Book Summary: Why Nations Fail – Understanding why countries are rich or poor - <AUTHOR> https://hundred.substack.com/p/number-1-why-nations-fail <comment><USER2> Not a single mention of colonialism huh

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the largest theme of the book, and it should really be part of this summary. I'll update it. Thank you for this.

EDIT: I added this at the end of the summary with two examples. Thanks again for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> In that case, _how the heck could you have written a book summary without mentioning that?_ I don't mean any disrespect to you personally, but this review seems like a bunch of cherry-picked points (whatever appealed to you) which might well completely side-step what the authors had in mind! We can consider this an exhortation of your views on your blog (which is okay to discuss), but it's really unfair to the book/authors to pretend that it's an accurate summary of their work that we're discussing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. My objective was to condense the main thesis of the book which is that there are Inclusive or Extractive institutions, self- reinforcing through virtuous or vicious circles, and that the process of Creative Destruction is critical within this system. I tried to anchor all examples within these main ideas. I think this gives you a shallow high level understanding of the book. But to make sure that it's not only my view or summary abilities, I added a few more reviews at the end which serves as counter to the Authors' ideas.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I do appreciate you linking to other reviews (Bill Gates', the book authors', etc.) — I found those very useful to map out a more holistic picture. Might be better if you post this message (with links) at the very top of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably relevant: "IQ and National Success" [https://youtu.be/8u0Lmp_jHw8?t=332](https://youtu.be/8u0Lmp_jHw8?t=332)

<comment><USER5> "Sign in to confirm your age. This video may be inappropriate for some users."

<comment><USER4> "In a Time of Universal Deceit — Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great summary. Probably good follow on reads would be the classical "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith and "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" by Michael Porter.

Just subscribed!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! Wonderful recommendations, will take a look.

Thank you as well for subscribing. It's really rewarding to read your comment.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The missing filesystem for the web - <AUTHOR> https://historysearch.net <comment><USER2> I like the idea, I could really make use of it. But have a concern on how prices are presented. There's big (font) monthly prices, and the text saying it's annual is low contrast, and partially obscured by the try it now button.

This is a huge red flag to me. What other fine print can't I see? I don't have color perception issues, but the background/text combo gives it the appearance of that light-grey text that's impossible to read.

Also, why not just give the annual price if that's how it's charged? (Admittedly, I don't know how it's charged. When I clicked the try now button hoping for an upfront number, I was prompted to sign up. I closed the tab.)

I know these aren't huge issues. But, you are selling a service to track people. For me to trust a service like this, they can't come out the gate looking like they're hiding their price.

<comment><USER2> Re-reading this, I sound fairly negative. I do hope this service does well. I'll likely end up taking another look at it down the road.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! This is Martijn, maker of History Search. I'm glad you like What we're doing.

I'm going to review these confusing things. The reason why it says try now is because we offer 3000 pages free, most recent visited webpages, and offer a 30 day money back garuantee.

We're not hiding anything, the pricing does say when billed annually. Also our privacy policy is super clear, also I answered this answer in more depth below.

On the free plan you can keep using it even when you cross the free search limit. Because Older records are archived and will become available once you remove more recent records, or upgrade. Not a lot of services do this.

Keep in mind this price isn't very steep if you take into account it isn't just cloud storage, most cloud solutions charge this or more and don't include the entire app, cross-browser extensions and service. Also don't worry, we're far from profitable and don't drive ferraris in the valley. We work day and night, and pay server expenses out of our own pocket.

We aren't Google and don't show advertising to further ensure user privacy. Taking this into consideration, we believe users who see the value in History Search won't expect us to starve and pay the hosting expenses all on our own.

Our mission is solving how hard it is to retrieve digital information online, but to keep doing so we need our users' support, also financially. We have choosen annual billing as preferred and advertised pricing because its a low cost subscription, and it would be a waste to spend around 2,9%+$0.29 per month. Thats a lot a waste of funds, since its not going to solving the problem or providing you a valuable service but to a transaction fee.

Hope this straightens things out, looking forward to seeing you aboard this movement.

Kind regards, Martijn

<comment><USER2> Hi Martijn, I find it encouraging how engaged you are.

I believe you aren't trying to hide anything. The formatting does make it hard to read though. For me, the button to try a charged price was covering up part of the notice that it's billed annually. The layout really ought to be adjusted so that the button cannot cover up the fine print. The font ought to be a color with more contrast from the background so it's easy to read.

The level of service you offer for a free plan is impressive. Kudos on giving users a full featured trial, I agree that most services don't do that. For instance, I skipped over Tutanota because basic features like filters required a paid subscription. Filters are important to me, I'd like to test them before I upgrade. On the other end, msgsafe.io offers enough of their features on a paid account that you can test the service before committing. (Though their page suffers from the same problems I initially mentioned about yours, I can't read it at all. I don't have time to screw with the CSS to make it readable, which is why I've yet to sign up.)

I agree about your prices. Less than $50 annually for the lowest paid tier is a bargain for what you provide. I really do hope you become profitable enough to drive Ferraris. The tech sector needs more companies that put their customers before profits.

I appreciate that you're not Google. I wholeheartedly believe that you and everyone else working on this should be making good wages. It's only fair. I intend to try out your service as a way to see my phone's history from my computer. If it works well for me, I'll upgrade to whatever plan meets my needs. Your prices are more than fair. (It'll be sometime in the next week or two. I screwed up my phone by kneecapping some Google packages, I haven't had time to fix it yet.)

I completely agree with what you're saying about annual billing. Transaction fees can be outrageous. I would prefer that the price is presented in a way that clearly communicates what I'll be charged before I get to the checkout (of course taxes wouldn't be added till then, but that's standard). If you put something like "$x per year" in big font and "$y per month" as the smaller print, I'd know ahead of time that the billing is annual.

Personally, I don't do money back guarantees on trials anymore. A few years back I signed up for a 30 day trial of Amazon Prime while going through the checkout (I had never had it before). Three days later my credit union's fraud department called, Amazon had charged for the full year two days into my trial. The fraud department told me it wasn't an authorization. I went back and forth with Amazon to cancel Prime, they made it a real pain. Ultimately, I had to cancel my card, get a new card, and have my credit union place a block on any transactions from Amazon. That 30 day "trial" wasted at least 40 hours of my time.

As a suggestion of a great trial experience, look at Mullvad ([https://mullvad.net/en/](https://mullvad.net/en/)). You can get started on a free trial in less than 60 seconds if you have VPN software installed. I tried it once, halfway into my free three hours, I signed up for a paid account. Personally, I would be more comfortable with your service if I could sign up without giving personal data like I did with Mullvad. You seem trustworthy to me. However, I think your service has the potential to be huge. Sites like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook could really benefit from buying a company that provides a service like yours. I wouldn't want my history to end up in their hands with my name attached (I don't use any of the three sites). Even if you don't plan to get bought, it isn't impossible. (After all, Michael Dell went public.)

I know I sound picky, but I feel feedback should be. Then you can decide which gripes are worth addressing and which ones are just me being a grumpy SOB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that last paragraph made me laugh. I sincerely appreciate candid feedback, and fully agree there shouldn't be any confusion regarding pricing. I'm going to look into this asap.

I do think I realize where the confusion is coming from; you are seeing the pricing page from mobile? You mentioned being able to search the things from mobile, this sadly isn't possible yet. Mobile browser extensions are only slowly evolving (but we're on it), so for now History Search is desktop only.

Will look into the examples you provided, thank you, and see how we can use it to make History Search better.

History Search is not intended for sale. Like I said it's just our first step, plus I don't believe in our current leaders - Apple aside, I'm impressed by practically everything they do. Also users have complete control over what History Search indexes and stores. So if a sale would ever happen you can always export and remove any or all data in History Search-but again a sale isn't the goal, we aren't even funded at moment (well, self funded). Ontop of our intentions and perspective of what the web should be, privacy regulations are finally getting better, this gives companies who choose a straightforward business approach a chance. A better paid Facebook wouldn't have stood a chance 10 years ago. Luckily this is changing.

There are over 3 billion internet users. 500 million would be able to benefit from and can afford History Search. Reaching these numbers is our goal.

I didn't go into everything you mentioned in this message, but it's all noted and I would like to thank you for the kind words and your time to help us improve.

Kind regards, Martijn

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, but does it track me? Can you guarantee that it doesn't?

<comment><USER4> [https://worldbrain.io/](https://worldbrain.io/) does something similar and promises to keep things local with the default settings (and it's open source)

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually started with a local storage approach too during the first 1,5 year we worked on History Search. The reason why this approach failed is due to the size of the application—it to large have for mainstream devices. If you're interested I've written about our journey more here: [https://medium.com/@martijnverbove/moments-before-success- or...](https://medium.com/@martijnverbove/moments-before-success-or- failure-d0f50ff148ea)

I like what Worldbrain is doing but their extension is a prototype. As you will notice they support plain-text search (similar to ctrl-f), and History Search is full-text search and won't impact your device's CPU load or memory.

On their website they mention their next version will be cloud-based too. This is not to spy on people but because of the performance demands of a full-text search engine and the applications—this types of services also require maintenance. Just to give an impression; our search engine alone is over 3,5 GB, this doesn't include the app or databases.

What I would recommend to try them both out and see which one is best for you.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the reply! Sadly non-local storage is a no-go for me. I'd rather have a desktop app. But I also understand you'd have a hard time selling desktop apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm Martijn, maker of History Search.

So its simple; It does track you; thats the point. However, you control what History Search does and where it's active.

Any data you capture using History Search can easily be deleted and is available for export to csv, for you to do with as you please. Besides that History Search can also easily be paused, or webpages can be blacklisted.

We also have a very clear policy about privacy and security: it is yours, we also comply with GDPR regulations. If you're interested you can read more about these on historysearch.com/security or historysearch.com/privacy

My goal is to turn History Search into a filesystem for the web. Anyone can use it for free and index/search 3000 pages, most recent. Pages out of the limit are archived until you upgrade or remove some pages. We believe the future of internet is trust, and reward: if people like our services they simply pay us—no ads no selling of personal data—if no one pays we will no longer be able to improve; this is in my opinion a healthy internet.

What History Search does is revolutionary. Since it will be increasingly difficult to do all the things we do online without a backbone that makes it possible to retrieve webpages you've been, using any words you remember on it. This help you find back articles or gmails, open documents or quickly navigate web services.

Can you imagine having to remember all the hidden files on your computer or the places in memory your files reside? Well this is what it's like working online (more or less, a bit less extreme though haha)

How it works is, History Search uses browser extensions to index the text on webpages when you visit them. This way any word you remember will be enough to retrieve it for you. So its both technically and literally an index (you know those pages in the back of those dusty encyclopaedias).

History Search is a product I'm very passionate about, and have spent the past 3,5 years working on. The vision is even bigger: an entirely new way of working with decentralised information sources — in a way they are still connected. The future of History Search is Convergate: Convergence Gateway. The names speaks for its self.

We value trust, and utility over anything. Companies that need to be free aren't any good. Have you ever wondered so every successful service which is "free", is also a waste of time (companies like Wikipedia aren't in this categorie since they receive donations).

Long story short, History Search is a cloud storage so yes your data is stored on our (well Amazon's) servers. But our system is solid, and we do everything we can to make sure our user's privacy is respected.

I launched it this week on Product Hunt if you want to see some more info: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/history-search ](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/history-search
)</comment>


Ask HN: How to process credit card payments - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN. First question here so if possible take it easy on me :)
Main question is how can one start to process payments from many to many. Does one work directly with visa api or through a bank? And what are the security conditions that one would need to abide by(nuclear resistant datacenter etc).
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> Take a look at FastSpring. Global coverage for developer clients, their end users, payment methods/currencies located all around the world, and an embedded store SDK used to power such app stores as Adobe's new Exchange. Pricing includes international payment costs, int'l tax management, pci compliance, chargeback fees, file hosting, unlimited support, and all the merchandising functionality. Developers save months to years of work because it's an all-in-one service, the features are already there for the developer selling one time or recurring based payment products and services globally.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're building a marketplace thing, take a look at Balanced [1]

Otherwise, take a look at Stripe [2]

If you're not in the U.S, it get's more complicated.

[1] [https://www.balancedpayments.com/](https://www.balancedpayments.com/) [2] [https://stripe.com](https://stripe.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would need it to work all over Europe so I'm waiting for the more complicated atuff :)

<comment><USER4> Check out www.paymill.com (Stripe except based here in Europe)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the fees from all the mentioned providers are way too much. Usually the bank pos fees are 1,8-1,9%. So the only solution that I see is actually processing payments myself. That's why I'm looking for more information on how that's done.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525772299940870.html

<comment><USER2> Great to see that might be gaining momentum and it would seem to be an idea that could get bipartisan support. Here's the link to the discussion on Paul Graham's essay on the Founder's Visa - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908>

</comment><comment><USER3> The problems have been discussion here already.

"being able to raise money" is just clearly a too easily fudged condition since you wouldn't want to regulate what was done with the money afterwards. They snuck the "accredited U.S.-based venture capital firm" phrase in without explanation when, as previously discussed here, accrediting venture capitalists is a far from easy task and quite possibly not desirable for the industry.

An alternative would be to liberalize the terms of the H1b Visa so that workers could come on an H1b and then start startups. It would give the H1b receiver more leverage, thus increasing their salaries and reducing complaint about H1b abuse - this way everyone wins ... _well, except the many H1b abusers_.</comment>


Cheeky Python: A Redis CLI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogcreek.com/cheeky-python-a-redis-cli/ <comment><USER2> I always wonder if FogCreek's insistence on remaining a mostly Windows shop is a helper or a hindrance. On one hand it seems to be missing out on the crazy explosion of tooling innovation happening on *nix. On the other, it is one of the few companies bringing stuff like Mercurial to Windows, which, love it or loathe it, still has a stranglehold even in developer communities.</comment>


Berkeley City Council Unanimously Votes to Ban Face Recognition - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/victory-berkeley-city-council-unanimously-votes-ban-face-recognition <comment><USER2> As a conservative I usually roll my eyes when I hear the latest legislation passed by the Berkeley City Council. But they are 100% right on this one. Long live liberty and anonymity (to those who want it)!</comment>


How long should we wait for an overdue earthquake on the San Andreas? - <AUTHOR> http://rocksandwater.net/blog/2016/07/wrightwood-recurrence/ <comment><USER2> I lived in SoCal and worked in SFO for some decades and witnessed both the Northridge and the Oakland quakes first-hand, narrowly avoiding personal injury or even death in both cases (big things falling around me), and the conclusion I made after these events, which I eventually acted on, was simply put thus: GTFO!

I really didn't want to be there when the Big One happened, nor even some of the minor small ones, so I've moved to Central Europe where such things have a lower chance of happening .. in a way, I have a perverse desire to see The Big One happen from so far away, but I always dread the mind-game of trying to conceive what SoCal will be like, afterwards. I truly dread the idea, and I honestly can't understand how any society with scientific awareness of its surroundings can nevertheless commit to building so much expensive civilization and infrastructure in a known catastrophe zone. I guess its just a matter of momentum, but I sure wish the citizenry of the PNW and SoCal would prepare themselves for this event a bit better. It seems so defeatist to continue to build things in that area, knowing it could fall into the sea in a moment, and there is nothing we could do about it. California should just be a massive nature park stripped of all human involvement, just in case, but of course this is never going to happen, so if The Big One does happen in my lifetime, its just going to be a massive tragedy no matter what we humans could have done about it with all our science and stuff. Argh!

<comment><USER3> I guess if I lived through two significant earthquakes in that way, I'd probably have had a thought along the lines of "This is a sign to move" as well.

>It seems so defeatist to continue to build things in that area

Fatalistic is probably the better word. I can buy an old missile depot in the Midwest and stock it up with supplies and prepare myself for the zombie apocalypse or whatever.

Or I can live somewhere I enjoy, and has good opportunities, etc. and not worry too much about events I don't have a lot of control over or a lot of insight into their probabilities.

Of course, there are situations between those two extremes and it's not unreasonable IMO to include "the Big One might hit" into a calculus for evaluating moving to or staying on the West coast. (As with living in areas with a lot of potential for floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.)

Actually turns out Las Vegas, for example, scores pretty well on non-disaster metrics. One reason a lot of datacenters are there--in addition to evaporative cooling.

<comment><USER2> Its not like I didn't have a great time living in California, because I truly did, and in many ways its a delightful civilization in which to participate.

Perhaps its just a cultural comfort I seek, in which the citizenry at least _seem_ aware and prepared for total and utter disaster, any minute now, and live accordingly. I guess its exhausting to live that way, so if it happens, it happens; maybe that liberal and - lets just get out and say it, "Zen-"like mindset truly is just a part of the California love ..

<comment><USER3> Honestly, though, I'm not sure anyplace in the US is different. I lived in New Orleans and I was well aware of the hurricane scenarios as well as some of the failure scenarios of Corps of Engineers structures up the Mississippi. (Had a good friend who worked for the Corps.)

So it seems a pretty typical attitude in the US. Perhaps it's different elsewhere. Abstractly understand the worst case scenarios, plan to mitigate them (or not), but go on living life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question: what happens to land rights after a quake? Since the quake moves land around, stretching in parts and destroying land into cracks in others. Do property lines get redrawn? Who owns any newly created land space? Is it fair game for anyone to claim?

<comment><USER5> It doest really work like that, it's not like new land is created by pushing out into the sea, but even if it was the property owners boundary is likely the sea, therefore the land is incorporated within their area.

<comment><USER6> It very much does work like that though... The San Andreas fault is a "strike- slip" fault. The plates are (effectively) moving past each other, in opposite directions.

Imagine you owned a rectangular piece of land, with the fault running right up through the middle of it. After an earthquake, the western half of your property is now shifted a non-trivial distance to the north relative to the eastern half. What happens to the property line? Does it now have a 'kink' in it? Does it remain in the same place relative to the 'ideal' geodesic plane (meaning various landmark like fenceposts, etc, are now in a different place relative to the property line).

It's certainly an interesting question...

<comment><USER7> You have ownership of a piece of land, not a spot on a map. If the land moves then you still own the land even if it is non-contiguous. I am not sure what happens in the case where some event creates new land adjacent to yours such as the case where a lava flow extends land out past yours into what was once water or if an uplift fault raises seabed to become contiguous with yours, but I would assume that the state would claim ownership over the new land.

<comment><USER8> >You have ownership of a piece of land, not a spot on a map.

That's sort of silly. How do you define a 'piece of land'? What if I dig out my piece of land so it's a 100ft hole and then there is a sheering motion from the plates so half of my hole slides under someone else's land? Do I still own both halves? If so, do I no longer own the land at the bottom of the top half? If not, then it would not seem that I do not own a 'piece of land'.

<comment><USER9> Land ownership is not really absolute; it is always subject to the definitions of the local law and, ultimately, the whims of the government.

You don't have complete power over what you do to your land, because the government has the last word. On the other hand, without government, there is no land ownership because the definition and enforcement of land ownership is one of the most ultimate functions of any government, since the creation of first city-states (e.g. ancient Babylon).

So if the government permits you to dig that hole in the first place, then what happens in an earthquake depends on local legislation. I don't really know how it works e.g. in the U.S. but I would assume that the boundary of your piece of land is defined in relation to physical markers that are recorded with their geocoordinates, but if the lay of the land changes so that the markers move, then the boundary of your plot will also move. And this could mean that the size of your plot changes.

Where I live, for instance, there are old boundary stones (which would in an earthquake naturally move along with the land on which they are laid) and newer marker bolts attached to bedrock that serve as reference points for geodesic measurement purposes. Also, there are height markers; for instance, when I started to build my house, the city would send a guy with equipment and start from one of these markers and then tell me if the foundations of the house are at right elevation. Should there be a major earthquake (not really a possibility here, ours is just about the most stable bedrock on Earth) then the changed positions (coordinates) would have to be recorded in land registry.

<comment><USER10> You may find learning more about the foundations of common-law to be interesting (since it seems you are from a Civil Law perspective).

[http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/TortWeb.html](http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/TortWeb.html)

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586941](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586941)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, these were interesting reads, although I would still appreciate a hint how common law specifically would handle emergence of new land differently from civil law systems?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was under the impression that the bigger danger was the expected eventual earthquake of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, potentially leading to tens of thousands killed or injured and millions more displaced.[1][2]

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really- big-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone#Earth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone#Earthquakes)

<comment><AUTHOR> The damage from a Cascadia rupture is going to be more widespread but the ground shaking in the metro areas may be less than for the San Andreas because the San Andreas hits the surface quite close to populated areas (LA also has more people that WA and OR combined). The intensity of ground shaking decreases with distance due to geometric spreading and energy absorption by the intervening rock mass. Cascading ruptures are also every 500 years (or so) vs every 100 years, so the hazard per year is less. But yes, both are major concerns.

<comment><USER12> Also, speaking of other faults, WA also has the smaller, but much more shallow, Seattle fault. Because it's so much closer to the surface, and right under the city, it can potentially do more localized damage than Cascadia.

(There are other dangerous faults like that in Puget Sound region, but Seattle fault gets special attention because of how many densely populated Seattle metro areas sit literally right on top of it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a ton of data on the very regularly occurring (hourly) small earthquakes around the world available from USGS: [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/) I'd like to see whether this analysis works on this rich data, not on the very sparse data set of San Andreas earthquakes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Some fault lines seem to accumulate energy, so the longer the waiting period between two earthquakes, the stronger it gets. Is it the same for San Andreas, so that more frequent earthquakes would actually be beneficial as they would be easier to handle structurally?

<comment><USER15> I'm not an expert and I have the same understanding. Futuristic earthquake mitigation approaches talk about inducing small, non-destructive earthquakes in a controlled way to reduce the magnitude. The goal is to completely manage earthquakes.

<comment><USER16> Not as good an idea as it sounds. The problem is that the largest earthquakes release massive amounts of energy. Each point on the Richter scale corresponds to about a factor of 30 in energy. So to release the energy of one magnitude-7 quake would take some 900 magnitude-5 quakes. And a 5 in a populated area can still do a little damage. Can you imagine how people would feel about having one of these a week for 20 years?

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, a daily (smallish) earthquake could easily replace your alarm clock.

"Sorry I'm late... I slept through the tremor this morning."

<comment><USER18> Time your sex well and you can have (or fake) an earth-shaking orgasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I can't understand is that after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, where "Over 80% of the city was destroyed by the earthquake and fire" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake) ), why on earth was it rebuilt? Surely that's a sign to move the new city elsewhere?

<comment><USER20> You're only looking at the downside risk. There are _huge_ upsides to the area - notably the San Francisco Bay is a natural harbor, which makes it a really good place to put a port. The promise of wealth from trade meant people would live them pretty much regardless of the downsides.

<comment><USER19> Fine, but what's likely to be cheaper, building an artificial harbour away from the fault line or rebuilding a damaged city every 100 years or so?

<comment><USER20> You'd have to go a _long way_ from the San Francisco Bay to be a safe distance away from the fault line, which would have a dramatic impact on the costs of operating the port - it'd add hundreds of miles to the distance you'd need to move the goods off the ships to where they were needed. Factoring that additional cost in over the decades between earthquakes (SF burned down quite regularly prior to 1906), I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually cheaper to rebuild the city occasionally.

<comment><USER19> > "You'd have to go a long way from the San Francisco Bay to be a safe > distance away from the fault line"

Is there an equation that's useful in working out how the strength of an earthquake changes as you move further away from a fault line? I tried to find one, but haven't had any luck yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does an historic earthquake look like in the layers of rock? How do they know when they occurred?

<comment><AUTHOR> The science of finding out the (pre-)historic earthquake history is called 'paleoseismology'. You can read about it from a variety of sources.

In most instances the earthquakes are dated by finding carbon-bearing material in deposits that look like they were created during the earthquake, and doing radiocarbon dating of them. The ages may be bracketed by radiocarbon dating of sediments that were clearly broken by the earthquake (and are therefore older) and ones that overlie the broken rocks (and are therefore younger).

In a few other instances, earthquakes can be dated by tree-ring dating; for example during big subduction zone earthquakes, the coast often subsides by a meter or two, which will put some forested beaches under sea level (or at least high tide level) and kill all of the trees that can't deal with salt water.

In others, the dates of sediment layers broken or caused by earthquakes can be dated through other means, or correlated with climate events of known time.

Some example of deformed and undeformed sediments in the Wrightwood trench site on the San Andreas is here[0,1]. [2] is from the nearby San Jacinto fault. [3] has a lot of images. [4] is a good introduction to the science with good pictures.

[0]: [http://www.bssaonline.org/content/97/4/1054/F14.large.jpg](http://www.bssaonline.org/content/97/4/1054/F14.large.jpg) [1]: [http://www.bssaonline.org/content/92/7/2726/F11.large.jpg](http://www.bssaonline.org/content/92/7/2726/F11.large.jpg) [2]: [http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/content/7/3/211/F6.large.jpg](http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/content/7/3/211/F6.large.jpg) [3]: [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/external/reports/04HQGR0...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/external/reports/04HQGR0083.pdf) [4]: [http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic988563.files/EPS2...](http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic988563.files/EPS203_paleoseis5r.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, we aren't only overdue but a quake seems imminent? The upper bound of time between quakes was very slim.

This is a stupid and selfish question, but what does a quake on the San Andres fault mean for San Francisco? My knowledge of all of this is based on 4th grade science.

<comment><USER5> Bad news. Whilst building codes may be better than in the past, due to population density the risks of a high number of deaths is significant.

<comment><USER23> I would imagine a very significant portion if the Marina district just turning into rubble unfortunately. I'm hoping this doesn't happen until buildings have a chance to improve even more.

<comment><USER24> No chance for improvement. New buildings follow better building codes, such as the tall ones that may sway like Japanese skyscrapers, old buildings have no mandate to improve, and San Francisco was mostly built after the 1906 earthquake, with many of the walkups that litter the view being in the 1920s - 1940s.

From my understanding, any hope you might have is neglecting a reality that an overdue earthquake will cause devastation largely reserved for the third world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully San Andreas will wait another 10 years, because by that time there will be no Nuclear Reactors operating in California. We are down to only ONE, and it will shut down within the next 6 years. PG&E is getting out of Nukes.

</comment><comment><USER26> If it doesn't happen this year, just wait longer.

<comment><USER27> winning by induction

<comment><USER28> Subduction actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> People always say Hayward Fault is more troubling for California because so much is built directly ON the fault.

</comment><comment><USER29> Possibly a silly question, but...

I hear the term 'overdue' applied particularly to earthquakes, rather than any other naturally occurring event. Does this mean 'overdue' in the same sense that rolling a six is 'overdue' if you've not seen one after six rolls?

<comment><USER30> My understanding is that the probability and expected magnitude of an earthquake actually increases over time as tectonic tension builds. So no, not like dice.

<comment><USER29> I meant in the sense of probability, not literally like dice :)

<comment><USER31> I think it was clear what you meant.

If you roll a dice 10 times and don't get a six, the probability of rolling a six is still 1/6 for the next roll. However, as the time since the last earthquake increases, not only does the probability of one increase (unlike dice which has a constant probability) but also the likely magnitude of it increases as well.

The equivalent with dice would be you roll a non-six 10 times in a row, and instead of 1/6 probability of rolling a six, you now have a 1/3 probability of rolling a six and a 1/100 probability of setting off a nuclear explosion.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the helpful response. I still don't think I got quite the question across that I meant though.

It wasn't so much the probability model (independent or otherwise) I intended to question (hence my very poor choice of the die rolling analogy), but the choice of describing an event as 'overdue'.

At the risk of introducing another down-voted analogy, presumably hurricanes have a probability of occurring based on things like ocean temperature, time of year etc., but I don't think I've ever heard the phrase 'the east coast of the US is overdue a hurricane'.

<comment><USER32> The term 'overdue' is used because, as earlier posters explained, the probability of an earthquake actually increases the longer that it doesn't happen. But it comes to hurricanes, I suppose the probability of them occurring does not increase if they don't happen (or we just don't know), and that's why we (generally) don't use the term overdue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How bad does Bootstrap look on a production site? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a backend guy starting his first foray into building the frontend for a consumer webapp.
However, I have next to no design skills and Bootstrap makes a lot of sense to me (ease of use, relatively nice-looking).
Does a Bootstrapped site look sketchy to you? If so, any recommendations for a more legit-looking framework? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Consider it a solid base to build on thats fairly easy to skin later on. As a developer who hates design, I gotta say bootstrap was my kick into liking design. One major tip: put patience in design, dont expect things to happen in 5 minutes do lots of experimentation and tinkering. Also try to get into less css.

Some resources:

<http://ajkochanowicz.github.com/Kickstrap/>

<https://wrapbootstrap.com/>

<http://bootswatch.com/>

<http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/>

<http://jetstrap.com/>

<http://www.boottheme.com/>

[http://designshack.net/articles/css/20-awesome-resources- for...](http://designshack.net/articles/css/20-awesome-resources-for-twitter- bootstrap-lovers/)

<comment><USER3> Can this be deployed with Wordpress?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not a designer so perhaps can relate to you question. I think Bootstrap is a great choice for non-designers who basically want to hack a usable and reliable design. Bootstrap has great advantages to designing a site / webapp that is usable and functional. Much of the design has been well vetted for cross browsers and bugs have been fixed to a great degree.

There are lots of resources available as in the comments to customize bootstrap so that it can achieve a reasonable degree of distinction (vs. the default template).

You will find some great themes that you could mimic to almost have no "traditional" bootstrap trace left in the initial UI experience.

Also, once you get used to Bootstrap you are not going to have to relearn the semantics to get your design out. You can focus more on customizations and the core of your webapp.

I've compiled a huge list of Bootstrap resources over the past year (as mentioned in the other comments). I hope to put another "directory" out shortly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't waste any time or money whatsoever on a custom design until you have validated your app idea by getting people to pay you money for it.

Even if you are building an app for hackers / designers who are familiar with Bootstrap and might balk at something being "Bootstrappy", your first customers are going to realize that it's just a beta site.

If you are building for any other market, you may _never_ need to bother customizing your design. Out-of-the-box Bootstrap looks better than 99% of the niche software out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> A raw bootstrap site doesn't look sketchy, just a little undesigned. Depending on your audience, this may be perfectly fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> We are using bootstrap, and skin it using

<http://bootswatch.com/>

As orangethirty wrote, you can get a css developer to skin the entire thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bootstrap is a framework and not a _look_. I suggest you hire a designed who may help you build a good looking front end while using bootstrap to deal with cross-browser issues and grids.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Don't use the default CSS styles._ Make it your own brand.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can get bootstrap themes from <https://wrapbootstrap.com/> as per your requirements

<comment><USER11> Not sure about them. I bought a "bootstrap" css from them, completely worthless. I would have to re-work all the html because they extended most of the base into their own abstraction. tl;dr - the implementation I bought didn't use bootstrap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Double click and edit bootstrap templates:

<http://www.bootui.com/></comment>


Remote execution DoS exploits iPhone by simply loading a Web page - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1424

<comment><USER2> This doesn't work for me on Safari 3.1 (Mac), so it may be fixed in that update.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307467>

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307563></comment>


Pentagon Building Wish List for New Technology Spending - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/12/pentagon-building-wish-list-new-technology-spending/144249/ <comment><USER2> It must be nice to have an increase in budget so large that it could have been used to pay for free public college education for everyone.</comment>


BMW: All Models Electric Within Decade - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasdaq.com/article/bmw-all-models-electric-within-decade-20150629-00597 <comment><USER2> Ok, it's important to note that they're not saying all cars will be true all- electric, but rather that they will all have at least some kind of electric assist to increase MPG across the fleet. Even so, that would be very difficult to pull off in just 10 years given how long car design and production cycles are. It's a commendable goal, though.

<comment><USER3> I think BMW has been working on technologies for electric cars for a very long time already, probably even longer than all-electric car manufacturers like Tesla have existed. In Munich you already see quite a lot of electric BMWs and charging stations, so the technology seems to be pretty mature as far as I can tell.

I think the main reason they did not make the transition to (partially) electric cars earlier is that they did not want to cannibalize their business with non-electric cars. Another point is the still-missing charging infrastructure and the (to my limited knowledge) lack of some universal standard for charging stations. The final point is that today potential buyers of electric cars still have many good alternatives that are as much or even more ecological than all-electric cars. If you look e.g. at the new models from Volkswagen or BMW, many of the smaller ones use 4 liters of gasoline / 100 km or less (i.e. > 71 MPG), which is pretty hard to beat in terms of eco- friendliness and efficiency considering that electricity is still much more expensive than gasoline in terms of energy / price.

One driving factor in the transition to partially electric cars might be that there are not many other possibilities left to further increase the efficiency of conventional engines. In fact, most of the increase in efficiency that we have seen in the last decade was not due to better thermodynamic design of the motor block but better control of e.g. the fuel injection through more advanced sensors and electronics. As this optimization path seems to have reached is maximum potential it probably makes a lot of sense to use electric motors to e.g. recover braking energy, which should shave off another few percent in fuel consumption (Toyota already proved the feasibility of this very successfully with their Prius series).

<comment><USER4> BMW is making lots of money with eco-unfriendly cars: 7, huge SUV, over powered limousines, ...

In their home market in Germany electric cars have very little acceptance: expensive, low range, electricity is mostly generated with coal, no infrastructure, ...

The program of the German government to have a million electric cars is largely a failure.

Before there will be a million electric cars in Germany, there will be ten million electric bicycles.

<comment><USER3> Well even the big limousines are actually quite fuel-efficient these days. For example, the series 7 BMW 730 with its 250 horse powers uses only 5.6 l / 100 km ([http://www.bmw.com/com/de/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2012/sho...](http://www.bmw.com/com/de/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2012/showroom/technical- data/?)).

BTW coal makes up for only 20 % of the electricity production in Germany, and most of the coal-based power plants are quite "clean" in the sense that they make good use of the available energy (in most cases the heat waste is used industrially and emissions are heavily filtered).

As I said before, adoption here is mostly a question of availability, cost and efficiency, all three of which need to be improved before customers will see electric cars as a "reasonable" choice.

<comment><USER4> > Well even the big limousines are actually quite fuel-efficient these days. > For example, the series 7 BMW 730 with its 250 horse powers uses only 5.6 l > / 100 km > ([http://www.bmw.com/com/de/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2012/sho...](http://www.bmw.com/com/de/newvehicles/7series/sedan/2012/sho...)).

These are unrealistic industry-produced numbers. This is widely discussed in Germany that these numbers are a joke.

Also forget the massive amount of energy going into the production of these cars and the materials they use. The huge space and infrastructure they are using... we still have air problems in the cities because of the diesel cars.

> 20 % of the electricity production in Germany

Coal has a share of 43.6% of electricity production in Germany.

> in most cases the heat waste is used industrially and emissions are heavily > filtered).

The filter ash is going where? The coal is coming from where?

CO2 is not filtered.

<comment><USER5> I agree, the numbers tend to go towards 10L/100km for these cars, based on typical driving habits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Michigan the Big 3 are still funding hydrogen car projects and making primarily hybrids. Industry guys I know are not taking battery powered cars that seriously. They passed a law banning Tesla from having showrooms in the state.

[http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/...](http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2014/May/0507-fuel- cell.html)

[http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability- report-2...](http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability- report-2013-14/environment-products-plan-migration-fcv.html)

[http://www.autoblog.com/2015/07/30/fiat-chrysler-exec- future...](http://www.autoblog.com/2015/07/30/fiat-chrysler-exec-future-fuel- cells/)

<comment><USER7> I am looking at apartments to buy here in Sydney and not a single one has available power sockets in the car parking garage. Likewise at work. Which obviously makes charging impossible. The problem here is the chicken/egg situation. Building owners aren't going to install per bay power without cars. And people aren't going to buy cars they can't charge.

As land becomes more and more expensive housing density is increasing worldwide. This means fewer houses will have dedicated garages/driveways and apartments are going to become more popular. This increases the chances that your car will not be within distance of a power socket.

Hydrogen doesn't have this problem. It works exactly like petrol does today. It doesn't require much education or really any change in user behaviour. It is simply another nozzle at the gas station just like when LPG/Natural Gas was introduced.

<comment><USER8> Hydrogen is not simply a drop-in for petrol, like LPG/Natural gas. It is considerably more challenging to store and pump, and its infrastructure is _orders of magnitude_ harder to install than electric charging points.

<comment><USER7> But as a customer I don't know or care how the hydrogen gets there.

I just know that I will drive to the same gas station, use the same hardware to put it into my car, wait the same amount of time and pay for it exactly the same way I do today. Only it will be clean. And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car.

<comment><USER8> I honestly don't mean to sound antagonistic, but literally every single point you make is wrong.

> use the same hardware to put it into my car

It is not the same hardware: hydrogen pumps are far more complicated, difficult, and expensive than gasoline pumps. ([http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell- car...](http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont- work-part-2)).

> wait the same amount of time

Hydrogen cars will always have very poor range compared to hydrocarbon-fueled cars. So for the range that you get, you will spend much more time pumping. See the blog-post series above for more on that.

> and pay for it exactly the same way I do today

Because the infrastructure is many times more expensive than petroleum infrastructure -- and this is not just a matter of relative economies of scale, but a fundamental attribute of hydrogen -- you will need to pay much more to recoup those capital costs. Again, read the blog post series above (I'll stop repeating this, but it holds true for every point).

> Only it will be clean.

Only at your tailpipe, which is a false form of cleanliness. Systemically, Hydrogen is dirty. Hydrogen production is _spectacularly_ inefficient. The only remotely efficient way of producing it is to extract it from hydrocarbons -- in which case it would actually be cleaner to generate work by burning the hydrocarbons directly. Truly "clean" methods of hydrogen production (electrolysis of H2O) require copious amounts of electricity, which must come from somewhere, and again would be better used directly, via a battery- electric vehicle. Basically, any energy source which produces hydrogen could be used to directly power a vehicle, and would be 5x-10x cleaner by doing so.

> And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car.

You have _already_ changed your life to fit your car -- by driving to gas stations! Home-charging is a feature, not a bug.

Besides, if you really want to drive to a remote location to get a complete top-up of your range -- that's what battery-swap is for. Battery-swap stations are far cheaper to build than hydrogen filling stations, and can give you more range, more quickly, than hydrogen pumping. And they are _truly_ clean, not imaginarily clean.

<comment><USER7> You are missing the point. Look at it from the consumer's perspective. It will be identical to how they fill up their car today. Nothing new to learn. No change in behaviour. No finding new stations out of the way. No proprietary battery swaps that exist only at specific stations.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw)

<comment><USER8> Did you even read what I wrote, or follow the sources? Hydrogen pumping is _absolutely not_ identical to how people fill up their cars today. And you can't simply retrofit a standard gas station to pump hydrogen: you need to build an entirely new facility. Just like a battery-swap station, except much more expensive (and therefore rarer and further out of the way).

If you could simply replace gasoline with hydrogen, then your arguments might have some merit (although it still wouldn't be "clean" by any real measure). But you can't, and therefore your arguments don't.

<comment><USER9> It's identical in that you pull up to a pump, insert a credit card, connect a hose to your car, and in about 5 minutes you are on your way.

All your other complaints are irrelevant to the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really really need nuclear power to actually make this a "clean" technology. And I hope we're paying attention to the environmental impact of lithium mining too while we're at it. And rare earth minerals.

<comment><USER11> Everytime I read a comment like this (claiming nuclear is clean, ignoring the atomic waste contaminating your land with radiation for the next hundreds of thousands of years, which is starting to become a severe problem for example here in Germany), I notice that the commenter is usually from the US. I wonder why this is?

<comment><USER12> Nuclear is pretty clean if the waste is dealt with properly and stored safely, until we figure out how to use it.

My understanding is that the radiation problem in Germany is since Chernobyl...

I don't think people's viewpoint on this issue has anything to do with nationality.

<comment><USER13> Germany started their nuclear power phase-out in 2002, well before Fukushima. In 2010 the Merkel government decided to extend the lifetime of the existing power plants by 8 to 14 years, which was heavily criticized at that time. The only thing the Fukushima 2011 incident resulted in was that the phase out was accelerated but it would have occurred nonetheless.

> if the waste is dealt with properly and stored safely

At least in Germany, nobody figured out yet how to store the waste properly for a long-time. Remember, that the country is densely populated. For example, take a look at the Asse II mine.

<comment><USER12> Fukushima had a big impact on nuclear policy in Germany. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense given its geological stability.

There's a world outside Germany. Pay someone outside Germany to deal with it.

<comment><USER13> Nobody has yet built a storage site for high-level waste. There are three attempts, the two German ones failed. WIPP in New Mexico looks promising but is far from perfect. Even for less-radioactive waste, the current situation doesn't look too good.

The thing is: No matter how often it is repeated, there is currently no safe place to store a sufficient volume of nuclear waste securely anywhere in the world. It's not just a simple question of "paying someone else".

Developing those sites seems possible but the solution to the waste problem isn't there yet.

<comment><USER14> There's a storage site being build in Finland. Should ne ready to start accepting waste around 2020. The waste will ne stored in bedrock, around 450m below surface.

[http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/onkalo](http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/onkalo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The climate change deniers may be costing the US a chance to be a center an enormous future industry, clean tech.

The article says BMW's move is in anticipation of stricter environmental laws in the EU. The situation could give Europe or certain regions there a 'first- mover' advantage, if it hasn't already.

Once the 'Silicon Valley' or valleys of clean tech are established, where all the talent, capital, services and infrastructure are and where business is done over a beer/wine/etc, it's not going to suddenly shift to the US when Americans catch up on climate change issues, especially if Europe offers a large 'single market' for this technology. China could also be building an insurmountable lead.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am going to miss the conventional engines.. getting old perhaps.

<comment><USER17> Do you also miss when it was common for people to smoke in public spaces?

<comment><USER16> We still do it in Bulgaria but I hate smoking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me it is obvious that the way to go would be to abstract out the power source by using an electric drivetrain regardless of the engine. When the car has electric motors connected directly to drive shafts you can eliminate lots of the mechanical linkage and you are also free to redesign and relocate the power source as you wish.

But, most importantly, once you accept the slight inefficiencies in converting energy to electricity and then to radial forces, you are free to experiment with whatever power source you like:

\- use batteries like Tesla: you can simply fill with batteries any compartments of the body that you wish. The car runs as long as the batteries have charge.

\- use fuel cells if those ever become viable.

\- design a small, self-contained turbocharged diesel engine that runs at the optimum RPM to drive a generator when the batteries need charging: put it in the boot or the front bay, but you don't need to consider how it connects with the wheels mechanically, and it can be lighter and doesn't have to support a wide range of RPMs like current engines.

\- or maybe linear generator engines powered by gasoline or diesel (like what Toyota has been developing) turn out to be optimal for mobile electricity generation for some period in the future.

\- or maybe a low-cost turbine engine hooked to a generator like the Whisper concept car: the engine can burn nearly anything and provides high power output at high RPM that would otherwise be in the impractical range for a car.

But if you combine any power source _and_ a small battery, that allows you to buffer energy and only use the combustion engine to occasionally recharge the battery. You can drive the rush hour traffic or a downtown route using mostly electric power only, and rely on the combustion engine to recharge the battery when parked (but not plugged in to mains) or while driving during longer trips. A reasonable compromise for range anxiety would be to drop down to limited power when the battery runs out and you need to rely on the combustion engine only. You could still reach your destination but at slower speeds.

Nevertheless, the options are quite unlimited. Buffering of energy is more useful than raw power in the future just like an Android phone is more useful than a desktop PC in the general case even if it's slower and runs only a day or so without charging. Only serious usage warrants desktop PCs with stationary power supplies: most online activities can be done with a low-power device that runs on energy buffered in the battery.

<comment><USER19> Good ideas but those different power plants all have very different coolong and exhaust requirements. Hard to design something that can adapt to all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really wish that BMW would produce a low cost single seat city car that competed more directly with the Renault Twizzy. The i3 is great but for my needs it's honestly way too much and so too expensive.

<comment><USER21> The Twizzy is not very low cost and for that is has no windows I wouldn't even consider it a car.

<comment><USER22> Twizy is technically an ATV ("quad") and doors and windows are available as optional features from Renault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm I would love an electric car and the i8 is beautiful after seeing it local car dealer and drooling

but the price is incredible at north of €120K! you can buy an apartment/home here for that lol, and it wont depreciate as much

So in meantime i will continue to drive my decade old gaz guzling m-sports x5, i now wonder if should hold onto it another 10 years and keep in my garage, decades from now it could be a collectors item for those who want/nostalgic fpr v8 petrol muscle cars.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's going to be interesting to see how car companies adapt to the stricter standards and whether people are willing to give up the speed and power to go electric.

<comment><USER25> Electric is not slower or less powerful, electric's issue is the low energy density wrt petroleum fuels, so you need much more volume dedicated to batteries and you still get a much lower range. See the recent news about a hypermiler getting 452 miles out of a Model S (on 0-grade roads at 25mph), the hypermiling record on a production petroleum car is more than 1600 miles.

This is exacerbated by the much longer refueling times, a supercharger needs ~20mn for a 50% charge, an at-home 240V/40A does ~10%/hour.

<comment><USER26> Hypermiling isn't necessarily a valid comparison method. How do they compare in stop and go traffic where the gas powered car is wasting power that the electric car can retain via regenerative braking?

<comment><USER27> 2016 Toyota Camry: 25mpg city * 17gallon fuel tank = 425 mile range just city driving.

If you still want regenerative braking, the hybrid version is rated at 43mpg city and has the same size fuel tank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Misleading headline slightly...

</comment><comment><USER17> A fully electric Los Angeles would be encouraging. Paris, Shanghai, and Beijing too.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wonderful!</comment>


My first app after bootcamp - <AUTHOR> My co-founder Joey and I started Baron Fig 3 years back on Kickstarter making analog products.  At the same time, we always wanted to make an app to capture and organize your notebooks.
We tried every way possible to not program it ourselves.  Made a few versions using contractors.  Problem for us it was slow, expensive, and couldn't make changes fast.
I tried learning myself watching videos online, but didn't feel I was learning fast enough.  Ended up finding an iOS bootcamp in NYC (TurnToTech).  Spent 4.5 months splitting my time between a full time bootcamp and helping to run our full line of physical products! (paper notebooks, pens, leather cases)
After 6 months of working on the app, we finally released it today. Its been quite a journey and learned a ton.  If anyone wants to check it out, can take a look at our site.
https://www.baronfig.com/pages/codex <comment><USER2> Joey here. Major props to Adam from learning iOS/Swift and publishing Codex in less than a year. Let us know what you think, always looking to improve.</comment>


A better logo for Google Music? - <AUTHOR> http://syhw.posterous.com/hey-google-music-here-is-your-new-logo

<comment><USER2> BTW, don't use this service to archive your files, you can't download them back (Amazon cloud is better in this regard).

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't say I agree with this one.</comment>


Chat apps now more popular than SMS worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57581830-94/chat-apps-now-more-popular-than-sms-worldwide/

<comment><USER2> here's a tribute to those who made it possible from the team at Verbs.im & Appetite.io

<http://appetite.io/a/ab3f7e07> (links to an iphone home screen with 20+ messaging apps)</comment>


A century ago, a recording of "Livery Stable Blues" helped launch a new genre - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/was-first-jazz-recording-made-group-white-guys-180962246/?no-ist <comment><USER2> I don't know if this was planned out by the author of this article by right as I read this sentence "At 1:19, 1:37, 2:30 and 2:48, you can hear, in quick succession, the clarinet crowing like a rooster, the cornet whinnying like a horse, and the trombone braying like a donkey." I was at 2:48 in the video and heard what the sentence was describing. If it was planned out then it was a very cool effect and a good way for me to feel more connected to the article.

<comment><USER3> If I understand what you're saying, I don't think reading speeds are anywhere near consistent enough to plan out such a thing.

<comment><USER4> Hey, maybe the camera was tracking his eyes and started playing the appropriate sounds when his eyes focused on the right words. I'm only joking but I think that it is possible to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The American Folklife Center blogged about this recently:

[http://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/02/birth-of-blues-and- jaz...](http://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/02/birth-of-blues-and-jazz/)</comment>


Show HN: New voxel demo (webgl) - <AUTHOR> http://qake.se/demo2/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is an engine made based on my previous Qake Engine but this time rebuild to support multiple sizes of voxels, dynamically sized worlds etc.</comment>


Amazon Kindle Fire: More Profitable Than Expected? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/01/18/amazon-kindle-fire-more-profitable-than-expected/ <comment><USER2> 47% bought one as a gift, that worries me. It's similar to my own anecdotal evidence from people I know who bought them: they have an iPad, but they bought their kid/niece/nephew a kindle fire.

It seems like a lot of these are going to families as a 'second tablet'.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this handle reading e-books?

The article lists that as one of its main uses in the real work, but it seems like it would be a dramatically worse experience than either paper or the e-Ink kindles that came before the fire.

<comment><USER4> This, IMO, is one of the real problems with both Amazon and B&N branding their LCD tablet devices under the same brand as their eInk ones.

People don't seem to "get" it. The Fire/Tablet is more expensive, and so, must be the "best". If all you want to do is read, the LCD devices are actually _worse_ in both readability and battery life. But I don't see either manufacturer doing a great job at explaining that.

<comment><USER3> I think you have a great point. I have an older kindle (odd to say that about something I got less than 6 months ago...) that I think is fantastic as a dedicated reader. I would pay for the Fire swiftly, if it was a better reader, but the store models I have seen seem to be worse as dedicated readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their hardware cost will also come down as they achieve increased economies of scale. Net net, the profitability of the Fire should increase over time.

</comment><comment><USER6> So when users purchase a device designed to consume amazon services they consume more amazon services...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, nothing surprising here. By this logic, since most of the revenue comes from ebooks, they should have stuck to selling normal Kindles.

I suppose app and streaming video revenue will grow over time.

<comment><USER8> Half were gifts. This is a crossover device, at least in grandma's opinion, and she chose it over other pads. Even if its worse than a 'real Kindle', the point is the Fire got a sale that probably would have been lost to a nook etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Netlify lambda functions - <AUTHOR> https://flaviocopes.com/netlify-functions/ <comment><USER2> If you get in much deeper than just a couple of functions, I highly recommend using Middy. It acts as a 'sort of' middleware, which makes it much easier to write reusable stuff and comes with its own often-used middleware, such as converting the body from JSON to an object.

[https://github.com/middyjs/middy](https://github.com/middyjs/middy)

We have over 40 functions on our main product and it's been working really well.

<comment><USER3> Thank you! Was looking for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel that the term "lambda function" is being misused lately ...

<comment><USER5> Can you give an example of that ?

Generally « Lambda » refers to AWS Lambda , I've rarely seen it used another way.

Others FaaS on the market have their own name ( Azure Functions , GCloud Functions ...)

According to this article Lambda is what Netlify uses to run functions.

<comment><USER6> _generally_ Lambda in programming languages has been another word for anonymous functions, and has been for decades, until Amazon decided it'd be fun to name a product after a general programming concept.</comment></comment></comment>


What We Learned from Pivoting into a DTC Business in Two Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.branchfurniture.com/blogs/turn-key/pivoting-to-a-d2c-company <comment><USER2> branding and quality look on point. wish there were some more options

</comment><comment><USER3> this is impressive

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks jason - been a long few weeks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for one-on-one programming help when you are stuck? - <AUTHOR>

We all get stuck when we are coding, would you pay $50/month to have access to an expert programmer who you can skype and have him/her help you get unstuck? <comment><USER2> Absolutely - we all would. But the problem someone creating a business around that model _and targeting HN_ is that the level of expertise we might expect is far different from that which a government contractor/employee might expect. So asking us if we'd pay gets a different response than asking someone/somewhere else, I'd think. And that difference might make a whole lot of difference if you are trying to make a business case/model.

Man, $50 a month for 1-on-1 access to someone who knows _x_ better than me? I could do a whole lot of damage with that!

<comment><USER3> I don't think you could do a subscription model for this business. It's only profitable if none your customers use your service.

The value proposition makes sense - find a solution faster than searching for it yourself. However, I feel like you would have to pay per use and the level of expertise required would dictate cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was recently asked to join [http://www.sagebourse.com/](http://www.sagebourse.com/) as a teacher, but I had a few reservations about it. I do love to teach, but I don't want to put a price/expectation on it. I just prefer to troll freenode channels like #learnprogramming. I suspect someone like me would be a good kind of person to get as an instructor (not that many years in the field, wouldn't ask for much of an hourly rate, but is still knowledgeable to beginner to intermediate developers), and I think more experienced people would either ask too much or just not want to waste time. It would be really cool if there was something like this available, but I just don't think it will ever scale (and as it does it probably will degrade in quality significantly) or be reliable. It's definitely a 'problem' without a real good solution (if you don't count irc)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is kind of what I had an mind [https://gumroad.com/l/bADx](https://gumroad.com/l/bADx) \- again I am just trying to validate the idea.

PS: I make more than $50 an hour in my day job but the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service.

PPS: I know this doesn't scale, at least not at first and if it is just me but I can see it eventually becoming a marketplace

<comment><USER2> _... the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service._

I think that any consultant who has been in the game for many years has worked out a recurring monthly "relationship" with some customers for exactly that reason. The difference is that (a) those consultant deals have a minimum of x hours per month (where x >= 10), and (b) there's a dollar amount per hour that you bill for time over that base. As a result, you the consultant have a strong bias towards helping that customer ASAP. But it has to be at least a decent amount of money per month - say $1000 at a minimum - for you to put aside other projects 2-5x per month to help this customer. $50 though just doesn't cut it - am I going to stop working on this major project with a deadline three days away so I can earn $50 one time? No. I have 50 unread emails and they represent $5000 this month - am I going to ignore those right at this moment and answer the one that's worth $50? No. With your recurring consulting client though, you would do that - not only are you getting $1000 per month from them, but there's the potential every month to make much, much more if we go over x hours.

"But, Scott - I don't actually have any of those customers doing that with me right now."

Maybe not, but everything has an opportunity cost. All it takes is you not answering a $50 email in what the customer thinks is an appropriate amount of time and bam - bad reputation. Or all it takes is 2-3 customers in a row who ask for things that can't be completed in an hour or who don't like the advice/help you've given them and bam - bad rep. Or all it takes is one customer asking a problem that you don't know the answer to _and_ you also have a major project deadline looming and so you "miss" the question (wrong answer, bad advice, forget to answer, etc) and bam - bad rep. Just not worth $50 to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, I don't think I can realistically expect someone external to understand and solve the type of problem I'd pose to them. It's not that they wouldn't be smart capable people, but if I can't solve the problem easily myself, or with the help of StackOverflow or Google, the problem is typically of a nature that is very specific to my niche field, programming environment, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Recently saw a company on HN that does something similar: [http://www.airpair.com/](http://www.airpair.com/)

Don't know much about them, but they seem to be making a go of it. Apparently there's at least some demand in the space!

<comment><AUTHOR> very cool and similar to what I had in mind...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes. Absolutely.

Ignoring the possible problems of your pricing model, I'd go for this like a shot during the months where I'm coding.

Coaching is incredibly valuable, even for experts (which I'm not, but others might be), and is much undervalued.

</comment><comment><USER8> I came across codementor.io

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes.</comment>


Ask HN: My dad just retired. What should he do? - <AUTHOR> My dad is a Physics grad who has spent his entire life in Accounting and Taxation. Is fairly OK with tech but took early retirement since he wanted to "try something else". This has mainly resulted in Netflix so far.
I am seriously not sure how I should advise him on what he should  constructively do next to remain engaged and active (mentally and physically).
A lot of my friends are in a similar situation with their current parents. Feel like for this is starting to become a problem for all recent retirees! (Just tech savvy enough to browse apps/web but not motivated enough to learn programming)
P.S. We end up going into these deep topics like Universal Basic Income where his perspective from age and experience brings new dimensions https://twitter.com/jharohit/status/1097852468048814080?s=19 <comment><USER2> I have been helping non-programmers at work "get into things to do with computers" for the last two years. I'm happy to have a chat with you or him, if you like. There are plenty of interesting things to get into, but mindset, motivation, and intentions are the main obstacles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does he have any other hobbies?

Based on my hobbies, I know I plan on writing plugins for DAWs and writing more experimental electronic music, and to keep on playing guitar and bass until I can't for some reason like bad arthritis.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm about to retire, and am looking at hobbies that are good for lifelong health, like biking, hiking, walking and the sort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are great goals! Honestly I have heard the same from my Dad and also from my friends' parents. But nothing really incentivizes you apart from just the will to do that!</comment></comment>


Is Sniping a Problem for Online Auction Markets? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://papers.nber.org/tmp/97510-w20942.pdf <comment><USER2> The bidding system on online auction sites like ebay has always been a joke.

If an auction ends at a precise date and time, then the only thing bidding early accomplishes is driving up the price.

If someone wants to get the item for cheap, they should NEVER bid until the last second.

The whole concept is flawed compared to auctions in real life, which start with a bid price, and then drive up the price with additional bids. The auctioneer simply ends the auction when people stop bidding.

The only way to fix the sniping problem is to fix this fundamental issue with online auctions. They need to make it so that auctions can dynamically end at any point in time (for example, if the item hasn't been bid on for a set time window, or if the seller is simply tired of waiting).

Imagine if you wanted to sell an iPhone or something with this type of auction model. People would place bids up front, and they would have a fast-paced bidding war (driving up the price), followed by a slower bidding war, as they started to reach the limits of what they were willing to pay. If nobody topped the current bid during the following 24 hours, the auction automatically ends, and the highest bidder wins it. Placing a bid automatically resets the 24 hour delay (or maybe it resets it to an exponentially smaller time window to keep people from postposing an auction indefinitely).

I'm imagining a scenario where the person who creates the auction can set the auction automatic no-bid termination time window, and they could also set a true deadline (which perhaps only they would be privy to) when the auction would automatically end.

That is the only way bidding makes sense to me on online auctions. With the current system that ebay uses, sniping is the only type of auction bidding that makes sense.

<comment><USER3> The online auction with hard bid window is perfectly fine. Rationally, everyone bids their reserve price immediately at any time during the window. The current winning bid (just above the second bidder) is displayed so you can avoid the effort of bidding if your reserve is too low to matter.

I don't really understand the concept of "driving the price up" in online auctions. It only seems to represent a flawed understanding of cause and effect (the current price causes the future price) which only makes sense irrationally with effects such as anchoring or post-hoc rationalization of purchases.

The price is whatever someone is willing to pay for it, if you lose a purchase by setting your reserve on the auction system to less than your true reserve - what you were willing to potentially pay or conversely, if you have won an auction for more than you would have liked - you have failed to act in your own best interest, there is not a middle ground between the two.

<comment><USER4> While I agree in principle - I now just bid what I think and forget about it - if I bid $1.00 and you bid $1.02 you will win but really I was prepared to bid $1.04, so I have to overbid to avoid this margin. And then I'm at the next price break.

<comment><USER3> You could have simply bid 1.25 or whatever your true reserve is in the first place. If your reserve price changes in the face of the current auction price you're not acting rationally.

<comment><USER5> > You could have simply bid 1.25 or whatever your true reserve is in the first > place. If your reserve price changes in the face of the current auction > price you're not acting rationally.

Well, sure, the rational choice model is a poor model for human behavior in general that is only even a reasonable approximation when aggregating over large groups, and even then only in certain kinds of interactions. People not acting rationally isn't some kind of exceptional failure mode, its the norm.

In relevant particular, the rationality assumes -- falsely -- perfect, zero- cost knowledge of utilities and opportunity costs. In reality, understanding of the expected utility and opportunity cost of a transaction is always imperfect, and the degree to which it approximates perfection is dependent, to a certain extent, on the effort expended in considering the utilities and costs, which has its own opportunity cost.

If you modify the rational choice model only enough to accommodate the fact that certainty of costs and utilities in the real world is dependent on effort which itself has an opportunity cost it then becomes easy to see how it is as rational as it is practical to be to _revise_ ones estimate of value of a potential purchase in light of information that indicates that the safe (and cheap) estimate used in preparing a bid is not enough to secure a purchase, so further consideration is needed to determine if it is worth upping that bid or whether the purchase should be abandoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> New Zealand's TradeMe auction site just automatically delays the expiry by 2 minutes every time there's a bid within the last 2 minutes of the auction. The auction is not over until 2 minutes has passed with no further bids.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't see it mentioned in the paper, but one of the main advantages for using a "sniping" service is that you can participate in multiple auctions at the same time. Assume there are similar 5 items that would meet your need, but you only want 1 of them. If you "bid and forget", you might end up committing to purchase 0 to 5 of the items.

But if you create a "bid group" to place last minute bids, as long as the endings of the auctions are spaced in time by more than the "lead time", you only have an active bid on one item at a time, and thus will finish with either 0 or 1 items, a much better outcome.

The "bid and forget" alternative is to only bid on one item at a time, and then as soon as you lose an auction, you bid on one more. But this requires that you keep track of when the auction end, remember what the next item is, and submit the next bid before that next auction ends, which is hardly bid and forget.

ps. No affiliation, but I've used [http://auctionsniper.com](http://auctionsniper.com) for some number of years and would recommend them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Their answer, by the way, is that 4-18% of people are less likely to return to the platform as a result of irritation over sniping.

eBay's mechanism for automatically increasing your bid to your reserve as necessary should alleviate this. For me, it does ... I put in my max bid and just let it go (years ago, I sniped manually, when I had ntp and a fast connection and not everybody else did; that was good). But I find that for people bidding on my auctions, some don't understand the max bid idea (so are very good sniping targets) and others appear to understand it but still think they're going to get sniped anyway. I don't know how this could be but I've had a couple confusing conversations over it with people who offer me lots of money to end auctions early (and who don't otherwise seem like scammers).

So even though eBay has a way to beat this, regular people don't find it usable enough, basically. The TradeMe mechanism another commenter mentioned sounds smart.</comment>


Monarch: Google's Planet-Scale In-Memory Time Series Database [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol13/p3181-adams.pdf <comment><USER2> As someone interested in PL theory, I've long found the query language exposed by Monarch surprisingly interesting (briefly discussed in section 5.1 but the description doesn't quite do it justice). It's a functional language, a breath of fresh air compared to "real programming languages" in use at Google like C++, Java, or Go.

The most interesting idea is that its native data types are _time series_ of integers, doubles, distributions of doubles, booleans, and tuples of the above. This means that the data you operate on intrinsically consist of many timestamped data points. It's easy to apply an operation to each point of the data, and it's also easy to apply operations on a rolling window, or on successive points. This makes the language have the feel of an array-based language, but even better because the elements are timestamped and the array can be sparse.

Furthermore the presence of fields in each data point adds more dimensions to the level of aggregation (not just the inherent time-based). Now the language has the feel of a native multi-dimensional array language. It feels amazing to program in it. You can easily do sophisticated queries like figuring out how many standard deviations each task's RPC latency for a specific call is above or below all tasks' mean, for outlier detection.

<comment><USER3> The query language is the brainchild of John Banning, one of the authors of the paper, and has a long history behind it. In 2007 or so he started working on a replacement for Borgmon's rule language; the thinking at the time was that the main problem with Borgmon was that its language was surprising and difficult for casual users to grasp. (And with a monitoring language, there are only casual users.)

That work eventually resulted in a language called Optic, which was indeed (IMO) a very nice cleanup of Borgmon. Ultimately though that work got shelved in favor of Monarch, whose focus was less on the language problems of Borgmon and more on the points listed in the introduction of the paper, especially points 1, 3, and 4 (at least in my memory).

The underpinnings of the query data model and execution model got hashed out reasonably well as part of the first implementation of Monarch, which started in earnest in late 2008 or early 2009. But the textual form of the query language suffered for quite a long time after that. I wrote the first crappy version of an operators-joined-by-pipes language sometime in 2010. ("Language" is a generous term; John liked to refer to it in a kindly way as "an impoverished notation.") But it was clear even then that the basics of that syntax were appealing: they lined up nicely with how our users mentally constructed their queries. "You start with the raw data; then apply a rate; then aggregate by these fields; then take the maximum over the last five minutes" etc.

Through a couple of revisions over the subsequent few years, that "impoverished notation" eventually got embedded, through some awful operator overloading, as a kind of DSL inside of Python. But it was clear to everyone that it would be impossible to release that publicly to GCP users; it was much too clunky, and also by then tied inextricably to Python idiosyncrasies. So in about 2015, give or take, we came back to the question of what a better textual notation might look like.

The obvious first choice was to see if we could somehow twist SQL into being useful, possibly with some custom functions or very minor extensions. Around this time there was a large effort going on to standardize several different SQL dialects that were being used by internal systems (BigQuery/Dremel's SQL dialect was not the same as Spanner's dialect, etc). So it felt like there was a convenient opportunity to somehow fit time series data into the same model.

John did a bunch of due diligence to try to make that idea work, but it just wouldn't fly. I remember a list he had of about fifty of the most common kinds of queries, written with a SQL version next to (an early version of) Monarch's current query language. Nearly everyone he showed it to, across the spectrum of experience and seniority, both SWE and SRE, said "of course I'd rather read and write SQL, let me look at that list"... and then went through it careful and came out thinking, well, maybe not.

I don't know if there are any interesting conclusions to draw from the history of it, except that language design is really hard. I agree that it's a fun little language, and I'm very happy that John and the team managed to get it out publicly in Stackdriver.

<comment><USER4> Googlers still have to use the terrible python dsl ("mash"). Even worse: they have to use it wrapped in a different terrible python dsl ("gmon"). Sigh.

<comment><USER5> I was mostly using th new notation when I left in 2018.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that this paper contains hard numbers hinting at Google's absolute scale. They say Monarch has 144000 leaves. Even if each leaf is assigned only 1 CPU core -- which is probably a low estimate because who would do that? -- that makes Google's monitoring stack a Top 100 supercomputer.

The only other places I've seen Google give out hard numbers were a presentation by Jeff Dean mentioning map-reduce core-years consumed per day, and a footnote in a paper that mentions how much CPU time Google Exacycle gives away to scientific computing every day. All of these calibration points are eye-opening.

<comment><USER7> Yeah the "supercomputer" ranking is a bit of a joke. Every mid-sized google dc would count as a top 10 supercomputer.

<comment><USER8> I work at one such "medium sized" Google DCs. Supercomputers are typically much more interconnected, whilst we have a much more traditional topology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Question for googlers (and ex-googlers). Is there anything out there that's as convenient as /streamz, but in opensource form?

<comment><USER10> If you are looking for /varz, [https://prometheus.io](https://prometheus.io)

If you really want /streamz with simple aggregation for distribution, description for metrics etc in an HTML page, I haven't encountered one yet.

<comment><USER9> No, looking for streamz specifically. I'd like to be able to see how each node is doing and have automatic, zero-config aggregation in k8s a-la Borg/Monarch. The service I built was one of the first large users of Monarch at Google many years ago. All because I couldn't be bothered to learn Borgmon. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if Google will ever open source it.

<comment><USER12> Googler, opinions are my own.

Open sourcing anything at Google tends to be rather difficult because much of the technology we build is built on other technology that has not been released. It tends to take a great amount of effort to open source anything at Google because of all the internal dependencies you have.

It should be noted that Prometheus is an open source recreation of the precursor to monarch (developed by a former Google SRE that has since returned).

[https://prometheus.io/](https://prometheus.io/)

<comment><USER13> But when you publish a paper on Monarch, aren't you giving away the core idea?

In the case of PageRank, at least it was published after Google had already dominated the search space, i.e., many years after the conception, implementation, and utilization.

I wonder if Google papers are internally reviewed before publishing so as to make sure only partial information is revealed, and not the secret sauce.

<comment><USER14> [Also a Googler, opinons mine] In addition to what the other people are saying: there are some limitations to monarch (or really, the data upload path) that are quite annoying, so monarch isn't even necessarily the "best". It's just very good. There are ways to improve it.

The issue is, even if you give away the secret sauce that doesn't really help with making the secret sauce scale or whatnot, nor does anyone that isn't a large cloud provider need a custom solution like monarch. Prometheus or Datadog work fine for everyone else. This might be interesting reading for those companies, but also it might not be, because those can't be as centralized as monarch is (consider if prometheus had an API and ran a centralized cluster of data-ingestion servers, and you made time series to that global, Prometheus-owned, cluster).

<comment><USER15> The one thing I really want (which apparently Monarch has) is histogram retention. I'm often called upon to summarize service latency as global p50 and p95, and at the sheer volume of data we have, we aggregate that metric. Thus I am left calculating an average of p95s, which isn't super useful.

To the best of my knowledge, nothing else in the market does that.

<comment><USER6> Stackdriver/Google Cloud monitoring is backed by Monarch, so if you want the flavor of a Monarch distribution-valued metric, see the docs:

[https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/api/ref_v3/rest/v3/Typed...](https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/api/ref_v3/rest/v3/TypedValue#Distribution)

Since the distribution is represented by a CDF of buckets, there's no guarantee that you'll get an accurate representation of the median or any other quantile. On the other hand you'll get an exact average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale Given the size of the beast, I wonder what monitors it?

<comment><USER16> A borgmon</comment></comment>


Receivd is now kicksend - <AUTHOR> http://kicksend.com/early-access

<comment><USER2> I think I liked "Receivd" better... but I definitely understand that "Kicksend" would sell better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I definitely like the new name!</comment>