Algorithms [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms/all.pdf <comment><USER2> I'd tried studying from both CLRS and this text (S. Dasgupta, C. H. Papadimitriou, and U. V. Vazirani) some years back.

I had a visceral reaction against CLRS when I saw the standard pseudo-code the book uses. But as I tried implementing some algorithms in C, I found that the algorithms were so precise and detailed that there was no better way to represent it (apart from giving the C code directly).

I've heard claims that CLRS' pseudo-code could be presented in a higher level manner - but it defeats the purpose of an Algorithms text. Algorithms should be correct, fast and consume the least memory possible - this requires you to think about low level memory management, cost of comparisons etc.

However, the density and detail of CLRS forced me to look for other books which presents the topic in a better manner. Vazirani is an excellent choice in this regard. The language is clear and easy to understand, and it gives a better high-level picture than CLRS. I remember reading Chain Matrix Multiplication (page 184, 6.5) in Vazirani and being overwhelmed by the simplicity of the presentation compared to the dry formalisms used in CLRS.

From my experience, I recommend using CLRS as an aid for rigorous study and Vazirani for less rigorous, but very effective learning. Also take a look at Sedgewick's Algorithms in Java series - <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/> (he has C and C++ series, but Java is what I've used). It is more detailed than Vazirani but at the same time more approachable than CLRS.

<comment><USER3> Another good algorithms text is Skiena's _Algorithm Design Manual_. It's not as rigorous as CLRS (it doesn't spend as much time on proving correctness mathematically), but as an implementer of algorithms, I find Skiena to be more useful on a day-to-day basis than CLRS. Skiena talks about caveats and pitfalls that come up when attempting to implement the algorithm on real hardware (e.g. cache-locality issues, high constant factors, etc.) that CLRS skims over.

<comment><USER4> Another vote for Skiena; CLRS for reference, Skiena for how to think about solving problems with algorithms.

<comment><USER5> For me, Skiena had the added bonus of being an enjoyable read which isn't always the case for algorithm books. I highly recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So... who's read it? sonabinu? Have you actually used this book enough to recommend it?

The fact that it's freely available online doesn't make it worth reading. If someone is actually recommending it, I'd like to know why they prefer this over, say "The Algorithm Design Manual". Just posting a link tells me nothing. I hope the people that say they're going to try reading this can give a detailed review in a few weeks' time - or even a few hours' - I'd be much more content diving into a chapter of this if I knew someone else thought it worthwhile.

Edit: I see jasim has read it :)

<comment><USER7> This book was used for my algorithms class last year. I never buy textbooks because I never really find them useful (especially CS books). This book, however, I thought did a great job of explaining how things work and was a pretty easy read. I even found myself reading ahead and reading content we didn't cover in class.

If algorithms are interesting to you, I certainly wouldn't turn you away from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am doing my MS in Software Engineering and currently reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had the pleasure of taking the class based around this book from Christos Papadimitriou while at UC Berkeley. It is indeed a concise and excellent book. If you see it in person you'll be surprised how short it is compared to most textbooks. I must confess, though, that some of the exercises can be absolutely maddening.

Dead tree link for those interested: [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/00735234...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/0073523402)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, this is one of the best algorithms textbooks due to a few reasons:

* It emphasizes rigor without much formalism.

* Rich number of non-trivial exercises.

* Conciseness of description of algorithms and strategies.

If you look for a textbook with algorithms translatable to C/C++/Java codes line by line, this is not one of them.

<comment><USER10> Any suggestion for the topic, more entry level for people that can't read math notation (ie newbies?), perhaps in python?

<comment><USER9> I don't have a good recommendation for your needs. However, there are a few books that might be close:

1\. Programming Pearls by Jon Benley. 2\. Programming Challenges by Steven Skiena. 3\. Algorithmic puzzles by Levitin.

The first two are mostly programming focus. I have not read the 3rd book, but I have a good idea what it is about (based on other books by Levitin); it should be good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since algorithms are always a hot topic here at HN, I'd like to point out to those interested two online courses that are going to start at Coursera soon, both are continuations to previous courses and both are starting in about two weeks (come December): 'Algorithms, Part II' - by Robert Sedgewick & Kevin Wayne of Princeton themselves [1], and 'Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2' - by Tim Roughgarden of Stanford [2]. Online courses tend to be by far not as rigorous as books are, but I took first part of Prof. Roughgarden's course and it was very enjoyable on all sides.

[1] <https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII> [2] <https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2>

</comment><comment><USER12> We also really like Steven Skiena's lecture vault.

<http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/video-lectures/>

<comment><USER13> He's also got a really great set of videos on Computational Finance. I haven't seen the Discrete Mathematics or Computational Biology videos, but I imagine he does a good job there as well.

I believe all of these videos are also available on his YouTube channel by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bit off topic, but can anyone recommend a Data Structures book (as a precursor to Algorithms?)

Or am I incorrect in thinking the two are discrete concepts unable to be separated?

<comment><USER2> A data structure deals with the way you store data. A singly linked list for example is a data structure. All you need to understand about it is that every node except the terminal ones points to one other node. The traversal of this structure can be called an algorithm, albeit a simple one.

Manipulation of the linked list often requires a traversal. Also, inserting data between nodes also require a little juggling of the node pointers. These are all what you can call 'algorithms'. Data structures can exist and be learnt somewhat independently of their underlying algorithms, but it is rarely useful like that.

There are however pure algorithms that do not care much about the underlying data structure - insertion sort is an example. Most data structures though aren't very much useful when separated from their fundamental algorithms.

Hope that answers your question.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. My confusion stemmed from not actually taking Data Structures yet, along with the fact that some colleges call their second course 'Algorithms', while including a junior-senior year 'Algorithms' course as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never noticed this until now: how does the scribd script work on HN? Does it automatically suck in the PDF after it's been posted? I didn't realize that clicking on [scribd] takes you to an actual scribd page (I just thought it was the convention that people used to indicate that the link goes to a PDF).

Also, why scribd? (API I'm guessing?)

<comment><USER16> I don't understand why you would ever want to ruin a perfectly good PDF by letting Scribd anywhere near it...

<comment><USER17> I used to like being able to read PDFs in the browser, which Scribd let you do, but now the browsers I use (Chrome and Safari) both have in-browser PDF reading that seems to work more smoothly than Scribd for me, so I've switched to the opposite preference. I do occasionally click on it for PDFs that I expect to be large (such as this one) where I just want to skim a few pages without downloading the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would also recommend Jeff Erickson's (UIUC) book on algorithms freely available here ( <http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/teaching/algorithms/> ). It is very well written challenging material.

</comment><comment><USER19> Web page with links to individual chapters:

<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems to cover less than CLRS. I find that most algorithm books cover the same general (beginner to intermediate) set of topics as CLRS does. I was hoping to find something that goes beyond the stuff covered in CLRS but not as far as the level of TAOCP. Any recommendations will be appreciated.

<comment><USER2> It'd depend on what you're looking for. Sedgewick covers some areas better than either CLRS or Vazirani. For example, I remember relying on Sedgewick for B-Tree since neither text covered them. Sedgewick also has an entire text for Graphs, so I presume he goes into lot more detail than others can.

If you are considering coding competitions like TopCoder, you should look at Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. It covers a lot of ground that is not covered by CLRS or the like.

But I think between Skiena, Sedgewick, CLRS, Vazirani and TAOCP, you have fundamental algorithms and data structures covered. If you are looking to go into detail on specialized topics like say AI, these texts wont help much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looked at the title and thought 'better than Vazirani!?'. Found it out to be Vazirani. It's an incredible book. I was (still am) looking for a print Indian Edition of the book. Is there anyone who can sell it off in India :), second- hand?

<comment><USER22> Available on flipkart for 356 INR

[http://www.flipkart.com/algorithms-0070636613/p/itmczynvb7p2...](http://www.flipkart.com/algorithms-0070636613/p/itmczynvb7p2zacz?pid=9780070636613)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks like it handles all important topics for sequential algorithms quite well. It even discusses quantum algorithms in the last chapter.

What I really could need though is a reference book for parallel algorithms. Especially shared memory PRAM algorithms for OpenCL, OpenMP & co. Most current books only assign a chapter at most to this. I guess the main problem here is that parallel algorithms are still very much in their infancy compared to their sequential counterparts.

<comment><USER24> The use cases are much different. Once you get outside of the standard parallel sort/scan/reduce/map functions you can find in Thrust[1], you get into algorithms that have an entire enormous book[2] explaining the idea behind them.

That gap is closing slowly as a lot of old algorithms are being remixed into highly parallel versions. This is noticeable in string pattern matching applications, driven by the need to analyze tons of DNA.

More people would benefit from knowing how exactly to code efficiently on the GPU before jumping right in to writing algorithms on it; it's easy to lose multiples of throughput if you don't know what you're doing. As always it's becoming easier for programmers though; if you're new to the idea of GPU programming I really recommend checking out Microsoft's C++ AMP[3], which shipped with VS 2012. Removes a lot of the headaches of programming with CUDA and OpenCL. I've had a chance to play around with it, and it's excellent.

[1] <http://thrust.github.com/>

[2] [http://books.google.ca/books/about/Computational_Electrodyna...](http://books.google.ca/books/about/Computational_Electrodynamics.html?id=n2ViQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y)

[3] <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh265137.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just bought this on Amazon, looks great but I still prefer dead trees for tech books. Awesome that they've released it for free online though, very cool!

Amazon Link (no affiliate): [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073523402/ref=mp_s_a_2?pi=SL7...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073523402/ref=mp_s_a_2?pi=SL75&qid=1352917070&sr=8-2)

<comment><USER25> Whoops, seems I posted the mobile link, here's the desktop site link: [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/00735234...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/0073523402/ref=sr_1_3)

And here's the uk one: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/007352...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Algorithms-Sanjoy- Dasgupta/dp/0073523402/ref=sr_1_3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm planning on starting this book any day now. I've already skimmed through the pages and have came to the conclusion that the lack of code(not pseudo code) will be a problem for me.

So the question to those who have already read this is: Is there a blog or a site or something of that sort that has covered this book and posted code samples or something like that.

<comment><USER2> I think that it pays to implement the code yourself. Even though you think you understand a concept, you haven't tested it till you write the code. IMO, there is no better way to learn algorithms than implementing, tweaking, profiling and trying to visualize them.

<comment><USER26> I need some basic examples smething in the order of "tips on implementing algorithms"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are the answers to the exercises available?

<comment><USER28> Exactly, without answers (or an instructor) exercises are pointless. It really makes me mad when I see a book that doesn't give also the answers, how should I know that I did the exercise correctly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From the table of contents, it just looks like the standard stuff you'd see in an undergraduate class (with an odd-ball bonus section on quantum computing). What makes this better than standard texts like CLRS that cover the same subject matter, and in more detail?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, a chapter on quantum algorithms. I've often wondered whether there might be room for novel research in this field if quantum computing became more practical.

I'll definitely give this chapter a read. Thanks for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER30> This was the book I used for my Algorithms class, along with CLRS. I much (much!) preferred this one for its brevity and clarity.

</comment><comment><USER31> I like the pseudocode, but it's a bit distracting that some of it is italicized, though.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks interesting. Is it possible to get a PDF without signing up to scribd? Thanks

<comment><USER33> Already done. The title has two links.

The first part goes here to the PDF directly: <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms/all.pdf>

The second part, "[scribd]", goes to scribd.

<comment><USER32> Oh, thanks for that. I didn't notice and obviously clicked the wrong link...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> TFS. I plan to read this cover-to-cover in the next 10 days

<comment><USER35> "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." - Francis Bacon.

This one should be chewed and digested. It's not a race - work slowly and diligently, and start exploring the boundaries of the topics covered, and you'll get much more out of it.

<comment><USER20> It's possible that he/she is already familiar with the material but is reading it as review, in which case 10 days sounds more than reasonable.

<comment><USER34> True. As tsahyt puts it,

> it's always good to review things one has already learned. For me this > usually leads to insights I haven't had before and a deeper understanding. > Learnings seems to be an iterative process.

This is my primary motivation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can you suggest me a free text on genetics algorithms?

<comment><USER37> You might want to check out <http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/>. There is a link to a free pdf version of the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> f(n) = O(g(n)) irritates me, but I know that people like to express Big-O that way for convenience.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the economic impact of missing string type in C? - awinter-py How would the course of history have changed if C had, from the beginning, a safe string type? <comment><AUTHOR> You'll likely be familiar with this article, but I'll leave it here for other readers and the off chance that you are not: [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365)

<comment><USER2> It doesn't really answer the question, though.

      Experience shows that such proposals go nowhere because
      backwards compatibility with the PDP/11 and the finite
      number of programs written are much more important than the
      ability to write the potentially infinite number of programs
      in the future in an efficient and secure way.

What does secure mean, here?

A length-prefixed string object wouldn't have solved lifetime bugs like use- after-free, which are far more common.

NUL-terminated strings are effectively an immutable type. The NUL byte tells you nothing about the size of the backing store, so nobody appends to a NUL- terminated string without being given ancillary size information. For the most part NUL-termination is irrelevant to the problem of buffer write overflows. Some kind of write overflow is usually a prerequisite for gaining control of execution remotely.

Because the beauty of C lies in the manner it exposes pointers, any such alternative solution would also have to tackle the problem of deriving slices/vectors that point into larger arrays. The length-prefixed string solution doesn't solve that directly, whereas NUL-terminated strings naturally offer an elegant (if simplistic) solution for character strings.

Pointers are useful in other situations. You usually don't need the power of pointers, but where they're most valuable is precisely where obvious, effective, and simple solutions are sparse. For example, pointers naturally length themselves to iteration. How many iterator interfaces has C++ gone through? Swift? Rust? Languages like C++ and Rust retain pointers because often times they're still the best model, especially in the most complex situations prone to mistakes.

It has yet to be shown that there are simple solutions that are "secure" while maintaining the simplicity, transparency, and efficiency of C. (Cue Rust fans!) I don't doubt that such solutions exist, I just doubt they're as easily discoverable as assumed. C is a great language because of the tremendous expressiveness it offers for it's minimal complexity. If better expressiveness, or better "security", comes at too high a cost in productivity, there's no reason to think such a language would have triumphed over C. After all, Pascal and many other languages predated C.

Regarding the PDP-11, C predates the PDP-11. The B language also used a terminator rather than a length prefix. See

      https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html

The whole PDP-11 angle is both dubious history and highly speculative. It's certainly a simple and convenient narrative, though. And those are always the most fun.

I'm not defending NUL-terminated strings. I agree length-prefixed strings would have been preferable. I just disagree that they would have magically resulted in substantially more "secure" code. The alternative universe where C had length-prefixed strings is certainly not one with $0 of unnecessary costs related to bugs and intrusions. Indeed, there's little reason to believe it would have alone resulted in anything more than a marginal reduction in costs.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Plato's Protagoras Highly Abridged - <AUTHOR> For no wise human...will allow that any human being errs voluntarily, or voluntarily does evil and dishonorable actions;...
And do you, Protagoras, like the rest of the world, call some pleasant things evil and some painful things good? - for I am rather disposed to say that things are good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no consequences of another sort, and in as far as they are painful they are bad.
But are you aware that the majority of the world are of another mind; and that humans are commonly supposed to know the things which are best, and not to do them when they might? And most persons whom I have asked the reason of this have said that when humans act contrary to knowledge they are overcome by pain,or pleasure...
Then you think that pain is an evil and pleasure is a good: and even pleasure you deem an evil, when it robs you of greater pleasures than it gives, or causes pains greater than the pleasure...You call pain a good when it takes away greater pains than those which it has,or gives pleasures greater than the pains...
...if you are unable to show any good or evil which does not end in pleasure and pain, hear the consequences:...the argument is absurd which affirms that a human often does evil knowingly... And that this is ridiculous will be evident if only we give up the use of various names, such as pleasant and painful, and good and evil. As there are two things, let us call them by two names - first, good and evil, and then pleasant and painful. Assuming this,... a human does evil knowing that they do evil...Because they are overcome...By the good... Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion to one another, either as greater and smaller,  or more and fewer?
Then, I said, no human voluntarily pursues evil... To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a human is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when they may have the less. <comment><USER2> " For no wise human...will allow that any human being errs voluntarily, or voluntarily does evil and dishonorable actions;..."

So sociopaths don't exist? Plato seems to be assuming that all humans are the same in what they find pleasurable or painful, which is obviously not at all the case. In particular, sociopaths don't feel painful guilt over things that normal people do.

I assume that Plato's reasoning on this issue is due to his dualistic, idealistic metaphysics.

I am wondering if the Straussians follow Plato on this matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the argument would be that psychopaths don't _really_ know they are doing evil, with their lack of shame being a direct consequence.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you could say that. But the idea behind what Protagoras is that if you could get people to reason well about what brings them pain and pleasure then they would always behave in a morally good manner, but for psychopaths that just wouldn't work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are wrong.

<comment><USER2> People who have tried have consistently failed. That includes Plato himself with Alcebiades.

I have the strong impression that you don't know any philosophy, and also don't know much psychology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nevertheless I apologize for the invective and appreciate you responding. As soon as I think of a suitable continuation of the argument I will respond (it may take awhile).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A favorable iPad review--by a woman who'd never used a computer until now. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2011/03/28/my-mom-reviews-the-ipad-her-first-computer/

<comment><USER2> The interview seemed a little leading to me. The interviewer wanted to talk about apps a lot more than the reviewer did; she basically just uses facebook and email.

The interview also comes to the conclusion that doesn't follow from the interview: that tablets (and the ipad in particular) are superior to computers for most mainstream use-cases. However the reviewer only uses facebook and email (and assuming a 3rd party facebook app) and had lots of trouble with the facebook app (with it having fewer features that the site and with crashes). She also said at the end that what she hears from others is that they like the computer better. And indeed her facebook experience would have been better on computer than the ipad.

<comment><USER3> I agree, and I was a bit surprised at how non-plussed she seemed at apps in general. Honestly, for just facebook and e-mail, a cheaper netbook might be a better solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More interesting to me than the article was a comment describing how iPads displaced PCs, one by one, in a law office:

[http://technologizer.com/2011/03/28/my-mom-reviews-the- ipad-...](http://technologizer.com/2011/03/28/my-mom-reviews-the-ipad-her- first-computer/#IDComment138188176)

Edit: the link often doesn't bring up the comment. Whether it's due to the ridiculously heavy page (at least 298 separate resources, 4 of which don't finish loading for me, plus an additional AJAX request to Twitter every few seconds) or the system for loading comments from Intense Debate, I don't know. To find it, search for "lawyer", and if that fails, search for "Friedmann" on the page, expand the replies, and read the third. I give you: hypertext.</comment>


Smallest gaming console ever. - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2010/10/27/smallest-gaming-console-ever-ever/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29 <comment><USER2> Very cool, but it seems to have a fairly slow Clocks rate.

<comment><USER3> That's so bad. So so bad :P

EDIT: "So bad" is a typical British response to someone who has told a joke that is somewhat tenuous yet amusing. As was maximilianburke's joke, IMO. I thought it was good to explain that since I got voted down for what's essentially a compliment where I come from! :D

<comment><USER4> Oddly enough I didn't (still don't) get the original joke but I did understand the 'so bad' reference implying I obviously missed something really funny.

<comment><USER5> The song being played in the video is Clocks, by Coldplay.

<comment><USER4> Ahhhhh... much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from the Last Time Civilization Collapsed - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/08/19/341573332/lessons-from-the-last-time-civilization-collapsed

<comment><USER2> I read that bug, highly recommend. It tells good story, while keeping with facts we found.</comment>


Trump's dangerous TikTok ban, abuse of power - <AUTHOR> https://searchcio.techtarget.com/opinion/Trumps-dangerous-US-TikTok-ban <comment><USER2> banning china is probably the only good thing hes done.

<comment><USER3> Lately I've noticed more people publicly saying negative things about China. It warms my heart and renews a little of my faith in humanity. China is so obviously a bad actor and has been for so long on so many fronts. Finally it seems people are waking up to this as a fact. I'm no Trumper but its seems all his predecessors were simply too cowardly to stand up to them.

Someone finally did stand up to them - and look - we're all still here and the world continues to turn. Who knew right?</comment></comment>


Pagers, faxes and cheques: Things that might seem obsolete, but aren't - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-49906336 <comment><USER2> Where I work we move a lot of money around via ACH (which might as well be via cheque). We treat the account number as a secret and encrypt it because here in the US the extent to which a bank needs to authenticate the source of an ACH transaction is largely left to the discretion of that bank.

We're integrating with a company in Germany that is confused by our request for their public key (so we can encrypt the account numbers on capture for their eyes only). As it turns out, in Germany it's common to share your account number on your web site so that your customers can more easily pay you. They have an authentication step that is separate from the account number.

This of course makes our system look pretty silly. We give account numbers to everybody we write a cheque to, but then treat them like private keys in other contexts.

Maybe this is to be expected, as ACH and SEPA (which is the equivalent-ish system in the EU) are separate systems after all, but further research shows that there are other regional differences within the SEPA network re: whether the account number is a secret.

If we had a competitor trying to do the same thing with a system where authentication and addressing were both separate and part of the protocol (e.g. any cryptocurrency), they'd be done by now and making money. We've been at this for more than a year and we're getting nowhere.

The moral of this story is that cheques may not be obsolete yet, but the protocol that backs them will probably soon be. It has fundamental flaws that open the door for fraud and incur other overhead costs as well. Once there is a viable competitor it doesn't stand a chance.

<comment><USER3> ACH will eventually be replaced by real time payments (RTP)[1]

[1] [https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment- systems/rtp](https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp)

<comment><USER4> In the finance world 'eventually' is a long time.

This is an industry that I am sure will 'eventually' eliminate mainframes from its tech stack.

My guess is that ACH systems will be maintained for a few decades as a legacy payment rail with countless promises of phasing it 'inn the next five years'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I've said before: pagers are great: batteries last months. Easy to pass around and know when you're the one on-call.

Limited teaching required to understand their use.

Can take a beating.

Work well in disaster scenarios because its network is far less fragile than the cellular network's.

They don't leak your location.

Their signal penetrates extremely well.

They make sure the person on-call doesn't go too far from where they're supposed to be on-call when they're required to be within x km of base.

<comment><USER6> But they have major drawbacks, too. Like: no encryption and authentication. And that means that e.g. critical medical data about a lot of people can be trivially snooped from the airwaves. This is not just hypothetical, it really works, and you can find multiple newspaper articles and reports online on this subject by googling a bit.

Worse, it is trivial to tamper with this and insert forged pager messages. A lot of harm could be done with this, possibly even leading to death of patients.

<comment><USER7> What medical data is sent via pages? All the times I've used them it is a simple code, and possibly a location.

<comment><USER8> A recent Canadian example:

> The data being broadcast includes the patients name, age, gender marker, > diagnosis, their attending doctor and room number. Other broadcasts > regarding medical tests such as x-rays are often associated with a patients > last name or medical number, exposing their progression through hospital > departments.

[https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2019/09/09/open-privacy- discover...](https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2019/09/09/open-privacy-discovers- vancouver-patient-medical-data-breach/)

<comment><USER5> So don't include information that isn't necessary. rm name/age/gender.

If it's the organization's in-house medical number, that should be okay. It's literally a random identifier number. Or better yet, use a visit number, test number or result number to avoid linking them together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Checks will be around for a while, especially for B2B transactions in the US. Checks are the easiest way to move a large amount of money with minimal fees. Accounts payable departments already have their workflows setup to use checks. Also, banks don't make it easy to do transfers. ACH and wire transfers can take as little as 24 hours, but some banks don't expose this functionality on the web to make the transfers easy to initiate.

The Federal Reserve conducts a triennial payments study to track the number and value of non-cash payments made by U.S. consumers and businesses. The 2017 annual supplement[0] reports that checks account for approximately 17.9 billion payments worth an estimated $29 trillion dollars, give or take a few million. Unsurprisingly, these numbers are trending down over time; however, according to a 2016 survey published by the Association for Financial Professionals [1], 51% of B2B payments are still made with checks.

[0] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/2017-December-...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/2017-December- The-Federal-Reserve-Payments- Study.htm#xtable1-growthratesbypaymenttype2015-30039a65) [1] (fee login required) [https://www.afponline.org/publications-data- tools/reports/gu...](https://www.afponline.org/publications-data- tools/reports/guides/afp-payments/Detail/not-going-anywhere-why-checks-still- matter/)

<comment><USER9> How can a paper check be the easiest and cheap option?

Doing the same transfer of money via electronic means should be significantly cheaper to execute. And it should be cheaper for all participants. No paper to print, transfer, read, process, send to the bank (physically!).

Honest question, why do Banks in the US do not replace this process with something cheaper?

<comment><USER10> Write a check, pop it in the mail. You're done.

Integrating with some ERP or payment system is a pain in the ass, especially for a one time or infrequent payment.

<comment><USER9> So in Germany you can, since the 80, probably also longer, fill out a small (standardized) form, bring it to your bank (possibly by mail) and they will transfer amount x from your account to the recipients.

Since the 90, this can be done electronically, so you don't need anything physical.

This is now further harmonized by SEPA all across Europe. Where apparently something similar existed in most countries.

I find it difficult to see the benefit of checks over the above process.

<comment><USER10> I totally agree, but we don't have such a system in the US, and the alternatives being proposed today are all inferior. Checks are still easier.

<comment><USER9> But why? What's the reason this has been solved differently in the US and in the EU, when pretty much everyone agrees that the EU solution a) works and b) is probably cheaper? Or asked differently, why does something like the EU system not work in the US?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 7.1 cheques per household? I understand a rent check, but what are those others? Or, since that's an average, is it that most households write just one, but then enough elderly people are writing checks at the store (that I invariably am stuck behind) that it inflates the average?

<comment><USER12> My gas bill. Paying them electronically involves a third-party, which charges a fee. It's easier for me to simply write a check. That's 12 checks a year.

The same goes for my real estate taxes, which have a 2.2% convenience fee, as well as a transaction fee. That's four checks a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sincere question about cheques: How do people in the UK (or other cheque-less places) deal with the transfer of large amounts of money between private or nearly private parties?

I own a small business and have worked for small businesses, and it's my experience that checks make the world go around in the woodworking field.

All of the shops I've worked for have paid me by check - nobody wants to screw around setting up direct deposit for one or two employees.

Several of them pay suppliers by check; suppliers don't want to take the hit on credit card fees.

And all of them take checks for payment from customers regularly (and I do to), for the same reason, among others.

The only downsides I see to cheques is that they're insecure and that there might be insufficient funds. If you're dealing with a trusted party (or at least somebody you reasonably believe to be acting in good faith), those are basically non-issues.

The upsides are pretty extensive:

1) They don't require carrying around large amounts of cash

2) They don't require third party cooperation (at least to write)

3) They don't require internet access

4) They don't require any sort of set-up, which reduces the friction for one- time or infrequent transfers.

5) There's basically no fee for the volume we use them in [0] except for buying the cheques.

6) If a payer does bounce a check (unintentionally) the payee can insist on a more guaranteed form of payment in the future. The friction is added to the party that screwed up in the first place.

Edited for formatting and to add:

All of this requires an informal web of trust. I've definitely used cash for one-time large transactions with people I don't have in my network. I've sold a car for cash to a random private person and bought a bicycle with cash from a different random private person, for instance.

[0] My business checking allows enough free transactions a month that I should be covered for a while; if I start exceeding that, I probably won't be super- worried about the cost of the fees)

[1] A buddy worked at a cabinet shop whose plywood supplier wouldn't take their checks. They switched to counter checks or money orders, or something else that guaranteed sufficient funds at the time of issuance. Hypothetically they could have gone to another supplier. In practice, finding a good supplier is a lot of effort, there aren't many in the first place, and word gets around fast if you make a habit of burning people without making it right.

<comment><USER14> > Sincere question about cheques: How do people in the UK (or other cheque- > less places) deal with the transfer of large amounts of money between > private or nearly private parties? > I own a small business [...] > woodworking field.

In Hungary it depends on whether the businesses are trying to evade taxes or not. If yes, cash is king. If no, then just transfer money to a bank account (I guess this is the same as "direct deposit"). All banks have online banking for this purpose.

> [...] setting up direct deposit [...]

There is nothing to set up for a one-off transaction. You log in to the online banking site or use the bank's app. Fill in the recipient's name, account number and amount, confirm with SMS code and it's done.

But it's equally easy to set up a recurring transaction online for every week/month/whatever.

<comment><USER15> Similar in Canada. Interac e-transfers cost a flat $1-2 (depending on your bank) and the funds are debited as soon as it's sent so when you accept one it's guaranteed available and deposited and available immediately.

Just send via SMS/email from your banking app. The other person gets a link that will open in their banking app and allow deposit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Faxes are better than email because you _know_ it didn't get filtered out from the inbox for some reason.

My employer reports that 99% of the emails it gets are blocked. And many employers are tightening up further to prevent malware attacks.

If I need to send a purchase order, it's nice to know it was received and have an automatic copy of it without having to think to print a confirmation.

<comment><USER16> Spam faxes are a huge problem in my experience. It was not worth keeping a fax machine around.

<comment><USER17> There's at least a federal law on the books that allows for a $200-500 claim against each unsolicited fax.

It was a good enough deterrent for decades, until the recent age of spoofed caller ID. Also, it would be more effective if the claim could be made against the benefactor, not just the sender.

<comment><USER18> If you give fines based on beneficiary without verifying that the beneficiary actually caused those faces to be sent, a bad actor could bankrupt their competitor by sending a bunch of spam faxes "benefiting" them and waiting for the claims to roll in.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, although that might be easier to prove/disprove.

Also to be clear, it's not a fine, but a type of civil claim made through the FTC instead of a court. With the main difference being: you receive the spam fax, then you get the $200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The nice thing about a check is that you can give it to anyone. You don't need to know where they have a bank account or even _if_ they have a bank account. (Check cashers may charge usurious fees but I'm glad they exist, as a backstop if nothing else.) On the other hand I can't send money via PayPal to someone who only has a Venmo account, or vice versa, and PayPal and Venmo are the same company!

The inter-bank services like Zelle and Popmoney might be a little better, though I've never used them and don't know if they're really catching on. Can you send money via Zelle to an account at a non-Zelle bank? I know it's all ACH under the hood (even most checks get turned into ACH these days) but I don't really know how the permissions around that work.

As for the unbanked, there's always cash.

<comment><USER20> > The nice thing about a check is that you can give it to anyone.

I live in Europe. I haven't seen a single place accept checks for at least 3 decades.

But hey, we have working banking systems. Maybe that helps explain it?

<comment><USER19> AIUI, the paper giro was a direct interbank transfer decades before ACH was even a thing. They were widely used in Europe but never introduced in America. That might be part of it.

Also, America has a lot more banks per capita than the rest of the world. Until the 1990s banks weren't allowed to operate in more than one state, and although there's been a big wave of consolidation since then there are still a bunch of tiny banks in out-of-the-way small towns that are very set in their ways and don't want to spend money on newfangled technology. In the rest of the world, you get the major commercial banks on board, and maybe the dominant network of savings funds/cooperative banks/credit unions, and that covers just about everybody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Checks are almost a specialty item now. I was shocked at how much they cost even from the discount mail order printers. If I keep the same bank, this order, the smallest they produce, likely will last the rest of my life. Guess they have to cover their costs on what is no longer a high volume business.

<comment><USER22> I'm reminded of their existence when visiting Canada / US. Their continued existence is baffling.

<comment><USER23> Housekeepers and babysitters like to be paid in cash. Sometimes it's more than we have on hand, so we write a check.

I've pleaded with my housekeeper to accept CashApp or Venmo, but he refuses. He wants a check. He's, perhaps rightfully, distrusting of new payment tech.

Babysitters are 50/50 on Venmo.

<comment><USER24> I was always under the impression that it was against the TOS to use Venmo for business transactions.

Looks like I was right unless there's some sort of separate business account

[https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/217532097-Can-I- use...](https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/217532097-Can-I-use-Venmo-to- buy-or-sell-merchandise-goods-or-services-)

>Venmo may NOT otherwise be used to receive business, commercial or merchant transactions, meaning you CANNOT use Venmo to accept payment from (or send payment to) another user for a good or service.

<comment><USER23> Then about 99% of the transactions on their platform are in violation of their own ToS. If someone pays for a joint meal, then you venmo your half, you're paying for a good or service.

I'm guessing they have that in there to try and get around some KYC or due diligence requirements? Or is this another Paypal-style tactic so they can shutdown people's accounts for ToS violations and confiscate their monies? Yes, that's probably it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The fact that pagers are still in use by hospitals is a bit scary. POCSAG isn't encrypted, and it's possible to intercept messages in the area. One of my former coworkers did that as an art project: [https://brannondorsey.com/project/holy- pager](https://brannondorsey.com/project/holy-pager)

<comment><USER26> Why is an unencrypted pager message any more scary than an announcement over the loudspeakers? Aren't pages generally just "go here" or "get to a phone"?

<comment><USER25> Mostly due to the range (well outside the hospital itself) and the content. Pages can be just "get to a phone" but that's evidently not universally true:

[https://brannondorsey.com/assets/holypager/holypager-03.jpg](https://brannondorsey.com/assets/holypager/holypager-03.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Right, but the point is that you can use them without revealing any personal health info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I worked at a large telco until 2015, and they had a written policy where it was their goal to get a fax line added to every home.

</comment><comment><USER28> The last time I saw Richard Stallman talk he had a pager.

I'm actually interested in getting one, it would be cool to get push notifications for things I normally get on my phone. I wish there was a watch that had pager service.

<comment><USER29> Remarkably, what you describe was the foundation of Research In Motion. They started out in pagers, advanced along with push email and then like most, feature bloated chasing a consumer market into the annals of history.

<comment><USER5> They should have stuck with consumer markets, but clinged to hardware when what they had was winning software.

If they stuck with messaging software (BBM), they could have been WhatsApp. Which was sold for 6x what they're worth now.

They only made it platform-independent way too late.

<comment><USER29> Their core business was Business customers, the company grew out of that. They then pivoted around the time of the pearl towards a consumer market, which was also a couple of years into launching a consumer service BIS, as opposed to BES which required you to have the backend BES software. That was when the focus shifted and at a time in which the Apple and Google offerings started to appear and the rest is all she wrote.

They did offer their messaging software for other phones for a while in the early days, Microsofts CE offering with blackberry connect (iirc the name). It worked, yet didn't traction that well as anybody who really needed it, would be better of buying an older RIM phone and using that and many did stick with the older phones come the rise of the colour screen and onwards.

What they did do well was effecient comms over 2G, once 3G became palatable for chipsets and more so, cost of use, that along with the rise in alternatives from the likes of Apple and Google, helped Blackberry push themselves into an also ran for trying to compete instead of focusing upon the real bread and butter - the Business customers.

But life is always full of what-if's. But all companies have their retrospective if we knew then what we know now moments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's the Tamagotchi to get nowadays (in Europe)? I would like to buy some as gifts. There's a whole bunch of different models and I'm a bit lost.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cheques and faxes died with the phone booth 20 years ago in Europe and the developed world outside the US, right?

<comment><USER5> It was a bit easier because I think prescriptions by fax never took off outside of N. America, but it was the better way.

<comment><USER32> Unless DEA hasn't bothered to update their website, they still require prescriptions for scheduled drugs to be on paper or via fax. If they actually cared about security (which they don't; nobody in the US government does with the possible exception of the NRC) they'd only allow electronic prescriptions signed by an accredited CA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Faxes have one crucial advantage over email. The police need a wiretap authorization to intercept them. Of course if your fax machine is connected to the internet (as most are today), they can get around that by hacking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even though the US has moved to e-prescribing, there have been some arbitrary limits imposed that didn't exist on paper. E.g. the instructions line was limited to 140 characters on one major hospital EHR.

<comment><USER34> Another limit is that it is harder to shop around with an e-prescription. I cannot find a way to get Kaiser's pharmacy to tell me what a given drug will cost out of pocket on my Kaiser plan unless I present them with an actual written prescription. Then they can tell me what it would cost to fill it right there.

So I have my Kaiser doctor, who can easily send e-prescriptions to any pharmacy I choose, instead write me paper prescriptions just so I can find out the Kaiser price, and then decide if I want to fill it there or take somewhere else and use a GoodRx coupon or pay cash.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Analog multimeters

<comment><USER35> Very useful, especially when tuning or calibrating equipment. I find optimization so much easier on an analogue scale than a digital one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. Sometimes you only need to know _whether_ or see _which direction_ not _how much exactly at this exact moment_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> business cards

punch-down patch pannels

"call for quote"

<comment><USER35> Call for quote to me spells 'go away'. If I have to call for a quote you are (1) going to overcharge me and (2) are afraid that your competitors can beat your price and/or (3) harass me for months afterwards with 'follow up' that I have no desire for.

<comment><USER37> > Call for quote to me spells 'go away'.

There are many cases where this is by design.

I was recently in the market for a new couch. I walked into a neighborhood furniture store, and I began looking around the showroom confused why there were no price tags on any of the furniture ("ask for the price").

A minute later, the sales person approached me and said "Welcome! [...] Our prices start at $4500 for a lovely sectional. Our store never has sale prices and we don't negotiate price. Our couches are custom order and are delivered 8-12 weeks from the time of purchase. May I take you around the showroom?"

Since I was looking for something delivered next week (at a lower price), I walked out of the store happy that the sales person was so upfront.

Some businesses do not want you as a customer, and use techniques like "Call us for a quote" to weed out customers they know won't buy. Also, some products are inherently difficult to give upfront pricing for before understanding more parameters of the purchase.

Edit: This is especially true of B2B SaaS. A significant number of leads we receive request custom integrations between our internal systems and the customer's internal systems as part of their purchase. In these cases, it's literally impossible to give a quote without multiple calls understanding the complexity and set up cost.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but does it actually improve things for either side?

That couch business wasted both your time AND the sales rep's time. Who does it help to not post prices?

For B2B, sure, you can't give an exact quote until you figure out the custom logic, but the customer can at least ballpark what long term operation costs will be based on any published pricing you have. I've never talked to a SaaS vendor without some idea of ongoing price, even if we're going to need upfront work that will be priced separately.

<comment><USER37> > That couch business wasted both your time AND the sales rep's time. Who does > it help to not post prices?

Because there isn't a price to show.

The missing detail I left out in the original comment is that the sale rep also said "We have hundreds of fabric and color options available, and we can accomodate any configuration."

Sure, I guess they could post prices for the models sitting on the floor, but that price would only be for that _exact_ configuration. The point is, the sale person wants to spend 1-2 hours working with the customer to determine their fabric preferences, then color preferences, then configuration / shape of the couch. The store does not cater to people who want the ability to walk in, point to something and say "I want that, how much?" \- those people are not their customers.

> For B2B, sure, you can't give an exact quote until you figure out the custom > logic

In the couch example, it's the same, exact "custom logic" is instead fabric, color, configuration, pull out vs. no pull out, ottoman vs no ottoman, etc.

(For the record, I hate non-transparent pricing as much as anyone. Heap is an example that has been on my mind lately since we're looking at analytics solutions at our company: [https://heap.io/pricing](https://heap.io/pricing) \- it's impossible to infer the "contact us" pricing, since the only other plan they have is "Free" \-- we're on their "Startup" plan for $499/mo, and I have no idea if we're being ripped off, or if that's what everyone else is paying too...)

<comment><USER38> They can show a breakdown with the base cost of each module, the surcharges for the different fabric and colour options, and a price example for the display unit. It's not rocket surgery, IKEA manages to do this just fine.[0]

[0]: [https://www.ikea.com/se/sv/planner/gronlid- planner/](https://www.ikea.com/se/sv/planner/gronlid-planner/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Calafornian state department insist on cheques or cash. Now I live in Europe I cannot issues cheques, and I cannot mail cash internationally via courier (law). So how the Dickens do I get my children's birth certificates apostilled (born in US)?

(Ans use a person I trust in the US, but without a social network it's beauracratically impossible)

<comment><USER3> Use a bill pay service. Most US-based banks offer a bill pay service that will mail a check to the payee. I'm not sure if such a thing exists outside of the US, or if your European bank will mail a USD check.

<comment><USER39> Euro banks do not issue checks. Maybe bill service could work, can they forward the cheque along with documents like birth certificate originals?

<comment><USER40> > _Euro banks do not issue checks_

is not entirely universally true: at least here in Germany, especially business accounts might be able to write cheques, because businesses sometimes have to deal with companies in places were cheques are normal. Do you really need to send it in the same letter as the documents? That makes it harder, since many banks will have a partner bank in the US directly send it instead of handing it to you, but the latter also is possible with some banks. So it could be worth researching if you can use such a banks services, e.g. through someone trusted locally. Bit of a long shot, but ...

<comment><USER39> I'm in Germany. I am not turning into a business for this. I dunno how you could even say that with a straight face in Germany... Have you seen the paperwork? I asked at Deutsche Bank, but they could not help or think of another bank that could help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Cheques can by definition can never be obsolete as they are simply "a written order directing your bank to pay money [to someone]" and don't have to be on a bank issued and numbered format.

<comment><USER42> Maybe so but your bank is not going to send money to someone unless they have proof that you are the one sending the order. I doubt you can just mail a letter to your bank and ask them to send money out of your account.

<comment><USER43> Have you tried? I bet you they would. Mine does it with a phone call!

<comment><USER44> how do they authenticate over phone. Just curious. Key generator? Something else?

<comment><USER45> Banks don't necessarily need strong authentication, because that isn't what they are trying to guarantee. Banks have contracts that often guarantee something closer to "eventual consistency", where the ability to rollback or correct transactions is more important than guaranteeing any single transaction is correct at first. In the unlikely event of a problem, they can fix it. The bank judges how much risk they want to take and uses whatever level of authentication they feel is necessary, which might be as little as asking your name and/or account number(s), or calling your phone listed on your account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I mean, they are all obsolete. Just because people still haven't upgraded doesn't mean they're not obsolete.

Also surprised they didn't mention the use of tapes by the police: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20556330](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20556330)

<comment><USER29> Advantages of tape for evidence is that it is way easier to prove that it was an original, not tampered with than a digital form.

WIth that, I worked at the BBC in the early 2k period on a project to replace the last bastions of tapes in radio towards a complete digital system. Remarkably one of the drivers of this move was that the tapes used had stopped being manufactured. Ironically though like many things tech that from a user perspective - just work, parts of that system are still in use today.

But then like many things - if it works, why change it does seem to play out more often than not.</comment></comment>


Mapping A Company's DNA: Introducing Salescoop - <AUTHOR> http://datainsightsideas.com/post/125956820

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats to Dave for going full-time with what is a pretty cool idea.</comment>


Why Apple Want To Sell Us The iPad 2 for $399 - <AUTHOR>

When I saw that slide in Apple event which showed the price of the iPad 2 I was like "WTF is Apple doing?"
Then I said, wait a minute, maybe they are referring to "The new iPad" which was released in Q2 2012 or the "4th gen iPad" which was released in Q4 2012. But when I start reading the stories in The Verge and other tech site, I realized that Apple really want to sell us a "Two and a Half" years old device which run A5 processor without Siri and without Retina display for $399 which is just $100 less than the device they just announced !
I read some commentators trying to justify this move from Apple as they are trying to attract the education institutes and encourage them to use the iPad in their education system.
But this totally invalid, simply because the iPad 2 barely can run the iOS 7, and when iOS 8 got released this device will be dead and unsupported !
And if we take it financially, you can hit the market and find "The new iPad" which 2X faster and with Retina display for exactly the same price (I bought one for my son 3 weeks back)
For me, this prove that Apple really sucks when it comes to targeting the cheap devices market. <comment><USER2> Apple seems to be continuing a trend of cutting costs and passing the benefits on to themselves.

First, instead of reducing the price on the iPhone 5, we get a plastic 1st- part knock off. I was ridiculed for saying that the high price of this device leaves no reason to choose it over a marginally more expensive 5S, but it now appears that quite a few people are going for the 5S for that very reason.

Second, in spite of the fact that many people complained about RAM utilization on rMBPs, they cut the baseline memory in half, for the sole purpose of deluding people into thinking that they actually reduced the price of the 13" model. 4GB of ram in a computer that already costs nearly double the average price that people pay for a laptop is absolutely ridiculous. I'm happy that its now possible to upgrade to 16GB, but the baseline seriously should have had at least 8GB, at the same price.

Finally, we have the iPad 2, a device that should be priced at about $150-$200 that instead costs $400.

My theory on Apple's mobile devices is that the company was worried that the latest models didn't differentiate themselves enough to compete against the last generation.

As for the rMBP, I really don't have an answer for that, it just seems mind- bogglingly stupid.

I love my iPad, and I was anxiously waiting to see what the new rMBPs had in store for us, but I'm honestly dissapointed with Apple's recent releases. Its like Tim Cook is purposely trying to fulfill the prophecy laid out by all the post-Jobs Apple Naysayers.

<comment><USER3> Similarly to the reduction in RAM on the 13" rMBP, they also removed the discrete video card from the baseline 15" model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My hypothesis is that it's about encouraging upgrades rather than increasing the cheap market.

I've heard from multiple sources that Apple computer and devices have a much higher resale value than other electronics. I've never understood this from a Moore's law perspective, but I've been shown compelling evidence that it's true.

Now, imagine that you own an iPad 2 and want to upgrade to the latest iPad. You'd start by saying that the iPad is $700 and then subtract off the amount you'd get for your iPad 2 on eBay. Natively, I'd say that the device is two and a half years old, so you'd drop the original price by a little under a factor of four, so I'd sell it for $200. Thus I need $500 to buy the latest iPad.

Of course, I've now seen that the iPad 2 is a $600 device, new. Droping off a factor of two, because it's used, I put it up on eBay for $300. I now only need $400 to get the latest iPad. Apple just saved me $100 without actually cutting a penny from their own sales.

Of course, they could have made more money buy selling the iPad 2 directly to the person I sold it to on eBay, but that jsut creates a larger iPad 2 install base that the need to deal with. They get more money in the short run, but they then have to deal with fragmentation in the long run. Instead, they've now made the used market more expensive, discouraging used buyers while encouraging upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER5> _For me, this prove that Apple really sucks when it comes to targeting the cheap devices market._

I can't wrap my head around their thinking this entire year. Apple doesn't want "cheap devices" \- that much is clear.

* The "cheaper" iPhone comes in at $600 instead of the $700 real iPhone (in the US at least)

* The iPad 5 is 8x faster than the iPad 2 (according to the press conf footage) but is only $100 more

* The Mac Pro has doubled or quadrupled in price over previous iterations (and maybe even higher). $3000 for the base model but that doesn't include internal storage (256GB is not enough for video/audio/pro use), 4K monitor, keyboard, mouse, external media drive, firewire converters, etc. The true cost of the Mac Pro is going to be $4000 - $5000 once you add in taxes and external components.</comment>


NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN Show Zero Results for Cannon Hinnant - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nbc-abc-cbs-and-cnn-show-zero-results-for-reports-on-the-5-year-old-white-child-allegedly-executed-by-black-25-year-old-neighbor <comment><USER2> This is bad, right-biased reporting. CNN at least has a story about the murder of Cannon Hinnant[1].

For context, the implication here is that "liberal media" only reports white- on-Black or police-on-Black crime.

It's true that murders often tend to be local news stories unless they fit a national or historical pattern. Obviously there is no pattern for young Black men murdering white children.

Another counterpoint is the widespread national coverage of the murder of Secoriea Turner, a child shot at a roadblock protest in Atlanta. If there were a narrative they were trying to suppress, you would expect them to suppress that story.

I don't see any reason that this child's murder is of national interest unless someone believes there is an unreported trend of Black-on-white-child violence (which of course there isn't).

1\. [https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/us/north-carolina-boy- killed/...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/us/north-carolina-boy- killed/index.html)

2\. [https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/atlanta-shootings- secoriea...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/atlanta-shootings-secoriea- turner-rayshard-brooks/index.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I don't see any reason that this child's murder is of national interest

I don't see any reason that Mr. Floyds death is of national interest

<comment><USER2> He was killed by the state during an arrest for counterfeiting $20. The militarization, misbehavior, and accountability of the police has been a national issue for most of the last century and all of this one.

Further, Floyd's death _was not a national story_ until the video spread online, protests began, and national media were forced to cover it.

Breonna Taylor, by contrast, was not a national story until over a month after her death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm based in the UK and we had UK newspaper website stories (Daily Mail, The Sun, The Independent and others which are on both the left and the right sides of politics) about Cannon Hinnant here before there were results on those US websites. In fact the only reason why I'm aware of this zero results issue is because people started posting "Why are UK newspapers reporting this but not our own US media?".

So I checked for myself and sure enough zero results.

I'd suggest that if something has been reported internationally and locally but not nationally that something strange is happening.

</comment><comment><USER4> Overall, we rate the Washington Examiner Right Biased based on editorial positions that almost exclusively favor the right and Mixed for factual reporting due to several failed fact checks. [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington- examiner](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner)</comment>


Show HN: Servers.lol – Should Your EC2 Be a Lambda? - <AUTHOR> https://servers.lol <comment><USER2> A few weeks ago I created a small framework called lambdaphp[1]. The site [https://www.lambdaphp.host/](https://www.lambdaphp.host/) is hosted on AWS lambda only!

My aim was to host a Wordpress or Laravel site on AWS lambda without paying any monthly hosting charges. I got everything running on it (sessions, fs, request, etc).

Some things are different though, like when you write to a file using _file_put_contents_ , etc it writes to a S3 bucket instead of fs (thanks to PHP's S3 wrapper), or when you create a session, it uses AWS DynamoDB to do that behind the scenes.

I've created some examples like this sign-in example which uses AWS Cognito + AWS lambda to create a login/signup page[2], file uploader, etc[3].

Of course my project was just for my own amusement but I think this can be good for side project where you just want to host something and forget about it.

[1] [https://github.com/san-kumar/lambdaphp](https://github.com/san- kumar/lambdaphp) [2] [https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/auth/](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/auth/) [3] [https://github.com/san-kumar/lambdaphp#examples](https://github.com/san- kumar/lambdaphp#examples)

<comment><USER3> Can you deploy a functional Wordpress blog on Lambda? Would love to try it.

<comment><USER2> I certainly hope so though I haven't tried it myself. I've managed to get the sessions, routing, fs, etc working just fine without any additional configuration, but of course there will be some quirks during the actual Wordpress installation which I haven't explored yet. Maybe next week I will try it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull Check this out: [https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/)

> The Lambda free tier includes 1M free requests per month and 400,000 GB- > seconds of compute time per month.

> The Lambda free tier does not automatically expire at the end of your 12 > month AWS Free Tier term, but _is available to both existing and new AWS > customers indefinitely._

(emphasis added)

That is awesome. Providing you could get your application compatible with lambda. This application may help for WSGI-based (python) applications: [https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa](https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa)

More on AWS Lambda: [https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/)

<comment><USER4> Zappa isn't just for WSGI, you can also build massively parallel event driven applications with async task invocation!

[https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa#asynchronous-task- executio...](https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa#asynchronous-task-execution)

:D

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure it's quite obvious to those who work intimately with Amazon services, but for the rest of us, and because it's un-googlable, this apparently is referring to a specific service, AWS Lambda. Would be helpful to include any explanation at all on the landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point well taken, we'll iterate on this and add some background on Lambda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I watched the overview video below and the tldr for me is that although serverless is doable now and can be done well, the tooling is not there yet, and you're also locked into AWS. So check back in back in 2-3 years.

For me, I think Kubernetes + virtual kubelet (for container instance creation, with per second billing, only on Azure right now) is the safest option. It gives the benefit of easily scalable compute with no need to move to an event driven model or constraints on function duration and resource usage.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fBbSgJJV_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fBbSgJJV_g)

[https://github.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual- kubelet](https://github.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual-kubelet)

<comment><USER7> You can do the same thing (just run a horizontally scalable container for me with per-second billing) on AWS Fargate: [https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/](https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/)

It will also support Kubernetes pods next year.

Disclaimer: I work for AWS.

<comment><USER8> What's the startup time like with fargate? Is it in the region of a few seconds, or is it more like minutes?

<comment><USER9> I've read reports of fargate startup times around 45s. Not fast, but not terribly slow either.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that really helps place it in terms of where it might fit with my workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice calculator, but it's missing an important field: How many hours per day do you keep your machines running. It assumes you run 24/7.

S3stat's nightly job needs 60 or 70 hours to run, but it all has to happen in the few hours after Amazon finishes delivering logfiles for the day. So I spin up 15 or so machines as spot instances that churn through the queue then shut down.

This calculator tells me that should cost $600 or so per day, when reality it is more like $12. So even though it claims Lambda could do the same thing for $5, it'd take a long time to win back the engineering cost of making the switch. (A little over a month for every hour I spent working on it, it seems).

<comment><USER11> One of the big value propositions of the cloud was to automatically provision extra servers in response to load - either like you are doing, or by detecting load spikes and spinning up instances.

Trouble is, people don't seem to do that. I see a lot of 'Boss says use the cloud, lets just provision our current network in AWS 24/7'.

I kind of see serverless abd redshift as a workaround for the fact that users are currently mostly doing it wrong, and will eventually figure out that an always on cloud deployment is more expensive than just hiring server or colo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What it doesn't mention is the high latency of the 99th percentile of requests. If that's something that you don't want, then avoid Lambda, for now.

<comment><USER13> Is the high latency you mention due entirely to cold starting instances, or is there another cause?

<comment><USER14> We had huge problems with Java and Lambda start up times. I would strongly recommend python/nodejs or maybe Go. For whatever reason .Net core was still slower but not Java holy crap slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The thing that makes me nervous about Lambda is the lack of price capping to prevent buggy functions racking up thousands of dollars in a weekend.

<comment><USER16> That's where you apply some software developer diligence and do proper testing and monitoring. You're saying right now that regular servers / instances allow developers to be lazy because hey, automatic caps.

<comment><USER15> Everyone makes mistakes. If a dev deploys something to a server with fixed costs that starts hammering CPU at least we won't be hit by literally thousands of dollars in extra charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonderful website! Really appreciate the detail put into this. And it worked very smoothly on mobile.

Indeed, lambdas are worth considering for some but not all projects, and this tool seems helpful for people who may need a place to start researching their options.

</comment><comment><USER18> This claims that on close-to-breakeven applications that moving to serverless might reduce dev costs or accelerate dev work... Serverless proponents: how does that work in theory?

In practice, all the serverless guys I've seen have a pre-CI pre-VCS pre-UAT kind of workflow using the AWS console where there's no change control or ability to collaborate.

<comment><USER19> Of course it depends on the use case, but for smaller functions it definitely reduces dev work. For AWS, Lambdas can be versioned and aliased. Blue green deployments are trivial since you can switch Lambda versions on the fly. Rolling back and invoking dev versions are similar.

<comment><USER7> You can now even do canary deployments where you switch a small amount of traffic to a new version of your Lambda. The FaaS (function as a service) ecosystem is rapidly reaching parity with traditional software.

Disclaimer: I work for AWS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's unclear if the Requests/minute is per instance or total. I tried putting in 500k/minute (total) and got a $40k Lambda bill vs $2k EC2 bill (which is roughly what we pay). If I switch it to 20k/minute (per instance) then it's more-or-less the same price for either.

<comment><USER21> I get the feeling that lambda is only good for small apps..

Once request volume goes up, instances are much cheaper.

So lambda makes sense for hobby stuff and those small services that you only use occasionally. And then again, the financial motivation probably have more to do with maintenance cost.

<comment><USER8> It can be good for very bursty things too, particularly in the background. I process 'lots' of json on S3 using it. With no setup or anything complex I can churn through a a TB of json in a few minutes. Not sure on total time, but it's less time than it take me to sync the resulting files to my local machine. Running a thousand things at once for a few minutes is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> According to this our app would be $44k in lambda and $2k in EC2.

I suspect we're paying a great deal more than that for EC2 but I don't see those bills.

</comment><comment><USER23> serverless is the shake weight of tech.

in all seriousness a very useful and cool tool. thanks for sharing!

i'd have picked a more informative domain; maybe serverless.info?

nice to know that is currently not cost effective for my workload.

\- lambda = $3,327.05

\- ec2 = $1,1146.24

<comment><USER24> Serverless is great for all the tiny little things I want to schedule and forget or setup a trigger for and forget. But my type of usage is not going to pay the bills for serverless.

I just don't get why anyone is using stuff like lambda for big projects unless they have extremely unpredictable and extremely spikey traffic.

Because any kind of sustained usage will quickly be cheaper to put on a nano instance and scale up from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The main disadvantage of serverless though is the need to learn an entirely new tech stack, and one that is locked in to AWS. Migrating a large (or medium sized) Django app to Lambda has non-trivial cost in terms of engineering time. Also the Lambda stack is less well known, which may cause some challenges for the engineering team (ramp-up time for new hires, etc.)

<comment><USER26> Eh - I wouldn't say an _entirely new_ tech stack. The main difference is breaking your components into microservices; after that - you just need a wrapper for your serverless provider of choice. The majority of the logic should be reusable though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great, I wanted to make something like this once but never got round to it.

Mainly because the pricing calculator from AWS is pure trash

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious, is there an intersection of people who make significant use of AWS who purport to support the open source movement? If so, how do you reconcile centralizing so much of your business/personal data and technology influence behind such a proprietary platform?

<comment><USER29> I upload my code to AWS, and it gets run.

You save your code to your Intel laptop, and it gets run.

Neither of us have the complete source code that is used to run that code. You have to be ok with that, and drawing a line in the sand at the hypervisor level just seems super arbitrary.

<comment><USER30> i can buy an amd laptop and run my code. where you gonna run your aws architected code if aws changes their policies to something you don't like? hint: it's called vendor lock-in.

<comment><USER29> Ok, so then I spend 5 minutes changing some boilerplate and upload it to Azure/Google Cloud/a server I bought on craigslist? Even if that did happen, I probably would still have saved time overall, because I didn't have to maintain physical infrastructure between now and whenever that distasteful policy change takes place.

<comment><USER30> nope. if your code takes 5 minutes to rewrite, then who cares? if it takes longer, then you have a big, expensive, risky problem.

<comment><USER31> Its not the code that take 5 minutes to rewrite, its the AWS entry point.

<comment><USER30> I call bullshit. But if you want to do the experiment, on video, I'll watch it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can even get Pharo to run on AWS Lambda - [https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda](https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda)

However what's really interesting is that it serialises any crash to S3 which you can then pull down and run/fix in your local Pharo debugger - [https://twitter.com/martinfowler/status/897083875003969536?l...](https://twitter.com/martinfowler/status/897083875003969536?lang=en- gb)

</comment><comment><USER33> If Lambda supported Powershell, I'd already have moved hundreds of small Active Directory management scripts there.

And I'd move at least a couple personal projects there, instead of porting them to Node.

I know I'm in the minority, but there are dozens of us.

<comment><USER34> On AWS Lambda you could copy the Powershell Linux binary into your project and call it from wrapper code in NodeJS, Python, Java, C#, or Go.

Over in Microsoft land, Azure Functions natively supports Powershell according to this blog post: [https://david-obrien.net/2016/07/azure-functions- PowerShell/](https://david-obrien.net/2016/07/azure-functions-PowerShell/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see some systems that might be prime for the move, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there any work emerging on a standard environment/framework for serverless code? As it stands it all represents vendor-lock-in due to the comparatively high costs of moving between stacks. An environment that's deployable to any of the serverless providers would be ideal.

<comment><USER37> I believe serverless works on a bunch of different providers. I have no affiliation with this project but it's a pretty good tool! [https://serverless.com/](https://serverless.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > perhaps its time to ponder if a more modern architecture would save you > money or positively affect developer experience.

That's condescending and inappropriate (since it knows nothing about "modernity" in architecture), at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice. No feedback. But the share link at the end is just the root domain: [https://imgur.com/gallery/FL0xa](https://imgur.com/gallery/FL0xa)

<comment><USER40> I'd venture the "without results" caveat just above that link might be why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Perhaps you could factor in something about cold-start?

I know that in my context, this has been a key issue. Another odd one is that our organization has only certified RHEL and Cent OS running server-side code.

<comment><USER7> What exactly are your issues with cold start? This typically only affects functions that are called a few times a day, and can be solved for those functions by running a CloudWatch event that triggers your function every few minutes or so. You get 1 million free invocations a month, so this typically doesn't increase your bill.

Disclaimer: I work for AWS

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm not sure what the stated purpose is for the .lol tld but it is difficult to take a service seriously when it uses a domain like servers.lol

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow, we're paying A LOT more than we need to.

<comment><USER44> Would Lambda work for On-Prem at all?

<comment><USER7> Yes, take a look at AWS Greengrass: [https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/](https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/)

This lets you run the same Lambda execution environment on any device you own. Typically, we see this being used by customers that need to do computing at the edge where Internet connectivity is poor or intermittent (think oil and gas fields, mines, etc.)

Disclaimer: I work for AWS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Fun site! It's a bit annoying that you can't edit the input and get a new result though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! You should be able to edit the inputs by clicking on the left hand side (application name) to change the inputs above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Nice to see Haskell on the list.

<comment><USER47> It's in the list but when you click on it, it says "Some of the languages you are using are not yet officially supported in Lambda, but there are still runtime workarounds. Here are some resources:" and links to a blog post about running Haskell on Lambda.</comment></comment>


Inside Vulfpeck's Spotify Stunt - <AUTHOR> http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/touring/5937612/inside-vulfpecks-brilliant-spotify-stunt <comment><USER2> While it's an interesting idea it will come at the detriment to other musicians using the platform. Spotify's payouts are largely based on subscriber's monthly fees divided over the total number of plays for a month (to get price per play), then multiplied by the number of plays an artist gets. This means that as people flood to play the silent songs, other artists who actually use the platform to share audible music are making less money. If they want to crowdsource a free concert tour they should make a Kickstarter/Indiegogo and sell shirts or autographed paraphernalia.

Refer to the "Royalties: in detail" section: [http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#spotifys- pr...](http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#spotifys-progress-so- far)

<comment><USER3> It's a gag meant to get attention and poke fun at Spotify's royalty scheme. If anything, it's to other musicians' benefit because it makes a point: Spotify is of so little value to individual musicians that they're willing to thumb their noses at it for publicity.

<comment><USER4> On what are you basing your statement that Spotify has little value to musicians?

For example, the link in the comment you replied to has some numbers showing the difference in value between a Spotify music listener and a non-Spotify music listener in the US. From such numbers, and others at that site, it seems like the opposite should be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This strikes me as the audio equivalent of click fraud. Someone is paying for that silence...

<comment><USER6> Agreed.. I can't imagine Spotify are happy about this!

<comment><USER7> _"This is a clever stunt, but we prefer Vulpeck's earlier albums," said Spotify spokesman Graham James. " 'Sleepify' seems derivative of John Cage's work."_

I don't think they care, at this stage anyway. And probably never -- it doesn't scale as well as click fraud.

<comment><USER8> At Spotify royalty rates it's cheap publicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might participate if I didn't just unsubscribe from Spotify. (That's what happens when you send me ads by push notification, especially when I pay for your app.)

<comment><USER10> You can turn off all the push notifications.

<comment><USER11> But the point is that an ad was sent via a system not intended for ads, and arguably against what is advertised if this was a paid subscription.

<comment><USER12> I've never had an ad pushed to my iPhone, iPad, or the 3 computers I regularly use spotify on since I subscribed over a year ago. The push notifications from the app are all related to sending you new album releases and other artists you listen to on the site, if you enable them. Sounds like above is pebcak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great now spotify is going to want my heart rate information to figure out if I am asleep or awake while listening.

<comment><USER14> That is actually totally possible! How nuts. As soon as the iWatch/Ring/Hairband has an SDK..

<comment><USER15> I was going to say "over my dead body" but then they'll detect when a user dies eventually and somehow monetize and leverage that.

<comment><USER16> Automatically generated tribute songs based on the likes of the deceased. Plugged in with facebook to provide images and generating a tribute video with audio and video. Build it as an online service for sending sympathy e-cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I liked Spotify's response ("derivative of John Gage"). Has Spotify stopped streaming audio ads between songs on the free service? Pretty easy to go back to that if this became a real problem.

<comment><USER3> Somehow I doubt Spotify's advertisers would agree with this fix. If Spotify knows that people fake-listening to streams is a problem[1], then they'd be ill-advised to try to get money from advertisers for those fake listeners.

[1] not that I believe this problem will get big enough that Spotify even remotely gives a shit. Their answer was actually pretty excellent: laugh along with the joke, knowing that this is likely not going to start happening a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Should Vulfpeck's brilliant stunt materialize into a completely free tour for fans, it could change the way independent artists regard streaming services and fan engagement."

How? If more bands make albums like these, services like Spotify will refuse to carry them. This is a one time deal. Regardless, any band could ask its listeners to stream its music on mute.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what is the conversion rate between the amount electricity used vs. the amount of royalty payments generated. Perhaps it might just be easier to straight up donate to this guy.

<comment><USER20> Well, it depends on the device used and whether you left it on just for the music.

Let's say you left a Macbook Air (2011) on playing the album. It has a 50 watt-hour battery, which lasts 7 hours, so it uses ~0.12 watt-hour/minute. Since the album has ten tracks of around 30s, that's 5 minutes * 0.12 Wh/m, so ~0.6 watt-hour in total.

The average price of residential electricity in the US is 11.72c/kWh (Dec. 2013), so that ends up at around $0.00007/album.

Since he says he gets $0.005/listen, or $0.025/album, that's still significantly profitable.

If you're one of those people who leaves the smartphone on anyway, the cost would probably be negligible.

Of course, it probably wouldn't matter anyway since the fixed transaction costs would make it unreasonable to send so small donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice publicity stunt, never having heard of these guys before, im now listening through their albums on Spotify, love it.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a self-limiting hack which squeals the friction between musicians and the new techno-gatekeepers.</comment>