute, with a micro currency system (kinks) that we built.

<comment><USER34> Very interesting! Thanks for your reply. Have you ever posted or discussed your infrastructure before?

<comment><USER33> I've posted about small parts of it in various places, but not the whole experience. I no longer work there (since April 2010), so while I know they still use quite a bit of the serving infrastructure that I built, my knowledge is now quite a bit out of date.

One fun bit that I built is called the cockblocker (as you can imagine, we used all sorts of fun names for internal projects). People who repeatedly attempt to hack the system (usually through various forms of abuse like failed login attempts) would automatically get their IP address routed to /dev/null.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This title and the article's title don't quite match...

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitted title matched the page, but it's been changed by the mods

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What service do you use for flowcharts?

</comment><comment><USER37> Is there an open source project that accomplishes something similar?

<comment><USER38> There is on open source a Nginx module that streams RTMP and creates HLS segments that looks promising: <https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module>

There are also red5 (<http://www.red5.org/>) and rtmpd (<http://www.rtmpd.com/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know others already said this, but I clicked on this link from work and immediately became appalled when realizing it was about porn and quickly backed out. I'd gladly read this from the comfort of my own home and I'm sure the content itself is SFW but still the point is I was mislead. Can we please [mods] not change titles in cases like this?

<comment><USER40> Don't understand. You can browse articles for leisure at work. So what was the problem with this article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What is the association with this site toptal.com? Has anyone here ever worked with them before?

<comment><USER21> Hey Jeremy, this is our engineering blog.

<comment><USER41> Thanks. This is the only article on the blog? I was actually intrigued by the site and was wondering if anyone on HN has used this service as a dev or a client....

<comment><USER42> I was in talks with them as a dev. Their requirements were a bit weird, so that's why I didn't sign a contract in the end. I think there was one requirements which asked that the developer answer the employer's message within a pretty short time frame, not matter the timezone difference.

<comment><USER21> Hey Elbear, that's not in our contracts, at all. We do make sure our developers communicate within 10 hours regardless of the timezone. We feel that is more than reasonable and it's worked extremely well for Toptal. However, that's not in our contract, it's actually something we simply stay on top of as a company. Our requirements are not "weird" at all, they enforce high integrity, and in most places in the world, the concept of high integrity is "weird". The type of people who will not conform to such standards are precisely the types of individuals who we would never want to work with in a million years, and that is _precisely_ why freelancing platforms have such a pervasively bad reputation.. because they're filled with low or even medium integrity individuals. To us, that's unacceptable. As it is to any A-player team. -Taso, CEO, Toptal

<comment><USER43> Doesn't this mean that your employees are expected to be on call for 14 hours per day though?

<comment><USER21> Your version of "on call" is not congruent with ours or most of the world. When a doctor or DBA is "on call", they have to get up, fix something, and spend hours if not days doing it. We simply enforce communication. If you want to call that "on call" then your decision, and we disagree with that definition. To answer you question, yes, if you're responsible (in our subjective definition of what constitutes responsibility), you will answer within around 10 hours. In practically all communication you can reply "I got this I'll answer you later." or something similar to show responsiveness. The word responsibility stems from "response ability" and we believe that everyone should be... responsible. That's in our DNA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great work. I worked with RTMP for some time and I recall the pain to reverse- engineer their protocol. One other comment, maybe the title should be more like: "How I improved a slow/inefficient RTMP video streaming service by 20x". Just a thought.

<comment><USER45> Would he get the same CTR if he changed the title?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Nothing open source in this article which was the biggest drawback of me reading this.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately that's the case. I heard really good things about wowza these days. Not open source but a lot of things are open and flexible. Also back then red5 was also an ok alternative, not sure if that's still the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you're going to change the title, at least add NSFW to it...

<comment><USER48> How is it NSFW? It is an article that is about video streaming on scale. Yes it does mention it was for a porn site, but it really does not have much to do with the article. If you work somewhere where this would be viewed as inappropriate I am not sure what can be viewed at that employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The network graphics are pretty sharp, anybody familiar with where they came from? Or, are they custom?

</comment><comment><USER50> Why is the type of content relevant? Perhaps there's something peculiar about porn users?

<comment><USER51> Because, like it or not, the porn industry dealt with a lot of the technical issues of selling video, pictures, and video streams on the internet before anyone else. They needed it to be profitable / have actual revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Congratulations to whoever messed with the title; I clicked this at work.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've never expected that the story would be about porn.

</comment><comment><USER54> More efficiently? For two minutes of video? I could see if you were trying to stream Zombieland or Spaceballs... but porn?!

I guess whatever inspires people to innovate is okay with me.

<comment><USER8> Original writer here.

Actually this was a website which streamed online broadcasts live from people, like ustream does but with adult content. Some broadcasts could be hours long.</comment></comment>


Goodbye WordPress: 2014 Will Be the Year of the Flat-File CMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.typeandgrids.com/blog/goodbye-wordpress-2014-will-be-the-year-of-flat-file-cmses

<comment><USER2> We're going back to moveabletype?</comment>


Teardown reveals Chevy Volt's electronic secrets - <AUTHOR> http://edn.com/design/automotive/4372600/Teardown-reveals-Chevy-Volt-s-electronic-secrets

<comment><USER2> I used to work at the hybrid battery lab at GM, and for a while on the Volt battery itself. I'm happy to try to answer any questions (without breaking confidentiality, of course).

<comment><USER3> Are the boards end user programmable or readable? One of the things that fascinated me about the Nissan Skyline GT and cars with OBDII was the ability to plugin a laptop and get realtime data from the ECU, program the valve timings, and in the case of the Skyline get the brake, Antislip, and g-forces data. Is this type of information available to the owners?

<comment><USER2> That's a good question. Everything eventually connects in to the ECU, so there's no reason the customer shouldn't be able to read this data. As for writing data, I'm not sure how difficult it would be, but it can probably be done.

Personally, I'd leave battery controls to people smarter than me. Consider that the battery costs around $8,000, and that severe over- or under-charging is a massive hazard to both the battery's lifespan and the driver's life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone explain why there are so many control boards? It seems like a nightmare wiring those systems together and coding them all to correctly interact together.

Then again I have limited experience with real-time systems.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to guess "modularity". Probably also cheaper to shoehorn more smaller boards into the car, than one large board.

Anyway, as for connecting them and coding the interfaces, they've been doing that for ages. Have you heard of CAN bus? It's actually pretty cool.

<comment><USER4> That's pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. Hadn't heard of CAN before.</comment></comment></comment>


Musopen Wants to Give Classical Music to the Public Domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/musopen-wants-give-classical-music-public-domain

<comment><USER2> Looking at what they say they can get recorded by a world class symphony for $10k, it sounds like the musicians don't make much money. I would have thought classical musicians good enough to win a spot in a top symphony would make a lot (not pop star level, of course, but better than I typical middle class worker).</comment>


Fallout from Blizzard Hong Kong Incident - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjw535/blizzards-hong-kong-screw-up-is-officially-an-international-incident <comment><USER2> What is really interesting about this is how completely and utterly horrible a job Blizzard did in anticipating and preparing this very obvious possibility, and thus is so poorly handling every single aspect of this.This so obviously was likely to happen that it easily could have been anticipated and planned for to be dealt with in a much, much more professional way, and yet clearly they didn't, and it's beyond inexcusable for any major company to drop the ball like this. And they just continue to prove their incompetence in how they're (not) responding now -- they should be in crisis PR mode, yet they're just sitting there, paralyzed.

How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come.

<comment><USER3> Blizzard has been on a downward spiral for years. They still have awesome teams releasing and maintaining awesome games, (thank you for custom colors in SC Remastered!), but by and large their direction has been towards EA and away from their true fans.

<comment><USER4> This is because their name is not Blizzard. Their legacy is Blizzard. Their name is Activision Blizzard. They are actively opposed to players' interests in many ways, like lootboxes which many countries seek to outlaw for teaching children to gamble, always-online DRM etc.

<comment><USER5> Metzen is out, Morhaime is out. Really the soul of the company has departed already. They still have some of the best talent in the industry but the products are not going to be what we used to love anymore. Makes me sad as I've supported them from Warcraft I and Diablo I until about last year (when they killed the competitive scene for HOTS with very little warning).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great Streisand moves by China though, previously gamers or basketball fans might not really care about what's happening in Hong Kong/China in general, but within 2 days they (China) have raised awareness of what a shitty overlord they are.

<comment><USER7> Well, China has done nothing here though. This is the NBA and Blizzard acting to prevent what I like to call the "Weibo Outrage Machine" from revving too high. (Not that it worked, because in the NBA's case, the machine was red lining. In Blizzard's case, there was nary a peep though, so that one is a bit puzzling?) For any who were unaware, the "Weibo Outrage Machine" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, think Reddit, HN, or Twitter. Only in Mandarin, and with consensus opinions essentially 100% opposed to consensus opinions in the West on these issues.

I'm afraid we may have entered an era where outrage machines in China effectively dictate market access. Senators, Prime Ministers, Premier's, and Presidents will be powerless to stop it. (Well, short of shutting the outrage machines down.)

<comment><USER8> How does this "outrage machine" affect the actions of the Chinese government? If people get outraged enough, will they vote against the communist party?

<comment><USER9> I am a Chinese American but my wife is Chinese. I have a large number of Chinese friends. You may be surprised to learn that vast majority of Chinese natives are very pro-China; and while they can be critical of the Chinese government at times, they tend to be united against any actions taken by foreign entities they consider anti-China or anti-Chinese government.

Talk to a few Chinese immigrants and you will know.

The younger Chinese generation grew up in an era of Chinese economic boom and are the benefactors of the efficiency in decision making that came with a more top-down (dictatorial if you will) government. The younger generation is much more focused on economic well-being and safety over liberty or freedom.

So as long as China can maintain the economic growth it's been having the past two decades, the Chinese public will by and large support the government.

<comment><USER10> > The younger generation is much more focused on economic well-being and > safety over liberty or freedom

This is perfectly reasonable when you consider it a personal decision. Sure, trade away some of your freedom for better economic well-being.

But how do they justify this when their personal economic well-being requires trampling the freedom of other people?

By that logic, would pro-China people would support China going to war with and taking over other countries if it brought them "economic well-being"?

(edited to make the last statement more clearly a question since it's something I'm genuinely curious about.)

<comment><USER11> >But how do they justify this when their personal economic well-being requires trampling the freedom of other people?

There are 3 great evils in China: terrorism, separatism and extremism. HK/Tibet/XinJiang/Taiwan are not economic issues but security ones. People balance prosperity for security everywhere. The west sees HK as a large pro democracy movement, the Chinese see's this as fringe separatist violence by 0.001% of the population. They see HK as Chinese alt-right getting bold undermining domestic serenity: disenfranchised, social media savvy, economically anxious youth who see their culture being displaced and their privileged being eroded by mainland immigrants. They're acting accordingly.

<comment><USER12> In what way does pretending Taiwan does not exist improve China's security?

<comment><USER11> The physical island is a huge geopolitical asset or security risk. See island chain strategy. Also look up elevation map of Taiwan + Taiwan straight. Chinese coast is very shallow and hard to hide Chinese subs, whereas east Taiwan drops straight into deep water which enables China to hide subs which is important in controlling regional waters against US Navy. Regardless, the Chinese military planning certainly doesn't pretend the land isn't there. The government (from both sides) just doesn't recognize each others sovereignty.

<comment><USER12> China does not occupy Taiwan, so those points are moot.

What security interest is served by censoring discussion of the existence of Taiwan?

This is a political issue, not a security issue.

<comment><USER11> It's both. Politics is a huge part, reunification is #1 CPC policy consideration since founding and her entire legitimacy rests on it. Occupation goal is by 2050. No one is censoring discussion of Taiwan? If you're talking flag emoji that's equivalent to banning confederate flag in Chinese context. People talk about Taiwan in China all the time but under context of reunification. On refusing sovereignty claims. If Taiwan was sovereign they would be free to host US bases which challenges Chinese security, particularly shipping lanes where China imports oil. China is not energy secure. Taiwan has been a Chinese "redline" for many reasons.

<comment><USER12> > If Taiwan was sovereign they would be free to host US bases

Taiwan is clearly sovereign, anyone saying otherwise is ignoring reality or avoiding offending China.

The US had military bases in Taiwan for 20 years, the military bases were removed to assist with normalizing relations with China.

I can absolutely see why insisting that the US not place military bases on Taiwan is a security concern, but this has nothing to do with the sovereignty of Taiwan. (Similar to US concerns about Russian military installationa in Cuba which were unrelated to Cuba's sovereignty.)

The institutional double-speak around the sovereignty of Taiwan is purely political and has no impact on actual security issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another incident: A fan at a 76ers game was escorted out after shouting "free Hong Kong" before a game against a CBA team in Philadelphia yesterday.

[https://twitter.com/Christie_Ileto/status/118177972224357580...](https://twitter.com/Christie_Ileto/status/1181779722243575809?s=20)

<comment><USER14> It would be interesting what wpukd happen if people on NBA games started wearing FreeHK shirts. Would they be ejected during game? That would really mean that china effectively censors US citizens.

Also what would happen if crowd pulled HK support en masse, escort out everyone?

<comment><USER15> We may see in a few weeks: [https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-hong-kong-tshirts- on-nba-ope...](https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-hong-kong-tshirts-on-nba- opening-night)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is scary to see how much more China and the CCP can get away with, I'm looking forward to seeing where it will all end up. Probably not in a good place. Money talks, morals? Not so much.

<comment><USER17> Right now the leadership in China is terrified! They've been able to get away with a lot, basically using their economic power to get other countries to look the other way with regards to their behavior (suppressing their people, stealing IP, bullying smaller nations). but the moment they got called on it and people started moving their operations to other countries (previously considered "impossible"), they saw the economic impact. And they realized that they can't get away with what they're doing if they aren't providing their citizens with a constantly growing economy, their citizens are going to start getting angry again.

It's clear now much of the Chinese leadership were a paper tiger and now that the heat is on, they don't really have a strategy. They just never expect enough people to call them out publicly and embarass them. Maybe they'll keep hold of their own country by suppressing information flow, countrywide surveillance, but whatever power they had over the global economy: severely diminished.

<comment><USER3> Their economy is also massively indebted, they got hooked on debt to a degree many here would consider reckless. They've wasted a tremendous amount of money on useless construction, which may be one downfall of a planned economy.

<comment><USER18> I was intrigued by your comment, so I went looking around: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt)

It looks like their debt is only 15% of their GDP? I've heard the China <> Debt thing before and I don't understand it. Could you explain what you mean?

<comment><USER19> I'm by no means an expert, but my understanding is that China's debt problem is not external debt, but internal debt. To put what the more negative takes are saying in US-related terms it's as if the mortgage-lending practices of the mid-2000s were done on a much larger scale (involving not just housing loans but almost everything funded by borrowing, including industry, infrastructure, etc) and for a much longer time.

As a result, there are lots of loans on the books that will never be paid off as things stand, and unlike the US there is no mechanism in the financial system to acknowledge any of that on a gradual basis (loan writedowns, etc), so the loans keep being rolled over instead.

At some point, reality will need to be faced, at which point there will be either massive financial system issues, much worse than what the US had going on in 2008, or huge government bailouts. And in the latter case, that implies even more financial repression or taxation, or both, than is already going on, with resulting decreases in economic well-being for urban areas in China, which is the thing that _really_ worries the CCP.

If the economy grows faster than the "bad loan" burden, then this problem is basically temporary, and rolling the loans over until the economy has grown enough to just deal with the issue is the right strategy. It's hard to come by plausibly correct (or even unbiased) estimates of either economic growth or the size of the "bad loan" burden, but almost all the estimates I've seen seem to agree that for a long time the "bad loan" burden was growing faster than the economy. Whether that's still the case, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, Twitter et al. have been training corporations to pay attention to various levels of public outrage, and the public outrage has been training corporations on how to mitigate that outrage without impacting the bottom line too dramatically, and now we're surprised these pliable flexible money gumbys' are bending to the whim of someone with (potentially) _more_ money?

As a bonus, "we" (The West) have recently demonstrated hundreds upon hundreds of examples of free speech being relegated to a distant second to certain "special" feelings our society holds, and now "we" are trying to tell China that their certain special feelings aren't worthy of this level of protection?

If our values mean nothing to us, then there is no reason to be surprised that those values mean just as little to others.

<comment><USER21> Since Twitter is blocked in China, I bet it is corpotate regional managers who are flipping out about posts that reach maybe 1 percent of China's population

<comment><USER22> 1% of 1'500'000'000 is 15 million people

<comment><USER21> True but nevertheless insignificant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm mixed on this. I'm 100% for Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai to express his support for Hong Kong. I'm not so sure it's okay for him to do it on Blizzard's show/event.

27 years ago Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live when it was broadcast live. She's was arguably right to critize the Pope but was she right to do it from Saturday Night Live's Live broadcast? IIRC because of that incident SNL added a 5 or 10 second delay so they'd have time to cut if something similar happened again.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor#Saturda...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor#Saturday_Night_Live_performance)

Anyway, I'm support of the HK protestors and having written that in public now I wonder if I'm banned from China. I also believe I want US businesses to all stick up for freedom of expression and not sell out to China. I'm just saying in the context of using the Blizzard event I'm not so ready to condemn Blizzard's initial response. In the new context of what's happened since then though I hope they change their direction.

IIRC Sinead O'Connor was pretty much universally condemned even though if I understand correctly she was right.

<comment><USER24> I don't know about SNL, but the thing that pisses me off about Blizzard is that they have been parading around as a company that supports human rights. They recently held a pro LGBT+ event, they've held numerous humanitarian aid campaigns and they even have a statue outside their headquarters that features one of their core values "Every voice matters".

You simply can't do all that, and then go against democracy and basic human rights like this, and then expect people to not call you out for your bullshit.

<comment><USER25> Not to denigrate supporting any kind of human rights, but promoting LGBT and humanitarian causes in almost any western country won't lose them a single customer. Today, that's the easy way out. 20-30 years ago it would be gutsy.

<comment><USER26> It can still cost them customers, e.g. hardcore Christians. Today, it is still brave, just less than 20-30 years ago.

Throughout the entire existence of WoW they've actively prohibited LGBT community to express themselves in WoW. While they did nothing about virtual RP sex on RP servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Xi Jinping Thinks China Is World's Only Sovereign State

[https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13497/china-sovereign- sta...](https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13497/china-sovereign-state)

<comment><USER28> That article is jumping to a heck of a lot of conclusions with no real basis.

<comment><USER11> It's Gordon G. Chang who has been calling for Chinese collapse via all sorts of deceptive narratives in the last 20 years. No one who studies China takes him seriously.

<comment><USER8> I had to wonder about the fascination with a fairly innocuous decades-old opinion of Pres. Carter's. Talk about beating a dead horse...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The CCP can move quickly and decisively to ban access to the world's 2nd largest market, and it uses that power to chill speech and force governments and companies to take actions it wants that are antithetical to a free society.

Small nations and individual companies cannot stand up to this coercion individually, and free, market economies lack the organization to respond in a cohesive way.

The optimistic belief that economic growth and market integration would liberalize authoritarian or totalitarian countries should by now be wholly debunked.

The CCP is responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities and violations of human rights today, and has largely managed to silence the world from even speaking out against its actions.

Individuals should do everything they can to express their opposition to this state of affairs, but the only viable response is for the governments of free peoples who care for and value these freedoms to jointly act in response.

If we value freedom over money, there must be economic consequences (including economic isolation) for China for its actions, and we should not be reluctant about promoting these freedoms globally, including within China.

The GATT and WTO rules in place today are not sufficient to counter the threat China represents. It's time to rewrite the rules of global trade to prevent the CCP from freely benefiting from trade while simultaneously using it as a hammer to blunt and distort the values that enabled the markets from which it benefits.

<comment><USER30> Do you think a union would hold any power, almost like an 'accredited travel agent'? Sign up and show you won't bend you initial ethics to suit China.

<comment><USER31> > Do you think a union would hold any power

Power over whom?

China? No.

US Companies? It depends on the context: how damaging would a strike be, and how much of the important people can you get to join?

In the context of pro gaming, I have serious doubts that any union is viable outside games with a franchise model. There are just too many hungry people and too few spots at the top to ever have a meaningful strike.

Even with a franchise, the result of a Union forming may just be the dissolving of the franchise model (or the failure of the game as an esport) rather than the Union achieving political power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson both have entire novels featuring in-game markets of MMOs ('For the Win' and 'Reamde'). Hopefully the authors have done more research than I did, but the claim is that MMOs have multibillion-dollar markets of in-game items and currency, with the companies running the games thus controlling the flow of money. And the markets can be used for supranational transfer or laundering. And plenty of people in China, India and elsewhere are farming in-game gold full-time.

Would Blizzard give up such a segment to let some dudes make a few loud comments?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if this will affect the Starcraft 2 Nation Wars tournament that's currently ongoing. China, Hong Kong, and "Chinese Taipei" (as Blizzard insists the team be called in the tournament) are all participants in the tournament, though the Chinese team just happened to recently eliminate the Hong Kong team, so it would have to be another country's team to pull an "I am Spartacus" in support of the banned player and Hong Kong.

<comment><USER34> You do know why "Chinese Taipei" is contentious right? The island of Taiwan houses an entity that considers itself the rightful government of China in exile, the Republic of China (ROC).

Mainland China is currently governed by the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Both governments consider themselves "China". They consider the other government as an illegitimate entity occupying territory illegally.

The PRC refuses to deal with any nation that treats the ROC as a nation. That means it is not recognized by the UN, the Olympic committee, etc. If you make any sort of inference that the island of Taiwan is not the territory of and under the control of the PRC, they will flat out drop your ass.

The compromise is "Chinese Taipei". Because "Taiwan" sounds too much like its own nation to the PRC and "Taiwan, China" sounds too much like a subordinate of the PRC to the ROC.

So it's not Blizzard that's insisting the team be called Chinese Taipei, it's the PRC and ROC. Although, they'd much rather the other government not exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Interesting that the stock price of Activision Blizzard is basically unfazed.

<comment><USER36> Should go up tbh - they've shown investors that they value shareholder profits/keeping markets open more over all other considerations (fanbase, PR, not being hypocrites, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "but it is incredibly disturbing that American companies would willingly participate in the Chinese government's propaganda campaign."

Not counting the U.S. media, of course!

</comment><comment><USER38> And that's why FIFA bans all political displays or comments, and displays of any symbols in general...

I expect Blizzard to follow suit.

<comment><USER39> But aren't FIFA a bunch of morally bankrupt scam artists?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA#Corruption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA#Corruption)

<comment><USER8> Isn't that what GP said? Banning speech sure seems "morally bankrupt" to me...

<comment><USER39> You're right! Now that I think about it, my comment could have been a snarky joke. I didn't think it through. (^_^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's interesting to see that no where in this thread or in the Vice article posted by OP, is Robert Kotick's name mentioned.

It's not until Kotick, Morhaime (Blizzard co-founder) and Allen Brack (President) start feeling the heat will they reverse course.

<comment><USER41> Morhaime stepped down as CEO last year, and his advisory role with the company ended back in April.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's a weird day when I find myself agreeing with Marco Rubio. But it's true, China is effectively attempting a global chill on free speech by gating market access. If we don't stand up now, the effects will be felt long into the future.

<comment><USER13> Something tells me this will end with Apple in the middle. Can't think of a company more exposed to both China and the US.

<comment><USER43> Apple's rainy day fund will come in real handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Welp, I guess we had a good run. Time to show the Chinese that they will never take away our freedom

</comment><comment><USER45> Stock is down ~3.5% since Monday, is that a meaningful swing?

Not sure if shareholders care...

</comment><comment><USER46> And yet, I see absolutely no talk, even from the U.S. Senators who are quoted, of the U.S. actually doing anything about it that would make a difference.

<comment><USER47> To be honest, for once the market seems to be doing a pretty good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Let them have their LAN party

</comment><comment><USER48> Blizzard has shown their true colors: make money at all costs.

<comment><USER49> This is almost every company ever to be fair.

<comment><USER50> True, but it hurts more when it's a company with such a great history and strong relationship with its customers.

I think people don't really care about what Nestlé or Monsanto do because they've never really cared about those companies, but people care about Blizzard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I would love to see protesters at Blizzcon wearing the HK protester attire.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's almost as though we need a president interested in some kind of trade...conflict with China. If only we had one of those.

<comment><USER53> I hate Trump for a lot of reasons, but I support his way of dealing with China.

<comment><USER54> He's not even pretending to care for the oppressed people in China. They'll get thrown under the bus just like the Kurds are right now with Turkey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Earlier discussion on (mostly) the same topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21201768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21201768).

</comment><comment><USER56> Real question: How is what China is doing any different from what we've seen the US do to Venezuela (the Adobe incident) or even Cuba for that matter?

<comment><USER57> The US issued sanctions against Venezuelan government officials known to be be corrupt; the sanctions don't apply to all, or even most, of Venezuela. Adobe simply used those sanctions as an excuse to cut off support for everyone in Venezuela so they could pull out without having to refund anyone.

Also, with respect to both countries, we aren't trying to use our US economic power to force a _Venezuelan_ or _Cuban_ company to do what we want.

The US government has made its stance toward both countries clear for the last several decades, it's not like they tricked US businesses into going into Venezuela or Cuba and then tried to pull the rug out from beneath them.

<comment><USER58> Adobe changed their stance on refunds, I think. Unfortunately, it seems that the link on their site[0], which I read on Monday in English, has apparently been replaced with a Spanish version. Machine translation of relevant quote:

>If you purchased your products directly with Adobe, you will receive a refund before the end of the month for any license period paid and not received. We are working for our distributors to act in the same way.

[0] [https://helpx.adobe.com/la/x-productkb/policy- pricing/execut...](https://helpx.adobe.com/la/x-productkb/policy- pricing/executive-order-venezuela.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Propose that a suspended player is a US citizen. This feels unconstitutional / illegal, as Blizzard has taken away the player's ability to earn a living based in their political views. The guise of suspension under the violation of "disparagement" feels weak.

I'd be interested in seeing how a lawsuit plays out.

<comment><USER60> There is no law or constitutional provision in the US that says you can't refuse to work with someone for their political views.

<comment><USER61> idk man it sounds like discrimination to me.

<comment><USER62> It's legal to discriminate as long as it's not a protected class.

<comment><USER63> There are some states, like CA, where discrimination based on political views is illegal, but it's practically-speaking not too hard for an employer to find a more traditional performance reason that may be related to political views. Caveat: IANAL

Source: [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers- discri...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discriminate- based-on-political-beliefs-or-affiliation.html)

<comment><USER60> Even then, that refers to employees specifically, and the person in question is probably not a Blizzard employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> First, I introduce myself. I am a Chinese, an ordinary citizen. I want to express my view rationally: the so-called repression of speech, freedom of speech, that also scores what freedom of speech, Hong Kong incident involves national dignity, just as the United States don't want 911 to be supported by some people (example: Imagine a well-known person, just days after 911, publicly declaring that 911 was a Great National Renaissance Movement .)(More seriously, it involves the level of the Chinese nation.) To say that, I just want to express that this is the common view of the Chinese people at present. That's why there are Chinese people who support 911 on Twitter. They want to express that Americans support Hong Kong's behavior. In their hearts, it's the same behavior as supporting 911. While being indoctrinated with China's harmfulness theory by the media, I hope that you can rationally understand these recent events, rather than trust the media.

<comment><USER65> The difference here is that although the US government doesn't want us to talk about September 11th, I'm totally free to do so at any time, on any channel, using any medium. I can freely call George W. Bush an idiot and a dupe for playing right into Osama Bin Laden's plans. I can say that the TSA and the further restrictions on freedom of movement have been one of the worst aspects of the post-911 world in the US. And the persistent culture of fear that has grown up as I've become an adult has been a scary thing for me to face. And I'm free to say that the news media in the US is creating this culture and sustaining it.

I can say all of this without fear of recrimination from my government. I'm enrolled in TSA Precheck, never harassed by the police, can move freely within the country, and am free to buy or view whatever I like in spite of my lack of support for that part of our national government. One of our founding fathers is famously quoted as saying "I do not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." We take that statement as gospel. For us to censor our citizens is an affront to our national dignity.

Can you say that the student protests in Tianenmen Square were met with a police response that was massive overkill? Or that attempts to censor Hong Kong's free speech are unacceptable? Or that free speech against your government is an inalienable right? Because if not then there's not really much similarity between the US and China despite how it may seem to you.

<comment><USER66> Voltaire's biographer was a founding father?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I don't think it should be an international incident. The reality is that corporations shouldn't be espousing political viewpoints, and nobody should care what their opinion is on controversial policies. They make and sell products and that's all they should stick too. Why should Blizzard get in the middle of what's happening between China and Hong Kong? And to be clear, it isn't just Chinese government versus Hong Kong protestors. The Chinese public, the people who buy and consume Blizzard products, also have very strong opinions on this, as does the Hong Kong public.

The problem is that these brands also want the brownie points. So they'll cherry pick safe policies to loudly support when it doesn't negatively affect their bottom line, but stay quiet when it does, making them look like hypocrites and pissing off everyone.

<comment><USER68> > The reality is that corporations shouldn't be espousing political viewpoints

But they MUST. That's the issue. There is no such thing as remaining neutral.

What could they do? Ban the player to make China happy? Now the west is mad and boycotting.

NOT ban the player? Now China is pissed and kicking you out of the country.

They were damned by someone either way. There was no neutral political stance they could take. International politics is just setup that way. Total neutrality doesn't exist on that stage.

<comment><USER67> >But they MUST. That's the issue.

Then what is the right answer? HK independence?

>There is no such thing as remaining neutral.

Of course there is! What does it mean to NOT remain neutral? What position should a corporation take and which controversial topics? How about the IOC? Or FIFA? Or some charity? Or the EU? I don't see European nations, for example, taking any steps to challenge China. I don't see the public boycotting Chinese goods. Why would you expect a video game company to do so?

Do you honestly want a video game company to take a position on every single controversial topic .... of which there are thousands? Or only on the ones that you find particularly important?

>What could they do? Ban the player to make China happy?

No. Ban the player not to make China happy but because he brought politics into a neutral sporting event. The same thing that NFL and NBA did with players kneeling during the anthem because it pissed off half their fanbase.

<comment><USER69> > Ban the player not to make China happy but because he brought politics into > a neutral sporting event. The same thing that NFL and NBA did with players > kneeling during the anthem because it pissed off half their fanbase.

In both those cases, though, that's still _taking an action_ that supports one side and affronts the other. "Staying out of politics" could arguably lead to making s short statement "the NFL takes no league-wide position on players kneeling during the anthem" _and taking no action._ And: "As a company, Blizzard takes no position on politics and the viewpoints players express are their own," followed by _taking no action._

And, of course, there's an argument to be made that even doing that is effectively "taking a side," right? Because your (lack of) action _still_ implicitly supports one side and affronts the other. Maybe letting players kneel during the anthem _does_ piss off half your fan base, but explicitly banning them from kneeling pisses off the _other_ half of your fan base.

As much as Rush lyrics may be the last refuge of scoundrels, there's a lot of truth in "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

<comment><USER67> >n both those cases, though, that's still taking an action

No. That is insane.

Being neutral is not the same as taking an action. I know we live in a twitter world where everything is black or white but you don't get to create a false dichotomy of "you're either with me or against me" \- there is always a third choice of "I refuse to get involved".

>Staying out of politics" could arguably lead to making s short statement "the NFL takes no league-wide position on players kneeling during the anthem" and taking no action. And: "As a company, Blizzard takes no position on politics and the viewpoints players express are their own," followed by taking no action.

You're parsing out meanings from words that aren't there. Sure Blizzard could have done nothing, but they did decide that their platform shouldn't be used to espouse political messages, even ones they may privately agree with. If you want to be pedantic that's 'taking an action', but the action is NOT "I support China", nor "I support Hong Kong protestors", but rather, "I have no position on the matter because I'm a video game company that is interested in selling video games and running StarCraft tournaments".

Why are you so intent on creating a division where there is none and forcing everyone to choose a side?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


DRM isn't dead until it's dead for movies, too. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/07/20/drm-dead-yes-but-only-for-music/

<comment><USER7> DRM per se is far from being dead.

The specific DRM on music was killed by necessity of backward compatibility. CD-Audio, mp3 etc. did not contain any DRM provisions and market demand for compatible products precluded DRM.

On the other hand, standards that include DRM from the beginning (DVD, BlueRay, HDMI etc) will continue using it. New standards will also come with DRM until customers successfully pressure the vendors to dropping it.

DRM is not dead, it just couldn't find the parking spot in front of the music store. Otherwise, business as usual.

<comment><USER8> In every area where people can create something that can be digitalized the creator will attempt to slap drm it in the vain hope of extracting a little more money out of it. Items that are classified as entertainment are simply the most public.

      - Video Games
      - <USER2>
      - TV Shows
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - <USER5>
      - Technical articles (pdf)
      - <USER6>
      - Radio or really audio of any form including telephone

There is drm for video of photos or articles with photos, but is there drm for only photos?</comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Billy Chasen, co-founder, Stickybits - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/2595788622

<comment><AUTHOR> We have an easily explainable product, but people only get it by example.

\- Billy Chasen (@billychasen)

<http://startupquote.com/post/2595788622></comment>


Apply HN: Get Discovered with IMe - <AUTHOR> IMe is a new social networking platform for talents to be showcased and developed. Users will be able to connect with other talented people (sports, games or anything that can have competition) and get reviewed by the people that they just met. More data collected (stats) at professional level will be helpful in the hands of scouts or recruiters to discover the next superstars.
Using technology to create platform for this will solve 2 major problems
1) Able to compete with others players in the area (not just the same school or college) giving a chance for players to learn more and create an edge over others.
2) Able to network and create local teams will eliminate the need to spend a lot of money on learning camps. Learning and developing can be done in your city on your schedule with the team you created.
There will be a lot of additional benefits as a player maintains his/her stats and ratings positively. This data at one place will be helpful for getting discovered.
We welcome your opinions about our project. All the very best in your ventures. <comment><AUTHOR> IMe is focused on gathering the necessary data in the events that the player plan and participate using IMe.

Primarily, using IMe, people can plan and participate in a competition as a individual or a team and for players interested in taking it to the next level, tailored forms will be available to record the data while participating in the event. We believe this method of data collection proves true for the scouts.

Local audience also will be able to validate the recorded data in the live forum for the trending events.

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like the idea of gather stats that will be useful for scouts and recruiters. Your current app looks like it is more targeted at kids. I would focus more on high schoolers looking to be recruited, and aim to create something of a LinkedIn for athletes. I would also talk to a lot of scouts and recruiters now, to learn what they want, since they are your customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support and that is exactly what we want to build. Linkedin for athletes (and other skills).

The data collected by each player will vary greatly based on the sport/event they are into. This also depends on what the scouts or recruiters want to see so yes, we would need to talk to a lot of them to provide the useful data.

We are targeting high school kids who are into team sports and also any local coaches who coach kids outside school. Managing a team and competing other teams will be our primary focus in building the user base.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please visit [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1976514806/get- discover...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1976514806/get-discovered- with-ime) for more information and can help us if you liked our project.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks as if IMe depends on local network effects. It seems that it's growth might draw some lessons from the early days of Facebook.

What geographic areas will be targeted first?

What skills will be targeted first?

How will it acquire sufficient users in early markets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your response. Could you please provide some specific lessons from Facebook? Just so that we can prepare outself.

We are targeting high school players for our initial traction. The professional and scouts packages are very much dependent of data being available so we need to start building our user base.

We will start with reaching out to high schools from small towns rather than cities due to the availability of public parks.

We envision this to be the linkedin for athletes and other talented people where talents are connected with other talents as well as scouts and recruiters

<comment><USER3> Facebook started with a small highly localized target demographic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Server-Side Javascript: Back With a Vengeance - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/server-side_javascript_back_with_a_vengeance.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I just thought about this, but you could (in theory, and limited by certain implementations) execute your tracking scripts serverside instead of on the client. If you do this asynchronously then you can probably eliminate the hit those scripts take on page load time.

Edit: Now all the reasons this wouldn't work are pouring in (mostly for something like Google Analytics). Mixpanel works this way though, and they provide the ability.

</comment><comment><USER3> JavaScript is "assembler with closures and broken hashtables", and I don't get why anyone would want to use it on the server, compared to richer languages.

<comment><USER4> Well, have you ever tried to program in javascript? It's a fantastic language for prototyping. If you want to try an algorithm, you sit down, write an astonishly small quantity of code and it just works. That's just one of the reason why I use javascript.

Another is, that it's a fantastic language to use for hobby projects, because you don't need to think too much beforehand, thanks to the dynamically typed variables, methods and objects.

And last but not least, you don't have any GUI to manage. HTML does it for you, which simplifies matters a bit. You want to dynamically create HTML? No problem. You prefer to prepare the HTML beforehand? No problem at all.

So to answer your question, I use it because it's refreshingly easy to use, more so than richer languages who are sometimes simply too heavy.

<comment><USER5> That's basically the same reasoning that applies to any server-side scripting language: high level scripting languages are much more efficient to develop with than more structured lower-level languages, and the web-application model lets you use HTML as your GUI which is quick, easy, and flexible (though not as rich or stable as client-side GUIs can be.)

My personal preference for server-side development is Modern Perl, because it lets you develop anywhere along the "highly structured" to "rough scripting" line that you please. Other server-side languages are fine if they suit your development style, but I like to adjust my style to suit the project, and to use a language that can adapt to whatever style I need.

Client-side, Javascript is great especially with jQuery. I couldn't deal with javascript development without selectors; it's far too much effort. I'll have to give Javascript a try for server-side development, but I don't think I'd want to do a large project in Javascript. My current application at work has nearly 7K lines of client-side Javascript, and it's already getting unwieldy.

<comment><USER6> > Client-side...jQuery...nearly 7K lines

The reason I only use jQuery for ajax-sprinkles apps (take a static app and make it ajaxy!) is because it provides no tools for dealing with larger size programs. I used to use MochiKit for the Signals module, but I've switched over to yui3. It's roughly the same terseness of jQuery but with an excellent set of tools for organizing/decoupling your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been following Narwhal, Jack and Nitro for some time now. I'm very excited!

</comment><comment><USER8> in favor or less context switching wrt code reuse: i will say that allowing my firefox extension (client) and django website (server) to share the same templates is pretty awesome. (thx static)

</comment><comment><USER9> I dont buy that "less context switching using the same language client and server-side" nonsense. Are you storing data in a database? Context switch. Are you outputting HTML? Context switch.

I also dont buy that it makes client-side Javascript better because you are using it on the server as well. The client-side Javascript is probably going to send and receive JSON. When it gets that JSON, it has no clue (and doesnt care) what language or framework generated it.

On a side note - I have been lurking on the node.js mailing list for a while now. Why do people think writing a MVC framework is apropriate? Isn't there something more exciting you can do with node.js?

<comment> old-gregg Less context switching probably means two things:

* Mental context switch between server/client languages.

* Better code reuse, i.e. the same model class can be used on the server and client side.

Those things you're talking about are just protocols: storage protocol, transfer protocol, etc.

<comment><USER9> > * Mental context switch between server/client languages.

Not sure I follow. The client-side Javascript you write will probably interact with the DOM API. The server-side Javascript will probably interact with the filesystem of the server, it is BYOD (Bring Your Own DOM). Plus, no matter what, you will always have that switch between client/server because that _switch_ is what defines client/server.

> * Better code reuse, i.e. the same model class can be used on the server and > client side.

Does anyone actually do this? True, it is the same language, but it is not the same environment.

<comment><USER10> > ...it is the same language, but it is not the same environment.

It is for me. I'm building a framework and enterprise app that just targets V8 (Node server, Chrome client). It's very liberating, to say the least. I still use Firefox (Firebug) for experimental stuff though, as Chrome's dev tools aren't up to par yet.

<comment><USER11> I'm surprised to hear WebKit's DOM Inspector being compared unfavorably to Firebug. What's missing?

<comment><USER10> At least when I last used it, the error reporting was lacking. Errors'd hang the page and wouldn't give accurate messages/line numbers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reconstruction and Simulation of Neocortical Microcircuitry - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(15)01191-5# <comment><AUTHOR> Highlights

•The Blue Brain Project digitally reconstructs and simulates a part of neocortex

•Interdependencies allow dense in silico reconstruction from sparse experimental data

•Simulations reproduce in vitro and in vivo experiments without parameter tuning

•The neocortex reconfigures to support diverse information processing strategies</comment>


Tesla Self-Driving Demo - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware-neighborhood-long?redirect=no <comment><USER2> This video was seriously impressive even while knowing that self driving cars exist. It answers a lot of the questions that pertain to driverless cars.

It had pedestrians, stop signs, cyclists, somewhat hazy conditions (hazier fog conditions are certainly possible), and parallel parking. It's truly amazing how capable this auto pilot is and I am certain this is a glimpse into the future of how automated cars will operate.

Can't wait for the day when my commute doesn't involve my obedience of mindless traffic laws and I can be productive while sitting and being transported to my destination.</comment>


In Month After '13 Reasons Why' Debut on Netflix, Study Finds Teen Suicide Grew - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/health/13-reasons-why-teen-suicide.html <comment><USER2> There's lots of existing studies demonstrating how suicide coverage in the media is contagious to suicide rates in the population [https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/4/238](https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/4/238).

It makes you think putting out a show like this and plopping it to the top of Netflix was irresponsible and actually pretty messed up.</comment>


Ask HN: Macbook Air vs Mac Book Pro vs Ultrabook, help me choose. - <AUTHOR>

I'm planing to buy a new portable computer and can afford to buy a really good one. I'm considering buying a mac book Air, mainly because of the portability and mobility. I however need a very robust computer with some a giod battery and a descent screen size, the macbook Air screen however seems to be too small for that. What would you recommend me to do? the only reason why I'm considering an Ultrabook is, I've been working with PC's all my life and have never used any Apple products. At the other hand, the Macbook pro looks very robust. Can you please advise?
computer used for: coding, ftp'ing,  office tasks (emails, word processing...etc).
I'd like to write some iphone apps at some point, so a Mac mini + Ultrabook is also an option.
p.s. french native speaker, sorry for any "funny sentence" there.
Thanks <comment><USER2> I'd go for the Ultrabook + Mac Mini. This comes from an anti-Apple person. But I owned a Mac Mini to make iPhone apps. Then it came the wonderful Apple's programmed obsolescence and I got cut out. Apple's products are way to expensive for what they offer. Not that they are not good, but not amazing as some people would say. I now stand against Apple because of they restrictive policy. Every single things they do makes me feel like they only want your money and that they want to rule the world. Every single thing.

Also, there are some very good Ultrabooks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that sounds good. Well, I don't like Apple politics as well, but it looks like their products are very stable. I may try the 13" macbook air

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a fulltime developer, and a macbook air 13" is my main machine. I love it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. The battery life is better than I've ever had before (4-5 hours in real world scenarios), and the portability can't be beat. At the same time, it's not too small to do real work on. That being said, I do hook it up to a 30" dell monitor & mouse and keyboard when I'm not out and about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks scotty, it looks like macbook Air is the way to go, nobody seems to suggest the macbook pro option. This leaves me with the macbook Air 13" or Ultrabook+macmini option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For portability, the Air can't be beat.

I use a MacBook Pro because I don't really have a use for portability but I have worked with an Air and it is more than enough for what you need.

The battery life is slightly lower than the Pros but, at least for me, 5 hours is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a new 11" Macbook Air, and I use it on a daily basis for coding. Portability was my primary concern (I wanted something I could carry with me whenever I leave the house), and I've been really impressed by the speed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will give it a try, 13" macbook Air

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Get an Asus Zenbook UX32VD (the one with the dedicated card and 1080p screen), update the HDD for an SSD of your choice and up the RAM.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why isn't a Thinkpad on that list? Most would agree that they're on the same "level" as Macbooks. Just with different pros and cons.

<comment><AUTHOR> when I think or portability, Thinkpad isn't really the first option I'll take, too heavy, too big...and I don't like the design. Samsung Ultrabooks are slim and just fine, but it looks like the macbook air is the way to go.

<comment><USER8> Agreed with comment above. I recently bought ThinkPad x230 with ivy bridge processor, 128GB SSD and 8 GB RAM. The weight would be around 3 pounds. I doubt if any other machine (ultra book/air) would beat this in any performance benchmark.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just took a look and read some reviews, impressive specs. but still hate the design, this doesn't look like a slim computer. really love the specs, but unfortunately hate the design/look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For your purposes, a 13" Macbook Air would suffice.</comment>


From first timer to funded - valuing validation - <AUTHOR> http://localglobe.blogspot.com/2008/07/from-first-timer-to-funded-valuing.html

<comment><USER2> I commented on the blog, but really my comment probably belongs here.

This is a great advertisement for SeedCamp, but I find it strange that SeedCamp/Y-Combinator/TechStars focus on people with ideas, pre-launch.

Is there anything like this availble to first time bootstrappers who have just gone and gotten it done? Build/Launch/Revise - but it would be great to have access to these kinds of resources - lots of knowledge and a bit of money.

Seems to me that once you've got a product out there, it's difficult to get small amounts of money to keep things going, and the publicity that YC etc. provide is unbeatable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that looking to 'validation' from investors demonstrates some level of insecurity about your idea.

And it leaves power in the hands of investors.

Don't believe for a moment that all investments were good idea (obligatory pets.com reference here).

There's power in looking for validation elsewhere: users, competition, press. If you get it from there, the investment will follow.

</comment><comment><USER4> the whole article is just one very long advertising for seedcamp

<comment><USER5> Sure, it promotes Seedcamp, in the same way it promotes YC or TechStars. These programs are increasingly the smartest way for first-time founders to get off the ground with their ideas. Plus, at least here in Europe, there's still a huge group of talented hackers who don't know about them, so spreading the word is no less important today than a couple years ago.

Full disclosure: I work for Seedcamp.

<comment><USER4> It's cool, I wasn't jumping on you :-) I was just summarizing the content.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I won't mourn Mozilla - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6688 <comment><USER2> _It doesn't look good for the Mozilla Foundation – especially not with so much of their funding coming from Google which of course has its own browser to push._

I guess ESR did not get the memo that Mozilla decided to not extend the Google deal a few months ago. It shows how much ESR is out of touch with reality.

<comment><USER3> Google, Yahoo, the money spends the same. The error doesn't change the meaning one iota.

<comment><USER4> Does Yahoo make its own browser?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of the article doesn't seem to be judging Mozilla by the work they have done...

<comment><USER6> Also, Eich said he chose to resign because of the political pressure from the people, not pressure from Mozilla. You may believe this was a lie, but Mozilla never publicly did anything but support him as CEO.

Also, there was no large reaction against Eich's politics when he served a technical role, but when he moved into the political CEO role, people looked at his politics. You may disagree that they should be analyzed at all, but it's hard to argue that CEO of Mozilla is an apolitical position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet another fine example of why ESR seriously needs to stop pretending to be the arbiter of "hacker culture" as if he speaks for all of us.

</comment><comment><USER8> Closed the tab when I saw it was about Eich. Love him or hate him, if he's the main source of your opinion on Mozilla then you have nothing interesting to say on the subject.

Wait, this was ESR? He's quickly become the fedora to RMS' neckbeard.

</comment><comment><USER9> Eric Raymond has a vested interest in dudes not being held accountable for their vile opinions and / or actions.

(see things like [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001) )

<comment><USER10> I've always had my suspicions about ESR (to be clear I'm now only defending the "Preventing visceral racism" post you link), so I clicked through and... what's the problem? Sure this is a difficult subject, and therefore isn't discussed in "polite company", but that's his blog, so _caveat lector_. The only "vile" things described therein are ESR's semi-automatic gut reactions. Those might be valid targets for thought policing, but fortunately for society ESR went ahead and policed up himself. His "opinions and / or actions" are totally divorced from those gut reactions. If this topic may not be discussed in this fashion, then it may not be discussed, full stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a ridiculous article; such specious reasoning.

The meritocracy argument is such bullshit. White, straight, privileged males love to talk about this shit so much, but then they look the other way when people are kicking out any attempt to making the playing field level for others. There is no real meritocracy when the opportunities and treatment of individuals are so unbalanced. There's just privilege.

Beyond that, _he 's actively rooting against the only ever successful non- profit, open-source browser vendor_ because they didn't live up to some silly ideological expectations perfectly. Great, Mozilla is gone. Now, the only browsers that can run under the modern web are from corporations.

Even further, such hypocrisy. Check this logic out:

- _Mozilla didn 't judge Eich by the quality of his work alone, but threw him out because of how he treated gay people by donating to causes that would prevent equal treatment under the law._

- _I don 't like Mozilla because how they treated Eich._

What a petty individual.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mozilla's failure w.r.t. Brendan Eich started before they "failed to defend" Brendan Eich. So blaming them for such a failure is off-target.

Doing an under-resourced mobile OS that also appears to lack a workable ecosystem strategy is what could do a lot of harm to Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER13> I will, because I think the world needs Firefox.

But given their treatment of Eich and of user security, they deserve to end.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm still bitter that mozilla did not allow the mozilla suite to continue.

Instead we got the name seamonkey... which was named almost specifically to be "non politically correct", virtually guaranteeing no corporate use (you're welcome firefox team).

Mozilla with their ridiculous branding/artwork/trademark management turned me off pretty much from the beginning.

So, yeah, I use seamonkey personally, but it's practically non-existent in wider usage. If Mozilla fails, then I'm not sure with its future... which is something that I'd mourn.

</comment><comment><USER9> Please nobody read the comments, but also please somebody explain this one to me:

"Considering that you are throwing away probably the most efficient way to keep Islamists out of participating in the design of technological infrastructure, I really hope this is worth it."

</comment><comment><USER15> Also their constant push for JS is deplorable. I want to build stuff in languages I like, not transpile/script.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought Eich chosen to step down.</comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup: Thoughts about C++17 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://isocpp.org/files/papers/D4492.pdf

<comment><USER2> This seems like a more detailed version of the slides Bjarne released a week or so ago. Is anyone else noticing any differences?</comment>


Two Frenchmen Help You Quantify Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/cozy-cloud/

<comment><USER2> I like that cozycloud, as my personal cloud, can automatically collect informations about myself without using any third party. I can quantify myself without that feeling that someone is spying me.

It seems to me that it's the first free software helping you to quantify yourself. Do you guys know another one ?</comment>


Be one of the first to try out codable as soon as it goes online - <AUTHOR> http://codable.org/

<comment><USER2> I'll bite - email address submitted, but I still don't know exactly what it is I'm waiting for. ;)</comment>


Wearing masks is as much about protecting others as yourself - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52015486 <comment><USER2> Everyone should be wearing a mask, even if it's a DIY mask [1]. Perfection is the enemy of good. We don't all need medical grade masks!

If everyone wears masks, then transmissibility of any virus is dramatically reduced.

Don't fall for the myths that you don't need a mask, don't fall for the arguments against masks. Don't think you're so damn smart.

The key here is to create a culture of mask wearing. The advantages are worth it!

[1] [https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make- diy-...](https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-face- mask-virus/)

<comment><USER3> I have no idea if you're right, but I'd be happy if fashion changed that way before all the facial identification cameras take over every public space. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The information on the WHO website as of 2 days ago said that masks will only prevent spread from people who have symptoms, but not protect people who do not have symptoms, unless they are caring for someone who has Covid-19. This is, of course, logically inconsistent, and made me distrust the information from WHO.

That information is now gone from the website, and they no longer appear to be saying this. There is speculation that WHO was intentionally distorting facts in order to prevent hoarding.

I think it might have served them and us better to have been truthful and transparent: "There is a global shortage of masks, so please do not hoard masks. Priority should go to those who care for covid patients, and those who have symptoms."

</comment><comment><USER5> Man, any story about masks seems to rapidly get flagged off the home page today.

<comment><USER6> Not very odd given the shortages of masks.

Don't use medical grade masks. The rest might not help and cause a false sense of security. You also need to cover your eyes.

<comment><USER5> Ugh, see, that's all wrong.

A non-medical mask still catches droplets, both in and out, and eyes aren't the primary source of infection.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've heard several times from experts that I should only wear a mask when I show symptoms, to protect others. But what about the incubation period? Could I not spread the disease before I start showing symptoms?

<comment><USER8> You may never show symptoms and still spread it. Everyone should be wearing masks in public, if you must be out and near anyone else. The title of the post says it all.

<comment> da-x I think this should be taken with a grain of salt. You can't be physically shedding large quantities of virus if you are not coughing or sneezing, and being exposed to large quantities is essential for infection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the United States, where we seem to have a shortage of masks, all of this discussion goes out the window though. We need to ensure we have enough masks for health care workers and the sick, before we encourage the healthy to wear them.

(My understanding is that it's not just N95 masks that are lacking, but simple surgical masks too.)

<comment><USER5> Even a simple cloth mask - not N95, not surgical - has some benefit. The Czech Republic has made them mandatory.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone- weari...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-wearing-face- masks-help-us-slow-pandemic)

> But some health experts, including the director of the Chinese Center for > Disease Control and Prevention, think that's a mistake. Health authorities > in parts of Asia have encouraged all citizens to wear masks in public to > prevent the spread of the virus, regardless of whether they have symptoms. > And the Czech Republic took the uncommon step last week of making nose and > mouth coverings mandatory in public spaces, prompting a grassroots drive to > hand make masks.

The entire article is worth a read.</comment></comment>


GitHub Enterprise on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://enterprise.github.com/aws

<comment><USER2> I can't seem to find the pricing page for the enterprise offering.</comment>


Show HN: Where the Hell is FiOS? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BWStearns/WhereTheHellIsFios

<comment><USER2> You might want to run that json through a prettifier.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely on the todo list and will definitely be done when I sit down to work on the map (thanks NYC for the PLUTO data!). I just load it up through python and it prints prettily enough for me, sorry for being lazy. Also, if anyone has any insight into the completeness of the data, please let me know (i.e. if your address isn't in the data but you are a happy(?) customer of Verizon FiOS). It is a skimpy list, but I'm used to low expectations being surprisingly disappointed so I'm not writing it off yet that it isn't complete.</comment></comment>


A Look at the AMD Zen 2 Core - <AUTHOR> https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2458/a-look-at-the-amd-zen-2-core/ <comment><USER2> This isn't directly related to Zen 2 (sorry), but it's something I've been wondering about:

How do processors that split ops into uops implement precise interrupts? I sort of understand how the ROB is used to implement precise interrupts even with pipelining and OOO, but I don't quite see how processors map uops back to the original instruction sequence.

<comment><USER3> First, most uops can't throw exceptions, so fusing a shift and an add instruction together doesn't require any complex tracking here.

If a uop throws an exception (let's say a fused add+ld), each uop can have a tag that helps you backtrace to its PC (instruction address) of let's say the start of the sequence, so you know what to inform the Privileged Architecture as to what "instruction" excepted. For many reasons, you need to store a list of PCs of the inflight instructions somewhere (although it is heavily compressed), so having a small ID tag to help reconstruct a given uop's PC isn't too onerous.

Ideally, multiple instructions may map to a single uop, but either none (or up to one) can throw an exception. The hard one here is something like load-pair uops; since each load can throw an exception. Some machines, if a fault is encountered, will refetch the pair and re-execute as independent/unfused loads. Other designs will just pay the pain of tracking _which_ of the pair excepted and do some simple arithmetic off of that.

<comment><USER4> Instructions such as shift and add that have memory operands can throw exceptions on x86/amd64. (This was some of the motivations of RISC, separating loads/stores from ALU ops made exception handling cleaner).

Heh, random note, I just looked up shift instructions on x86, there are 6 different ones, not RISC. But today there's a lot over 1000 instructions so a few shift variants are peanuts.

<comment><USER4> Correcting myself, the issue was uops and not instructions. But this turns out to be still similar: at least intel nowadays keeps the memory addressing part in uops (most cases) and doesn't split instructions into load/store uops + alu ops.

<comment><USER5> I thought there was two different uop ISAs on big x86 cores with two different purposes these days. One is pretty close to the original instructions, just decoded and fixed width (on AMD at least, this is what's in the uCode ROM). Then those are cracked to another ISA that the ROB knows about because instructions will cross functional unit boundaries.

So in say 'rol mem_addr, shift', your inner ISA would be cracked to something like.

        ld  reg_temp0, mem_addr
        rol reg_temp0, shift
        st  reg_temp0, mem_addr

This is all hearsay though; I could have certainly misheard/misremembered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zen 2 is very good in number crunching and synthetics. But it has a problem - terrible memory latency. 70ns with 3600cl16. ([https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/18168279](https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/18168279)) It distills to a not-so-good gaming frame times. It's 64mb L3 cache ([https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_9/3900x](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_9/3900x)) helps only partially.

Few games will suffer greatly from it, but there are several titles with RAM bottlenecks, like PUBG and FarCry.

Anyway, AMD has a much better price/performance offer than Intel. For general puprose Intel is totaly anihilated, but for the games they are still more than competitive.

<comment><USER7> As far as I know, these processors are not yet released. What's the confidence level that this user benchmark will be indicative of real life expected performance?

It seems implausible that this user benchmark is a good indicator. The Zen 1 architecture exhibited nothing of the sort[0] -- it would be an order of magnitude performance regression.

I expect we'll start to see more accurate tests once the processors are actually released into the wild.

[0][https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-2700x-revie...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-2700x-review,5571-3.html)

<comment><USER8> Well, to be devil's advocate: just because AMD improved their memory latency does not mean it was state-of-the-art. Indeed, looking at some random user benchmarks of Zen 1, it looks like the memory latency is similar with Zen 1. (See my reply to parent for a couple links, but I think you could also just find random Ryzen 2700X benches and see the same.)

Of course, the effects of ~20ns more latency on system memory accesses may not be as easy to observe in practice, especially if throughput is excellent. But we'll see, I guess; 'gaming' benchmarks should be a good test. (Meanwhile, I'm just going to be happy with Zen 2 if it provides a large speedup in compile times.)

<comment><USER9> But Zen 2 has HUGE L3 cache. I think that this cache would compensate for that latency.

<comment><USER10> Actually, the L3 cache is also sharded across chiplets, so there's a small (~8MB) local portion of L3 that is fast, while remote slices will have to go over AMD's interdie connection fabric and incur a serious latency penalty. On first gen Epyc/Threadripper, nonlocal L3 hits were almost as slow as DRAM at ~100ns (!).

<comment><USER11> Does that local vs remote L3 show up in the NUMA information?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Zen employs a dynamic predictor known as a hashed perceptron." When will Hollywood tap into this wealth of cool vocabulary?

Is this a gimmicky marketing term, or is it logical\descriptive\rational?

<comment><USER13> Hashed probably means that some features are mapped to a desired perceptron weight via a hash function. This serves as an implicit regularization and can be much more efficient (no need for a predetermined feature vector, sparse representation etc.). It's called hash trick in ML. Perceptron is a single layer NN. Dynamic predictor, a branch predictor that adapts to program input, not just some predetermined state (like a formula that was shown to be good enough for a collection of programs).

<comment><USER14> In this case, I'm pretty sure it means that multiple instruction addreses are hashed to the same perceptron (or is what you said effectively the same thing in ML-speak).

Since you don't have branch predictors for each address, you share the same prediction data for multiple addresses (this is one often underlooked cost to heavily branchy code).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish AMD enabled Secure Encrypted Memory by default for all devices, and also bring Secure Encrypted Virtualization (or something similar) to consumer Ryzen chips, too.

Even Microsoft has made VM-sandboxing a consumer feature. It's time for AMD to join the bandwagon and help along the way, not keep the virtualization/other security features exclusive to server customers.

<comment><USER16> SEV is claimed to be present on Ryzen Embedded, [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1605b#Featu...](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1605b#Features)

Available on UDOO Bolt, [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-bolt- raising-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-bolt-raising-the- maker-world-to-the-next-leve)

At least AMD made DRTM (SKINIT) available on consumer CPUs, where Intel still keeps DRTM (TXT) limited to business vPro chipsets. ECC is available on some CPU/motherboard/bios combinations for Ryzen, although ECC and low-power for Ryzen APUs is segmented to "Pro" models only available to OEMs.

It's still near impossible to buy devices with Ryzen Embedded, despite several system announcements from ASRock, but SEV is available today on Supermicro Epyc 3000 mITX motherboards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a really good article. I am finally at the point in my college education where I can understand what they are talking about!

Are there any articles like this about Apple or Intel chips? I like hearing about actual implementations, not just educational processors. (I am looking through the other articles on this site.)

<comment><USER18> [https://www.anandtech.com](https://www.anandtech.com) (Ian Cutress et al.) has good regular "deep dive" pieces. David Kanter at [https://www.realworldtech.com](https://www.realworldtech.com) is worth a read, although his site is not as active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The post states:

>"Perceptrons are the simplest form of machine learning and lend themselves to somewhat easier hardware implementations compared to some of the other machine learning algorithms."

Can someone explain what is it about perceptrons that make them easier to implement in hardware?

<comment><USER20> Wait, how is K-NN harder to implement than a perception... Even in hardware? What about linear regression? What about decision trees? What about naive Bayes?

<comment><USER21> Performing nearest neighbors search is much more expensive than a simple multiply-add. I don't know about the other, my idea is that a perceptron is much easier to implement in hardware/low-level operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Man, just tell me how fast it runs on practical apps.

<comment><USER23> The verdict is in. Aside from games Ryzen 3000 is a big win; "practical" application run substantially faster on these CPUs. Intel still has a small absolute lead for a bunch of traditional gaming benchmarks, but work loads like compression, rendering, compiling, transcoding are nearly all faster than anything Intel offers.

Expect large price cuts from Intel soon.

<comment><USER24> And except games means if you are CPU limited at 1080p or lower with old game engines you are losing maybe 5% performance.</comment></comment></comment>


Gender Roles with Text Mining and N-grams - <AUTHOR> http://juliasilge.com/blog/Gender-Pronouns/ <comment><USER2> I kind of expected this to say something about "married" being flipped between Jane Austen and George Elliot rather than just glossing over it and saying the results for both authors are substantially similar.

Also I wonder about the approach here. Austen's protagonists are generally female, right? So of course we're privy to more of their internal thoughts than the men.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your comment about Austen's female protagonists. The article's author appears to have assumed that because Austen writes in the third person, equal weight can be given to she/he bi-grams. But, a writer can still internalize when using the third person and that could explain the differences much more than the gender of the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Always impressed with the expressiveness and flexibility of the tidytext framework for analysing text. Well done Julia!

Julia and David Robinson's book Tidy Text Mining with R[1] has plenty more great text mining examples like this one.

[1] [http://tidytextmining.com/](http://tidytextmining.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be fun to compare results with male writers, just to investigate the discrepancies in how genders may perceive the other.</comment>


Falsely implicated Boston bombing student found dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/world/body-identified-as-student-falsely-implicated-in-boston-bombing-20130426-2ii9k.html

<comment><USER2> See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5610833>

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of misleading headline since he was missing(and possibly dead) since before the bombings.</comment>