Show HN: Faast.js – Serverless Batch Computing Made Simple - <AUTHOR> https://faastjs.org <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, faast.js is a library that allows you to use serverless to run batch processing jobs. It makes it super easy to run regular functions as serverless functions. This is one of my first open source projects and I'd be happy to answer any questions here.

<comment><USER2> Hi,

Do you think serverless pricing model contradicts with batch operations ? I think that you normally pay for duration of tasks and ram usage etc. Batch jobs are supposed to be running long. I'm probably missing something here. Would you tell me little bit more ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on the specific use case. Some of the use cases I envision have sharp spikes in demand, and serverless can provide better service and price/performance. Part of faast.js is a cost analyzer that can tell you in real time how much your workload costs. What I found is that most people are probably using the wrong memory sizes for their lambda functions to optimize for price/performance. More on that when I write my next blog post... If you want a preview, check out this chart from the documentation: [https://faastjs.org/docs/cost-estimates](https://faastjs.org/docs/cost- estimates)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From what I can tell, it's the invocation model and deployment that is unique here?

You invoke faast from your local machine (or build server, or cron job, whatever), and in turn it deploys some functions to a serverless platform and runs them, then tears them all down when complete. Eg, from the site, this code runs locally:

        import { faast } from "faastjs";
        import * as funcs from "./functions";

        (async () => {
            const m = await faast("aws", funcs);
            try {
                // m.functions.hello: string => Promise<string>
                const result = await m.functions.hello("world");
                console.log(result);
            } finally {
                await m.cleanup();
            }
        })();

You wouldn't want to run _this code_ on serverless, as you'd be paying for compute time of just waiting for all the other tasks to complete.

It would be useful to see a discussion about how and where to host this entry code, may even a topic on "Running in production".

It's definitely a neat idea because if you control the event that kicks everything off anyway (eg: "create monthly invoices" or "build daily reports") you can deploy the latest version of everything, run it and clean it up in essentially a single step.

(Please correct me if I've misunderstood any of the details here!)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're basically correct, and thanks for the suggestion to add documentation about deployment in production.

One special case is if your functions return a lot of data; outbound data charges can get expensive fast, and you'll be limited in getting responses by your network link. So you can run the coordinator code on, say, EC2 in the same region and then the link to Lambda is super fast and you won't have any outbound data costs.

<comment><USER4> This is how I interpreted it's usage too. We've all started an instance on DO/AWS/GCP/ETC for some batch job were we wanted 32 cores or whatnot. This lets you use lambda's for the scaling instead of the cores directly. How efficient this is performance wise I have no clue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This can be great for scrapping jobs!

There are IP-based rate limiters on sites (linkedIn, facebook, etc), but each lambda has a new public IP so by using faast.js, I can stay under the radar.

Plus you can essentially spawn a headless chrome (puppeteer) to do advanced stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, I've put together a simple example of using puppeteer with faast.js in this repo: [https://github.com/faastjs/examples/tree/master/aws- puppetee...](https://github.com/faastjs/examples/tree/master/aws-puppeteer-ts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting project, the problem with Serverless service provided by different public cloud vendors is that programming and API are not uniform. I think Faast.js is on the right path to creating a unified interface for different Serverless services.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't Serverless (the framework, not the concept) abstract this away?

[https://serverless.com/framework/docs/providers/](https://serverless.com/framework/docs/providers/)

(not familiar enough with that framework to form an opinion one way or the other)

<comment><USER8> I'm not experienced on this stuff either, but it seems like Serverless (the org/framework) is designed for architecting whole sites/apps, whereas faast.js is focussed on hhandling batch computing jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love what you did!

We resently were exactly in a situation where we had to do heavy processing of ~4000 items each running between 1-10minutes. To speed the process up we ran it on lambda. That means our process went down from 10h++ on a single core computer to about 15min running it on 4000 lambdas.

Your library would have saved us quite some work as it would take away a lot of Aws config, deploy, etc....

Btw: I'm thinking of building a similar library for multi core/webworkers for node.js. currently a lot of boilerplate is required on node.js to make a loop run parallel on all cores.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. What kind of data was it, if you don't mind sharing?

Faast.js can be used with multi-core, just use the "local" mode and run it on a large box. I'm billing this as a way to test locally before running in the cloud, but it's actually a completely viable way to run parallel processes on one machine, with the option to run on serverless with a one line change.

<comment><USER9> Wow that's awesome. I'll have a look at it ASAP. We have actually just converted our lambda code to run on a multi core machine + much wiser algorithms to massively speed up the process.

I have not deeply look into your library yet. But how do you deal with de/serialising? We use [https://www.npmjs.com/package/class- transformer](https://www.npmjs.com/package/class-transformer) to correctly de/serialise ts-objects.

Also, do you create a new webworker per function call or do you create only as many workers as threads/cores on the machine and run the functions inside those? Starting a webworker can be very expensive if the serialised data is large .

Ps: each lambda function ran a special parsing of complex mathematics- excercises. We are an ed-tech company ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> The serialization/deserialization is just JSON for now, though I plan on adding some configurability and perhaps changing the implementation at some point. There is some runtime checking to make sure the arguments are correctly serializable.

In local mode, a process is created up to the concurrency limit you specify, and each process is reused for subsequent calls (mimicking how Lambda reuses containers, allowing you to use the same caching behavior you'd use on Lambda). I'm not currently using webworkers, but that's something I could see a new mode for easily. For larger data, I would recommend storing arguments and return values directly in cloud storage like S3, or on local disk in local mode.

I would be interested to learn how your experiment with faast.js goes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is neat, but would be more useful if it could deploy cloud functions made in language {x} and provide local js proxies for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. Any specific example you have in mind?

<comment><USER11> Python is a good place to start.

<comment><USER12> Pywren ([http://pywren.io/](http://pywren.io/)) seems to be basically this project, but in Python

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very neat! Last year I had to essentially do this on GCP and relied on a very similar implementation. Everyone was surprised to see JS being used for data processing but it worked wonderfully.

One thing I want to ask is the retries, how do you handle that currently? I ran into multiple cases where functions would fail for transient reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Functions need to be idempotent, so you have to assume they will be retried. Faast.js will proactively do retries in some cases where it thinks a function is slow, to reduce tail latency.

If a function fails to execute for transient reasons and exceeds the retry maximum (a config setting you can change), then it will reject the return value promise. You can catch that and handle with another attempt, or report an error, or just ignore it and report less accurate or complete results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me a bit of like 2019's version of RMI...

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks interesting. The concept reminds me of RPyC</comment>


When you should fire your most irreplaceable team members - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gigantt.com/2012/12/fire-your-most-irreplaceable-team.html

<comment><USER2> This is great... from a managers point of view. A manager that sees an employee as an easy replaceable part in a machine. A manager that is totally oblivious to an employees workload and the time-cost accompanied with offloading all of one's knowledge into a format that is easy to transfer and teach.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the contrary. This view assumes that replacing employees is about the hardest thing you have to do. Good people are extremely rare. So to mitigate the problem, and also to promote intellectual cross pollination within the organization, it's a very good idea to make sure everyone remembers to document what they know by default. There's no need to assume this means extra work - it just means you divide your time differently, giving more priority to communicating what you know. As an _employee_ I always strove to do just that - volunteer to document and spread on whatever I brought with me into the organization, and everything I picked up along the way, too. I saw this not as a chore but as a an opportunity to share, influence and also have less of a headache when the time eventually comes to move on to the next adventure.

<comment><USER3> right. key employees documenting everything they know that makes them valuable. This seems to be some empty suit managers wet dream.

As a thought experiment, imagine Google asking Peter Norvig to document everything he knows. The key assumption here is that what really makes your key employees valuable is _documentable_ , and transferable (from said document to someone else's head) to the point where someone else can just read some document and replace him.

Sure, documenting _some_ things may be valuable, but 'fire your most valuable team member' is either utter cluelessness,or just link bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> First, not every employee is a unique and rare snowflake - a one in a million hire. People _are_ mostly replaceable. This is reality, not a wet dream. Using an example to the contrary does not disprove the rule, just highlights an exception.

If you read the post carefully, it describes very clearly what makes employee valuable _besides_ their domain knowledge. It's quite a lot. That's why it's so hard to lose people. As I wrote, we each bring our own capabilities, attitudes and skill sets. But that doesn't mean that it's alright to work under the assumption that _none_ of our contributions to the organization can be documented and shared. In fact, a lot of what we do in our day to day work is pretty mundane stuff. We tackle problems, we learn things, we talk to people and make decisions. So for the most part it's entirely reasonable to ask people to share their knowledge with others through documentation by default. Mind you, documentation can be as easy as discussing things in a mailing-list vs. personal emails (one is searchable after you quit, the other pretty much disappears).

Additionally, the title of the post is clearly not to be taken literally. If you understood it to mean "find your best people, get them to document everything, and then fire them" then you misunderstood. That makes zero sense. It's those team players - the people who volunteer their knowledge - who are the most precious of all employees, and those are the ones you never actually want to let go.

On the other hand, the ones who are sure that their own Peter Norvig level "genius" could never be put into documentation, are the problem.

For what it's worth, this isn't an "empty suit's" dream. This is the way I've seen it done as a developer in a few software companies, and it's something I'm trying to promote ever since. And I stand by the title of the post, even if you find it controversial. Every organization has its local "guru" knowledge hoarder who is essentially a huge pain in the ass to manage because, intentionally or not, he's not playing well with others. He loves being a required participant in every single meeting. And heaven help you if you try to drive a change he disagrees with - no chance of that happening. These people should be prime candidates to get shit canned as early as possible. By adopting an organization-wide "document by default" attitude you gradually see less and less of this problem and reduce the chances of new hoarders sprouting up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can write documentation all day long, you can't avoid the fact that someone who's spent 10 years working on a project will have so much intricate knowledge about it that they are close to irreplacable. It takes months for a new recruit to get even close to productive if they haven't experienced that technology before. If you required all your team members to document so much that they could walk out the door and not be missed, you'd never get anything done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. But it's a goal to strive to. Nobody's proposing people spend their entire day documenting, but if they remember to document decisions/knowledge by default they mitigate the problem. Besides, who said it's a good thing to have one person with 10 years of very specific, undocumented domain expertise? Sure, in rare cases it's some outlier guru. Sometimes you have PhDs who spent 10 years becoming domain experts and you can hardly expect them to be able to serialize it all into the company wiki. That happens. But I'd bet that in most cases these are just people who positioned themselves into a cozy role, guaranteeing you can never let them go. These are liabilities, not assets.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it ok to interview with other companies after accepting an offer? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,<p>I'm a college senior who recently accepted a full-time position at a tech company after I graduate, but was interested in interviewing with some of the other companies like Amazon and Google just for the hell of it to see if I can pass. I'm actually interested in moving into these companies in the future, but I was wondering if this is considered to be bad practice or unethical? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Whenever we made offers to students who hadn't yet graduated we all made it very clear that they are free to interview and accept other offers and we should be prepared for that situation (not in any particular way, but mentally). They didn't owe us anything.

Of course we made attractive offers to candidates we thought were a great fit and where we thought that feeling was mutual. and we never had a candidate accept and then take another job.

to mathattacks points:

\- You are young, and your career will be long.

\- No one is going to blame you for looking out for yourself.

\- No one is going to go out of their way to black ball an anyone over an entry level position. You are not that special.

\- strong developers have the world by the balls. There is no reason to play loyalty to someone who isn't even paying you. It's time to get yours.

If it were me I wouldn't have accepted the offer. Assuming you are graduating in May, it'd be way too early for me to make a commitment. But thats me. However, it wouldn't weigh one gram on my conscience if I accepted the offer and kept interviewing to find a better fit. I'd probably use the offer as a bargaining chip.

<comment><USER3> DJB - I greatly respect what your company is doing, but I think your firm is in the minority. This is why most college placement offices suspend campus recruiting for people who reneg on offers. I cite MIT Sloan only because I found their policy by accident when I couldn't find their undergrad one. This is consistent with what I've seen at many other places. (I have no link to MIT) From <http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cdo/policies.php>

"We expect that all offers and acceptances be made in good faith. Students are obliged to honor accepted offers. Reneging on an acceptance is a breach of MIT Sloan's Student Recruiting Policies. If a student reneges on an offer, the recruiter should notify Jackie Wilbur at 617-258-6492, as soon as possible. We will review the situation and follow up on your behalf."

<comment><USER2> It works both ways. According to that link they also require offers to be open offers until January or February (depending on the position).

Interesting link. But I'm still not convinced the circumstances of an MIT MBA offer are similar to an entry level software developer offer.

Let me ask you a question. If it is his ethical duty keep up his end of the acceptance, how long must he stay at the job before it's ok to leave? When does the at will employment argument enter the picture?

Bottom line, the market for software developers is too hot right now to settle. Who knows when these conditions will happen again, if ever.

<comment><USER3> I pulled the MBA link only for convenience. In my experience competitive undergrad programs are similar. Certainly companies have responsibilities too. In general I think a year is the right period to stick something out. If you hate the industry you hired into, backing out isn't awful.

Let's take a step back and go the case in question. Here the individual just wants to see if they could get accepted later by interviewing now. In my mind that is both unethical and carries negative consequences.

I promise I'm not this preachy in person!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally speaking, you should stop interviewing once you have accepted an offer. Your soon-to-be employer has moved from decided to give you job to planning how you will contribute to the company. It is extremely poor form to back out post offer acceptance (exceptions would be some kind significant life event). On the flip side, if you are planning to interview with no intention of accepting a job from a company then you are wasting their time and potentially depriving a viable candidate of an opportunity to interview. If you get a call from a Google or an Amazon, explain your situation, and use it as opportunity to cultivate a network. They will appreciate your ethics, and if you don't like your job, you can reconnect in 6 months or a year. The bottom line is that you have accepted a job -- relax and enjoy your remaining months of little to no responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER5> At first reading, Mathattack's response seems obviously the most appropriate (Unethical - presenting yourself under false pretenses, possibly breaking the rules of your placement office, lacking integrity, endangering your reputation, etc), but upon further reflection, Horofox's observation has currency also - in a world that now seems totally lacking in corporate responsibility to the worker (intentionally unfunding/underfunding pensions, layoffs of real people that occur strictly as a 'this quarter' response to share price, layoffs that happen as a result of offshoring _every single function possible_ in order to maximize shareholder profit, prole/CEO pay ratios which haven't been seen since the Emancipation Proclamation, and on and on ad nauseum) why shouldn't each of us behave in a purely rational/self interested way?

Is there a reason to have regard for the corporation in today's world? Odds are the company you accepted the offer from was very likely one which has no notion of a social contract - they need you today and if they don't need you tomorrow you'll surely be gone without a second thought, and if that's the case shouldn't we behave in a similar manner? Or does personal integrity still matter?

<comment><USER3> Bayouborne-

Relevant points, but a couple thoughts:

\- For better or worse, work is like the prisoner's dilemma game. Some people assume, "Screw everyone else" because they view the game as just one play. In the reality, we have long careers. Companies that routinely take advantage of their employees don't stick around forever. In most fields being known as someone who will take the short term selfish path every time will eventually hurt you.

\- The obvious second point is of course you should avoid companies that have too crazy a CEO to workerbee pay scale, and that treat their employees poorly.

\- Most of the great success stories in technology are build on loyalty. Ron Conway commands great personal loyalty. (And goes the extra yard for his firms) Many of the legends of Silicon Valley are mentors to large groups of people. Not everyone acts selfishly. But if you do act unduly selfishly, you'll turn off even the most magnanimous people that can help.

Just my 2 cents, but I do see this as black and white. I've seen many people take short cuts, and seen many people become highly successful. The two groups don't overlap.

<comment><USER5> It appears (from my vantage point 1300 miles away) that the Valley is somewhat different what a lot of America has become. There may still exist in Cupertino, Los Gatos, etc, an enlightened collegiality, but what about the rest of non-startup America?

I think we've again become the proverbial _Cog in the Machine_ , actually worse than that, not even a cog, just the bloody goop that's unfortunately still needed for the time being to keep the machine running - and as the machine inevitably becomes more efficient, fewer cogs and a hell of a lot less lubricant will be needed. Again, in this new Brave New World, why should we care about the corporation? Sorry if I sound like a '20s Marxist, but [it's my] natural reaction everything I've seen happen in the last decade.

<comment><USER3> Bayouborne-

I respectfully disagree. I don't want to beat a dead horse too much since I usually protect my wallet when I hear folks preaching about ethics. (Why is it that ethics discussions usually follow people's economic position?)

That said... I view it as the Golden Rule.

Imagine you're heading to Tulane or Cal Tech or Stanford to recruit. It's taking a day off your schedule, but it's important to bring new folks in to the firm. You screen eighty resumes to interview twelve people, two of which you will bring back to your office for a full day of visits with your team and management. One of the two will get an offer. That's a lot of work. How would you feel if someone was just using this as practice because he would want to work for you later? If you found out, you would blacklist him from your company.

Imagine you are one of the students at Tulane, CalTech or Stanford who doesn't have an offer yet. One lucky guy did. So you are trying hard to get on the interview list at Google, because that would certainly be a great first job out of school. Unfortunately you don't get chosen for the interview. Who does get chosen? Your classmate who already accepted an offer from somewhere else. How would that make you feel? What would you do? Talk to them? Talk to the company?

In the latter case, it's not "Us against evil companies" it is being selfish at the expense of one's peers. In both cases it backfires.

This is about people being professional with one another.

Again - I don't want to rant too much on this, as most folks who lecture on ethics usually have hidden agendas. Thanks for listening. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Completely unethical, and may come back to bite you.

Unethical because you are presenting yourself under false pretenses, taking interview slots from people who don't have jobs yet, and are possibly breaking the rules of your placement office.

It will come back to bite you in may ways. If your current employer finds out what you're doing, they may go back on your offer. (How would you like it if they kept interviewing people after they offered you the job?) If Google or Amazon find out, you may get blacklisted in the future. Classmates who see what you're up to will not trust you in the future.

Net - protect your integrity, as it takes years to make a reputation, and minutes to break it.

EDIT - fixed spelling, and add one more point - If you want to work at one of them in the future, get to know the HR reps, and keep contact with your classmates that are going there. Let them know what you're up to. They're the ones most likely to pull you through in the future. (And block it if they see you behaving poorly in the meantime)

<comment><USER6>
      Completely unethical

Wrong. Unless the company is paying him a retainer he is unemployed and therefore can entertain offers.

<comment><USER3> Wavephorm,

I respectfully disagree. He may legally entertain other offers, but that doesn't make it ethical. If it was ethical, and wouldn't cause residual harm to his reputation, there would be no issue telling the world he was doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The way you put it (and that's an important condition!), I wouldn't call it unethical. However, if you go to an interview knowing you won't accept the offer even if you get it, you're effectively wasting the interviewer's time (and there may be more than one person involved in assessing your skills). I was in a similar situation about 3.5 years ago when I scheduled interviews with three different companies, and I accepted the offer after the first one. I called and canceled the other two interviews for the same reason: I'd rather have those interviewers working with other prospects.

</comment><comment><USER8> It basically is the same situation as continuing to interview once you have a job. It's not unethical, it's how the labor market works. However, you probably don't want to let your employer know about it, and they probably won't like you very much if you take another job.

</comment><comment><USER9> The inverse perspective works too:

An employer hires you. Then they come across more candidates. They continue interviewing for the same position. You then find out that they have been interviewing, your loyalty is shaken and you know that the employer can fire you within the trial period which makes the feeling worst.

New applicants will not know that the position was filled and get formally rejected if they are not significantly better than you. If they do find out about position being pre-filled, they'll resent the employer for continuing to interview them.

Please note that employment culture is very different in many companies and to not take things for granted. Look at Steve Yeegee's recent post regarding Amazon vs Google.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's ok, they are BUYING your lifetime. So get the best deal.

Work ethics? Why should work ethics exist when companies threat people like shit?

</comment><comment><USER6> Until you receive a paycheck don't think owe them anything.

Go for the interviews. Very few corporations these days have any sense of ethics or even common decency anymore (which is why so many people build startups) so there is no reason not to decline their job offer should a better one come up.</comment>


Ross Ulbricht Appeals to Supreme Court, challenging U.S. "third party doctrine" - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/27/ross-ulbricht-files-appeal-to-the-suprem <comment><USER2> Very interesting in terms of the digital age. When I read 1984 back in 1980, I recall how the main character was afraid to do more than think, since words spoken aloud were also discoverable via omnipresent surveillance. Even private journals written on your laptop and kept local could be open to warrantless search, since you shared them with the laptop manufacturer by sheer use of the tool by this argument in extreme.

<comment><AUTHOR> > When I read 1984 back in 1980 ...

I just read it for the first time last year. I found the book incredibly frightening. It wasn't because the ideas discussed painted a scary picture of the future. It was because the ideas painted a picture of the present.

Because Orwell's dystopian vision has progressed so quickly, I'm worried we're too late to fix things. In the future, I think I'll look back and see my reading of Orwell's 1984 as a milestone that changed the course of my life. I've never in my life felt so empowered while also feeling so incredibly helpless.

<comment><USER2> My peers considered the USSR and China at the time as living embodiments of Big Brother at work, so each generation finds their corollaries I guess. It feels good to feel or know something and relate it to the world around you, that is true for better or worse.</comment></comment></comment>


Pachyderm (YC W15) – A Data Processing Tool for the Docker Generation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/23/pachyderm/

<comment><USER2> > Companies that want to get serious about data analysis often have to hire > elite programmers who specialize in writing Hadoop MapReduce jobs.

There's no need to do so, you can use Hadoop Streaming ([http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce- clien...](http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce- client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/HadoopStreaming.html)) and anything that works with stdin/stdout.

<comment><USER3> Hadoop streaming is definitely a great way to use Hadoop and actually provided a lot of the early inspiration for Pachyderm. The thing that I always found difficult when using it was dependency management. If I wanted to use libraries it was a pain to get them distributed across all of the machines in the cluster and invariably I'd get one machine with a different version of something that would mess things up. This problem was the impetus for using Docker to do MapReduce.

<comment><USER2> You can specify files & archives that have to be copied to nodes before executing the job:

> The -files and -archives options allow you to make files and archives > available to the tasks. The argument is a URI to the file or archive that > you have already uploaded to HDFS.

[http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce- clien...](http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce- client/hadoop-mapreduce-client- core/HadoopStreaming.html#Working_with_Large_Files_and_Archives)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Joe gave a great talk on Pachyderm at a recent RethinkDB meetup that's definitely worth watching: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRjk_Xsf7t4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRjk_Xsf7t4)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty awesome!

I was sold at this point:

'"if you can fit it in a Docker container, Pachyderm will distribute it over petabytes of data for you." One cool example that uses Pachyderm is this MapReduce job for analyzing and learning from blunders in chess games.'

<comment><USER3> Hi!

We actually did that demo as part of a post. We just released it right here: [https://medium.com/@jdoliner/when-grandmasters- blunder-a8198...](https://medium.com/@jdoliner/when-grandmasters- blunder-a819860b883d). Hope you enjoy it.

<comment><USER5> Pretty cool!

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So its Manta with docker instead? See [https://github.com/joyent/manta](https://github.com/joyent/manta)

<comment><USER3> I haven't actually used Manta but I think in terms of computation model this comparison is fair. According to the docs: "Users express computation in terms of shell scripts, which can make use of any programs installed in the default compute environment." The problem I see with this is that it requires you to manage a global environment which can get difficult for large teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi guys, founder here. We'll be hanging out in this thread all day to chat with you guys about what we're doing. Ask us questions!

<comment><USER7> Hi there, Pachyderm looks like it really fits into the architecture we are going for.

I only took a brief look, but it looks like it is only loosely tied to CoreOS? So hacking it to run on Kubernetes/Apache Mesos etc. should be relatively easy?

<comment><USER3> Hi! Yes, pfs is designed with the "batteries included but removable" ethos in mind and is only loosely tied to CoreOS. Getting it to run on Kubernetes and Mesos is something we're definitely going to do at some point in the near future. I've set up an issue here: [https://github.com/pachyderm/pfs/issues/29](https://github.com/pachyderm/pfs/issues/29) for tracking this effort feel free to stop by and discuss!

Also if you'd prefer email drop me a line at email@example.com.

<comment><USER8> I had the same reaction to seeing CoreOS in the intro as the other poster...I'd love to play with this, but there's no way that I'd get approval from our security folks to use this in any serious capacity.

If you're looking for other tools to support, consider Consul, which should have an almost identical interface as etcd. Also, I'm not sure if ECS and/or Docker Swarm would satisfy the rest of the CoreOS responsibilities, but those are the two that it looks likely that we'll be able to use.

<comment><USER3> Hi!!

Just to clarify, is CoreOS in general a no go for you guys and is that due to its newness or something else? I'm unfortunately pretty ignorant on what the approval process looks like for security folks.

The good news is that pfs is designed to be loosely coupled and we're definitely going to look in to support for a variety of deployment methods. Consul in particular looks like it would be a very straightforward to add, I've created an issue for it here so you can follow it: [https://github.com/pachyderm/pfs/issues/31](https://github.com/pachyderm/pfs/issues/31).

I'm hopeful about ECS as well it smells like it might be the simplest thing that could work for pfs. I'd love it if we could not even deal with a notion of machines in pfs deployments.

<comment><USER7> I can't speak for curun1r, but the requirement for a whole OS is pretty restricting, especially when you already have a whole environment with configuration management etc. based on another OS in which you invested a lot of time.

From personal experience (granted this is from the early days of CoreOS), CoreOS is only really viable if you are going for a hardcorde "dockerize everything" approach, which has too much unpolished points as of now. As of now I'd rather use a rigid base (whatever OS, chef, mesos, marathon) with the more fluid parts (services inside docker, pachyderm, etc.) on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very interesting! I will have look into this more. Two quick comments:

How does this compare to Arvados ([http://arvados.org](http://arvados.org))?

You might be interested in the common workflow language effort which among other goals is developing a multi-vendor standard for wrapping analysis tools using Docker ([https://github.com/common-workflow-language/common- workflow-...](https://github.com/common-workflow-language/common-workflow- language))

<comment><USER3> Hi,

Just read up on Arvados. I'm totally new to it but it seems really cool. I think pfs and Arvados are very philosophically aligned. Arvados seems to believe as we do that the most important thing missing from data science right now is collaboration. I didn't have the time to fully grok their architecture but it seems like there are some differences there. In particular I don't know if Arvados has git-like semantics. It does on the other hand have a ton of cool features that pfs doesn't have yet such as content addressable storage and support for in memory databases that help speed up computations (I think that's what they do at least.) Definitely a very interesting project and hopefully good ideas can flow between the ecosystems.

The common workflow language effort is definitely very interesting as well. It looks like it's bioinformatic specific right now but we're planning to have something similar but more generic in the near future and I'll definitely be looking to cwi for inspiration.

Thanks so much for the links they're both very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're looking to build complex analysis pipelines using docker, check out NextFlow ([http://www.nextflow.io](http://www.nextflow.io))</comment>


Show HN: I redesigned Steam for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://moeedm.com/steam With some time on my hands, and a lot of frustration with the design of Steam for Mac, I decided to take a stab at redesigning it from the ground up.<p>This is what came of it. <comment><USER2> Looks nice. I guess right now Valve want a consistent experience on all desktop platforms rather than custom per-platform UIs but maybe they should change their collective mind :).

I feel like the "shopping cart" item (which isn't actually a shopping cart) isn't very readable at first glance.

The link to your e-mail address at the bottom is broken (mailto: missing)

</comment><comment><USER3> Few thoughts:

\- Loading splash is very nice.

\- Grid view looks good. Would like to see your take on the "list view," which I generally prefer.

\- The chat seems to waste a lot of space, especially with the top bar. The current Steam interface is much more information-dense, which as someone with a 1280x800 screen, I very much enjoy :)

I'd love to see your take on a redesigned storefront and community sections, too. I don't really have any issue with how Steam looks now (just how it functions - the OSX app was broken for _so long_ in so many ways!), but I like the visual refresh you've made!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice take on things. I could see a very Metro-esque look evolve very easily from this for Windows, too. Steam's current theme does feel quite busy.

I do like the design of the new Big Picture mode, and I think we are probably due for a Steam redesign in the next year or so.

</comment><comment><USER5> i like a lot of this design, only thing that i'm not really a fan of is the twitter-like sidebar when browsing games.

but that's all i have to say that isn't overwhelming positive. thanks for sharing, moeed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear what you all think :)

<comment><USER6> Link on your name at the bottom is broken.

Nice work otherwise. The text is sometimes a bit fuzzy, but I'm guessing that's from Photoshop's wacky sub-pixel rendering.

Just FYI: dribbble might be a better audience...</comment></comment>


High sobriety  - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/high-sobriety-20110409-1d8gz.html?comments=71#comments While this is not tech, it is interesting because this guy (Australian) tackled the issue of the weekend binge unconventionally. Instead of harping on the problems of alcohol damage, he turned his energy into blogging over a 3 month period of self-imposed abstention.<p>He writes about the gradual process of insight and discovery about who he is (doesn't have to drink to be fun), and who his real friends are (when he tries to abstain for 3 months), and eventual realization he doesn't need alcohol and how alcohol has embedded itself into society. <comment><AUTHOR> While this is not tech, it is interesting because this guy (Australian) tackled the issue of the weekend binge unconventionally. Instead of harping on the problems of alcohol damage, he turned his energy into blogging over a 3 month period of self-imposed abstention.

He writes about the gradual process of insight and discovery about who he is (doesn't have to drink to be fun), and who his real friends are (when he tries to abstain for 3 months), and eventual realization he doesn't need alcohol and how alcohol has embedded itself into society.

Before the internet, this would have to be a very isolating process. One is almost a pariah, unless one decided to become religious or joined AA. But with the internet, he has found a bigger circle of people who cheer him on and gave him support.

<comment><USER2> The site at <http://hellosundaymorning.com.au/> is somewhat interesting, but I am not sure why you linked to this SMH article. The article is only tangentially related, since it is about the writer's personal journey with alcohol abstinence as opposed to Chris Raine's website.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the journalists own experience when HSM validated the idea and gave it sufficient credibility to start a discussion. I am curious. In this age where we talk about gamification etc, what is the underlying approach in HSM?

I wonder if HSM offers an alternate way to socially validate oneself. e.g. the HSM offers an outlet for people who still want to be around their friends, and still want to enjoy themselves, but would rather have a Sunday without hangover. i.e. HSM works just like formspring.me or MySpace.

Or is HSM approach a easy way for people to see that they can reinvent themselves and pry people away from their dependencies by voluntarily quitting for 3 months. The end of the process seems to be one where some people no longer see why it is necessary to go back to their old ways. This is the YC model where people effectively learn new skills over 3 months in a new environment.

Perhaps blogging is a way of letting people express themselves in a different manner, one more cerebral, perhaps a more introverted one where there is deeper self analysis?

What else can we learn from here?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Amazon EC2 (small/micro) a viable solution for me? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently running a home Ubuntu server which I use to host a couple personal Wordpress websites, private git repo, and do some other tinkering (deploy some sample web apps, etc). My website gets around 4,000 views a month, so scalability is not a huge concern. Because I don't have a static IP, I'm using Afraid FreeDNS's dynamic DNS services.
I recently moved and forgot how much tinkering had to be done to get my server publicly accessible - port forwarding and other router settings, script set up with new ISP to ensure the updating of my DNS (since I don't have a static ip), changing of server network configurations, etc. It took me awhile to get all these ducks in a row... website was down for a good week. So... after going through the move and re-thinking things such as electric bills and reliability, I'm wondering if it's time for a change.  I've thought about going back to typical webhosting for ~$5-10 a month, but I really enjoy the flexibility and learning I get hosting on my own server.
Would an Amazon small/micro instance be a viable solution given my circumstances (I don't know much about the cloud options out there aside from Amazon)? Can somebody shed light on the hourly pricing? I'm looking for ballpark monthly pricing if I host a couple wordpress websites (~10,000 views a month) and do some small web application hosting (Tomcat). Looking for a less than $20 a month solution.
Any help would be fantastic! <comment><USER2> > Wordpress, git repo, and tinkering

A micro instance should be fine.

It is 5$/month, but I think if you are a new customer big-A give you get one year for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Thoughts on other VPS vs EC2?</comment></comment>


RobinHood's Chequing accounts may not be SIPC eligible - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/julieverhage/status/1073583035986137089 <comment><USER2> Well, yea. SIPC only covers cash deposited with a broker _for the purpose of purchasing securities_. I suppose the "purpose" of depositing cash in these accounts is to purchase T-bills for the 3% but I'm not sure that's immediately apparent to their customers.

This _isn 't_ a checking account. This is a brokerage account with a cash sweep that comes with a visa card.</comment>


Magic is knowledge and experiments.Is that why science can't access it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Magic-is-a-complex-system-of-knowledge-and-experimentation-Is-that-why-science-cannot-access-it/answer/Abhishek-Gupta-3459?ch=10&share=9ca90b8f&srid=5on2V <comment><AUTHOR> Magic is just an illusion

<comment><USER2> A particularly large area of magic is all about the art of illusion. But there are other branches for which illusions are only used as "icing on the top." Mentalism is an example of one that, while it does use illusion, it also adds in real effects that aren't commonly known by the targeted audiences.

Hellstromism is a pretty good example, as it has been used in several forms with The Amazing Kreskin and Derren Brown. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_reading) Needless to say, Hellstromism lends itself well to illusions (like mind reading), so it is easily confused unless you know the difference. But both names mentioned have had lots of success demonstrating it without disguising it as something else and turning it into an illusion.

Hellstromism is a great example of something that is presented as magic, and came about through "occult" knowledge and experimentation.</comment></comment>


Fukushima from Afar: Realtime Data that Matters - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudant.com/fukushima/

<comment><USER2> Awesome experiment. I found it interesting that the post doesn't mention the author is also the Founder and Chief Scientist of Cloundant, according to the NYT article linked in the post.

Pretty crazy that the guy manages to juggle being a founder and a physics professor at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> The scientific article behind this is interesting; it is at <http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4853>

Quick summary: the researchers in Seattle take the building's air filters once a day, compress them into a block, stick the block in a lead vault, and use a gamma-ray analyzer on it. They can detect radioactive particles from Japan, 7 days later (at very low levels). Based on the composition, they believe the particles are from radioactive steam, not burning fuel, which is kind of interesting. Because they are analyzing the filters, rather than the air directly, they are testing particles from 114,000 cubic meters of air at a time so they get very high sensitivity.

<comment><USER4> Great summary of our paper! From the amount and ratio of the different isotopes you can do a tremendous amount of nuclear forensics, which I knew nothing about before this happened. Not everything is in books (some is still deemed top secret from WW2 and beyond), but we learned a lot by consulting with a veteran of the Manhattan project.

<comment><USER5> Any chance you can outline the steps in your workflow? Or perhaps provide a snapshot of example data?

I'm asking because I'm interested in real-world examples of how someone with a lot of CouchDB experience approaches a number crunching task like this. I think seeing the steps in how the data flows from instrument to final charts and graphs would be interesting. The fact that it was done in a rush makes it doubly interesting because it means that it wasn't planned out, and was probably iterated on a bit.</comment></comment></comment>


Was Steve Jobs Born as Abdul Lateef Jandali? - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Steve_Jobs/Archive_6#Disputed_information:_Birth_name <comment><AUTHOR> The Huffington Post and Gulf News articles referenced in that discussion:

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thank-you-steve- jobs_b_999718](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thank-you-steve-jobs_b_999718)

[https://gulfnews.com/technology/steve-jobs-a-tribute-to- the-...](https://gulfnews.com/technology/steve-jobs-a-tribute-to-the-cousin-i- never-met-1.887022)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you garden or try to grow fruits/vegetables? - <AUTHOR> As title suggests I'm just genuinely interested if folks here try to grow things. Seem,s like hn has a good bit of folks from different regions. If so, what are you trying to grow and what are the conditions where you are trying to grow? (e.g. North Carolina where I'm from has clay soil and I'm growing peppers, tomatoes, and trying my hand at some tech around saffron)<p>I'm interested cause I'm in the agtech space and just trying to find folks who like to grow shit. <comment><USER2> I live in North NSW, Australia. At my home I have a mango tree, olive tree and am about to put some blueberries in also. I grow tomato's in the garden at the moment and am about to plant my 2nd summer crop of lettuces, rocket and some capsicum and chilli plants. I grow many herbs.

Down the road is my folks farm which I help caretake. They lease the land to the local dairy farmer for his herd to keep the grass mown. Out there we have roughly 30 pecan trees , 2 mangoes, 2 macadamia nuts, 1 starfruit, coffee, mulberries, figs, custard apples, pineapples, dragon fruit,paw paw and bananas in the orchard. Our veggie garden has asparagus, capsicum, chillis, lettuces, garlic,squash, rhubarb and a heap of other herbs and such as seasons permit. Scattered around the house garden we have pomegranate, lemons and heaps of rosemary and mint amongst the tropical plants and English flowers.

We fertalize with cow shit and occasionally surface pellets of equal npk. I also use a house&garden a&b nitrogen mix for some particularly finicky plants or for things that need a quick hit.

I'd love to work in agribusiness but ATM I'm just a labourer. I am helping a friend with tech for a mushroom farm to try get into it a bit.

Sorry for the poor formating / gramar this was written from a phone.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am in Perth, Western Australia which is one of the Mediterranean climate zones in the world.

We have no "soil" just a courtyard and planter boxes on our front balcony but I grow a range of edibles in containers

Many herbs - rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, parsley etc, Strawberries, Lemon grass, Chillies, Many citrus including quite a few native Australians, Pomegranites, Banana, Blueberries, Potatoes and sweet potato, Eggplant and few others.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mentioned not having soil, are you using store bought fertilizer or something else? Do you need to deal with adding any chemicals to grow things?

<comment><USER3> I use potting mix from the hardware store.

Because it is hot and dry I have to over water, this leaches out nutrients so I have to feed quite regularly, slow release pellets and fish emulsion with a bit of worm juice.

Additionally for the citrus have to add iron chelates because the leaves get yellow from deficiency otherwise.</comment></comment></comment>


Seeking a cofounder? Help me understand what's important to you - <AUTHOR> http://wilcoxd.wufoo.com/forms/seeking-cofounder-survey/

<comment><USER2> How about looking for a graphic artist? Plenty of developers who can make code sing but not a UI.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just giggled over two spelling mistakes. You meant to write compatibility and feasibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed, thanks!

<comment><USER4> comittement is spelt wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Commitment and work ethic

<comment><AUTHOR> woh. Good point - added to the form!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does CBD infused products help in reducing anxiety? - <AUTHOR> I've been with Anxiety for long now, I recently came across someone who said taking CBD products will help with anxiety. Is it true? Does anybody have experience with the same? <comment><USER2> I assume you mean infused, but that's not important. To address your question: no. I mean "maybe", but also "it's complicated". Different people react in different ways. As of now there's no official study backing any health benefits CBD may have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edited, thanks for that.

"Different people react in different ways" \- Do you mean there is a chance I will feel better?</comment></comment>


Exploring the transactions behind the $31m Tether hack - <AUTHOR> https://elementus.io/blog/tether-hack/ <comment><USER2> is there no way to invalidate addresses / wallets? Surprised that the address used in the Bitstamp heist was still usable. Surprised that the hacker used the same address even.</comment>


Google Chrome: not ready for html 5 canvas rotation - <AUTHOR> http://www.wiredprairie.us/examples/easeljs/canvasdemo/ <comment><USER2> It works fine in the current Beta version of Chrome. In fact, it performs far better then it did in Firefox.</comment>


The Palatino FAQ (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/19990202052926/http://www.mindspring.com/~fez/palatino/palfaq1.0.txt <comment><USER2> When I dabbled in print design (working heavily on structured templates in FrameMaker, Interleaf, Microsoft Word, and LaTeX), I lucked out that my first site had license for Palatino, which I loved for body text. Few engineering specs within the European Space Agency process model ever looked so stylish. :)

I later also liked Knuth's Computer Modern Roman for body text, but can't stand CMR at headings sizes, especially in heavier weights. Palatino, OTOH, I recall working for headings, though I still usually prefer to use sans serif typefaces for headings.

<comment><USER3> I really liked Palatino as an alternative to CM in uni for LaTeX templates.</comment></comment>


Revered today, MLK was widely disliked by Americans when he was killed (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-he-died-180968664/ <comment><USER2> I was a teenager when Dr. King was murdered. King's numbers went down when he branched away from civil rights into other political issues.

He was early, but correct on Vietnam. I doubt anyone under 21 didn't agree with him on the war in 1967. Time would have proven him correct on much of what he was saying had he lived.</comment>


First Functional Molecular Transistor Comes Alive - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/functional-molecular-transistor/

<comment><USER2> dupe <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014325></comment>


Why don't you smile more? Assertive women in the workforce - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/why-dont-you-smile-more-assertive-women-in-the-workforce-53adfc01ffc3 <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing. Especially on a Monday</comment>


It's official, Corporate Passwords Are Cheap - <AUTHOR> https://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=12710 <comment><USER2> I would guess most employees even give away their passwords for free, by just using the same one for every account they sign up for - you would just need to guess the correct username for their corporate account...

<comment><USER3> Which is likely to be their name, following the same format as other corporate accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's important to note the difference between giving away your password, and allowing others to access your information. I'd give someone my password for £10 if I could instantly change it to something else - But it would take a heck of a lot more for me to allow someone to access my files & identity.

<comment><USER5> Yes. The article didn't mention whether the identity of the seller would be sold as well. Knowing that a person exists in the world whose corporate password is "FuzzieBunn1" isn't a terribly useful piece of information. Furthermore, did survey participants perceive that there might be some risk of being caught selling access to one's company? In most countries, doing so must be a crime of some sort. In general, I'm skeptical of the survey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The poll numbers are pretty meaningless without some further info or breakdowns. How many of these are Tesco/Walmart employees? Or at companies with card swipe entrances? I'm not saying someone couldn't use a password in that scenario beneficially, but it changes the dynamic compared to a VPN password for someone with the authority to approve large transactions.

I'd mostly guess that no-one is offering to sell a (to them) meaningful business password on the cheap, but perhaps they underestimate what could be done with it. Or perhaps they see their IT or building infrastructure as sufficient to catch unauthorized people standing at the tills, or at desks (and they may be underestimating again how straightforward it can be)

</comment><comment><USER7> The "survey" was apparently paid for by a company that does corporate identity management. Is it any surprise they got the results that would motivate people to buy their product?

</comment><comment><USER8> solution: log in via Facebook for corporate.</comment>


Are Text Messages Killing, or Saving Us? - <AUTHOR> http://sbms.blogspot.com/2010/11/are-text-messages-killing-or-saving-us.html

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems to make sense simply for the sex part of the study, the author even admitted to such in the original study, saying the equivalent of text messaging is correlated with increased sex among youth. However, he never implied that it was the cause of it. I think that would've been the equivalent of career suicide.

What I'd like to know more about is the link between texting, social media and the other factors presented that didn't have clear cut explanations. People who are generally more social are bound to be more promiscuous etc. but why was there a link between texting and socioeconomic status, and why was the trend reversed for social networking compared to texting? Also why was there increased rates of obesity for this same group? Aren't larger people usually less social? It's not as simple a study as it seems.

</comment><comment><USER2> you will note the author clearly states that the correlation does not imply causation and its more than just the sex its about risky behaviour in general

</comment><comment><USER3> Correlation does not imply causation.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess we need to do the 'correlation or causation' flash test at least once a day in the contemporary age...

Hint: what personality characteristic might _you_ imagine could move someone to _both_ have sex more often and make a lot of social contacts?</comment>


Every Patriotic and War Protest Song You've Ever Heard Of - <AUTHOR> http://nowsourcing.com/blog/patriotism-protest-music-infographic.html

<comment><USER2> "Where have all the flowers gone" isn't listed as a protest song. Indeed, apparently the 1960s had only one protest song. Yet Tool's Aenima, which is centered on life in L.A., is there. Very strange. I don't know what the submitter was thinking.</comment>


Adobe confirms flash 0-day, issues security bulletin - <AUTHOR> https://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa11-02.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Background on the advisory: [http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/04/new-adobe- flash-zero-day-...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/04/new-adobe-flash-zero- day-being-exploited/)

 _According to sources, the attacks exploit a vulnerability in fully-patched versions of Flash, and are being leveraged in targeted spear-phishing campaigns launched against select organizations and individuals that work with or for the U.S. government. Sources say the attacks so far have embedded the Flash exploit inside of Microsoft Word files made to look like important government documents._

Here's a virustotal scan of one of the documents: [http://www.virustotal.com/file- scan/report.html?id=1e677420d...](http://www.virustotal.com/file- scan/report.html?id=1e677420d7a8160c92b2f44f1ef5eea1cf9b0b1a25353db7d3142b268893507f-1302359653)

The fact that one AV engine detected it as a 0-day was the source of admonishments or congratulations depending on where the observers stood. Until it was discussed that the one detection was probably an unrelated false positive.

<comment>

Additional artifacts from the attack including the spearphising tease and the times they were being sent (early morning friday apr 8) - at the height of the budget battle.

[http://contagiodump.blogspot.com/2011/04/apr-8-cve-2011-0611...](http://contagiodump.blogspot.com/2011/04/apr-8-cve-2011-0611-flash- player-zero.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I think it's worth pointing out that this vulnerability is being exploited by people opening Word docs (on Windows) that they get via a phishing email. The last 0-day exploit against Flash that I saw posted on HN was the same thing but for a swf embedded in Excel. Not that these things aren't bad, but saying "Flash 0-day" sounds an awful lot more doomsday-ish than "0-day exploit if you open an attachment from a phishing email". Not trying to make excuses for Adobe, but people around here are pretty quick to jump on the overly-dramatic bandwagon when it comes to Flash.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. There some fear-mongering with that type of headline.

Of course, I had no idea that flash could even be embedded in Office applications.

<comment><USER4> I mean... they just want to look responsible. If they'd toned it down, people would have accused them of not taking things seriously enough. It's better for them to seize the situation and own it rather than let the press have a field day and then spend time having to explain themselves. That's just my 2c...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Happy thank-goodness-I-removed-flash day. One of the best holidays, since I get to celebrate it so many times a year..

<comment><USER6> "...and are being leveraged in targeted spear-phishing campaigns launched against select organizations and individuals that work with or for the U.S. government"

Perhaps you work for or with the U.S. Government. Information leakage is fun! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Man, Flash is like Windows 98 back in the day. Time to take the plunge and uninstall.</comment>