Now Google is blocking Windows Phones from accessing maps.Google.com - <AUTHOR> http://wmpoweruser.com/now-google-is-blocking-windows-phones-from-accessing-maps-google-com/ <comment><USER2> "Not a client side problem. I just ran it through a network capture. (see here[1] )

Google is 302 redirecting anything with a WinPhone user agent to the main page. This may be a bug rather than an intentional thing, but it's Google's bug to be sure." Source: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/15yx0a/after_mic...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/15yx0a/after_microsoft_complains_that_google_is_blocking/c7r47v8?context=3)

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/Hfum6.jpg>

\---

And update here:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/4/3836510/windows- phone-8-use...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/4/3836510/windows- phone-8-users-unable-to-access-google-maps)

Seems this is 100% intentional from Google. What the fuck? I was completely blindsided by this, I couldn't imagine a huge company like Google doing this at this scale.

<comment><USER3> Well... it's their service. And you're not paying for it. Seems to me they can offer it any way they want.

I don't know if it's a good move on their part, that's a different question.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly the reasoning that pisses me off. If MS pulled the same shit, we would be out with pitchforks ready to bury them. Have some consistency. Any corporation using their monopoly product to provide a bad experience for competitive products is evil.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft has already pulled it. Please point me to a native version of Office running on any Linux distro...oh that's right, doesn't exist.

Bing Maps does exist.

<comment><USER6> Google went out of their way to prevent MS phones from using Google maps. MS did not go out of their way to allow Linux to use Office. There is a big difference.

<comment><USER7> Microsoft's pretty agressive against Android (license fees for every sold Android, #droidrage campaign etc.) so I fully approve of this Google's move.

<comment><USER8> Spitefully blocking Windows Mobile's browser because Microsoft is insufficiently humble in its competition against Android is a raging dick- move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google's statement:

 _The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web._

Microsoft's response:

 _Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 use the same rendering engine._

<comment><USER10> Google, however, doesn't provide the same version of Google Maps for desktop and mobile.

<comment><USER9> So instead of not providing any service, why not offer the desktop service with caveats, or stop just supporting one rendering engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Again a open case of abusing Monopoly. Google keep forcing the users as it want and everyone says, its a free service and can be bent as Google want. It forces to use Google Plus for may services, forces to log in to Google to install chrome extensions.

<comment><USER12> >forces to log in to Google to install chrome extensions

Is there a legitimate reason for this?

<comment><USER13> It's more that you can install "extensions" just fine, but need to be logged in to get "web apps". In reality, both are Chrome ran code, but there's the distinction there. You can however install basic extensions like adblock or ghostery without logging into Chrome.

(It won't help you on the anonymity standpoint of course, because every Chrome has unique id that's recorded when you log into any google service)

It's the "we require login to access any google docs documents if you use chrome, but don't need it if you use other browser" that's more annoying than web apps in my opinions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's certainly an interesting development, Microsoft has been gunning for Google by any means, fair or foul: [http://readwrite.com/2013/01/03/googles- ftc-settlement-is-an...](http://readwrite.com/2013/01/03/googles-ftc- settlement-is-an-epic-fail-for-microsoft)

Now it seems Google is doing pay-back by crippling Microsoft's Phone efforts by not offering their services on them. I can't feel sorry for Microsoft in the least, it seems like finally they are subjected to 'what you reap is what you sow'.

<comment><USER15> I feel like it's the customers who are being punished, not so much Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but it's Microsoft customers who implicitly agree with Microsoft policies like pressuring OEMs to not sell computers without Windows Tax, or the whole Secure Boot debacle.

<comment><USER16> Be careful for what you wish for as it looks like other non WebKit browsers will be caught up in all this. Under this remit Firefox OS/Boot to Gecko for example would be blocked from using Google Maps.

Regardless who the victims are its a bad move for anybody who believes in open web standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember when it was Opera that people cared so little about that they regularly banned it, purely by accident. Not a good place for Windows Phone to be.

<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/msn/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me or has the other hacker news submission on this story with much more discussion disappeared?

<comment><USER19> if you mean this one, it's just moved down: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5010891>

<comment><USER18> Indeed that's the one. Given its current points and submission time I really don't understand the HN sorting algo sometimes.

<comment><USER20> It was likely flagged. Anti-Google stories don't do well on HN. There's a very strong bias against anti-Google stories, but a strong bias for anti-MS stories.

<comment><USER21> Don't know about you, but as web dev/designer who codes html emails and websites, I curse Microsoft on a daily basis!

Thankfully ie6 is no longer and issue and there are many frameworks that making building websites for ie7/8 along with the others a snap. Wish there was something for html emails cause i was just cursing microsoft and wishing they'd hurry up and go extinct.

<comment><USER20> You do realize that IE6 is more than 11 years old. Microsoft wishes everyone used IE10 probably more than you do.

Do you curse Apple because of Safari 1? Which is actually newer than IE6?

Microsoft's greatest fault here is that they haven't been able to get people to upgrade their OS fast enough. An odd reason to curse them. And an odder reason still to flag their articles and push Google articles.

I get that everyone will have some bias, but the amount of bias doesn't seem justified, IMO.

<comment><USER22> If anything the amount of bias is way to low, MS singlehandedly crippled progress on the web for many many years and would deserve to be burned to the ground by an angry mob of webdevs for it.

You can develop in Chrome and it just works in Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc., but without fail things are always broken in IE (yes also in 6+ versions). Any webdev could tell you about the horrors.

IE versions have always been DOA compared to what's possible in competing browsers at the time. Microsoft's fault of not getting people to upgrade is their own doing by not anticipating and adequately reacting to the problem… or frankly just not giving a shit™. Others don't have these upgrade problems.

Also, we can be very thankful that they failed in their ploy to make the whole web IE-specific, but we should not forget and it's to soon to forgive.

<comment><USER23> Do you not remember how much of a giant leap forward IE6 was when it was introduced? Or how massively far ahead of Netscape 4.x IE 5/5.5/6 were? IE5 gave us AJAX, and its CSS support was light-years better than the competition when it was released.

I've been a die-hard Microsoft hater since I was a teenager. Even so, there was a period from 2000-2004 when I used IE, because it was so clearly _better_ than any other browser on the Internet. I gave up Netscape reluctantly, but when it just hung on half the sites of the Internet because it was so buggy, it was time to switch.

I take it you don't remember coding <layer> tags and working with Netscape's broken & nonstandard DOM implementation either, nor laying everything out with tables and spacer GIFs because it didn't support CSS. It used to be we'd get our pages to work in IE first, and then the boss would grudgingly say "And you've gotta make it work in Netscape too." (That was actually what got me my first full-time job...they called me in for an interview and during it I worked around a nasty layers bug that they hadn't been able to figure out.)

<comment><USER22> Yes Netscape was having problems around that time, good luck trying to finance the development of a complex commercial software project when your competitor is abusing its monopoly by bundling a free alternative with its operating system. You are right about the ancient history timeframe but my points are valid for everything that happened with and after version 6, you know… the point when the web and broadband really started to take off. And you could have used Opera or the Phoenix/Firebird Firefox-precursor instead of IE6.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure i agree with your over-all point, but I have to say Microsoft bundling a browser probably helped move the Internet rather than hinder it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And it begins. It's clear to me that Google is the next Microsoft now -- cue chokeholds on competitors, starting with maps on iOS and WP.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd be curious to see what happens if you change your user-agent header...

<comment><USER27> When you change it to something else (I did to Android 2.3, WebOS) it worked. When accessing with a WP7 user agent string ("Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; SAMSUNG; SGH-i917)" I was redirected to www.google.com.

Looks like an innocent mistake, however. Or they decided they wouldn't support IEMobile 9.

<comment><USER28> Wait, how does that look like an innocent mistake? It used to work, they changed some code, and now they're blocking users with a specific useragent.

<comment><USER20> It's Google. Of course it's an INNOCENT mistake. If Microsoft had done it, it would be a mortal sin against humanity.

Google has even come out and said that mobile Google Maps is only for WebKit engines. The open web is no longer about web standards apparently -- it's about one specific rendering engine.

<comment><USER29> It goes even further. At the top of my google docs spreadsheets there is now some scary language saying I should upgrade to chrome from my unsupported (but perfectly functional) browser.

<comment><USER30> Those horrible notifications that reappear every time you refresh the page are my very own source of annoyance with google. I have a 23" display and I like zooming into all pages to see text clearer. Now, google is the only internet company that decided to show me a big red box with "Your browser's current zoom setting is not fully supported".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not saying this isn't new, but I've had a WP7 phone since June 2011; I've never been able to access a Google map on it.

<comment><USER32> Well, if what you're saying is true, I guess tech blogs and Hacker News are just freaking out over nothing.

If it's indeed old, the timing is suspect since Google just avoided sanctions from the FTC. MS lobbied hard to get Google penalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I guess we're forgetting how expensive it is to officially support IE. When Windows phone first launched it came with some sort of IE6/7 combo and was, of course, another nightmare from Microsoft for web developers.

If it were up to me, I wouldnt have my developers waste the effort on a browser/device that doesnt matter. However, I have not targeted the newest version of mobile IE, it is on my list, I have read that it is magnitudes better than what they originally shipped.

</comment><comment><USER34> Where's the proof that this is some sort of "retaliation" ? As far as we know it could be an update to GWT that introduces the change.

<comment><USER35> I agree there's no proof of retaliation and the article is going a little overboard with jumping to conclusions but why would an update to GWT cause a site to redirect user strings with "Windows Phone" in them to google.com ?

Anyway Google has come out with a statement saying that only webkit is supported on mobile for maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Relatedly, see also the Youtube access blocking on Windows Phone [http://www.wpcentral.com/youtube-access-and-windows-phone- mi...](http://www.wpcentral.com/youtube-access-and-windows-phone-microsoft- throws-down-gauntlet)

</comment><comment><USER37> I haven't tested WP8 devices but the default browser on WP7.5 didn't support pinch gestures so google just displayed a page saying "Your device is not supported".

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe Microsoft should put some funding into OpenStreetmap.

<comment><USER39> They already support OSM. You can trace their aerial photos from bing which is the best material you are allowed to trace in many regions.

See wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Huh. The ad-supported third-party gMaps app still works on my WP7.5 Lumia. Not sure what I'd gain by using it in the browser.

<comment><USER41> You don't get to whine about it when something you never use stops working.</comment></comment>


Rethinking Computer Science Education - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chancancode/rethinking-computer-science-education-319a60709b30#.bygn4cipz <comment><USER2> > Programmers and software engineers are in very high demand these days — we > need a lot more of them, and we want them now. A Computer Science degree > takes 3-4 years in most schools, which is way too long and costs too much.

We need more construction workers, but civil engineering degree takes too long and costs too much. Do you see the stupidity of this sentence?

Once upon a time there was this concept of vocational schools. It was later replaced with colleges and universities, which by their very nature are far from industrial setting and thus can't teach what's necessary in the industry.

<comment><USER3> But we are not taking civil engineers and putting them in construction jobs. We are, however, taking computer scientists and putting them in programming roles. And there is high demand for those programmers, weather you want to call them programmers, software engineers, computer scientists, or whatever.

Today, in most cases, a computer science degree doesn't translate into the skills to be an effective programmer out of the chute, but that is where the demand is.

<comment><USER2> > We are, however, taking computer scientists and putting them in programming > roles.

And how a computer scientist would make a decent programmer? He wasn't trained in the craft, he was trained in different direction. He could just as easily skip studying to get a degree and start training under an experienced programmer.

> And there is high demand for those programmers

Yes. Note that the industry needs _programmers_ , not _scientists_ (or even would-be scientists). Who the industry looks for and who it needs (judging from jobs that are offered) is a mismatch, of course. This is what I called the stupidity.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Noticing new comments on HN - <AUTHOR>

There is a lot of valuable content here, and comments add great value, ihmo.
Let's say you just read a thread on an interesting topic. Once done, do you have a way to notice the new comments on HN? (e.g, after a few hours, days)
Any tricks? This could improve the visibility of 'late' comments that I miss most of the time. <comment><USER2> I usually scan the comments page: <http://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments>

I also have scripts that pull discussions and compare new versions with old, although they're fragile, and I don't use them much.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Firefox addon, like SiteDelta?</comment>


Study: Women performed better on a math test when using someone else's name - <AUTHOR> http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/womens-true-maths-skills-unlocked-by.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+BpsResearchDigest+(BPS+Research+Digest)

<comment><USER2> A lot of users seem to be having a really tough time with the conclusion of the story.

Here is the gist of it: The differences in participation and performance in math between women and men are due to cultural and environmental reasons, it has very little to do with intellectual capacity.

There seems to be a huge reluctance to give up this prejudice, it's always some sort of "there are exceptions, but women and men are different" and whatnot. They really aren't, not nearly to the degree indicated by the gender gap. Same with race.

<comment><USER3> It seems weirder to me than that. Let us take it as a given that there really is a stereotype threat and/or that women are systematically discriminated against with regard to acquiring math skills. Let us take it as a given that damage is really being done. The natural conclusion is that regardless of what name is put on the top of the test, the women should _still_ do worse, because they really are worse at math at the time the test is being given, which is to say, after 15-20 years of systematic discrimination. If the discrimination is effective, then by definition it must mean they really _are_ worse. If they aren't worse, then the discrimination is either ineffective, or women are naturally _better_ at math and the discrimination is holding them back (a position which would be quite complicated to establish and defend).

If the damage can be undone by merely putting a different name on the top of the test, then that strongly implies that the putative damage is itself illusory. If the damage can be wiped away so easily, then it can't have been that bad in the first place. If this _is_ the extent of the "stereotype threat", then it's obviously not holding them back all that much if _even so_ their real skill is equal to the men's.

I can't help but think that this study was indeed ideologically driven, and in the zeal the authors had to prove their point about how women aren't worse than men, they didn't think about the fact this accidentally "proves" that the discrimination can't be that significant. But perhaps it is just a neutral study performed out of sheer curiosity.

And just to make it perfectly clear, I am taking their own logic on their own merits. I'm not inserting my own opinions here, excepting on the question of whether there was potentially an ideological drive here. (My opinion doesn't really fit on this axis at all either way.)

<comment><USER2> > _Let us take it as a given that there really is a stereotype_

> _the putative damage is itself illusory_

> _My opinion doesn 't really fit on this axis at all either way._

lmao. here's a quote for you:

 _"It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists."_

― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

<comment><USER3> You misunderstand. I think there probably is some bias against women going into mathematics. When someone say "let us take this as true for the purpose of argument", it does not mean that it isn't really true. It means simply that in this post, we're not going to analyze the possibility of whether that is true or not, we're just going to assume it.

There's also a class of people who are so smart they see sexism uniformly everywhere, even where it isn't. You're being a jerk, not proving how wonderfully not sexist you are. Refusing to even consider the possibility that someone isn't sexist is itself a form of discrimination, and I reject your attempt to pigeonhole me in an effort to make yourself look holier-than-thou.

I'm also not going to fall into the trap of endlessly justifying myself, so go ahead, have the last word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't believe any psychological studies these days unless they have been successfully replicated.

</comment><comment><USER5> _> There's an unfounded gender stereotype that says women aren't as good at maths as men. Reminding them of this prior to a maths task usually undermines their performance - just one example of a harmful phenomenon known as stereotype threat._

I taught [remedial] maths in college where the girls outperformed the boys (I suspect because they tried much, much harder), so this topic always piques my interest.

I recall reading in several places that both genders do worse when one is primed (boys and girls do worse at math when you say 'boys are better at math'), but I couldn't find the studies.

Does anyone have a link to the study/studies that show both genders do worse when one is primed?

(While searching, I found some interesting criticism of stereotype threat due to "publication bias,"[0] which seems even more fascinating to me.)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating result that you can counteract the negative effect of the statement with anonymity.

It would have been interesting if there was a 3rd leg where they issue the tests with an "anonymous id number" instead of having them write a false name...

I wonder if the effect is equivalent of a) writing a fake name vs. b) claiming anonymity will be maintained with a pre-printed number

The author seems to take this for granted with this statement; "At the most practical level, they speak to the benefits of using non-name identification procedures in testing," but writing a fake name precludes a lot of testing, so it would be helpful to know if the benefits extend to IDs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone aware of studies conducted on differences (if there are any) on how much time women and men invest in doing something (math, programming, sciences) in the long run?

I suspect that although there is clearly no reason to believe that women are less capable than men, there are psychological differences on men's and women's willingness to spend time on different type of subjects. Also, on how they evaluate their accomplishments.

Think of the mythical pizza-and-coke-debugging-nights in your own project no- one will ever use.

<comment><USER8> > there are psychological differences on men's and women's willingness to > spend time on different type of subjects

Citation needed? I've spent time with women in science and they seem pretty dogged in the pursuit of their goals. It seems to me that it has a lot more to do with cultural norms.

<comment><AUTHOR> christianpascu is asking for the citation! They made an observation, and asked if there was any evidence to support that.

<comment><USER9> Making a sexist remark and asking for someone else to provide the evidence is not acceptable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I gently agree, except they did qualify their sexist remark. They are saying "This might be wrong; I don't have anything to support it; is there anything to support it?" which is a lot better than saying "Women can't do X because Y. Prove me wrong."

> I suspect that although there is clearly no reason to believe

and

> Is anyone aware of studies conducted on differences _(if there are any)_

[emphasis added]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was an article posted to Hacker News about the gender difference in learning yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971356)

It made clear that boys and girls are motivated by different factors when learning. So I have a problem when I read this article and the first line is:

"There's an _unfounded_ gender stereotype that says women aren't as good at maths as men."

Someone may have taught this writer that opening up with something "controversial" makes for good prose, but I think it just undermines the purpose of the article. There are plenty of statistics that show that technical fields, including math, are heavily male-dominated. Why would someone post something in hacker news that basically implies that this history is not real?

This gender gap certainly may not be because of latent gender differences in potential math skill. But if on average, women tend to be less interested in math, they will reach their mathematical potential less often. And based on the article I linked above, there are at least statistical differences between the motives of male and female students.

<comment><USER11> You've just confused motivation, learning style, and competence in your comment. The article yesterday could be considered to be about _learning style_ (it is certainly about the ability of eight-year-olds to sit still). The gender gap in technical fields is heavily influenced by _societal views_ \-- in 1984 37% of computer science majors in the US were female, and it's been declining ever since, and in Malaysia women are (close to?) outnumbering men in CS/IT. And then you discuss _motivation_ , which is different. I don't believe it was discussed in a scientific way in the Atlantic article, although it has been studied elsewhere.

Your comment fails to address the point of the study. Women who take someone else's name do better on math tests. Since they didn't magically change their genetic makeup or knowledge base in minutes, the implication is that unconscious beliefs are influencing performance. No one has "implie[d] statistics are unfounded"; you've simply conflated several separate issues.

You are correct that if "women tend to be less interested in math, they will reach their mathematical potential less often." Today's post, though, reveals that it's not all about interest or motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> edit: it's been pointed out that I misread the part of the article where it stated that men's performance under the alias didn't improve. My apologies. However to keep the flow of the thread I've kept my original post below:

 _> Research finds the threat comes in two flavours. Women can fear their poor performance will be used to bolster the "women are weak at maths" gender stereotype (known as "group-reputation threat"). Or they can fear that their poor performance will be taken as proof that they conform to the stereotype ("self-reputation threat"). Both can undermine women's ability to fulfil their true potential._

Surely you can use that same logic to say that men are under the same fears and pressures to outperform women. Trying to argue a psychological handicap like the above -where the author cites two contradicting examples that are dependant on the individual- doesn't seem fair when it's only applied to women.

The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve. And the men did still still perform better. So you could also argue that this study proved that men's true maths skills are unlocked by pretending to be someone else. Which then leaves me wondering why there's the statistical anomaly in favour of men (I'm doubly curious as I'd always assumed that the figures would be the opposite way around, if just because my wife is quite significantly better at that subject than I)

<comment><USER13> > The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve.

No they didn't.

From the study abstract [1]

"Women who used a fictitious name, and thus had their self unlinked from the math test, showed significantly higher math performance and reported less self-threat and distraction, relative to those who used their real names. Men were unaffected by the manipulation"

      [1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2012.687012#.UdLyj6xDuKk

<comment><USER12> Ah I must have misread that last sentence. Thanks for the correction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Urgh, the summary says basically nothing and is in my opinion fairly vague. And I don't feel like paying $37 bucks to read this once. Also:

> The effect was stronger for women who cared more about maths.

No shit? People who are more interested in something are usually better at it?

<comment><USER15> > People who are more interested in something are usually better at it?

Yes, but no. It shows that women who care more about math are more sensitive to the reputation/stereotype effects, presumably because they _do_ care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ehm....

How about "Women perform better under anonymity." Has maths anything to do about it?

Really, it does not look like they factored the 'maths' term out.

<comment><USER17> Because that's a more general claim which cannot be made from this study, and may very well be false.

<comment><USER16> You are right in some sense but then they should not use the word "maths" either as if it were general. They should just stick to "one test", which happened to be "about maths" but who knows if this variable is relevant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> i'm really not sure that in this case 110 + 70 people sum up to a representative population.

and if the result are representative, doesn't it rather show, that math-women tend to care more about how other people see them and math-men care less about it?

</comment><comment><USER19> one of the points in this is:

women perform better under an alias than as their real name.

however, i believe there is a flaw in this assumption/point/theory with the related data. how can you compare 2 sets of women without a baseline of their mathematical skills? it seems that they are assuming that both sets of women (true name and alias name) have are at the same mathematical skillset. i do not believe that is a fair assumption, especially when the testing set were all undergrads even more so with a testing set of 110 women.

i would be curious as to see this same test being performed with some sort of standard or minimum requirement for mathematical knowledge in order to create that variable as constant as possible.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Artical basically says you work better if not under stress, or am i missing something?

<comment><USER13> Yes, you are missing everything.

It says _women_ performs better at _maths_ when they don't use their own name.

 _Men_ do not perform any different.

<comment><USER21> _Men do not perform any different._

I didn't find this statement in the article.

<comment><USER22> _In contrast, male performance was unaffected by using another person 's name._

It's right there at the end of the second-to-last paragraph of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I must say I am impressed! For once, an article on HN on gender that hasn't deteriorated into something completely pointless and depressing. I am encouraged again about HN's prospect of being a smart place on the nets.

<comment><USER5> If your comment goes to the top of this page, will it have a priming[0] effect on commenters to have more fruitful discussions?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_\(psychology\))</comment></comment>


33 Unbelievable Places To Visit Before You Die - <AUTHOR> http://distractify.com/culture/32-surreal-places-that-actually-exist-on-earth-i-cant-believe-this-isnt-photoshopped/ <comment><USER2> missed one: Dallol, Ethiopia

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallol,_Ethiopia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallol,_Ethiopia)

[http://landscape- photos.org/modules/photoblogmodule/content/...](http://landscape- photos.org/modules/photoblogmodule/content/images/photos/1301.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of these places will hopefully not become tourist attractions, they exist because of - not despite of - lack of human activity.</comment>


How to (somewhat easily) block ads and trackers at the network level - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-totally-escape-ad-tracking-at-home-b2fadd34a991 <comment><USER2> A lot more effort than that is required in our DoH world.</comment>


Lessons Netflix Learned from the AWS Storm - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/lessons-netflix-learned-from-aws-storm.html <comment><USER2> It's not clear they learned the simplest and most import ant fact: You have to be able to migrate your production traffic away from whole regions.

<comment><USER3> Paul, I'm sure your skills are top notch, but even you have to admit that the problem you solved -- a globally available write only system -- is a totally different problem than the one Netflix is solving, which is a read/write workload.

Also, as someone who was a user of your globally available service, I can tell you that while it might have been UP all the time, it certainly had no problems losing data all the time too. Some months there was just simply no data for reddit at all, even though we were sending the service more than a billion data points.

So we could sit here and sling insults all day, or you can operate under the assumption I do -- that each of is a competent engineer who works for a business that has to make decisions and tradeoffs between costs and reliability.

<comment><USER2> We're responding to a post, by Netflix, explaining their downtime. That post is missing the single most important fact - that they need to be able to failover across regions. The rest of their explanation is just second-order noise.

Anyone who reads HN can see that a minimum uptime strategy for Amazon is to failover across regions. Each time there is a major AWS outage, we hear about HN readers whose service was affected even though they spanned availability zones within a single region. But to date, Amazon's regions have operated independently.

That observation is not dependent on knowledge of Quantcast (which is incidentally, far more than a write-only system), or the other production systems I've built in the last 35 years.

(I'll follow up by email about your support questions)

<comment><USER2> A little transparency can make life easier. Try this:

"Don't panic. You are using a backup datacenter. Some very recent queue or account changes may be missing, and some changes you make tonight may be lost. We are working nonstop to resolve this and appreciate your patience"

When stuck, just change the requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dear Netflix, thank you for being transparent and honest about what happened.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone find it really weird that netflix doesn't run it's own datacenters?

If the netflix business fails, they would have giant valuable datacenters leftover. Instead by relying on the cloud, they are "all-in" on serving movies. The movie and tv studios have giant leverage here, they can easily make or back a competing service and users will go where the content is. Is their strategy for being on the cloud really, "it's easier than doing it ourselves?".

<comment><USER6> Maybe not necessarily easier, but it isn't part of their focus. Besides having collateral (the datacenters) what else do they gain?

It's not like Amazon where they're providing infrastructure to other companies. I remember someone else on HN pointing out that there aren't many non-adult video providers the size of Netflix/YouTube/etc that aren't already rolling their own solutions or served by companies like Brightcove.

<comment><USER7> By not having datacenters they don't have capital tied up in buildings, real- estate, staff/benefits at those data centers, they can be much smaller personnel wise and having much more of the staff focused on stuff that matters to customers. Customers don't care where the data center is or who is running it, as long as their movies come on when they want to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> RESILIENCY = REDUNDANCY + INSULATION. Great post. I look forward to hear what heroku is cooking, I heard they are working hard on better handling similar incidents. Redundancy without insulation is what happened to the titanic and seems to be the most common mistake when architecting HA systems.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The service that keeps track of the state of the world has a fail-safe mode where it will not remove unhealthy instances in the event that a significant portion appears to fail simultaneously."

You should keep your logics dumb.

<comment><USER10> That was my thought as well when reading that sentence (actually, I was thinking "was this overengineered for no good reason?), however they go on to say that there _is_ a purpose -- mitigating "network partition events" which I can only guess is referring to AWS's version of netsplits.

It sounds like there was some technical debt to that implementation, but hey, I for one am glad they gave us some insight into what happened.

<comment><USER11> "Technical debt" is a nice way of saying it had bugs. It was mostly a configuration problem, if it had been setup better we would have had no outage or a much shorter one. The work to test all our zone level resilience (Chaos Gorilla) was underway but hadn't got far enough to uncover this bug.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Conferences Are Almost All Terrible - <AUTHOR> http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/the_five_horseman_of_the_coming_conference_reckoning <comment><USER2> Big surprise: conferences about social bullshit for social bullshitters are full of bullshit

All the new-media types that spent the 90s pushing "Multimedia CD-ROMs" found their feet again with "the social" -- and now that they can no longer pretend that Second Life is relevant they've all moved on to the web.</comment>


Steve Ballmer Recruits HR Person with a Golf Club - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=42079 Lisa Brummell tells Business Week how Steve Ballmer "convinced" her to take on an HR position she didn't want by smashing a golf club to bits in her office, during a meeting. Interesting recruiting technique. <comment><USER2> This might be amusing if it weren't badly-written to the point of incoherence.</comment>


Show HN: TakeMeasure – Make your phone a ruler - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.pressburg.takemeasure <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand how this works unless all objects being measured are on the same surface as the reference object. Take for example, this image [https://lh3.ggpht.com/n3-JnvRAOTqSOwD7UriOo7ooPGQ0Nf8wueiK_U...](https://lh3.ggpht.com/n3-JnvRAOTqSOwD7UriOo7ooPGQ0Nf8wueiK_U6uu36kX- Bm1lgzVU8Xa2MK3b2jsTI=s0)

Imagine measuring a distance vertically along the side of the window. Now imagine a second image in wich, instead of a window, there is just more of the (now larger) desk. If you were to draw the same line in the same location in the second image, the actual distance of the underlying object would be different. Does TakeMeasure somehow account for this? I would assume the answer is no, and if so that would still make for a useful app, but then I saw this "TakeMeasure allows you to measure dimensions of _any small or large objects that fit into your camera view_. "

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. You can measure objects in the plane of the reference object, but you are allowed to take the picture from any angle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can take photos but the second and third tabs are empty; i can't see/set a reference. I tried ensuring the photo had a uk banknote in it (does it matter which?) but it made no difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is your phone model? I'll have a look and try to release an update. You can use any UK banknote.

(aside: one would expect a picture taking using camera app to be fairly trivial, but it is actually very challenging on Android, where each vendor implements it with its own little subtleties)

<comment><USER3> Sony Xperia Z3 (recently upgraded to marshmallow 6.0.1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick check, if you click on three dots on top right and go to "About", does it say TakeMeasure 12?

<comment><USER3> Yes, copyright 2014!

<comment><AUTHOR> I reproduced similar problem in Xperia Z3 on 5.1.1, which I was able to fix and release. Unfortunately 6.0.1 was not on device cloud. Nevertheless, I think there are good chances that update to v13 will fix the issue, in any case, please let me know.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's fixed it, thanks.

My wallet folds notes but the app is accurate if I try and make them as flat as possible first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for posting this. It is rather interesting to play with and has a good interface.

I have a couple issues though. First I can't zoom in enough to be very precise with the placement and measurement. It would be nice if the zoom was not limited so much. Also, using a Samsung S5 I am having some trouble getting an accurate measurement. I put a ruler and a us letter paper in the same plane and took a photo at about a 30 degree angle. I'm seeing about a 12.7" measurement on a 12" ruler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. I will consider increasing the zoom level. Would you like to share your picture so we could investigate the precision? (email@example.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very nice. I'm experiencing some problems taking the picture directly by the camera (Nexus 5; 6.0.1). It takes a picture but the picture is empty or broken (but still shows up in the gallery). As a workaround, it's possible to make pictures by the default Camera app and then select the picture from the gallery.

Anyway, I think it's quite useful and surprisingly precise (+/\- 1%). If I may make a feature request, I'd like to see more reference sheet sizes, e.g. the full A0-6 range.. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi tjelen, thank you for your comments and suggestions! I have made the camera issue fixed and released to production. You should get an update pushed soon.

I am taking A0 - A6 request into consideration. Quite a few people were asking for a custom reference definition in the app. Might do it in one update if time allows in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://pressburg.co.uk/takemeasure](http://pressburg.co.uk/takemeasure) to see it in action.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's great, but why is it incompatible with my device?

(Sorry, I'm not well-versed in these Android stuff, but my phone is fairly new and running Kitkat.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, glad you like it! Let me have a look, have you tried to search for "TakeMeasure" directly in your phone? Might also be regional availability, what phone do you have / which region are you in?

<comment><USER8> Incompatible for me as well, which makes no sense at all. I live in the Netherlands and use a Samsung Galaxy S5.

I don't see why you're doing regional blocking for a free app. Even for paid apps it doesn't make a lot of sense. Would've loved to try this out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. It should become available as soon as play store updates the page. Best regards.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, will give the app a try once I can install it, if I remember.

<comment><USER3> The Android Play Store has a wishlist feature - it's next to install on that webpage, as well as from within the Play Store app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very nice, thank you Ľuboši. Sorry about not rating it on GPlay, i am not allowed as it still requires G+ account for that :/

I love this kind of apps that interface to physical world. I have been using guitar tuners, BPM counters, noise and lux measuring apps and recently have been looking for RPM meter either by looking at spinning object or by counting LED flashes. Any suggestions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the positive feedback! Instead of rating you could show your friends :p It is an interesting idea to measure RPM, but I am not knowledgeable about a concrete app. Best regards.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> iOS version - search for "TakeMeasure" in AppStore or click at: [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/takemeasure/id1035169494](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/takemeasure/id1035169494)

<comment><USER10> I got the iOS version and I was having trouble aligning the corners on the reference object. When I lifted my finger the crosshair would jump slightly with it.

Is it possible to offer edge detection or corner snapping?

I also got much better results when I zoomed as far as possible into the image to align each corner. I think that would be a helpful tip in the app when aligning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good news is that we have recently started playing with corner detection algorithms for snapping, we have first results, it looks promising, after little bit of more work, there might be an update in the near future.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hubski, my idea of a better aggregator - <AUTHOR>

One year ago, I downloaded the news.arc code and decided that I would teach myself programming by building a better aggregator. At that time, I had some rudimentary HTML knowledge, and little FORTRAN under my belt.
I knew that I wanted an aggregator that could support a wide range of submissions, and one that could scale without losing quality for the user. Hubski is what I have to show for my time and effort.
The easiest way to describe Hubski is to say that it uses a commenting system akin to HN or Reddit, but uses a sharing scheme like Twitter.
You have a personal feed comprised of the posts of people you follow, and the posts that they share with you. Instead of voting for a post, you share it with your followers. Posts propagate across the community by sharing. Posts can also be tagged, and tags can be followed like people.
That's Hubski in a nutshell.
There are a number of other things, like post previews, user shout-outs, and stuff, but most are UI-related. Here's a screenshot of my wife's account: http://i.imgur.com/NYrMf.png
http://hubski.com/all
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I really like the idea. And the dot thing is cute. The design looked better after I increased the zoom factor in my browser.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Maybe I should go a bit bigger with the font...

<comment><USER3> Should be around this big: <http://adterrasperaspera.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I increased titles and subtitles by 1px.

It does make it a bit easier on the eyes.

<comment><USER4> I'm gonna +1 on making it easier to read (maybe slightly bigger font, but definitely lower font weight) and I'm a 19y/o with 20/20 vision.

I too taught myself rails with an aggregator, and you've done a really good job at solving problems in that space. I'm definitely gonna keep an eye on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I'm gonna +1 on making it easier to read (maybe slightly bigger font, but definitely lower font weight) and I'm a 19y/o with 20/20 vision._

:) Awesome. Thanks heynk. I'm still searching for the perfect title font. If have any more feedback, definitely send it along to markkat at gmail. Or, people report issues and make requests at: <http://hubski.com/tag?id=bugski>

And if you dig it, spread the word!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable link: <http://hubski.com/all>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The imgur: <http://i.imgur.com/NYrMf.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the clean and minimal design of the site. Keep up the great work!</comment>


LastPass' Authenticator app is not secure - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/lastpass-authenticator-app-is-not-secure-77b9743c3007 <comment><AUTHOR> I know that they have fixed version going to the app store, but Password mangers should be risk adverse. The disclosure timeline for this vulnerability is NUTS! And this basic app security stuff.

They're like _whatever_ when he reported this multiple times. They only fixed it when he goes public. This is not how you would expect a security product to handle a security vulnerability, not to mention that the vulnerability was an amateurish mistake in the first place.</comment>


Open communities, kids and coding and people  - <AUTHOR> http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/open-communities-kids-and-coding-and-people/

<comment><USER2> _We have not trademarked the Coding for Kids name yet – on purpose as we consider this a community movement and community owned project._

Trademarking does not mean you plan to making something proprietary. It can be a means of preventing exploitation as much as anything else. If you don't contest this abuse of the mark now (by showing that you had already used it in the stream of commerce, then you may lose your own right to use it in future, especially since the other party has asserted ownership of the mark. Trademark protection is not automatic in the same way that copyright is. Ideally you should consult a trademark lawyer, but at least check out Nolo's resources: <http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/trademark-law></comment>


AngelList is the NASDAQ of our generation - <AUTHOR> http://klinger.io/post/69099780086/angellist-is-the-nasdaq-of-our-generation

<comment><USER2> I would like to focus on point #3 - market analysis software. In my opinion, this effort is misdirected for private companies. Simply put, the information available publicly on most of those is completely irrelevant. You can't infer anything about a startup from the number of twitter followers or alexa score - those are (inaccurate) vanity metrics that shouldn't be used for any serious investment decision.

The important information is (mostly) private - revenue, users, conversion, CPA, LTV, etc. Guess what - if you want to invest in private companies, you should be talking to founders and get the actual information.

Going back to the NASDAQ comparison - publicly traded companies have had market analysis software for years, and it hasn't been very good at predicting stock prices, even though there is much more information available, and historical data about a very important metric - stock price. Doing the same for private companies with the important data missing would produce the kind of results you can expect from it.</comment>


The AWS Spend of Our SaaS Side-Business - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cronitor.io/the-aws-spend-of-a-saas-side-business-30bd5dbd91b <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work for Google Cloud

> Cloud solutions like elastic load balancing are generally engineered for the > average use case. Think about the ways you are not like the average.

This might be the case for some things, but many of Google Cloud's "elastic/serverless" products (Load Balancers, App Engine, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Datastore, etc) can truly scale up from nothing to huge traffic spike without the need for pre-warming and things like that.

<comment><USER3> Came here just to reiterate this. Google Cloud Load balancers don't need warming, manual creation of support tickets, etc.

Also, networking on GCP is vastly superior to AWS. The VPC is setup with sane defaults and VM instances can communicate privately to other VM instances in any zone or region without needing complicated constructs such as VPN's or NAT instances.

Lastly, Google Cloud is generally cheaper (sustained use-discounts), higher performance, and takes all the lessons learned from AWS and applies them.

The one knock I have on GCP is billing. It is incredibly obtuse. Even the monthly billing invoices I still have a hard time digesting (especially if you have multiple projects under a single billing account).

<comment><USER4> Any AWS users have a better experience with their newer "ALB" load balancer? It doesn't specifically call out any performance benefits over the legacy "ELB", but since it's much newer, I'm curious if it happens to do better.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Although Administration / UI is slightly more confusing. We had unique performance issues with the ELB offering that couldn't be fixed because it was the way it was designed. With ALB, that performance issue no longer existed.

<comment><USER6> ALB may be more complicated, but it's also more flexible, and I've especially come to appreciate that in the past couple of days.

By the way, it looks like ALB might be based on nginx, based on the error pages. I wonder if classic ELB is based on HAProxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice post, and interesting to see your learning pretty much matches my own when building my SaaS business.

Curious as to why you didn't opt for RDS for the database side of things? I actually have about 5 side projects as well as my main SaaS, and they all share the same RDS instance for the database which saves me cost while keeping performance high.

Also, do you use Lambda much at all for periodic scripts that need to run? I've more recently been building more and more mini applets on Lambda for things like health checks or replicating data across Amazon services etc. with good results.

Also, and this might be a good complimentary service to your monitoring service, but I've been using CloudWatch's timed tasks a lot recently to trigger some of those Lambda instances - very quick and easy. I've been using another service to monitor and report on missed triggers, but will look into Cronitor a bit more as a viable option.

<comment><USER8> Failover time for RDS is high, like a minute or two.

That's probably fine for lots of stuff, but not everything.

<comment><USER9> How do you get higher availability than that?

<comment><USER8> Use Virtual IP rather than DNS for failover.

Minutes is a really long time to go down.

<comment><USER9> Have you tested that?

If you actually have an in-house solution to providing better availability than amazon's RDS options, then I recommend you market your engineering solution to the major cloud providers as they will pay you very well to help them implement your solution to that problem.

<comment><USER8> > Have you tested that?

Only all the time.

> I recommend you market your engineering solution

I saw exactly that company at the last re:Invent. Can't remember what the name was...

> to the major cloud providers as they will pay you very well to help them > implement your solution to that problem.

My guess is that most reasonably sized organization manager their own databases for uptime-critical systems (case in point). It lets them have more control over backups, when to upgrade the database, how to handle failover, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few months ago my co-founder August did a great Indie Hackers interview [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/cronitor](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/cronitor) and we heard a lot of positive feedback on sharing revenue and growth numbers. On that theme, we thought we'd write a blog post to give a little more color to our largest expense, AWS.

<comment><USER10> The post was great.

The only thing I didn't like was "spend" in the title – "costs" or "expenses" would be less pretentious, to my ears and in my mind. This is a really trivial quibble! [And apparently this is a _really_ old word in English anyways][1]. Now I feel like a grumpy old person.

[1]: [https://english.stackexchange.com/a/79055/42347](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/79055/42347)

<comment><USER11> Not to quibble with your quibble (but here I go anyway)... The term "Marketing Spend of X" or "Operating Spend of Y" is fairly common business-analysis- speak. At least in certain regions of the United States. IIRC, I also heard it used by Telstra and ANZ execs during some projects I had to take care of in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great post. It's good to see an enterprise smaller than Segment [0] talk about how complex AWS pricing is.

You mention you use SQS to queue incoming metrics. What server/framework/language are you using to do this? IME using SQS requires tools with good parallelism to deal with it's high-latency/high-throughput performance characteristics.

[0] [https://segment.com/blog/spotting-a-million-dollars-in- your-...](https://segment.com/blog/spotting-a-million-dollars-in-your-aws- account/)

</comment><comment><USER13> How much of devops in AWS-land is really forensic accountancy?

Moneymaking idea for someone: a devops person, a lawyer, and an accountant get together and charge companies to predict their cloud bill.

<comment><USER14> Use cloudability to monitor cloud spend and prediction is pretty easy..

<comment><USER13> Naturally someone has already started that business :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a bit curious about the cost/revenue ratio. Is 12.5% considered a reasonable ratio? I just checked our spend, which includes not only hosting but other IT related spends (helpdesk, email, slack, email marketing service, etc). I think our spend is around the 3-4% mark compared to revenue.

Now I'm not trying to show off or say we're doing things better. If anything, maybe this post can help me convince my cofounders that we should spend more on infrastructure hosting (there's lots of things we could improve). I'm mostly curious what's a typical ratio in other smallish startups.

<comment><USER16> Cronitor co-founder here. This is a great question! I would love to see others post some numbers here.

As Shane mentioned in the post 12.5% has been a consistent number for us as we have scaled up over the past couple years. That said, at this point I suspect we will see this percentage decrease a bit going forward. I'm basing this on intuiting that we're a bit over provisioned at the moment and won't have to scale our infrastructure linearly with user growth over the next year or two. Of course, that remains to be seen...

To add some more numbers to the conversation my full time job is CTO at a consumer facing tech company (Babylist.com) I just looked at our spending on IT/infrastructure for the last couple of months and it's around 1.5-2% of revenue.

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I guess there are economies of scale / barrier of entry costs involved that should reduce this ratio over time.

On a side note. When people talk about x-figures revenue, are they typically talking about x-figures monthly or yearly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love AWS and for any startup that I expected to need to scale quickly I would choose it in a heartbeat.

However when it comes to low-traffic side projects and experiments where costs of a few hundred dollars matter, I prefer Linode or DigitalOcean with ansible provisioning and B2 for block storage. It will cost you more time for sure, but it will give you better performance at the low-end which means you can break even sooner. If it takes off you can always migrate to AWS, GCP or Azure later.

<comment><USER18> GCloud recently updated their free-tier ([https://cloud.google.com/free/](https://cloud.google.com/free/)). They provide $300 credit which can be used for any product in GCP, and some services when used within quota are always free. So you might want to give GCP a try for your low-traffic side projects.

<comment><USER19> Just to clarify, the $300 is linked to your personal account and once it expires it's gone forever (at least for now).

<comment><USER20> can't you just create new accounts ad infintum?

<comment><USER21> You need to add a CC or bank account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dumb question: is there a way to show the total AWS costs you're incurring in the past second/minute/hour?

The finest granularity I can find in the AWS web console is per day; many times I've butterfingered an input and only caught it a few days after the fact due to the unexpected bill increase.

<comment><USER23> AWS supports publishing detailed billing information to an S3 bucket on an hourly frequency with excellent granularity as to which resource and operation is driving spend.

Unfortunately, to make meaningful use of this you pretty much have to roll your own infra to download it, load it and analyze it. :(

<comment><USER14> Once again... contact cloudability.

<comment><USER24> cloudability starts at $499 minimum per month. Not sure how this seems to be a feasible option for side projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reserved instances are never really good starting out. I think it's better used when you understand your setup and your setup has been working for years. Or if you are migrating a service that you understand the load that was on premesis.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice post indeed. Few cents from our experience at ActOnCloud, Often Cloud- first and Cloud-only companies would face similar issues in future. Cloud is a one way trip. Unless one takes care of vendor lock-in and prepare the team for better governance and financial control, its going to be nightmare.

With cloud providers pushing for Serverless, it will be even more darker, there is not a way to get control, Just hope that everything will be greener.

</comment><comment><USER27> Surprised to not see RDS and ElastiCache. What do you use as "db"?

<comment><AUTHOR> We run our own MySQL and Redis on an Ec2 instance. Originally it was due to cost -- you essentially are charged by instance when using these services and we could run them both from a single instance. Today, it's really due to not wanting or needing to do the migration.

I will add, we've paid when we've had to do several manual db upgrades in that time:

\- Original m3.medium on non-provisioned iops

\- Upgrade m4.large

\- Upgrade to an EBS with provisioned iops

\- Upgrade to m4.xlarge

These are easy enough, but not nearly as easy as an RDS upgrade is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What are the reasons for three months being 3X the rest?

<comment><AUTHOR> We purchased reserved instances. When I quote the 12.5% number it's amortizing the ri cost.

Reserved instances have saved us a ton of money, even with my screw up last October.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29>
      You should only use T2 instances within an auto-scaling group.

Could someone please elaborate? I always thought this is a horrible idea because upon CPU credit exhaustion the AWS metrics show CPU utilisation including the burst. For example, if you run out of CPU credits for t2.micro it will show around 15% in AWS whilst on the instance itself you will see 100%.

<comment><USER30> Using t2 rds in production for 1 year for some stuff at work. We used cloudwatch to monitor the cpu credit balance. Moved from t2 small to t2 medium. Fixed some queries that used too much cpu. Still running strong. Never had down time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _> You pay by number of requests, not number of messages, so it reduces costs and makes it significantly faster to gulp down messages._

Are there any other technical changes you've made to your application code specifically in response to AWS costs? Any other recommendations when designing a new application?

<comment><USER32> There is advice like this in the "Cost Optimization" whitepaper of Well- Architected

aws.amazon.com/well-architected

disclaimer: work for AWS and author

<comment><USER32> [https://aws.amazon.com/well-architected](https://aws.amazon.com/well- architected)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really interesting to see the cost of other small companies.</comment>


Show HN: JHP, ultra-simple static site rendering in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brundonsmith/jhp <comment><USER2> Cool. A nice addition may be to resolve promised interpolations, so you could do `<div>${promise}</div>`. You would need to use tagged templates to do this: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Template_literals)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting idea. My thinking was that people could use async/await for that kind of thing, but it would still require declaring local variables instead of interpolating expressions. I'm aiming for utmost simplicity, but this could be a worthwhile tradeoff :)</comment></comment>


Best method for grabbing contacts? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for something like http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_other_networks<p>There are a few scripts I have found but none that look like they are frequently updated. Anyone have some working knowledge? <comment><USER2> Well every provider has different access methods, of course.

Google's is probably the easiest since you can easily just supply a username/password (note: I believe they support OAuth as well, which would be the preferred means of accessing sensitive data instead of asking users for their password) and utilize their contacts API. <http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/>

When I looked at this several months back, it seemed there had been a few libraries to abstract this at one point, but they eventually gave up. Possibly because the other systems don't/didn't place as nice as google. But there is: <http://developer.yahoo.com/addressbook/> and <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb447750.aspx></comment>


The Double-Edged Sword of the Web - <AUTHOR> https://ponyfoo.com/articles/double-edged-sword-web <comment><USER2> Earlier submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044928)</comment>


IndexedDB: Connection to Indexed DB server lost. Refresh the page to try again - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201483 <comment><AUTHOR> IndexedDB: An internal error was encountered in the Indexed Database server [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197050](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197050)

IndexedDB: on-going IDBTransaction is not active any more after process is suspended [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202705](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202705)</comment>


New iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro Models Ditch 3D Touch in Favor of Haptic Touch - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/09/10/iphone-11-no-3d-touch/ <comment><USER2> Thank goodness. 3D Touch was the "randomly do some other operation 5% of the time" misfeature for me.</comment>


Right Wing Terrorism and 'The Enemy Within' - <AUTHOR> https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-right-wing-terrorism-and-the-enemy-within/ <comment><USER2> Regarding the proportionality of media reports: "the right wing" is ~30-50% of the population (depends on how you want to define it), Muslims make up ~1%. If the extremists of each movement are similar in relative size & violence affinity, you'd expect 30-50x more right wing extremists than muslim extremists.

According to the numbers in the article, it's actually 3x.</comment>


Day in the life of a Roguelike Developer - overcoming burnout. - <AUTHOR> http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/06/day-in-life-of-roguelike-developer.html

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I'm not the only person who has #3. For some reason, I seem to get miraculous insights into problems when I'm exercising, so I've taken to keeping a tiny pen and a couple index cards within reach at all times. While running, this has sometimes resulted in me crouching on the side of a street, scribbling madly while constantly looking for oncoming cars, but when I get back home and finally finish that tricky proof or implement that evasive idea into code, I find it is well worth the trouble.

<comment><USER3> I keep thinking I should get a voice recorder (my MP3 player can record, but starting up recording takes several seconds). But the sound of my own voice makes me uncomfortable, and I'm doubtful I would follow up.

I also get ideas e.g. when driving. A voice recorder could capture those.

Recently, I discovered while trouble-shooting something else that my old cell phone has a sort of half-*ssed recorder built in (requires extended button press; voice notes limited to 1 minute, despite having a 1 GB card in the thing). I imagine this feature is available on iPhone, Android, etc.?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like the author works on Unangband full-time. I can't help wondering how he can afford that with a free niche product.

<comment><USER5> "It sounds like the author works on Unangband full-time. "

From the page linked to,(emphasis mine)

"I'm a IT manager from New Zealand who spent the last 5 and a half years working in the United Kingdom. I've just emigrated to Sydney, Australia with my wife, and spend my _free time_ at the moment developing Unangband and blogging. I also write as the Amateur for GameSetWatch."

I guess this could be interpreted to mean he is not working and all his time is "free time" but it doesn't sound very likely. It sounds like he has a fulltime job and is working on unangband parttime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of possible interest: an interview with Glenn Weichman (co-creator of Rogue): [http://www.roguetemple.com/interviews/glenn_wichman_intervie...](http://www.roguetemple.com/interviews/glenn_wichman_interview)

</comment><comment><USER3> The "Burnout" graphic is from despair.com, by the way. They have quite a collection of similar "demotivators".

<http://www.despair.com/viewall.html></comment>


Ignoring search warrants, pulling strings: How Tesla avoided an OSHA inspection - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2020/03/03/osha-tesla-gigafactory-nevada-full-safety-inspection-avoided/4931563002/ <comment><USER2> This does kinda look like a bunch of employees at Tesla are upset and want to use OSHA to cause Tesla as much hassle as possible. You can bet those are the ones leaving pipes and wires lying about when an inspector visits...

A 'full investigation' just sounds like an excuse to shut down the production line for multiple days while it's investigated.</comment>


A Primer on Bézier Curves - <AUTHOR> https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo#preface <comment><USER2> I love bezier curves. I'm working on rebuilding a project I started in college, a vector graphics editor. The function for determining intersections between two cubic bezier curves, which I found on a professor's website, is absolutely insane:

[https://github.com/artursapek/mondrian/blob/master/src/coffe...](https://github.com/artursapek/mondrian/blob/master/src/coffee/geometry/cubic- bezier-line-segment.coffee#L397)

It's a wall of this:

          c11.x*c12.y*c13.x*c13.y*c23.x*c23.y - c11.y*c12.x*c13.x*c13.y*c23.x*c23.y + 6*c21.x*c22.x*c13y3*c23.x +
          3*c11.x*c12.x*c13.x*c13.y*c23y2 + 6*c10.x*c13.x*c13y2*c23.x*c23.y - 3*c11.x*c12.x*c13y2*c23.x*c23.y -
          3*c11.y*c12.y*c13.x*c13.y*c23x2 - 6*c10.y*c13x2*c13.y*c23.x*c23.y - 6*c20.x*c13.x*c13y2*c23.x*c23.y +
          3*c11.y*c12.y*c13x2*c23.x*c23.y - 2*c12.x*c12y2*c13.x*c23.x*c23.y - 6*c21.x*c13.x*c22.x*c13y2*c23.y -
          6*c21.x*c13.x*c13y2*c22.y*c23.x - 6*c13.x*c21.y*c22.x*c13y2*c23.x + 6*c21.x*c13x2*c13.y*c22.y*c23.y +

Maybe there's a way to refactor it, but I wouldn't know because I still don't understand it; I just know that it works.

<comment><USER3> What the heck...!?! I would really love for someone to explain how something like this happens.

<comment><USER4> It happens because the curves are not polynomials in the normal sense. The parameter t that ranges from [0..1] is not the same between the two curves, so it is not equivalent to setting two polynomials equal to each other and solving for x, or t in this case. A solution to the intersection is equivalent to solving for the t parameter of both curves simultaneously and IIRC that ends up having an order that is the product of the orders of the curves (9th order for 2 cubics?). On second thought it's not the product, but it is definitely much higher order. That is the reason people use the matrix representations, once you get a feel for that the complexity tends to get hidden by representing an entire matrix of Nth order polynomials by a letter like B.

If anyone is really interested in this stuff and wants to make a major contribution to open source software... First study these and then move on to NURBS, surfaces, and then trimmed NURBS surfaces. These are the core of all CAD software and a clean library for trimmed NURBS is sorely lacking. There are two that I'm aware of, the one in OpenCascade which is a huge ball of mud (but works) and the one in SolveSpace which doesn't scale well and has some other limitations - that is the one I feel is most worthy of someones time.

<comment><USER5> NLib is the gold standard in closed-source, right?

<comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I am financially tied to NLib's current distributor.

NLib has a lot of sophisticated NURBS math tools. It was literally written by one of the men who wrote The NURBS Book.

As far as I know, it doesn't do anything much for trimmed NURBS surfaces, in the sense of a surface trimmed by an arbitrary series of curves. (Might be a tessellation routine for that case?) Basically it is mostly geometry, with only very limited topology support.

There are lots of products which provide geometry & topology support: SMLib, SOLIDS++, Acis, and Parasolid come to mind. The first two are built on NLib. I don't think any of them have as sophisticated NURBS geometry tools as NLib does. (Except to the extent that you can call NLib routines directly with the first two.)

I'm not aware of any commercial product which directly competes with NLib at all. Which doesn't mean one doesn't exist! I'd be interested if anyone has experience with other libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pomax (the author) here: for those wondering about what's different since last time this hit HN, this is a slowly-but-surely updating project that has been in the works since 2011. If you remember seeing it before: you're not wrong! But it will probably have been less content or less functionality than it is this time round =)

The latest improvement is that the codebase now supports localization which means that if you're a dual (triple, etc) speaker and you want to help bring this content to people who don't speak English, now you can! Chinese and Japanese localizations are already underway (although it's a volunteer effort, much like the Primer itself, so progress is again steady, but slow) and currently cover the first 10 or so sections.

For more details on the fine points of the build system and how much work it was to overhaul an "everything is assumed to be English, no l10n provisions have been made whatsoever" to "EASY to localize" (not just 'possible to', but 'easy'), hit up [http://pomax.github.io/1489108158510/localization-is- hard](http://pomax.github.io/1489108158510/localization-is-hard) where I've blogged about the uplift and the tech choices I made.

And on a less impressive note but certainly more useful for social sharing, the social share buttons now actually point to the section you're reading, so that future sections can be shared waaay easier. For the last six years, those things have just pointed to the base article URL and that is not very useful when you want to share the fact that you just read up on how to split a Bézier curve using matrix operations, or want to link to the B-Spline section all the way at the bottom of the Primer.

<comment><USER8> You're apparently part of the biannual _State of SVG_ days on HN

2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14155393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14155393)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10678652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10678652)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6470908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6470908)

<comment><USER9> Excuse the pedantry: Biennial is every 2 years ;-)

<comment><USER7> Additional pedantry: while biennial does exclusively mean "once every two years", biannual is not strictly speaking wrong. However, quite inconveniently, like most "bi-[time span]" words, biannual can mean either twice a year or once every two years.

<comment><USER8> I actually had it first with biennial, but thought but that would be the word for the event (like the italian _Biennale_ ) not the time interval, since it sounded weird as an adjective. Oh the ambivalence; yet listing the years should make the intent obvious.

Also if you use search, there are some more high profile SVG related posts that don't follow that made up pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It never fully clicked for me until I saw it animated [https://www.jasondavies.com/animated- bezier/](https://www.jasondavies.com/animated-bezier/)

<comment><USER11> I've got a few other references on Bezier curves, including a link to a previous HN conversation:

[https://github.com/melling/ComputerGraphics/blob/master/bezi...](https://github.com/melling/ComputerGraphics/blob/master/bezier.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a really good article! It was thanks to this (and the Wikipedia page) that I managed to write code[1] for drawing evenly-spaced letters along the curve. The letters are even rotated to match the curve, all thanks to this article. It's basically a one-stop shop for all things Bezier :)

[1] In Racket, here: [https://github.com/piotrklibert/curved- text](https://github.com/piotrklibert/curved-text)

<comment><USER7> Always happy to hear the primer made a difference in someone's life =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      > They're named after Pierre Bézier . . . publishing his investigations in 1962

      > One might be tempted to say that the mathematician Paul de Casteljau was first,
      investigating the nature of these curves in 1959

      > Bézier curves are, at their core, "Bernstein polynomials",
      a family of mathematical functions investigated by Sergei Natanovich Bernstein,
      with publications on them at least as far back as 1912.

I see many stories like this, which shatter the idea of a lone inventor bringing something new out of thin air.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, I don't think anyone who actually learned even a modicum of maths history holds that idea, though. Where were you made to believe the idea of one person coming up with complete solutions all on their own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pierre Béziers, in addition to being a great mathematician and engineer, was a great teacher (including when he was ranting about us, youngsters, not being able to solve "simple" mechanical problems !) It's good to see people investing such effort to make it easy to understand and available to everyone

</comment><comment><USER15> I used this resource about six months ago as a refresher so I could build bezier splines[1] for character pathing while I was learning Unity. It is probably the best resource out there for this.(Outside of game engine specific information.)

1: [http://i.imgur.com/8pWMTZS.png](http://i.imgur.com/8pWMTZS.png)

2: [https://vid.me/GMso](https://vid.me/GMso)

<comment><USER7> Oh that's cool - it's always great to see the primer having helped in making a thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Look at the archives, this link has been doing the rounds for at least 6 years now.

<comment><USER17> That makes it especially impressive that he used React and other recent Web technologies to build the site.

(It's been around a while but this is a rewrite and looks like a pretty massive update)

<comment><USER7> My day job is web techs, so I've been slowly upgrading this article ever since I turned it into a "real page" in 2011. The latest part (that got done after the last time this hit HN) is localization support, so there are now Chinese and Japanese translations for the first 10ish sections, and a relatively clean way to translate entire sections at a time (each section is now an .md file that gets transpiled to a JSX component, before bundling kicks in. It's nifty)

<comment><USER2> Good on you for keeping it up to date. This page is extremely dense with information and clearly has cost you a lot of your time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was expecting another superficial article with some interactive graphs but this is a lot deeper with handy formulas for various flavors and uses of Bézier curves. Worth a bookmark!

</comment><comment><USER19> Lovely explanation, I always find them fascinating. I really need to get around to coding some of them sometimes, but I find most of the itnerest in the mathetics.

That said, early higheschoolers knows jack about binomials unless they are particularly smart. I would venture a majority of college students (in subjects other than engineering and science) would find this too daunting. I think by downplaying the complexity it actually turns people off from trying to learn. Which of course is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER20> > In fact, they even need this for straight lines, but the function is > ridiculously easy, so we tend to ignore that as far as computers are > concerned

Well.... If it was so easy, why does the algorithm have a name? (Bresenham's algorithm), if it's named surely it must've been "invented" at some point, implying it wasn't as easy?

<comment><USER21> Bresenham's algorithm is for rasterization, and I think the article refers to the function f(t) -> (x,y), which is just a linear interpolation in 2D.

<comment><USER22> Plus Bresenham is for doing things just using integer math, with floats rasterizing a line is little more than straightforward linear interpolation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think I used an earlier version of the section of splitting bezier curves to do the opposite: Combining two bezier curves in SVG (probably they were split at some point before by the outputting program).

</comment><comment><USER24> This came in very handy for me on one of my side projects, specifically finding intersections between curves. Excellent content.</comment>


The Necessity of Musical Hallucinations - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/the-necessity-of-musical-hallucinations

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised Music Ear Syndrome (MES) was not mentioned:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_ear_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_ear_syndrome) [https://audicus.com/the-ghost-in-our-ears-hearing-loss- and-m...](https://audicus.com/the-ghost-in-our-ears-hearing-loss-and-musical- hallucinations/)</comment>


Build your own GPU compiler with libNVVM (using LLVM IR subset) - alok-g http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2013/presentations/S3185-Building-GPU-Compilers-libNVVM.pdf <comment> alok-g See also: <http://nvidia.fullviewmedia.com/gtc2013/0319-230C-S3185.html> (Presentation recording with audio)</comment>


The $2,500 Veterinarian Bill – Dating a Team Member - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.joelx.com/the-2500-veterinarian-bill-dating-a-team-member/7870/

<comment><USER2> You got ripped off. In order for chocolate to be dangerous the dog needs to eat a decent amount of chocolate. The LD for my rottweiller and GSD was greater than any amount of chocolate I ever have in the house.

However if your dog ever gets into chocolate (or something else you would rather not have them ingest)save $2,500 and pick up a $5 bottle of Hydrogen peroxide and pour down dogs throat. To make it easier for everyone involved pour the bottle out into another container and cut the bottom of the plastic bottle off. Now you can use the funnel you created to get the peroxide down the dog's throat. It doesnt take much to get the dog to vomit, so be prepared to move away quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> She's your girlfriend so she wouldn't think twice about taking advantage of you. Sounds like you're running a tight operation over there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow. You posted this yourself? Do you even realize this makes you look like a moronic ass?</comment>


Tell HN: What price would cover "stock quotes [advanced] by 20 minutes"? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Could you please clarify?</comment>


LeaseWeb: Statement on former client MegaUpload - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leaseweb.com/2013/06/19/statement-on-former-client-megaupload/ <comment><USER2> Expecting LeaseWeb to sit on these servers indefinitely without any communication with Kim is unreasonable. While what happened to MegaUpload is a travesty, expecting their hosting partners to share collateral cost/damages is unreasonable given their other obligations.

As stated in the other thread, I think what LeaseWeb has done is fine and Kim should reconsider his comments. In a similar situation, I doubt he would have done otherwise.

<comment><USER3> This is now one parties word against another's. Kim says he tried to contact them, they said he never did and sent him a notice.

Leaseweb kept the servers a year at their own cost, if the end result is bad PR from Kim, they should have just cleaned them right away. Alternatively, they could have coordinated a positive story for both parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the local feds took 60 servers? Out of 690?

I can't tell from the _1HU front plate_ of a _generic server_ what it's contents are. So maybe those were the only servers they could directly implicate in transmitting copyrighted stuff? But I'm not sure you can even make that distinction (load balancers, proxys, internal networking different from outside view, ..). The charges also included racketeering and other capital crimes, so I'd imagine they could have easily taken all of these servers on that charge alone.

Also, the way searches work here is that the people executing them are usually not involved in the actual investigation. They call it the _executive arm_ for a reason. So they usually get a broad description of what to take ( _servers_ ), and from whom ( _Megaupload_ ) and then take everything they can find. Police here commonly confiscates _displays_ when looking for hard disks.

Also, why did LeaseWeb not immediately re-assign after first non-payment? What was the bet here? That MegaUpload would be able to stave off capital charges on absolutely no capital at all (initially), spanning 5+ countries?

From what it looks like, these servers were tainted, and should have been taken in as evidence.

(Whats the connection here with [https://www.eff.org/cases/megaupload-data- seizure](https://www.eff.org/cases/megaupload-data-seizure) ?)

<comment><USER5> Maybe they just took the servers that were used for/labeled as email or other corporate purposes and left the storage farm that had all the content on? Assuming a segmented network I would think all the corporate servers were on one network (possibly all in the same racks) that was probably obviously labeled and the storage servers were identical arrays on another network.

<comment><USER6> But then why are there 60 of them? You don't need that much for corporate email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kim's response:

 _Leaseweb says: "After a year of nobody showing interest in servers & data we considered our options." Data preservation emails say otherwise_

[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347417997901697024](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347417997901697024)

 _Nobody should believe for a second that we haven 't tried everything to convince #Leaseweb not to delete #Megaupload user data._

[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347420452462931969](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347420452462931969)

They probably should have had this conversation in public first time round...

</comment><comment><USER8> I consider that an excellent written response to a tricky situation. Props to them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reasonable. Let's see what Kim has to say to that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hypothetically, if Kim Dotcom found the money to run those servers, would he have been allowed to pay LeaseWeb to keep them unwiped?

<comment><USER10> He did find the money and he chose to make mega.co.nz instead.

Everything else is just a plea for attention.

<comment><USER11> Your opinion of course. This is Leaseweb's side of the story. I imagine that Kim's side sounds very different.

<comment><USER12> The difference is that Dotcom has a long history of lies and fraud. Leaseweb, on the other hand, doesn't have any negatives I could find in the last few years aside from Dotcom's complaint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Swap out hard drives, mail them to kim dotcom with a bill. Its a good idea anyways.

</comment><comment><USER14> Kim called it a "data massacre", he's not one for understatement. Kim should of already had backups, he can't expect a business to hold his leased servers without any compensation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sucks to be Kim but why should another third, seemly innocent party, have to suffer too?

600 servers that be leased at, say, $100 a month is $60,000 a month or $720K a year. Kim, FedGov...Jesus or whoever should pay if they want to keep the servers idle. Leaseweb had more patience than I would have had.

As for evidence: My guess is that the Feds have enough preserved servers to make their case. You do not need them all unless you want to file 100++ million charges. If they have 10 servers and within them they have enough data about xxx violations of the law, that's good enough. He will be charged with them and that's it.

Low blow from Kim.

<comment><USER16> Also note that $100 per month is pretty low-ball figure.

<comment><USER17> I think its high ball. The servers were no doubt paid-for by that point.

The only real cost they could have is depreciation on the servers themselves and power to keep them on. I dont think its fair to call potential income they could get from re-renting them lost money, as its not like leaseweb stopped taking customer orders.

Also, I think this is actually going to be good for Kim. While everyone from the MU side denys it, the overwhelming use for MU was infringing content. By LW deleting this, I believe it benefits MU more than it hurts them. Prosecution has to prove guilt, not the other way around. If evidence gets deleted that goes to serve MU, not the USDOJ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is what they could have done to save the data:

\- replace the hard drives

\- start renting the servers to other people

\- save the old hard drives just in case

How much would it have cost them to save the old hard drives on 600 servers? Not much.

<comment><USER19> _How much would it have cost them to save the old hard drives on 600 servers? Not much._

over $100,000 based on a very conservative and unrealistic estimate only factoring in the cost of removing and installing 600 hard drives.

<comment><USER20> 100k is less then the 750k - 1M that lost for hanging onto them for a year without use. Sorry but something smells fishy here, the first month they should have swapped the drives and put those servers back up. (saving the drives intact just incase the feds came asking for them)

<comment><USER21> You're forgetting that when they initially decided to keep the servers they didn't know whether Kim would regain access to his funds or whether he would want to buy the data back at all. In retrospect they could've made the decision to do what you're suggesting.

I know conspiracy theories are appealing, but it's much more likely that they took a calculated risk by holding on to the data/servers for one of their bigger, well-paying clients (~1.5% of their total server count). Then, when the gamble didn't look like it was going to pay off, they decided to cut their losses and reuse the servers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UCBerkley removes online video content starting 15 March - <AUTHOR> http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-capture/ <comment><USER2> Start downloading like mad, and archive this stuff to S3?

[https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please don't change this title to the original one. The original title obfuscates the meaning and importance of this article in my opinion.</comment>


Bill Venners chats with the Twitter developers, in Twitter on Scala - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/twitter_on_scala.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great interview. Specially since it is very clear about the shortcomings of the Ruby runtime.

Someone should port Rails to Scala :-)

<comment><USER3> The leading Scala web framework, Lift (www.liftweb.net), was made by David Pollak, an early Rails adopter.

Lift tries to take the best of Rails but it is far from a port.</comment></comment>