Ask HN: Why Aren't Smart People Asking More Questions About Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> Like many here, I have watched Bitcoin come on to the scene and evolve. I have also dabbled in it.
But, I can't shake some fundamental questions, and I wonder why other thinking people don't seem to be asking them.
The TL;DR is that Bitcoin is very mysterious and quickly evolving away from its initial billing, yet no one seems to be seriously questioning its true purpose or whose agenda it may really be serving.
I realize there's been speculation about its mysterious "founder". But, that's only part of it. The other part is that it was once a Libertarian's dream, which would explain some of the appeal, given its decentralized nature. But, what's become increasingly clear is that there will not be anonymity or even psuedonymity as governments move to regulate it and companies backed by the usual VCs move in to build infrastructure and platforms around it.
So, the "usual suspects" are, effectively co-opting it, centralizing it in practice (even if the peer-to-peer network for crunching remains), positioning themselves to profit from it, and steering it directly to their governments.
So, here we have this mysterious founding of a potentially revolutionary tech that is solidly on a path towards not living up to its initial billing. Instead, it's en route to becoming a global currency that is, for all intents and purpose, not  decentralized, while appearing to be so (in fact, one could argue that it represents global centralization). Further, it appears to be well on its way to benefitting the traditional players. Now, why isn't that bringing up serious questions about its true origin and purpose?
Some may say this sounds like conspiracy theory, but on the contrary, I have no theory, just questions. And I am wondering why a lot of smart people who initially gravitated to Bitcoin aren't asking similar questions as it evolves away from its initial promise. <comment><USER2> You may have missed the thread that PG started on the topic: It has a decent amount of smart people asking questions about who it might serve.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did miss that. Thanks.

The discussion meandered, but there are also interesting comments to be found on the thread. Still, that was nearly 300 days ago, and it's full steam-ahead. That is, people are still supporting it, even as its divergence from the initial intent accelerates.

I haven't really seen engaged dialogue among Bitcoin adherents to the extent that there's effort to resolve some of these questions as a condition of continuing to lend their support.

As evidenced by that thread, when asked at all, people tend to treat these questions as more of an interesting thought exercise; this, versus approaching them with the serious consideration that such a "revolution" would seem to merit.

In short, I would say that Bitcoin is anything but what it was initially purported to be. Yet, people seem to ignore this fact and support it anyway. When you think about it, it's really kind of strange.

<comment><USER2> For what its worth, I do see cryptocurrencies as a revolution, just not Bitcoin as the survivor. I think a lot of people have a hard time distinguishing between bitcoin and the concept of a crypto-currency. The potential is pretty clear to me and anyone I meet with a STEM background. The biggest dissenters I meet in real life tend to be liberal arts backgrounds, no matter how educated. So even if they have a masters in econ, art, or a JD, or what have you, they tend to be down on Bitcoin, which I find fascinating!

Meanwhile the people I know with STEM backgrounds like mechanical engineering, math, physics, etc think it is incredibly interesting, even when they don't own any or know too much about it. Really what I just wrote is a poor version of what PG wrote about bitcoin: "Hackers love it"

So no, I don't think bitcoin will survive, but I think crypto-currencies are here to stay and we are seeing a small revolution. Just like the Internet, or file sharing, or countless other tech things that have happened in my young life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ultimately the "true" origin or purpose of Bitcoin will never be known unless someone leaks it. There's nothing we can do to divine it and speculation is pointless IMO. I think it's more productive to treat parties' motivations as unknown and arbitrary and try to understand/build the Bitcoin ecosystem under that constraint. (Granted, this is a bit of a worst-case assumption.)

Putting that aside, a trickle of these kind of discussions has been happening at BitcoinTalk, /r/bitcoin, and various blogs. I've observed that some early adopters hoped that mainstream people would "turn libertarian" after being exposed to Bitcoin, but in reality the opposite is happening: people are trying to apply their mainstream values to Bitcoin by building tools to do anti-fraud, refunds, insurance, etc. It's easier for people to change their payment system than to change their values. The original vision of Bitcoin with irrevocable pseudonymous transactions will still exist, but it will make up a smaller and smaller fraction of the blockchain over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _the "true" origin or purpose of Bitcoin will never be known unless someone > leaks it_

Well, that's really my question. Why don't people seem to care?

> _speculation is pointless IMO_

And, that's the thinking that boggles my mind and prompted this post. Why is it that people don't think it matters? There are actually two things here: 1.) It appears to _not_ at all be what attracted people to it, which also means that it is not conveying the presumed benefits to its adopters. and 2.) That implies that it's something else and is conveying _some_ benefit to _someone else_.

So, with respect to those points, 1.) why do people continue to support it when their reasons have dissolved? and 2.) why don't they care that they have possibly been misled, wonder who misled them, and why?

I mean, it would be one thing if they just said "screw it" and walked away. But, they just seem to blindly continue supporting it.

> _people are trying to apply their mainstream values to Bitcoin_

Exactly. The mainstream swooped in quickly and swept all of those hopes away. But, it seems to not have deterred those early adopters that their dreams have been crushed. Perhaps with the gold rush, their support no longer matters as much. But, you'd think they'd almost revolt against their hopes being crushed. Yet, there's barely a grumble.

> _It 's easier for people to change their payment system than to change their > values_

Well said.

<comment><USER3> To elaborate on my point, speculation about Bitcoin's origin seems to produce many different hypotheses with no clear winner. It produces no actionable information and thus it's no more productive than watching House of Cards (but equally entertaining, at least to me). The whole point of Bitcoin is lack of trust, so we shouldn't believe anything Satoshi said even if we knew who he really was. Perhaps many Bitcoiners have already internalized this viewpoint; if they are comfortable using Bitcoin even with the assumption that it is a "black op"/"false flag"/"government trap" then the truth can hardly be worse. There is some precedent with Tor which is widely used by anti-government activists even though it is funded by the US military and developed by ex-NSA people.

Getting back to the mainstream takeover, perhaps many Bitcoiners are letting their greed overcome their principles and they won't complain as long as they get rich. Some others may be irrational fanboys who can't let it go because that would require admitting that their identity was built on a sham.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bob Wenzel has been questioning it thoroughly:

[https://encrypted.google.com/#q=bitcoin+site:economicpolicyj...](https://encrypted.google.com/#q=bitcoin+site:economicpolicyjournal.com)</comment>


Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/25/electric-cars-emit-50-less-greenhouse-gas-than-diesel-study-finds <comment><USER2> I find that the amount of emissions from the production of the batteries is often glossed over. While I do think it can be lower over time.. today it's quite high. Just would be nice that it is brought to peoples attention more when discussing the savings from electric. Not to stop us from moving to electric but from an awareness factor.

<comment><USER3> Lack of awareness? This argument is brought up _a lot_. Here's one article debunking one of the complaints about it:

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/news/a2...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/news/a27039/tesla-battery-emissions-study-fake-news/)

It's getting to the point that it's almost silly how recurring a fallacy that somehow battery production emissions are absurd or battery mining conditions abhorrent.

Compared to say oil rigs and oil derricks and refineries, it's so very hard for battery mining and battery production to be any worse.

The two most "exotic" elements in a Lithium Ion battery, both of which are actually a tiny fraction of the mass, lithium and cobalt, are both still primarily "brine mined" sorting through easy to access pools rather than the mine shaft mining that comes to mind for most people (we're roughly still at the stage of "gold prospecting" and just pulling lithium and cobalt from salts in water, rather than "gold mining" deep into the earth).

ETA: Not to mention that this very article and its 50% claim is _yet another_ that includes the carbon emissions of battery production but seemingly _none_ of oil production.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does the AFL-CIO support SOPA? - <AUTHOR>

One thing I've noticed is that the unions are on board with SOPA and named alongside the MPAA, RIAA and their ilk. However, I am unable to fathom why the unions are pro-OWS and pro-SOPA... and it turns out, they are not (so far as I can tell).
If you search on the http://aflcio.org/ site for sopa, you get three results. Two are blog posts on the AFL-CIO site, one is a link to an external news story. One blog hit is an anti-SOPA comment, and the other is a legitimate blog post that mentions how Richard Trumka (the organization's president) spoke out in support of the PROTECT-IP act in May 2011.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/11/30/justice-dept-launches-campaign-against-counterfeit-goods/
There's no mention of SOPA by the organization, and the most recent quote is about another act and it's now seven months old. Trumka's position at the time was that "solving the problem of counterfeiting, piracy and intellectual property theft [is] critical to creating and sustaining the jobs needed to revive the economy".
It seems to me like the anti-SOPA/pro-sanity movement should take the momentum gained from the GoDaddy flip-flop and target the AFL-CIO next. They don't appear to have a strong position and supporting SOPA + OWS simultaneously is deeply contradictory.
I'm a Canadian and have no ties to labour politics, but my understanding is that SOPA harms the working class. They should be fundamentally opposed to the passing of the bill, and we should give them an opportunity to change their mind as GoDaddy did earlier today. <comment><USER2> Counterfeit goods are not just media/entertainment/online content. Many of the organizations in support of the bill are brand-name manufacturers whose goods are easily counterfeited in other countries.

AFL-CIO members could argue that SOPA/PIPA would allow the AG to block foreign sites that sell counterfeit goods, thereby forcing individuals to buy the "official" goods domestically (where they would be manufactured by American labor). Granted, I don't know if there are any brand-name manufacturers still making their goods in the U.S., but that would be the obvious argument to my eyes.</comment>


Polynomial-Time Hierarchy Is Infinite Under a Random Oracle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2015/04/ph-infinite-under-random-oracle.html <comment><USER2> From Scott Aaronson's blog post on the paper:

> Basically, they need to show that, for every k, there are problems that can > be solved by small circuits with k layers of AND, OR, and NOT gates, but for > which the answer can't even be guessed, noticeably better than chance, by > any small circuit with only k-1 layers of AND, OR, and NOT gates.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm struggling to understand the concept of a "random oracle". I assume any oracle is just an infinite string of bits, or natural numbers, or suchnot, and thus is countably infinite (and has order omega), so there would be uncountably many (2^aleph-null) such oracles - how does one pick one at random, such that they are (I assume) equally likely? How does one pick a random element from an uncountable set?

And then, if I pick any oracle at random, then isn't there an infinitesimal (yet non-zero) chance I could pick one which has a special structure which makes their result false?

<comment><USER4> An oracle would be a sequence that give you a correct answer to a problem (or set of problems).

You could use Kolmogorov randomness to say whether this sequence is also random: "Kolmogorov randomness – also called algorithmic randomness – defines a string (usually of bits) as being random if and only if it is shorter than any computer program that can produce that string."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Kolmogoro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Kolmogorov_randomness)

<comment><USER5> How do you identify the length of a program to determine that? If I had a presumably random string and an assembly dialect that had a command that outputs that exact string, the 'program' has been deferred to the hardware or the brain of its inventor. I can understand how that is still a long program, but I can't understand how that would be measured.

<comment><USER6> Kolmogorov complexity is not a single value - it's more of a function f(universal computer, string) -> <minimal length of program to output that string>.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robert Noyce and His Congregation - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/asap/1997/0825/102.html <comment><USER2> How did this only get three votes? By the way, the full version (18,000 words) is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60385>

</comment><comment><USER3> Great read! Answers a lot of unasked questions. I'd give it 2 upvotes if I could.</comment>


Struggling with Japan's Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Disaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-with-japans-nuclear-waste-six-years-after-disaster.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13850750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13850750)

44+ comments</comment>


Exporting your Google waves & "Wave in a Box" - <AUTHOR> http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/exporting-your-waves.html

<comment><USER2> "Access Wave from Google Docs"

This means they are trying to integrate wave into google docs. It baffles me that they didn't run with this headline instead: "Wave is being integrated into Google Docs." This would have been much better publicity than just pulling the plug and declaring Wave as dead.

<comment><USER3> Wave always made more short-term sense as plumbing to unify google docs/notebook/chat/mail/etc.

Having, say, robots watching/operating on Google Docs and Email would be a huge feature advantage that competitors would have a very hard time catching up to. And you can offer that to users without trying to force them through the gauntlet that was the unified Wave interface.

And, years down the line, when people are ready and the unified interface was polished, you could bring it back for people who want it.

<comment><USER4> In the cases where I've been on projects that successfully used Google Wave, it was always as a coordination tool to google docs...basically a content management tool with pointers/links to individual docs...on occasion as a file repository as well.

Basically a kind of sharepoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If Wave wasn't associated with such a disastrous public perception, there could be a viable market for customized, hosted enterprise Wave instances.

The rub would probably be finding that niche group that A) has made Wave an important part of their workflow, B) is incapable of instantiating it on their own, and C) hasn't, since hearing the news, already found another solution to replace Wave.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Cut a hole in the box. 2\. Put your wave in that box. 3\. Make her download the box.

And that's the way you do it.</comment>


Station X Linux Machines - <AUTHOR> https://stationx.rocks/ <comment><USER4> Next reseller of the same OEM laptop ordered somewhere in China.

Check the right side of this laptop: [https://stationx.rocks/products/spitfire](https://stationx.rocks/products/spitfire)

and compare with Galago pro: [https://system76.com/laptops/galago](https://system76.com/laptops/galago)

sides: [https://screenshots.firefox.com/0I2YsDmIvbKuYbr3/stationx.ro...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/0I2YsDmIvbKuYbr3/stationx.rocks) and [https://d1vhcvzji58n1j.cloudfront.net/assets/products/galp3/...](https://d1vhcvzji58n1j.cloudfront.net/assets/products/galp3/ports- right_1280-32d6cdd4b5.jpg)

and I've seen this model at least on two other resellers.

<comment><USER5> A reply from System76:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refreshes_ubuntu_linux_laptops_with/ddvcx45/)

<comment><USER6> So am I right in thinking that System76 are working on firmware and drivers for clevo/sager laptops, but then not committing them upstream? Or are they simply not open sourcing them at all?

<comment><USER7> ..." _we put in the effort to file the bugs, track them, write the code, and get it upstreamed._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason these look similar to System76 is because they are the exact same Clevo chassis. The bezels are awful, but I give credit to System76 and Station X and any other that works to sell and maintain Linux machines.

My next Linux laptop may be from one of these companies if they can work with Clevo to stop making the screen bezels so horrendously large.

</comment><comment><USER9> Aside:

 _Station X_ was the wartime codename for the Bletchley Park facility where (amongst others) Alan Turing worked on breaking German Enigma-enciphered traffic and Tommy Flowers built the Colossus electronic calculator for breaking encrypted teleprinter codes ( _Geheimscriber_ ).

All the laptops are named after WW2-era fighter planes. The desktop is named after a long-range wartime strategic bomber.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks similar to [https://system76.com/](https://system76.com/).

I got the 17" Kudu for work. Honestly, I'm now aware that a 17" screen on a laptop is just too impractically big, but the hardware has been great.

<comment><USER11> 14" is perfect size for me. Not 13", not 15" but 14". I hope it will become easier to find in the future.

<comment><USER12> I said it before and I will say it again: a 14" display in 4:3 aspect ratio is the best choice for a programmers laptop!

It's tall enough so that you can see a lot of text but narrow enough that the laptop does not get too bulky.

If there will ever be a new 14" machine with a 1400*1050 display I will be first in line to buy it!

<comment><USER13> >I said it before and I will say it again: a 14" display in 4:3 aspect ratio is the best choice for a programmers laptop!

Interesting. How do you measure the aspect ratio? By actually measuring the height and width of the visible part of the display with a ruler or measuring tape, or via some software utility / command? I have a 14" display laptop, and would like to know the aspect ration, hence asking.

<comment><USER14> Pixels for computers are approximately square, so you can simply derive it from the native resolution of the panel.

[1]: [https://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1400%3A1050](https://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1400%3A1050)

<comment><USER13> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Entroware also resell these laptops - at a better price - [https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops](https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops)

All I want from my next laptop is to be powered via USB-C. I'm sick of dragging around multiple different chargers for my gadgets.

<comment><USER16> Powered by USB? Isn't that a different class of machine? Apple has the Book/Air but not the Pro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Price-wise they seem quite competitive on paper. I'm curious as to what the build quality & peripherals are like. In my experience the real difference between a regular and top-of-the-line laptop is in the small things.

They're also lacking a 4k laptop, which I would highly recommend to anyone used to working on the road. (or who has to show of work to clients in person).

<comment><USER18> Price-wise, I got a zenbook for 2/3 the price, with a 3200x1800 screen (instead of 1920x1080), a slower CPU, same RAM, larger SSD, most other details the same. It's a better fit for my needs, and runs Linux perfectly. I agree completely about the screen - a decent HiDPI screen is quite wonderful.

Also, I wouldn't want any of the distribution options they offer to pre-load. And I wouldn't want a pre-loaded OS anyway.

I'm not trying to discourage a worthy goal, but these are some of the issues that this company has to overcome.

<comment><USER19> Having done the "buy a Windows laptop and load linux on it" thing for many years and many generations, I think I'm done. I have now had a Dell preloaded with Ubuntu and a System76 and I don't think I'll ever go back. The Dell has special drivers tho for backlight and other things, so loading a different distro is a little more work than a System76 is.

<comment><USER20> Does System76 work on upstreaming these special drivers, or are you just stuck with whatever they slap on the disk if you want all hardware to work?

<comment><USER19> Yes, they do specifically work on upstreaming the drivers into the Linux kernel.

I found this post from System76 to be really interesting: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refreshes_ubuntu_linux_laptops_with/ddvcx45/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why the keyboard layout? End next to up key? Insert above backspace? What's wrong with the classic 2x3 block?

Another issue I have is with the spacing between F keys. Looks like an afterthought to Fn+? keys.

Not to mention there is not a single clear picture of the keyboard on the product page...

[https://stationx.rocks/products/manjaro-special-edition- spit...](https://stationx.rocks/products/manjaro-special-edition-spitfire)

<comment><USER22> Also the slight irony of "We create drop-dead gorgeous machines - designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux" next to a photo of a machine with a Windows key.

<comment><USER21> Gnome 3 for example uses it by default.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but it doesn't need to have the windows logo printed on it

<comment><USER21> It doesn't?

<comment><USER22> No. The rest of the photos have the brand logo on them, e.g. [https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2083/3225/products/REVISED...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2083/3225/products/REVISED_2_big_2048x.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The way to attract Linux users is to tempt them away from their Thinkpads. The way to do that is to offer a laptop with a trackpoint, this little red dot:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trackpoint&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=trackpoint&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER25> Never understood the appeal of this thing.. tried it once to move the mouse and it was just so slow and awkward.. hardly seemed to work at all.. why do people like this? I really don't get it myself.. is it for something besides moving the mouse? The thing seems pretty bad for that purpose.. maybe to move he mouse in small increments? Would love an explanation because I absolutely don't get it myself.. pls help!

<comment><USER26> Did you try it on an actual thinkpad? I have a dell with a trackpoint and it's nowhere near as accurate.

The appeal is that your fingers don't ever need to leave the homerow and also working from your lap on a bus for example is much easier since your hand doesn't have room to move to get to the trackpad

<comment><USER27> Agreed. Used to have an IBM Thinkpad with a trackpoint and loved it. Then I got first a Dell and later an HP laptop with trackpoints and could never get used to either of them. They just didn't work anywhere near as well as my old Thinkpad. I cannot really articulate the difference, but it was massive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The only laptop I would consider upgrading to from my Thinkpad X220 would either be a modern Thinkpad x270 (just for a hardware upgrade because I like the form factor) or to something that provides a similar keyboard, docking, and modern-ish hardware.

Most of my work happens over SSH, my laptop is currently fast enough for Netflix, email, and web browsing. I'm capped at 2 1920x1080 monitors but this is livable.

I think if someone took the old X220 generation Thinkpads, upgraded the internals, and kept the keyboard and docking that they would sell like hotcakes.

<comment><USER29> Somebody _is_ kind of doing that: [https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/](https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/) . They also mod x220s but the mod is more invasive since they require a different screen bezel.

I recently got an x62 and it's great, although you must put some effort into making linux work smoothly on it and making the screen brighter. But all in all I am extremely happy with it.

<comment><USER28> Where do you go about buying this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I dislike the website. The reasons are:

1\. "Beautiful machines" is the first point being made. This is superficial.

2\. "All distros welcome". Turns out that installing a distro is the least of my concerns when it comes to a laptop.

3\. The first thing you notice is this video with the multiethnic group of people from which one of them is at the front as well as happier/dancing. This is inconsistent and weird. What is the message being communicated with this? How is it relevant? Sell me a goddamn laptop instead. Put a picture of a laptop or something.

In order to be constructive, what I would rather emphasize is: laptops are hardware. The intended audience here are tech enthusiasts. I would rather speak about hardware specs, or something distinctive about the hardware, compatibility, the ergonomics... post a benchmark. Something that is actually better than "beautiful laptops" and a awkward video. This is common sense.

This is how a system is sold: [https://www.apple.com/imac- pro/](https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/) . Note: I do not own one and I am not affiliated with that company, just making a point.

Then... just a reminder: most laptops are potentially a Linux laptop.

<comment><USER31> _> Turns out that installing a distro is the least of my concerns when it comes to a laptop._

Man, how times have changed. Linux working half-decently on a laptop used to be the holy grail of opensource fans. Nowadays, thanks to Ubuntu and friends, chances are that most of it will just work, regardless of hardware. This is a massive achievement and it's not really as promoted as it should be.

<comment><USER30> Well, true. It can be challenging to install some distros, especially if the default configuration doesn't give you a working network interface. And while it can be solved, it's by no means a desirable first Linux experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > We create drop-dead gorgeous machines - designed and customised to run Linux > - and only Linux.

Only linux? Seems like a weird limitation... or am I understanding this wrong?

<comment><USER33> One more thing:

> designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

But super key still have Windows logo.

<comment><USER34> You can customize the sticker on the super key during checkout, choosing from many distro logos or other Linux related logos. Windows is also an option.

<comment><USER33> It's cheap, it's sticker! How company can sell "laptops and all-in-one powerhouses meticulously crafted to run Linux." and put a sticker on one of the keys because they couldn't "meticulously" prepare keyboard designed for Linux users.

> No Windows or Mac here, folks

So they are lying on their main page. Great!

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I hear you... Their design is far from "drop-dead gorgeous" for my taste.

I was just pointing out that you're not really tied to Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > We are Linux advocates who believe in providing you the most free and open > devices to create your most important work.

Does that mean they have a disabled/cleaned ME like the purism machines? Or what does "free and open" mean in this case?

<comment><USER36> On the "free and open" front, their "B-29 Superfortress" linux desktop only has options for Nvidia graphics cards. Would have been nice to see some AMD options in support for their open source work.

<comment><USER37> The "free and open" part is lying for the sake of PR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Are they intentionally trying to optimize bezel real estate? Like for people who add a lot of post-its to the side of their screens?

<comment><USER39> If Linux people are known for anything it's their love of post-it notes on the side of their screen /s. But yeah. If I wanted a "gorgeous Linux laptop" I would buy a Dell XPS 13". Dell actually puts some work into making their own hardware and they upstream drivers and other stuff so the XPS actually works pretty well with Linux.

<comment><USER38> I actually have a xps13 dual booting Ubuntu and Windows. It's gorgeous, fast and portable. The only thing that sucks is the track pad, but I mainly just dock it anyway so it doesn't annoy me too often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just buy and powerwash a Chromebook.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Seriously I wonder why not this? I understand if you're looking for a portable workstation or something of that performance why not... but for an ultra- portable little dev machine. And it would be far cheaper, too, no?

(I've liked what System76 has done, but even then I probably wouldn't spring for the Galago as opposed cheaper Chromebook unless I were jumping up to one of their other workhorses)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _Gorgeous_ Linux laptops

First thing I noticed on these pictures, was the ugly sticker left side underneath the keyboard. Sorry, but such trifles got nothing to do with gorgeous. Also, black camera frame, huge display bezel, and non-centered touchpads are, imho, a nogo if you wanna call it gorgeous.

<comment><USER42> I prefer the touchpad not to be in centre. It does not make any sense. It's like putting your mouse in the middle of your desk, instead of the right or left where you can actually hold it properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I had been planning to replace my faithful 5yr old Samsung Ultrabook with a Dell XPS. But I like the idea of buying from a UK supplier based in Bletchley Park and using a lot of WWII branding. I do need a win32 dev env, but I guess I could run Windows inside a VM.

<comment><USER31> _> using a lot of WWII branding_

Yeah tbh that's the only thing that puts me off a bit. War is war, I'd rather not glorify it; it might be a necessary evil on occasions, but I'd rather not be reminded of that every day. Then again, I'm not British.

Still, I would expect the subset of potential buyers for geeky machines not to massively overlap the nationalistic subset of the British population, so to me it looks like poor marketing overall.

<comment><USER43> Being British I love the branding, but I am something of a WWII obsessive. WWII, the Battle of Britain, "the few", fight them on the beaches etc is a huge part of national identity in the UK. But it seems to me that WWII flavoured branding could be a huge marketing mistake in the EU territories Station X is targeting: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands.

<comment><USER35> Well, Spitfire, I can understand. But Lancaster? Technically awesome as the Lancaster was, I wonder what kind of brand marketing genius wants to their product associated with the firebombing of civilians [1]. Or in the words of Churchill himself, "a serious blotch on the conduct of the Allies in the war".

[1] Not to disparage the dedication to duty, bravery, and sacrifice of the aircrews, roughly 50% of which never made it back. Competing with the German U-boat service for the service with the highest KIA rate, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "By Linux nerds for Linux nerds." and all the people in the picture are guys with glasses a couple of man from different nationalities. Thanks for the stereotype. Women in tech are going to be very proud of this image.

<comment><USER45> I'm sorry (and I'm so called woman in tech, if any), but shouldn't girls worry about WomenInTech trend?

If everyone makes you a way because you're a Woman, not a good engineer - <USER2> there anything good about this?

Who cares about the picture, if these guys make nice laptops?

<comment><USER46> I'm not a woman but I think you're misunderstanding. It's about fair representation, not special treatment because you're a woman. Assuming that's a promo video, it's under-represented.

<comment><USER47> The under-represented party in that video is the hardware.

Humans (regardless of whether they are male, female or other) are _over- represented_ in that video and they add no useful information to prospective buyers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is there anyone here who's actually used one of these?

<comment><USER49> No, but I can tell they're just rebranded Clevo builds.

These machines have very decent specs and are easy to service and upgrade, but at the cost a of very low quality build with regards to the laptop case itself.

There are plenty of other brands that offer the same kind of Clevo laptops with Linux, the best known of which is system76.

Basically, these are just the same Clevo machines you can buy with any Clevo reseller, but with Linux installed for marketing differentiation, and a significant mark up in pricing.

<comment><USER50> I thought your statement was rather aggressive (you basically say that the linux brand is used to bump the price), until I saw this :

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

I hope the people from System76 or StationX will be able to show that their added value is a little more than installing some linux image... (I was considering buying one of those, but your statement makes me hesitate)

<comment><USER19> Definitely check out System76's response to your question of showing their added value. I totally agreed with you, and that post turned me around.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refreshes_ubuntu_linux_laptops_with/ddvcx45/)

<comment><USER49> That's interesting, I'd not seen this comment before.

So the good thing about System76 is that they can gather up the Linux users buying their products, and use the volume of those combined sales to give Linux users a voice with upstream manufacturers like Sager and Clevo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

So no BSD then?

<comment><USER19> I interpret that to mean, "We only focus on whether this thing works well with Linux." So BSD may work fine, but YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Battery life: up to 5 hours".

Not a MacBook Pro killer at all.

<comment><USER53> I read that and came to say the same. Not sure if this is because of Linux power management or the hardware itself. Either way I don't consider any laptop with "up to 5 hours" battery life an option anymore. I keep laptops longer and batteries degrade over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Any company trying to make it's name in the Linux market has to field stuff at lower pricepoints. I can buy a perfectly good Acer netbook for 300$ and install Ubuntu in a matter of minutes. If you cannot do small and cheap, the thing that Linux can do better than anyone else, you aren't going to win over many people.

<comment><USER55> The margins in the low end PC laptop market are so narrow that it's a crazy place to aim for if you're a small player.

<comment><USER54> But people looking to test out a new company/os want cheap. They will come back later once confidant. Smaller/cheaper generally also means greater battery life.

<comment><USER55> But _will_ they come back looking for something more expensive?

I'm not sure there's any money aiming for the market that buys cheap. On the other hand enthusiast vendors like e.g. PC Specialist in the UK have survived for many years selling PC's in the price segment these guys are going after, because frankly for some of the models you could survive as a small company on a few dozen a month, while you might have to sell 10x-20x as many units to make similar margins to cover salaries and sales costs for lower priced units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Anyone knows what the real battery life does on these because 5 hours is not very good and usually a seller is optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER57> Love the video ad but its pretty hard for me to consider buying one of these. I want on site repair/replacement... not 'user serviceable' try to fix it yourself... my last three HP laptops were all over $2500 and all needed on- site service at some point.

</comment><comment><USER58> If any of you visit eastern europe or countries where pirating a copy of windows is common practice, you can get linux laptops everywhere, sometimes the same machine is discounted because it's a display unit with freeDOS (who'd buy a machine you can't test)

</comment><comment><USER59> _" All distros covered "_ = No distro really fully covered.

The world doesn't need another random laptop which you might be able to install Linux on. What's needed is a Linux laptop that just works(tm) - <USER3> the time, every time, with the most common peripherals.

</comment><comment><USER60> It says "MacBook Pro killer". Is there an option to have a high-resolution screen (e.g. 2880 x 1800, like Retina)? All I found was Full HD IPS 1920 x 1080.

</comment><comment><USER61> A "MacBook Pro killer"... with a 1920x1080 display. Right.

</comment><comment><USER62> The marketing feels so try-hard. Do you need to shit on Macbook because there's nothing to sell otherwise? So passive aggressive.

</comment><comment><USER42> > designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

So have they blocked installation of windows in some manner, a la Chromebook?

</comment><comment><USER63> I find it funny how a copy of a Mac is necessarily beautiful (and so original)!

Anyway, no track point so I'll just skip!

</comment><comment><USER64> Screen bezel :(

</comment><comment><USER65> Or get a Xiaomi Mi Air and get a better laptop for less money. Only downside is the low maximum RAM.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is there an option to have a '\' key where that weird shaped Enter key is?

</comment><comment><USER67> How are these compared to Purism?

</comment><comment><USER58> what i'd like is a portable "mainframe" you can remote into from older (or cheaper) machines, something you can still in a backpack along with a chromebook.

</comment><comment><USER68> I had to close within seconds of dealing with this web design, to keep my sanity.

Adding that to the pushing of one distribution over the others... way to utterly misunderstand your target market.

I doubt they'll be selling many. Morons, the bunch of them.

</comment><comment><USER69> is 8gb of ram really enough these days? I know for my development and multitasking I'd feel underpowered with 16gb, but 16 is at least a decent baseline.

</comment><comment><USER70> Ugh, another wannabe macbook. If I want a mac, I'll just buy one. Please give me a good quality linux laptop that isn't trying to be a macbook.

</comment><comment><USER71> > Or are we dealing with _a_ an Arch or Gentoo stalwart? Regardless, our > machines have you covered.

Might be worth fixing your typo :-)

</comment><comment><USER72> It seems quite good but I'm very intolerant of 16:9 screens. It's a no-go for me..

<comment><USER73> Agreed, I will take the wide-screen ratio god intended (16:10) any day of the week over 16:9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Intel backdoor included.

</comment><comment><USER74> It starts to be wrong with Linux.

</comment><comment><USER75> The animation made me cringe.

<comment><USER76> I don't understand who they are targeting with it

<comment><USER77> I don't think they understand it either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Wow, so much dudebro. That animated gif is killing me.</comment>


Hoffa: TPP a punch to the gut of U.S. workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/11/10/hoffa-trans-pacific-partnership-us-workers/75555086/ <comment><AUTHOR> Melinda St. Louis of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, and Ari Rabin-Havt, speaking yesterday in a 1-hour panel discussion on the TPP, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHG0fZW3_s&t=15m40s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHG0fZW3_s&t=15m40s)

 _" Of the 30 chapters of the TPP, there are only 6 that have to do with traditional trade issues … the rest have to do with … "behind the border" policies, which are basically our laws … In the text, we see an expansion of the failed model, under NAFTA, that pits US workers against workers in other countries, this time in Vietnam where workers earn 65 cents an hour, as well as other countries such as Malaysia which has a huge problem with human trafficking — modern-day slavery — we are very concerned that this continues that race to the bottom … it leads to an overall depression of wages and an increase of income inequality in the U.S.

… It's a trade of industries: we are going to favor our pharmaceutical manufacturers, certain content producers receive favorable status — while giving up other industries."_

<comment><USER2> > It's a trade of industries: we are going to favor our pharmaceutical > manufacturers, certain content producers receive favorable status — while > giving up other industries."

Isn't this just describing the comparative advantage theory of international trade?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did a double-take when I noticed the author's name. Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance[1] is a pretty well-known mystery, at least here in Detroit, and I guess I never knew that his son had taken over leadership of the Teamsters.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa#Disappearance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa#Disappearance)

<comment><USER4> Me too. I thought they either dug up some old quotes and applied them to the TPP, or there was another Hoffa. Interesting that this apple falling near its tree.

<comment><USER3> Given the senior Hoffa's ties to the mob, I hope the apple fell at least a little bit away ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Random idea: If protectionism works cannot a group of people decide to create an internal economy where they purposefully trade with each other before outsiders for all products that they manufacture? They will buy goods for above real market value but the money will remain within their internal economy. Biggest problem would be enforcing the contract.

I think this already sort of exists somewhat. If my close relatives, manufacture something, I gladly buy their goods over those of their competitors because yes, I am paying more but the money is supporting my uncles, nephews and nieces. I think that's a net positive for me. They reciprocate the favour. As a family we are wealthier than we would be otherwise because, no, they cannot abandon their business and start new businesses just so they could take advantage of competitive advantage. That is unrealistic. They know only one market well enough and do not have the resources or guidance to get into a completely different market.

I guess the Amish are another example of this and I believe Israel's Kibbutz aswell.

<comment><USER6> Except that people who are globally competitive have no incentive in participating - they can earn on a global market _and_ enjoy the cheaper/better goods provided by others.

<comment><USER5> Well that's what trade deals are for.

You can convince a subset of those "globally competitive people" to participate by vowing to buy their services over those of their competitors. They lessen their risk of finding work and you get a larger economy.

You don't need everyone to participate, just a big enough economy.

Also one distinct advantage over a country doing the same thing, is that you can choose who can participate or not. So once you reach the level of adequate manufacturing for a certain good you can restrict participation of people offering the same service/skill.

<comment><USER6> >You don't need everyone to participate, just a big enough economy.

That might work for Amish but unless you plan on learning how to churn your own butter and know someone who can print a CPU on to silicon wafer in their garage I doubt it translates well to the real world.

As a software engineer this should be obvious to you - writing a software service/program can solve a problem globally - few people can solve a problem for hundreds of millions - specialization, automation, IT all changed how things scale - I don't need to grow my own food anymore, farmer gets to enjoy social networking, video streaming and games - win/win.

What you're suggesting is that we duplicate the work being done or do it sub optimally so that we can benefit people who aren't competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Protectionism" is the dog whistle rallying those who wish to circumvent labour and environmental protections by making products elsewhere, yet, selling them here in direct competition with those who follow the rules.

If only we could fashion trade agreements to lift all boats, removing tariffs only when the production of a product is ecological and societally sustainable.

<comment><USER8> When the US went through its own period of "getting ahead" \- it did a lot of things that weren't very ecologically sustainable. There's an argument that it's not entirely fair to tell other countries what they can and cannot do as they go through a similar period in their history.

<comment><USER9> Of course not. But it's entirely fair to tell them they can't sell their goods in our country if they're unwilling to play by our rules. They had the same option when we were "cheating".

<comment><USER8> Not if they wanted any of the 'advanced' goods we were producing, like, say, cars or chemicals or whatever.

Also, some people might view a large, wealthy, populous country imposing its will on a smaller, poor country as not very nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The software industry in U.S. did have a similar experience 5-15 years ago when "outsourcing" is the fashion.

What came out of that, it appears to me, is a booming software industry with more local competent and confident software engineers.

I am for reaching a economic global optimum.

<comment><USER11> It's silly to suggest that the boom is due to cheap overseas programmers instead of the web and smartphone revolutions.

<comment><USER8> I think what he means is that there was a lot of 'doom & gloom' about how all our jobs were going to India and so on and so forth. And here we are... things are still going pretty well.

<comment><USER9> Because of explosive growth nobody saw coming at the time. I doubt the same is going to happen with say - automobiles, or designer clothing. We can make a pretty good estimate of what demand will be over the next decade.

<comment><USER2> Nobody ever sees explosive growth coming; that's what makes it explosive. That's why the U.S. generally manages its economy to permit and encourage innovation, rather than to meet centralized predictions.

There are some early hints. The confluence of software, solar, batteries, and cars is looking like something big could happen there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really like it when people try to evoke emotional responses to things they haven't read.

<comment><USER13> What makes you think he hasn't read it? The author is the president of the Teamsters. While he maybe hasn't read the whole thing himself, he almost certainly has a team of people helping him understand what it will mean for his union members, since that's his job.

And this isn't just emotional writing, he's pointing out specific problems he has with specific sections of the agreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And if Hoffa gets his way, US consumers will experience a punch to the gut.

Protectionism and "Buy American" is fundamentally incompatible with affordable consumer goods. Hoffa's way will lead to you only being able to afford a new smartphone once every 20 years. Televisions will become family heirlooms because you just can't afford to buy a new one. Hope you like the outfit you're planning on buying, because you're going to be wearing it for years.

I value the modern American lifestyle.

<comment><USER15> You're doing an immense amount of hand waving. I would much rather spend a bit more money on goods knowing that they were made in a more socially and ecologically stable manner and that their manufacture contributes to the lower limit on my salary.</comment></comment>


O2 installs 18+ filter on the mobile web - adam-_- http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/04/o2-mobile-web-filtering

<comment><AUTHOR> _The restrictions are at the DNS level_

184.108.40.206.

<comment><USER2> But can you change that on a phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Easily. Edit /etc/resolv.conf, write an HTTP proxy, write a web browser, etc. There is probably some GUI way of doing it too.

<comment><USER2> Oh, and here I thought it would be _difficult_ even for someone tech savvy. :)(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article was published on the 4th March and at this moment I can access all sites mentioned in the article and tube8.com without entering any details. I'd suggest the article is a little out of date.

I'm a contract customer so they may have updated their policy to exclude all contract customers (who are all over 18) or they may have dropped it. I don't know.

<comment><USER4> I used to get this years ago on an O2 pay as you go with old school crappy mobile internet. Can't remember exactly what sites triggered it, but it was something pretty innocuous, perhaps gambling/lottery related.

The switch from PAYG to contract made it disappear but it would be foolishly tin-foily of me to assume that this is exactly what O2 wanted to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sending this to the few of my friends who still think Net Neutrality is a bad idea. If blocked porn can't convince them, nothing will.

<comment><USER6> Because using the police power of the state against otherwise peaceful organizations is more convenient than taking your business elsewhere, and allows you to substitute your preferences for the revealed preferences of other consumers.

<comment><USER5> Which works great, if the organizations in question don't have a virtual monopoly on what should be considered a public utility. There is no "elsewhere".

<comment><USER6> Does O2 have a monopoly on wireless internet access?

<comment><USER5> The IMCB is a collaboration between Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 02, 3 and Virgin Mobile.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps I wasn't clear. Does O2 have a monopoly on wireless internet access?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is who's behind this: <http://www.imcb.org.uk/> and here are the details of the filtering policy: <http://www.imcb.org.uk/pdfs/ClassificationFramework.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER2> For one specific mobile service provider.

<comment><USER8> Actually I have been using Vodafone Mobile Broadband here in London and it has the same kind of filter. Somehow it disappeared after three weeks. It didn't seem to be as bad as this one from O2 since I did some tests and I was able to see erotic images without a problem, only porn sites seemed to trigger the filter. That and also maybe 5% of all the different sites I have visited on the last month.

<comment><USER2> From the headline, I thought this was some sort of government initiative.

<comment><USER9> Moral panics have a long history here; a lot of it is due to the sensationalist media culture. Government clampdowns are usually the result of whipped-up public hysteria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This happened to a colleague of mine, but I'm on the same network and it didn't happen to me.

You can turn it off by either going into an O2 store with some ID, or paying £1 on a credit card - you'll be given £2.50 in credit to your phone bill to compensate.

</comment><comment><USER11> O2 have had this on my phone for quite a while.</comment>


Scott Heiferman looks back at Meetup's bet-the-company moment - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-back-at-meetups-bet-the-company-moment- <comment><USER2> This is an interesting dilemma that I think alot of startups come to. Interesting that Meetup is still around after making the switch to premium. Could the same be done with other free services?</comment>


Why don't airlines fly a straight line between Barcelona and Düsseldorf? - <AUTHOR> http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/13428/why-dont-airlines-fly-a-straight-line-between-barcelona-and-d%C3%BCsseldorf

<comment><USER2> Flight routing in Europe is actually quite interesting. Eurocontrol, which controls all the airspace, has an algorithm which either accepts or rejects a route you submit but many times routes are rejected for non obvious reasons.

Due to this, most people use third party software which generates routes and does a brute force search on the Eurocontrol system until one is accepted. When you go ahead and actually fly the routes though, it is pretty common for ATC to give you shortcuts between most sectors.</comment>


Intel abandons development of modular Compute Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/22/18277596/intel-abandons-compute-cards-pc <comment><USER2> What is it with Intel and its roadmap. In my book Intel was the pinnacle of execution from as far back as I remember. The last couple of years have seen shocking half hearted attempts at adding things to the roadmap and then jettisoning them silently.

</comment><comment><USER3> They should buy a mobo mfr and include one of these coprocessors on each board.</comment>


Moving the Goalposts on Seattle's Minimum Wage - <AUTHOR> https://civicskunk.works/moving-the-goalposts-on-seattles-minimum-wage-43261b19ee63 <comment><USER2> Timothy Taylor had an interesting blog post on this topic : [http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.ca/2016/08/higher- local...](http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.ca/2016/08/higher-local- minimum-wages-early.html)

It is derived from a U. of Washington report found at: [https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/MinWageReport- July2...](https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/MinWageReport- July2016_Final.pdf)</comment>


Use the index, Luke A guide to database performance for developers - <AUTHOR> https://use-the-index-luke.com/ <comment><USER2> This is one of my all time favorite books. If you work with Postgres, an awesome follow up is this article series (much more advanced) [http://www.interdb.jp/pg/](http://www.interdb.jp/pg/)</comment>


Why anything.blogspot.com goes to anything.blogspot.in? - <AUTHOR>

Do anyone know? Why anything.blogspot.com goes to anything.blogspot.in for all blogs? <comment><AUTHOR> Its with all blogspot blogs, even with <http://google.blogspot.com> redirect to <http://google.blogspot.in>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got the answer, thanks [http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2402711)</comment>


CIA Assessment on Surviving Airport Secondary Screening While Maintaining Cover [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/WikiLeaks_CIA_Assessment_on_Surviving_Secondary_Screening.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Actual title is " _CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover_ " but had to move the words around to keep it within the 80-char limit.</comment>


HubSpot's approach to front-end development at scale - <AUTHOR> http://dev.hubspot.com/blog/frontend-development-at-scale-1 <comment><USER2> I would have a lot more interest in what this blog post said if the page actually had good performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Owch, but fair point.

If you are willing to accept some excuses (one can hope?), our dev blog is running the yet-to-be-released version of HubSpot's new blogging tool and is very much a work in progress. Also, the pages served by that blog (and our CMS) are not related to the tool this post is talking about.

But nonetheless, we need to make it faster. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool work on this stuff guys, but <http://tbranyen.com/u/cae5c180.png> is not a good start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I should have linked to the internal legacy version of the code (<https://github.com/HubSpot/asset_bender/tree/master>) instead of the new in- progress v2 (<https://github.com/HubSpot/asset_bender/tree/future>)?

The point is that we'd rather gather feedback and hear from the community before we assume that everything we've done internally is exactly what other people and companies need. And sure, it would be awesome if we had a super polished version ready for anyone to use, but we kind of want to gauge interest before plowing ahead on v2 in isolation.

ps: About the forks, I'd love to get them merged upstream, but I have the feeling that they diverge more than the owners would like. But yes, we need to have that conversation (and suggestions are welcome, I'm pretty new to the ruby community).

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I didn't want to be harsh, but whenever something new comes out I like to try it right away. As of right now, it's looks too involved to get started with.

Sort that part out asap if you want people to give feedback and try it!</comment></comment></comment>


EC2 now out of limited beta; four-core and eight-core instances now available - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=241

<comment><USER2> Some shortcomings that still irk me.

[http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329797&th...](http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329797&threshold=2&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=21000749)

<comment><USER3> Yes, it looks like Amazon has been solving the easy problems (paid AMIs, bigger instances) first, while the hard problems will be addressed later. But given that it took a year or so to add large instances, I wonder when load balancing and storage will be improved.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The 1.7TB drive on the extra-large instance seems strange to me. Who needs that much non-persistent storage?

<comment><USER4> Is the instance storage faster? I know there is discernible latency with file transfer between EC2 and S3. Having faster local storage for each instance could be very beneficial for swap space or temp tables, if your servers need a lot of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I still can't imagine needing that much temporary space and yet being small enough that using EC2 is still economical.

<comment><USER5> Some calculations don't need to be done that often. Recalculating for a massive data set can often be.. fudged for a period of time, in scientific computing - accuracy decreases over time, and then a full recalculation is eventually necessary. If you need major computing power, but only need it twice a month, this type of plan is economical, whether you're a large company or a small one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Way to go! Really good news.</comment>


Rushdie's New York Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/salman-rushdie-new-york-bubble/ <comment><USER2> If you want an intro to Rushdie, try Imaginary Homelands, his book of essays from long ago. His craftsmanship with language and insight makes it clear why he's a leading writer (and I'm not).

</comment><comment><USER3> >Salman Rushdie has managed, within a year of the 2016 election, to publish the first novel of the Trumpian Era

Nope -- easily beaten by Howard Jacobson's _Pussy_. Rushdie however still has an opportunity to write the first _good_ novel of the Trumpian era.

<comment><USER4> I was at an event this week where Rushdie was speaking about this book (among other things)[0], apparently pretty much all of the book was written before the election - the reality just worked out in a way that it fit with the book. In a sense, he was saying, the book told him that this is how things had to work out, even though he's very much against the election result... So the trick to "be the first" is to be ahead of the curve, I guess.

[0]: [https://membership.theguardian.com/event/salman-rushdie-a- li...](https://membership.theguardian.com/event/salman-rushdie-a-life-in- writing-34360437995)

<comment><USER3> I think in Jacobson's case he was fast just because he was doing his regular schtick on autopilot. A pretty uninspiring read. Great cover though.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Bi-Directional Replication in Postgres Transactional? - <AUTHOR> http://sdf.org/~riley/blog/2016/01/04/is-bi-directional-replication-bdr-in-postgres-transactional/ <comment><USER3> _> It's better to think of BDR like other eventually consistent data stores […]_

with the exception that this will never be consistent.

Silently corrupting data goes totally against the usual Postgres spirit (which might be one of the reasons why the BDR patches haven't been accepted yet). Normally, if $THING can't be guaranteed to be done right, then Postgres just doesn't offer the feature (or throws a specific error).

If handling transactions isn't feasible for BDR, then it should refuse BEGIN's instead of accepting them and silently corrupting data.

If handling transactions across tables isn't feasible for BDR, it should blow up once you touch more than one table, forcing you to roll the whole transaction (which has so far only touched one table) back.

It's totally fine if your tool can't do $THING. Especially in matters of multi master replication which is a really hard problem. However, I would really want your tool to be honest about its deficiencies and tell me so I can try to find a workaround.

(Of course this could also just be a "simple" bug at which point, you can disregard this rant and just fix the issue :p)

<comment><USER4> > Silently corrupting data goes totally against the usual Postgres spirit > (which might be one of the reasons why the BDR patches haven't been accepted > yet). Normally, if $THING can't be guaranteed to be done right, then > Postgres just doesn't offer the feature (or throws a specific error).

There's a good set of scenarios, particularly globally distributed datastores, where latency makes it infeasible to make strong guarantees. That's what BDR was designed for. That's why you can configure conflict handling and add conflict handlers to resolve conflicts.

And it's not "silently corrupting" things - it's logging the conflicts to postgresql's log and, if configured, to a historical table.

> If handling transactions isn't feasible for BDR, then it should refuse > BEGIN's instead of accepting them and silently corrupting data.

That just depends on what you define as "handling transactions". You can have multi statement transactions which are atomic - something rather useful for a lot of usecases. Other sessions, on any node, will never see a partially applied set of DML from within a transaction. Also useful.

I agree that it'd be helpful to expand BDR docs on the specifics of what consistency to expect when doing what.

<comment><USER3> _> And it's not "silently corrupting" things - it's logging the conflicts to postgresql's log and, if configured, to a historical table._

I stand corrected. Still, it would be useful if there was a mode when it blew up because that would make sure the data is always consistent even if the application forgets to check the historical table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does the author think _should_ happen here?

Two servers independently committed conflicting transactions, which is always a possibility for multi-master in the general case. You can't have independence and dependence on the same variable at the same time.

Now, maybe BDR could do better for the case the author is concerned about, but the author hasn't explained what it should do and why it's better.

The author seems to want the entire conflicting transaction to be rejected, but it's already been committed on the remote node so I don't see how that helps. They will never be back in sync again until you sort it out.

You should use BDR in cases where you can come up with some reasonable conflict resolution. For instance, allow inventory to go negative, and inform one customer of a delay with their order.

</comment><comment><USER4> What the author of that blog post expects isn't realistically possible in a general async multi master system. You can't really have conflict free changes, that are consistent across values to boot, across distributed nodes unless you: a) are synchronous in some way (e.g. distributed locks) - <USER2> you don't really want in a geographically distributed system because of the heavy latency impact or b) partition your data in a way that doesn't requir any changes to span nodes.

In many scenarios these restrictions are unacceptable, and dealing with potential inconsistencies is the smaller (but y no means small) evil. If you indeed need it, you need to design your spoliation accordingly.

There are workloads where it's easy to deal with such problems. If there are only inserts, without constraints there often not much to do. In other cases you can simply accept rare inconsistencies.

Quite often the majority of writes don't need to care, but a small portion needs to be much more careful. E.g by using distributed 2pc, or BT always going through a specific node.

</comment><comment><USER6> But, how could they really be? Wouldn't you always come up against the CAP theorem (treting delays like short partitions)?

</comment><comment><USER7> The thing that I can't find a simple answer to and it bugs me: master-master replication is pretty common in MySQL, is the MySQL implementation inherently flawed somehow but people are still using it (which would be against the spirit of PG, and rightly so), or is it something about Postgres that makes it specifically difficult to implement?

<comment><USER8> Master-Master in plain MySQL is incredibly hackish, but it's not that hard to design your database schema around these limitations and avoid conflicting writes in _most_ real-life scenarios.

Then there is Oracle's MySQL Cluster (never seen that in production, no idea how well it works) and Percona's MariaDB Galera Cluster, which… well: [https://aphyr.com/posts/328-jepsen-percona-xtradb- cluster](https://aphyr.com/posts/328-jepsen-percona-xtradb-cluster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Progammers worry too much about achieving perfect instant consistency which is impossible anyway, because so far Eintein's theory of special relativity holds true. The priority of the database needs to be to accurately capture and store facts, as they occour in the real world. Yes certain contraints may be breached, but as long as the activity is tracked correctly, these can be resolved later. Bank systems are not consistent, with HSBC for example even if I do an inter account transfer, the lags are often several minutes, international payments are slow antiquated and involve many human interactions. Checks are even worse, as a student I could go way over my overdraft limit because I deliberatly got extra checkbooks at the start of term, then with my check guarantee card I could cash £50 for each check, even at my own bank who knew i was over limit? But I still of course was liable to repay these and I did in full, because they were all recorded accuratly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bolting on replication into an existing product is very hard. It usually is something that has to sit at the core of the product to be done right. It seems this sort feature cuts vertically from core all the way to the user level API.

</comment><comment><USER11> None of this is surprising. I'm not sure what the author was expecting? Or if they're simply clarifying the scenario for others as a warning.

 _> "You would be paying that 70ms cost four different times."_

Right, and either you're willing to pay that cost OR temporary inconsistency is acceptable to you. BDR doesn't warp the speed of light.

Also: If bank accounts are involved, inconsistency is not acceptable. Someone will bankrupt you. That's not BDR's fault.

<comment><USER4> > Also: If bank accounts are involved, inconsistency is not acceptable. > Someone will bankrupt you. That's not BDR's fault.

Fun fact: a large portion of bank accounting systems are _not_ fully consistent. It's a but scary at first, but of you think about it, it's not that surprising: e.g. not all ATMs and shops are always online, particularly in the past. Many systems also couldn't and some still can't, keep up with the full load on peak times in a central manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that logical decoding (the rather unfriendly name for the API that lets you subscribe to streams of changes coming out of Postgres) _does_ demarcate transactions. The lack of transactionality in BDR is not the API's fault.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. BDR also doesn't even have that fault in general. Conflict handling happening in a row basis and not having any form of transaction are two very different pair of shoes.

FWIW: I'm not particularly happy about the name either. But we fought over names so long that agreeing on something subpar was better than not having the feature. It was originally named changeset extraction. Not sure if that'd have been better.</comment></comment>


Can We Just Have Medicare for All Already? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/affordable-care-act-federal-judge-ruling <comment><USER2> Can we at least try a free market approach already?

<comment><USER3> Are you being serious? And if you are could you expand?

How would someone born with Cystic fibrosis survive in your scenario?

<comment><USER4> As someone with CF, I love that preexisting conditions can no longer be denied insurance. At the same time, I want to make sure that companies like Vertex have sufficient profit motivation. I definitely don't feel like a purer free market would support that, but I don't have 100% confidence in Medicare without significant reforms either.

<comment><USER3> I'm not American, so I don't have any experience of Medicare etc. I don't particularly share your concern about sufficient profit motives. I think the free market breaks down when both parties know that for one party, it is literally a matter of life and death.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Living like a college student - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbluemagenta.com/2010/09/11/living-like-a-college-student

<comment><USER2> If you can keep a high enough margin in your checking account (which I'm sure you can if you're cutting a grand to Sallie at a crack) you can just set to auto pay your credit card bill in full each month. Assuming your bank offers the feature.

With this and some elementary math skills you can safely use a credit card. Also generating some perks and a good history with it.

Don't get me wrong, the #1 used thing in my wallet is my check card, but you don't have to be terrified of the other plastic either.

How many times has your check card saved you from recklessness? For example, "I'm sorry sir your debit card was declined, you have no money." "Oops, I totally forgot what my balance was."

If this doesn't happen with your check card, I'm pretty sure you can keep yourself from getting over your head with credit cards too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally I never use a checking account as any NSF (non sufficient funds) fees will absolutely kill your account. I've had NSF fees of about $1500 due to a family emergency. What I have now is a line of credit and a credit card.. much less of a hassle having to watch where my money is.</comment>


You Commit Three Felonies a Day - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842.html

<comment><USER2> When I read this line,

 _Prosecutors identify defendants to go after instead of finding a law that was broken and figuring out who did it._

I thought it made the whole piece. It's quite clear to anyone who follows federal cases that this is exactly what is going on, and it is rather obvious why anything that enables this is perverting justice.

<comment><USER3> The trend is pretty scary -- if any given normal activity could conceivably be made into a "crime," then you end up with a sort of underclass of people trying to keep prosecutors and police happy because they know that no matter what they do they could be hauled into court at any moment. That's wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The concept of punishment is also out of whack. If this guy was convicted of wiretapping, he could go to prison for longer than someone who ran someone else over with their car.

(The reason is that "intent" is well defined with respect to murder/manslaughter, but not with newer crimes.)

<comment><USER5> And if he was caught with marijuana three times, he could go to prison for life!

<comment><USER4> Citation? 3-strikes laws are for felonies, and marijuana possession is a misdemeanor in most (all?) places in the US.

<comment><USER6> It is a felony where I live...in Arizona.

<comment><USER7> Ouch... do they have a three strikes law there? By the way I just went to Phoenix and I really don't like the speeding cameras. I am curious though, do they work to make the traffic overall smoother? When I was there I didn't see any traffic.

<comment><USER4> Speeding cameras are a way to increase city revenues without raising taxes.

<comment><USER8> As someone who navigates roads without a steel cage around myself, I wish red light cameras were replaced with Red Alert-style Tesla coils. Running red lights is dumb. Cameras make the roads safer.

<comment><USER7> I was actually only talking about speeding cameras. The red light cams are ok with me as long as they don't change the yellow length to make more money. If speeding cameras were used to improve overall flow of traffic I would be ok with them too.

I can see them positively affecting traffic because I have seen how backed up traffic can get when a cop pulls someone over for a speeding ticket.

Spelling mistakes == commenting from my iPhone.

<comment><USER8> Oops, I misread. Speed limits are set arbitrarily low in some places compared with the design of the road, so I usually disagree with speed limits anyway. If you want people to drive more slowly, change the road to make them want to drive more slowly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is crap. Councilman did more than store emails. He gave away free email accounts, then he spied on those who got emails from Amazon.com. The dude argued that because the emails went into storage on his server for even a second that he wasn't wiretapping. The judge agreed. On appeal, both the Justice Department and the EFF wrote in to say that counts as wiretapping. Let me repeat: in this case the EFF and the Justice Department agreed the dude was wiretapping. The whole rest of the piece falls apart if you know anything about the case. This is typical of the WSJ's opinion page -- which holds to NONE of the standards of its news pages.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Congress has demonstrated a growing dysfunction in crafting legislation that can in fact be understood."

They write so many laws, even without considering regulations and State and local laws, that you can't even READ them all, much less understand them. Where do you think the "tyranny of the lawyers" has come from; they've been doing this for decades.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article didn't do much to support the "Three Felonies a Day" thesis. More support for the tired, more general "laws are bullshit" refrain, but not for the thesis in the title.

<comment><USER12> Opposition to vague or unenforceable laws is not the same thing as opposition to the rule of law, in general. In fact, I think -- as, e.g., Lawrence Lessig has argued wrt copyright -- such laws might have a corrosive effect on general support for the rule of law and could be opposed on those grounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Phew! I'm glad this doesn't apply to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> More than that, but that's another story for another day.

<comment><USER15> And another site.

<comment><USER14> Er, "but that's another story for another day" isn't an actual promise to spill the beans. Colloquially it means the speaker will likely never reveal the secret(s), and when made in passing the reference is intended to be lightly humorous. Time to roll up the Jump to Conclusions mat.</comment></comment></comment>


The Billion-Dollar Telescope Race - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/the-billion_dollar-telescope-race <comment><USER2> > No wonder, then, that many leading astronomers in the 1980s and early > > 1990s had written off Nelson's scheme. A 1993 Los Angeles Times > profile of > Nelson, for instance, quotes an anonymous source it > describes as "one of > the nation's top telescope designers." The > anonymous source rated Nelson > an "arrogant fool" and predicted that > the W.M. Keck Observatory's $200 > million price tag would ultimately > just be money down the drain.

> Yet when in 1992 the Keck telescope—followed by its cousin Keck II in > > 1996—instead delivered on its designers' promise of ushering in a new > era > of 10-meter class astronomy, other observatories around the world > were > caught by surprise.

I think it should also be noted that Keck was "competing" with a similar-sized telescope which ended up being known as the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). LBT had a huge number of issues, both with engineering and funding, that lead to almost 20 years of delay. Part of the problem was that LBT is more technically challenging than Keck, since it has two large mirrors on a common mount (like a pair of binoculars). But like Keck, LBT also had difficulties with protesters, but the objections were more environmental than cultural (Mt. Graham is the home to an endangered species of squirrel). All of this is to say that it wasn't unreasonable for the astronomical community to be skeptical of Keck since a project similar in scale ended up far behind schedule and over budget.

</comment><comment><USER3> The TMT, the only telescope of the three that is trying to go into Hawaii, got a major setback days ago when its building permit for its site atop Mauna Kea was denied by the Hawaii State Supreme Court ([http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8a57f575c6ed41958de678ade72bc...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8a57f575c6ed41958de678ade72bc77a/hawaii- supreme-court-denies-telescope-construction))

<comment><USER2> When astronomers decide to build a telescope they do an extensive site selection study to figure out where the best place to build the telescope is. The most important factors are things you would expect: how cloudy the site is, the elevation of the site, latitude, light pollution, etc. But they also consider the political feasibility of building the telescope. [1] Although Mauna Kea is a better site on purely scientific grounds than the Chile site where GMT is going to be built, Mauna Kea has always been dinged in these site selection reviews for the political problems of getting the telescope built. TMT decided to risk the political difficulties for the better site. It seems that the political objections to the TMT were stronger than they anticipated.

There are actually some excellent sites in various parts of the world that don't yet have telescopes on them because the infrastructure isn't there yet to support them. If my memory serves right, there is a site in Nairobi that is one of the best in the world scientifically, but it's unfeasible economically and politically to build a large telescope there. There was also a site in Morocco that made the short list as a site for the E-ELT. As economies improve, though, these sites will eventually be developed. In the past 15 years the infrastructure in India has gotten to the point that it was possible to build the Indian Astronomical Observatory on a very good site in the Himalayas. I think China is now building (or at least considering) another observatory somewhere in the Himalayas as well.

[1]: For a list of some of the factors considered, see this paper, especially Table 1: [http://authors.library.caltech.edu/19568/1/Schoeck2007p8596W...](http://authors.library.caltech.edu/19568/1/Schoeck2007p8596Workshop_On_Astronomical_Site_Evaluation.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Yes, the astronomers I know have been fearing this shoe would drop for several years now as the protests have gained strength. Chile is looking pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whatever happened to putting liquid rotating mirror telescopes on the moon? Here's an article explaining the idea: [http://science.nasa.gov/science- news/science-at-nasa/2008/09...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science- at-nasa/2008/09oct_liquidmirror/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd say that a billion dollars seems like far too much money considering all the problems that money could solve here on earth. It could be spent on general science education, which imho would probably result in greater discoveries over the long term. But LeBron James just inked a deal that could see him earn that much for bouncing a ball.

<comment><USER6> We spend trillions of dollars a year on solving problems "here on Earth", that does not obviate the ability nor the need to spend money on pure scientific research.

Consider how much the advancement of science has contributed to the wealth and health of mankind. Hundreds of billions of person-years in healthy life. _Quadrillions_. Literally _quadrillions_ of dollars of value and economic activity added due to the understanding of gas laws, thermodynamics, material science, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, etc. Can you think of anything with such a tremendous return on investment?

<comment><USER5> Nobody is calling for an end to astronomy spending, let alone ending blue sky research. But there are always efficients that must be debated. Spending a billion on one telescope (or one LHC) must be weighed against spending 100-million on each of ten. There are certainly discoveries that do need the bigger microscope, but there are a great many areas of science that are underfunded. Seeing a billion go to one device should be a red flag warranting serious debate.

There is also a Freudian aspect to any "worlds biggest" project. They are a magnet for waste and competition totally outside the arena of science.</comment></comment></comment>


Portugal cable provider created a filter for vuvuzelas - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://arrifana.org/blog/2010/06/vuvuzelas-servico-publico/&sl=pt&tl=en

<comment><USER2> The translation is amazing. I had no idea machine translation had come so far. I guess I need to read more stuff in languages I don't understand.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this part of the machine translation: "Yes, it works in RTP HD but only after the 3rd Tuesday of next week"

I wonder how many Tuesdays a typical week has in Portugal?

<comment><USER4> The portuguese "Terça" means both Tuesday and third, must be quite tricky to catch

<comment><USER4> if you change the wording from "a partir de 3ª feira da semana" to " a partir de Terça feira da semana" it does translate it correctly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sky Sports in the UK has a similar setup. Press the RED button and filter out the vuvuzelas ..

<comment><USER6> Sky Sports aren't showing the world cup?</comment></comment>


Do You Know Where Your Data Is And Who Reads It? Varonis Knows - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/10/21/do-you-know-where-your-data-is-and-who-reads-it-varonis-knows/

<comment><USER2> Varonis is Latvian for hero :)</comment>


Show HN: Ballerina – Cloud Native Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://ballerina.io <comment><AUTHOR> Ballerina is a compiled, type safe, and concurrent programming language to make it easy to write integration services, which are typically the glue between connecting different endpoints with distributed transactions, reliable messaging, mediation, transformation, and orchestration.

These are all capabilities that are usually built into integration products around a language, though these concepts are baked into the syntax and the language design.

The platform portion contains additional runtimes components for enabling this functionality including an API gateway, a message broker, a transaction coordinator, and a bridge for brokering transactions to services that are written in other languages.

There are roughly 100 committers. It's a lot of people that were involved in Apache Synapse and WSO2 ESB.

</comment><comment><USER2> As a language nerd, I had to take a look. But I really can't figure out what this is about.

"Ballerina makes it easy to create resilient services that integrate and orchestrate transactions across distributed endpoints."

Is it real or a joke? It sounds like a markov chain generator was fed with tech mumbo jumbo and then generated this?

If it's real - what is the no nonsense description?

And who is behind it?

<comment><USER3> I'm the lead designer of Ballerina.

Its a real language :-). Please check the spec out here: [https://ballerina.io/res/Ballerina-Language-Specification- WD...](https://ballerina.io/res/Ballerina-Language-Specification- WD-2015-05-01.pdf).

Feedback welcome!

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really interesting. Is it production ready? What companies, if any, are using this in production?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using it in production at WSO2 now - we have gateways and web site APIs running it.

We just made a 0.970.0 release last week which contains significant alterations. The language and runtime have been in iterative design and test for a couple years.

We are just now putting live ballerina.io so that we can start working within the community to gain adoption. A number of WSO2 customers are working with it in development and pre-production, but we asked them to not consider production deployments until the rework was done.

We hope to hit a 1.0 milestone by the end of the year where we will guarantee backwards compatibility.

We do find the runtime to be extremely stable with throughput numbers about 5x higher than equivalent ESBs, and we are running long term stability tests that are doing well. We'll publish all of these results soon, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I want a "programming language" (or better, a platform) that would natively integrate different services, like Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, Trello, GitHub, Dropbox and so on like they were all in the same machine.

<comment><USER6> You are in luck, ballerina is a platform carefully designed to address most of the integration problems we face. You can have a look at ballerina central where connectors are available which are needed to integrate with third party apps like, Git twitter etc. [https://central.ballerina.io/](https://central.ballerina.io/). Also take a look at some guides available at [https://ballerina.io/learn/by- guide/](https://ballerina.io/learn/by-guide/)

<comment><USER5> Whoa, I wasn't expecting for that. I'll surely check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the way it works in Ballerina is that an endpoint is a keyword that can create an object that represented a networked location. This could be one of three things - either the caller that invoked your service, the service you author which is listening as an endpoint, or a service you want to invoke.

For the services that you want to invoke, you can create endpoint objects of different types. The objects during initialization use connectors to establish the communication. It's like doing a constructor call in an OOP. You can import different packages the way you would with any language and shared packages are available on central.

Once you have one of those endpoint objects, you can do type safe invocations against it. So you might create a Twitter connection creating a "tweeter" object. That connector then has functions which can be invoked, "tweeter -> tweet (params);". This returns a data structure that is strongly typed and mapped to the payload expected in return from the service.

It's also pretty simple to write your own packages which have your own connectors. The push / pull dynamics of packages with central are similar to Elk or DockerHub, but applied to code modules.

<comment><USER5> Ok, now I'm trouble. How is this different from using an API wrapper for any of these services in any other programming language?

I'll read more on ballerina.io anyway later to see if I can answer this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt you are trouble, it's a natural question.

On the surface every networked call feels like a method call, so absolutely, within any other language it could be done with a nicely prepared API wrapper for a similar type of connector. And, ultimately, that is what happens within a lot of ESB products that standardize how a connector should be deployed, versioned, and consumed by client applications within that environment.

Beyond that, though, the approach to the language design and the underlying implementation of connectors offers simplicity benefits that should make consuming new connectors easier and more reliable. A few things: 1\. All network-bound calls are required to use arrow `->` notations instead of dot `.` to make some important distinctions. One is that sequence diagrams make this distinction and we can auto-generate sequence diagrams from any code file as the code structure is designed to reflect how integrators model their services.

2\. Treating an endpoint as a native keyword and how that endpoint object is initialized within the language makes it opinionated, which ultimately makes configuration of some complex connectors simpler than what would be seen in API wrappers. If you take a look at the circuit breaker example, the circuit breaker is added as a configuration parameter to an outgoing HTTP connection. Of course, other languages can be opinionated about this as well, but they almost always delegate this to an add-on framework, and there are always some minor quirks to how frameworks work with their language of choice. So we get to bypass that and ultimately the syntax gets minimized to the point where it's easier to embrace and learn.

3\. The underlying concurrency model in the language's runtime is based upon workers for parallelization, which are how sequence diagrams are modeled. Languages like Java map threads to classes. Node maps threads to the event processor, and so forth. When an HTTP -> call is made, we can do some nice internal optimizations such that while the code that you write will see that network call as a blocking call, behind the scenes, the runtime treats the outbound request as one worker and receiving the response as a second worker. Each worker is mapped to a different thread and you get some nice throughput mechanics because the system's scheduler releases a thread when the request is made. Because we know that any connector's invocation is going over a network with this syntax, there are interesting thread scheduling algorithms we can implement. We are seeing about 5x the TPS with a simple routing service built in Ballerina vs. the same type of service that we would implement in an ESB like Camel or Apache.

There are other thing that the designers will probably comment on, too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>