Magic Roundabout: Circumnavigating the World's Most Complex Intersection - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/magic-roundabout-circumnavigating-worlds-complex-intersection/ <comment><USER2> As a systems guy I love roundabouts. They make it so much easier to get across intersections and they completely eliminate the variable cost of left hand (right hand if you're British) turns. That is because traversing them and exiting simply a linear function of traffic and not based on whether or not there is a special light for cross traffic turns which may or may not be timed appropriately. Thus it is always the "fastest" way to get from point A to point B by travelling along the highest flow routes.

That differs in the US where travelling a slower, but less controlled side street can be faster than using boulevards with left turn lights.

<comment> david-given Roundabouts are awesome --- self-organising, self-managing, power-free traffic junctions! But they do have a failure mode, which is that they tend to starve low-traffic loads if the traffic is too asymmetric.

For example: consider a T-junction with a roundabout at the junction. (Very common in the UK.) Most of the traffic is travelling across the T in a straight line. But I'm entering the junction via the cross road.

The rules are that traffic from the driver side has priority over me, but that I have priority over traffic on the passenger side. So I stop at the line and wait for a gap.

With balanced traffic, I'll be guaranteed a gap because the oncoming traffic will have to stop to wait for someone else, which means I can move onto the roundabout ahead of the vehicle they're waiting for. But with unbalanced traffic, there won't be a gap, and I'll be stuck.

Typically what the traffic planners do at this point is add traffic lights, which is basically giving up, and defeats the whole point of having a roundabout in the first place.

...I used to live near this monstrosity, which had lights at every stop line. Blech. [https://email@example.com,-0.8971696,200m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.8971696,200m/data=!3m1!1e3)

<comment><USER3> West Palm beach, fl had large round abouts installed about 10y ago and I thought that was great, except with little traffic at the time it seemed wasteful in time navigating and more importantly in space. I think the idea is great though, it's safe and usually gives everyone a fair shot to get moving without much delay.. I'd be interested in knowing how the diameter of the round about is decided on, specifically is it some algorithm based on predicted traffic congestion numbers.

<comment><USER3> If you're curious: [https://goo.gl/maps/so6EDBad15K2](https://goo.gl/maps/so6EDBad15K2)

<comment><USER4> South Florida has quite a few round-a-abouts. There's a few in Hollywood and Lake Worth as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah yes, the Magic Roundabout... indelibly written in my memory, as my first encounter with it was on a freezing January morning in thick fog. I had no idea what on earth was going on.

The one at Hatton Cross is pretty good as well ([https://email@example.com,-0.4230654,172m/da...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.4230654,172m/data=!3m1!1e3)) especially since a traveller may come across it, jet-lagged, and having just picked up a hire car...

<comment><USER6> There's one close to me as well - not as complicated to drive on as you would think looking at it from the top - [https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hemel+Hempstead,+Hertfor...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hemel+Hempstead,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.473929,185m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x487640d05cd71ac1:0xf0e07f1fcfdff2b2!8m2!3d51.753241!4d-0.448632)

<comment><USER7> I've been on the one in Hemel on my bicycle. There's also one in Colchester: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_%28Colchester...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_%28Colchester%29)

In addition to magic roundabouts, Britain also has gyratory systems, which are like normal roundabouts, except much larger and possibly with buildings in the centre, reachable on foot via underpasses (which are called subways in England, just to confuse Glaswegians and New Yorkers). The most famous one is at Hanger Lane in London, which has a tube station in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an American, I honestly think I'd just put my car in park and sob uncontrollably if I came across this.

<comment><USER9> We are currently experimenting with other strange interchange designs in America. I present to you the diverging diamond:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange)

We have one near where I live that opened a few months ago. There appears to be an adjustment period for our drivers. I have spoken to people who drive the diverging diamond near us on a daily basis and they say at least once a week a motorist who is not used to switching from the right to the left hand side of the road goes the wrong way, risking a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm from Australia, and have been living in Canada/USA for 10 years.

Yesterday I flew to the UK, and drove around with a friend today. Immediately one of the first things I noticed and commented on was how much better traffic flows. We hardly stopped, and just kept moving through roundabouts.

Is there any world where four way stops make sense?

</comment><comment><USER11> My manager insisted we should rent a car and just drive everywhere on our work trip to the UK. As the cab entered one of these monstrosities, he turned to me and said "you know, maybe you were right and it's best we didn't try this ourselves".

Still, it seems very efficient...

</comment><comment><USER12> Huh, I didn't know these were a) a 'thing' (as in, more than one across the UK, and b) officially called 'magic roundabouts'.

I've encountered one in Hemel Hempstead; it was a little scary (istr you can see traffic coming 'towards' you), but the article makes me want to go back and try it out again.

Edited to add: Between this and the horrific Welwyn Garden City one-way system, I guess Hertforshire must have (or have had) some of the maddest traffic planners in the UK...

<comment><USER13> I think Birmingham may have Hertfordshire beat, particularly with the infamous spaghetti junction...

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6662562/Birminghams...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6662562/Birminghams- Spaghetti-Junction-Britains-most-intimidating-road.html)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelly_Hill_Interchange](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelly_Hill_Interchange)

<comment><USER14> From your second link: >>>The junction provides access to and from the A38 (Tyburn Road), A38(M) (Aston Expressway), the A5127 (Lichfield Road/Gravelly Hill), and several unclassified local roads. It covers 30 acres (12 ha), serves 18 routes and includes 4 km (2.5 mi) of slip roads, but only 1 km (0.6 mi) of the M6 itself. Across 5 different levels, it has 559 concrete columns, reaching up to 24.4 m (80 ft). The engineers had to elevate 21.7 km (13.5 mi) of motorway to accommodate two railway lines, three canals, and two rivers.

Truly an inspiration to those of us who grew up with Erector Sets and Tinker Toys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FTA:

> and has been adapted to create other ring junctions around Britain:

That's a GIF recording of Cities: Skylines, not a roundabout in Britain. Purple pollution in the upper-right gives it away.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've traversed it and it's not that bad. Google Maps on an iPhone is horribly useless in roundabouts (I've mentioned it on HN a few times). Apple Maps is a little better. I found our 6 year old TomTom to be the best at giving directions. Having a bit of spacial awareness helps a great deal.

<comment><USER9> It would make sense that the Apple version would be at least fairly reasonable with roundabouts then; as they currently get at least a portion of their data from TomTom.

<comment><USER16> Apple seems to rely on a mixed bag of suppliers that are not Google for their map data. I'm not surprised it's TomTom and that may be why it's gotten so much better after release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the US, Carmel, Indiana has the most roundabouts. They just installed over 100 with many more on the way.

Ironic as the first automated traffic light was also installed in Carmel.

[http://www.carmel.in.gov/index.aspx?page=123](http://www.carmel.in.gov/index.aspx?page=123)

</comment><comment><USER18> Roundabouts are pretty bad for pedestrians. Imagine trying to cross the magic roundabout on feet from one block to the opposite one. And adding walkways might be expensive (especially if you want to accomodate wheelchair users).

<comment><USER19> You would just cross each street that feeds in/out, right? No cutting across the islands.

<comment><USER20> This is how it works. (British)

<comment><USER21> Yes they often have grass and plants/trees in the middle, which both discourages people from walking across and stops you seeing ahead when you are driving, which makes you drive at a more cautious speed.

Or they can be huge and have underpasses like the massive (now demolished) 'hole in the road' in Sheffield, or this beauty in East London (1m25s in) [https://youtu.be/Smbfm4unjh8](https://youtu.be/Smbfm4unjh8)

<comment><USER19> Bristol's bearpit is like that, there are underpasses that take you under the road and into the "pit" in the middle, so you can cut straight across- much more convenient and less confusing than attempting to cross the feeder roads.

Bit scary at night, mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My home town's claim to fame! Swindon used to be called roundabout city by some because we have so many.

</comment><comment><USER23> Roundabouts are good in an urban setting. they are a pain in the arse on a freeway/dual carriage ways.

however, fuck the magic roundabout. Its a hangover from the 60s/70s urban planning where people decided it'd be great to carve up large amounts of a town and shit out a huge road in its place. Surrounded by baron lifeless concrete.

</comment><comment><USER24> Frankly that seems more like a whirlpool.</comment>


Overqualified? Yes, but Happy to Have a Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/us/29overqualified.html

<comment><USER2> _They are the former chief financial officer working as comptroller, the onetime marketing director who is back to being an analyst, the former manager who is once again an "individual contributor."_

I am curious about how many of these people were "overemployed" during boom times?

I know this recession has made many competent people loose their job and become willing to accept less, but bubbles and boom times often see companies try to grow fast and become willing to accept less qualified people to fill some positions too...

<comment><USER3> The idea of people being "overemployed" is described in the Peter Principle which states that people rise to their level of incompetence. Maybe it is reversing itself a little. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _For his part, Mr. Carroll admitted that he had caught himself often trying to drop his credentials into conversations at his new workplace.

"Obviously that stems from maybe some embarrassment at the level that I'm at," he said. "I do want people to know that, to some extent, this isn't who I am."

It helps somewhat that most of his former business school classmates are hardly becoming masters of the universe.

"It's not like anyone else is tearing it up," he said.

While he is happy for now, Mr. Carroll worries about what will happen once he has finished the more interesting work of overhauling the department. He wonders how long simply having a job will be enough._

This does not sound like a person that is happy. This sounds like a person who feels embarassed, forced into a position he feels above, and typically jealous comparing himself to his friends' success. It's kind of pathetic seeing someone trying to fake taking the high road ending up with remarks like this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh please. How many MBAs do we need? Get a degree in something useful, then get an MBA.

<comment><USER6> I've seen several MBA beancounters drive software companies into the ground. A few of them, I was surprised to learn, had engineering degrees. I thought that, maybe, they just didn't cut it as engineers and went into "business/management" as an alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Employers are seizing the opportunity to stock up on discounted talent, despite the obvious risks that the new hires will become dissatisfied and leave."

The article provides examples of how growing businesses (e.g., start-ups founded by the hackers who post here) can get highly skilled employees at bargain salaries as they scale up, making their companies grow well and making the newly hired job-seekers happy.

<comment><USER7> When you hire someone at a bargain salary there is always a question of whether you are really "making the newly hired job-seekers happy" or just relieving them of their temporary desperation only to see their uncontentedness surface later.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. If you hire someone at bargain salary, they will probably work the minimum amount necessary while still looking for other jobs. When they get the next offer they will jump ship.

If you give less, you will get less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to know if they perform significantly better than previous employees...

</comment><comment><USER10> And those hired straight from college have untainted thinking and work habits.</comment>


Tech hiring is broken so how can I find a new job? - <AUTHOR> I'm a senior front-end developer at my current job. I'm tired of working here but having trouble finding a new job. I have 8 years of experience, which includes having done some fullstack stuff with PHP in the past. I'm obviously qualified to be a senior front-end dev because uh.. I AM one... Problem is I don't have a CS degree and the interviews that I go on ask me questions about algorithms and data structures that I have trouble with. It seems a bit silly to me since these questions usually don't have much to do with frontend development (do backend devs get asked about how they would implement a mobile-first responsive design using CSS3 and HTML5?) but whatevs... it is what it is.<p>I'm planning on hitting the books (and coursera ) to brush up on this stuff, but I'd love to know if anyone else out there running into this same issue? If so, how are you coping with it? <comment><USER2> Same here. 9yr of front-end dev/design experience and no luck. Applied for over 120 jobs (between 2015 & Today), and not 1 single interview. Nothing.

I have the education (Bachelors in Digital Design & Masters in HCI)...I have the experience & diversity of project work..... yet, I can't seem to land an interview out of 120 applications. What gives?

Perhaps it's my resume, perhaps it's my skill set, or the places I am applying, or maybe the market it flooded with dudes like you & me...I'm not sure.

It is very frustrating. I don't know what to do about it. Maybe get another degree....?

<comment><USER3> Seriously? I thought companies fight for people with good skill set and i see recruiters bothering me on Linkedin all the time. Did you try applying for start ups?

<comment><USER2> I have intentionally not applied to startups. I want to work for an organization with some staying power and not the 'flavor of the week'. With a wife & 2 kids, the risk of working somewhere that may go belly up in 3yrs becomes a huge factor when applying.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry you are having trouble finding work. I know what it is to have to support a family.

It can be demotivating, but don't give up, and take a look at some of your algorithm books. Or cut to the chase:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview- Programming-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming- Questions/dp/098478280X)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a problem in general. There were so many instances where the candidates were turned down because they couldn't write an algorithm from text book. The famous example being the guy who made Homebrew.

Reasons are below: 1) The existing assessment methods being used have been working for companies except in some cases. 2) There's no new way(yet) to assess candidates apart from the experience related questions. some companies use pair programming interviews which is by far the only different way which seems to be working. 3) Companies don't have time/resources to screen every candidate over phone, so they end up sending a link to hackerrank or some other programming questions site. And there are no custom assessments generated based on the candidate profile, rather these are very generic aptitude/algorithmic questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't look for a job, look instead for people you can help.

Get out of your bubble-- start attending meet-ups, conferences, industry trade events. Make new friends and contacts. Ask around who's doing interesting work? Who's struggling with technologies in your area of expertise? Who might need dev help?

That's the Old School informal search approach where you uncover those famous 'hidden jobs'. And it still works!

<comment><USER6> So really just "don't be introverted." I agree with you, and all that stuff is good, but sometimes it all can sound a bit much when you just want to do some programming for someone else. It's not that you shouldn't be doing these things, it just takes A LOT more energy for some people to add these tasks along with their normal schedule.

<comment><USER5> > it just takes A LOT more energy for some people to add these tasks along > with their normal schedule.

I'm not a social butterfly by nature, but I do enjoy conversations with intelligent people. If a new job truly is a priority, carving out the time (1 or 2 events a month) is an entirely workable stretch. And often you can use "professional development" as cover to get away from work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a hiring manager I see a lot of resumes and I am frequently shocked at how poorly many candidates come across on their resume. There may actually be nothing wrong with your skillset or experience, but many can't make it show on their resume.

If for every position you did:

1\. Feature enhancements in HTML, CSS and JS 2\. Bug fixes and debugging 3\. Wrote scripts, created new layouts etc etc

...then sorry, I am not even interviewing you because you don't seem to be thinking very critically about your job and what you are really here to do for the company.

Always express your resume in terms of accomplishments and what change you produced that affected the ultimate goal of the business.

So no, you didn't do "feature enhancements', you "Increased conversion rate by 5% after acting upon A/B test results. Streamlined the customer on-boarding experience by reducing clutter, pre filling forms, and cutting page latency."

After 8 yeas of experience and a brief listing of technologies you frequently work with somewhere on your resume, I don't really care what technology you used to accomplish the above. The fact that this is how you think about your role at the company is what matters to me. Any deficiencies or strengths will come out during the interview but I'll definitely invite you for a conversation.

And I agree, interviewing front end devs using algorithm puzzles are bullshit. A clear sign the company hiring doesn't know what it actually needs in a person but just do it because it's what Google does (or did).

</comment><comment><USER8> I've found that working with recruiters and going to conferences/meetups works much better than applying via a web form.

<comment><USER9> The best jobs I've ever gotten were through connections. I've had some good luck sending in applications through web forms blindly but the jobs weren't that enjoyable. I suppose at some level this was due to the opaqueness of the entire process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tech hiring is fucked.</comment>


Ask HN: Engineer working with rLoop needs place to crash in Bay area - <AUTHOR> Amir, a Mechanical Engineer from India has run out of the little money his parents could put up(dad has a truck he rents around), and hence accommodation in the bay area. He is working with the rLoop team competing for Musk's Hyperloop One Global challenge. They also won the Hyperloop pod competition in [January this year](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/meet-the-redditors-who-designed-a-hyperloop-pod).
He comes from a very average college as me from India, and is in the midst of launching his career as a worthy mechanical engineer. Opportunities like these are very rare in India. His coming back to India right now will put him back into a crappy job. Do you know folks who could relay-host him for a week or two?
Their garage is right next to Facebook HQ. He can't stay there because it is an incubated space. I've a friend who works in Sacramento but that's two hours, one way. Amir has excellent work ethics. Can also help the folks he lives with a little household things, but has 14 hour workdays without weekends.
His Facebook profile is here, in case you want to put a face to the name: https://www.facebook.com/whiplash.01
Know someone who can help? <comment><USER2> What about his circumstances would change that would cause this period of 1-2 weeks to come to an end? Is that when the Hyperloop challenge is over? Would he not need housing after that, or is he going back home aftewards?

<comment><AUTHOR> His circumstances would not change. We'd have to relay him for a couple of months in a week, two week cycles. Asking for a month of hosting is too much energy barrier. This is slightly working out. Got contacted by someone who's ready to host him till 15th of August.

It's like a startup. Can't see the end but you know you can't stop. =)

Would you be able to help here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should put your email on your profile so people can email you instead of randomly adding Amir on Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did that. Thanks!

Had added his profile so that people on the fence about hosting him would have a face to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does he not receive a salary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, no. The project had raised about $60K earlier via an Indiegogo campaign but they ran out of it covering core engineering and manufacturing expenses.

They would most probably be able to raise a round if they qualify the demo round ahead.

<comment><USER5> When is the demo round and what equity does he have in the project?

<comment><USER6> Hello everyone! The test weekend is in last week of October. Currently, I do not have any equity because my organization is a 501c3 in CA.

<comment><USER7> You should try [https://www.couchsurfing.com/](https://www.couchsurfing.com/) like Airbnb, but free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arthur C. Clarke has died at the age of 90 - <AUTHOR> http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ijDA5bgxiHlTvS_r-SSjskS1Tq1wD8VG3BKO4

<comment><USER2> This is a sad moment for me. ACC was the first science fiction author I ever read, and it wouldn't be an understatement to say that he changed my life.

His novels stimulated to think in a new way and to break free of the religious shackles I'd been brought up with.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't help but thing of this song:

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true; I'm half crazy over the love of you; It won't be a stylish marriage; I can't afford a carriage; But you look sweet, upon the seat; Of a bicycle built for two"

Trivia sidenote -- he called the supercomputer in 2001 HAL because he thought the company IBM would become increasingly dominant in a technical world. HAL's letters each are one below IBM's.

<comment><USER4> Though Clarke denied that, asserting it simply stood for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and was just a coincidence. Obviously, the odds are against him...

<comment><USER3> Another one of his mysteries I suppose... but I DID learn that while watching a TBS 2001/2010 marathon in like 1996. Ted Turner has never steered me wrong before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really tired of hearing this kind of news. People need to start signing up for cryonics.

The following is a public service announcement: PLEASE STOP DYING

</comment><comment><USER6> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Thanks for the magic in your writing that transported me as a teenager to worlds beyond imagination and high school...

</comment><comment><USER7> Bummer. I was expecting that he would indeed get to teenage centenarian.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.01/ffclark.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Clarke was one of the true masters. He not only wrote great books but brought attention and respect to the entire genre of sci-fi. Before Clarke a government space program wouldn't have been caught dead asking for a sci-fi author's opinion.

"Clarke's most important scientific contribution may be in propagating the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. He described this concept in a paper titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", published in Wireless World in October 1945. The geostationary orbit is now sometimes known as the Clarke Orbit or the Clarke Belt in his honour."

</comment><comment><USER9> Arthur C Clarke was one of my heroes. I started reading ACC when I was still at school, the impression he left on me has not only helped me cultivate a scientific temperament but also helped me see humanity as one people. The sheer excitement of reading a ACC story playing out on a global or bigger stage was more than enough to lift you up from whatever your current set of mundane problems are and make you feel part of something bigger. Thanks ACC for all the times you made me feel special.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a perfect time to celebrate his life, by reading (or re-reading) "Childhood's End", "2001", and "Rendezvous with Rama". All wonderful books that will enlighten and inspire.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me that Arthur C. Clarke was one very thought stimulating and unique author, in line with Isaac Asimov and the like.

Thank you, Arthur Clarke.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dammit :-( This guy was a real hero to me :-(

<comment><USER13> I am thankful that he was so prolific, because he doesn't really have to leave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sad, but 90 isn't bad.

</comment><comment><USER13> RIP Arthur. May you soon learn the nine billion names of God. <http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html></comment>


Ask HN: Do you participate in MOOCs? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone. Have you participated in a Massively Open Online Corse. If so, what was your experience? <comment><USER2> I have participated in 11 so far and have 4 just starting or soon to start. I can think of a good number I intend to take. I dropped out of 4 so far. And completed 7. 2 with distinction.

I have only used the coursera platform.

MOOC is definitely disruptive and new societal structures will develop in this space.</comment>


GNUkey: An open source hardware GnuPG and U2F token - <AUTHOR> https://kitspace.org/boards/gitlab.com/erigas/gnukey/ <comment><USER2> This seems pretty similar to the much smaller Tomu.im . It might even be running the same u2f code.</comment>


The Suck Less Philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://www.suckless.org/common/index.html <comment><USER2> _Most hackers actually don't care much about code quality._

Wtf is he going on about?

 _The bad news: quality rewrites rarely happen, because hackers are proud of large amounts of code._

Anyone else getting tired of strawman arguments?

 _Many (open source) hackers are proud if they achieve large amounts of code, because they believe the more lines of code they've written, the more progress they have made._

O RLY. Well, I know quite a few open source hackers, and you know what? They don't fit that crappy definition. Not one of them.

So, another article attacking some illusory definition of the word "hacker". I'm getting real tired of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Swap "hackers" for "programmers" (or self-described "hackers" who haven't developed good habits yet, or what-have-you) and the points are spot on. Who hasn't worked with code which is needlessly verbose, needlessly hard to maintain, and seems to have been organized by _pushing things in harder_?

See also: <http://www.laputan.org/mud/>

<comment><USER2> Needing to swap words around for a statement to make sense is not exactly a sign of a great statement.

For instance:

 _Lisp sucks_

...but that statement is true so long as you swap "PHP" for Lisp.

 _PHP sucks_

See what I mean?

There's a pretty wide chasm between saying that "many open-source hackers" suck and saying that "some self-described hackers who haven't developed good habits yet" suck. One is an extremely confrontational, unsubstantiated statement, whereas the other one is a platitude.

Turning platitude into controversial, confrontational statements is easy, but hardly remarkable.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know what? I changed my mind, I agree with you. It's pretty manifesto-ish, and it really appealed to my emotions.

I posted the link because I _really_ like several of their projects (dwm, dmenu, libixp) -- they seem to have the same aesthetic as the core Unix/Plan 9 people (e.g. K&R, Rob Pike) and djb. I'm also suffering through maintaining a rather large codebase right now. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a lot of courage, and a touch of genius, to move in the opposite direction."

\- Albert Einstein

</comment><comment><USER4> I see more blogging around ideas like this. Maybe it means we're winning? "We" being the small language/simple but powerful ideas camp.

Coders tend to be the kind who like complex mechanism. So we err on the side of too much of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the usual push and pull throughout history between the minimal and baroque, I think. Simplicity is often hard to get right.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Somehow my quest for simplicity has always been bewilderingly complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Simplicity requires wisdom about what to omit.

<comment><USER4> I'm actually talking about dealing with management. I'm thinking it's time to omit them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is similar to the philosophy maintained in the project I work in, x264: code duplication is the enemy and abstraction is your friend. Even in assembly coding, macros are used heavily to turn thousand-line functions into four lines of macro calls. The maintainability difference is unbelievable--the less code you have to write to do something, the easier it is to understand and the easier it is to change in the future. Furthermore, the shorter the code, the more you can fit on the screen at one time, and therefore the easier it is to get the whole picture.

The mark of an effective programmer is that he is able to do this abstraction no matter what the situation he is in--regardless of language or platform.</comment>


Los Angeles Just Proposed the Worst Use of License Plate Reader Data in History - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nselby/los-angeles-just-proposed-the-worst-use-of-license-plate-reader-data-in-history-702c35733b50#.72we8n4cf <comment><USER2> Also submitted at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640989)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is the slippery slope that started with publishing sex offenders' crimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> the worst use would probably be to just put a database up with all history open to everyone. searchable by owner name.

<comment><USER4> Chicago Tribune pretty much did this after a FOIA request for red light data was published. It's not searchable by owner name, but it's still pretty terrible.

[http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light- camera-t...](http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-camera- tickets/)

[http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light- camera-t...](http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/local/red-light-camera- tickets/data/chicago-rlc-data.zip)

The data's enough to get videos from: [http://www.chicagophotociteweb.com/](http://www.chicagophotociteweb.com/)</comment></comment>


DragonFly BSD swapcache: using SSD as filesystem cache - <AUTHOR> http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=swapcache&section=ANY

<comment><USER2> What goes around comes around. Many of the techniques being announced for today's SMP systems is the stuff that was being done on big MPP machines by NEC / Intel / Fujitsu / Cray / Thinking Machines in the 1990s.

see [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Advanced-Computer-Architecture- Proce...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Advanced-Computer-Architecture-Processing- McGraw-Hill/dp/0070316228/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270639888&sr=8-7)

It seems to me that the techniques that were in silicon then are being brought into kernels today. Crays ran a modified BSD4.3. All we need now is someone to say Hypercube.

Today's HPC is pretty messy. Driven by MPI and Fortran they have even pushed the Linux kernel out of contention by using OS-Bypass because the kernel is too slow getting bytes on the wire. In Plan9 we are experimenting with Syscall currying to reduce latency

<http://iwp9.quanstro.net/papers/usecsys.pdf>

I've drifted a bit because I wanted to use this quote :

"You want to make your way in the CS field? Simple. Calculate rough time of amnesia (hell, 10 years is plenty, probably 10 months is plenty), go to the dusty archives, dig out something fun, and go for it. It's worked for many people, and it can work for you." - Ron Minnich

oh if you liked that pdf here's another one about Plan9 on the Blue Gene

<http://www.iwp9.org/papers/bluegene-20.pdf></comment>


Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXK4e4uqXY <comment><USER2> I think Lego should use this video as their ad instead.</comment>


Battery-Electric Heavy-Duty Equipment: It's Sort of Like a Cybertruck - <AUTHOR> https://insideevs.com/news/384021/heavy-duty-equipment-meets-electrification/ <comment><USER2> > _They've created a single platform that can be easily modified to do any > number of jobs. For instance, their flagship product, the Dannar 4.00, can > accept over 250 attachments from CAT, John Deere, or Bobcat. […] Having > interoperability with so many different types of equipment, one platform can > easily perform many tasks over the course of a year. This is a huge win for > cash strapped municipalities. Why would a company or municipality opt to > have a backhoe parked all winter long when it could be doing another job?_

Does it have regenerative brakes?</comment>


Font Awesome 4 released - <AUTHOR> http://fontawesome.io/?4

<comment><USER2> Seems like a lot of people don't like the namespaces changes. I actually really like this! I suppose it's cumbersome even if you're building a project where you have full control. Then again - come on, we're talking about search&replace for 10 minutes here. And in more complex projects, you should have had a flexible function to handle icons anyways.

Why I really, really like it: If you're building something in a namespace polluted environment (say, a component for a popular CMS), this is a damn god- send.

I was on the fence before, from now on, it's fontawesome all the way for all my projects. They've done an amazing job so far and I'm looking forward to what they will do next.

<comment><USER3> It's also customizable in the LESS or SCSS as a variable. Want to go back to the icon-* prefix? No problem.

<comment><USER2> Well thanks for reminding me how profoundly lazy I am ;-)

And hey: Again, kudos!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I see on that page: one hell of a lot of unicode placeholders and not much else.

We don't all agree with a site's font choices.

And at least img made an attempt at semantic meaning and accessibility with alt= attributes. The failure modes for img are actually quite good. There's no such concern in the minds of those who gave birth to icon fonts.

<comment><USER5> Ligature symbols actually addresses this. there just aren't enough of them for my needs.

[http://kudakurage.com/ligature_symbols/](http://kudakurage.com/ligature_symbols/)

<comment><USER4> I must admit that's actually quite a cool solution.

I'm still not totally convinced by font abuse though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 370 icons is nice, but what i really want is a tool that lets me put together a smaller subset from multiple icon fonts that only has what my app needs. A global font-icon library from which to assemble this subset would be ideal.

These collections are trying to cater to everyone by growing in size when the better solution here is a modularizer.

<comment><USER7> [http://icomoon.io/app](http://icomoon.io/app)

<comment><USER8> Icomoon is great, I've been using it for a while now. I find it's pretty easy to create my own icons in inkscape and then upload them to icomoon and add them to my custom icon font.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They renamed the icons. They don't just break apps when they do that, they break users. At some point things like the names of icons should be frozen. I love Font Awesome of course. But please!

<comment><USER3> This is why it is a major release. It breaks compatibility for the sake of moving forward.

<comment><USER10> Could we not move forward without changing the namespace. Serious question.

<comment><USER11> No, they were changed for performance reasons which is a needed and important improvement:

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/568](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/568)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As much as I like having them for my projects (but I see no reason to get v4 instead of keeping v3), still no temperature (thermometer) nor sparklines (graph.)

<comment><USER13> I feel like this is outside of Font Awesome's remit.

<comment><USER12> I don't know why it is. A spark-like graph is useful for many use-cases (graph or bars? plot this, draw lines), and even more a thermometer-like icon (weather, medicine.) The thermometer has been hanging around the issues for a while also (or so I think from last time I checked.) I'd like to have all my icons in one basket, and I like the look of Font Awesome's. So missing these 2 is a little aesthetic pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh for heaven's sake, why is icon-* being deprecated? I stopped using Glyphicons _because_ they switched to glyphion-* .

<comment><USER3> It's customizable in the LESS or SCSS.

<comment><USER14> That's quite good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're looking for good looking icon fonts, don't forget to check out Entypo as well([http://entypo.com/](http://entypo.com/)). Not as many options as Font Awesome, but they do look really good/much better than other free alternatives or even paid ones.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this better than [http://icomoon.io/app](http://icomoon.io/app)?

I can create my own font file with icomoon so it only contains the icons that I needed for my site. Only issue I have is that there is no way to save the created font file so that I can modify later.

<comment><USER13> It's different. Icomoon is brilliant for creating a preset group of icons which will be used in a predictable way. But sometimes, especially during prototyping, you don't know which icons you'll want. Just being able to include a pretty thorough library which renders consistently and gives you a decent level of control is a nice weight off your mind. It would be nice to have a subsetting tool, but imo that's what Icomoon's for.

Btw, you can save fonts in Icomoon - just click on the save icon in the bottom right and it'll save a settings json file which can be reimported.

<comment><USER16> I can save my settings in JSON but that is not ideal as I have to keep track of that. It would be better if site saves that on the server.

<comment><USER17> Then pay the $9/month?

[http://icomoon.io/#premium](http://icomoon.io/#premium)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish they post a link to the previous version's icons page, most of my websites are using font awesome v3, and I dont see a way to quickly find an old icon classes right now, unless somebody can help me out with that?

<comment><USER19> You can find it at [http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

<comment><USER18> Great tip, is there a link on the current homepage? So that other people can also get a quick access to it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are ten new icons, but still no database icon :(

[http://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/139](http://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/139)

</comment><comment><USER21> I love Font Awesome though I do not understand why they have to claim "The iconic font designed for Bootstrap" \--- I have managed to use Font Aweome with Zurb Foundation and SASS and it works just fine.

<comment><USER22> Kind of brandjacking - but as it is free product I fail to see this as an ill behavior.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. Originally there was quite a bit of CSS to get it to play nice with Bootstrap. Now, it should have more compatibility across the board with all frameworks.

<comment><USER22> Clever move - every framework has or will have support for Bootstrap and Font Awesome respectively. BTW Good job, I appreciate your effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you're like me and need access to the previous version's documentation, I'm hosting it at [http://fontawesome.http410.com](http://fontawesome.http410.com).

<comment><USER24> Thx, but it is also available [http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

<comment><USER23> Awesome. Mind if I ask how you found that?

I couldn't find a link to this, so I just forked the gh-pages repo.

<comment><USER25> It's not called out directly, but it's linked to from here [1].

[1] [http://fontawesome.io/get-started/](http://fontawesome.io/get-started/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone else having trouble with using the new 4.0 fonts from the Bootstrap CDN?

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19549881/cdn-for-font- awe...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19549881/cdn-for-font- awesome-4-0-not-serving-font-files)

<comment><USER27> [https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/2193](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/2193)

Url should be /fonts, not /font.

In variables.less, change @fa-font-path to: "//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font- awesome/4.0.0/fonts"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> More speed? Looks to be from the following change:

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/568](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/568)

Any others?

</comment><comment><USER29> I whipped up a FontAwesome 4.0 library for iOS: [https://github.com/sweetmandm/FontAwesomeTools- iOS](https://github.com/sweetmandm/FontAwesomeTools-iOS)

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this the best font-icon set? Would anyone consider using more than one in a project? Do you subset them?

I'm about to decide on one to use.

<comment><USER31> We use Font Awesome and have been incredibly happy. We augment the set with our own SVGs and appropriately attributed ones from The Noun Project. There are a variety of scripts and web sites available for packaging SVGs up so that they can be used as a font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hoped for more than 10 icons :-( Any advice on how to "add" some other SVG icons to the mix and generate the whole font package?

<comment><USER3> This update is about getting the CSS right. Cleaning it up, speeding it up, making it leaner. More icons in future versions.

<comment><USER33> Looking forward to it. Love FA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Try adding the 'fa-spin' class to any element type; entire <div>'s and <section>'s start spinning.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good to see the Bitcoin icon making it in there.

</comment><comment><USER36> In the what's new it says everything has been rewritten. Does this mean the icon vector files themselves or just the CSS?

<comment><USER3> Just the CSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So FontAwesome 4 isn't backwards compatible, right?

I wonder how _much_ faster it is.

<comment><USER3> We've been seeing as high as 30% in webkit. Hoping to write the findings up. It's especially hard as pretty much every browser has killed off their CSS profiler.

<comment><USER37> 30% is great! Font Awesome is sooo sick.

Btw, is there a cheatsheet for those of us using FA3 still? Or are all the old icons interchangeable with "fa-" and "icon-"? Yes there is: [http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Since icon names have changed, how do I find the documentation for the 3.x version?

<comment><USER23> I need access to the old docs too, so I decided to host them here:

[http://fontawesome.http410.com/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.http410.com/3.2.1/)

<comment><USER19> You can also access it there: [http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> No more '[class^="icon-"], [class*=" icon-"]'! Yay!

</comment><comment><USER40> nice! to learn the new icon-names try our (font)awesome game [http://fontawesome.pro](http://fontawesome.pro)

</comment><comment><USER41> No IE7 support any more it seems.

</comment><comment><USER42> v4 And this still not really Open Source.

<comment><USER3> Uh, what are you talking about?

<comment><USER43> I think they're referring to an article that made the rounds a few days ago (can't remember which) that decried the requirement of Adobe Illustrator for participation (citing as evidence the ratio of icon requests vs pull requests).

<comment><USER3> I tried taking designs from other folks. The quality wasn't good enough, so I stopped.

<comment><USER2> Ah, so the old "you don't like my pull request, so I will tell people you're not Open Source". Classic.

<comment><USER44> Some people apparently think "open source" means "anyone can commit whatever they like to the main repository", which is odd.

<comment><USER42> \- Can't do pull requests on the graphics. \- Can't download the svgs.

The only thing that is open source is the implementation.

<comment><USER44> Can't do pull requests on the graphics?

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/pull/1823](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/pull/1823)

Can't download the SVGs?

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/blob/master/font...](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/blob/master/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> And history repeats itself.

A new generation of webdevelopers using Wingdings when designing pages in Microsoft Frontpage.... sigh.

<comment><USER46> Except it isn't required to have the font installed on _your_ system this time around.</comment></comment>


FCC has "serious doubts" that SpaceX can deliver latencies under 100ms - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/fcc-has-serious-doubts-that-spacex-can-deliver-latencies-under-100ms/ <comment><USER2> There are many of them already in orbit. The U.S. Army is the first customer and they will probably be happy with any satellite better than what exists today. Have SpaceX published any performance metrics? Jitter, Latency, Loss, Throughput per {n} users, etc... Do they use forward error correction? Do they observe QoS settings, 0x04, 0x08, 0x10 at least? I would love to be an early adopter if the transceivers are not too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think 100 Ms echo type of response is doable, but to do a search = no way. Takes more than that to get a DNS response from the ground, unless they had some smarts and memory in the satellites = a few TB of SSD memory would help a lot</comment>


Interactive Latency Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/interactive_latency.html <comment><USER2> This, overall, is questionable. Just what disk seeks in 2 milliseconds? SSDs are much faster than this; spinning disks still much slower.

Other quantities are unclear what they mean. "Send 2000 bytes over commodity network"\-- 44ns. but round trip in one data center is 500us. So is 44 ns just the wire time of 2000 bytes (363 gigabits/second is "commodity"??)-- but other operations count the actual _edge / completion_ of the operations?

<comment><USER3> This does seem to have parted ways with reality in several respects. Read a megabyte from main memory in three microseconds? That's much too fast, because they model memory getting faster. But they model CPU as stagnant, meaning the time to compress a 2kb block with zippy (snappy outside google) is much too slow. CPUs are not stagnant.

ETA: 20 GB/s SSD reads is a bit fanciful, as is > 1 GB/s sequential from a disk.

<comment><USER4> Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

HN is a community and we want it to remain one. For that, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity)

You needn't use your real name, of course.

<comment><USER3> The problem is your weird anti-abuse hacks automatically shadow-ban whatever account I have if I load HN from certain IPs. So I can't use any account that's been burned that way. Of course in the past you've denied that this happens, but I can demonstrate it easily.

<comment><USER4> Let's try a different way. I've marked your current account legit so as to exempt it from HN's anti-abuse software. As long as you keep following the site guidelines, it should be fine to stick with this one from now on. If you'd rather use a different account, let us know at email@example.com.

I'm not sure what past statement you're referring to, but HN's software doesn't shadowban anybody just for accessing the site from a specific IP, so whatever you're experiencing, that can't be it. Unless it's a bug we haven't seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As always, many of these quantities are gross approximations, modeled as continuous improvement instead of step functions, and often missing out on where performance has permanently plateaued. Looking at the numbers for any one year is a waste of time. Only the long-term trends are instructive, particularly where operations trade place in rankings (eg. due to bandwidth increases with constant latency).

There's also something fishy about the scrolling in the source code box.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even at the gross level, I'm pretty sure that RTT CA <-> Netherlands has improved in the last 30 years too. e.g. in the early 90's a lot of international data traffic went via satellite, and packet switching times have also improved since then.

<comment><USER2> Yup. In March 1990, the first T1 connection between the US and Europe internet went online. Not to mention the wire time of a datagram over such slow links is a long time, even ignoring the delays on individual devices.

Also--- 500us ping in the "same datacenter" for all time? I remember pings on the same segment being 2-3 milliseconds typical in 1995-- let alone crossing some routers with 68030's in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Probably of dubious use but perhaps to have a comparison also have the time of some assembler instructions like ADD, MUL and DIV. Just an idea. When I saw: branch mispredict 3ns, I thought first, okay and how many typical assembler instruction is this?</comment>


ACM considered harmful - <AUTHOR> http://se9book.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/acm-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER2> (disclosure, I'm an ACM member, and a IEEE/Usenix/SAGE/LOPSA member as well)

Professional organizations have trouble with their revenue models.

The journal publishing business that the ACM and IEEE are in isn't sustainable long term, and drives people away or causes perverse benefit schemes, similar to how newspaper's business models fell apart in the last 10 years.

A better method would be to focus on conferences and community, which is more of the way that Usenix and LOPSA work.

That said, there's some solid stuff in the ACM journals, and their membership fees aren't all that crazy.

I can't wait until the dead tree editions of their publications go away.

<comment><USER3> I'm going to disagree - I love having the dead tree edition. I'm also a member (granted, at a student rate), but love having a physical copy of something to read when I don't feel like pulling out my laptop just to read some articles. Plus typically, if I pull out my laptop, I have work that needs to be done.

Students are given the option of buying the print magazine though - I think they just need to extend this policy to everyone, rather than making it a print or nothing affair.

<comment><USER4> Print out the articles you want to read. I don't know anyone who reads ACM proceedings and journals cover to cover, and it wastes a lot of resources.

<comment><USER3> And now you know someone who does read his monthly copy of CACM from cover to cover. And I pay extra for it (again, student pricing doesn't include physical copies -- something I think they should extend to professional members).

So are you suggesting that I should have to print it out because people shouldn't be forced to pay for it? Or because I'm using some dead trees? Because if it's the second, there about a million more useful places you could recommend people cut down consumption, than on my monthly magazine with about 100 pages, that, again, I pay for.

<comment><USER5> I think you're talking about different things-- there's the monthly CACM magazine, and then there are the huge books of conference proceedings and journals.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps. I'll agree that the huge conference books are pretty useless (though I can see why university libraries want them), and not something I'd ever purchase. Those papers I _do_ print out. But I did specify monthly magazine in my original comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, some disclaimers: I sit on the ACM's Professions Board, and am a member of the CACM Editorial Board, where I sit on the board for the Practice section of CACM, also known as ACM Queue. That said, I speak only for myself here, not for ACM or the Professions Board or Queue Board.

Disclaimers dispensed with, let me say that I personally sympathize with the complaints, especially with respect to the practitioner. The Digital Library (DL) is, in a word, overpriced with respect to the practitioner, and I believe that the ACM can both increase its membership base and better (and more broadly) monetize the DL by using it as more of a loss-leader with the practitioner. The good news is that the ACM is quite receptive to this at its highest levels, and I believe that the chances for reform (at least with respect to the practitioner) are very good.

And indeed, this is the good news about ACM more broadly: the organization wants to change, especially with respect to the practitioner. One would be right to question this, but trust that I came to this conclusion only reluctantly and in the presence of overwhelming evidence -- a path that I outlined here:

[http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the- re...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-rebirth-of- the-acm/)

I would repeat here my plea from that blog entry: the ACM has given practitioners a new voice, but we must engage with the ACM to use it. We must move beyond merely "considering the ACM harmful" and point to new models that work for our profession and its society. In short, the ACM is willing to follow, but we practitioners must light the way!

<comment><USER7> Where "engaging with the ACM" means entering my credit card number into their website to access any content?

<comment><USER6> Were it only that simple! No, "engaging with the ACM" means becoming involved via either local chapters or with the national organization -- and it starts with becoming a member. If you're curious about other ways to get involved, I'm happy to offer ideas -- I can be reached at my HN user name at (naturally) acm.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh, the number of times I've bouced off ACM's paywall. It's maddening to see an article that you think will let you make progress in a problem you're working on, but unable to access it because of the $15 fee.

And paying the membership fees is not a solution, either — if you are an ACM member, you probably still need access to IEEE body of publications, and then there is Elsevier/Springer/others…

<comment><USER9> "It's maddening to see an article that you think will let you make progress in a problem you're working on, but unable to access it because of the $15 fee..."

Enough progress to justify spending $15 (less than the price of dinner downtown)? I agree, many find the revenue models / cost structures of professional organizations outmoded. However, I find this rather harsh aversion to paying a few bucks for peer-reviewed, scientific content curious.

If it's of any help to you, many public universities, schools, and local libraries provide full access to ACM content, often both on-site and off. The most common method of providing access to this is via EBSCO's "Business Source Premier" database. I frequently read ACM articles from my desk via the web; a quick title search in EBSCO will pull up the title in about 20 seconds, and I can download a PDF of about any article published since 1965 to send to coworkers.

That said, if price is an issue, please check with your local library. Odds are good that your tax dollars are already paying the cost for you to read these articles from the comfort of your home or office. This isn't just true for the ACM -- even in the age of paywalls, your library's probably been quietly working to provide digital access to all of this for the past decade.

<comment><USER8> You mean, check with my local library here in Poland, right?

Don't place me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box. I am OK with paying for content and I do pay for many things online. But there are two issues with ACM:

1\. The research has been paid for with taxpayers' dollars (I wasn't the taxpayer, but still).

2\. $15 is really expensive.

And of course, if it were just one article that would advance my work a lot, I'd gladly pay. But you don't know that ahead of time. And if you're building startups, you usually do a lot of wide-area research, so it isn't that one article, it's hundreds of articles that you need to skim through.

I also don't buy the argument that we need to pay so much just so that we get peer-reviewed content. JMLR (Journal of Machine-Learning Research) is a prime example that this need not be the case.

<comment><USER10> You can put me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box when it comes to science. Science, including computer science works best when new discoveries are spread far and wide free of charge. Journals make their money by securing publication rights in exchange for deciding that something is important enough. Once, it was difficult to publish information to a wide audience, but in the web age, journals seem like a bit of a scam to me.

<comment><USER11> The curation job still needs paying for, but I think it's pretty clear that the ACM and others have strayed from that to trying to squeeze the long tail for as much money as they can can get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ACM won't stop spamming me. "Your invitation to become a member", they say. Following the unsubscribe instructions doesn't work. Blocking the sending address doesn't work (they keep changing it). I've resorted to blacklisting *@acm.org.

I'm not the only one, either: <http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html> <http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php>

</rant>

<comment><USER13> I let my membership lapse a several years ago, and they're still sending me _snail mail spam_ to sign up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally, I'm bothered that the ACM is an organization for academic researchers and doesn't seem to give a damn about practitioners in the field.

I quit my ACM membership when I got sick of continuous hand-wringing editorials asking "Why don't women want to study CS?" and "Why don't undergraduates want to study CS?"

The ACM never seriously considers that undergrads who might study CS might know people who've chosen computing in a career and discovered that they hit a big glass ceiling in their 30's.

If the ACM started to ask the question of "What happens to CS graduates?" and thinking about career paths in the profession, they might find that the answers for the problems that keep them up at night might come naturally.

</comment><comment><USER15> Computing progresses _despite_ the ACM.

Kent Pitman has a similar stance:

<http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html>

<comment><USER16> Wow, the last one on that page is actually a recognized "Dark Pattern"¹:

        ACM used to routinely request certain kinds of "volunteered" contributions
        and/or subscriptions on my annual invoicing. They would do this by adding
        the things they wanted me to do (without my requesting it) and make me
        have to line out the items I didn't want.

This is known as "Sneak Into Basket": <http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket>

If anyone has a copy of such an invoice (I've always thought "societies" were silly, never joined ACM when I was in grad school, and refused to join NHS on principle) they should throw a copy up on the Dark Patterns wiki.

¹ _Racist nomenclature thumbs down_

<comment><USER17> Do you really think that the term "dark pattern" has anything at all to do with race? Protip: associating everything with races is how racism continues; stop thinking about things in terms of races in general, and the world will be a far better place.

<comment><USER16> Something to do with it, yes. Everything to do with it, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Grrrr... I can relate. Here's my ACM story:

I presented at CUFP '10 a while back, which is associated with the ACM. Even though I was a speaker, they charged me full ticket price to get _into_ the conference.

When I balked at paying to speak, the representative replied:

"Well, it's either buy a ticket or wait outside until right before your presentation, and then leave the room immediately after it."

To cap it all off, the video of my presentation is now behind the members-only paywall. (<http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ>)

<comment><USER19> At most CS conferences (save some of the biggies like SigGraph, SuperComputing), at least half of the attendees are the presenters or co- authors. Those ticket prices are intended for you. It's not an accidental oversight. Their funding for the conference takes into account the speakers paying.

<comment><USER18> Out of the 10 conferences I spoke at in 2010, they were the only conference who made speakers pay. Also, many of the conferences I attended covered the ticket price _and_ subsidized part of the lodging and transportation for speakers.

That said, all of the conferences I attended were very similar in size, sponsorship, subject matter, audience, and price, so this may just be a result of which conferences I attend. (In which case, I count myself as fortunate to find generous organizers.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author's problem is with the academic publishing industry (which all pretty much operates in the same manner), not the ACM.

Because academic publishing is deeply intertwined with the process whereby professors are awarded promotions and tenure, there is very little impetus for reform here. It will take a generation or more for this problem to go away.

<comment><USER21> Fortunately (at least for me), biomedical research these days is largely an exception to this. Thanks to a Bush-era appropriations bill, anyone who takes NIH funding must ensure that their articles are published open-access on PubMedCentral within 12 months of the initial publication. It's not perfect, but it does at least solve the problem with old publications getting locked behind paywalls unreasonable to the value. We also have the PLoS series of journals, which are completely open access and Creative Commons "attribution" licensed.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. This problem isn't ACM's fault. Professional societies are too dependent upon journal publishers to force significant change. It is Congress that needs to step in and demand that all journal articles produced as a result of any federally-funded research project (not just NIH-funded ones) be subject to the 1 year post-publication open access rule. If Congress does that, then the journals have no choice but to comply or else the authors who supply the content will publish elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From what I can say regarding CS conferences, ACM just rubberstamps and pockets the money. At one recent conference, the organizer addressed the concerns about high fees saying something like "well, most of it went to ACM, so we may hypothetically save on that, but we understand that the bulk of participants come from academia and they need the proceedings". Meanwhile, the "proceedings" are purely virtual, the same PDFs we submitted put online at ACM Digital Library. Bloodsuckers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Journals are priced for institutional libraries. They still don't know how to address the non-affiliated scholar market.

While the industry evolves its business model we need to get stuff done. Here's a workaround: use Google Scholar.

Look for the link that says "All X versions". Find the free pdf pre-print, usually from on the author's home page. Works at least 80% of the time for me. The OP is right though, this doesn't work so well for older pre-interwebs articles.

<comment><USER25> It also doesn't work well for articles outside CS.

Stab stab stab -- the journal model is hopelessly outdated in the digital age, and the sooner it disappears, the better.

<comment><USER24> I agree. I hope that more journals adopt the JMLR model. The university system is already paying for all the editors we need. No need to pay twice now that distribution costs are near zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For what it's worth, the executive director made 480k plus ~27k in benefits for FY ending 6/30/2009.

Revenue breakdown:

Conferences & Seminars: 23.25m

Publications: 14.8m

Membership Dues: 9.2m

Advertising: 1m

<comment><USER27> 480k? That seems a little excessive. Where are these numbers from?

<comment><USER26> Their 990, a form nonprofits have to file with the IRS. You can find them at guidestar.org. You can also walk into any nonprofit and request a copy of their most recent 990 no questions asked (well, no questions answered anyway).

<comment><USER27> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The most important reason why the ACM's publishing model (and academic publishing generally) doesn't just dry up and blow away is that people on academic career tracks are judged by their publication record --- meaning publication in prestigious journals; putting the same text on a web site someplace doesn't count. So, if an academic doesn't let the ACM (or Elsevier, or someone else equally grabby) take control of their writing about their work, they effectively sacrifice a valuable career chit.

Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. And if the idea is to do the same job while sucking less money out of people, that leaves very little cash for promotion, or to compensate "big names" that might lend credibility to the project...

<comment><USER29> _Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited._

Well, it depends. If (and I admit that this is a huge if) you can get a couple of really big names to start publishing stuff in your new journal, you can bootstrap a journal pretty quickly. However, for this to happen, the big names that you're dealing have to be really, really disgusted with their current journal.

<comment><USER28> Not just with their current journal (the big shots usually have a choice of venues), but with academic publishing in general. But of course, what makes someone a "big name" in academia is that they've succeeded well in the system as it is, and aren't likely to be deeply aggrieved with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _"The ACM, in common with other organizers, requires those who have papers published in its journals and conferences to sign over the copyright to them. This means that you can't republish a paper elsewhere and that the ACM can charge for your writing without paying you any fee."_

Really? So every CS researcher who posts their publications on their personal site is flagrantly violating ACM's copyright with no consequences? I don't see how this can be accurate.

<comment><USER31> There's an exception to that ( from [http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/RightsResponsibilit...](http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/RightsResponsibilities#dissemination) ):

      Publication is only a part of the broader goal of disseminating ideas and results. Authors can expect ACM to contribute to this wider goal, and in particular to encourage dissemination in multiple forums. ACM expects authors to acknowledge ACM's contribution and not to publish the same material in other venues, except as permitted by ACM copyright policy.
      Thus authors can expect ACM to:
      * Allow a submission to be posted on home pages and public repositories before and after review
      * Allow an authors' version of their own ACM-copyrighted work on their personal server or on servers belonging to their employers
      * Allow metadata information, e.g., bibliographic, abstract, and keywords, for their individual work to be openly available
      * Allow authors the right to reuse their figures in their own subsequent publications for which they have granted ACM copyright
      * Provide statistics for each journal, transaction, and newsletter on its average turn-around time and its current backlog of articles.

      And ACM expects authors to

      * Appropriately acknowledge the publisher's effort
      * Ensure that whenever the authors or their employers provide a link to a personal copy that there is a link to the ACM definitive version
      * Ensure that all versions copyrighted by ACM bear the ACM copyright.

<comment><USER32> This would qualify as "green" open access ("gold" open access being provided directly by the journal). So you can blame authors for not posting their papers online if you feel so inclined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Whenever I see the paywall come up when browsing the internet, I get the sick feeling I've been redirected to some Ponzi Scheme. Charging $15 for a 10 year old paper can be thought of nothing other than ridiculous.

<comment><USER34> It's the long tail of publishing. What is more interesting is what all the money they make like that ends up doing, where do the proceeds end up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The 15$ per paper is expensive but the membership gives you access to all papers and is relatively inexpensive. If you need to access research material frequently, you are probably better off having a membership and an ieee membership as well. You employer may pay it for you or you may get tax deductions for these fees as well.

<comment><USER36> Membership does _not_ give you access. You need to pay _another_ fee on top of membership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Particularly now that much innovation in computing is happening in the developing world, the ACM's toll booth on reading the literature is especially repugnant.

Digital distribution is not costly. The definitive online library for CS should be free to read. If wikipedia et all can support themselves then it would be trivial for the equivalent of the ACM library to do likewise.

I do think it's reasonable for the ACM to charge for their other activities.

</comment><comment><USER38> _But to access it, you need to login i.e. its not a resource for the profession but for members only._

Old-style professional societies aspire to be synonymous with the profession, and they work toward that by adding value that everyone in the profession will want.

Paying professional society dues is a normal thing in most professions. It isn't weird for the ACM to act this way; it's weird (or at least _new_ ) for people to want to work in a high-paying, technically specialized profession, not pay professional society dues, and still get all the benefits of a professional society. Hey, if you bring us that utopia, more power to you, but I don't see anything broken about the current model from an adult's point of view. Students and faculty get access through their university, and everyone else makes good enough money to pay ACM dues. The weak point is kids, who are excluded by the current system (which was never meant to work for kids) unless they live near a university.

<comment><USER39> It's also weird in most professions to work long and hard on something, only to give it away for free.

I find that open-source advocates tend to be open-information advocates as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Maybe missing it, but strictly speaking as someone interested in reading (not publishing), I don't really see what the fuzz is. Been an ACM member for almost 10 years (started as a student member) and every single year I've been more than happy to renew my membership.

Sure, would be nice if everything was free, but all the stuff ACM does cost money, and honestly, the fees aren't all that outrageous, and the digital library access itself is very much worth it.

Rather like receiving Communications of the ACM every month (or close to it, anyway); I enjoy reading it and would totally forget about looking the articles online every month otherwise, so it's actually fairly convenient for me. Would much prefer that Queue had been kept around as a printed mag, though.

</comment><comment><USER41> After being a member as a student, I signed-up for the regular account. Couple years of using it proved that it wasn't worth it.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently a student member, and the only reason I'm still subscribed is the print magazine copies. I could probably get them from the library, but having it show up on my doorstep every month is convenient.

Plus, I believe I need to be a member for the ACM ICPC anyways.

<comment><USER42> That wasn't true when I competed. I actually picked up a complimentary membership because I competed, if I remember correctly.

My institution was ACM-affiliated, but I'm not sure that matters either.

<comment><USER3> Then it was the IEEExtreme competition that required IEEE membership.

And my institution is ACM affiliated as well, and also paid for my entrance fee to the ACM. But now that I think about it, I believe you're right, I don't think the ICPC required it.

<comment><USER43> Actually, participants in a regional competition get a free ACM Student Lite membership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> IEEE is, unfortunately, the exact same way.

<comment><USER45> At least they have standards bodies

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I work at a company called DeepDyve; we work with publishers to provide alternative (cheaper) access models to their content. We have an online-only viewer and let you view articles for a limited amount of time (we call it a rental). If you are interested, please give it a shot and let me know how sufficient of an alternative it is. We currently allow 1 free rental (which will work for our ACM content), but we'll be adding free trials for our subscription plans instead very soon. <http://www.deepdyve.com> [http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for- co...](http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-computing- machinery)

</comment><comment><USER47> Unfortunately the situation is far worse in other fields of knowledge. _Nature_ magazine got in a big fight with the University of California last year when they tried to charge more than $1 million for the institution's subscription[1] (this for a journal written and refereed by volunteer labor), and the individual subscriptions are also outrageous.

It costs a lot of money to be able to stay on the forefront of human knowledge, even though the producers of that knowledge don't see a red cent.

[1][http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university- of-california-conside.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> FWIW this problem exists in many other branches of science too. I'm glad that APS now has an option that the author of a paper can pay a fee for the peer review, and in turn obtains the right to make a copy of the paper publicly available ("open access").

It sounds a bit backwards, but in practice it works out (at least if your employer pays the open access fees, as mine does).

There are also peer reviewed Open Access journals, but mostly they don't have the same reputation and impact factors as the established ACM/APS/IEEE/whatever journals. Still <http://www.doaj.org/> is quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER49> I had a similar thought this morning when I found out some academic journals charge their _authors_ to publish articles:

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236>

</comment><comment><USER50> You can now also rent ACM papers via DeepDyve. The first one is free, so if you want to stick it to the man, register email@example.com, email@example.com, email@example.com ...

</comment><comment><USER51> Not entirely sure if this also applies to the CS domain (been quite a few years since I published a CS paper) but in the medical domain researchers are also presented with the option of publishing in an open access journal. For example, PLoS <http://www.plos.org/>

</comment><comment><USER52> The article is not completely correct about the copyright thing. As an ACM author you at least retain the right to publish the paper on your web site. This is much better than say for instance IEEE paper copyright regulations.

</comment><comment><USER53> For those who want to know, ACM membership with access to all their journals (digital library) is $198/year. From developing countries, it is less. Choosing Poland as a random example, digital library access is $100/year.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow, this is a fairly condemning portrayal of the ACM. Thankfully, I've only once or twice bounced off of their paywall, and otherwise have been happily ignorant of their existence.

[EDIT] Removed reference to article being anecdotal.

</comment><comment><USER55> I love the link at the bottom to 'Goto Considered Harmful': <http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/>

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the author of this piece misses a point. Let me take the example of the American Physical Society (APS). They have membership fees (required to go to their conferences) and journals which charge money for access. As with all academic publishing, you sign a copyright waiver (but you are allowed to post your article on your own homepage--also, for many of us, we initially publish things on arxiv.org in preliminary form (before peer review). So, you have two sources--the author if they choose to distribute it, and the arxiv for many papers (excepting breaking high profile papers that might appear in Science or Nature). Overall, the APS is relatively good--they provide much cheaper access rates to poorer institutions domestically (USA) and internationally.

Now, you might wonder--what is the value added that publishers provide? Governments pay for the research, government sponsored researchers do most of the initial typesetting/editing, and government sponsored researchers do the peer review. The answer is that publishers: 1) Screen the papers to send out for peer review \--there is a lot of noise in submissions. Is this paper interesting or not? Does it pass the "sniff" test on technical correctness? To do this first pass requires editors with domain level knowledge of the field-- they can skim the article if they are not experts and guess about impact/sniff/etc. They are familiar with the reputations of researchers. Essentially these are people with at least a PhD in the field and this is not cheap. 2) Again, the editors are acquainted with potential reviewers in the field. They have amassed a database of people who are good reviewers. For example, referee A always critical? Is referee B always a softee? Does referee C respond in a timely fashion? Does referee D always have his reviews overturned on appeal to an additional referee? Etc.

So, essentially, what you are paying for is screening out signal to noise. The first thing you might think of is, well, let the government step in. I think this would be very bad. Why? Because it would then be easy for the government to determine what gets published and what doesn't. Think climate change....

Next, you might think--ok, well what about open access? Again, the problem is that many open access journals (where the authors pay and the public reads for free) is that the prices to authors steadily increases and unless it is mandated, authors may seek other journals. Especially if the most prestigious journals are not open access.... Finally, you might ask, well, what about a technical solution? Hacker News for academic publishing, complete with automated tracking of referees, calculations of reputations based on citations, commenting, etc. But, then you'll bump into problems of avoiding winner take all and that for academic publishing, you want the comments and referee process to be deliberate and considered.

What I would suggest is that for the computer science community to work harder on posting things to the arxiv before submitting to ACM journals and if that's not possible, then lobbying for journals to accept this. Then, for people who are ok with the rough version, they can access it and for people with need/resources, they can access the final, polished, piece.

In the meantime, try writing the author if you need a paper. In the physics community, many authors are happy to send you a pdf file. One time there was a paper from an expensive publication that we didn't have access to that I wrote the author to request a copy from. He actually sent a reprint--from Japan!

</comment><comment><USER57> annoying != harmful

pet peeve != constructive criticism

sensational title != worthy content

<comment><USER15> I accidentally upvoted this trite comment, but Ian Sommerville has earned the right to pen an "X Considered Harmful" article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic)>

Ok, sure, we have all avoided his works because they're a pain to read, but he is someone you would _expect_ to get along with the ACM as they needlessly peddled his and his peers' "methodologies".

[Edit: Seriously, in the last few days I had to step in an introduce no less than Matt Welsh and Rob Pike to HN, now Sommerville. HN's aversion to book- learnin' is surely paying off.]

<comment><USER58> HN's ^recent aversion to book-learnin'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I love ArXiV :D

</comment><comment><USER60> IEEE is much more expensive.</comment>


HAProxy 1.5 supports SSL offloading and downstream encryption - <AUTHOR> http://blog.exceliance.fr/2012/09/04/howto-ssl-native-in-haproxy/

<comment><USER2> I'm so glad to see that haproxy is finally adding native SSL support.

I have used stunnel (<http://www.stunnel.org/>) in front of HAProxy up to now. That setup works. But I'm happy that in the future I can remove one of the moving parts from my machine and just use haproxy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I would like to see is a way to change the HAProxy configuration on the fly, or something like a configuration backend. That would avoid reloading HAProxy after each config change, and allow a much more flexible configuration.

<comment><USER3> Why is haproxy reloading an issue ? It works pretty well in my experience (although I am not in the web business anymore, so things may have changed in the last two years).

<comment><AUTHOR> Reloading is no issue when you have few frontends or backends. But when you have a lot of front- or backends, the configuration file will be huge, and reloading will take some time. If you need to reload every few seconds, this might even cause downtime. But I guess our workload is not the usual implementation of HAProxy...

<comment><USER4> " _But when you have a lot of front- or backends, the configuration file will be huge, and reloading will take some time. If you need to reload every few seconds..._ "

Uh, yeah, I suspect your workload is unusual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can not build it in Fedora (both 12 and 16). Ubuntu is fine.

"include/proto/proto_http.h" defined "error_message", this is in conflict with the "error_message" already defined in "et/com_err.h", which is included by "krb5/krb5.h", which itself is included by "openssl/kssl.h", which included by "openssl/ssl.h"

Where do I submit a bug report? Couldn't find the link on haproxy site.

<comment><USER6> just use the software-engineering 2.0 way (vc but not github) and send a mail to their mailing list: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it supports SNI for virtual SSL hosts?

<comment><USER8> +1 If it did, that'd be really, really helpful.

The spec is pretty simple, I don't know why SSL implementations leave it off. :(

<comment><USER9> Because Windows XP doesn't support SNI, so not many people use it. That's my theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone tell me how HAProxy compares to Varnish? I've used the latter and swear by it, but I've never used HAProxy. Is it as amazingly fast at caching as Varnish is?

Right now I do nginx (for SSL) -> Varnish (caching) -> nginx (static media/proxying) -> gunicorn (Django). I'd love to remove many of those parts.

<comment><USER11> Last I heard, HAProxy does not perform any caching. I agree that fewer components in the stack would be an improvement, but we seem to be in the minority.

<comment><USER6> you are part of a vocal minority. there is a reason though for the unixy model of operation with more (well-defined as proxys usually are) smaller components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great, exactly when I need it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great to see another hole in secure connections being plugged.</comment>


HTTP Live Streaming in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://blog.peer5.com/http-live-streaming-in-javascript/ <comment><USER2> The problem with Apple HLS is that it uses MPEG TS container, which is not supported natively by the browsers (except Safari). So, any implementation of HLS in Chrome/Firefox should do the job of extracting video/audio from container using JavaScript (or Flash, like FlashHLS player does).

A more standard-friendly solution is MPEG DASH, which is similar to HLS, but can use MP4 container supported natively by the browsers (as a part of HTML5 video standard)

<comment><USER3> The MPEG-TS container (from 1995!) is also a lot less efficient than the more modern MP4 container. Overhead can range from 5% to 30% with bad muxing settings.

See: * [http://blog.zencoder.com/2011/12/08/announcing-the-clouds- mo...](http://blog.zencoder.com/2011/12/08/announcing-the-clouds-most- efficient-http-live-streaming/) * [http://features.encoding.com/blog/2014/02/24/simplify- http-l...](http://features.encoding.com/blog/2014/02/24/simplify-http-live- streaming-encoding-com-hls-segmenter/) * [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15661664/how-do-i- alter-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15661664/how-do-i-alter-my- ffmpeg-command-to-make-my-http-live-streams-more-efficient) * [https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2857](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2857)

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much of the transcoding of MPEG-TS to MP4 for MSE could be written in optimized asm.js code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article. I think we can actually talk about flash being replaced now that we have a real solution for HTML5 live streaming. Flash was never going to go away until there was something that could handle the DRM across all browsers.

I've worked a lot with Ooyala's live streams and was just looking at moving a client over to their HTML5 offering. They claim to offer it in all browsers but that is probably with a flash fallback, they haven't open sourced their JS (or at least I can't see it on their GitHub page).

We also use StreamUK on a lot of sites (but I've never used it directly) and from what I have heard they have great support for HLS. They have no GitHub presence so not quite sure if they're using the same libs the article mentioned or something proprietary.

Obviously DRM would still be an issue unless the browser natively supports EME.

<comment><USER6> >All tests were done on Intel Corei7-4810MQ machine.

I think we'd have to see 60fps on a Chromebook or similar low-cost machine before we declared the end of Flash streaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree we should do tests on low-cost machines as well. But at least on my machine the js libraries performed better than the Flash ones. So moving to flash-less should improve performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >but Chrome, Firefox, and IE still don't use this technology on their desktop versions

Actually, since version 11, IE supports HLS. [0]. When Apple streamed their last event, they mentioned on the video page that IE11 is supported. That's when I found out about it.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/01/29/simplified- ada...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/01/29/simplified-adaptive- video-streaming-announcing-support-for-hls-and-dash-in-windows-10.aspx)

<comment><USER8> IE11 running on Windows 10

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Dash basically takes all of the good stuff from HLS and gets rid of the bad > pieces.

Not sure I would use that sentence to describe a standard that replaces the extended M3U file format (it really whips the llama's ass) with yet another complex XML document.

MPEG-DASH is less of a video standard itself and more of a set of guidelines for new set of adaptive-bitrate streaming standards like DASH-AVC/264.

</comment><comment><USER10> As one of the inventors of HLS, I find this pretty damn impressive.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great to see progress, but 1668 dropped frames in the test is a bit underwhelming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, but it is HD, 60fps. The javascript libraries are dropping ~1 frame per second Flashls (which is better) dropped ~3 frames per second

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great article! Been thinking of writing one myself for a while now. I have a project ([https://github.com/johnBartos/RadioFreeTwitch](https://github.com/johnBartos/RadioFreeTwitch)) which siphons Twitch's HLS streams and extracts the audio-only portion from its manifest file. Up until recently, it's been near impossible to get a reliable, easy to use solution for non-flash HLS. So I shelved the project until the technology matured. Just last night I decided to take a crack at a flashless solution and was blown away by how easy it was - I use Flowplayer, and hlshjs ([https://github.com/flowplayer/flowplayer- hlsjs](https://github.com/flowplayer/flowplayer-hlsjs)) was just plug-and-play for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> A better solution would be to deploy a media server that can provide multiple stream formats. For example, Microsoft IIS Media Services [1] supports Microsoft's Smooth Streaming, HLS and MPEG-DASH without having to re-encode video for each format.

With such a solution, nearly every client out there can use a natively supported stream format without overhead. Also, Microsoft has a decent cloud offering with Windows Azure Media Services [2] that fixes all of this for you, including optional DRM.

[1] [http://www.iis.net/media](http://www.iis.net/media) [2] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media- services/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/)

<comment><USER13> I think at the end of the day the better solution for most people would be to use something like Brightcove, The Platform, Ooyala, Adobe, paid Vimeo, or even Youtube.

Unless you're Netflix, I wouldn't bother with this stuff yourself. Even then, a lot of (A)VOD sites 'outsource' this stuff to Brightcove or The Platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want white label solution, using Brightcove, Ooyala, etc' are too expensive for certain business models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This plus webrtc bittorrent = decentralized video broadcast?

<comment><USER15> I think BitTorrent was only using Flash because it offered portability across browsers and OSes. I wouldn't be too surprised to see them switch to using html5 instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article needs to get more up votes. Really imoportant stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article is incorrect on a couple points. Firefox for Android does not support HLS natively. And IE11 and Edge do support HLS natively on desktop.

Here is the Firefox bug (from 2010) tracking HLS support: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577084](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577084)

</comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone implemented HLS or DASH in an application that required low- latency? How low were you able to get it?

With DASH I have been able to achieve 5s by using small chunks and a short interval between iframes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've talked with a few guys from jw and videojs They've said to reach sub 2s using hls. They did that with <1s chunks and progressive streaming of a single chunk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could anyone please simplify this and explain how this is different from playing videos with HTML5 <video> tag?

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty interesting read. However this won't fully replace a flash implementation until we have AES-128 decryption support.</comment>


Swiss Startup creates investment portfolio based on your browser history - <AUTHOR> http://selma.io/true-you <comment><USER2> I am not a 100% sure it would be useful for someone like me. For example, if my history said I looked up HN and youtube a lot, would it recommend me investment in these or related to this?

Snowden randomly vouching for a product? That seemed out of place for me at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hurrying home to delete my browsing history before my wife starts investing in weird stuff with the family money :)</comment>


Invite HN: Schedule a demo of your startup/app - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN!
My name is Pranaya Ghimire. I am the founder of DemoSquared, the online platform for startups to demo their product or service.
What we are trying to do here is to build a platform that allows anyone who has worked hard to build a startup - who has worked hard to build a product, or a service, or an app, to come onboard and share with us - what they have built and the problem they are trying to solve.
I believe that this type of in-person demo is more impactful, more meaningful and more effective than a traditional marketing video because you can demonstrate how a product works in an unpolished, real-life scenario; building trust that what the audience sees is what they get. It helps you build that emotional connection and lets others see that there is an actual human being who stands behind the product; who has worked very hard to make that product a reality.
So if you have a product, or a service, or an app, that you would like to share with others, I would like to invite you to http://demosquared.com and schedule a demo (at no cost to you). Together we will create a short, impactful demo that really highlights your product, lets you share your story and lets you connect with the audience.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a direct submission url: [http://demosquared.com/submit-your- product.html](http://demosquared.com/submit-your-product.html)</comment>