My startup: Simplified Server Monitoring (pre-launch) - <AUTHOR> http://checkmint.com/TTgyqjDE

<comment><USER2> It's pretty, and sounds good. I've used Nagios for server monitoring in the past and that can be a bit of a pain, but that's because you can use it to monitor damn near anything. As a sometimes-sys-admin, I assume that in order to achieve your claim of "Monitor virtually any Linux, Windows or Cloud Service" that you're going to be offering only pretty basic metrics. Can you elaborate on how you'll keep it simple when dealing with virtually-infinite possible combination of server configs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Keeping it simple while still remaining functional for "advanced" users is one of my primary goals. We will start with the basics, but only so we can actually launch the product asap.

That's really the problem we're looking to solving though. Simplifying the mess. (that includes billing)

In the end, we have a certain feature set that's our internal goal. Whether their is demand for every part of that is another topic. Polling and a/b testing will determine where our development efforts are focused and how the first iterations shape up.

btw, thanks :)

<comment><USER2> Perhaps use something like uservoice.com as a simple way to track feature/monitor plugin requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep it very affordable or have a workable free plan and I will be happy!

<comment><AUTHOR> deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great! We use and love ServerDensity (<http://www.serverdensity.com>). They just released an amazing looking MongoDB monitoring plugin as well ([http://blog.boxedice.com/2011/02/15/mongodb-monitoring- dashb...](http://blog.boxedice.com/2011/02/15/mongodb-monitoring-dashboard/)). Any idea what your pricing will be?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pricing hasn't been solidified yet. We're competitive...

I believe I have your email address. I'll keep you posted.

<comment><USER4> Perfect. Are you guys YC funded, or just bootstrapping? Also, props, your landing page is amazing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Bootstrapped, baby.

And really... thanks for the compliment. We weren't so sure about it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks cool. How does it compare to something like Big Brother from Quest Software? And would it be available for use on internal networks?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used Big Brother specifically. Big Brother appears to be filling an enterprise level need for "everything". I'm guessing the majority of their users only actually need 80% of its functionality (if that).

We're starting with that majority-of-users functionality and building from there. Ease of use will and simplicity are our primary goals. Internal monitoring by way of server-side agents _is_ part of the plan.

<comment><USER5> I work with a company that uses Big Brother and they're not fans of it. Its user interface, ease of use and poor visualizations draw a lot of complaints. I'll keep an eye on your project as it develops, good luck with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool name and really nice design. Can you elaborate on what frameworks you used and how long it took to make?

<comment><AUTHOR> First, thanks!

The website and application are built on Tornado Web services (tornadoweb.org).

The front-end that you're seeing took about a week to finalize with revisions and fine-tuning, etc. At some point I just said "enough! let's put this in to production" and went with it.

The referral portion is also custom built, but only took a few hours total including the backend admin. The actual monitoring application took /quite a bit longer/ and is still in development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just requested a beta invite.

This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for for my startup. I had a love/hate relationship with Nagios/Cacti/Zabbix at my last job. Having something simple I can set up and (mostly) forget about is all I need at this stage.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update to this post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228000>

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting. How do you compare with Scout? <https://scoutapp.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> We're similar in that we're simplifying the server monitoring process.

For now, that's all I can say...

<comment><USER9> We used to use Scout. They're a great group of guys, but ultimately, we ended up just falling back to a Munin install. The biggest challenge for monitoring software seems to be the wide variety of environments you'll encounter on various servers. Scout does a nice job of focusing on Rails apps, but their scripts required just enough of my time tweaking that I ended up deciding that it wasn't worth the effort for the added insight we gained. Keep that in mind when developing your service. Make your documentation top notch, and provide an accessible support conduit for when users encounter issues.

Just to be clear, our decision to not use Scout wasn't because their service was bad. To the contrary, the service itself was very good. It just required a little bit too much setup and required a high degree of inference from the sysadmin. You more or less had to read the code in some of the plugins in order to make things work. That added up to more effort than I felt we were getting in benefit when compared to something like a local Munin install.

<comment><AUTHOR> The best feedback and advice I've gotten so far.

The monitoring product idea was created because of that exact issue. Nothing seemed to really solve the problem for us. I'll definitely refer back to this comment often.

You can follow me directly on twitter (same username) for any feedback or suggestions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startups Should Outsource HR - <AUTHOR> http://jackg.org/startups-should-outsource-hr

<comment><USER2> The company that I work for is a reasonably sized startup, around 60 employees. We have a small HR department and one person in charge of hiring. They are absolutely incompetent; they are completely incapable of doing their job and have been looking for any opportunity to leave for another department, I have no idea how they still have their job.

This really hurts the company, it blows my mind how such a seriously important part of the company can be treated so casually. If the person(s) in charge of hiring at a company aren't putting 100% into it then the ENTIRE company is affected.

Any opportunity to put HR in the hands of people who know what they're doing should be taken.

<comment><USER3> I have never met an HR person inside an organization who was particularly competent or at all fun to be around. Maybe they exist within a few of the bigger/more successful recruiting organizations (Palantir, Facebook, ...), but in general, any good HR person will end up being an externally-facing recruiter. Internal HR people exist to help the company fire people they want to fire, maintain regulatory compliance, and that's about it.

<comment><USER4> " Internal HR people exist to help the company fire people they want to fire, maintain regulatory compliance, and that's about it."

Sadly this is true. I had a startup that was acquired and we went from being a 50 person company to being a 250 person company, and later nearly a 1500 person company. And our original HR person who was more of the morale/culture/lets stay balanced kind of person, quit after the 'real' HR people explained to her what her job in HR was. I was helpless to change her fate and that really bothered me for a long time. After that and later Sarbanes Oxley and "Regulation FD" stuff were on everyone's mind, the people that called themselves 'HR' became compliance officers. Their job is/was to protect the company. That was sad for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We use Accretive Solutions in Mountain View -- they have an outsourced HR/accounting/admin service. They can use TriNet if requested, but I've found a lot better deals (if your employees are in multiple states) going direct.

The zero value add admin/compliance parts of HR are what you should outsource -- absolutely not the value-add parts like recruiting, internal culture management, picking unique benefits, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Services like these are ultimately short-term solutions. Our office manager was #7 to join and she's been a godsend in helping manage basic HR as the team has grown.

My advice to any founder is to seriously consider making an OM hire sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER6> Definitely hiring a good OM is a crucial move that lets the founder/manager focus on more important tasks than administrative stuff. However in case of 'hard' HR where up-to-date knowledge of legal, taxes, insurances etc. aspects is required, OM is not enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The $150/month seems very low. Every plan I've looked into in my area (AZ) is the >$500/month/employee range just to run it (no services), and has a minimum of 10 employees.

Someone could make a mint doing an good job of this online.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else have experience with using full-service outsourced HR? Even with an accountant and a good law firm, its amazing how complex HR can be, given all the nuances of payroll, benefits, contractors, etc.

<comment><USER9> We've had an excellent experience with TriNet - highly recommended.

<comment><USER10> My employer also uses TriNet. We switched from ADP at the beginning of this year, and it's been a much better experience. They just seem to be more on top of things and can get us actual answers when we have questions. Their website for employees is a little funky, but is much easier to use than ADP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In addition to being a major lurker here, I'm also a marketing assistant at an HR consulting and employer services company. There really is a TON of stuff that these companies can offer startups.

Most interesting though, in addition to dealing with compliance, taxes, etc. a lot of HR companies are looking to offer a wide range of services. I'm thinking of things like manager leadership training, employer handbook development, onboarding, compliance assessments, job descriptions and postings, employee satisfaction surveys, etc. etc.

<comment><USER12> If you're at the stage where you need employee satisfaction surveys and an employer handbook, you're no longer a startup, you're a bona-fide company.

A lot of that stuff sounds not only unnecessary for a startup, but downright wasteful. If you have 8 guys working for you, is that really the most productive place to put money?

<comment><USER3> Legally you DO need crap like an employee handbook, documentation of signing off on training or compliance documents (NDA, etc.), tax and insurance compliance, etc.

It is _because_ that stuff is such pointless crap, yet mandatory, that it is a productive place to put money vs. founder or employee time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have no experience in this area, but I think that a HR company finding employees for start-ups can be problematic. Normally, if you are not a 100+ people start-up, the kind of people you are looking for are not exactly the ones that are doing well in a standardised, corporation-style application process. So it's possible you end up with a bunch of corporate people, where you actually wanted some creative nerds.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is true to the extent that the PEO takes care of administrative things that aren't critical to the culture of the company.... but there should always be someone at the company whose an employee ombudsman / morale officer, whose mission is to make sure employee issues don't become problems, and who helps install a good company culture.

One startup I worked with had a person like this who was bot the recruiting person and morale person, and they had a dedicated morale budget. Rather than spend the budget on a monthly pizza party or something repetitive, he'd often save up a couple months of it and surprise us with something completely unexpected.

That one guy-- who was not a founder-- had a larger positive impact on the culture and effectiveness of the company than most of the founders (who at least get credit for knowing they needed someone whose mission was to create a good company culture and keep morale up.)

<comment><USER3> In most companies this role is taken by one of the founders (along with heading recruiting); I'd say the odds of success of the company can be judged by how long a founder does this vs. hiring someone to do it. Otherwise, it's usually someone who wasn't hired specifically to do morale (at least in smaller companies), but someone like an office manager or other manager who does it as a side project.

It's basically NEVER anyone in HR.</comment></comment>


Kissing the App Store Goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/kissing_the_app_store_goodbye

<comment><USER2> Everything is all about marketing now. Getting coverage and the word out there - makes a big difference (not that I've done that with my apps).

How are you going to compete with the likes of EA, LucasArts, ngmoco, Konami and capcom with massive budgets and connections? For me it seems you need to create something different/wonky that people will talk about, or the staff likes, to get on the top 25 or other lists.

Simply making something and putting it up there won't make you shit, I know I got one up there.

>> An Orwellian review team which does not communicate to anyone (even inside Apple), uneven policies which change at random times leading to horror stories form Shaken Babies to Google Voices

I agree for the most part with this. Any sort of crazy idea I have, I immediately think I'm not gonna bother with this because it takes to much time to develop just to be denied by Apple, for some arcane reason, and get a rejection letter with a nondescript problem. Other problems with the review process, you have absolutely no idea how long it will take.

I would love to get some sort of lead time, or amount of apps before yours.

For me it's a crap shoot, but I make things I like and want, if I plan to send it to the store, because I think others might enjoy them, I test them out to the best of my potential and try to conform to Apple's HIG.

<comment><USER3> Well, part of your wish is coming true. Apple's announcing an average time-to- approval for developers. Which is a very small step.

([http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/01/apple-adds-queue-time- contact...](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/01/apple-adds-queue-time-contact-info- to-iphone-developer-pages/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yowza.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2HdUuM_2Gk>

<comment><USER5> This demonstrates that whilst there's plenty of valid criticism of Apple's handling of the AppStore, it's _your_ job to build something that people want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another developer who fails to grasp the difference between distribution (the App Store) and marketing (the bit you must do to raise awareness of your application).

<comment><USER7> when your application is only available through that one distribution channel, your marketing ability and effectiveness are pretty limited.

<comment><USER6> Rubbish. How on earth does a distribution channel limit ones marketing ability? These are completely orthogonal aspects of producing a successful product.

Do you think movie studios hope that you'll stumble across their film by looking at the show times of your local theater? Do Authors pray that you'll stumble across their book in the M-R fiction section of a bookstore?

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, smaller independent films and authors probably do hope you stumble upon their works -- it's notoriously difficult to sell books unless you are picked up by a major publisher.

I think his point is that things like the App store should be more of a meritocracy (like the web), but it's becoming increasingly difficult for smaller players to get noticed to due the economics (strong downward pricing pressure) and Apple's policies (random rejection can destroy months of work). One thing they don't mention is how difficult it is to figure out where your sales are coming from; there's no Google analytics or referrer logs for app sales -- you have to do things like become your own affiliate through LinkShare and assign different codes to your own links if you have multiple distribution channels.

<comment><USER9> A list of all the things one can do to raise the profile and track the marketing of a single developer app would be a useful resource. Hell, if you put together a decent sized ebook, it would probably be a reasonable successful product. If you could reach the right audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The app store is not awesome for consumers. Like he says, it is poorly organized (why can't they implement tagging?). Finding something worth spending money on is time consuming and near impossible. Finding something that is free and interesting is also quite difficult. I monitor Pinch Media's feeds, and filter based on free, but most of the apps are worthless.

As for pricing, I think the realistic price for a well developed app is $5-10. I have spent money on a few games, but most of the non-game apps are either useless or targeted at something outside my wants.

A great example of a free app is Word Warp. It is one of my most frequently used apps. Supposedly, they make serious cash from advertising. If it's a game, and worth replaying, you can make good money. Maybe there's a way to do this w/ non-games that isn't too intrusive.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh wait, so it's just like the criticism thrown at Windows Mobile devices by Apple fanatics that "sure there's lots of software [for Windows Mobile] but there's so much of it it's impossible to sort through and determine quality."</comment>


Github is down - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com

<comment><USER2> I've noticed that these are not immediately marked [dead] by the Hacker News admins like some other spammy topics, and I guess this is a sort of gray-area. On the one hand, it is in some sense a "new thing" and it affects the community; on the other hand it does not particularly gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity to be linked to that status page. The later explanation and diagnosis of what went wrong, if it's made public, might be interesting: just knowing "you can't use this now" isn't of that caliber though.

It's also puzzlingly dynamic: In other circumstances the "current status" pages linked during outages have not been blog-type, but have instead just literally reported the current status, leading to links which say "X is down" -- only for you to click it and see "X is functioning normally." This has already happened for the folks who linked the GitHub main page, which loads normally. (And won't it also prevent the same URLs from being submitted at a future date?)

<comment><USER3> Also, many of these things, by the time some people (such as myself) see them on the front page, are already fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This feels like a pretty standard pattern for a lot of services — fail, come back up on backup DB, fail again when backup proves to not be capable of handling the surge of load, then eventually come back up on the primary DB once people have gotten bored and stopped hitting 'refresh'.

Is that a function of not prewarming failover DBs, or is there something pathological about the primary-secondary pattern?

<comment><USER5> Maybe we just don't hear about situations when the backup/secondary server succeeds in picking up the slack because it would be transparent to the end user?

<comment><USER4> Selection bias, good point.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and the selection bias goes even deeper: The simplest possible failover logic is "if something is wrong with our ability to talk to the database, try the secondary database". But, in that case, you almost never see a broken website running on its primary database. Inevitably, the site has already tried failing over to the secondary before it gives up and yells for help.

On the one hand, this is not a good thing, because if you've got a problem that's unrelated to the database (e.g. too much traffic is choking up your supply of DB connections) and then you do a failover, now you have two problems - or, at least, more moving parts to sort out before the situation is resolved. So it's tempting to design a more clever failover scheme. But, on the other hand, cleverness is itself a risk: Not only might your clever algorithm have an even-more-clever pathological failure mode, but it's harder to understand in an emergency. When your stuff is broken, simplicity is your friend. All else being equal, you don't want your front-line emergency responder to have to understand complex failover logic. There is nobody more frustrated than an ops engineer who can't make the system use the primary database because some stupid bot keeps forcing the use of the secondary, or vice versa. In the heat of battle, they're liable to comment out your clever bot and replace it with a one-line shell script.

Engineering is a difficult balancing act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If only there was some way of using git locally without needing github!

Oh wait, this isn't svn.

<comment><USER8> Aside from the fact this argument falls apart when you use submodules or third party repos, a lot of us use GitHub for the services they offer beyond just git.

<comment><USER9> If only there were some way to mirror submodules or other third party repos to your own servers without needing github.

Oh wait, this isn't svn.

<comment><USER10> I think he's also referring to website hosting, issues, wiki, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Frontpaging on HN will certainly help.

<comment><USER12> The purpose of a "status" page is ostensibly so that it can get the most visibility when the service is down, so that people aren't constantly refreshing the main site.

<comment><USER13> Also the status page is usually hosted on a different server than the service it reports on. Otherwise it would go down with the main service and be pretty useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now that is a good service status page. It made me go from "Github sucks" to "Go github." It is well pieced, informative, and upfront about the whole deal. Their auto refresher seals the whole deal. It shows they are confident on their skills to get the problem fixed. Bravo github. Well done. Now hurry up and finish so you can answer the support email I sent this morning. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I can see a github post-downtime analysis blog post coming up (I hope). :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Question for the Github people: Why not keep serving non-stale cached data while your databases are down?

You can do this with proxies or by modifying your code to always serve out of cache, and the db updates the cache, so if the db is down, the cache is your temporary failover while you fail over to the secondary db. ('cache' is anything memcached-like that's separate from your db)

<comment><USER17> We do in a lot of cases. We just don't have every detail in the whole app cached. :)

<comment><USER18> You don't have some things cached that should be obvious to cache, like the HTML for the most popular repos. Loading the commit messages from JSON for a page that's being accessed tens of thousands of time a day is less than ideal.

It isn't just github, it seems like a lot of web apps don't use the lessons learned for web sites.

<comment><USER16> I think there's a culture with modern developers that says using older, less sexy technology isn't going to work as well as newer, sexier technology. "Cache HTML?! That's so inefficient!" Yeah, it also just works, too. When all your databases, content engines, storage services, deployment tools, etc all take a crap, your clunky little web proxy cache keeps right on humming and your customers get at least a half-functioning site, if they notice at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If only there was a better git hosting provider. Oh wait, I use bitbucket.org!

</comment><comment><USER20> Yay!! We made it, frontpage on HN!

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool, an auto-refreshing status page that will mostly be looked at when the servers (possibly the network) are already stressed.

<comment><USER22> That page is hosted on separate infrastructure than their production app.</comment></comment>


Erik Naggum (1965-2009) RIP - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/kjetilv/status/2251766884 <comment><USER2> I keep hearing about how Erik was such a smart guy and how he contributed so much to the Lisp community. I have a serious question for those of you who say that his net influence was positive despite his abrasiveness: other than "The Long, Painful History of Time", a few pithy quotes, and a lot of rants on usenet, what exactly did Erik contribute?

<comment><USER3> I used to be a prolific ranter with an interest in Lisp. Running into Eric's posts inspired me to give that up - I didn't want online rants to be my legacy. Related, Xah Lee's crazy writings inspired me to take my social life seriously and not over-share on the internet. Both of them, and the rest of the comp.lang.lisp, taught me that getting stuff done was more important than making sure I was using the most aesthetically pure computing environment. Another lisp programmer, Philip Greenspun, also demonstrated the negative effects of too much writing online. In addition, he showed me that photography was mostly a factor of how much film and equipment one can afford, which inspired me to give that up and focus more on music and other things I had natural talent for. Finally, and only related in form, reading Ludwig Wittgenstein's later "notebook" style writings inspired me to give up on philosophy and enter industry instead of philosophy grad school.

<comment><USER4> > _photography was mostly a factor of how much film and equipment one can > afford,_

Bullshit.

<comment><USER5> Quite an eloquent rebuttal. Such a knee jerk response really makes me reconsider the truth of the statement.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, but the original claim dismissed an entire field of art by claiming that it boiled down to amount of wealth. I thought of writing something longer – perhaps an elegiac about the typical disparagement of what one does not understand, or a list of parallel examples that would show the stupidity of the argument ("computer programming was mostly a factor of how much CPU one could afford."), but then I decided that it was so self-evidently absurd that it would be a waste of breath to do more than simply point it out as bullshit.

<comment><USER5> _the original claim dismissed an entire field of art by claiming that it boiled down to amount of wealth_ I can imagine that, say in the seventies, both camera's and film were a lot more expensive than nowadays(relatively). As practice makes perfect, really getting into photography, wouldn't be an option for all people then, because it would be too expensive a hobby.

It may have been a pretty weird blanket statement, but there may also have been a hidden context that makes it a reasonable statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I knew him mostly through his usenet posts; he always seemed to have interesting opinions, often expressed very bluntly.

I really like his essay, "The Long, Painful History of Time": <http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html> See also local-time, a common lisp package based on his ideas: <http://common-lisp.net/project/local-time/>

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum>

<comment><USER7> "Whoever decided to use the semicolon to end something should just be taken out and have his colon semified."

Thanks Erik, I didn't know you, but you made my life happier for a whole minute :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To announce someone's death in a fucking TWEET is so insulting I actually feel angry.

update: Mod me down all you want, twitter fans. I'll be happy to tweet your deaths as well, if I can fit it in between what I had for breakfast and the funny thing my cat just did.

<comment><USER9> When my sister died, the reality was that I didn't know everyone that was important to her, so I had to resort to emailing all those she had emailed in a mass mailing she had sent a while back. I also created a web page so that people would find when they searched for her.

If twitter had been around, I would have posted there too.

Years on, I still get email from old friends of hers who found out via the page and want to chat about her to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He had a unique online persona - simultaneously nasty and fanatic(about lisp) and brilliant.

<comment><USER11> _Look at the United States of America, with its depressingly moronic units instead of going metric, with its inability to write dates in either ascending or descending order of unit size, and with its insistence upon the 12-hour clock, clearly evidencing the importance of the short-term pain threshold and resistance to doing anyone else's bidding. And now the one-time freest nation of the world has turned dictatorship with a dangerous moron in charge, set to attack Iraq to revenge his father's loss. Those who laughed when I said that stupidity is the worst threat to mankind laugh no more; they wait with bated breath to see if the world's most powerful incoherent moron will launch the world into a world war simply because he is too fucking stupid. But what really pisses me off is the spineless American people who fails to stop this madness. Presidents have been shot and killed before._

This is a fine example of the nastiness I guess, but it kinda makes sense in a weird sorta way !

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Age ~44? What are the oblique references to his declining health related to?

(" I am unable to keep my company in operation for health reasons, but it is one of those things I just cannot give up. Instead of being a commercial undertaking, it is now only a hobby. Until my health improves, which it might never do sufficiently" - <http://naggum.no> )

<comment><USER13> ulcerative colitis

</comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Is there any other confirmation of Erik's death?

<comment><USER14> [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8u5dp/erik_nagg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8u5dp/erik_naggum_19652009_rip/c0afqzh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> if you ever played street basketball you would understand the context of erik's controversial posts. next time you're in ny, head over to west 4th street's basketball court in manhattan - the language is thick and the gestures are threatening, only to be followed up with chilly beer and dubbies. the net is relatively new, most people aren't aware you have to put on 3D glasses.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is really sad, he was one of the greatest thinkers of the hacker community, certainly up there with pg.

This doesn't make him justice, but his rant about XML is one of my favorite rants ever: <http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML>

</comment><comment><USER16> Naggum was sort of the anti-pg (actually on Wiki he's described as PaulGraham's EvilTwin): people who loved Lisp were driven away from the community because they couldn't take the abuse, and so comp.lang.lisp became a vicious slime pit.

There's more discussion and some minimal confirmation on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8u5dp/erik_nagg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8u5dp/erik_naggum_19652009_rip/)

Unlike most of the posters there, I'm glad he's gone. The world is a better place without him, and maybe now the Lisp community can begin to heal.

<comment><USER17> The reality of the world is there's a place for all kinds. The thoughtful speaker needs the passionate militant because not everyone has an open mind. Think Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

Moreover, the world needs these type of people on all sides to make sure the truth gets heard. Even if Mr. Naggum wasn't speaking the truth his opinion helped keep minds open to his side of things.

Honestly, as annoyed as I get at times by people like him I can also see how it's a noble pursuit. As much as people say they don't care what other's think just about everyone does to some extent. In that way it can't be an easy job to scream what you believe is the truth until people listen. So really people like Mr. Naggum are giving up a large piece of happiness to continue their devotion to what they believe is truth. That's admirable.

<comment><USER18> Also remember the duality of those two people: Martin Luther King at times called for violence and Malcolm X was mostly a peaceful protestor. It's easier to put them into categories but nobody is so bluntly one way or the other.

Just as I hear Paul Graham's name blasted frequently online, for a variety of reasons, I'm certain Naggum inspired as many people as he scared off. Never assume an internet personality is the whole story.

<comment><USER19> As someone who owes a lot to Paul Graham's influence in the very space (Lisp hacking) that Erik Naggum inhabited, I object to your implied equivalence between the two.

 _I'm certain Naggum inspired as many people as he scared off._

I realize you mean well, but this is glib. Erik Naggum, in his online capacity, was a consummate intellectual bully. (It's hard to imagine anything less true of PG than that.) You know how everyone talks about how dysfunctional the Lisp community is? Naggum did more than anyone else to poison it. Go read the archives of CLL and see for yourself how it starts out as a wellspring of intelligent and civil discourse and then decays under the influence of some smart, funny, nasty characters. The whole thing is a case study in the fragility of online communities.

As one longtime Lisper explained to me, Naggum was so smart and willing to put so much time into it that he became a torque on the whole thing. Most people who found his style obnoxious simply left, and for many (not all) who remained he became the local standard. People began to imitate him and it ultimately affected not only that group but the Lisp world as a whole. Many nice people have tried to repair the damage, but it may never happen: the niceness required to do so is orders of magnitude greater than the poison. It's like trying to clean up an oil spill.

Erik Naggum was obviously really smart and could be quite funny (I enjoyed that aspect of his writing), and for all I know he was a smashing great guy in person - but as far as the above-mentioned harm goes, those things made it worse, not better.

Edit: given that HN's defining quality is to foster intelligent and civil discourse in a way that _doesn't_ get poisoned, your equivalence (and the place you posted it) are kind of ironic. But I know you weren't trying to make a huge point out of it.

<comment><USER18> I don't know much about Naggum, so it's entirely possible you're right. Apologies if I misinterpreted his relationship with the community.

<comment><USER19> No problem. Thanks for figuring out that I wasn't attacking you personally :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Perl 6 is different - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/leon_timmermans/2010/04/why-perl-6-is-different.html <comment><USER3> There's a presentation that Larry Wall gave at Google that has a lot to do with the internals of Perl 6: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzIWdJVP-wo> Actually, to be honest, I don't recommend it, I found it surprisingly dull in delivery (sorry, Larry), but the contents were very interesting.

I actually think describing Perl 6 as "having macros" is accurate, but gives the wrong impression. It doesn't "have" macros, it's _made_ of macros. The whole language is made of macros and you are nearly begged to extend it with more grammar. Or you can throw theirs away and write your own for something. Or you can throw theirs away, take some of it as a base, and extend it.

It's a wild, wacky experiment that needs to be done. Whatever happens, we'll learn a lot. My intuition says "collapses under its own complexity" (especially after trying to add a few grammar-modifying CPAN modules) is the most likely result, but I fully support with no sarcasm someone trying this out in case my intuition is wrong. It's not just Lisp redux, it's something new.

<comment><USER4> _The whole language is made of macros and you are nearly begged to extend it with more grammar. Or you can throw theirs away and write your own for something. Or you can throw theirs away, take some of it as a base, and extend it._

And people wonder why Perl is known as a "write-only" language!

<comment><USER5> Because it's a powerful language and during the dot com boom was used by a lot of very poor programmers.

Rails is running into the same problem with overuse/abuse of monkey patching, method_missing etc. that perl ran into with overuse/abuse of rich syntax.

It's sad. But it's really nothing to do with either language. They just handed a large chunk of power to a developer community that grew too large too fast for most of the membership to have learned how to use that power responsibly.

<comment><USER6> So, do you think the key to Perl 6's success is to avoid that? That is, do you think it's better for Perl 6 to have a smaller, more seasoned developer community in the beginning (to establish some best-practices before the rest of us join in)?

<comment><USER7> Unless you manage to pull every novice, dabbler, and new developer into the community and teach those best practices from the start, you won't solve the problem on a large scale. Programming -- especially the realm of informal, ad hoc programming so well served by dynamic languages -- rewards individual exploration. You don't have to write elegant Python or Ruby or PHP or Perl to get your job done, and you don't have to learn a lot of theory to accomplish a task. You may make a mess, but it's not clear that novices care about that. Why should they?

Perl 6 has an advantage in that most of the tutorials and examples aren't full of bad examples and muddled thinking like most of the Perl 5 tutorials and examples are. I don't expect that to last, but hopefully some thoughtful language design will make abusing the language much more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use Python as my primary scripting language but I spent some time looking at Perl 6 in the context of Parrot and it really has a lot of good ideas that post mentions:

      - multi-methods
      - rules (builtin parsing capability)
      - <USER2>
      - and a whole bunch of other good stuff.

I really made me want to use Perl6 and Parrot. That said the only reason I couldn't what perhaps the same reason I use Python over Perl5. I somehow couldn't get myself to go with such a _rich_ syntax. But if Perl5 is your thing then Perl6 is something that you will definitely like.

<comment><USER9> The industry as a whole errs too much on the side of _syntax as the focus of the community_. Syntax should fade out of the way. It should be infrastructure, not features. _Libraries_ are the proper object of focus. Libraries can be modified, forked, debugged without dividing a language community. Doing that to a programming language syntax weakens and divides such communities. In contrast, those actions on libraries actually strengthen programming language communities.

<comment> loup-vaillant Syntax has two problems: (1) it is the most visible thing in programming languages, and (2) there is only one per language.

I believe we should be able to modify, fork, or debug syntax the same way we do libraries. So what about a syntax meant to be read by computer instead of by humans?

        # Factorial example, machine syntax
        fac
          -> int int
          \
            0 -> 1
            n ->
              *
                n
                - n 1

It could be displayed in human readable form by an IDE or converted back and forth by suitable preprocessors:

        -- Factorial example, Haskell syntax
        fac :: int -> int
        fac 0 = 1
        fac n = n * fac (n - 1)

        // Factorial example, C syntax
        int fac(int 0) { return 1; }
        int fac(int n) { return n * fac(n - 1); }

No more quibbling over prefix vs infix, curly braces vs indentation, familiarity vs terseness… That would take a flame war away from language design and put it where it belongs: the IDE.

<comment><USER3> I've seen some people try this. It has problems once you extend past Ye Olde Factorial Example. Try converting larger chunks of syntax and it rapidly develops that you are quite obviously just putting different skins on the same semantics and it also quite rapidly becomes clear that having multiple skins is a disadvantage, not an advantage. All putting a new language in a skin that looks more "familiar" to you does is fool you into programming Old-Language- in-New-Language; you really _need_ the syntactic differences to remind you that you are _not_ in OldLanguage.

Try translating at the deeper semantic level and you also discover that you basically can't. The C-semantic equivalent of the Haskell is closer to a for loop, and even that isn't an exact match. (An exact match probably involves "goto".) Non-trivial examples just explode in complexity, and that's long before you get to _useful code_.

This is in the class of "things that have been possible for decades but haven't taken off for good reasons", right up there with the purely-visual languages and other classic "good ideas".

<comment><USER9> The "syntax as infrastructure" idea has been around in many moderately successful incarnations. (Lisp and Smalltalk, to name a couple.) Another way to think of this: shift Syntax into Meta-syntax, so it gets out of the way of the libraries.

No need for "syntax skins" in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My understanding is that Perl 6 is the polar opposite of lisp, in this sense: In lisp, the code is always and everywhere already in a parse tree, and can be manipulated easily by, e.g., macros; Perl 5, on the other hand, is the most unparsable language possible: see <http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393>. What perl 6 does is own the parsing problem, and respond by incorporating super powerful parsing tools. Unfortunately, I believe that perl 6 retains its dynamic syntax, so parsing of perl 6 itself is still an uncertain adventure, and not something one can incorporate unconstrained into one's metaprogramming. I'd love to be wrong about that; am I? If so, can someone recommend a tutorial on perl 6 metaprogramming?

<comment><USER11> Well, I'm just learning Perl (work related) and it certainly feels like they tried to include a lot of ready-to-use lisp-like macros in an otherwise traditional syntax when inventing Perl.

And Perl 5.12 has this jewel in its changelog:

New experimental APIs allow developers to extend Perl with "pluggable" keywords and syntax.

<comment><USER5> Which is already doable from CPAN using Devel::Declare, hence Method::Signatures::Simple, Sub::Curried, MooseX::Method::Signatures etc.

The stuff in core is, however, way, way more elegant than the way Devel::Declare currently does it - which was rather the point, Devel::Declare was "retrofit to existing perl5 VMs what will hopefully be core later".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know anything about Perl 6 (or much about earlier versions for that matter). Can someone explain how close it has gotten to Lisp? What macro facilities does it have? Can you munge the syntax tree after code is parsed?

<comment><USER13> Very close from what I gather from the web. It has macros similar to Lisp. They take an AST and return an AST. <http://perlcabal.org/syn/S06.html#Macros>

Do you think that Lisp style languages with sexps are the end in language design, or do you think that something better will be invented? (or has been invented)

<comment><USER12> I would never say never, but I haven't been able to think of a better way to represent programs than s-expressions despite many years of thinking about the problem.

I wouldn't be surprised if sexprs are the end in the sense that the integers are. I.e. you might go on to discover new things but they'd ultimately reduce to sexprs.

Is there a textual representation for ASTs? Could you write programs directly in ASTs?

<comment><USER13> To your question: yes, the Perl syntax (the macro system supports quasiquotation). This is exactly the same as in Lisp. The difference is that Lisp syntax looks more like how the data structures are represented in memory. I think you can also build up your programs with data constructors (i.e. like doing (list 'lambda (list 'x) (list '+ 'x 1)) in Lisp). But note that I haven't used Perl6, this is information from the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love Perl. I am most fluent in Perl. I can hack things together in Perl using CPAN modules without pausing, without thinking, and I am most efficient using it. I am happiest hacking Perl at 3AM. I hate whats happened to Perl because Perl 6 has taken so long to ship. Perl 5 is outdated. Moose helps, but its gotten so bad for so long that I can't code in Perl and collaborate with anyone. I write clean Perl, but it doesn't matter - everyone else moved on years ago and disdains it. So I hack Ruby, Python, etc. because I have to.

I hope Perl 6 changes that. Is it ready to use?

<comment><USER15> No, but this is a good time to play with it ... Rakudo Star should be released in the next 2-3 weeks or so.

Problem with Perl 6 was that it's too ground-breaking, without having the resources of a huge company (like Sun, MS).

But it doesn't matter because you can't find the combination of features it provides in other languages ...

      * full OOP
      * optional typing
      * multi-dispatch
      * macros
      * cool pattern matching
      * functional features ... map, fold are at home ;)
      * continuations / coroutines
      * transactional memory
      * eventually it will be compatible with every package on CPAN

Personally I don't like Perl (either 5 or 6), I'm more interested in Parrot because what is widely viewed today as being general-purpose VMs (the JVM / .NET) are a poor choice for dynamic languages.

Consider that the JVM and .NET are stack-based. Because of that efficient continuations passing style is impossible on top, and that's a PITA because you can build any control structure on top ... tail-calls, closures, coroutines, exceptions, green threads ... can all be implemented efficiently in terms of CPS.

Another thing against the JVM / .NET is that they'll never earn optimizations for dynamic languages that could impact the performance of first-class citizens. You can forget about an efficient tracing-compiler on top of those, simply because such optimizations are not cheap and can impact the performance of Java / C#, and those VMs are not low-level enough to implement it at a higher level.

And for instance, personally I'm skeptic that InvokeDynamic on the JVM will deliver that much performance. Yeah, it provides a mechanism for a monomorphic inline cache, and from there the JVM can do stuff like code-inlining of call- sites.

But it doesn't do tracing of types, which means that code like the following ...

      sum = 0
      for i in range(1000):
          sum += i

will always pay for the price of boxing/unboxing of those primitives, an optimization that current Javascript VMs and LuaJIT 2 are doing.

So if Parrot delivers, it will be one heck of an alternative. Either way, its interface is nice and you can use it right now for prototyping new languages.

<comment><USER16> Actually, Rakudo Star is probably about two months off at the moment. Q2 was the originally announced timeframe, then April was batted about, but the lead developer has had major family health issues taking up his time, so we elected to push it back towards the tail-end of Q2.

On the other hand, it's already a pretty good time to play with Rakudo Perl 6. It's still got some rough edges, and it's slow, but it's also expressive and powerful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      It has been said that Ruby is Smalltalk with a perly syntax.
      Perl6 extends on that: Perl 6 is Lisp with a perly syntax.

Interesting idea, but I would have loved to see some examples or comparisons. For all of the mindshare that Perl has, I haven't seen much content (especially code) about Perl 6 over the last couple of years.

<comment><USER18> Here are some links showing recent Perl6 content/code:

* Perl6 advent calendar: <http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/>

* Moritz Lenz perl6 blog: <http://perlgeek.de/blog-en/perl-6/>

* Carl Masak perl* blog & github projects: <http://use.perl.org/~masak/journal/> <http://github.com/masak>

* Perl6 planet: <http://planetsix.perl.org/>

* Perl6 book: <http://github.com/perl6/book>

* Perl6 examples: <http://github.com/perl6/perl6-examples>

<comment><USER17> Thanks—I'll check those out!

<comment><USER18> You're very welcome.

This link may also be of interest: [http://transfixedbutnotdead.com/2010/01/14/anyone-for- perl-6...](http://transfixedbutnotdead.com/2010/01/14/anyone-for- perl-6-metaprogramming/)

From the links in the post you can find Perl5, Ruby, Javascript and Python comparative examples.

Been playing a bit with Io (<http://www.iolanguage.com/>) recently so was planning to add a comparative post for that as well.

 __Update: __I just copied over my Io example i had brewing into a gist (<http://gist.github.com/372559>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I may have missed the point, but it seems to me that the gist of the post is, "Perl 6 is different because it's the same as Lisp".

<comment><USER18> Larry Wall himself said that:

 _Perl 6 is Lisp with a decent syntax, and minus a lot of assumptions about how lists should be represented :)_

ref: <http://irclog.perlgeek.de/perl6/2010-01-15#i_1905210>

He then goes onto to mention that _despite all the trappings of OO, Perl 6 is fundamentally more in the FP camp_

<comment><USER19> "Perl 6 is Lisp with a decent syntax,"

Calling perl syntax "decent", and by implication better than lisp syntax (such as there is) is mind bending.

<comment><USER15> Perl's syntax is designed to be more close to natural language.

Both Lisp and Perl are in the same camp ... I could hardly read an algorithm written in them before learning and actively working with them.

Either way, I'm tired of languages that can only be extended by adding functions. Declarative APIs require much more than that.

<comment><USER20> > Perl's syntax is designed to be more close to natural language.

s/natural/English/. Some languages can be parsed by computer without problems. For example, simple 15kb C program can parse 100% of technical text in Esperanto, 98% of technical text in Ukrainian (my native language), 84% of technical text in Russian, and so on. Not so simple parser can parse more than 100% of text, i.e. it can fix errors in text.

For me, shell is much closer to my native language than perl or SQL.

PS. AFAIK, there is no natural language in the wild nature. :-/ All human languages are artificial.

<comment><USER18> I think bad_user might be referring to Larry Wall's post _Natural Language Principles in Perl_

ref: <http://www.wall.org/~larry/natural.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _It thankfully steals nothing from PHP_

I love this quote.</comment>


RMS on the Death of Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#06_October_2011_(Steve_Jobs)

<comment><USER2> Join the discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3083349></comment>


Otter Browser – Aims to recreate the best aspects of classic Opera UI using Qt5 - <AUTHOR> https://otter-browser.org/ <comment><USER2> There's also Falkon, now a KDE project, which I prefer. The UI is more like Firefox, and it's QtWebEngine-only, which is maintained, unlike QtWebKit these days.

[https://www.falkon.org/](https://www.falkon.org/)

<comment><USER3> > maintained, unlike QtWebKit these days

Seems somewhat revived/maintained by annulen [0] as pointed out in these release notes. Also, QtWebEngine seems to usually be behind a Chromium version or two which, among other reasons, is why I use CEF in my Qt-based browser (granted I'm behind a couple versions on public releases, but that's my fault).

0 - [https://github.com/annulen/webkit/tree/master](https://github.com/annulen/webkit/tree/master)

<comment><USER2> Yes, that QtWebKit revival is interesting and worth watching. I haven't followed, but I'm still not sure if it's up-to-date. This blog post from a WebKitGTK+ (with a section about QtWebKit) developer from 2017 is the best info I could find: [https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2017/08/06/endgame-for- we...](https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2017/08/06/endgame-for-webkit-woes/)

And yes, QtWebEngine does not keep up with Chromium, but it is updated to some degree. I wish Qt and distros could at least keep better up-to-date with security fixes, but it's easier said than done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Screenshots: [https://otter-browser.org/screenshots/](https://otter- browser.org/screenshots/)

<comment><USER5> I find open source websites which can't provide a simple slideshow for viewing screenshots very depressing.

Do these developers seriously expect interested viewers to click back and forth just to see their graphics?

<comment><USER6> This is the first time I've ever heard 'clicking a mouse button' declared an egregious violation of the user's effort. Is this a widespread concern? How do you use the web?

<comment><USER7> most of the people nowadays surf from mobile

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem I really have with all these alternative browsers is one of trust. It always comes down to just blindly trusting the signed binaries posted online by "some internet guy" on a random website. Even Chromium suffers from this. For an application which I will be entering credit card details, social security numbers, and all other imaginable form of private data, this is non- negotiable.

<comment><USER9> I believe it's not exactly correct to separate browsers and non-browsers this way.

On desktop systems, a malicious program typically can access most data from the other applications. Personally, saw a few non-browser programs that had an "extra functionality" that swept the drives and phoned back home - and never saw a browser with malicious extras (except for third-party browser extensions). Not saying this couldn't happen, just that I feel that direct approach is somewhat less likely.

<comment><USER10> One browser that does phone home is UC Browser[0]. I agree with you though, you don't _truly_ know what will happen when you install any application on your desktop without proper inspection. With so many security researchers out there I'm surprised they don't inspect software for that kind of thing and do public reviews, and showcase evidence of phoning home without consent / notifying the end-user in an obvious fashion.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having used Opera for many years this sounded intriguing. After playing around with it for a bit, less so. Ok it got the mouse gestures, thanks, but for the rest: lots of small quirks which make it feel way too alpha (UI looks messy, different colors for menu bars and address bar/tabs, search box is pretty small, seems to use multiple icon themes or so, buttons with text clipped, ALT-D goes to address bar but doesn't select all text, the new tab page doesn't show icons nor tile images nor address so you have to hover to find out what a tie does, ...), doesn't feel particularly fast, and it doesn't have mail which was like the single thing making me stick with Opera for too long :P

Apart from that it's pretty cool nonetheless, and good that people still remember the proper Opera of back in the days.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps report your findings to the developers, to potentially have them fixed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Vivaldi (Vivaldi.com) browser is what Opera would have been if the 12 linage had continued into this day.

<comment><USER14> I doubt that Opera would've become a poorly performing browser with UI built with node.js.

<comment><USER15> I use it everyday and find its features and compability !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice, their front-page really could use some pagination love, I shouldn't get more than 10 weeks worth of updates on 1 page. I have to scroll all the way to the bottom before I can see the FAQ which is something I'd want immediately available without having to scroll down too far, or on it's own page, otherwise people will just think they don't even have an FAQ.

</comment><comment><USER16> The only reason I prefer Chrome over competitors is the speed of startup (including cold) even with _lots_ of open tabs. I close and start the browser many times and so far nothing beats Chrome.

<comment> em-bee firefox solves that by not loading all tabs except the active one. tabs are then loaded when they are opened.

<comment><USER16> I know but ff startup is still slow, including warm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is admirable that they took on this job, but I would probably stay away from it for serious things because of security aspect. Modern browsers (Chrome - Firefox) are probably a much safer choice.

<comment><USER18> On the other hand, browsers with a large user base are a more likely/profitable target for hacking.

<comment><USER19> _> A system or component relying on obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that if the flaws are not known, that will be sufficient to prevent a successful attack. Security experts have rejected this view as far back as 1851, and advise that obscurity should never be the only security mechanism._

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

<comment><USER20> Security through obscurity is bad, but the original comment wasn't about security through obscurity in that sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't find any mention of rendering engine or capabilities and plugin system.

<comment><USER22> opera 12.x FOSS version spinoff

<comment><USER23> Opera 12 rendering engine was entirely closed source, so a FOSS spinoff isn't possible. This is mainly working on recreating the UI experience only, with a very different rendering engine.

<comment><USER24> Interesting - I'll try it out, quite curious to see how it compares with Vivaldi, which has an Opera-like UI with the Chromium engine.

<comment><USER23> Otter predates Vivaldi (at least publicly)—I think Otter started very very soon after Opera 12 was discontinued. It's also open source (which imo was Opera's downfall), and uses an engine that is not the dominant one on the market (albeit a close cousin); I think both of these points are on its favour.

On the other hand, Vivaldi seems to have more resources behind it, as well as the name of Jon von Tetzchner, which helps adoption. It just seems to be making the same mistakes Opera did (closed source, so the community can never bring it forward independently), with the added downside of being really no different from the market leader under the hood (rendering).

<comment><USER25> Vivaldi's source code is available [https://vivaldi.com/source/](https://vivaldi.com/source/)

<comment><USER23> Opera 12s source is also available, yet it would still be illegal for someone to fork it as it'sa closed licence. Available source is not open source—the difference is having a legal right to continue development.

<comment><USER26> Of course, legality doesn't stop some people ;-)

There have been very interesting creations, like 10 versions of Windows on one live DVD, made by those who couldn't care less about the legal aspects. Such a "underground" browser would be an interesting thing indeed... there was a discussion here on HN about the source code leak not long ago.

<comment><USER23> I'd very very much like to see such an underground effort. We can dream...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My problem with alternative browsers is that I'm locked-in because of a few plugins, and I cannot be bother reinstalling all settings and plugins (including plugin settings) when I change computer.

Any browser that will let me sync settings and plugins, and that has the plugins I need (Slither, Pocket, AdGuard), I'll try and continue using if it works for me.

Otherwise, it's hard.

<comment><USER28> > Any browser that will let me sync settings and plugins, and that has the > plugins I need (Slither, Pocket, AdGuard), I'll try and continue using if it > works for me.

Firefox does this, no?

<comment><USER27> Yup. I did use if for a while.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin isnt the future of money – its either a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/08/bitcoin-isnt-the-future-of-money-its-either-a-ponzi-scheme-or-a-pyramid-scheme/ <comment><USER2> The headline says it's a ponzi/pyramid scheme, which doesn't get mentioned until the second to last sentence, in the form of a speculative question:

"In the meantime, though, Bitcoin is still a little bit of a Ponzi—or is it a pyramid?—scheme that its libertarian early adopters are trying to cash in on."

The general statement of the article is that Bitcoin is not as good as it seems because it's infrastructure takes energy to run and lacks some features banks have. While every other aspect gets compared to banks, the infrastructure of them doesn't even get mentioned. Yet, the costly infrastructure of the Blockchain is one of the main concerns raised in the article.

The Blockchain costs a lot of energy. So does every Google search you make, if you remember that comparison to how many hours of light you could generate instead of a single search.

How much energy does it take to run the parts of banks that the Blockchain could replace, globally? No one knows. My guess is that it puts the Blockchain to shame.

As more and more things go digital, the biggest cost aspect of a lot of things will be electricity. If it's not the Blockchain, something else will need that much energy.

More than likely whatever industry develops around VR will eat loads of energy. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't go for it, or that it's bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> A rambling, pointless article. Possibly the worst article I've ever read on the Washington Post. No substance to question of illegal scheme. Suggests we don't know the true cost of Bitcoin because of the environmental impacts of the energy use... even though the previous sentence explains that some miners are located in Iceland because of abundant energy and cold temps...</comment>


Please Let This Apple Rumor Be True: An iOS Smartwatch That Talks to Your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/please-let-this-apple-rumor-be-true-a-smart-watch-that-talks-to-your-iphone.php

<comment><USER2> Honest question: do people _really_ wear digital, "smart" watches?

When I see people wearing a watch, it's usually:

\- as a woman's fashion accessory

\- as an expensive/dressy/show off piece (Breitling, Panerai, etc.)

\- as a retro/hipster/ironic piece (old timex or swatch)

Do people really use/need "smart" watches?

<comment><USER3> I don't think the majority of people need or even want smart watches [1]. However an iterative update to the Nano to include Bluetooth 4 connectivity would allow it to be used as a portal to say, the entire music collection sitting on the device in your pocket/handbag, email notifications, weather forecast, Airplay remote etc. So a seemingly pointless ~1gb device becomes a whole lot more desirable through a relatively cheap and simple hardware update.

[1] Just another bit of kit that you have to take off/put on each day and doesn't add a whole lot more value than carrying a phone in your pocket. Separate devices are an antithesis to the smartphone - the Swiss Army Knife of the digital world.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Never-Blink: Blink and Lose. An Online Web Game - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ByronHsu/Never-Blink <comment><USER2> Clever idea, and (thank heaven) an incredibly clear demo right on the home page. Well done! I kind of think this could be like the next 2048.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your highly affirmation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> PR: never blink royale

Same game, many more players at one time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, what did you mean?

<comment><USER4> There is a new trend on games – they are implementing "battle royale" genre where multiple gamers play against everyone at once and every "killed" player will leave the arena. Winner is who stayed as the last "alive" person.

PUBG probably was the first popular PC game that was battle royale. Fortnite is currently most played battle royale

<comment><USER5> Uh, what about Team Fortress 2 (King Of The Hill maps)?

<comment><USER6> TF2 doesn't have any BR modes. KOTH is a standard arena shooter mode, with teams and respawning; "KOTH" only signifies that the objective is to control a static area in the middle of the map.

The closest that TF2 gets to a BR is its "deathmatch" or "elimination" mode, I don't remember the name, in which there is no respawning and the last person standing wins. However, this is very different from a BR; the maps are still tiny, there is no loot to upgrade your character, and there is no "circle", which is a wall of damage that shrinks to force the remaining players to move towards each other rather than staying put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone looking for a link to a live site to play it:

> Becausee the detector is too slow and weak, we can not endure too many > clients. Therefore, we do not deploy it to a public server now. We plan to > train a robust and fast model in the future.

:(

</comment><comment><USER8> Cute.

However I assume I could out-blink the framerate of a laptop webcam ;)

Does closing one eye at a time count, or is this like Doctor Who and we just ignore the concept of winking?

<comment><USER9> Too much effort. Just print out a picture of a person with open eyes.

At that point it's really just the honor code that holds us to honesty.

<comment><USER10> Add heartbeat detection to verify the person is alive. [1] has one example, Google "use webcam to detect heartbeat" to find more.

[1] [https://github.com/thearn/webcam-pulse- detector](https://github.com/thearn/webcam-pulse-detector)

<comment><USER11> Add gaze tracking and have people look at a randomly moving dot.

<comment><USER12> While entering captcha codes every 10 seconds

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams We need a version which allows players to eat a sugary doughnut without licking their lips.

</comment><comment><USER13> There are two private RSA keys in the repository. That may be intentional, but it's usually not a good idea.

[https://github.com/ByronHsu/Never- Blink/blob/master/backend/...](https://github.com/ByronHsu/Never- Blink/blob/master/backend/server.key)

[https://github.com/ByronHsu/Never- Blink/blob/master/backend/...](https://github.com/ByronHsu/Never- Blink/blob/master/backend/server.key.org)

</comment><comment><USER14> What are the chances I'll end up maintaining intense, unwavering eye contact with someone doing something lewd in half of their screen?

<comment><USER15> Where is our computer vision if it can't even recognize cocks?

<comment><USER16> Looks like this drew some downvotes, but it gets a +1 from me. Reliable realtime "censoring" in video chat platforms _not intended for sexual content_ would make informal video chat a lot more user friendly. I'd totally video chat with random strangers, that sounds fun. I'd join a video chat group hangout (Hacker New Live, haha) but I'd prefer everyone kept their pants on. Doubly so if I'm going to join this chat at work or in public.

<comment><USER17> Given what I know about the internet, this would promptly be subject to groups of users constantly testing it to see what they could get away with before it's the recognizer catches up.

<comment><USER18> hey, that's machine learning baby. Sounds to me like it's a successful market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome! I couldn't help but think that this needs to be implemented in a chat-roulette style application. Blink and you're thrown out to the next person.

<comment><USER20> Implementing a chat-roulette style application will bring chat-roulette style problems.

<comment><USER21> but blinking is faster than clicking the 'Next' button when someone surprises you with their 'goods'!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool concept. Some blink trivia, if you're playing to win: ;-)

Don't play against young children.[1]

Do play against women taking birth control.[2]

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/223495](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/223495)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7822673](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7822673)

</comment><comment><USER23> Has potential as a mobile app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Instagram has proposed "flappy bird" not long before. We though that we can use the same technique to launch a mobile version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That look like a lot of fun. Short simple fun.

I'd love this as a game/app to battle people on my contact list and keep high scores.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that we can cooperate with messenger or line!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice and fun concept! You can easily create a game with this concept.

<comment><USER26> The BBC created a game using this mechanic a couple of years ago, based around Doctor Who's Weeping Angels: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/593c6730-9491-...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/593c6730-9491-4735-b71a-dad09f82c241)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Better put a legal notice about potential health implications, or you may get into troubles.

</comment><comment><USER28> Clearly a Theranos pivot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. Why?

<comment><USER29> Because Elizabeth Holmes never blinked!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone ever heard of Total Shield EMF Protection - <AUTHOR>

I have a user that keeps this pipe bomb looking device next to her desk. I am a little worried that this device might damage her computer. Any thoughts?<p>(device) http://www.cutcat.com/item/Total_Shield/570 <comment><USER2> Whadda fuq, stay away from such esoteric cr*p...

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. I received a call from her about her computer running really slow. I walked in and noticed that device sitting on her desk next to her PC tower... Do you think it is messing with her machine?

<comment><USER2> Haha nope, I rather think that she clicks yes on every crapware installer and her PC is infested with spyware, toolbars, "cleaners" etc.

Just like 90% of private computers and organization computers without a decent IT staff.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Ruby's Default Arguments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobalean.com/2009/02/28/hacking-rubys-default-arguments

<comment><USER2> I don't quite see this as "hacking" anything, but it's a useful thing to know.

Along similar lines, I was coding some Ruby and calling a method that took a flag argument. E.g.

        save_something @something, true

and it bothered my that it was not obvious what that last value was for.

I figured that one approach might be to create a throwaway variable and use it in place of the literal:

          overwrite_existing = true
          save_something @something, overwrite_existing

... and then decided to just pass that first expression in as the argument itself to tighten things up:

          save_something @something, overwrite_existing = true

Basically, a handy (hackish?) way to document any argument.</comment>


Why Google Wants to Sell Its Robots: Reality Is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/why-google-wants-to-sell-its-robots-reality-is-hard <comment><USER3> Out of all the reasons I've read in the media, I really only see one legitimate (non-FUD) possible reason for Google selling Boston Dynamics: they didn't integrate into the company well. Not building the products Google envisions, and not working with Google's other robotic divisions, both seem like really glaring issues that would motivate splitting off Boston Dynamics.

Google has many divisions working on unprofitable long term research projects, so clearly that's not the reason. I don't think it's fear of humanoid AI - this doesn't seem like something the founders of Google would fear.

<comment><USER4> This. Another article that was more in depth said that the other robotics companies Google bought were being integrated into other divisions. Boston Dynamics is the only one being sold off. For whatever reasons they didn't mesh well with the rest of Google.

<comment><USER5> It is possible that Boston Dynamics is still very tight with military contractors and technologies which may prevent separation. Google made it clear it does not want these contracts and associations.

What if a chip/software chunk in Atlas was made by Raytheon and any modification needs to shared back? Or access is not even possible.

<comment><USER6> > Google made it clear it does not want these contracts and associations.

They did? Google still does DoD contracts for supplying Google Maps among other things. I figured they didn't care.

<comment><USER7> Just my personal opinion, but I think Boston dynamics robots show a lot of potential in the near future for military uses, however seeing big dogs in the battle field could generate pretty bad PR for Google, a company whose motto is, still, do no evil.

<comment><USER8> I'm inclined to agree. Google probably does not want to be the company that creates Terminators for the Pentagon. Watching the last BD demo on YouTube, watching that humanoid stomp through the forest, I couldn't help but joke how terrifying it would be to see one of those things holding a machine gun.

<comment><USER6> > I couldn't help but joke how terrifying it would be to see one of those > things holding a machine gun.

Funny thing is I would be far less terrified of it than a human if it were holding a machine gun because its human-like movement is so incredibly slow I would feel like I actually had a chance (even if I didn't).

However, if they embedded the machine gun into the bot itself (which I think is far more likely) then you could have instant targeting which shifts the terrifying back to the bot. It would also not look like it even has a gun depending on how they incorporated it and it could fire in multiple directions at once.

Ah, the future of war. So efficient and terrifying.

<comment><USER9> There are already automated "click to kill" turrets. They have a thermal camera and a gun, do automated target detection and automated killing. It's only due to customer demand that they have a human in the loop clicking the kill button. Having been within the firing range of one of those, it's a really terrifying feeling.

<comment><USER10> Which company makes these?

<comment><USER11> I think Samsung has a division that makes them for the ROK military (not being facetious, but possibly being incorrect)

<comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AKZC-5dFWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AKZC-5dFWQ)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "To develop robots, you have two options: You can either simulate an environment and robot with software and hope the results are accurate enough that you can load it into a machine and watch it walk."

This is much harder than you'd think.

Here's a fun story from 15 years ago when a friend of mine tried to do some simple AI:

His goal was to have a humanoid shape created is software learn how to walk using simple AI. The idea was that it would obey some basic laws (gravity, the limits of its joints, etc.), do something random, check whether or not it was closer to the goal of walking, tweak its parameters, and iterate. The chosen goal was not to fall over.

He set up the program, let it run over the weekend and let it do millions of tries. Hopefully when he came back to the office it would have learned how to walk, or at least stand up without falling.

His disappointment was huge when he came into the office: The simulated robot was sitting down with its knees bent, thus having achieved the goal of not falling over.

<comment><USER14> I've heard a similar story about small self driving cars.

The cars would drive around using a random algorithm, then copy and tweak the algorithm of the longest running car when they crashed. The researcher left the room to let the cars work, only to come back and find that each of the cars had deduced that the perfect solution was to remain perfectly still. After all, if they didn't move, they couldn't crash!

<comment><USER15> The only winning move is not to play - WOPR A.k.a. Joshua

<comment><USER16> That's the story story of a game-learning program that found the best way to "not lose" at tetris was to pause right before a brick extended above the top of the level, and leave it paused indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if is because the author is trying to be accessible, or genuinely doesn't understand AI but the writing eregiously understates the difficulty of human level machines.

If I had to summarize what the article said: "Google tried these robots but are selling them because it turns out to be hard to make robots that are as capable as humans." Which is like saying "it turns out that making humans immortal is really hard."

I doubt that is why Google is selling BD. My guess is that it was a combination of things: BD was a cost center with no commercialization roadmap, someone on the board got spooked about stupid AI risks, with the alphago wins it might start looking too scary for the public.

I think it was a terrible idea for Google, but is great for the robotics world as the behemoth is scaling back totally taking over the world.

<comment><USER18> Hi there, author here -- mostly trying to be accessible. And I think in the tech community it is well understood that robotics is hugely difficult, but it seems like general public pretty much equates progress in software AI with progress in robots, which is clearly not the case. We thought it might be helpful to highlight this to people who aren't hugely technical.

<comment><USER17> Thanks and it makes good sense in that context.

That said, I do fundamentally believe that there are some things that the "general public" will never wrap their heads around. Feynman had a great take on this when trying to explain why he can't just describe magnetic forces [1]. I'd be curious to hear your take on that.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o)

<comment><USER18> I'm an optimist in this area - people like Wait But Why and XKCD (eg - [https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/](https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/)) - <USER2> that most complex subjects can be explained in simple language that most people with an average education can understand. (An aside: I recently wrote an article about the use of D-Wave quantum computers on Wall Street and that experience gave me a sense of how tremendously difficult it can be to simple summarize an inherently technical topic. I estimate it took about five hours of study to be able to write a couple of accurate sentences I felt comfortable with.) Whether the general public has the inclination to take the time to understand this stuff is another question entirely!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They also admitted autonomous cars are going to take much longer than anticipated. Up to 30 years.

Perhaps the car situation and this are forcing them to rethink some of their plans.

<comment><USER20> Obviously. People who think general purpose self driving cars are just a few years out ignore the basic tenant of engineering: the last 10% is 90% of the work.

And with stuff like supersonic planes or Mars travel, the last 10% may take an indefinite amount of time.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty optimistic that supersonic planes are possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think Google simply concluded that BD's hydraulics-based approach was a technological dead end, and that there was little to be gained from trying to retool the existing, highly-specialized team. And once the DoD said they wouldn't use it, there was no customer on the horizon to offset the ongoing cost. So there was no short or long term reason to keep it.

</comment><comment><USER23> DARPA Robots are full 2.1D autonomous. Cars have far less degrees of liberty and their "environment" is heavily subsidized.

Why are drones (3D evolution) and electric train (1.xD evolution) easy to build?

Well in the case of drones makers don't care about limiting the movements so rules of feedbacks are easy. In case of train, it is even easier.

It is all about the size of the decision tree and the number of input(sensors)/output(effectors) that are coupled you need to control. There probably is a metric to give you the domain of "accessible" low hanging fruits of automation that can be set according to the domain.

General purpose automates are at best expensive, at worst a scam (see the mechanical Türk).

One way to make bots efficient is to specialize them. Hence the Jacquart mecanic computer that created the industrial revolution of 1830 and set the workers on fights and created the conditions for WWI.

I guess no one saw the problem of efficiency still exists even with infinite R&D budget.

The problem of robots is by requiring quite a lot of investment for their deployment they set an unfair competition between people being backed up by capital and innovative self made man without capital.

That was the reason to be of the Luddites.

</comment><comment><USER24> I haven't bought completely into all the AI hype, so take this with a grain of salt, but I feel like on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being human, we are at a 3 or 4. Boston Dynamics is trying to do things at level 8 with tools still stuck at the lower levels of AI. If there is a massive economic opportunity for AI tech that's available now, it's figuring out how to get it out of SV and making it useful for small businesses across the country. There are literally thousands of tasks that can be done faster and better using AI, but the problem is to use AI, you need someone skilled in basic programming to spend a week teaching themselves the basics before they can even begin to think about solving real business problems. Simplifying AI tools to the point where someone with basic excel/web browser skills can learn and apply this tech to their business operations in a few hours' time will be key to unlocking this opportunity.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure "machine learning for MBAs" will be a thing very soon if the current trajectory holds.

Using a scale of 1-10 to rate the "human-ness" of AI belies the complexity of the situation. Computers are already better than humans at a huge number of tasks. In other areas, they haven't reached the level of an infant, or even a mouse.

<comment><USER26> Already a thing :) Actually, Chicago Booth's MBA program has always been very heavy on statistics and now they have an ML class as well.

<comment><USER24> I'm not talking about teaching ML or AI to MBA's, I'm talking about making the technology easy enough to use that it is accessible to practically anyone. ML can have lots of benefits to many small businesses where parts of their operations are highly repeatable, but variable enough that they can't necessarily be automated away. Figuring out how to use ML in cases like this can improve quality control, efficiency, and a host of other factors, but owners of many small businesses don't have the technical skills or time to invest in learning AI. What they do have is a few thousand dollars to invest in something that could make their business better, but there needs to be a Wordpress or Excel of AI to bring the technology to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a hard time believing that Google sold Boston Dynamics because they didn't want to be associated with military applications or with "evil" AI. Boston Dynamics had deep relationships with the government and clear military applications when Google decided to acquire them. I don't see how the PR situation would have changed between now and then.

This seems like a case of a merger/acquisition that just didn't work out. Hopefully it's for the best. The military robots that BD makes have the potential to save a lot of lives and do good, in combat and non-combat situations. Ultimately, Google/Alphabet is an advertising company. Maybe it's better for Boston Dynamics to go their own way. They can still maintain a relationship with Google and other companies to share AI knowledge and technology.

<comment><USER28> > The military robots that BD makes have the potential to save a lot of lives > and do good, in combat and non-combat situations.

This statement somehow felt more scary than all the terminator jokes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Google's decision to try to shed its Boston Dynamics robotics group highlights a fundamental research problem: software is far easier to develop and test than hardware. "

This is an interesting statement, because I assumed that it was the software that ran the robots that was hard to get right.

</comment><comment><USER30> I could see a market for a Google Hydraulic Robodog that follows me when jogging, fending off and biting aggressive real dogs until I call it with "Ok Google, don't be evil!".

<comment><USER31> Yeah, but would there be a market for it when the robots cost as much as a car?

<comment><USER30> Having a self driving car follow me to fend off the dogs doesn't work on my running path though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> From the article:

"But Boston Dynamics's creations were not quite as advanced as people assumed. The main problem the company had solved was getting its machines to move in a realistic manner, said a person familiar with the company's technology, but full autonomy is far away. Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, said as much in an interview with IEEE Spectrum in February, when he acknowledged that in the videos, a human steered the robot via radio during its outside strolls."

So basically what they created was fancy R/C toys, not real autonomous and potentially beneficial robots that could do real work? Creating realistic movement is a hard problem, and the associated electronics and algorithms to move from point A to point B, but it's hardly novel.

Maybe this coupled with the fact a few others have mentioned the company was poor at working with other divisions is the reason why they want to sell it?

<comment><USER33> Have you seen the robots they developed? Reducing it to "moving from point A to B" is misleading, in my opinion, even if technically true. They essentially developed machines that could move in difficult terrains, often where humans themselves couldn't.

My favorite is the Sand Flea, a small car which can jump 9 meters (30-feet) into the air: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "X is hard" is the new Considered Harmful. The newest thought-terminating cliché.

<comment><USER35> Not using clichés is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Also, just as when BMW bought Landrover, the sold it two years later. Google has learned what they needed to learn from Boston Dynamics, and I assuming had a chance to syphon off any talent they wanted too. Time to move on with the key assets.

<comment><USER37> Similar how Google did with Motorola Mobility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "...but full autonomy is far away. Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, said as much in an interview with IEEE Spectrum in February, when he acknowledged that in the videos, a human steered the robot via radio during its outside strolls."

This seems kinda sketchy to me. It's possible we'll fall into a Robotics Winter, similar to the AI Winter due to these over-inflated claims of advancement.

<comment><USER39> I looked up the quote: "Raibert said that for the outdoor scenes, a human provides general steering via radio while the robot uses its stereo and LIDAR sensors to adjust to terrain variations. ATLAS also does its own balance and motion control. "

This kind of navigation level steering is an easy problem compared to stable walking over rough terrain and recovery from kicks and shoves.

<comment><USER38> Maybe, but the videos (and surrounding media) were presented in a way which implied the robot was autonomous, finding it's own path through the terrain.

It may not be intentionally misleading, but still misleading.

<comment><USER31> Compare it to that Watson/Carrie Fischer commercial, where Watson is presented as being able to carry on a conversation. It can't really do that, but that's also misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder what Google's thinking was when they bought Boston Dynamics if they are now selling them because of the long timeframe. Trying to accelerate the timeframe, helping to make the robots autonomous using their other AI groups, and being ready to launch when the technology is ready are the reasons I thought they made this acquisition.

<comment><USER41> They may just have wanted to get a good clear look at the state of their technology and then having done so, decided that it wasn't interesting.

They could also be keeping the interesting bits for themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The mention of groups of robots learning together by exposing themselves to the real world and sharing lessons is very interesting to consider. I wonder if this is inspired by ants searching for food and leaving scent trails. Are there success stories of this approach in robotics already?

</comment><comment><USER43> The comment "the division's leader, Jonathan Rosenberg, said the company needed 'to have a debate on hydraulics.'" is significant. Google also owns Schaft, which has an all-electric humanoid with water-cooled motors that are heavily overdriven for brief periods using ultracapacitors to get a power boost. Boston Dynamics' robots are hydraulic, using proportional valves controlled by high speed servoloops. This works, but it has lots of disadvantages. The energy efficiency is poor when you don't need full power. There's no energy recovery. The system is bulky for a humanoid. For the pony- sized BigDog, it made sense. Early industrial robots were hydraulic, but that's now rarely seen except in very large robots. Electric motors and their controls have improved enormously in recent years.

I was expecting, after the Google acquisition, to see a new humanoid robot about now with Schaft's drive system, Boston Dynamics' balance system, and Google's image understanding system. That was the good outcome. Apparently Boston Dynamics does not play well with others, and that didn't happen.

Notice that Google isn't selling Schaft. I hope that they're doing OK. They're people from Tokyo University and from Honda's ASIMO project who felt things were moving too slowly. But they're in Tokyo, and Google may have problems managing remote teams.

As for "reality is hard", a good humanoid robot is mechanically at least as complicated as a car. Look how much engineering effort it took to develop good cars. Today, small teams can build a car, but that's because the problem and technology are well understood and you can buy many parts off the shelf.

Google has no track record in hardware with moving parts. Their autonomous vehicles have great software, but the hardware is purchased and bolted on. (Really bolted on; they do not bother to integrate the sensors into the vehicle shell, unlike every auto manufacturer that's done self-driving.) They're still using those rotating Velodyne scanners, which are a mechanical system that should have been replaced years ago. Flash LIDARs and MEMS LIDARs exist. Even the Google StreetView cars look clunky, and their backpack StreetView thing needs a redesign from GoPro.

I can see the cultural problems between Google, with no track record in mechanical engineering and a very young workforce, and Boston Dynamics, with good mechanical engineers and a 67 year old CEO. On the other hand, Google should not have bought all those robotics companies and expected them to make money Real Soon Now. Look at automatic driving. It's been 11 years since the DARPA Grand Challenge, when we first saw that it could really work. Nobody has a production vehicle on the road yet. It's a long haul with a big payoff. This isn't like the ad business.

If anybody from Google is reading this: you still have Schaft. Don't fuck that up. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER44> So it's even more far-fetched than a "Moonshoot" project? Will Google even get to keep the technology it created so far, or will it all be sold as IP and they won't be able to re-use any of it for other projects?

<comment><USER42> It could be that the standard for moonshots changed with the formation of Alphabet. That's the impression I got from yesterday's press coverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So Google quits because the problem is too hard? Clearly this is not the reason.

<comment><USER46> Google doesn't deserve this kind of deference. As a corporation, they will abandon a problem if predicted expenditures outweigh predicted returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > The main problem the company had solved was getting its machines to move in > a realistic manner

Why? Who cares about the aesthetics? The only thing that matters is if they can get the job done while being safe.

<comment><USER21> If the robots are to work around or with people their movements are important. People are very good at predicting and understanding each other's behaviour, which is useful for safety and coordination. This may be secondary to just getting around but it's a serious consideration and area of research in interactive robots.

<comment><USER21> Dupe, sorry. Delete timed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think it's a shrewd logical decision. Google wouldn't sell robots just like they won't sell cars, because licensing the software is more lucrative. Same old MS-IBM story really.

</comment><comment><USER49> I tweeted Elon Musk asking if he wants to buy Boston Dynamics.

<comment><USER50> Watch out guys, we've got a stalking horse over here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Weird title. Should be "Why google decided not to sell robots" rather than "Why google wants to sell its robots."

</comment><comment><USER52> > "In order to make AI work in the real world and handle all the diversity and > complexity of realistic environments, we will need to think about how to get > robots to learn continuously and for a long time, perhaps in cooperation > with other robots," said Levine.

SkyNet is coming.</comment>