Github blocked from China - <AUTHOR> http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/?domain=github.com <comment><USER2> I believe the blocking is directly related to an automated train ticket polling plugin that had brought down Github just days ago. Due to upcoming Chinese New Year, newly released train tickets are sold within minutes. That plugin introduces huge traffic to already crumbling ticket vending site, and it has obviously made railroad bureau angry. Blocking Github makes that plugin immediately malfunction because it makes reference to javascript files hosted on Github pages. The bureau has also paid a visit to the plugin's author, for the purpose of intimidation perhaps.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to a news article or something that explains all this?

<comment><USER4> Tech in Asia has an English summary & commentary about the train ticket plugins ban:

[http://www.techinasia.com/negotiation-miit-orders-chinese- br...](http://www.techinasia.com/negotiation-miit-orders-chinese-browsers- kill-train-ticket-plugins/)

Indeed there seems to be one plugin which hotlinks a js file from Github: [http://www.ce.cn/cysc/tech/07hlw/guonei/201301/21/t20130121_...](http://www.ce.cn/cysc/tech/07hlw/guonei/201301/21/t20130121_21322634.shtml)

But of course, blocking Github didn't affect any of the other plugins. So Phoenix TV is reporting that most other plugins are still actually working:

[http://tech.ifeng.com/internet/detail_2013_01/21/21406667_0....](http://tech.ifeng.com/internet/detail_2013_01/21/21406667_0.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ouch, but maybe solvable...

Confirmed from Beijing. Thought it was the internet connectivity in the office that failed, but same at home.

Did a traceroute and this reveals an expected result. It is really the DNS which returns a wrong value '184.108.40.206' instead of the expected '22.214.171.124', so it looks like a dns poisoning attempt or some other dns issue. Editing your /etc/hosts file or using opendns can help in this case.

traceroute to github.com (22.214.171.124), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 10.0.21.1 (10.0.21.1) 1.987 ms 2.265 ms 2.832 ms 2 188.8.131.52 (220.127.116.11) 35.160 ms 35.416 ms 35.675 ms 3 188.8.131.52 (184.108.40.206) 20.185 ms 22.808 ms 24.970 ms 4 184.108.40.206 (188.8.131.52) 33.900 ms 33.950 ms 34.056 ms 5 * * * 6 220.127.116.11 (126.96.36.199) 71.221 ms 48.915 ms 50.631 ms 7 184.108.40.206 (220.127.116.11) 70.620 ms 72.682 ms 95.149 ms 8 22.214.171.124 (126.96.36.199) 88.623 ms 90.785 ms 93.630 ms 9 220.127.116.11 (22.214.171.124) 267.972 ms 276.896 ms 277.973 ms 10 220.127.116.11 (18.104.22.168) 265.656 ms 269.840 ms 210.408 ms 11 * * * 12 220.127.116.11 (220.127.116.11) 286.678 ms 288.514 ms 291.715 ms 13 vlan905.core5.iad2.rackspace.net (126.96.36.199) 303.488 ms 307.324 ms 305.763 ms 14 aggr301a-1-core5.iad2.rackspace.net (184.108.40.206) 311.652 ms 314.041 ms 317.400 ms 15 github.com (126.96.36.199) 315.588 ms 317.580 ms 320.812 ms

So with OpenDNS it loads... still some packetloss, but this is expected. In the worst case, use a VPN. Although, this means it will trouble Chinese participation and contributions to projects even more.

<comment><USER5> At least it is big news on Weibo where people complain about 'creating dumb people when you cant study code'.

This might have to do with the a ticket polling (bashing) application since during this time it is hard to get tickets for the train due to the yearly mass migration for spring festival. It referred to assets hosted on github pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure how any developer survives in China without a VPN, so this is probably one of the least vulnerable groups.

On the other hand, any deployment strategies that depend on github are going to be hosed.

I no longer live in China. Internet issues are a bit reason for that.

<comment><USER7> There are tools that make it easy to work disconnected. Ruby On Rails is one, because of its one-stop-shop nature and its easy-to-download docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This really sucks because Github doesn't seem to like my favorite OpenVPN providers -- I can access the site, but actual git operations don't work. Previously I'd just disconnect, clone/push/etc., and reconnect, but now that might not work at all.

Pain in the ass, more so by the day it seems.

<comment><USER9> Have you tried using a <https://> url instead of git:// url?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a developer from China, I can tell you that I am furious now. The bottom line has long been that sites such as Github.com & etc are not blocked. This is no longer true...

<comment><USER8> Seriously? (I say this as someone living in Shanghai now, who has lived here for the last 10 years). Github was your bottom line?

<comment><USER10> Meant to say that I have had enough of this situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was predicted around a month ago, after the release of the tool that detects routers acting in the Great Firewall. [1]

But I'd assume you'd just Streisand Effect the project if it was closed down, almost inevitable once mongol was released, it'd just be forked.

Unless the block was a culmination of other factors that I don't know about, then I'd love to hear more.

[1] <https://github.com/mothran/mongol/issues/1>

</comment><comment><USER12> Confirmed in Yunnan.

I just returned to China after most of a year. The VPN stuff has gotten much worse. Tor is banned, new wacky Tor is banned. My work VPN (OpenVPN based, not publicly listed or used by anyone else) appears blocked (though it worked a couple of days back on a different link; I have a theory this is China Unicom vs. China Telecom landlines).

I am presently exploring IPSec/PPTP/SSH+PPP style solutions. Can anyone save me time here and tell me what is likely to be the most reliable? OpenVPN has been my mainstay in the past and it is now too much trouble here.

SSH+PPP is looking good from a low-latency, port-hopping, unlikely-to-be- blocked perspective, but figuring out how to get a client for that up in OSX is driving me nuts.

<comment><USER13> <http://refer.ly/aWhX> PPTP

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a downside to using a code hosting site. Joel Spolsky once said that "politics are orthogonal to software". I might not care if Chinese censors block my blog, but I want my code to be available to as many as possible. The smaller the site that holds the code, the easier it is for them to selectively allow it.

I don't want to go out of my way to make it so they can allow access to it despite a horrible censorship system, but I'd prefer not to put all my eggs into one giant basket either.

<comment><USER14> Software is easy to distribute. Copy your eggs to multiple baskets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cannot access the Hacker News Meetup page anymore... (<http://wiredcraft.github.com/hnshanghai/>)

<comment> barry-cotter Are you at it? I'm the guy sitting at a table with a beer, a laptop, glasses and a terrible, terrible sweater.

<comment><USER16> So, did you find each other? Don't keep us in suspense! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's kind of ironic, as open source is a pretty socialist idea in the first place (not that China is socialist, but it's supposed to be).

<comment><USER18> Is it really? The author of code owns that code. It's not like the workers using the factory (the programmers using the languages) owns it, they are just licensed to use it way more freely than it the owner did not give any freedoms.

In a communist society then the governemt would take ownership of all code (of factories). That's not Stallmans idea.

Saying that 'socialism == sharing' is too simple.

<comment><USER19> One of the core ideas of Communism - workers own the means of production. Source code is means of production for software. Capitalism is when the source code is owned by the "factory owner", i.e. corporation, and not by the people who actually produce it.

Example: programmers who work at Microsoft don't own the source code and can't use it for their own benefit, while Microsoft makes money from it and only pays wages, which are below the value of source code to the company. This is the old model of Capitalism.

Open Source is very much a Communist idea. People who work on open source, even if they are payed for it, still have access to their work and can use it independently of the company.

<comment><USER20> Great point. It seems obvious in retrospect, yet I had never thought of it with that level of clarity. It also explains why, as I ponder my career, I'm drawn to companies where a significant portion (or all) of my work would be open source.

On the other hand, given the terrible outcomes communism produced in the 20th century, it has a well-deserved bad reputation. I'd therefore hesitate to link it to open source without noting why open source is different: Code, once written, can be copied infinitely for free (or at a very low cost), so the model can work.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My blog, <http://www.in-the-attic.com> is hosted on Github pages, I have tested against the site this post links to and my site is accessible. IP it resolves to is 126.96.36.199 and this is the Github pages IP address.

<comment><USER5> I was unable to open <http://openhack.github.com> (also on github pages) so it seems to be targeted.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, this is happening because I specify the A Name record for the in-the- attic.com domain, if I hit gkwelding.github.com which is the github page itself then it's also blocked. Looks like some DNS FUBAR'ness is occurring somewhere.

<comment><USER22> We just added GitHub to our Firewall Unblocker for Hola, but we don't know if it's working. Can you check it out and report to me? Just install from Hola.org our Windows client > hover over the Hola tray icon and click Hola Unblocker. On this page choose GitHub from the Firewall Unblocker, and let me know at firstname.lastname@example.com Thanks! If it works, start telling your friends! BTW Hola is totally free! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmmm...I can access github from Beijing without any problems... (I am using Google's DNS servers)

<comment><USER5> Traffic directed at 22.214.171.124 and 184.108.40.206 is not always reliable (intercepted and malformed) where I life. I use mostly opendns and a tunneled dns proxy back to some servers i have. Bu yes, it works by avoiding the poisoned dns servers

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm seeing the same thing: <http://wheresitup.com/results/50fd9b39d331167b5a00017a>

</comment><comment><USER25> A friend of a friend from Beijing said github works for him (~2 minutes ago).

I'm actually flying there on Wednesday, let's see how it goes :)

<comment><USER26> It's blocked in my Beijing apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My personal website is hosted by github and it's accessible from China. So they don't seem to block those -- weird.

</comment><comment><USER28> They just have too many enemies and too scared.I wish github can be recovered,otherwise I have to cross the wall.

</comment><comment><USER29> Thanks to the blocking, no more projects being OutSourced to China, at-least the ones hosted on Github now!

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it because of some govern"mental" issue or just some technical problem?

<comment><USER5> not clear. might be DNS poison... since a trace returns a functional path and using an alternative DNS it seems to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You can't survive in China without a stable VPN connection.

<comment><USER32> China blocked VPN protocols.

You can't survive in China without a closed homebrew tunnel protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> No-go in Shanghai :-(

<comment> barry-cotter Yeah, I know. Anyone else at the HN meetup at Abbey Road? I'm thewhite guy with glasses, a beer, laptop and a receding hairline.

<comment><AUTHOR> The next HN meetup will be held on February 21, after the Chinese New Year: <http://shanghaihn.org/>

<comment> barry-cotter Bollocks. I thought it was tonight. See you next month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Subscribed you to the mail reminder so that you don't forget: see you there.

<comment><USER34> Is it possible to be subscribed as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of the official page: <http://shanghaihn.org> (hopefully that words fine despite being a Github pages :) ).

<comment><USER34> Thanks! Are there any HN meet ups in Beijing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This sucks, the GFW sucks, the government sucks!!

</comment><comment><USER36> blocked websites may be more popular in China now...before, not many people know Github..

</comment><comment><USER37> Shit</comment>


CO2 shortage: Lessons learned from a storm in a pint glass? - <AUTHOR> https://www.gasworld.com/co2-shortage-lessons-learned/2015003.article <comment><USER3> A better article about from an industry insider is [https://www.gasworld.com/co2-shortage-lessons- learned/201500...](https://www.gasworld.com/co2-shortage-lessons- learned/2015003.article)

An interesting fact that he picks out is that coordinating shutdown periods between suppliers would be in breach of anti-competition rules.

The crisis has overall highlighted the fact that shared production can cause issues. Ammonia is worth about $50 billion whereas CO2 is worth about $7 billion worldwide. This makes the CO2 market about 7 times more inelastic in supply than ammonia.

<comment><USER4> Ok, we changed the URL to that from [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/europes-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/europes- co2-shortage/564458/?single_page=true). Who can resist Gasworld magazine?

<comment><USER5> Besides this comment, is there a more transparent way to see when mods have mutated the post?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I asked an expert in the beer trade about this recently and some of the big breweries (Molson Coors who make UK bestseller Carling, for instance) make their own CO2 for supply chain security.

<comment><USER7> I thought beer was naturally carbonated! Not being a drinker, I never gave it much thought.

<comment><USER8> Depends what kind. Real ale contains yeast is naturally carbonated as it continues to ferment in the cask or bottle. In keg beer, after fermentation the yeast is filtered from it, the beer is pasteurized, and CO2 is added.

<comment><USER9> Real ale is an arbitrary definition large scale commercial brewing will not risk secondary bottle fermentation for many reasons from quality control to health and safety.

<comment><USER10> >Real ale is an arbitrary definition

In the same sense that any term has an arbitrary definition. The Campaign for Real Ale coined the term to defend the practice of cask and bottle conditioning of beer. Beer is only real ale if it's unfiltered, unpasteurised and is served without additional carbonation.

There are plenty of breweries producing real ale on a large scale; many of them are subsidiaries of AB InBev, the world's largest brewing business. Filtered and/or pasteurised beer is more convenient to ship, but other food and drink manufacturers cope just fine with perishable products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least nitrogen powered Guinness draught is safe.

<comment><USER12> Guinness is usually 25/75 (CO2/N2).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not mentioned here but relative cost of transport is an issue for CO2 - It's pretty cheap on a nominal basis ($/CF) so transport becomes an issue. Which means it's a local market, also since it's a small market - <USER2> infrastructure hasn't been built for it.

Point being there is no shortage of CO2 - just a shortage in certain places of demand (at non-exhorbinant pricing).

</comment><comment><USER14> I hadn't quite caught that the manufacture of fertilizer is so carbon-heavy -- it's not just the energy sunk into cracking apart N2, but the H is also coming from fossil fuels. -.-

</comment><comment><USER15> The amount of foam in that beer makes me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER16> Don't go to the Yebisu brewery in Tokyo then - they pour a demonstration glass for you and let you watch as the head extrudes itself several inches past the top of the glass, like Arsenio Hall's haircut.

<comment><USER17> But does it make the sound the audience used to make on his show?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why don't more people put their beers on nitro? A few local breweries have nitro IPAs which are freaking delicious.

<comment><USER19> Beers on "nitro" are still carbonated with CO2. The nitro is used to achieve a higher serving pressure used to force it through a diffusing nozzle on the tap. N2 doesn't actually dissolve in liquid very easily compared to CO2. If you put the CO2 at higher pressure, it makes the beer more carbonated over time.

</comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea > It's used to stun animals before slaughter

What? How? Carbon dioxide is well known to cause a painful death. Why the fuck are they not using nitrogen?

<comment><USER20> I think this is poorly written in the article... Likely the Co2 gas is used to power bolt-guns which are in turn used to stun larger animals like cows before slaughter.

<comment><USER21> No, the slaughter industry does in fact use CO2 to asphyxiate animals. It even has a fun euphemism, "Controlled Atmosphere Stunning".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation#Animal_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation#Animal_slaughter)

<comment><USER20> Interesting, I didn't realize that was done at scale... As the comment above me said, seems harsh to use CO2 for that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I started reading this article I thought it was a work of fiction, imagining a world in which there's a CO2 shortage rather than the famous over abundance which we're currently all aware of. It's odd and sad that there is a demand for the manufacture of carbon dioxide in a world absolutely choking on the excess of it.

<comment><USER23> It's like saying that you have access to several tons of gold because you live on the beach. Sure, there's plenty of gold in the ocean. But you can't do anything with it.

<comment><USER24> Exactly, to quote the (current) article,

>The caveat to this point, of course, is that this is also not as simplistic or straightforward as it might seem – despite the widespread perception, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually very minimal. In fact, it can be pegged at around 500 parts-per-million (ppm), which is less than 0.05%.

It's more than enough to cause problems without being trivial to take out and concentrate. Water may very well have enough lead in to damage someone's health without having enough to be economically beneficial to extract for the material alone.

<comment><USER22> all good points. I take it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Bioethanol and chemical factories, for example, also produce carbon dioxide > as a by-product.

You know what that means. Indirectly we drink that tasty cow fart. I hope they clean the filters.

<comment><USER26> Do you know what milk and meat are made of?

<comment><USER25> I'm vegan for a reason.

<comment><USER27> The plants you eat are also indirectly made of your _cow farts_ , though. And much more than just the farts.

<comment><USER25> Life is basically consuming cow and dinosaur farts and some of their rotted poo.

Disheartening, but now I know. _Enlightenment hits me in the form of a cow patty_

<comment><USER4> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Don't Use The JVM - <AUTHOR> http://yakkstr.com/posts/5270-Why-I-dont-use-the-JVM <comment><USER3> Yes, Java uses a lot of memory. It uses a lot of memory mostly because it doesn't mmap static shared lib files. Most c library based systems (e.g PHP, Python, Ruby) do. When the system can mmap read only shared lib files, that uses a lot less memory because multiple processes can share them and they are only read in to memory as they are accessed thanks to the page fault mechanism of 386 protected-mode architecture.

Java can't do this because Java self-modifies code (JIT) to run faster while it's running. Once all your classes are loaded into ram though, the memory gets consumed at a much more leisurely pace. However, multiple apps can't reuse each other's already mapped into memory code like they can with PHP, etc. As far as appserver restarts, just pay the money for JRebel already and quit complaining. Your life will be so much better.

<comment><USER4> I cannot understand why JVM sticks to JIT. JIT's advantage is mainly portability of intermediate code. So once intermediate codes are deployed in server, I don't care whether pre-compile takes 30 minutes or not if memory allocation and computation become more efficient. However this might be stupid idea.

<comment><USER5> JIT allows a range of optimisations that are not possible with AOT compilation. A JIT has access to more information at runtime such as profiling data and so can perform more informed optimisations. It can also change over the lifetime of the programme if observations change.

Some interesting stuff here [http://wikis.sun.com/display/HotSpotInternals/PerformanceTec...](http://wikis.sun.com/display/HotSpotInternals/PerformanceTechniques)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The JVM is the one part of Java that is actually _Gaining_ more mindshare. Granted "hello world" is not the ideal usecase - but you are missing the point. The cost you pay for hello world still remains the same up to a moderately sized app, and the more the complexity of your app, the more benefits you start to see from the JVM's memory model.

A better comparison would be a real world app that scales to a number of users - tell me about JVM memory usage and performance then.

</comment><comment><USER7> The JVM (at least the Oracle/Sun version) has some scary seeming memory allocation policies. One of the biggest offenders is its complete unwillingness to ever shrink the system allocated memory, even if the heap is 95% empty. For instance, if your application has a huge peak allocation period (whether your fault or an issue with soft references sticking about when you really don't want them), it will put memory pressure on the OS for the rest of its (process) life. If the JVM has an option of garbage collecting large amounts of objects or growing the heap, it generally prefers growing the heap. You can run quite a few Java applications with amazingly small heaps at everything will be fine (except for performance due to GC overhead).

The abstraction breaker here is that your application often has a set of ideal GC settings, which need to be set. You cannot forget about the garbage collector when using the JVM.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hello world and hobby projects are not the target for the JVM. It may take a good chunk of RAM to fire it up at all but you can serve far more clients in that same chunk than you could with the number of Ruby processes, for example, you could run in the same memory. Look at how much more performance Lift/Scala can squeeze out of the same box than Rails.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is certainly true when you have to scale at some high level, but I think that level is a lot higher than most people realize. I worked at yellowpages.com for a while and we were serving a large amount of traffic (the local ads on bing are from yellowpages) with native ruby. The JVM may have been a better option at that scale, but the vast majority of sites won't reach that scale. And ruby handled it just fine. The actual search logic was run on the JVM though.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but the point is that the JVM makes you pay that memory cost up-front, so it looks a lot more resource-heavy than it really is, whereas the scaling cost of things like PHP and Ruby is back-loaded.

People worry about scaling too much in general, IMO, but you'll actually get more mileage out of your hardware with something Clojure or Scala than you will with Python/PHP/Ruby/Perl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I see his point regarding excessive memory usage WRT the JVM, I don't think this matters much. The fact is memory _is_ cheap these days and the convenience of the JVM is something that's tough to overlook. Furthermore, while a Hello World app may require 100MB when implemented on the JVM, much of that is overhead which will stay relatively constant as your process grows more complex (to a point, obviously). I can run multiple processes on the same JVM instance and stay within reasonable memory bounds.

Also, we need to consider the alternative. Where would we go if we didn't have the JVM? It's not like .Net is much better in this regard. We could go without a system as heavyweight as these two but then we lose all the advantages that come along with that weight.

Certainly, those advantages are _not_ needed for a lot of purposes. Looking at what he's running I would say he probably doesn't need the weight of the JVM.

That said, I'm pretty sure I couldn't do my current project anywhere _but_ the JVM (well, okay, they're all Turing machines so technically I can, but bear with me). I'll gladly fork over the cash for a beefier VPS if it that's the cost of the JVM.

Full disclosure: I am considered a Scala evangelist.

</comment><comment><USER10> I fired up an application written in play framework with -Xms64m -Xmx100m and hit it with ab -n 500 -c 20 <http://localhost:9000/> the RES column in top remained under 86m. The application does alot more than "hello world", I can speed it up and decrease memory consumption by substituting groovy based templates with java based templates using a module called japid. If you want to use JVM for hobbyist apps start using frameworks which are not based on j2ee.

</comment><comment><USER11> TLDR: JVM uses too much memory for little/hobby projects.

Response: Learn to manually configure its memory useage, don't just go with the default.

Not really front-page worthy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you throw up a hello world project on github and tell me which arguments to pass it to get the memory lower? I've tried, but maybe I've missed something.

<comment><USER9> If you're launching your hello world project in the CLI, you'd just add -Xmx=64m or whatever size you need. 64 tends to be the default and I haven't personally tried pushing it lower (for my work I actually have to push it up into the 3-6G range. Ah, language processing).

<comment><AUTHOR> Try it, I did. I can't get a servlet to use under 100MB after getting hit with a moderate amount of traffic. It runs out of heap.

<comment><USER12> Use a smaller servlet engine. Most of them assume you will be fine with a larger heap and prepare caching structures, etc with that in mind Others are smaller and lighter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which are good for low memory?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Further, today bandwidth equals performance. use 100M of memory? suddenly you've clobbered your cache. Use 10K instead, and it'll fit inside your cache neatly.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm reading this article while Eclipse restarts after I shutdown the app because it ran out of PermGen space.

I ran web apps that serviced 10x more users off of a 512 meg VPS with SBCL :-|

Anybody up for a sword-fight? jousting?

<comment><USER15> Curious as I am learning CL. What did framework did you use with SBCL?

<comment><USER14> Restas + closure-template is my favorite now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yup, JVM takes up huge resources. But, when you put the app in production, you can be rest assured it will perform. JVM gives you piece of mind.

<comment><USER15> Until any given thread consumes too much of the heap and the jvm goes catatonic. See this all the time with jruby with 6 rails app in a single jvm instance.

<comment><USER16> Maybe you should reconsider how you have designed your setup.

Do some testing to see how much memory you have allocated to the JVM - <USER2> much resources each of your rails apps are consuming.. Use a Heap Analyser (or similar) - it could give you good insights into what is hogging up the resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just checked, and a small Clojure web app I am working on does indeed take almost 100MB of RSIZE - but it have its only JETTY container and a lot of other overhead that it is not sharing with other deployed apps. Also, a large app with a lot of code would not take much more. Hosting ten small web apps in the same Tomcat or Jetty instance would probably take much less than the 1 GB of RSIZE mentioned in the article.

I do agree though with the goodness of reducing memory use and I like to check memory use and execution speed when I look at comparative benchmarks like Computer Language Benchmarks Game.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've run into lots of headaches trying to run multiple apps in the same container. It's been a while so maybe this has improved over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You want to develop a server app and 100MB required by container is your concern? BTW This is year 2011 not 1996.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel like the JVM has already proven its self to be viable as a production VM. The 'helloworld' argument doesn't really hold water because you would never run helloworld in a vm. If you care about fast setup/teardowns or small memory footprints then don't use ANY vm. If you want things like easier security policies, garbage collection and maybe more the point: scalability then the VM is a great platform to develop for.

<comment><USER20> The point is that it is too expensive RAM-wise to even serve as a gateway drug for hobbyists to venture into more serious JVM based projects.

<comment><USER19> I feel like when you hobby you run stuff on your local machine. Are you saying that your local machine doesn't have atleast 1GB of memory? Saying that it can't run hobby projects is a bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER20> The author is talking about hosting web applications. If you have half a dozen toyapps, which have an audience ranging from 0-10, you couldn't host them on separate JVMs on a VPS. There's not enough RAM for this scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> My audience is more like 5k to 10k per day per app. I just got 2k visitors from this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "hello world" - win xp 32 bit, sun jdk 6:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { Thread.sleep(10000); System.out.println("hello world"); }

Heap - 5M, Used heap - below 2M. All defaults.

(the "sleep" is there to have time to connect Java VisualVM)

<comment><USER21> Sorry, I missed you are talking about "'hello world' web app", anyway there is no such thing a 'hello world' web app, there are very different application/web servers out there and you can't obviously compare jetty vs built-in jdk 6 com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer and WebSphere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hold on, my rails processes take 80 megs. Am I doing something wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> On the JVM it will take over 300MB with JRuby. A simple 'hello world' servlet on the JVM takes over 100MB (once you hit it with a little traffic).

<comment><USER12> Untrue. JRuby can run an app in under 200 MB easily, and close to 100 MB if tuned right.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to tune it, but I used a few of the standard options. Trinidad, kirk, etc. I was using a real world app, not a hello world, so there were a number of gems and such outside of vanilla rails.

Edit: This ia a real rails app, so it's a bit of a tangent from my post, but I'm looking at it right now. I spun it up with trinidad, dev mode, and requested the home page. It used over 600MB. It's an admittedly heavy homepage, asset wise, but it will run out of heap if I set the max heap any lower than 500MB.

Edit 2: let me try it with MRI

Edit 3: MRI took about 225MB, about half the memory. In this case JRuby is clearly better because we run it in threadsafe mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If one actually has a true practical reason to be concerned that processes won't consume less than $1 worth of RAM, I have to wonder why anything involving a managed environment such as the JVM was ever up for consideration in the first place.

I'd figure when dealing with that kind of memory constraint the only real contenders would be things like C, FORTH, or maybe PICAXE BASIC.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great comment:

 _You can allocate as much or as little memory as your application needs. I run many personal web projects on a JVM sitting on top of a free-tier AWS EC2 micro-instance. I have tomcat6 instances running with <32MB footprint.

Perhaps you need to better understand what you're putting on the JVM and why it needs what it does_

<comment><AUTHOR> Please throw up a 'hello world' servlet on github and let me know which arguments to pass it to reduce the memory usage. I've tried, but I may have missed something, and yes I've tried all the obvious things like setting the heap size.

I think the commenter you're quoting is confusing the heap size with the total size. Or I'm missing something and would love for someone to show me what I'm missing.

<comment><USER24> I don't know about tomcat, as its memory footprint can be quite big. But Jetty's hello world is a 5 lines in Bash, and takes 9 MB:

<http://wiki.eclipse.org/Jetty/Tutorial/Jetty_HelloWorld>

Java ecosystem is too big, and it is common for newcomers to overlook the juicy parts. The mainstream frameworks and libraries reflect the mainstream use of java: big apps for medium/big companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's taking 57.6MB for me. That's Real Mem in the macs Activity Monitor.

<comment><USER24> Well, I am using this on Ubuntu Lucid, with jdk 1.6.0_25-b06

You may wanna try playing with some variables. With the following command line:

       java -cp .:servlet-api-2.5.jar:jetty-all-7.0.2.v20100331.jar -client -XX:MaxPermSize=1M -Xmx2M -Xms2M HelloWorld

I've added _-client -XX:MaxPermSize=1M -Xmx2M -Xms2M_. It took it down to 7Mb from 9Mb. However, this should not concern you in VPS/Amazon EC2 instances, as you can always run linux there, and these problems should not come by.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is on my linux VPS (64bit)

$ java -cp .:servlet-api-2.5.jar:jetty-all-7.0.2.v20100331.jar -client -XX:MaxPermSize=1M -Xmx2M -Xms2M HelloWorld Error occurred during initialization of VM Too small initial heap for new size specified

I can't get it to run in under 30MB RES according to top. This is after hitting it with a little traffic, i'm not sure if you hit yours with any traffic.

<comment><USER24> Ah, 64bit JVM. It likes to think it is of itself as enterprise. One thing that may help is _-XX:+UseCompressedOops_ , and even _-Xmn1M_.

Note that depending on the enverionment it may say it is too small, so you may have to ramp up a bit some of these stats. I also get it if I set lower than then ones I gave.

Note that jvm is very tunnable[1,2]. Also note that you can use a 32 bit jdk in a 64bit machine. It won't get you beyond 2GB vm, but if you are going for small memory, this is not something that matters (and it should allow you to get to a very small memory footprint).

Also note that there are other JVMs, like Oracle's JRockit (with extra memory options[3]), and KVM[4] (designed for small memory footprint[5]).

But hey, that is lower than 32 MB already!

 _Edit_

You can also try some other lesser drastic measures[6,7]. Note that you are getting in less mainstream use of the JVM, and things can get a little crazy in this area.

[1] [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/vmoptions...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/vmoptions- jsp-140102.html)

[2] <http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/performance/jvm-tuning.xtp>

[3] [http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15289_01/doc.40/e15060/t...](http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15289_01/doc.40/e15060/tune_footprint.htm)

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_virtual_machine>

[5] <http://java.sun.com/products/cldc/wp/>

[6] [http://www.coderanch.com/t/202896/Performance/java/Ways- redu...](http://www.coderanch.com/t/202896/Performance/java/Ways-reduce- memory-footprint-JVM)

[7] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4893192/process-memory- vs...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4893192/process-memory-vs-heap-jvm)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the thoughtful replies!

<comment><USER24> No problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess you should just run a golang HTTP service behind nginx if memory is your biggest concern.

If that's not good enough go ahead and write the whole thing using C. You can get one hell of a small "Hello, World!" program using C.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've become a huge fan of golang for this exact reason :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A blanket statement for a fairly specific use case seems irresponsible.

<comment><AUTHOR> What blanket statement did I make? That I don't use the JVM? That doesn't seem like a blanket statement to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> But JVM is here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good for you.. Mr. Knuth</comment>


Latest Apple Ads Take a Turn for the Worse - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/07/28/latest-apple-ads/

<comment><USER2> "Dude, you're getting a Dell!"</comment>


Show HN: Signup for my startup beta launch notifications - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I've been working on a new startup for the last few months and will be sending out information on being a beta tester soon.  The app is a SaaS web/mobile app that helps streamline customer feedback at point of sale.  It's geared towards restaurants and other service industry businesses, so if you're interested and you'd like to get an invitation (or just launch news in general), head over to http://howas.it and sign up!  Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickity Clickable -- <http://howas.it></comment>


Ask HN: What Android Wear apps would you like to see? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> When I'm in town, there is only a bus every 30 mins home.

If I'm in the pub, I don't care what time it is now, I care how many minutes it is to the next bus home.

I want a watch face that just has 2 or 3 numbers, number of minutes to next few buses home.

The last bus of the night should be highlighted quite a lot, with alarms for that.

<comment><USER3> I wrote an app that does this on my pebble for the DC metro, I should probably get around to releasing that on the app store...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of these are Watch ideas:

\- Work with "Zombies, Run!" or similar apps to improve the "role-playing exercise" app market

\- Breaking news

\- Alerts about responses on reddit, HN, etc.

\- RSS reader

\- Drive the Google Play Music interface on my Android

\- Drive the Google Play Music interface on my PC

\- Remote control for Chromecast / Google TV / Android TV / Roku

\- TODO list / reminders

\- Friend RADAR. How close am I to my friends right now

\- "Ask me about." I set my list of "Ask me about" topics. You set yours. We glance at our watches, and see we've got some interests in common. Or you have one I'm interested in...

\- Process Dashboard / Personal Software Process - basically a timing system for project time

\- Sleep monitor that wakes you up near when you want to wake up, but when you're already in the light sleep phase

\- CASIO calculator watch mode. Impossibly small buttons emulated as close as you can.

\- Pick a list of TV shows that I watch, and have it have a countdown to when the show starts

\- Remote control for Power Point or Google Slides presentations (forward, back buttons)

\- Push-to-talk phone conference call? Voice-activated mode, too?

\- CB radio - chatting with everyone within X distance who is on the same channel?

\- Compass

\- Remote control for home automation - lights, etc. Garage door opener...

\- Mission Impossible mode - just looks cool and has flashy displays with no purpose at all.

\- Open WIFI signal strength meter

</comment><comment><USER5> Part of behavior cognitive theraphy is counting occurrence of negative thoughts throughout the day. So I would like a button that I can press without looking at the watch, and have each press recorded and time stamped.

It's not just CBT either, there could be other events you could want to record, like each time you drink water, or some such. Opening phone to do the record is too disrupting, esp if you're with someone.

<comment><USER6> Just another data point for this request.

I've frequently started to-do lists and have tried a million different apps for them. I have a watch with all sorts of fancy timers etc.

In the end, I come back to realizing all I want is what OP has requested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ingress interface, so I could play the game without holding phone in my hand (useful if you want to bike to cover distances between portals faster).

</comment><comment><USER8> A super lightweight and low friction app for weight lifting that: \- Lets you track workouts (exercises, weight, number of sets and reps, etc). \- Suggests / coaches you on what exercises to do each workout, what weight to set, how many reps, etc. based on your progress so far in past workouts. \- Acts as resting timer between sets and exercises (without having to switch apps or anything). Bonus points for some kind of alert (vibration? sound?) when you have say 10 seconds left.

Bonus points for: \- Automatically counts reps you do based on your arm movements, then starts the resting timer once you stop doing reps. \- Accurately records your movement and later corrects your posture (say with squats, etc).

</comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, I don't know what I want on Android wear. I'm not even convinced wearables is that great of an idea. So I guess, though non-specific, I'd like an application that convinces me that I should plop down $x for yet another screen.

<comment><USER10> I had the exact same thoughts, roughly, and then I got one at Google IO.

When I'm not at the house, it's a godsend. I barely use my phone anymore, and instead just pick up my wrist, say "Ok Google, text wife", a brief pause, and then "Can you pick up some milk? We're running out."

It saves battery life on the phone like whoa, is convenient to know when messages are coming in, but (IMO) less distracting than ringtones. It allows me to wait for urgent messages while I'm in a meeting without disturbing anyone else, and without obviously picking up my phone every few minutes to check for them.

Beyond that, they're much easier (and maybe even safer) to use while driving. At the least, I avoid the whole rummaging-through-my-pocket-to-pull-my-phone- out-because-it-vibrated bit.

<comment><USER11> I would buy into it if the voice recognition was just a little bit better. It is impressive and nearly there, but I still wind up correcting just about every message I send.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A Bluetooth dongle that tells me when my fly is down.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it could be done with an iBeacon attached to your zipper?

<comment><USER12> Well, I figure the zipper would have built-in Bluetooth so it would alert me when I start to travel some distance while down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A service requesting app that can be shared with large businesses (property owners?), govts, etc.

e.g. I see a broken sprinkler, I quickly can mark it w/GPS picture, and report it.

Another example would be refuse on the street, parks, sidewalks (like a couch, tv, etc)

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

A wearable that goes on a pet's collar that then ties into the owners watch, so the owner can always find their pet.

<comment><USER14> I think Whistle already has a product like the pet collar you mentioned. [http://www.whistle.com/gps/](http://www.whistle.com/gps/) (also, I love the video :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anything that is low input and high output.

What I mean is that most apps / wearable tech seem to require lots of manual data input (in my case, MyFitnessPal, Runkeeper, etc.)--although some of this has gotten better with say, tracking steps. Regardless, I feel like a lot of my life is currently data input.

Whatever future app development ideas come to fruition would benefit heavily from having a high level of simplicity and automation on the side of the user while still doing some difficult data crunching that is VALUE added.

I think this is one of the reasons Mint.com is so popular. It requires very little input from the user and quickly generates a LOT of very useful information.

Imagine how useful it would be if my nutrition information, blood pressure, glucose levels, etc. were all recorded for me automatically. Then I wouldn't have to think about them everyday, I could just examine them when I'm curious.

</comment><comment><USER16> I built a one time password system a while ago ([https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=69e92695-f6eb-42e...](https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=69e92695-f6eb-42ed-9258-dc4443493059)).

I'd like very much to display the OTP pad on a watch and enter the code into either a desktop app or a phone app.

</comment><comment><USER17> I dont know if it the hardware has more sensors than the phone, but for a watch I would like to get stats of my body, temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, pulse, pedometer, etc etc

No actions, just a log and some kind of visualization.

Maybe some kind of walkies talkie like Nextel, push to talk

A small gps that gives you where to go and distance to it

hope it helps!

</comment><comment><USER18> Remembrall: An app that gives a slight beep or vibration after 1 min, 3 min, 10 min, 30 min, 2 hrs, and 6 hrs. When I want to remember something (like the name of someone I just met) I tell the app and whenever it alerts, I review the fact in my head to refresh my memory.

</comment><comment><USER19> Something that lets me scan a NoSQL database, like in the movie "Disclosure"

A clip for those who don't know: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkyV7d5t8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkyV7d5t8o)

</comment><comment><USER20> * Open my garage door

* Shopping list

* Location based reminders (e.g. remind me when I am at the shop)

<comment><USER21> I think Google Now will do the last one for you already (location based reminders). I use it for reminding myself about things when I get to work or home. Just say "Okay google remind me to <thing>" and then there's a location option for when.

I don't own a watch, but I think they probably implement this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nothing super new; just a Strava app with a map and directions and some stats.

Perhaps a few swipable screens. Map - _swipe_ \- next instruction - _swipe_ \- stats.

This would be so nice while biking.

<comment><USER23> That would be dangerous since most android wear screens are so small. I'd be scare to look at them while i'm biking.

Now if the wearable simply alerts me via vibration then that would be cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Stochastic polling - i.e. ask me a user-defined question ("how are you feeling?") at random intervals (6x daily, or 3x daily, randomly).

</comment><comment><USER25> "Connect to iPhone", perhaps? :)

<comment><USER26> Apple is rumored to be working on a watch, correct? May be you could wait for that one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Baby monitor - Show me a waveform of an audio stream when it goes above a certain point that I can tap to hear.

</comment><comment><USER28> Tag song button for Soundhound/Shazaam/GooglePlay/etc. Use the watch microphone.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google Authenticator voice action to display the current 2FA code for some account

</comment><comment><USER29> Alarm when phone gets out of range, so I know when I just left my phone in a cab.

<comment><USER30> Exists, it's called Wear Aware

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Movado Face</comment>


3 Weeks of Hacking - <AUTHOR>

I recently quit my job to dedicate time to learning before I leave to go to university (Computer Engineering). As it stands I have 3 weeks of free time that I am looking to put toward a project.
Here's my problem: I have no idea what to focus on.
I have a decent ability to program in C/C++(More so C) and am familiar with Linux/Unix systems. My aim is to become a contributing member to FOSS and collaborate in a multi-developer project or to learn as much as possible about in the given time frame.
I have never worked on any kind of project like this and hope to treat the entire thing as a learning experience.
So here is what I'm asking you HN readers: Do you know of a project that needs a little love? Or have any other ideas as to what I should do in this time?
I would prefer to work fairly close to the hardware and maybe even pick up on some skills lost to newer developers (optimized inline assembly, oh my!).
Any/all feedback would be amazing. <comment><USER2> My advanced algorithms teacher always told us to spend as little time as possible in front of the computer. Before you spend three weeks in front of yours, here are some things you may or may not want to consider.

Devoting an hour each day to algebra and calculus will make your life considerably easier once courses begin. Not having up to date mathematics skills can, in my experience, be a big hurdle for someone that has worked a while before attending university.

Exercise. Doesn't matter how, long walks or intense gym sessions, whatever. Exercise is always a great way to get clear thoughts in your head. Perhaps you will realize what you want to build?

Finally, three weeks is not that long. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to perform now. Why not spend a little extra time with family and friends? You wan't to start your time at university relaxed but eager to jump in.

</comment><comment><USER3> For web programming, I like to start by writing a simple blog and add rss, tags, search, etc as I need to learn more.

For open source web work, I know Khan Academy needs help and I believe Resig has recently re-vamped their exercise framework, which is the main place for new contributors.

For closer-to-hardware hacking, I learned by making little games for Game Boy Advance and Atari 2600. The Nintendo DS also works similarly, although the hardware is a little more abstracted.

I really feel the GBA is ideal. It has a good combination of bitmap, sprite, and tile drawing modes, fairly good development tools, and lots of interesting bit twiddling to achieve what you want: <http://www.gbadev.org/> You can also pick up transfer cables and a flash cartridge to put it on real hardware, which makes it a fun demo piece.

Atari is all assembly, GBA is mostly C with pieces of assembly inlined here and there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking at GB Development fairly closely, might put together some kind of little project in that. Extremely close to the hardware which is always nice and I just need a little flash cart to let it run on my old GBC to show it off. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being a good hacker is more of a marathon than a sprint. Three weeks in a coding cave is good, but even better is devoting an hour or more every day to hone your craft every day.

What to focus on? That depends on what you would like to build. I can't tell you what you will enjoy building.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always tried to devote as much time to my work as possible, whenever possible. However my job drained the energy out of me and made any effort I put in become spread out over multiple little projects. The main reason I'm asking this here is because I have a nice amount of time to sit down and work on one little project until completion.

Honestly if I can hold it in my hands and it works in a unconventional way, it's brilliant.

Another poster mentioned GB development, I honestly think controlling external devices (AVR, Arduino, etc) in a standard way using something like a GameBoy would be a worthwhile project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.weekendhacker.net/> is where you want to go :)</comment>


Reborn 3: Desktop browser with Web 3, faster VPN and ad blocker - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2019/04/opera-60-reborn-3-web-3-0-vpn-ad-blocker/ <comment><USER2> I don't like the term Web3 and I think a lot of people using the it are basically pushing snake oil.

However, I really like the idea of eventually having client-side decrypted data, and censorship-resistant "torrent-like" distributed content. Whether cryptocurrencies must play a role in this or not remains to be seen.

<comment><USER3> Having the ability for users to pay granularly for their use of web infrastructure is a key requirement if we want to transition away from a model where big corporations with dubious motives pay for web infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> This is an interesting idea. Do you know of any good articles/books about it? I am interested in learning more.

<comment><USER3> A good chunk of the cryptocurrency space is built around this idea. Some more well known projects are Filecoin and Blockstack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two questions : How different is this reskined chrome different than brave if I were to consider using it?

Can we still rely on opera and trust them (after their Chinese acquisition)?

<comment><USER6> I think in terms of track records there isn't a huge difference between a Chinese-owned and a US-owned company. If you're already searching outside that sphere of influence, that makes you a huge outlier. Assuming that you are not, I think putting just the focus on the nationality here is maybe not a strong argument in any direction.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why this was downvoted. US companies have been caught regularly adding backdoors to products sold abroad (from the top of my head, I seem to remember IBM admitting the charges, Microsoft being caught red-handed, etc.)

Last November, Emmanuel Macron gave a big speech about the fact that the EU cannot rely anymore on the US as an ally for cyberdefense, because the US spent so much effort spying on the EU (and regularly getting caught) that it was not even nearly possible.

So yeah, I trust US companies about as much as Chinese companies, which is not much.

<comment><USER8> Not like there's a lack of open source web browsers. Why go specifically for the closed source Chinese-owned browser that asks for your crypto keys and provides a "free" "VPN"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crypto's main issue is not the UX. It's the volatility and costs(i.e merchants pay less for the same crypto). Until these two issues are fixed it makes no sense to use crypto payments unless you are denied access to mainstream payment networks(visa/mastercard).

The VPN should be integrated at the OS level not browser level.

<comment><USER10> Crypto in this case is also being used as an authentication / password replacement system. Signing with your wallet address proves you are a specific person. So that alone is a great reason to include the wallet.

<comment><USER9> >> Signing with your wallet address proves you are a specific person. So that alone is a great reason to include the wallet.

No, it doesn't. It just proves that you own/hold a private key. You need to build an identity protocol on top of that if you want to prove that you are a specific person/organization. Such protocols have been around for quite some time before crypto currencies. It's just they don't have a good UX, that's why most websites require a password based authentication instead of a key/certificate.

I like a lot JWT/JWT as it has a lot of useful attributes(. e.g the "acr" attribute) so you better start with that than a crypto wallet

<comment><USER11> I think they meant to say a specific "account" rather than getting into person-hood.

I have been wanting what the op describes for a long time - why do we have to "create" accounts? Why can't we simply tell the site our account with our request. For a dumb example, having "?publicKey=(key)" in the url. That way the site can know who we are and be able to link our profile, provable by our ability to sign using the private key, does away with login forms, does away with password recovery flow, does away with email single-point-of-failure, allows us to switch profiles easily, etc. It's mind-boggling that every site in the world rebuilds login logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Opera set itself as the default web browser after install on W10. That's quite aggressive.

<comment><USER13> How is that possible? Win10 should require manual confirm for that

<comment><USER14> Same here... Opera sets itself as default browser without any action/prompt whatever. It also adds the Opera icon in the task bar without asking anything. Red line crossed. Next step is probably to uninstall competitors ?

<comment><USER15> Not saying setting itself as the default browser is a good thing or anything, but Firefox also pins to taskbar automatically. Chrome does too IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In addition to ad blocking, VPN is becoming a very important feature for modern web browsers. With so many countries blocking websites and websites geoblocking users it becomes necessary to help users circumvent that to access a wide web. This is kind of the whole point of web browsers, give access to world wide web, not local web.

Interestingly, Opera trying to compete with other browsers makes it pursue users interests, while other browsers yet again don't see Opera as competition, ignore users and pursue megacorp interests instead.

<comment><USER17> It's a small jump from blocking websites to blocking popular VPNs. I know two countries which block websites (Russia and Kazakhstan) and they either block or have plans to block VPNs. I don't see centralized VPN as effective solution for that problem.

<comment><USER18> How do you block a VPN though? Do you just constantly chase after their IP addresses? I mean Netflix and similar services do try but with not much luck really.

<comment><USER19> That isn't at all the same problem: Netflix is trying to block being accessed by a VPN, while China/Russia/etc. want to block users from talking to a VPN.

<comment><USER18> How do you block "talking" to a VPN?

<comment><USER20> When packets traverse the edge router, IX, cable (landing) station, .. if they're recognised as VPN traffic, then the server's IP (or IP / port) is added to a blacklist, every subsequent packet is dropped.

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

<comment><USER21> Yup; this is why VPN over HTTPS is a thing.

<comment><USER20> HTTPS has whole series of side-channel leaks, which can be exploited to fingerprint the tunnelled protocol: many implementations don't add padding or active probing resistance.

Sizable communications with an uncommon IP can be singled out by netflow analysis.

But yes, it usually works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This feels more like a marketing move just rebranding an existing product than anything meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER23> How is any of this new? I mean it's cool, but we already have most of those features with Firefox and extensions.

<comment><USER24> You can have almost anything through extensions and that doesn't disqualify built-in alternatives such as this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" Web 3 is an umbrella term for a set of emerging technologies intersecting cryptocurrencies, blockchains and distributed systems"_

wat?

<comment> ainar-g This is especially frustrating, considering that _Sir Tim Berners-Lee_ himself has said, that "Web 3.0" should be about Semantic Web[1]. That does mean that it should get easier to build distributed and interlinked systems, but that seems to be a consequence, not the goal.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web#Web_3.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web#Web_3.0)

<comment><USER26> I remember reading around that time that some people were wondering whether Semantic Web or IoT become Web 3.0. Unfortunately I won't find the references without a lot of googling. On the other hand Semantic Web is pretty much dead, HTML5 being not related to XML rather went further away again IMHO. Also IoT didn't seem to find the adaption as expected for home users, at least I don't find myself interacting with IoT devices on a day to day basis.

That said, IPFS servers and clients are there but it's not in use. So it would be quite a stretch to call that "officially" Web 3.0 until it will be in use by a significant amount of end user applications. Until now also blockchain (read Bitcoin) payment is very exceptional despite tons of frameworks, libraries, servers and clients. Even for the semantic web there are bizillions of tools but the information value remains questionable.

Looking back at Web 2.0, the transition went much more smoothly from static Web 1.0 to usage of "DHTML", HTML 4.0 with much JS/Ajax and eventually popular services making a lot of use of it, namely Facebook and Google including their plugins that were embedded on lots of websites at that time and still are.

Anyways, would be nice if a new development would get traction...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> God I miss Opera 12, Presto and Dragonfly. :(

<comment><USER28> You might be interested in Vivaldi, a chromium fork made by some of the same people that originally made opera.

[https://vivaldi.com/](https://vivaldi.com/)

<comment> dao- It's not a Chromium fork, it basically is Chromium with a custom UI and stuff added on top.

<comment><USER29> So, in other words... it's a Chromium fork.

It's not a _Blink_ fork, if that's what you mean. They built a new browser, using the HTML & JS engines from Chromium. The rest of the browser is different. As a user, I consider the HTML & JS to be commodities, and everything else to be the salient aspects that I look at when choosing between browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks very good to see VPNs and crypto integrated as first-class citizens into a webbrowser. Also love the nightmode.

<comment><USER31> What is the point of having crypto integrated into the browser? Native bitcoin mining malware?

<comment><USER32> It's crucial to UX. Otherwise if you want to buy something you need to switch to the crypto wallet, pay for it by copying and pasting addresses and wait for the other side to pick up your transaction and show confirmation in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > It allows you to browse and make transactions the blockchain-based Internet > of the future, also known as Web 3.

Pretty important press release for Opera. You'd think they'd proof read it?

</comment><comment><USER32> > free and unlimited browser VPN

How can they do this for free?

<comment><USER34> They log all your data and use it for surveillance.

<comment><USER32> It clearly says they don't.

<comment> mickael-kerjean That's tooth fairy trust. Last year china got rid of all its VPN apps in the apple store, how can someone would trust a VPN made by a Chinese company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Isn't it misleading, to discuss it as a "vpn service"? If you install a binary, that not only controls vpn channel on both sides, but is also a browser, do I understand it right, that it can completely highjack the trust mechanisms, and happily MITM anything you visit? Is there any way to find out if it's really establishing, well, vpn connection (e.g. openVPN or Wireguard), without DPI hardware and corresponding expertise?

<comment><USER36> This is the same as any non-tech person using a "VPN". They do not care about privacy or anything. So this makes sense.

<comment><USER35> Please correct me, if I'm wrong. When a non-tech person buys a vpn subscription, she may be provided with a tunneling software, but the key exchange is still happening in the browser. If the site shows a green lock, you can trust the connection to be encrypted, to the extent you trust Mozilla.

Also, many vpn providers let you use open source software, like OpenVPN.

Opera, however, can ship an installer with a statically linked mock ssh lib, that's always showing a green lock. It's a much more sinister threat model.

<comment><USER37> Mozilla could do the same. That said, I do trust Mozilla quite a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Our browser VPN is completely free and unlimited, as well as being a no-log > service. Our VPN servers do not log or retain any activity data.

Few days ago we were discussing how VPN is important but won't save the day if you don't know what you are doing.

When we have calls of "I won't log you", I always try to image how tha mine's bird will be set: and if have to log me under some subpoena, how will I know?

<comment><USER39> yeah, just assume all VPN are logging you for sure. That does not mean they don't serve a useful purpose though. Just not what is defined as criminal in whatever place your traffic goes through. (That being said, I think it is only the US that tries to get people for "cyber crimes" in foreign countries?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I personally feel that browsers are headed entirely in the wrong direction - "one thing well" no longer applies in this space.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a lightweight browser, if such a thing even exists anymore? Perhaps Chromium + Scriptsafe + uBlock is what I need, but ultimately I want is a tabbed browser without a load of unnecessary features bundled in.

For example; there is no way I would trust the VPN embedded into a browser, thereby rendering it useless bloat. Much like I don't trust the ad blocker in Brave for Android, but I find the experience better than Firefox mobile, and carry on using it despite my displeasure.

<comment><USER41> [https://suckless.org/](https://suckless.org/) offers their WebKit web browser surf. For tabs, use it with their tabbing frontend, suitably named tabbed.

It was a little barebones for me when I tried it some years back but it might be what you are looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Installed, and uninstalled when I found it automatically add it's icon to my dock. (It's the first mac software I ever installed that add it's icon to dock itself)

</comment><comment><USER43> A company that sold itself to a Chinese consortium for $600M announces a free VPN service.

That's some high quality humor.

<comment><USER44> If it's free then you are the product

<comment><USER45> "If it's free then you are the product"

BINGO! [http://crimeflare.net:83/cfs.html](http://crimeflare.net:83/cfs.html)

<comment><USER46> Well, a free tier loss leader for paid services is much different than what people are generally referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really like Opera and use it as my main browser. Yes, that Chinese company is notorious. Just don't put any spyware in your oversea version. If you have to, please only plant it in Chinese release.

</comment><comment><USER48> So I've installed Opera 60. How do I try out anything special? Where is the Web3 and what's there?

</comment><comment><USER49> Seems Brave-inspired, notably without generating revenue for websites and users. Which is the better choice?

</comment><comment><USER50> This looks a bit like Neon, which to me the UX is a bit of gimmick. Since Opera is sold to a Chinese company, I may consider this if Opera's going to open source it's code. Btw, I believe nothing is free, you are just paying it in a non monetary form.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is opera chrome clone? Or do they still have their own guts?

<comment><USER52> Opera has a chrome-based engine since 2013 more-less. I guess their old engine were called Trident, and its gone. Also i think they are now owned by a Chinese company.

Edit: oops, Trident was the Microsoft browser engine.. i guess i meant 'Presto' as the name of the old ditched Opera web engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> apparently we are currently on version 3 of the web?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h 3.0.5274a-rc99, haven't you been getting the release notes?;)

(But seriously, it's like HTML5; there probably won't really be another major version ever, just new things built on top of the existing schema)

<comment><USER54> I must also have missed 1.0 and 2.0 too then

<comment><USER55> 1.0 was the static web, 2.0 is basically HTML+JS+css, 3.0 includes a value exchange protocol layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Tab grouping support?

</comment><comment><USER57> Opera is a Chinese owned company now, right? How safe are you in trusting a Chinese VPN? Maybe slightly better than a VPN operated by Facebook...maybe?

<comment><USER58> Last time I looked at operas "VPN," it wasn't even a VPN. Just a http/https proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think I'll wait for Web 4, with three dimensions and time. I hope it's as fun and conducive to creativity as MineCraft!</comment>


Show HN: SuperCoco – Learn Spanish by talking - <AUTHOR> http://www.supercocoapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. This is the language learning app that I've always wanted: no typing and tapping, lots of listening and speaking.

Would love to get feedback from HN community!</comment>


The Building Block Web - <AUTHOR> http://staynalive.com/articles/2009/10/15/web-3-0-the-building-block-web/

<comment><USER2> Note to the blog's owner: I do not like getting a popup thrown in my face telling me I'm "required" to login via Facebook.</comment>


Ask HN: Acquisitions Department? - <AUTHOR>

We've been approached by a large player in our space who is interested in potentially acquiring our startup. We'd like to get in touch with other large players in the space to see if they're also interested in an acquisition. That said, we don't have connections to these companies and are a bootstrapped startup without VC connections. Who do we contact and how do we go about contacting them?<p>My idea is to contact an employee of the company in an unrelated function and see if they can do an intro to somebody in the M&A dept. Is that crazy? <comment><USER2> Unrelated may not get you anywhere if the company is sufficiently large enough, which is probably true in any company large enough to actually have an M&A department.

I happen to know someone in M&A at my company, but only because I worked with him on a project. Even then, he's in M&A integration, and not someone with negotiation authority. Most of my coworkers don't know anyone in M&A. If you randomly showed up on my doorstep, I wouldn't give you his name.

You could be on to something, but I think you'd be better off talking to someone high up in the department you'd be acquired under.</comment>


PlayStation Network hack launched from Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/14/playstation_network_attack_from_amazon/

<comment><USER2> There's no information in the article about how they did it - whether using EC2 was actually necessary (because they needed a lot of processing power) or whether they just used it to cover their tracks a bit further (using a stolen credit card, and connecting to the instance through a set of proxies). Without that, this is about as useful as saying that the attack was launched from a server running Linux.

<comment><USER3> this just in -- we have reliable information that the attackers used a keyboard to type their nefarious commands, as well.</comment></comment>


Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/dropbox-raising-massive-round-at-a-5b-plus-valuation/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a round for the founders and employees to sell some shares (called a series f?), unless Dropbox has some major expansion planned to build its own CDN and data centres instead of using S3. The amount of savings at there scale (200 million new files / day [1]) would be huge as data via S3 is already more expensive then running your own bare metal boxes. I would imagine that Dropbox pays some sort of bulk price, but I can't find any information.

I don't think the 5 billion dollar valuation is out of the ball park considering that they solve a problem that a lot of people encounter including my mother. Their solution is simple and elegant and seems to work. Last statistics I heard they had 25 million users [1] and growing, while I dont know how many of those users are active subscribers I can imagine the conversion ratio is much higher then normal freemium products.

While there has been a lot of anti-Dropbox news in the tech press lately, we need to remember we live in an information bubble that doesn't reach the normal user.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/17/billion-dollar-valuatio- clu...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/17/billion-dollar-valuatio-club/)

<comment><USER3> There's a difference between 200 million new files and 200 million 'uploaded' files.

eg a song has a fingerprint. If 100 other users 'upload' the same song, it's counted towards their usage but no actual upload or storage is performed, saving costs.

Pretty clever on their part :)

<comment><USER4> _Pretty clever on their part :)_

It is actually pretty standard. Deduplication is a very common method for not duplicating the same content on shared storage.

<comment><USER3> OT: How do you add italics to text? I find it preferable than adding >s.

<comment><USER5> You may find these helpful, the formatting options for HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 41 days ago, PG's estimation for the sum of the value of _all_ YC companies was 4.7 billion. <http://ycombinator.com/nums.html>

Congrats to Drew, Arash, and the whole Dropbox team.

(Ordinarily I would say that giving congratulations before a deal is confirmed as closed is a jinx, but at this point there is no such thing as jinxing Dropbox. Their ultimate success, whether this report is true or not, is inevitable.)

<comment><USER4> How does PG value YC companies? Is this process public knowledge or something internal to PG?

<comment><USER6> From the link: "For 18 of the top 21 I used the postmoney valuation of the most recent funding round. The other 3 had grown significantly since their last round, and to estimate the values of those I used the opinions of independent experts and the valuations of the funding offers they are currently receiving."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dropbox has traction and paying users. Why do they need $200 million? Of course it's not just a two-man gig anymore, but... what is it for?

If their business model isn't supporting the growth they want and they're not going to change it, is throwing money around going to be all that helpful?

Maybe I'm doubting that they'll be able to bring in that many new users because I can't imagine how anyone hasn't heard of dropbox by now -- which is pretty silly. I've just known about it for a long time because of HN.

Or maybe there are economies of scale that I don't know about, and by spending $x they'll be able to save/make $y>>$x?

(...Are they going to get off of s3, set up their own datacenters?)

<comment><USER8> Current traction and paying customers may not be enough to satisfy their growth/evolution goals. The cash could be used for a lot of thing. One guess is that they may be trying to ramp up the attack the enterprise storage/backup market and need a war chest to have any major impact.

Also, plenty of people who could really use a service like Dropbox have not heard of it. Even with their current product offerings, there is an ocean of customers who haven't been reached yet.

<comment><USER9> They still need to work on their pricing. They have an opportunity to convert quite a few of their non-paying customers if they'd simply offer a plan between 2GB and 50GB.

[https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/90/better-more-affordable- st...](https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/90/better-more-affordable-storage- prices)

<comment><USER10> Don't forget, they also have an opportunity to downgrade quite a few of their paying customers from 50GB to e.g. 20GB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More than 4 years ago, a post on HN by Houston asking for a review of DropBox:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863>

[Edit: Corrected link. Thank you.]

<comment><USER12> And if I remember correctly that linked to just a video of how dropbox works, without Drew actually having a working product (but you couldn't see that on the video).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kudos to them on a fine product and excellent execution but, wow, this seems pretty frothy. And I don't have a huge problem with some of the other big valuations (Square, AirBnB, etc). But DropBox is going to have to find some other interesting business for investors to see any of that money. Just storing files doesn't seem like it would fit that bill.

</comment><comment><USER14> and to think i balked at investing in dropbox at 20m pre!

<comment><USER15> Can you tell us why you balked? Market size?

<comment><USER14> 20 seemed too high, is all. lesson learned: if the price is shooting up, there might be a reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No, no, it is not a bubble and 5 billion dollars is just a several hours of printing.. ^_^

</comment><comment><USER17> Very rough mental math: At a $5B valuation, PG's share of Dropbox should pay for ~10,000 YC investments

<comment><USER2> Did you factor in for dilution, they previously raised a 7.2m round.

<comment><USER18> We also don't know what percentage YC took. They might have taken a bit more or less than 6%. Regardless, this valuation puts their equity in the $100 million - $350 million range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Almost the same price as United States Steel (6.2B).

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Drew and Arash, awesome stuff!

</comment><comment><USER21> All this talk/speculation about how the valuations are done and Amazon S3 costs etc.. Just log in to Dropbox with email email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com on dropbox.com with ANY password and look in their docs folder, S3costs2011.xls and valuation.xls. duh.....

<comment><USER22> Let's hope they will invest at least some of their newly-gotten money into improving their security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Awesome! I use their service all the time, I'm glad to see them doing well!

</comment><comment><USER24> In the past year, Dropbox has lied to it's customers about encryption and how much power Dropbox has over the data (!!!), shown that they deduplicate before encrypting (and that they can view files in your Dropbox and make them unsharable), and finally allowed all Dropbox accounts to be logged into without a password, for _four hours_.

And yet they are at a $5B+ valuation?

I'm amazed at how dropbox seems to be able to make any mistake and keep going. _Very_ few other companies are capable of this. I'm not sure whether i should congradulate them or be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow. Good for them! Go Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's worth more YCombinator or Dropbox

</comment><comment><USER27> Congrats to Dropbox and YC. Awesome!!

</comment><comment><USER28> Congrats also to Trevor, Jessica, PG.

</comment><comment><USER29> With the revenue of 100M, that valuation is insane.

S3 costs must be eating most of the revenues.

<http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-revenue-2011-3></comment>


Interview with founders whose startups didn't survive (video) - <AUTHOR> http://techdrawl.com/atlanta-startups-that-didnt-survive/ An interview with 2 Atlanta entrepreneurs whose startups didn't quite make it. <comment><USER2> Somewhat bittersweet to front-page Hacker News with a video about how we failed! Feel free to comment here if anyone wants to ask more questions of (or lampoon) me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing with us. I wish there were more coverage of the sad fate that befalls most of the startups out there.</comment>


Easily exploited Netgear router flaw discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3148680/networking/easily-exploited-netgear-router-flaw-discovered.html <comment><USER2> Its mind boggling how such important pieces of our infrastructure can be pwned with rediculus simple exploits. This is not the first shell injection bug found in consumer grade routers. Far from it. Sometimes I think that all these companies rely on interns for R&D.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh dear. The exploit is trivially easy: [http://imgur.com/gYy6CwD](http://imgur.com/gYy6CwD)

Even if only exploitable on the lan side, you could make a simple landing page, buy some cheap ads, and start your own botnet.</comment>


No Lunch Left Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/opinion/20waters.html <comment><USER2> I was with the author until this sentence:

"that are produced without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. When possible, these foods should be locally grown."

Uhm... I eat foods with "pesticides" every day. Pesticides increases the crop yields and increases quality. Correct use of pesticides pose no harm to humans. Chemical fertilizers also increase crop yields (dramatically) and makes food cheaper. Oh... and guess what – anything is "chemicals".

Some areas are more suited than other areas for crop production (e.g. climate, land and labour costs). Why should everything be locally grown?

"cash for every meal they serve — $2.57 for a free lunch"

170 grams of Tuna costs me as a consumer $1 dollar. I am pretty sure they can get it for cheaper. It is fairly healthy – a healthy meal can cost less than $3 (but I guess they want to grow the Tuna locally).

She suggests that the budget should be tripled – meaning at each lunch will cost about $8. That is just preposterous.

"not to the continued spread of youth obesity, Type 2 diabetes"

I live in a third world country – and there is no problem of diabetes or obesity under the youth. Most people eat a lot less and food that costs a lot less than that of USA school kids.

"Let's prove that there is such a thing as a good, free lunch. "

There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is however a lunch for which another person pays.

<comment><USER3> "Pesticides increases the crop yields and increases quality."

Same with genetically modified crops which, by the way we have been doing for centuries - we just call it hybridization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Every public school child in America deserves a healthful and delicious lunch that is prepared with fresh ingredients. Cash-strapped parents should be able to rely on the government to contribute to their children's physical well- being, not to the continued spread of youth obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other diet-related problems. Let's prove that there is such a thing as a good, free lunch._

Politely disagree. The article also states that the government is subsidizing school lunches to the tune of something like $2.57 for free lunches, $2.17 for reduced-price lunches, and $0.24 for paid lunches. It then states that most of this subsidization isn't even going into the school lunch program, instead it's going to "heat the cafeteria" or for "custodial services."

Utilities aren't free; nor are janitorial services. At first glance, it seems to be an accounting problem: incorrect cost assignments wrapped up with a budgeting problem.

One of the things we learn in managerial accounting is that variances (diffs. between "budget" and "actual") is that they are opportunities for improvements. Accounting for "free lunches" isn't free!

<comment><USER3> I don't know about delicious, but I seem to have done OK on my mom's sandwiches. Government subsidized school lunches were crap 30+ years ago and, not surprisingly, are still crap today.</comment></comment>


Travel firms sue creator of cheap airfare site - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30634144

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813138)

</comment><comment><USER3> In other news, United and Orbitz are about to learn of the Streisand Effect[0]...

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

<comment><USER4> United is already one of the most hated companies in the country, they don't need to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mr Zaman has launched a fundraising campaign to gather cash to fight the > legal battle against United and Orbitz. So far he has raised $10,538 > (£6,776) of the $15,000 needed.

I'm guessing he'll need more than $15,000 ....

<comment><USER6> Has anyone found where to donate to this guy's legal fund? Seems like he wants to fight and I'm really curious how this plays out in court.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged](http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A better solution for the airlines is to stop selling tickets to passengers who have a habit of deplaning halfway through a trip.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reddit ama done a month ago here [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagg...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/)

</comment><comment><USER10> How dare this guy force Orbitz to lose approximately 38 minutes worth of revenue...

</comment><comment><USER11> considering, as the article says, this only works with one way tickets, and no luggage, how many people would be taking advantage of this that a lawsuit is necessary?

<comment><USER12> if you don't ordinarily check luggage (like most people seem to do nowadays), all you have to do is buy two one way tickets. the only downside is that you'll get selected for extra screening more often.

<comment><USER13> A friend of mine would always get the dreaded SSSS because he booked lots of last minute one way tickets for work.

Signing up for TSA PreCheck almost completely eliminated that problem. If you are willing to give up a bunch of info and pay the government, you can skip the "random screening."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've just never understood this idea of forced price discrimination, the idea that consumers are restricted in buying a product freely available.

<comment><USER4> Airfares aren't priced on a cost-plus basis, they're priced based on what the markets will bear. For instance, MKE-BOS has no non-stop options, so lots of airlines compete for one-stop business funneling passengers through their hubs. This drives down prices.

Compare this to ORD-BOS, which only has a few non-stop options. Those non-stop carriers (United, American and JetBlue) can charge a premium compared to, say, Delta, which can only offer one-stop options.

Passengers in captive hubs looking at monopoly routes (Houston, Detroit, Atlanta) have it even worse when looking for non-stop routes.

So a traveler looking to buy ORD-BOS will see high prices on the non-stops. I frankly don't see the problem here—almost every product is priced based on what the market will bear rather than cost+margin.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with burnout? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This has been dealt with quite a few times here (search burnout) and recently too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14320392)

Check the comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you take time to rest every so often? I used to work 7 days a week on my SaaS but now I make sure to take some time once a week to have a day off, to relax, to mediate, have drinks, see friends, etc. No code for a whole day.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the cause of the burnout? What exactly are you struggling with?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just spent the last couple of days working extremely hard on getting a major version of my project released and now I don't really feel motivated to work on code. It happens every so often.

<comment><USER4> It just sounds like you're tired. You're human, not a machine. Give yourself a well-deserved brain break.</comment></comment></comment>


Clojure Pattern Matching Lib: literal, seq, map and other patterns - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/8aa213ce127c5aca

<comment><USER2> One of the main developers here. Couple of points that aren't mentioned in the thread or aren't obvious w/o reading the whole thing:

* This is yet another example of how powerful macros are. All the features described are implemented in ~700 lines of code and a single macro.

* The pattern matching library is meant to be user extensible - you'll be able add your own patterns / syntax. Users simply need to bring their data types to whatever protocol is required by your new pattern. I think this going to be crazy powerful. For example - very fast pattern matching on primitive arrays / buffers.

* This is the groundwork for bringing high performance predicate dispatch to Clojure. This is under explored territory for dynamic languages.

<comment><USER3> * This is the groundwork for bringing high performance predicate dispatch to Clojure. This is under explored territory for dynamic languages.

I really like the way how pattern matching (in Haskell, etc) is transformed into a bunch of case expressions, which can then be compiled into code where each argument is evaluated only once and each "then" expression is compiled only once (no duplicates).

However, to my best knowledge, it requires some static type information to make the compiling transformation possible. E.g. the Haskell compiler knows that a Maybe Bool can have only three possible values: Just True, Just False or Nothing.

How do you do this in Clojure with dynamic typing? This really intrigues me and you're really pushing the boundaries of dynamic languages and compiling here a little bit. Very interesting indeed!

* For the uninitiated: you can find good description of compiling pattern matching in Simon Peyton Jones's book here: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/slpj-book-1987/)

<comment><USER2> This library will produce a decision tree where each argument is only tested once - no backtracking. How is a bit too much to explain here. I recommend the Maranget paper Compiling Pattern Matching to Good Decision Trees on which this work is based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome, one of the things I was really missing coming from Erlang.

</comment><comment><USER5> I saw guards mentions in the "notes" but no evidence in the TODO. Does guarded pattern matching work with your compilation strategy?

<comment><USER2> I have some rough thoughts on how to implement guards, nothing concrete, but I don't see any obstacles to integration with our compilation strategy.</comment></comment>


How the Ipod turned us into Loners - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2289177/

<comment><USER2> By the same logic, the Sony Walkman also turned people into loners in the 1980s.</comment>


Greenland Ice Sheet has melted to the point of no return - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165395).</comment>


Tommy Robinson Exposes the Coordinated Effort to Silence You - <AUTHOR> https://rairfoundation.com/tommy-robinson-takes-on-the-danish-press-exposes-a-coordinated-global-effort-to-silence-you/ <comment><USER2> No person should ever be silenced for their views even if you disagree with them. It is the first start into understanding why they have these views. Censorship just silences and sweeps the opposing view under the carpet and makes the debate one-sided.

A healthy and rational debate is one where both sides have the opportunity to express their opinions without getting constantly flagged/dead or banned.

'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' \- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

<comment><USER3> "Silenced" here appears to mean something different than "prohibited from any form of communication." Since clearly we can see him expressing his views by following the above link.

It appears to be that "silenced" here means something lesser, more like "not allowed to use certain platforms as a way to communicate to others, based on rules those platforms decide for themselves."

Freedom of association is, like freedom of speech, a core component of the human rights. These are, of course, sometimes in tension.

But just like a newspaper isn't forced to publish all of the letters sent to the editor, and a billboard company isn't forced to post all messages, neither is Facebook forced to host all messages.

Facebook and Instagram are for-profit commercial platforms, with the primary goal of making revenue via advertising. They are free to decide how to maximize their revenue.

Are their other similar organizations where we require them to host communications they might not like to host? Certainly - look at common- carriers like the telephone company.

But the argument doesn't seem to be that we should force Facebook, etc. to be common-carriers, but rather that simply exercising their freedom of association is an affront to free speech - which if true, would surely lead to an unhealthy society where the heckler's veto overrides any sort of discourse.

BTW, Hall's quote from "The Friends of Voltaire" describes Voltaire's views concerning the revoking of Helvétius's right to publish De l'esprit, its ban in Rome, and more. By my reading, Hall doesn't imply that Voltaire meant to also 'defend to the death' the right for Helvétius to force a given publishing company to publish his book - something which wasn't needed as it was quickly re-published across Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since I hadn't heard of him, Wikipedia claims:

> Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (born 27 November 1982), known as Tommy > Robinson, is a British far-right and anti-Islam activist.[18][19] He is the > co-founder and former leader of the English Defence League,[20] and later > served as a political advisor to former UKIP leader Gerard Batten.

The linked-to text reads like it's from a far-right viewpoint, so I assume it's the same person.</comment>