Ask HN: Linux/bash configuration in a regular file vs a dotfile? - <AUTHOR>

Why not put shell configuration (i.e. .bash_profile or .bash_rc) in a regular file instead of a dot file? <comment><USER2> Because "dot files" are normally hidden when "ls" lists a directory. So unless you change things to always show them, by having them "hide" you don't have to look at them in your directory listings every time you list the directory contents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that is the original reason...but I seem to have to edit it quite often (or at least some environmental variable) so I thought perhaps it'd be useful to have it visible.

<comment><USER2> If you want them visible, then just do this in your shell:

alias ls="ls -a"

And now anytime you do an ls, you'll have visible dot files.

Of if you are using Linux and the GNU tools, setting the LS_OPTIONS environment variable to contain -a will also make them always visible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/gjvc/etc](https://github.com/gjvc/etc) and/or google for "github dotfiles" \-- many people keep their set up there.</comment>


Show HN: Coco Color my new invention, a coloring stylus for iOS & Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.cococolor.com <comment><AUTHOR> about 2 years ago my youngest daughter Coco said the pink stylus I had given her was broken. She meant it didn't color in pink on her iPad! As clear as blue sky, the idea for Coco Color was born.</comment>


Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/02/04/journalists-at-sochi-are-live-tweeting-their-hilarious-and-gross-hotel-experiences/

<comment><USER2> For someone who grew up in Russia this doesn't come as a surprise at all. This is how it is when the whole world is watching, one can only imagine what everyday life is like in Russia. I remember the stories of how back in the 1980 Olympics the, normally completely empty, grocery stores in Moscow were all of a sudden filled with 'luxury' food items imported from Finland to show the rest of the world how great the country was. Meanwhile Moscow was a complete lockdown and nobody could get in or out of the city. Deja vu all over again ;)

<comment><USER3> Can you confirm whether the russian in the "please don't flush toilet paper" is correctly translated?

Seems to be more likely that they actually mean "paper" or "paper towels" not "toilet paper".

It is quite common to not want anything _but_ toilet paper flushed so I'm wondering if that is what the sign actually is meaning to say.

<comment><USER4> it is toilet paper for certain. source: russian speaker.

<comment><USER5> No, it isn't. Sign says only "paper". It isn't clear what they mean, can be interpreted differently.

<comment><USER6> Part of traveling is groking the local terminology for things. In Atlanta, soda is "coke". Ohio, "pop". New York "soda".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every single olympics, there is dire warnings before hand, things will not be ready. There are guaranteed huge traffic problems, not enough volunteers or infrastructure.

Then as soon as it starts, all is forgotten, it is a wonderful time, the best Olympics ever, greatest world records broken, the best Olympians ever.

<comment><USER8> You hear the run up of 'they aren't going to be ready', but you don't hear it days before the Olympics. In Whistler/Vancouver, our housing was completed months before. You didn't have incomplete buildings or event venues leading up to the day. Some of the venues may have cut it close (I don't really remember), but still, I don't think anything was left to a few days before.

I really don't care about the journalists though. I'm more concerned about the athletes and the venues, particularly for their safety in many of these sports where (by the sounds of things) the competition will be essentially a 'trial run' of the venue. In Whistler, our Bobsled and Nordic Ski venues all hosted warm-up test events before the Olympics.

<comment><USER9> The venue issue is already present: [http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-03/why-extreme-nature- soc...](http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-03/why-extreme-nature-sochi- slopestyle-course-has-snowboarders-scared) .

The main issue illustrated by this story is that the warm weather in Sochi is causing many of the venues to be built sloppily or incorrectly. In this case the slopestyle venue was difficult to build because of poor snow quality and the jumps are all massively overbuilt to try to compensate for high expected melting rates over the coming week.

<comment><USER8> We had similar concerns in Whistler regarding the Women's Downhill Ski Coarse in particular. That isn't what I meant when about being concerned about safety. This sounds to me like a very challenging course, that doesn't mean it is unsafe. Women on the downhill in Whistler were complaining that the course was too difficult. Olympic organizes also voiced concerns, but realistically, that's just how we do it in Whistler, maybe Sochi is a bit of the same.

When I am concerned about safety, I do mean safety of the athletes, but I don't mean jumps being too big. I'm more concerned about poor fencing, inconsistent terrain, etc. A pedestrian pathway fell down just before the Commonwealth Games in India a few years ago. Those are the types of safety concerns I was worried about.

As far as 'big jumps' go, I figure, if you're a professional athlete and your sport involves jumps, you need to know what speed you can safely take those jumps at.

Contrast that to the tragic Skeleton accident on the first day of the Whistler Olympics. Everybody had said how challenging the track was, but nobody imagined anybody would fly off the track and hit a pole. The challenging track is acceptable, the pole is absolutely not. There was nothing the athlete could have done to protect himself once he came off the course.

I don't know that the snowboard cross comparisons is that kind of dangerous.

<comment><USER9> Point taken about challenging courses, Whistler, and Sochi. The bike park at Whistler is a pleasure every time and still the best in the world IMO, in no small part because Whistler aren't afraid to build big features.

I certainly don't think that the snowboard cross course as reported so far is dangerous in a deadly way like an alpine course with flawed fencing design or a skeleton or bobsled course with solid obstacles in proximity, but the reasons that the snowboard cross course are bad are still very worrying.

Based on what athletes said for example here: [http://www.ctvnews.ca/sochi/safety-concerns-over-sochi- slope...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/sochi/safety-concerns-over-sochi-slopestyle- course-intensify-1.1669625) , the snowboard cross isn't huge because the builders wanted to go big by design, but rather to anticipate extreme melting activity. And, like the Whistler courses, the slopestyle course was supposed to have been tested a year ago but was unable to be constructed due to a lack of snow.

I certainly don't think it's a good sign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's more frustrating than your government overspending money on corrupt construction? Not even getting what you paid for. Construction and preparation costs were in the billions. Much of the money was given to Putin's associates and, in return, the people get this trash.

Same goes for Obama with Healthcare.gov. We spent all that money and got garbage in return.

<comment><USER11> Well, healthcare.org was an incompetent contractor. It wasn't _corrupt_.

<comment><USER6> It was grossly negligent at best.

The lack of contractural provisions requiring the contractors perform to get paid displays a level of incompetence that suggests corruption.

The real issue was probably an insane deadline that required a "fast" procurement vehicle. I consider that systemically corruption.

<comment><USER10> What was so insane about the deadline? The site was mostly fixed in a couple of months and that included time to find someone to fix the site and dig through all the toxic code that was already written.

With the level of incompetence that was shown in the site, it's extremely unlikely the original contractor just needed a couple more months to get the project finished.

The deadline was more than realistic. There was plenty of time to create something useful, they were just too incompetent to do so.

<comment><USER12> Wait, it's "extremely unlikely" that the original contractor needed a "couple of months" and yet you state that the deadline was not insane because it was fixed in a "couple of months"?

Most of the actual repair to the site was done by the contractors in question, the "IT surge" team that was brought in were mostly for quarterbacking what needed to be done.

Would CGI Federal and the other contractors got it working with a bit more time? Maybe not, but I don't quite get how you can present such sweeping assumptions as fact.

<comment><USER10> The site was riddled with so many issues and "simple pickups", like 404 pages, that I had no confidence in _that_ management team to finish the project within a couple of months. However, a _new_ management team quickly showed that the problems were fixable by a competent team. I believe the timeline was reasonable for a well managed team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems way different than the usual "everything is going to be terrible" months out stuff we usually see. This is "the games start tomorrow and the HOTELS aren't actually finished".

</comment><comment><USER5> As of "do not flush toilet paper", I have seen such signs in many places around the world (but I don't know reasons behind it), and it isn't only my experience [1]. It's intresting that it was a new for journalist who travels a lot.

[1] [http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20967/how-to- deal-...](http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20967/how-to-deal-with-a- full-trash-can-for-used-toilet-paper-where-you-are-not-allowe)

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I know this is disappointing for a global sporting event, but I'm surprised experienced journos have not experienced stuff like this in other developing countries (e.g. India).

<comment><USER15> Most of the journalists that I've been seeing this stuff from are sports journalists. Very heavily biased towards the United States and Canada.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I knew corruption surrounding the games was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. What happens if they're not prepared? Do they just go "Sorry, no xyz sport because the venue isn't ready"?

<comment><USER17> Hopefully, all the olympic venues are ready.

Still, underdelivery and enormous costs of these olympics (~$20-50bn figures depending on what to include in olympic costs) are horrifying for us Russians even more than yellow rusty water is for europeans and americans.

If past experience is any indicator, whatever is built for the Games will decay and rot within months after the event.

<comment><USER18> In France, since the Albertville olympic games (1992), the local ski venues are much more accessible (thanks to tunnels), and you still can use the bobsleigh track. So it really depends if the infrastructures were thought only for the olympic games or with a broader view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't been to Russia since the 90s, but this sounds pretty par for the course for back then: undrinkable water, crumbling new construction, Stray dogs,etc. I'm a bit surprised it's still that bad. It's a shame since it's a beautiful country with some really warm people.

Also, really surprised seasoned journalists have never been to a country where you can't flush the toilet paper?</comment>


Little Nemo in Google-land - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.co.jp

<comment><USER2> Some context, for those who, like myself, didn't recognise it: It's celebrating the 107th anniversary of the publication of an American comic strip. It ran between 1905 and 1927.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo>

</comment><comment><USER3> For any Winsor McCay fans out there who don't know - good quality scans of Little Nemo 1905-1914 are on the Internet Archive.

<http://archive.org/details/LittleNemo1905-1914ByWinsorMccay>

(Little Nemo ran on to 1927, but later strips are still in copyright)

There's also a full run of his Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: [http://archive.org/details/DreamOfTheRarebitFiendByWinsorMcc...](http://archive.org/details/DreamOfTheRarebitFiendByWinsorMccay)

</comment><comment><USER4> Smooth! I loved the little touches, like the parallax effects on the previous panes as the window stretched vertically.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for posting this! I haven't seen the movie but I remember the Nintendo game being great <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo:_The_Dream_Master>

<comment><USER6> As the wikipedia article notes, this is based off the movie, and not the comic.

The comic didn't evolve a storyline per se for quite some time; there's very little continuity between pages. It is also, do note, a full-page comic. The artwork is fantastic and beautiful, with a particular excellence in linework and architecture. There is somewhat of a homage in Gaiman's Sandman series at various times, notably in The Doll's House.

One curious element is the highly racist (to modern sensibilities) depiction of an african child, one of Nemo's companions. For some reason he didn't make the film.

Little Nemo ran under two or three different headings and had a hiatus in publishing concurrent with a switch of publications. In my opinion the quality went downhill towards the later years. On the whole, the comic has a compelling and uniquely unreal quality to it; I recommend it highly. As they were originally published about 100 years ago, the copyright should be expired: I believe at any rate that the comic is available on the torrent network of your choice.

The film was a decent bit of animation, and the story largely dispenses with the plot of the comic. That is actually to the good; a more literal translation I feel would have been impossible. The only flaw I might single out would be the relative weakness of its musical numbers: if Disney had not made it necessary for any animated film to have songs, it is doubtful that anyone would have thought to add them. On the whole, while it is quite excellent on its own merits, it falls somewhat short of Windsor McKay's mastery of sequential art.

The film seems to be available on Hulu: <http://www.hulu.com/watch/257552>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suppose this is available in Google Japanase, not English, right now because they are already on Monday right now.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.google.com.au/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you view this on Google Korea and follow it to the end, the first search result is a torrent of the DVD.

</comment><comment><USER10> How does someone make something like this? I see there are bunch of images and they are using css sprite technic but is there a tool that helps you generate an animation like this? Or is it manually done the hard way.

<http://www.google.co.jp>

</comment><comment><USER11> Meta/Off-topic:

Is there a mechanism in HN that auto-deadlinks certain domains? I submitted google.com.sg a couple of hours ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4653135>, submitted before I saw this post), and it was deadlinked by the time the page refreshed.

(As far as I can tell I'm not hellbanned.)

<comment><USER12> Alas, I don't know the answer to your question, but I can tell you that you are not hellbanned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This makes me happy on so many levels.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice. First thought evoked: "Scenes From A Night's Dream Lyrics" by Genesis

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is "I'm Feeling Lucky" in English?

<comment><USER16> It's their trademark, that they probably didn't want to protect in many different languages.

<comment><USER17> It has nothing to do with that, it's branding. Check Google France, Spain, China, Russia...they all have localized versions of "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons. The Japanese and Koreans are English-crazy, so they kept it in English to look hip.</comment></comment></comment>


Solve This Puzzle to Get This Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkmirror.com/hUmsXHsC3yihic9B/denver.craigslist.org/sof/514727825.html

<comment><USER2> Come on using base64? isn't that a bit too old school?</comment>


Ars Technica's best video games of 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/ars-technicas-best-video-games-of-2017/ <comment><USER2> I was going through this list and saying "where the hell is Horizon Zero Dawn!?!?".

Then I found it at #2. It is a tough choice between that and Mario, but for me Horizon edges it out.</comment>


Show HN: Deta – A cloud platform for building and deploying apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.deta.sh/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, co-creator here!

With Deta we are exploring ways to make the cloud less of a monster.

As a dev who worked in sales and marketing, I always had ideas for small web tools to improve my own and my team's workflow — but I always faced hurdles, like setting up a server, configuring an http proxy and implementing auth.

With Deta, we are trying to take away these repetitive tasks and allow you to simply build your web app, not the environment it runs on.

We would love any feedback / questions / comments you may have!

<comment><USER2> AppEngine and Firebase tackle the same frustrations. They both worked out pretty well. Have you used firebase? You should at least try it out and explain where it falls short.

<comment><USER3> Firebase is great, but there's plenty of space for yet another simple cloud solution.

Providing a decent SQL database would be a good feature compared to Firebase. And tons of little things that avoid reinventing the wheel everytime I have a new idea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds cool but one bit of feedback in terms of prioritization

> DetAI (pretty soon) – No-code neural nets to auto-fix bugs before they > happen.

I (and I suspect others as well) don't really need no-code auto-fixes for code. What I want is simple workflows for training WYSIWYG AI models. I'm not interested in writing python to express the model's computation graph. All I want are some blocks that I can glue together into a tensor graph and then deploy it for training and inference.

<comment><USER5> > All I want are some blocks that I can glue together into a tensor graph and > then deploy it for training and inference.

Something like that? [https://peltarion.com/platform](https://peltarion.com/platform)

(no relation)

<comment><USER6> I looked at the website and I couldn't find a pricing page anywhere. I tried looking for a site map to see if that would lead to a pricing page, but there's no site map page either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think you might be underestimating the fact that your marketing copy is a good proxy for your product commitment in the long run. I am having difficulties adding you to the short list of "platforms to be considered when starting out a new project" mainly for this reason alone..

Best of luck though, i just wanted to give honest feedback

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like one of those platforms that's neat in concept, but will fall apart fast for complex requirements.

<comment><USER9> Ya, after reading the page I would think the developers agree. They even wrote "Deta is building a cloud for the developers with less build bells and whistles". Sounds like a simpler version of Heroku? But why not use Heroku?

They also make it sound like the problem they're solving is that YAML is hard... but it's really not

<comment><AUTHOR> We do more than Heroku in some cases. Our plans is to offer more convenient abstractions for _developers_, where they can just ship code and we do the rest (imagine netlify but for the backend).

YAML/K8S/AWS make sense for complex backends, not for our target use cases (small tools and utils).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Calling something both production grade and beta at the same time seems like a contradiction to me

</comment><comment><USER11> The pricing page is hilarious:

Explorer: $0

Adventurer: $5

Enterprise: MONEY

<comment><USER12> It was funny when I read it but not sure if it is completely appropriate for attracting Enterprise customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi, thanks for posting this. I have two simple lightweight use cases and I would like to know if those fit to this platform or not.

1\. A simple Python script with two-three dependencies that needs to be run everyday once. Basically I am looking for a crontab in the cloud.

2\. A very lightweight script that needs to be run 24/7 and would not consume more than few MBs of RAM ever.

None of these two needs an HTTP endpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> > 1\. A simple Python script with two-three dependencies that needs to be run > everyday once. Basically I am looking for a crontab in the cloud.

This is possible and a target use-case. We offer cron and you could get rid of the API endpoint.

> 2\. A very lightweight script that needs to be run 24/7 and would not > consume more than few MBs of RAM ever.

We do not offer long running jobs atm.

Ping me firstname.lastname@example.com and happy to onboard you.

<comment><USER13> I can't find how to setup cron at your site. Can you please point that out to me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You are currently sending the shadiest verification email I ever encountered.

<comment><USER15> Now I am curious how _shady_ it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> The sender is firstname.lastname@example.com (managed by AWS). We are working with them to have an @deta.sh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are you planning to add a SQL database? I don't want nosql

<comment><AUTHOR> SQL is not planned yet but we would like to offer it at some point.

<comment><USER17> I take it SQLite ain't already bundled with Python, then? Seems like that'd be an easy win (and SQLite's almost certainly "good enough" for Deta's target audience).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> can you tell a bit more how deta compares to similar (?) services like firebase, netlify, vercel?

(don't worry if there isn't a great "usp" answer, just interested in learning more)

I'm personally quite excited about getting the journey from idea to something to tinker (and shareable) back down to how I remember it from a few years ago where I just live-edited files on a server. I tend to over-analyze all the various tech stack and deployment aspects too early :(

For hackathons I'm currently also using repl.it and glitch to get immediate results.

edit: kudos to getting this shipped/launching, can relate to how difficult it is to get an initial version out!

<comment><USER19> Hi — another co-creator here, thanks for the feedback.

With respect to your first question, I believe abdelhai answered it in another thread above.

We totally empathize with the experience of getting something to tinker and share rapidly up and running.

We actually started out our journey with our own cloud editor. It was essentially a worse repl.it or glitch but with a built in database and files. What we learned from our own talks with devs is that many of them really love their local development workflow and their own text editors. We decided or original approach was the wrong one for us but still want to provide the instant experience and rapid feedback that Glitch and repl.it do so well.

A couple USPs that might not be apparent in our marketing materials:

If you type 'deta watch' from the CLI, your locally saved changes will deploy in real time to your Micro(server). All you need to do is hit 'refresh' in the browser or make a new HTTP request.

We provide a real time 'Visor' which caches and logs incoming requests and responses. These can be replayed from within Deta against your latest code. Users have found this very useful for developing things like webhooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> $0, $5 for the first two tiers? That sounds way too cheap.

<comment><USER21> For $5 you can get an entire VPS from DO. You can also get similar services from Firebase for less. How is $5 for a service that offers a very very basic NoSQL API and simple Auth API cheap?

<comment><USER20> You have to provision and maintain your VPS. As far as I can tell, Deta isn't in the same line of business, they provide a managed infrastructure.

For sure you can already find cheap ways to host your systems. I still think that if you're a small team that want to compete in this domain you shouldn't try to compete on price, they are doom to fail if they go in that direction against already established businesses.

As someone who seem to match their target audience, I can say that $5/month is too cheap for me, that doesn't really inspire confidence. Of course that's just my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So you're a little bit of firebase a little bit of Herou? I guess consolidating managed services can have value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes + dev-friendly SDKs. That's what we believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We changed the URL from [https://www.deta.sh/billion- ideas](https://www.deta.sh/billion-ideas) to the project home page, which is more appropriate for Show HN.

We also changed the title from "Show HN: A Cloud for the Next Billion Ideas", which is too baity for HN. I always advise startups (especially YC-funded startups when they prepare their launches) to rigorously take out any sales and marketing language from their text and titles. HN readers are averse to it.

The basic rule is: Don't try to sell them, try to interest them. If you sell them, they will close the tab. If you interest them, they will sell themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies.

Honestly, we felt that our description (cloud platform) doesn't match our USP, and we thought that our phrasing conveys our message/ambition more succinctly.

<comment><USER23> No worries. I'd be happy to change the title to something accurate and neutral if you want to suggest better wording.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't this pretty much what Heroku does? Why would I choose Deta over Heroku?

<comment><AUTHOR> We offer a higher abstracted cloud. With Deta, you do not VMs/container, you just push code and it just works.

No need to load balance, etc. We also have a built-in fast NoSQL DB that works without configuration.

And many other dev-oriented conveniences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very cool platform, but I can't actually sign up!

<comment><USER19> This was down for a bit but should be fixed now, sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why did you link to the ideas page?! There are 839 words on it and I have no idea what your product is or does.

After looking at the docs[1] and front-page, you're a serverless lambda/functions/zeit with all the normal limitations, but a pretty decent tech-specs for the free and paid tier.

What makes you different? I really like the lack of vendor lock-in, but you need some more killer features to stand out.

1\. [https://docs.deta.sh/docs/micros/about](https://docs.deta.sh/docs/micros/about)

<comment><USER27> Did you not make it to the bottom, which includes a very specific and useful definition of the services they offer?

<comment><USER28> No, because it started explaining why computers are good and I didn't need a recap.</comment></comment></comment>


Creator of the GIF says it is pronounced "Jif" - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10072420/Creator-of-the-GIF-says-it-is-pronounced-Jif.html <comment><USER2> 22 May 2013

<comment><USER3> Doesn't make it any less relevant. I'm still arguing with people who are convinced it's 'gif' not 'jif'.

I prefer 'jif' as that's how I've always said it, right back to when it was originally invented. However, the pronunciation makes no sense, as it stands for _G_ raphics _I_ nterchange _F_ ormat. the word 'graphics' starts with a soft-g, so why isn't it pronounced 'gif' then?

<comment><USER4> Just reading it, without knowing the background, it's certainly a possible pronunciation in English, and I guess you have the French to blame for that (cf. Geoffrey).

"Mispronouncing" abbreviations and the like is quite common. Once usage sticks around, derivation does hardly matter. Habit trumps logic.

Compare "char", C's monosyllabic mutilation of "character". Now everyone who pronounces it like "car" (as in vroom-vroom) go stand in a corner, as according to Dennis Ritchie it's either "char" (as in charcoal) or "care" (as in TCOB).

One of the few signs of maturity that I seem to exhibit is being able to control myself these days whenever someone says something obviously badwrong like that (or pluralizing status as "stati" or saying "binary order mark"). I hardly even twitch anymore.

When starting at a new company, test your co-workers that way. Say "squoll" for SQL, pronounce char as "shar" (with a French inflection), say 6 for vi and capitalize programming language names.</comment></comment></comment>


The Woz Wonderbook (1977) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/woz-wonderbook/Apple2WozWonderbook1977.pdf <comment><USER2> I remember having found an optimization in the disassembler 30 years ago, and I was so proud of me.

It's on page 51, we can replace:

      LSR
      BCC EVEN
      LSR
      BCS ERR
      CMP #$22
      BEQ ERR
      AND #$7
      ORA #$80

with:

      LSR
      BCC EVEN
      ROR
      BCS ERR
      CMP #$A2
      BEQ ERR
      AND #$87

saving 2 bytes !

<comment><USER3> Nice, every byte counted back then. Did you burn new EProms with your version? I remember doing that once just to see it work for some minor modification.

<comment><USER2> In fact, I was working on another computer, called "Oric 1", and tried to optimize a disassembler.

At this time, I spent several months optimizing the Basic ROM from Microsoft, but I never released anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link isn't loading for me––also on archive.org: [https://archive.org/details/TheWozWonderbook](https://archive.org/details/TheWozWonderbook)

<comment><USER5> Also IPFS QmRLfN12i51FtvsmgQfGZ91K698dBPFei3oWDAjAH17NGQ Wozniak_Steve_The_Woz_Wonderbook.pdf

<comment><USER5> With metadata: [https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcjbHP4XhQJjrmRyV1iHywdHQiwbUYdn8pEACU...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcjbHP4XhQJjrmRyV1iHywdHQiwbUYdn8pEACUnjPGdyK)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad most of the handwritten stuff is all but unreadable

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks really cool, I just recently order a copy of The WOZPAK Special Edition: Steve Wozniak's Apple-1 & Apple ][ Computers on Amazon so this kind of thing looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really interesting, thank you for sharing.</comment>


The Moonshot Proposal – Giving away my startup to a nonprofit – Comments needed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@luisantonio/the-moonshot-proposal-32f102506592 <comment><AUTHOR> \- I am giving away the 100% of my startup. More than 4 years of effort of lots of people, money and dreams.

\- I commit to destine an extra around $10.000 of my own money (all I have) to that cause if people think and show that the Moonshot Proposal is something that worth a try.

\- I commit to destine a 10% of my life income to social causes, from now to my death. (I will give it, even if you don't support this proposal).

So yes, as the saying goes: "I am all in." .... you can read it more in the link.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Since some of you already know Watsi and other YCombinator nonprofit startups, I would love to read your opinion.

I will read your comments and answer your questions here. Thanks in advance.</comment>


Silicon Valley billionaires believe in the free market, as long as they benefit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/03/google-apple-silicon-valley-free-market-joke <comment><USER3> Collusion is small potatoes. The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today.

Really disappointed more authors don't take on that topic.

I don't like the author's definition of "classic libertarianism" though. Classic libertarianism is anarcho-socialism. Liberty in all spheres of life: the personal, the political, the economic. Opposition to all forms of tyranny and concentration of power.

What the author is describing in the article is American "Libertarianism" which came about in the mid-20th century. It adopted the term from libertarian socialism but cleansed it of its critique of authoritarianism in the economic sphere (corporations are dictatorships).

It's as though a royal servant came up with a philosophy of "liberty to do whatever you want with your kingdom" and the royals embraced it, along with anyone else who aspired to it. It's a corruption of the term.

But the idea that anyone in Silicon Valley is an honest Libertarian (in the American sense) is ridiculous, given the massive amount of state spending that supports it.

<comment><USER4> The word Libertarian was coined by french anarchist (libertarian communist) Joseph Déjacque.

In the US the word libertarian would be better replaced with neo-liberal.

<comment><USER5> A neo-liberal is just someone who is strongly pro free-trade and possibly some lowered/standardized regulation of business(although not universally, possibly(but not always) formerly or currently associated with center-left(or at least center-left from a US perspective)

<comment><USER6> )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article clearly elaborates that the author doesn't understand either the philosophy or ethics of libertarian (or actual free market) economics. From what I can tell, the author may have not have even read cursory basics on Wikipedia about such.

This header:

"Google, Apple and other tech firms likely colluded to keep their workers' wages down." then concludes: "So much for that libertarian worldview"

That assumes incorrectly that willful collusion is somehow anti-free market, or anti-libertarian. The free market has absolutely no position on collusion, except that force may not enter into economic transactions. If two parties choose to collude to set prices, the free market has no opinion on the matter as such; if they set prices incorrectly in the process of judging the market, they will lose. That is basic free market ideology.

A free market doesn't outlaw or in any way forbid collusion. Nor is it considered immoral in laissez-faire doctrine to agree to freeze or suppress wages across an industry. The use of force (eg to prevent workers from leaving their job for a better paying one) to control workers would be considered immoral and illegal. Otherwise, it's the responsibility of the worker to pursue a job that properly compensates their talent, not the responsibility of the business owner to overpay the worker (and if the owner isn't properly compensating the worker, and that worker leaves, the owner loses).

As a response to wage collusion by business owners, in a free market workers also have the right to collude to attempt to inflate wages; owners also have a right to fire every single one of them in response. Whichever group judges correctly about their value proposition, wins.

One can then move on to debating the merits of laissez-faire Capitalism versus other systems; or libertarian ideology; or 19th century free market economics. The author however is far off base in understanding even where the conversation would begin.

<comment><USER8> The hypocrisy, it burns!

So it's ok to exploit one's personal situation (family and financial commitments stopping one from moving to a location where the cartel is not in force, for example), but hey, no physical violence please, psychological one will do!

There is a main difference between the two actors: employers _own original capital_ , employees don't. The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent: limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital. You lose the company, you lose a bit of capital; but in most cases, there is more where that came from. Workers don't own original capital (which is why they are workers, after all). The penalty for them is much higher, they could lose their house and/or livelihood.

Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best. It's sad that we're still debating this same stuff in 2014.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it is OK to "exploit" the fact that somebody wants to sell something cheap, but it's not OK to take it by force. If you think it is hypocritical, next time you buy something at a discounted sale instead of stealing it you're a hypocrite.

>>> The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent:

Because in your world running a business carries no risk as businesses never go bust. I see. Must be nice.

>>> limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital.

And losing invested capital (for small business/startup - likely all one has and also a lot of borrowed money) is nothing. Again, must be nice to be a man for whom losing all investment is nothing.

>>> The penalty for them is much higher

You mean, they have to go to work to another place now? If they possess marketable skills of decent quality, it won't be long before they'd be paid for them. If not, now we know why the business went bust - they shouldn't have hired workers which are incompetent.

>>> Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best.

Here we considered it and found you fundamentally misunderstand both nature of business and nature of employment, suggesting business carries no risk and employment only possible with single employer and if that goes bust the worker can not work anymore. Yes, it does sound a bit sad.

<comment><USER8> _Because in your world running a business carries no risk as businesses never go bust. [...] And losing invested capital (for small business /startup - likely all one has and also a lot of borrowed money) is nothing_

We are talking about Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe -- startups? Small businesses? No, market-clearing companies with billions in profit and rich dividends, quarter after quarter.

 _If they possess marketable skills of decent quality, it won 't be long before they'd be paid for them._

As you put it, must be nice to be a man for whom losing a job is nothing. If you are a major investor in Intel or Adobe, chances are you are not going to lose your house over it; things tend to be different for most workers.

I am not saying business never carries risk; what I'm saying is that the type of risk is qualitatively different from the risk of losing a job for an average salaried worker.

<comment><USER9> Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe were startups once. They took risks. These risks played out. Hundreds of others took the same risks, and you don't know their names, because their risks didn't. But you can also remember names like Compaq, DEC and Ashton-Tate. They were giants once. They are no more. There's always risk, and Adobe of today may become Ashton-Tate of tomorrow.

>>> must be nice to be a man for whom losing a job is nothing.

I didn't say it's nothing. I said it's not losing your livelihood on permanent basis. If you have marketable skills, you will find another job, and unlike capital, your skills can not be lost. They can become stale and out of date, but there's an easy remedy for that - keep learning and improving - and that needs to happen even if you do have a job.

>>> If you are a major investor in Intel or Adobe, chances are you are not going to lose your house over it;

Unless you deal in trivialities like "if you're a billionaire, then losing a million does not matter", many people lost a lot on dotcom boost, and many lost their house quite literally betting on housing market. Unless you are a politician or friends with one, investment always carries a risk of loss.

>>> I'm saying is that the type of risk is qualitatively different from the risk of losing a job for an average salaried worker.

Yes, it is, investor risk what can be easily and irreversibly lost and can not be protected (I exclude bailout shenanigans of course, this is plain old robbery that our politicians facilitated) and the salaryman risks only a temporary dip in the cash flow in the most cases, and his skills can not be taken away or lost, indeed they are usually improving constantly (15 years of experience is usually better than 5). The nature of risk is substantially different. That's why most people prefer salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is stupid. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs are all Democrats and Obama supporters. Most valley leaders are.

The reasoning of the article laid out explicitly: Peter Thiel is guilty of hypocrisy because (democrats) Larry Page and Steve Jobs failed to live up to Peter Thiel's libertarian principles.

[edit: CEO of Adobe, also involved in this mess, is a Democrat and selected by Obama to be on his PMAB.]

<comment><USER11> is collusion even anti libertarian?

<comment><USER10> Whether it is or not (I'd generally say not, but I don't want to speak for true libertarians [1]), this article is stupid.

[1] I'm only weakly libertarian, so I don't want to speak for them. My values are almost entirely left wing liberal, but I haven't drank the koolaid on economic theories designed to justify the status quo and protect party cronies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author, Dean Baker, has a very narrow view of what libertarianism is and isn't. I'm a left-libertarian. I take a great deal of inspiration from the libertarian activist Karl Hess, who developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% in his 1975 manifesto, _Dear America_ :

"1.6 percent of the adult population owns 82 percent of all stock, and thus actually owns American business and industry. In a very real sense, that tiny 1 percent of the population faces the other 99 percent across a barrier of very real self-interest. That tiny 1 percent has been accumulating more as the years go on, not less. The key to that accumulation is assuring that the people who make up the other 99 percent are sharply restricted in what power and privilege they accumulate."

Again, that was written by an American _libertarian_.

Libertarianism is a _family_ of philosophical viewpoints, that runs the gamut from the "Libertarian socialism" of Noam Chomsky to the "Geolibertarianism" of Henry George to the craziness of the "Tea Party."

It's noteworthy that Ayn Rand denounced libertarianism. I was excommunicated from the Objectivist club in college for espousing libertarian anarchist views.

It's also noteworthy that Tea Party founder Karl Denninger renounced the Tea Party, saying it was co-opted by the Republican Party, which shifted its focus to "Guns, gays, God." He sums up his feelings toward the Tea Party, saying:

"Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than The Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with The Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the f---ing money!" Source: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger- tea-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea- party_n_770108.html)

Someone who's really interested in the variety of libertarianism ought to start with the Wikipedia article at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism)

<comment><USER13> You're coming over rather no true scotsman there. Every political group tries to disown the negative aspects of its labels. But those who self-identify as libertarian are and should be judged on the views and actions of others who self-identify as libertarian.

<comment><USER14> Should you judged by the views and actions of others who self-identify as "hackers"? If the label includes people with a wide range of fundamentally incompatible views, it's not very useful to use as a yard stick. It looks a lot like guilt by association.

<comment><USER13> > Should you judged by the views and actions of others who self-identify as > "hackers"?

Yes

> It looks a lot like guilt by association.

Your political affiliation is your own choice, so it doesn't seem to have that unfairness.

<comment><USER10> So it's fair to judge Democrats as guilty by association in this case?

(Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marisa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs all self- identify as "Democrat", not "[Ll]ibertarian". The president of Adobe is on Obama's PMAB. I can't find info on the others with 3 minutes of googling.)

<comment><USER13> Sure, although I'm not sure the hypocrisy line is terribly effective here. A bunch of people who think regulations are necessary to stop corporations exploiting their workers turn out to run corporations that exploit workers? Well, yeah, isn't that exactly what you'd expect?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I frankly believe that libertarians are idiots and will drag society and social progress into the victorian age (hey, opinion, ok?), I think its important to point out that Steve Jobs @ Apple was not in any way one.

I don't believe for a minute that he cared about how much people made and was far more concerned with either employees leaving with secrets, or more likely annoyed that a revolving door of employees between his company and others took _time_ away from getting his projects completed.

Apple has no problem paying people, but if they're trying to complete something for particular market opportunity, they probably don't want to waste time bringing new hires up to speed.

<comment><USER16> Yet, when I look at the data, Apple engineers get paid below the market average and they work at one of the most profitable companies of all time.

<comment><USER17> Considering how many engineers would gladly take a below market wage for an opportunity to work at Apple, I don't think that is necessarily out of line with market forces doing their usual "magic". Even economists would admit that wages are not the sole determinant of where people choose to work.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking about this the other day coincidentally. The only big tech company I would want to work for is Apple, and I'd gladly take a few tens of thousands less than my already far larger than my living expenses wage to have the opportunity to. I wonder what that says about me?

<comment><USER19> _I wonder what that says about me_

For one thing, it says that you are likely young. And I don't intend that as an insult.

<comment><USER18> Fair! I'm 23, no children, no wife, no particular responsibilities. I suppose that means I can "afford" to take that pay cut and throw myself into something like Apple. The only thing that gives me pause is the reports from those that I know who have worked there is that it's very very demanding, but also very very fulfilling.

<comment><USER19> Well, if you're going to do it now's the time. I'll have two kids in college next year, and a third in a few more years. That'll probably run about $300K when all is said in done.

So taking a few tens of thousands of dollars cut for ten years is that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Intel heads and so on are/were libertarians? News to me (and them I imagine).

<comment><USER21> The whole article was rife with made-upisms. For example, plenty of libertarians believe in intellectual property.

<comment><USER22> I hear some communists also believe in the private ownership of the means of production too.

<comment><USER23> eh, that one's real. It's a wedge issue, and there are not entirely unreasonable libertarian arguments for IP. I happen to totally disagree with them, because _they 're wrong_, but I sympathize with the libertarian that believes in IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This kind of "free-market libertarianism" involves systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games against labor: free for me, not for you [1].

[1] [http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/02/the-asymmetric-zero- sum-g...](http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/02/the-asymmetric-zero-sum-game/)

<comment><USER25> So that article is just phrasing the normative in positive terms? Besides rigour, what's the point?

This confuses more than it clarifies. _Economic injustice_ is a question of moral values; phrasing it as a scientific truth lends it a false air of credibility.

<comment><USER24> Putnam has argued against a strict fact-value dichotomy in " _The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy_ " and in a recently published book of essays edited by Putnam entitled, " _The End of Value-Free Economics_ (Routledge INEM Advances in Economic Methodology)." _Economic justice_ , _theft_ and _fraud_ are not strictly questions of moral values--this presupposes a spurious fact- value dichotomy. These notions have both normative and positive aspects; the positive aspects of these notions (and others, related to class dominance) can be captured in game theoretic terms--and should be.

In the _Preface to Game Theory Evolving_ , economist Herbert Gintis suggested that the mathematical methods of non-cooperative (and cooperative) game theory developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern, Nash and their successors–Gintis among them–have the potential to elevate social and political discourse above ideological debate.

Gintis does not take the step of applying game theory to the topics under discussion--but neither have most of the comments here, with the expected result.

<comment><USER25> Capturing the positive aspects in game theoretic terms might have advantages; I recognised rigour as one.

However, I don't think these advantages warrant capturing all the positive aspects in game theoretic terms. It makes the reading opaque, hiding the normative value judgments behind scientific-seeming jargon.

Instead of formalising the positive aspects, clarify the underlying normative choices. Then we will come closer to finding where it is we actually disagree.

<comment><USER24> I have revised the article at [http://publicsphere.org](http://publicsphere.org). The normative value judgments are not hidden behind scientific seeming jargon. The normative value judgements retain the significance they have--however, they are inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which _should_ be explicated. Instead of denying the relevance of positive aspects outright behind philosophical seeming jargon based on a discredited fact-value dichotomy imported from British Logical Positivism into economics, find some positive reason they are wrong. I see no reason to privilege the normative aspects at the expense of the positive aspects--unless the intention is to prevent the discussion from rising above ideological debate.

<comment><USER25> > inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which should be > explicated

Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights.

> approximately 0.1% of the US population has been systematically winning > asymmetric zero-sum games against the lower 99%.

You treat clusters of individuals as players in a game, and infer injustice from systematic winning of these games; as though justice would necessitate "fair gameplay" between collectives, not just between individuals.

There's nothing to disagree with in your formalisation, but your formalisation is meaningless to anyone who disagrees with the underlying philosophy of rights and justice.

<comment><USER24> _Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights._

No, I make no such assumption. The assertion that I do is not warranted. Since philosophers like to find inferences their interlocutors believe they have not made: locate this assumption. Rousseau's vocabulary of "rights" has not been particularly helpful.

I do not "infer" injustice. The attempt is to characterize positive aspects of it. It seems to be characterized by the systematic winning of certain games by one group against another, especially when the utility obtained by winning is population dependent for one group (the "winners") and not for the other group (the "losers").

A general prohibition against allowing one group to systematically win asymmetric zero-sum games against another group would be a normative principle. So would some elaboration of special exceptions.

incidentally, you use the term 'meaningless' too loosely. Under what philosophical theory does a formalization becomes meaningful depending on who agrees with its "underlying philosophy"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like how top comments are arguing about what "Libertarianism" is and that author does not know what it is 100%.

Yet they are completely ignoring the main point of this article - <USER2> companies pushing down wages.

lol

<comment><USER27> Pedanticism poisons discussions, but nerds gotta be right on the Internet.

<comment><USER28> For multiple definitions of right (if the top comments are to be believed) :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Free market includes the freedom to conspire for lowering wages down like includes the freedom from workers to decide where they work or even compete with those companies.

Having said that, we don't live in a free market, the economy is ruled by central banks who do central planning, thanks to free money for them, taken from the rest of us.

In the technology sector, we live in a world with business and software patents, and with lawsuits costing millions, which makes competing against the big guys harder and harder for little guys.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love this notion that Silicon Valley billionaires can all be painted with the same brush. Truly, if there was ever a group of individuals known to celebrate conforming to the thought processes of others, this is it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Libertarianism is a scapegoat here. These people are all Democrats. More or less in the same vein as all the Democrats on Wall Street.

<comment><USER31> The Koch brothers are Libertarian and Republican. Judging by their political spending.

These labels are entirely useless. Word games are stupid. To have a useful conversation, just agree on words, then argue ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everybody only belive in the free market if they benefit. Nobody wants a free market, everybody wants direct handouts or whatever else.

As long as there is a third party that can be made to help you, you will. The only reason there exists a relativly free market in the first place is that there is a balance between diffrent 'powers'.

Everybody individually would benefit from some policys in there faver but there are few policys that help everybody.

As soon as one groupe gets to much power (meaning political influance) the get a handout (Sugar Farmers, US Steel ...).

</comment><comment><USER33> The free market is all about fighting for your own self interest. The purpose of government is to ensure those members with special power or position are not able to extort those advantages.

ANYONE in their position would do this. It's not a matter of belief or politics or even ethics. It's a matter of oversight. The people responsible for _providing for_ the free market have failed to protect relatively less powerful market players.

Let's stop pretending that the "free market" isn't a dirty nasty place.

</comment><comment><USER34> In other news:

\- kids believe in extra cookies at snack time

\- dogs believe in steak and not dry kibble in the dog bowl

People (and animals) like things that they perceive to benefit them. How is this even news?

</comment><comment><USER35> This seems strange, as it's a little removed from the folks doing most of the complaining, no?

 _This case is striking on many levels, the most obvious being the effective theft of large amounts of money by some of the richest people on the planet from their employees._

</comment><comment><USER36> that's what politics encourage you to do, so off course those guys will be billionaires.

</comment><comment><USER37> Silicon Valley has nothing to do with a free market, those companies make ridiculous profits for one reason, intellectual property. And IP is in complete opposition to the free market.

<comment><AUTHOR> A point that was made in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I heard many young people try very hard to get an unpaid volunteer / intern job in UN headquarters. They need to pay their own rent and food out of their own pocket to work for UN for nothing. How crazy is this?

UN must be libertarian! Damn!</comment>


Show HN: Free Team Chat & Public Chat Rooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.hashworld.co/#world

<comment><USER2> Very nice. It's like irc + upvoting? It would be interesting to hear what direction you plan to take it in. Are you going to keep it as a personal project or try to build it into something like HipChat?

Keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, what a kind reply. Thank you!

For now, it's just a pet project, I'm not yet sure in which direction to go. But I'm pretty sure it's not going to be like hipchat, in the sense that it will not be just a place to chat with co-workers or friends.

I would like to capture the spirit of IRC as it was in the 90's, really. A place to hangout and have mass discussions with lots of people...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Xssman strikes again. Secure your code kiddies.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just an alpha release... it's on my todo list :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So... it's just like IRC, but with some XSS ?</comment>


FTC Approves Roughly $5B Facebook Settlement - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftc-approves-roughly-5-billion-facebook-settlement-11562960538?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Still distraught that Equifax, which was so egregious, was not disciplined at this level.

<comment><USER3> Just so incredibly disturbing. For all of Facebook's fault, it's very easy to opt out of using it. When a service that the government forces you to use loses your data, heads should roll.

<comment><USER4> >> For all of Facebook's fault, it's very easy to opt out of using it.

Not really. Facebook has shadow profiles of non-users.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps in the sense that they have a session cookie that tracks impressions of sites which reference them on the web, and that information they have that their users uploaded that happen to also reference you.

But not anything like in the sense of a logged in user and the level of knowledge they have about actual users.

Facebook knows a lot less about non-registered users than Google does, for instance.

And in the sense of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which is what this fine is about, my understanding is that non-users were _entirely_ unaffected.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think Google knows more than Facebook?

<comment><USER7> Search queries reveal a lot.

<comment><USER8> Do we consider people making search queries on Google to be non-users?

<comment><USER5> I think yes if you're not logged in. But there's plenty of ways Google is tracking you, and serving ads to you, away from Google.com too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Q12019 revenue was ~$15B [0]. So, about a month's worth of revenue. Honestly, 1/12th of a year's _revenue_ is a fair bit of pain. It's not exactly a slap on the wrist.

My econ-mojo may be really off, but revenue is more akin to the gross profit, not the net profit, correct?

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/facebook- earnings-q1-2019.ht...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/facebook- earnings-q1-2019.html)

<comment><USER10> 1/12th of a year's revenue is a bit of pain, but it won't cause any fundamental changes at Facebook I think. This just sends the message that you don't have to care about things like ethics or user data being private as long as you have a big enough war chest to pay off the government. Either the fine should've been bigger, or coupled with new regulation.

<comment><USER11> Nothing can change Facebook that Zuckerberg doesn't want to change. He has a controlling interest.

<comment><USER12> Tell that to the talent that no longer wants to work for Facebook and the executives fleeing the company.

It's an extremely fast way to change a company, no matter how much voting power Zuckerberg has. It'll kick Facebook into old age stagnation and rot mode faster than just about anything else. To say nothing of what happens when an organization no longer trusts and believes in its CEO.

Which is to say, Zuckerberg's voting power doesn't make him or Facebook immune to suffering numerous consequences of poor leadership. That can rather dramatically change Facebook. Depending on the extent and duration of that poor decision making obviously.

<comment><USER11> _Tell that to the talent that no longer wants to work for Facebook and the executives fleeing the company._

And there are thousands of college graduates who will spend months learning LeetCode and be glad to take their places and get a total comp of $250K+ a year. You severely overestimate how few people care more about the "greater good" than collecting a nice check.

<comment><USER9> Maaaaybe. I'd like to think that there is an evaporative effect occuring there.

Assuming that more ethical people are better to work with and vice versa, then as more ethical people leave, the work enviroment gets worse and worse.

Like, payroll issues take longer to deal with, your co-workers aren't as up for beers on Fridays, your boss isn't as on your side as you'd like. So, the elves leave middle earth.

Eventually, the company can end up in a situation where payroll issues are impossible to deal with, where your co-workers are _far_ too free to hit up a bar on a Tuesday night, where your boss could care less about you. So then even some of the skuzz-bucket people say they have had enough.

So, yeah, FB is good right now and can use their funds to pay people to deal with those issues. But fines like the one they got today are going to hamper that process.

As has been said for decades: Culture is everything.

<comment><USER11> I've worked for 20+ years and I've learned that the boss "never cares about me". Anyone who thinks that your company "cares about you" is in for a rude awaking.

<comment><USER9> I mean, there is a lot of space between the type of boss that could care less and the type of boss that actively tries to harm.

Also, it really does depend on the firm. I've worked a lot of jobs that couldn't be arsed to know my name. I've worked a lot fewer jobs that really did care about me, but I have been there and seen them.

<comment><USER11> _I 've worked a lot fewer jobs that really did care about me, but I have been there and seen them._

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say over lunch that you told your boss at one of those companies "that really did care" about you that you just bought a house and that you and your spouse are expecting a child. Then the next week that because of a strategic shift/missed earnings/acquisition where the acquirer wanted to find "synergies" they decided they were going to let you go. What do you think is going to happen?

<comment><USER9> Generally the firms that care are under 10 people in size.

As such, it depends. And yes, I've seen those exact conversations play out in the favor of the employee before, about a dozen times, even in the larger firms. I've also seen it play out badly too.

<comment><USER11> How many firms that are under 10 people in size do you know of that are not VC backed and therefore beholden to their investors who definitely don't care about the employees?

<comment><USER9> Not sure I understand the question, but I've never worked for a VC backed start-up. I'm in medtech, not CS.

EDIT: Also, 90% of all companies in the US are under 20 people: [https://www.businessinsider.com/us-employment-by-firm- size-h...](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-employment-by-firm-size-has-a- fat-tailed-distribution-2015-6)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm somewhat amazed how many people on here seem to be happy that large tech companies are forced to pay giant fines to the government when their salaries are paid or propped up by the market created by these same companies.

I'm not saying FB has done no wrong, but is it really 100 times worse than Equifax, Wall Street banks and a host of other more malicious corporate offenders that got a slap on the wrist and a small 1-2 digit fine?

<comment><USER14> 2 wrong does not make one right.

All these companies should be paying giant fines. FB's fine is not giant relative to their yearly revenue.

<comment><USER13> However, you don't see banksters on bankernews complaining how small their fine is.

They realize that'd be biting the hand that feeds them. From all the big industries, only tech seems to have an active desire to watch itself burn.

If it is not yet obvious, taking large amounts of money from tech companies will impact everyone, including tech employees by forcing job cuts and lowering salaries. Doesn't matter if you work at Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even though that's a lot of money... I can't help thinking it's not nearly enough.

<comment><USER16> What amount would you say is enough?

<comment><USER17> Enough to put shareholder equity at risk, or in other words, a fine on the scale of bankruptcy risk.

FB is flat over the last year, I would like to see a fine that results in a significant loss of market cap, preferably something which would require selling off business units to stay solvent.

<comment><USER18> This was already priced into the stock value which is why it hasn't had an effect

<comment><USER17> I'm not talking about what happened today, but the long term effect.

Yes it was priced into the stock and that price is about equal to the price of FB a year ago.

I want that price, the long term price not the intraday reaction, I want the long term price to be down more than 10%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Q4'18 profit was $6.9B, so $5B is nearly 1/4 of a year's profit.

That will be noticed.

<comment><USER20> They had already budgeted for it earlier this year.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/facebook- ftc-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/facebook-ftc-fine- privacy.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > disclosed in April 2019 that it was nearing the end of negotiations with the > FTC and expected a fine of between $3bn and $5bn.

That's a quote from the article in The Guardian [0].

Negotiations? They were negotiating their own fine? That sounds so absurd. Surely someone can reply telling me it's normal, but can anyone make an argument for why it makes sense?

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook- fine-ftc-privacy-violations)

</comment><comment><USER22> Stock market seems to think it was a good deal for FB; share price jumped ~1.3% on the news.

<comment><USER23> Facebook previously stated that they were expecting a fine of ~$5B. The fine + uncertainty was already priced into the stock.

The market is reacting to the removal of that uncertainty, which is the same as a reduction in risk holding the stock.

<comment><USER24> And when FB previously announced they expected a $5B fine, their stock was _up_ 10% on that day.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742270)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> $5B is peanuts for FB, just Mark personal wealth is ~$74B, he could pay the fine himself.

The should have fined FB on some % of their total revenue, like GRDP. I'd say 15/20% at least.

<comment><USER26> 5 billion is a truck load of cash and any company with the least competitive capacity will be willing to spend up to 4.999.999.999 to avoid paying it.

<comment><USER25> > is a truck load of cash

it is relative, for normal people it is indeed a ton of cash, but you have to compare that to the size of FB. In that respect, $5B is not that much.

<comment><USER26> Thats the wrong mental model. Most operations facebook does is in the few cents to a few dollars: that is insignificant to the total revenue, so they would forgo every single thing relative to the general income, and you can guess what happens afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Facebook's current market cap is $585B, so this is less than 1% of their market cap

[https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap](https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap)

About as painful as a bad PR week. And easy to attribute to the "cost of doing business"

</comment><comment><USER28> Where does this money go, out of curiosity? Does it go into the FTC's budget? Govt general fund?

</comment><comment><USER24> FB stock _up_ ~2% today.

<comment><USER29> Because FB accurately predicted the fine amount and doesn't have to use any more money. The market are already adjusted to the FTC fine risk. The only risk measure by this point was if it would be higher than $5b.

<comment><USER24> But that's not the case. When FB announces 3 months ago they were holding back $5B for an estimated fine, their stock was up 10% that day.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742270)

<comment><USER30> That is the case. A $5B estimated fine puts a rough ballpark on the potential fine. I.e. it's likely not going to be over $10bn. That could easily bump the stock up, with extra potential upside due to the uncertainty of what the actual figure will be. That is, could it be $8B? There is extra uncertainty priced in which has now been fully lifted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Big brother untangles baby babble - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8127804.stm

<comment><USER2> Terrible title, interesting update.</comment>


SpeakHQ: building a group micro-update webapp - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.markbao.com/2008/how-i-built-a-webapp-in-18-hours-for-699/

<comment><USER2> I don't know about everyone else but this is at least the 4th "I built some widget in X number of hours post" this week. It's getting old.</comment>


GroupMe Account Takeover Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://dsaccomanni.blogspot.com/2014/10/groupme-full-account-takeover-vuln.html?m=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, I reported this flaw to GroupMe. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask.</comment>


Chrome Extension to play hotstar videos on linux - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hotstar-linux/ilkipdhedpliigooflifemoecdbifaed <comment><AUTHOR> Hotstar videos player does not natively support Linux, keeping many in India and the world wide from watching live cricket and serials. This extension bypasses that problem and plays hotstar videos on linux! Check it out...

</comment><comment><USER2> I was looking for such an extension. That was very harassing moment when linux users like me were not able to use website like 'HOTSTAR'. You have done such an appreciable work. A big thumb from my side.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this extension I was waiting to have such extension.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice extension :)</comment>


OpenShift by Red Hat - <AUTHOR> https://openshift.redhat.com/app/ <comment><USER2> If you don't like the idea of relying on RedHat to play with this tech, remember that it is Open Source. Download it, use it, heck make a business that builds on it.

      https://github.com/openshift/crankcase
      https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools
      https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own

(I will say though: they make it extremely easy to get started and I really like using OpenShift so far. I've never used Heroku, but if it's this user friendly i'd definitely have used it before... Why don't they have a free offering for people to test out the service?)

<comment><USER3> FWIW, heroku does. The first heroku slice for a project is free, with the caveat that it'll be spun down during periods of inactivity.

I imagine that most hobby users of heroku (say for a weekend hackathon) aren't paying anything.

<comment><USER4> I know of people who deployed prototypes and even production work for clients to Heroku (I did once too ;-)). Quite a few people run Jekyll blogs on there long term for free as well. It's pretty amazing what you can get out of a single dyno for something that's not high traffic (i.e. most apps).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like this "Free" business.

It doesn't make sense and the complete lack of pricing info really puts me off.

So I play around with this, like it and choose to stick with it. They then introduce uncompetitive pricing.. I just wasted my time. They do not need to give exact pricing - they might not know at the moment - but they should at least give an overview of what they plan to do.

> We will keep this free plan for the foreseeable future. The free plan > allows...

> This free plan will exist while we develop and test the service. As the > service becomes stable we will be introducing paid plans and you will be > asked to upgrade.

These 2 statements make sense to me. The fact they mention nothing about pricing on their site confuses and annoys me.

<comment><USER6> The problem with free stuff is the lack of support. If I mess something up and my site crashes after hitting the HN front page, I want someone to throw money at until things work again.

<comment><USER7> _I want someone to throw money at until things work_

In that case, although you can certainly pay for support (as others have pointed out)—but you're probably not the intended audience for this service.

<comment><USER8> Actually you are the intended audience. We are keenly aware that people want this capability. The free tier won't have this built in, but the other tiers will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> T-A From the ToS ( <https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms> ): "you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non- exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site"

That makes me a little nervous.

<comment><USER9> Here is the clause from the OpenShift Preview Services ToS (not the site terms): <https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement>

3.3. Your License to Red Hat. You hereby grant to Red Hat a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free license to use Your trademarks, trade names and logos in connection with publicizing the Preview Services and communicating with analysts, customers or the press about the Preview Services. Your further grant to Red Hat, and any third party service provider on whose services Red Hat may depend to provide the Preview Services, a perpetual, worldwide, non- exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to make, use, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display Content for the purpose of providing the Preview Services. Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for posting the entire clause. Let me just comment as a Red Hat/OpenShift employee with some insight into the business intent behind the legal language.

As you can see from the complete clause that includes "...for the purpose of providing the Preview Services", the license to your content that you grant to Red Hat is really to allow Red Hat to provide the Service. Also the last sentence i.e. "Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement." should make it clear that there is no other interest in the users content.

<comment><USER11> I am really confusing by following term and conditions

Rights in Content: By displaying, publishing and making available for download and use by others any content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials ("Content") you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non- exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site. You agree that this license includes a right for Red Hat to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Red Hat has relationships for the provision of services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. You understand that Red Hat may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Red Hat to take these actions. You confirm and warrant to Red Hat that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tried the service a couple of months ago and it is really easy to use. Got a blog up and running in no time just to test the waters using bottle, jinja and mongo. No sweat.

<http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in checking out how to get mongo running on openshift, here are some things to get started

\- Good list of resources: <https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb>

\- Lots of goodies in here: <https://github.com/openshift>

\- Part 1 of a 4-part series on building mobile apps with titanium, mongodb and openshift: [http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your- mongodb...](http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb- building-mongodb-mobile-apps)

\- Upcoming webinar on node.js and mongodb with OpenShift: <http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services>

Disclaimer: I work at 10gen

</comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a Python web app on OpenShift (Tornado not Django) and really liked it. While I don't have experience with Heroku, I was really impressed with OpenShift.

However, be aware that not everything is enabled yet. I ran into problems when I discovered the multiprocessing package doesn't work (<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991>).

</comment><comment><USER15> I have yet to find a service as straightforward as Heroku. Cloudfront comes close... but i get the feeling especially when looking at the documentation that Heroku have really put in a lot of effort into making a simple to use application platform.

<comment><USER16> Dotcloud does it for me. I'd love to support RedHat though.

<comment><USER17> Never heard of Dotcloud before, anyone have experience hosting a decent size app with them?

<comment><USER18> Wunderkit (<http://wunderkit.com>) runs on dotCloud. So doe Punchtab (<http://punchtab.com>). Both serve many millions of monthly uniques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah I'm excited about it and it's getting me to finally take the step from traditional web app development (vps, php, etc.) to more easily scalable app development - and it's all open source, no vendor lock-in, and hopefully affordable pricing in the future.

Look forward to seeing more tutorials & code samples online and on their site. For example has anyone tried out meteor (w/node.js & mongodb) with it yet. Also, hopefully it will integrate with some of the browser-based IDEs out there like cloud9.

<comment><USER8> Did you ask for integration with cloud9? Funny you should mention that: [https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no- hand...](https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hands- developing-for-the-cloud-in-the-cloud-with-cloud9-ide)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How can this be free? If I host a massive application here, will they shut it down or rate limit or how can this work?

<comment><USER21> the preview is free and has a limit:

"The developer preview supports up to 3 gears per user. You have a quota of 40,000 files, 1GB of storage, and 512MB Memory per gear. It is free to use and you can run your application indefinitely. If you need to increase this quota, please mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com with your username, domain and Application URL."

from: [https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many- applicat...](https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applications- can-i-deploy-and-how-long-can-i-run-them-for)

<comment><USER22> <https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495>

Where can I get more information on Pricing ?

To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone chosen openshift over heroku for django? I didn't see any pricing info; is openshift still in beta?

<comment><USER24> OpenShift is free.

<comment><USER25> But what's the catch?

<comment><USER26> It's Free Software, you can run it yourself or switch providers at will. The catch may be in the lack of features compared to a proprietary option (like Heroku)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No mention of pricing anywhere on their site. What?

<comment><USER28> FAQ has something: "To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Very interesting, though documentation doesn't seem to be very comprehensive yet.

There is little information about process management, like <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model>

Not to mention how to create custom Cartridges, like you can do with Heroku buildpacks: <https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5>

<comment><USER8> We actually do have custom cartridge: [https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that- run...](https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-runs- anything-http-getting-started-with-diy-applications-on-openshift)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Couldn't get their client software to work on Ubuntu. Even followed a few tutorials. I think I'm missing something, but haven't a bunch of time to invest.

<comment><USER31> I like these instructions: [http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_...](http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_debianubuntu)

<comment><USER32> Thats not really a tutorial, just an introduction on how to install the CLI tools. What's missing is a tutorial on how to _use_ them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I tried openshift a few months ago for Rails. A real pain in the butt. They dont have simple deploy like Heroku. Even heroku can be time consuming in the beginning to get right, openshift was even more complicated. It may work better for Java I don't know, looks like they are right on the bleeding edge with support for Ruby 1.8.7.

<comment><USER8> Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x

<comment><USER7> Good to know; I just came here to complain. :-)

On the other hand, though, I think you should have probably started with the 1.9.2/1.9.3 series rather than the ancient 1.8.7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> the rubyist in me is happy to report that openshift is written largely in ruby. so all ruby programmers should try running openshift in their own machinea

</comment><comment><USER32> The documentation is frankly awful. For example, when getting the status:

rhc domain status -l <myemailhere> I get an error about ~/.ssh/config not existing. I added my ssh key via the web interface and have no idea what's going on here.

In looking at the User Guide, I find it gets me no where. [http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Gu...](http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Guide/chap-User_Guide- OpenShift_Web_Interface.html#sect-User_Guide-Configuring_Your_Local_Machine)

The relevant message here is:

"If your system fails any of the tests, make a note of the error message and consult the relevant section of the OpenShift User Guide for further information."

Nothing like a circular reference that leads to nowhere.

<comment><USER8> You probably created your domain and application through the web interface. This is an issue we are working through now - sorry we haven't gotten to it yet - it will be fixed in the next couple of sprints. The problem is that your SSH env has not been set up to work with the RHC tools yet. They expect a configure file in the .ssh directory to specify which key talks to the *.rhcloud.com domain. This KB article may help you get started: [https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh- facts...](https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts-to-be- aware-of) Again, my apologies and we are actively working on that story right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Do we have any major computing player remaining without an app cloud offering or plan?

<comment><USER36> Apple?

<comment><USER37> iCloud has developer APIs - all your code just happens to run on the OS X and iOS clients (which are distributed via the App Store, which sits in the cloud).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why all PaaS providers (Heroku, CF, OpenShift) building their CLI tools using Ruby? Are they copying Heroku? Maybe because Python used for OS itself? What dotCloud uses?

<comment><USER18> dotCloud's cli is written in Python. In the long run I don't think it matters which language it's written in - as long as it's easy to install on every computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Tsk tsk.. ruby 1.8.7 by default

<comment><USER40> and python 2.6 and PostgreSQL 8.4 and Perl 5.10. They definitely don't seem to be aiming for the "cutting edge" crowd.

<comment><USER41> Redhat stopped targeting the "cutting edge" demographic about 10 years ago. They enlist them as QA for their real customers now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Interesting that the install instructions for Red Hat Linux distributions is far more complicated than that of other Linux distributions.

But seriously, if they are offering a free platform to anyone with an email address then what sort of precautions are they taking to prevent abuse?

<comment><USER43> Are we talking content abuse? It's in their ToS if we are. Not entirely sure how effective they're going to be at monitoring malicious content, but it's there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wish they'd list pricing in the event you grow beyond the free plan. Reluctant to even bother trying without knowing that type of information.

</comment><comment><USER45> just a quick compliment to RH; loving how the employees are giving constructive feedback on the comments here :)

</comment><comment><USER46> How does it compare to CloudFoundry? Aside from having official PHP support, that is.

<comment><USER47> CloudFoundry's PHP support is also official. While it's not yet available through cloudfoundry.com, you can use it now with AppFog (<http://appfog.com>).

Disclaimer: I work at AppFog and contributed to the initial version of PHP support for the CloudFoundry open source project at <https://github.com/cloudfoundry>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm generally a fan of RedHat, but not having details on the most important point of OpenShift that will decide whether it will fail or succeed in the market (i.e. the price) is a scummy play - that I only expected from enterprises. I hope these "enterprise marketing" tactics aren't a trend for RedHat.

<comment><USER8> This is not a bait and switch. We are trying to make sure we get the pricing right. That said - we plan to make the current free tier free even when we announce pricing. We are also committed to being competitive in terms of pricing. We will be announcing pricing this summer.

<comment><USER48> But you've "announced" your cloud platform, yet I can't justify any time learning or becoming familiar with it since there is no idea on price - it's frustrating.

<comment><USER8> Does the other cloud providers seem reasonable to you? If so then you might want to spend time investigating. As a dev evangelist for OpenShift, I can say it doesn't take much time to get a simple app up and running. Come by #openshift on freenode and we can help you if you get stuck

<comment><USER48> No they don't - that's my point (Only AppEngine did before they increased their prices). Because of the high cost of available clouds I don't use any clouds and just run my own dedicated server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If you're not paying, you're the product.

<comment><USER50> It's in developer preview, they're hoping you tell your friends and generate buzz.

<comment><USER49> Right. You're the product. In this case, you are the marketing product. It's not always bad to be the product. Cows eat for free, right? Just a good thing to keep in mind.

<comment><USER50> Absolutely.

<comment><USER51> Honestly the buzz I want to hear is "you guys suck, here's 10 ways you could be better" before we start taking money, at which point it's "you guys suck and you're taking our money, give me my money back". I'm trying to build the service I would use, and the intent as mhicks said up above is to always have a free tier so that folks get a chance to try it out before they commit.

<comment><USER50> Best of luck with this project. Its encouraging to see a large organization that is so committed to open source taking a stake in PaaS!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is cool!

</comment><comment><USER53> I made a mental typo when reading the name and omitted the "f."

<comment><USER51> I do that about 3 times a day. I also got rejected for an openshift license plate because of that significant f...</comment></comment>