Azul launches pauseless gc jvm for unmodified linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/zing5-features

<comment><USER2> How much would Oracle pay to acquire this?

It's disconcerting that they need to mention "512GB", as if they found that "pauseless garbage collection was" not a big enough selling point (perhaps because for most server applications - where the big money Java apps are - individual responsiveness doesn't matter all that much).

It's also disconcerting, because (it seems to me) that big apps are increasingly a thing of the past, as we move to massively distributed smaller, slower processes - each individual JVM with its own smaller memory needs. Big apps seem to be an upmarket niche, disappearing fast. Whereas the great strength of pauseless gc is in realtime client-side apps - like mobile devices.

I think these guys have done something great here, and it would be a shame to see them pushed upmarket into oblivion, when they could create an entirely new disruption based on Java - perhaps (finally) fulfilling its promise... (and for the java-haters, also for other JVM-based languages).

 _EDIT_ Azul tech previously on HN (links include explanations IIRC): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810506> \--- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2022723> \--- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2058476>

<comment><USER3> So in theory you are correct, but the reality on the ground is that 96gb in a box is getting to be pretty standard now.

Also the other thing to remember is that the standard java GCs dont reliably work under all workloads above 2-4GB. You can make a 8gb or 16gb heap work, but if you hit a full-compaction your JVM will go MIA for MINUTES at a time. So you can't even scale to a 16gb ram heap.

The 512GB is for the previous customers who do in fact use heaps of that size.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I guess needing over 2-4GB is not terribly high-end; and even if I'm right about disruption, demand will keep creeping up over time at both high and low end. Even phones have 1GB these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How did they do it? I thought that their GC critically relied on virtual memory support that current OSes do not provide, hence the need to run virtualized.

<comment><USER5> I bet they just sacrifice granularity and use the MMU to do what they need. Unmap an entire page and handle the segfault would work, but be not as good as the VTD stuff they use in the hypervisor version.

<comment><USER6> That's roughly what they do in the hypervisor version too (protection is at page granularity). The big problem is that this causes major suckage on an unmodified kernel because mprotect() changes mappings synchronously and only works on a linear region at a time. So basically every page that gets scanned involves a separate global TLB shootdown.

The Azul collector doesn't need the changes in page protection to be visible immediately, so their kernel patch allows batching together the changes and committing in a single operation.

As far as I can tell from reading their whitepaper, however, they still require kernel patches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad it's not open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Azul's software jvm is based on openjdk, and they have an old source dump at managedruntime.org. I wonder how timely source code releases need to be under the gpl...

<comment><USER8> when you get the binaries, you need to have access to the source at the same time, I understand

<comment><USER9> Under GPLv2, under which OpenJDK is distributed, that is technically optional. You basically have two options:

a) Ship the source code alongside the binary

b) Offer to furnish the source code to people who ask for it

AFAIK, the second option was intentionally introduced to provide for a delay in releasing source code, since providing the source code to uninterested parties might be cost-prohibitive if it's 1992 and you're publishing on floppies.

<comment><USER10> If so, then we need to wait until somebody got a copy of it and then distribute it. Since GPLv2 should have clauses prohibiting the any parties from baring redistribution given the same license is used.

But just one thing... according to Wikipedia [1] it is actually based upon Hotspot, but they also entered an undisclosed agreement. In such aspect, Azul may have licensed Hotspot not through GPLv2 but through different terms with Oracle. If that is true, they may be able to keep part of their code out of GPLv2.

Also they had some open source stuff released under GPLv2 at another website [2].

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Azul_Systems&o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Azul_Systems&oldid=457109589)

[2]: <http://www.managedruntime.org>

<comment><USER11> Is HotSpot is GPL?

<comment><USER11> A "yes" would do...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The Zing™ JVM 'Pauseless' Garbage Collector implements a highly concurrent algorithm that is able to concurrently compact the Java heap, and to allow the application to continue to execute while remapping of memory is performed. This patented solution allows applications to completely separate heap size from response times for predictable, consistent Java GC behavior." (from <http://www.azulsystems.com/zing/pgc>)

Great, so you can patent a GC algorithm now.

<comment><USER13> What's the problem? They didn't patent gc in general. And pauseless gc seems like one of those things everybody wants, so if it really were trivial and obvious, it would have been invented by now. The fact it took this long implies that their invention is, in fact, novel.

<comment><USER14> Indeed, it's been a Holy Grail since I showed up on the scene in 1979. I think I stopped using Lisp Machines before generational garbage collection was added to the ones I was using, which made them "less pauseless", but Azul's entire approach is novel:

Instead of deferring the hard cases as long as you can (e.g. in generational GCs doing collections beyond the nursery) at which point they're likely to be painful, concentrate on the hard cases first and foremost. Get those right and everything else falls into place. Here's their CTO discussing that in a short interview: <http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/azul_pauseless_gc.html>

A relevant quote:

 _[...] Our collector really does the only hard thing in garbage collection, but it does it all the time. It compacts the heap all the time and moves objects all the time, but it does it concurrently without stopping the application. That's the unique trick in it, I'd say, a trick that current commercial collectors in Java SE just don't do.

Pretty much every collector out there today will take the approach of trying to find all the efficient things to do without moving objects around, and delaying the moving of objects around—or at least the old objects around—as much as possible. If you eventually end up having to move the objects around because you've fragmented the heap and you have to compact memory, then you pause to do that. That's the big, bad pause everybody sees when you see a full GC pause even on a mostly concurrent collector. They're mostly concurrent because eventually they have to compact the heap. It's unavoidable._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does that mean there "patches" went into the linux kernel or did the work around that?

If they do does anybody know more about whats going on in terms of moving these features into the kernel? I could really find anything on it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Where does it say you don't need to modify linux?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Azul Systems have today announced Zing 5.0, eliminating their previous requirement for a hypervisor, and therefore bringing their pauseless JVM to unmodified 64-bit Linux for the first time."

<http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/11/zing5-native>

<comment><USER6> It sounds like there is still a kernel module (the system tools RPM).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cliff Click rules everything around me</comment>


A new kind of LML, drool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dou4cc/drool <comment><USER2> Demo appears to be broken in Firefox and Chromium.

When it works, and if it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added what flags to open in Chrome Canary and Chromium in order to be able to open the demo to the readme.</comment></comment>


Apple charged with infringing on touch patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226448/Apple_charged_with_infringing_on_touch_patent

<comment><USER2> A small nit-pick, but I wish authors would stop using the term charged in conjunction with civil trials. Apple has not been charged with anything, they have been sued in civil court. The RIAA/MPAA has done enough to try to blur the line between criminal prosecution and civil proceedings they don't need the help of the media in their endeavor.</comment>


Only 4% of languages are used online - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/only-4-of-languages-are-used-online/ <comment><USER3> And what percentage of people in the world uses one of the languages in that 4% as their primary language? I'm guessing it's a really large percentage, probably a majority of the world's population. It's not really useful to look at the _percent of languages_ when they vary in the number of speakers by so much (and there's a long tail of languages with a vanishingly small number of speakers).

<comment><USER4> Indeed. To get a rough idea I added up the first table in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers) , it seems that about 85% of the world population are native speakers of one of the top-100 (top 1.6%) languages.

<comment><USER5> It's not clear from the Wikipedia list if the language categories are mutually exclusive. For example, it seems quite likely that nearly everyone who speaks the Wu, Jin, and Min Nian Chinese family languages also speaks Mandarin.

I'm not even sure what it means to say that Min Nian is the native language for anyone in Taiwan. Sure, lots of people learn it at home but anyone under 60 is going to be just as fluent in Mandarin.

<comment><USER6> The first language I learned is Min Nan, though my Min Nan is not as fluent as my Mandarin now, I still consider it my mother tongue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We parsed a lot of the data from App reviews (about 100 million) in different countries. Languages used are predominantly skewered toward english or other european languages. For example, in Israel, 51% of all reviews are in english while only 46% are in Hebrew.

Writeup on major countries: [http://blog.sensortower.com/blog/2013/11/27/what- apple-app-s...](http://blog.sensortower.com/blog/2013/11/27/what-apple-app- store-reviews-can-tell-you-about-foreign-language-app-users/)

<comment><USER8> That's pretty cool analysis. Do you think the high proportion of English relative to other non-native languages could be related to the general affluence of Apple users? It would be interesting to see how these ratios stack up relative to the languages used in reviews on some of the Android app stores in their respective countries. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER7> I suspect the affluence of smartphone users in general is more selected towards those that can speak/write english. Also, most apps are not localized to native languages, and so the people that use apps are exposed to english more often. It's much harder to get reviews on Android, especially for different countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess the title "Only 240 languages are used online" doesn't sound like a problem? That probably represents 5 or 6 of 7 billion people?

I think the world should move towards even fewer languages than 240. However, it would be very sad if we didn't capture the complete grammar, vocabulary, etc. of those other languages before they die, along with lots of audio, to preserve them.

<comment><USER10> You're promoting both the killing and preserving of languages in the same paragraph, seems a bit misguided. Surely if they're worth documenting, then its worth trying to preserve their use as well.

Surely the world should be moving to a place where it doesn't matter what language the source is, at least online. A fully competent Google translate would seamlessly allow everyone to communicate without destroying culture in the process.

<comment><USER11> Why promote the use of obsolete technology (including language), when it can be satisfactorily preserved in museums?

<comment><USER12> Because "satisfactorily preserved" and "museum" are contradictory for a language.

A spoken language is a living thing -- and it carries with it the patina of all those that have used it, their stories and how they shaped the language in return etc.

Relegating to some museum excibits (that noone will care about, let's be honest) is like being satisfied by a polaroid of your significant other, instead of him/her.

<comment><USER13> We're not talking about artifacts though; we're talking about people.

Yes it would be better to be able to observe and use a language within a native, living body of people in order to be able to well comprehend and thoroughly appreciate the nuance, breadth and depth of a language. But in order to do that you also must _require_ that population not to use some other language which may well benefit them (in terms of education, trade, international relations, access to information, etc.).

In Wales for example the historic Welsh language is being propped up at vast expense to a relatively poor region of the UK. All lessons¹ in [state run] primary schools (4-11 year olds) are used to promote the historic Welsh language and children are taught that their own language - <USER2> English - is to be deprecated in preference to Welsh.

None of that serves the children. Without government interference, if trends continued, barely a handful of people of any age would speak historic Welsh. As it is now - made compulsory for all children in state schools - use of historic Welsh language is still declining.

That would indeed be a loss to those interested in Brythonic languages or who mourn for the simpler times of their youth when they spoke historic Welsh or who despise the English people so fervently that using "their" language is anathema [I'm not even joking], or whatever. But, would it be any loss for the people living in Wales as a whole? I warrant not. Indeed it seems it would be a gain.

\---

¹ PISA results for 2012, [http://priceonomics.com/only-4-of-languages-are- used-online/](http://priceonomics.com/only-4-of-languages-are-used-online/), are just in and show Wales is falling behind the rest of the UK and that the UK is slipping relative to the other countries surveyed. I think an insidious over-emphasis on historic Welsh is at least in part to blame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd bet a large portion of these languages don't even have official written languages. Some of the Chinese languages have tens of millions of native speakers and even they have no standardized way of writing their languages. When you start getting into languages that are specific to a tribe or very local area, the odds seem pretty low.

</comment><comment><USER15> The www.jw.org website (Jehovah's Witnesses website) is translated to 316 languages atm, which is on par with the article's claim (170 actively used + 140 borderline cases). You can disagree with the site's message, but it tries to do a good job into sending the message to people all around the world in different languages. In comparison though, JW publications are printed in 600+ languages, so there's still lot to do for the website.

Edit: Going into "publications" section, there's a picker which lets you select a language from total of 538.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope the research cited is better, because the article makes a complete hash of mixing interface language, script and language actually used to communicate. All of these are thrown together as "use of language on digital stuff".

It's quite common around the world to use an interface in language X (because the options are limited) but communicate in their own language. (I personally do it all the time, so much so that I prefer an English interface over one in my own language for the sake of consistency.)

Lack of support for certain kinds of script may be an issue, but that never becomes clear from the article. If the data is heavily based on the formal support for languages (instead of actual usage) then it's seriously skewed. And even if it isn't, the article doesn't tell us where the actual problem is.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

<comment><USER18> That depends on whether you are globalist or nationalist.

Globalist - good, less languages - less barriers. Good for international commerce and knowledge sharing.

Nationalist - bad, loss of language means some part of cultural heritage lost.

Truth is always somewhere in between.

<comment><USER19> Loss of a language also often means a slightly unique way of seeing the world and thinking/talking about it is lost. Many languages have cool or weird features [1], and I care about that even though I can't communicate with speakers of those languages and therefore will never know the difference. I don't care about the national heritage of others, it's theirs - I care about diversity for the sake of it existing, not for the sake of me experiencing it. If we all thought the same stuff in the same ways, without any barriers, that would be much worse than having disconnected pockets of diversity, IMHO.

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

<comment><USER20> That way lies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and madness. The value isn't about (slightly) unique ways of thinking/talking _about_ things, but (slightly) unique ways of expressing those thoughts. That is, without at least a good description of as many of the various grammars that exist, we lose a lot of data that can help us to understand language as a whole. F'rinstance, if languages like Hixkaryana had died out before being described, then the prevailing belief that OVS was an "impossible" regular order (as opposed to a special construction) would likely have become "truth", and the possibilities only explored in artificial languages like Klingon. Losing that data means that we are losing the ability to make inferences as to how language works at the most fundamental level in the human brain.

On the other hand, it is rather inconvenient (from the perspective of a great global society) to have as many "pure" languages on the ground as we have (and have had). But while linguae francae bridge gaps across culture, full-time bilingualism and multilingualism tend to cross-fertilize grammars (and, of course, vocabularies), which has the effect of eroding the more interesting (and the most difficult) aspects of grammars in the smaller languages.

<comment><USER19> > That way lies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

What's wrong with it? I'm not familiar with it, but Wikipedia says " _Current researchers such as Lera Boroditsky, John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson believe that language influences thought, but in more limited ways than the broadest early claims_ ".

> The value isn't about (slightly) unique ways of thinking/talking about > things, but (slightly) unique ways of expressing those thoughts.

How is talking not expressing thoughts? Anyway.. Then you go on to make good points, but I don't see what makes you think they're in contradiction to anything I said. I was not talking about " _the_ value", someone else claimed that _everybody_ who cares about language diversity must be a nationalist, and that being a "globalist" means welcoming putting all eggs in one basket. I completely disagree with that, but for my nilly-willy reasons. If you have other reasons that's fine, they're good reasons, but to say that my view is vaguely wrong, because there lies madness for reasons you don't care to go into, well.

I personally do not care as much about what is accessible to "us" as about what is accessible to itself, wether I am aware of it or not. If there was a button to exterminate all parts of the universe we will never have access to and then forget that happened, I wouldn't press it, even if you bribed me, I hope. And again, remember this is in response to someone saying the only reason someone would care is X; I'm not saying my opinion is correct or perfect in any way, I'm just saying it's not X, cuz it's not :P

<comment><USER20> Just by way of explanation, B L Whorf's hypothesis (a considerable expansion of Sapir's original opinion) was that vocabulary, and more importantly, grammar, guided (and was guided by) modes of thought. A particularly famous example was that Hopi, having no past or future tense, which led its speakers to conceive of time as cyclical in nature, as opposed to the almost-neurotical need for Europeans to keep historical records and plan everything out. Quite apart from the fact that his analysis of the Hopi language was hideously inadequate (it is as tense-filled as most European languages, lacking only the explicit present progressive that is a peculiar feature of English and Celtic languages), he seems to have managed to miss the fact that the culture had developed a sophisticated set of timekeeping technologies as well. Much of the follow-on research ("language as culture" is a tasty morsel for anyone bent on believing that language is nothing more than learned behaviour) can be shown to use specific meanings gathered from informants for words that can be used to express much more general concepts. The problem is that the researchers failed to ask if the words could be used in another way.

The provable aspects revolve mostly around concepts like the colour "grue". That is, people whose languages lack separate words for blue and green, using instead a single word for both that could be rendered in English as "grue", take longer to distinguish between blue and green. It's not that they can't see the difference, but they initially file blue things and green things under the same heading, and only go on to distinguish between them when it's necessary. We have the same problem in English with yellow -- only people who've spent enough time in the world of colour would be likely to immediately distinguish warmer/redder yellows (like cadmium yellow) from colder/greener ones (like lemon yellow). And they learn that (usually) by figuring out that the two are not interchangeable when mixing colours -- both yellow and blue done wrongly and yellow and red done wrongly result in a muddy brown rather than the expected orange and green. It doesn't affect our perception, just our initial means of filing things, and it means that some circumlocution is needed when describing a particular yellow to somebody who doesn't have the technical vocabulary.

We also don't have a single word for "someone who always feels cold" as the French do, but we all know a few _frileux_ even if we don't have a word for it, and are aware of that knowledge. We have dropped _hither_ , _thither_ and _whither_ , but are still aware of the difference between direction and location when we use _here_ , _there_ and _where_. A large number of the world's languages don't have sex-linked gender, but their speakers are perfectly capable of telling the difference between men and women.

The only place where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis really holds any water is in the realm of computer languages (and similar ordering-machines-around environments). Sometimes it _is_ impossible to express a thought/instruction even when the machine is perfectly capable of carrying it out. Sometimes it's just so far away from idiomatic use of the language that it's better from any perspective to find a suitable paraphrase that _is_ idiomatic. But these are toy languages designed to accomplish specific goals, not general-purpose languages that anybody has to _live in_. (Try having a relationship in Lisp and see how far you get.) In the human world, the ability or inability to express a thought has a lot more to do with experience and culture than with any limitations that the language you speak may impose on you.

<comment><USER19> > the provable aspects revolve mostly around concepts like the colour "grue". > That is, people whose languages lack separate words for blue and green, > using instead a single word for both that could be rendered in English as > "grue", take longer to distinguish between blue and green.

What about languages that require the speaker to keep track of their spatial orientation?

And how come thinking and talking in English and German are both slightly different for me? Those languages aren't even far apart, but in my mind one can't replace the other.

> In the human world, the ability or inability to express a thought has a lot > more to do with experience and culture than with any limitations that the > language you speak may impose on you.

And again with the strawmen. Where did I claim such radical difference as being completely unable to express a specific thought, or seeing the world completely differently? Nowhere.

There's one big difference though, jokes. You can make some jokes in some languages, but they just don't work in others.

<comment><USER20> That is, though, precisely what the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims -- I never said _you_ were claiming anything of the sort, merely that the hypothesis did. Linguistics, in general, is a fascinating area of study (though if you are good at spotting straw men where none exist at all, you'll find yourself twitching a lot).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "A language's Wikipedia presence was one of the most important indicators of its ability to leap into the digital age."

Which made me curios to search for and find Vicipaedia [http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedia:Pagina_prima](http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedia:Pagina_prima), it's in the 10k+ article category.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would rather focus on the many opportunities technology and the internet offers to preserve those 6000+ languages that are currently not being used online. It's not very bold to say that technology will prevent them from disappearing completely unlike many languages in history that were not persevered.

</comment><comment><USER23> That statistic is somewhat misleading. Or, at least, not very meaningful. A more meaningful statistic would acknowledge the different "weights" that certain languages carry (i.e., "how many people use it").

</comment><comment><USER24> These types of discussion about language always reminds me of [http://www.economist.com/node/15108609](http://www.economist.com/node/15108609) which I find a fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think wikipedia is such a great way to decide on a language. A better way is things like chat messages, but they are harder to analyze.

</comment><comment><USER26> As someone who lives in an area where language is extremely political, and government is already involved in language-related legislation in day-to-day life, I worry that this is a potential vector for more government intrusion on the Internet. The excuses are practically built-in, from the perspective of the nationalists.

<comment><USER27> La oss håpe dine landsmenn ikke tar til internett med sitt eget språk der det ikke passer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> And here is a map of where they are used on Twitter

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/qianz/MapTwitterLanguage/v1/inde...](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/qianz/MapTwitterLanguage/v1/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Useless things die out - it's a natural process.

<comment><USER13> Things which aren't useless also die out.

<comment><USER30> Well, for languages the main way for dying out is when ~2 generations of their population decide that this language is useless for them and the vast majority choose not to use it anymore.

There are exceptions like genocide and forced assimilation of conquered nations; but these refer to extermination of languages/cultures, not the much more widespread issue of them simply dying out through disuse and voluntary assimilation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wouldn't wonder why there is only 4%. There are thousands and thousands of languages allover the world.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are most languages really a big loss? I suppose there are some interesting variations in grammar, but what else? What can we learn from some obscure languages?

</comment><comment><USER33> I really agree on this..</comment>


WeChat's world - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21703428-chinas-wechat-shows-way-social-medias-future-wechats-world <comment><USER2> WeChat's operator, Tencent, has an office in Palo Alto, CA. They're hiring. But WeChat seems to be run separately from Tencent, as the Wexin group. Most WeChat and Tencent services are available in English, but so far Tencent hasn't tried to take on Facebook directly in the US.

WeChat is more than an "app". It's a mobile OS/browser which can run other services.[1] WeChat calls those services "official accounts". Once activated, they can send notifications and participate in payment systems. So, rather than having an app for each service, most services work through WeChat's standardized interface.

Last year, WeChat kicked off Uber's official accounts for what they claimed was a TOS violation. This was a big hit for Uber. Customers could no longer call a Uber from WeChat. Didi's official accounts remained live, as did those of other taxi companies. WeChat is an investor in Didi. This may be part of why Uber caved and sold out to Didi.

When augmented reality comes, it might look a lot like WeChat.

[1] [http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile- first/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has WeChat followed Facebook's approach of unbundling functions into single- purpose apps? Or is everything delivered through a common chat/IM interface, similar to Messenger?

<comment><USER4> All in one app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is a very convenient app, except that if you say the wrong thing, they imprison you, or just kill you.

<comment><USER6> US is no different with Facebook/Twitter/etc. Even last century there were documented instances of people being killed doing things like picking up a Western Union money transfer, and military assassin UAVs today almost certainly use cellphone IDs, which are likely frequently obtained by western governments via such databases when the target is overseas.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia Random Article (has gotten weird) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random <comment><AUTHOR> Based on a small sample size, Wikipedia seems to be numerically dominated by tiny one- or two-sentence entries.

> Fresneda de la Sierra is a municipality in Cuenca, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. > It has a population of 72.

> Caciomorpha batesi is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was > described by Pascoe in 1858.

> Uranotaenia (Uranotaenia) campestris is a species of mosquito belonging to > the genus Uranotaenia. It is found in Thailand, Sri Lanka,[1] Bangladesh, > Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Timor, and Vietnam.

> Vreme (Macedonian: Време), translated: Time, was a Macedonian daily > newspaper.

> Sagra is a village in the province of Alicante and autonomous community of > Valencia, Spain. The municipality covers an area of 5.6 square kilometres > (2.2 sq mi) and as of 2011 had a population of 454 people.

> Renocera stroblii is a species of fly in the family Sciomyzidae. It is found > in the Palearctic

About half of them (randomly chosen articles) are like this.

</comment><comment><USER2> How so?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just that there seems to be a huge amount of little stub articles on locations and insects and such. Click it a bunch and see what you get.</comment></comment>


Patent Issued, now what? - <AUTHOR>

At the risk of garnering some potentially negative comments, I'd like some ideas on what to do with my soon-to-be-issued (software) patent.
I pursued it as a means of heading off potential competition. However, that ship has subsequently sailed and I don't really have the heart for more legal squabbles.
Frankly, I'd be happy to donate it to some non-profit portfolio, but given how much money I spent pursuing it, I can't afford this.
While I understand much of the vitriol around this area of law, I'd also happily sell it to any third party, if only to recover my costs.
So, here's the main question for me right now: what the heck can / should I do with this thing?
I'm hoping someone on this list has been in this situation and has some ideas I haven't yet considered.
Alternatively, if anyone's interested in acquiring a patent, this one deals with synchronizing a mobile device with a desktop/other system.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Heading off the competition? We need to let the market decide the best products and not our broken patent system. FLOSS

<comment><AUTHOR> Please read my text more carefully. I acknowledge a much with "that ship has sailed".

In any case, though, my original query still stands. I'm not after a philosophy debate, but a brainstorming session - please.</comment></comment>


AWS Lambda and .zip is a recipe for serverless success - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@PaulDJohnston/why-aws-lambda-and-zip-is-a-recipe-for-serverless-success-4f547a6e87c3 <comment><USER2> Cloud commoditized datacenters. People then tightly coupled their applications to cloud providers like AWS. After some time, containers came along and commoditized the cloud providers. Those applications no longer needed to be tightly coupled to a specific cloud provider. This reduced both costs and the risk of being invested in a single cloud provider.

Serverless (AWS Lambda) is just the cloud's way of trying to "de-commoditize" the containers that commoditized them. They want you to tightly couple your applications to their specific cloud provider again. And charge you more. How much is that function in the zip from S3 going to cost you to run in a container managed and run by AWS? And how long did you spend configuring the API Gateway (and where else can you apply what you've learned doing the configuration)? Next time you see an article fawning over serverless and saying things like "Containers just don't matter in the serverless world" take a look at what the author does for a living. You'll start to see the same pattern I've been seeing.

Meanwhile, you could be spending less money and time treating AWS like a dumb processor with a network connection while only really configuring the open source software you already know. But it's your time and money.

<comment><USER3> I just don't get the "lambda locks you in" thing. You write a server the same way you always would, but like an extra 50LOC exists to make it work on lambda. So if I wanted to deploy elsewhere what would the big deal be?

Lambda also provides a lot more than containerized services, as the article mentions - I no longer have to patch my system, which is a huge operational/ security burden that many companies struggle with. The time to configure API Gateway/ Lambda feels trivial compared to the work involved in maintaining a patched FAAS solution.

<comment><USER4> I agree, but in my experience, the lock-in with using Lambda is that you become integrated with other Amazon services (like S3 and DynamoDB) that are harder to replace if you abandon AWS entirely.

<comment><USER3> That really doesn't feel like it's inherent to Lambda at all. You could say the same thing about EC2.

On top of that, many of AWS's services use standard API's. It's not hard to move away from RDS or Elasticache, you're just using SQL/Redis anyways...

If we're talking about something like SQS, ok, well you can just as easily say you're "locked in" when you use RabbitMQ because there is work involved to not be using RabbitMQ.

<comment><USER5> There are a finite set of this to trigger the function and they become central to

API Gateway, kinsesis, s3 change/addition...

It definitely has more lock in potential than more "vanilla" offerings like EC2, RDS, S3.

You could name a replacement/competitor service for each of the above, but if the Lambda is triggered by S3 changes then that's a big barrier to putting your static files elsewhere

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep being dazzled how what's basically "cloud CGI" is such a runaway success. Utter simplicity beats many considerations.

(For those who did not write web apps in 1990s: CGI here is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface))

<comment><USER7> It certainly does seem a throwback to old managed PHP environments. No need to set anything up, just provide your PHP code over FTP and off you go!

<comment><USER8> I agree with you in principal but AWS and Lambda feels significantly more complex than that. At least when I was FTP'ing my code up to some shared host I still had a lot of control over my environment (ini overrides, htaccess, etc...) With Lambda I feel like I have very little control. There is a black box running this stuff that I have no insight into. Even worse; when things break the resulting error is often unrelated to the actual problem.

<comment><USER9> one thing that would be great would be if it was setup in such a way that the API gateway / lambda functions had really simple, file based mappings on a virtual server that then automagically took care of deployment / scaling for you.

cp -r / symlinks could take care of the whole staging / lambda version aliasing stuff.

deployment is just scp'ing a zip file to a certain defined location.

all that insane complexity of configuring API gateway is replaced with some config.json or js file export defining what lambda to call and what permissions to use.

then to back the whole thing up you could just rsync it back to your local machine ... hmm though realistically you'd probably want to invert things and develop this whole hierarchy in a git repo that could be checkouted on that virtual server, or it could just natively understand git and branches just become the stages / alias as soon as you push them so no need to ssh in and pull.

<comment><USER10> Apex Up does something very similar along these lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Deploying .zip files is one of my favorite features of Lambda, particularly when writing Go apps.

Docker always felt wrong with Go to me.

Why do I need a local VM, a Linux build service, an image registry and servers with container orchestration to deploy Go software? I understand how all this helps with "legacy" Rails or Java apps, but why can't I just throw a Go binary somewhere to run it?

Lambda is exactly this. I upload a cross-compiled .zip to S3 and everything else is taken care of. This was a big breakthrough for me, seeing a much simpler solution for deploys than all the container stuff.

I've been building a boilerplate app that demonstrates just how little "stuff" is needed to run a Go service on Lambda:

[https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas](https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas)

More thoughts about how .zip files make our lives easier is here: [https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas/blob/master/docs/dev- pack...](https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas/blob/master/docs/dev-package- deploy.md)

<comment><USER2> You don't _need_ all of that shit, though. You absolutely _can_ just throw a golang binary into a super minimal alpine image and run it wherever you've got a Docker daemon installed. You literally don't need _any_ of the things you listed! Plus, it is simply untrue that "everything else is taken care of" in Lambda. There is plenty of one-off configuration to do ("toil").

<comment><USER12> If you're just working with a golang binary, you shouldn't be using an Alpine container, you should be putting the binary in an empty, from-scratch container. Go binaries are typically static and don't need distro or the libs it provides in their container.

<comment><USER2> Sure, I'm just saying that none of that stuff he says is necessary is needed _at all_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Serverless has its upsides but it also has downsides.

In an ideal, pure, world it's awesome. The problem is that your lambda function usually needs to use some sort of external resources. (It is pretty useless if you don't interact with anything)

Now you have to worry about and understand how to do access control on the said resources, how to collect the logs, how to collect metrics relevant to your code, how do you troubleshoot and deploy the function itself, how do you integrate it with the rest of things you have/own.

You're just shifting complexity from an area to a another area.

It works great in some cases, but it's far from beeing a panacea.

<comment><USER14> Right, and one of biggest downsides to serverless: reusing database connections/pools between requests. Right now the only "standard" solution offered by serverless's biggest advocates is pretty much a hack: rely on AWS's preservation of memory across some warm invocations. Basically keep it in a global variable and if you get lucky it'll still be there the next time your functions runs.

[1] [http://blog.rowanudell.com/database-connections-in- lambda/](http://blog.rowanudell.com/database-connections-in-lambda/)

<comment><USER15> I think a mixture of persistent proxies could work well with lambda functions for this use case. You can run lambdas in your VPCs with assigned security groups and IAM roles just like an EC2 instance and therefore lambda functions should be able to proxy through an intermediate server that performs the connection pooling on behalf of calling functions. Not sure what the standard solution for something like this would be though because every time I've seen connection pooling it's for use locally. Perhaps some nginx or haproxy hacking could make it work.

<comment><USER16> In this scenario you're still paying the cold-connection cost to your proxy, and that's just keeping a pool of tcp connections open, not necessarily doing anything smart/optimized in the sql driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading through this comment thread, if anybody is interested in a much more streamlined "serverless" experience and superior API Gateway, check out StdLib [1]. We've built a product for getting APIs built and shipped, full stop.

Bonus: .tar.gz format for submitting packages instead of .zip (though our CLI handles it automatically), and a bunch of freebies - everything from automatically generated documentation [2], SDKs, simple local development and testing, and more.

Disclaimer: Am founder.

Disclaimer 2: At the risk of being borderline spammy, we're hiring aggressively. If you're passionate about building a future that uses serverless technologies to make software development and APIs more accessible, e-mail me. (And thank you, pre-emptively.)

[1] [https://stdlib.com/](https://stdlib.com/)

[2] [https://stdlib.com/@messagebird/lib/numbers/](https://stdlib.com/@messagebird/lib/numbers/)

<comment><USER18> Check also a more visual approach to Cloud Backend including an sql cloud database and an API builder : [https://cloudbackend.appdrag.com](https://cloudbackend.appdrag.com)

Disclosure: I'm founder

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel it is like reinventing executables, the dumb way.

We can compare that with ELF binaries or remote procedure calls when someone else maintains the OS and makes sure that the infrastructure scales. Actual not even executables, because it is still interpreted code, instead of being "compiled" it is packed and distributed with a spec much less precise than a typical platform. Just because someone has a machine ready to be deployed on and scale ad infinitum.

Am I the only one who finds that a dumb protocol for a remote call? Could someone point on which part is this a smart badass thing? Perhaps it is just a weird "renascence of Operating Systems"?

Edit: I still think that we got here because it was too much work to learn about pre-existing technology or hire an expert and it was more fashionable/easy/cool/sexy to kick ass and move on.

P.S. Sorry for this sudden rant

<comment><USER20> I agree with this sentiment and feel the same way. I also find this is a frustrating trend in our industry in where a lot of engineers seem to be spending more time learning about "services" from specific vendors than about things like network protocols and their workings and limitations.

<comment><USER21> > Maybe this is just inevitable evolution of the IT industry but I've noticed > two things that are alarming.

I was at the Southern California Linux Expo[1] earlier this month, and one of the really weird things was how many people from Microsoft were presenting and attending (I wasn't the only one - Bryan Lunduke, ex-MSFT, did a podcast episode about it[2]). I think the trends you point out are from a lot of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Java, etc people now being forced into the Linux world, because Linux is now the default for new IT projects. Unfortunately they are bringing along their "practices" instead of retraining in good software systems engineering.

[1] [https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/16x](https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/16x) [2] [http://lunduke.com/2018/03/10/microsoft-headlined-a-major- li...](http://lunduke.com/2018/03/10/microsoft-headlined-a-major-linux- conference/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I kept waiting for the author to say, "Surprise, it's a jar file. Jars are just zips, and lambda supports Java." Then I realized author really was reinventing wheels for the reader who probably doesn't know what Java is.

<comment><USER19> I am totally with you... I think we are going backwards in technical choices just because some people had pain-points learning pre-existing technology or did not know how to deal with infrastructure. But if people pays for it, it is a market I guess.

<comment><USER23> Bingo!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's just code in a .zip file! It's really that simple!

Hey, unrelated what does "cannot open shared object file" mean?

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have experience with alternatives to AWS Lambda (like azure functions)? How hard is it to switch between serverless providers?

<comment><USER26> I played with Firebase (Google Cloud) Functions recently and the developer experience was pretty good. It's like if serverless ([https://serverless.com/](https://serverless.com/)) had first party support, in the form of the Firebase CLI. Deploying was simple, the Firebase dashboard is nice. That said, I only used it for a side project, so I don't know about any pains scaling. I would definitely use it again for another side project, though.

<comment><USER27> I will second Firebase. It has really matured as a platform over the past couple of years and is a much easier service to work with than AWS.

As to the parent's question on switching cloud providers though I think it would be non trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The comment about meltdown is wrong.

> You had to patch your containers and your instances/servers, but you didn't > have to patch Lambda functions.

This was right after talking about Fargate. Let's compare what you do and don't have to patch in Fargate / Lambda:

Kernel / host OS: Lambda and Fargate patch that for you without any work. This is the more important patch.

Container bins/libraries: some programs, like Chrome, which had JIT, could be exploited to read memory of that same process. In the case of lambda and fargate, you only needed to patch containers/zips that contained such programs.

If you were using something like 'serverless-chrome'[0] in lambda, you would have to update your zip file to get Chrome's workaround for meltdown. If you had a fargate container with headless chrome, same deal. It's practically identical in the cited case of meltdown.

There are many cases (like glibc or openssl vulnerabilities) where containers need to be patched, but lambda can patch it for you ... but in the case of kernel exploits, fargate and lambda can patch equally well.

[0]: [https://github.com/adieuadieu/serverless- chrome](https://github.com/adieuadieu/serverless-chrome)

</comment><comment><USER29> IMHO Cloud functions serve well a very small niche. However most of the people advocating for cloud functions seem to misused them. Their use cases would be better served using a well designed PaaS(though I admit is hard to find a good one these days).

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't think that building your whole service on lambda or google cloud functions with tons of code is the best idea, but it's a great shim between clients and backends. Tech changes constantly and you'll always be up against a change agent. Be nimble.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use containers (Docker for Windows|Mac) to create my lambda zip for dist, isn't that close enough? lol.

<comment><USER32> I actually do the same thing. Do the dependency install inside of a docker container in order to build the .zip. This is absolutely essential for compiled libraries in python or anything that involves postgresql. If you attempt to install psycopg on mac and then deploy that on lambda it will fail. So you either need a prebuilt version for ubuntu that you keep around, or you need to build in a docker container. We just build inside a docker container.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, it works really well, also allows me to configure CI/CD in VSTS/TFS via Windows agents for AWS deploys to Lambda. In the end, I'm pretty pleased with it. I've mostly used Node, but Python binary dependencies would have the same need.

Not entirely sure why I got the downvote, other than the tongue in cheek aspect and "lol" at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I actually find zipping and uploading manually a PITA. Started using the Serverless framework [1] recently and now I just run `serverless deploy --stage dev --aws-profile profilename` from my repo (which is an npm script).

[1][https://serverless.com/](https://serverless.com/)

<comment><USER34> No doubt! It seems antiquated and repetitive

<comment><USER35> Well that's what CI/CD is for. It's not any different than building and pushing a new docker image.

<comment><USER2> I keep hearing responses like this about various aspects of serverless, but it makes no sense. If a lot of these serverless operations are "not any different" than various Docker operations, why should I be spending time and money to couple my application to AWS Lambda versus simply running the container myself? Why shouldn't I just deploy a container (pod) for my code if I'm _already running kubernetes_?

The more I hear people defending serverless, the more it feels like they're asking people to voluntarily increase their time and money costs, learn hyperspecialized and nontransferable skills, and make their application far less adaptable. All of this while accruing tons of technical debt for a pittance of some convenience.

<comment><USER35> To be clear, I'm not a proponent of serverless at all. I'm just pointing out in isolation that zipping and shipping something is not antiquated, it's just a methodology for shipping code. I guess it feels old because it's not wrapped up in a lickable CLI and online docs with great typography, but it's not fundamentally flawed.

To your point, I don't see any value of serverless over containers today. We are now at a point where container orchestration is mature enough that it's a sane default choice, but it took a while to get here. Serverless is where containers were 5-7 years ago (depending how you squint).

Will serverless ever be a credible replacement for containers? That depends on the vendors working out a whole lot of details. In theory, with the right services around it, serverless can be lighter than containers because they can fully control the baseline environment and build more into it, but that is also less flexible than containers. How much standardization will be possible between vendors? If the price comes down and the tradeoffs look good enough then I could see it eating into container marketshare, but I'm really not holding my breath. It's still 100% in the hype phase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You know what would be better than a .zip? A .tar.gz file. Zip files cannot be unzipped without having the whole thing in memory. What's funny is that the Lambda environments (at least for Node) do not have the `zip` executable available which means that to zip/unzip something inside Lambda I need one written in javascript which has to be included in the zip file I upload to AWS instead of being able to use the native one.

<comment><USER37> You have it backwards. Zip files have a table of contents letting you unzip individual files without decompressing the whole thing, and you don't need to load it all into memory.

<comment><USER38> The table of contents in a zip file is at the _end_ , not the beginning, so you need random access to the full file if you want to properly jump to the right location. Some zip files use the length feature of local file headers so you can jump ahead in the file without processing the data, but many skip the length so you have to work through the DEFLATE algorithm to find the end of the first file (to find where the second file starts)

<comment><USER37> Yes, you can and should use random file access to load things from a zip file. For example, Go's zip package takes an io.ReaderAt interface, not an io.Reader. Using sequential I/O for this would be inefficient.

<comment><USER39> The problem here is that you mostly have a streaming interface In s3.

<comment><USER37> I'm not familiar with s3, but it seems like if you want random access for a key-value database, you should store each file under a separate key? Storing an entire file archive as a blob (in any format) and downloading the whole thing just to access one file seems like a weird way to do it.

Apparently there is "s3 select" in preview [1], but it only supports gzipped CSV or JSON.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/s3-glacier- select/](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/s3-glacier-select/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My hypermedia history - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@enkiv2/my-hypermedia-history-11d576ce6dbb <comment><USER2> " And, I've implemented stuff that's pretty close to what I wanted back then but found it less satisfying than I expected.

I guess that's life.

So pro tip for all you young people:

Never have goals. If you achieve them you will realize they were crap all along, and if you don't then you'll be stressed out about failing. "

– to which I would reply with,

       "HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
       Enwrought with golden and silver light,
       The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
       Of night and light and the half-light,
       I would spread the cloths under your feet:
       But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
       I have spread my dreams under your feet;
       Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

[https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/he-wishes-for-the-cloths- of-...](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/he-wishes-for-the-cloths-of-heaven/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love reading and hearing from people who have pursued these philosophical interface ideals. They have accomplished some great things and I think it's undeniable that they are exploring a vast area of unknown.

I wish they could generally be kinder to themselves. I consider the design of musical instruments, which is an area of expertise often lost to time because if it's accomplishments being so gradual and, endemic, we might say. Differences in resolution of an average person's hearing senses vs. visual senses makes this comparison valuable. The keyboard is the hypermedia accomplishment of music but it resembles a piano so much in appearance that we consider it the same interface form. Musically, however, it is a new world. Recent musical software is largely a regression in interactivity. There is a lot of meaning that tends to get lost here.

So much of the PC's value comes from the hard drive. The hard drive stores creativity that used to require sheet music and upkeep of instruments and incredible investments of time. I am guilty of forgetting this all the same, and love tooling away at my CGI workstation workflow. But, at the end of the day, I often feel I simply cannot compete with the value of Ctrl + S with cloud sync.

On the other hand, there is the mouse, which is comparable to a music instrument, and it's easy to overlook the benefits of the awkward oblong shapes of classical musical instruments. Their cooperation with the human body and their form inspire and enable the whole history of music as we know it. But, we remember only a handful of people, not who invented them, but who merely made final modifications to them. Their inventors are lost to time. The bulls of hypermedia seem to face similar struggles.</comment>


Apple Ping: A Music Social Network, Like "Twitter And Facebook Meets iTunes" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/itunes-ping/

<comment><USER2> I really wish Apple would split iTunes into various programs rather than the do-all music player/store/iDevice manager/an excuse to bundle a bunch of other Apple software and now it also provides a social network too. Or at least into modules that can be added to the vanilla player.

There's a problem when it runs worse than playing 720p video, Microsoft Office, or Firefox with quite a few tabs on an N450 netbook.</comment>


Google Keep, a New Service for Taking Notes - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.in/2013/03/google-keep-new-service-for-taking-notes.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> How long before Google discontinues the service? I'll stick with EverNote.

<comment><USER3> Reader lasted longer than almost all of the (major) RSS readers combined. What makes you think EverNote is going to be around forever?

Honestly, I don't understand the stance of using an inferior product (this assumes you believe Keep will be superior to EverNote, if not, then why even comment?) because you fear the superior one will be shut off. I rather use a product from a company that has a history of providing mechanisms to take out my data if/when they shut the product down instead of a startup/small company that will probably lose all my data when they go bankrupt or get acqui-hired.

<comment><USER4> The issue for many people is that these ancillary services from Google may be found to not add value to Google's overall G+ strategy, and killed in the interest of staying "focused". Google is simply not "all-in" with some of these services. This just isn't the case for company's like Evernote.

<comment><USER5> Presumably a product conceived post-G+ will be explicitly designed to add value to the overall G+ strategy, so has less chance of getting to the point of being shut down. Google Reader on the other hand was conceived in 2005 when Google was all over the place and even then the management didn't like it.

<comment> mkr-hn G+ is a tricky dependency. There's little confidence in it outside Google and some factions in the tech press.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting to see if uptake is diminished by their recent shutdown of Reader. It's hard to feel unwary of new Google services that don't smell like something 90% of folks will use.

<comment><USER7> There's no 'if' about it. Everyone still is, and will be pissed at Google for quite a while.

<comment><USER8> you dont see a mass exodus from gmail ...

<comment><USER9> Gmail is a significant enough profit center that it's unlikely to ever be under threat. Reader didn't directly contribute to the bottom line (and arguably led to fewer ad views).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Phil Libin's long term plan for Evernote[1] is precisely what this sort of application requires, and is at total odds with Google's product release/discontinue approach.

Google Notebook was "discontinued" only a few years ago - and the kinds of consumers who would be interested Keep almost certainly share a significant overlap with those who two years ago were interested/used Notebook, and therefore have literally been bitten by Google in _this exact space_ in the last few years.

[1] [http://vator.tv/news/2013-01-17-phil-libin-on-an-evernote- ip...](http://vator.tv/news/2013-01-17-phil-libin-on-an-evernote-ipo-it-s-a- moral-obligation)

<comment><USER11> While I think this is an interesting point, at the same time, it looks like it may have been more difficult technically and brand-wise for google to migrate notebook to drive (which I think is the goal). It probably made more sense for them to discontinue notebook, which had a relatively small userbase, and relaunch it as a new product/brand under the drive suite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure if I want to touch any non-core (Search, YouTube, Gmail) Google's services after the discontinuation of Reader.

<comment><USER13> The thing is, a few weeks back Reader could be considered core Google offerings.

<comment><USER3> Is this a joke? A product with less than 1-2 million active users can't honestly be considered a "core Google offering".

<comment><USER14> How many more million users are needed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No way I'll give it a try. Bit by Google Notebook a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER16> To be clear (for those of us who don't always click through and actually read the articles), this isn't any sort of announcement from Google --- it's just the results of some sleuthing that hint at a future note-taking service.

<comment><USER17> It's more than a hint. The service was active on Google for some time a few hours ago and then was pulled down again. It definitely exists, not a matter of 'if' but a matter of 'when'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sorry google but you can fuck off this week.

</comment><comment><USER19> Irony explained using an analogy:

A new experimental product by Google with a dubious monetization strategy at best has the name "Keep".

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a hard one. I'm a geek that loves to try new gadgets/websites and when I find one I like I use it a lot, like Google Reader for example. The problem with Google is I may get attached to one of their products and then a year or two down the road they pull the plug on it. It's happened enough times now that I don't even care to try Google products until it becomes as big as gmail and I'm sure it wont just vanish. Anyways plenty of other good services for taking notes that I can pay for and I'm sure they will be around for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER21> All the "how long will it last" sentiment aside, this looks like a great move for Android - lists, notes and other basically structured data, synced across your mobile devices which Google can provide on Android devices out of the box if they want.

If they did do that it would also makes it less likely they'll pull it at some point in the future. Bundle it with Android and you're going to hit hundreds of millions of users very quickly. Even Google don't pull back from that sort of thing without thinking.

</comment><comment><USER22> Screenshots from Androidpolice they took while Keep was up for a short time: [http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is- live-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is-live-google- launches-a-note-taking-service/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The most interesting about this is not that Google is building a new service, but how everyone responds to it. All trust seems to be entirely gone among most hackers around here.

</comment><comment><USER24> This was live for a little bit last night. Here are some screenshots: [http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is- live-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/17/google-keep-is-live-google- launches-a-note-taking-service/)

<comment><USER25> To stay actually on topic for once, if these screenshots are anything to go by, Google Keep looks pretty bare bones and not really suitable as a replacement for anything bar the most simple use case (of course, a couple of screenshots does not a product make).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is some awesome commentary here.

Nobody even read the goddamn article. Bunch of parrots.</comment>


Show HN: Tiny Suspender, a tiny tab suspender extension for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tiny-suspender/bbomjaikkcabgmfaomdichgcodnaeecf <comment><AUTHOR> Tiny Suspender is almost similar with The Great Suspender extension: it "suspends" background tabs to reduce Chrome's resource consumption. But it has slightly different feature set and different implementation, as well as focused on being as tiny as possible.

Source code is available here: [https://github.com/arifwn/TinySuspender](https://github.com/arifwn/TinySuspender)

<comment><USER2> > But it has slightly different feature set and different implementation, as > well as focused on being as tiny as possible.

That's precisely what I wanted to know more, because I already use The Great Suspender. You know, I usually blow my chrome with 50+ tabs, thus extensions like these really save memory for me, although a tab is still a process from what I understand and even in 'hibernated' mode it still consumes some memory. Yours reduces it even more? If yes, by how much? Thank you

<comment><AUTHOR> Tiny Suspender has two hibernation mode. The default one is pretty similar with The Great Suspender in which it replaces the page with a special "suspension" page loaded from the extension assets. Chrome actually run these "suspended" page under a single extension process, so if you have 50 suspended tabs, they actually run under a single Tiny Suspender extension process, which typically consume ~30-60mb of memory (sometime more, sometime less. Not sure why) on osx.

The other mode is experimental and can be enabled from settings. It uses the experimental Chrome tab discard API. This API has some limitations, and I never actually measure the actual memory saving under this mode, but if what chrome dev saying is true, it could potentially save even more memory.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, I'll consider doing a benchmark later and I will be happy to switch if the difference is significant :). Nonetheless congratulations on your project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber CEO email to employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitter.com/EricNewcomer/status/833821240703881216 <comment><USER2> Cool. There'll be a shakeup and some heads will roll. Then nothing will change. Maybe we'll even see some privileged white boys complain about how they have to walk on eggshells now without a hint of irony.

<comment> purple-again While I understand you may feel frustrated by your life experiences, you as an individual get to choose whether to be a hateful bigot or work towards creating an atmosphere of inclusion.

Your comment is clearly on the side of hateful bigot and only serves to drive us further apart.

<comment><USER3> This sounds like victim-blaming to me. I guess you think that women who are sexually harassed or even assaulted should be "working towards creating an atmosphere of inclusion" too, right?

<comment><USER4> The OP's comment was a politically charged statement that sterotyped all white males. This is the same argument that Trump uses to de-facto ban Muslims.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and this kind of comment does not meet the hackernews guidelines for quality posts. I hope you reflect on your hypocrisy.

<comment><USER5> > The OP's comment was a politically charged statement that sterotyped all > white males.

No, it was not. Saying "maybe we'll even see some" is not the same as saying "all".

<comment><USER4> The post was clearly unproductive race-baiting. Are white males the only perpetrators of harassment at Uber? I think not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>