Ask HN: Using Cloud Foundry in production? - <AUTHOR> My company is planning to start using Cloud Foundry running on Open Stack for our main business to consumer sites (doing most of our sales). The initiative is primary pushed by dev teams that like the ease of deployment.
As supported distributions from Pivotal, IBM & HP are quite expensive they want to use the Open Source ('free') version to run CF on-premise. Given that OPS has limited experience with both CF and Open Stack this seems pretty ambitious to me.
If have tried to find other companies that use a similar setup in production but I could not find one in my network. Hence this post with the question to HN readers to share their experience (ease of setup, stability, etc) with a similar setup.
Another related question I have is if someone has experience with running Docker containers in production on CF Diego. Our architects seem to have the opinion that CF can be used to replace our Docker Swarm environment as well. <comment><USER2> Disclaimer - I co-founded a Cloud Foundry consultancy.

There are numerous folks running open source Cloud Foundry in production. Most I can't name for confidentiality reasons, but the Comic Relief payments system runs on open source CF on a variety of infrastructures.

Once you've got open source Cloud Foundry deployed and managed with Bosh, and you're using Concourse to update it, you should have a reasonably easy time. Numerous governments deploy open source Cloud Foundry this way (UK, USA, Australia, with several others evaluating it currently).

You can run Docker containers on Cloud Foundry's Diego runtime. We normally encourage apps as a unit of deployment currency for a number of reasons (easier auditing, allowing developers to focus on code rather than setting up images), but Diego is battle-tested. Under the hood both apps and Docker containers are run the same way, so you don't need to worry about the Docker stuff being treated differently.

I've not heard great things about OpenStack. I know people who have run very large Cloud Foundry installations on OpenStack, and had production issues with OpenStack network drives, amongst other things. From the anecdotal evidence of people I've spoken to, you're more likely to have problems with OpenStack than with Cloud Foundry.

I'm happy to chat more - search for my username and you'll find us; I don't want to put gratuitous advertising in HN comments :D

<comment><USER2> Here's an article about VW using OpenStack and Cloud Foundry: [http://www.baselinemag.com/blogs/volkswagen-group-deploy- ope...](http://www.baselinemag.com/blogs/volkswagen-group-deploy-openstack- production.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I essentially have the same questions as you do. I'd like to evaluate Cloud Foundry, here, where I work.

I'll probably bake-off DC/OS and Cloud Foundry; maybe I'll also bake-off one or more of DEIS Workflow, SuperGiant, and maybe Apcera.

All of this is an eval for an enterprise-grade Docker platform, for development through production, including CI/CD.

</comment><comment><USER4> Same here, but references seem to be nonexistent for on premise OS version.</comment>


Android Security 2017 Year in Review [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_2017_Report_Final.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> > In 2016, our systems started using machine learning to help detect and > classify mobile threats ...

> Google's systems learn which apps are potentially harmful and which are safe > by analyzing our entire app database. ... if any apps are attempting > anything suspicious, such as interacting with other apps on the device in > unexpected ways, accessing or sharing personal data without authorization

Does Apple do something similar for iOS apps? Or is the design of iOS such that apps are well-isolated enough that they don't need to?</comment>


Jordan Peterson's book is a bestseller – except where it matters most - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2018/02/09/jordan-petersons-book-is-a-bestseller-except-where-it-matters-most.html <comment><USER2> I liked his (Jordan Peterson) explanation of James Damores paper. It seems rooted in biological facts and there was extensive research that was scientifically accepted cited. I really like Peterson and I think his critiques are really valid. His most recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast really interested me and I found it both novel and a great scientific exploration of social & biological concepts. I don't understand the controversy around him tbh.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to his explanation?

<comment><USER2> Here is one of the clips from Joe Rogan it's ~14mins [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jF4qwo4Yg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jF4qwo4Yg0).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Times list, along with most everything else in the paper, as per their motto of "all the news that's fit to print," is essentially the sphere of approved thinking that a certain part of the populace approves of.

<comment><USER5> You took the red pill ;) humans are group animals, we're constantly influencing each other. Individuality is a myth.

<comment><USER2> I believe that those 2 statements aren't mutually exclusive. To paraphrase Peterson it is important to participate in groups as we progress into society from a dependent child relying on our parents into the various groups we socialize in. It is important to have a strong sense of self and individuality but equally important to know how to participate in groups and when to hold societal norms and when to challenge group psychology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: "Why is controversial professor Jordan Peterson so popular?" [https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/02/07/why-...](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/02/07/why- is-jordan-peterson-so-popular.html)

<comment><USER7> Man, I love how totally valid and normal thought is now labeled as "controversial". You gotta flag wrong-thinkers from the getgo right? Can't let anyone have any wrong ideas.

<comment><USER8> I agree with many of his ideas and I agree with the label controversial. A lot of people like his ideas, and a lot of people hate them. That's pretty much the definition of controversial. They didn't use the headline to call him bigoted or misogynistic, which I could imagine some other publications doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dr Peterson's recent discussion with Ben Shapiro is one of the best conversations I've heard in a long time. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRPDGEgaATU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRPDGEgaATU)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's the NY Times. How is this a surprise?

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like Canada's largest daily newspaper is stopping just shy of accusing NYT of manipulating their best seller list for e.g. political reasons. This is getting interesting...

<comment><USER12> It might not be widely known but the NYT Bestseller list is curated list.

<comment><USER8> I thought that the curation was fairly widely known, at least in the community of book lovers. But, in this case they weren't claiming it was excluded from the list because some editor removed it in the interest of "curating," they claimed it was excluded because of a hard rule about not including books that weren't published in the US.

It would be nice if someone could find a couple of examples of non- controversial books that made the top of other bestseller lists but that the NYT excluded because they weren't published in the US. That would make it a lot easier to defend the accusations that they are using "Canadian published" as an excuse to keep a book off the list they don't like. There have got to be several publishers in other English speaking countries with very popular books that don't have any US presence that still sold well here.</comment></comment></comment>


Telautograph - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telautograph <comment><USER2> "By my invention you can sit down in your office in Chicago, take a pencil in your hand, write a message to me, and as your pencil moves, a pencil here in my laboratory moves simultaneously, and forms the same letters and words in the same way. What you write in Chicago is instantly reproduced here in fac- simile. You may write in any language, use a code or cipher, no matter, a fac- simile is produced here. If you want to draw a picture it is the same, the picture is reproduced here. The artist of your newspaper can, by this device, telegraph his pictures of a railway wreck or other occurrences just as a reporter telegraphs his description in words."

I'm amazed how much this reads like a modern pitch. Fascinating

<comment><USER3> Is there a term for the common phenomenon where we do not expect or assume humans of the past to be as .. articulate or _witted_ as us?

This reminds me of the reactions to the ancient graffiti from Pompeii etc., some of which read like something one might see on 4chan:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/5iy6i4/ancient_gra...](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/5iy6i4/ancient_graffiti_in_pompeii_is_hilarious_and/)

<comment><USER4> That remains one of my favourite web pages on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linked in the Wikipedia page, found this page [1] with much more information as well as different methods used to transmit images via telegraph lines. Awesome!

[1] [http://www.jmcvey.net/cable/elements/letters1.htm](http://www.jmcvey.net/cable/elements/letters1.htm)

<comment><USER6> What a fascinating page! It's amazing how many technologies were invented to solve the same problem until the playing field was winnowed down to the survivors (telegraph, telex).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Margaret Atwood invented a similar device for remote book signings: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LongPen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LongPen)

<comment><USER8> And who can forget that Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth wished he'd invented the Fing-Longer?

[https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Fing- Longer](https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Fing-Longer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So ... a fax-plotter. Awesome.

<comment><USER10> An analog fax-plotter!</comment></comment>


Sexism's Double Standard: Where is the Outrage? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lemcoe.com/sexism-double-standard.html

<comment><USER2> "I am outraged that there is nobody outraged about this." In other news, women have it SO much better than men. Amirite fellas? When will men finally be allowed to break through this injustice and be treated as well as women? Ugh.

<comment><AUTHOR> You cherry-picked one line from the post and used sarcasm to attack it, missing the four or five other lines that would have disproved said sarcasm.

Well done.

<comment><USER2> You cherry-picked one example of something which hasn't put men's desires at the top of the priority list, missing the social and cultural context of thousands of years of male-domination that would disprove said accusation of misandry. Well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just as some carefully redefine racism so that only whites can be racist, I'm sure sexism has been carefully redefined so that only men can be sexist. I recall seeing an article linked to from HN that similarly redefined discrimination to exclude "affirmative action".

</comment><comment><USER4> > _What I am concerned about is the selective outrage being exhibited by the > technology community. One such example is the Lulu app, which advertises > itself as "the first ever app for private reviews of guys." I, personally, > could not care less about what the app actually does. My outrage comes from > the fact that no one seems to care that if this idea was implemented with > the tables turned - men reviewing women - then it would almost certainly > receive national media attention, being condemned by Women's Rights and > Civil Rights groups._

"No one seems to care"...well, except for the various threads on this on HN and Reddit the past couple of weeks. Oh, was the OP looking for women to speak out? Well here's disapproving commentary by Gawker's feminism blog, Jezebel:

[http://jezebel.com/5982867/the-creepy-new-yelp-for-boys- and-...](http://jezebel.com/5982867/the-creepy-new-yelp-for-boys-and-other- apps-for-your-genitals)

Which references the "XX Factor" feminist blog on Slate, which also was very negative about Lulu:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/07/lulu_app_for...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/07/lulu_app_for_rating_men_it_s_just_as_creepy_as_rating_women.html)

Those are two pretty prominent feminist online properties right there, both who probably empathized with Adria Richards and routinely mock the male culture at Reddit, and yet, here they are, attacking Lulu. Did the OP actually do any research or does "no one seem to care" just something he notices because he doesn't seem to care to look outside his bubble?</comment>


Send Elevator Pitches to VCs and Angel Investors - <AUTHOR> https://pitchwaldo.com <comment><USER2> "It's like Snapchat with blockchain but for cruciferous vegetables!"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what we're looking for!</comment></comment>


The End of Video Coding? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/the-end-of-video-coding-40cf10e711a2 <comment><USER2> Pull quote:

We run compute on the cloud and have no real-time requirements. I was asked by the Chair, "How much complexity increase is acceptable?"

I was not prepared for the question, so did some quick math in my mind estimating an upper bound and said "At the worst case 100X."

The room of about a hundred video standardization experts burst out laughing. I looked at the Chair perplexed, and he says,

"Don't worry they are happy that they can try-out new things. People typically say 3X." We were all immersed in the video codec space and yet my views surprised them and vice versa.

<comment><USER2> This makes entire sense to me: When you're going to stream the episode of Stranger things to 15million people, who really cares what the one-time cost to encode is? Surely you'd take algorithmic complexity that was 100x or even 1000x the baseline if it provided you with even a few kB of bandwidth savings?

<comment><USER3> You still care, since at some point the cost of the extra encoder-hours used is going to outpace the bandwidth savings. I'm guessing she mentally assumed 'at no bandwidth savings, how much margin do we have?', since the amount saved wasn't ever quantified.

<comment><USER4> There are a couple of things that make Netflix somewhat unique.

1) They have a fairly limited catalog (contrast with the constant ingestion of new content by Youtube, for example)

2) The cheapest way for them to ensure they have sufficient capacity to handle peak loads leaves them with a lot of extra compute during non-peak times. That excess compute is essentially free.

<comment><USER5> >That excess compute is essentially free.

Since they host on AWS, wouldn't they just scale down during non-peak times and save money?

<comment><USER6> The AWS-hosted part is not the CDN afaik, which will probably make up the vast majority of their infrastructure.

<comment><USER7> Speaking as an ISP: Netflix traffic comes from the Netflix ASN and peering session. Their globally distributed CDN/caching/video file storage servers are not on AWS to the best of my knowledge. Netflix traffic does not come from our peering with Amazon's ASN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that despite the tech, Netflix video quality is really horrible. Youtube is consistently much higher quality, even though Netflix's own "fast.com" tells me my connection is capable of 75Mbps downstream. Which should be enough for crisp 1080p. Multiple times I've been so frustrated with Netflix's quality that I've started a movie, stopped it because it looked like something out of a VCR, torrented the true 1080p version and watched that.

<comment><USER9> Most likely you're watching in 720p.

In Chrome, Firefox and Opera you're getting 720p max.

To get 1080p you need to be watching in Internet Explorer, Safari or on a Chromebook.

To get 4k you need to be watching in Edge and have a 7xxx or 8xxx Intel CPU and HDCP 2.2 enabled display.

Source: [https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742)

<comment><USER10> Do they offer any reasons to these limitations?

In particular, is it due to DRM requirements, or pure performance? I suspect it's the former.

<comment><USER11> It's DRM. The widevine conf they are using means they are decrypting and decoding in software when you use Chrome or Firefox. When you use Edge you use a different DRM scheme that allows allows decrypting, decoding and rendering in hardware so Netflix offered content upto 4K in Edge with Recent Intel CPU's. (Last time I checked Ryzen has only just come out with no onboard GPU. But support for recent Nvidia GPU's was promised, it's been a while so the landscape may of well changed) If you didn't have the latest Intel CPU it called back to an older version of PlayReady (sure that's the brand name of MS's DRM - on phone and a bit lazy to look it up) that still surported 1080.

See in Widevine there are a number of "levels", the highest being when it can decode, decrypt and push to the frame buffer all in a secure zone. This can not be achieved (atm, well atleast the time of my research into the matter) with widevine on Desktop, so in such a setup widevine will only decrypt upto 720p content.

When running on Android and ARM this is possible and you can get 1080p, which is why you can get cheap android based tv sticks (even the old Amazon Fire TV sticks) supported 1080p but your gaming rig and Chrome could not.

Don't work for Widevine, Google, NetFlix or anyone else for that matter. Just a nerd with too much time on my hands so I looking into this stuff. Any corrections welcomed :-D

<comment><USER11> No longer able to edit so replying to myself: Taken from another post of mine about widevine 7 months ago where we was discussing why the RaspberryPi couldn't support 1080p Netflix ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15594460) and a link to the comment chain to make it easier for anyone reading - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586844))

> As far as I understand it there are 3 security levels to widevine Level1 > being the highest and 3 being the lowest.

> Level 1 is where the decrypt and decode are all done within a trusted > execution environment (As far as I understand it Google work with chipset > vendors such as broadcom, qualcomm, etc to implement this) and then sent > directly to the screen.

> Level 2 is where widevine decrypts the content within the TEE and passes the > content back to the application for decoding which could then be decoded > with hardware or software.

> Level 3 (I believe) is where widevine decrypts and decodes the content > within the lib itself (it can use a hardware cryptographic engine but the > rpi doesn't have one).

> Android/ChromeOS support either Level1 or Level3 depending on the hardware > and Chrome on desktops only seems to support Level 3. Kodi is using the > browser implementation (at least when kodi is not running on Android) of > widevine which seems to only support Level 3 (So decrypt & decode in > software) and therefore can not support hardware decoding. But that doesn't > mean that hardware decoding of widevine protected content can not be > supported on any mobile SoC. Sorry if I gave that impression.

> When a license for media is requested the security level it will be > decrypted/decoded with is also sent and the returned license will restrict > the widevine CDM to that security level.

> I believe NetFlix only support Level 1 and Level 3, which is why for a while > the max resolution you could get watching NetFlix on chrome in a desktop > browser was 720p as I believe that was the max resolution NetFlix offered at > Level 3 and we had to use Edge/IE(iirc) to watch at 1080p as it used a > different DRM system (PlayReady) and why atm Desktop 4k Netflix is only > currently supported on Edge using (iirc) Intel gen7+ processors and NVidia > Pascal GPUs (I don't know if AMD support PlayReady 3.0 on their GPUs as I > don't have one so not really had the desire to investigate, I'm guessing > that current Ryzen CPUs do not as they currently don't have integrated > GPUs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see this:

      In the ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG standardization world, the
      Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) was formed in October 2017 to
      develop a new video standard that has capabilities beyond
      HEVC. The recently-concluded Call for Proposals attracted an
      impressive number of 32 institutions from industry and
      academia, with a combined 22 submissions. The new standard,
      which will be called Versatile Video Coding (VVC), is expected
      to be finalized by October 2020.

Can anyone with more industry knowledge chime in here? To me, that sounds a lot like the kind of group that created the patent- and royalty-encumbered stuff the AOM was created to avoid.

<comment><USER4> I have some industry knowledge. You are exactly correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >To address the _disconnect_ between researchers in academia and standardization and the industry users of video coding technology,

This annoys me quite a bit. Because then it list out the so called large-scale video encoding from Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. As if Video Encoding are only done by OTT providers. And the Video Encode from iPhone ( Consumers ) TV broadcast ( the good old content distributor ), livestream of events from Sports to Olympics.. etc doesn't matter. It is a very Silicon Valley mentality, and shown in AOM / AV1. After all they are creating their own codec for their own use. While other industry codec organisation will have to take care many "edge" use case.

>So how will we get to deliver HD quality Stranger Things at 100 kbps for the mobile user in rural Philippines? How will we stream a perfectly crisp 4K-HDR- WCG episode of Chef's Table without requiring a 25 Mbps broadband connection?

It is interesting this 100kbps bitrate and rural Philippines comes up. Because this is the exact same quote from Amazon's video specialist Ben Waggoner mentioned on Doom9.

Shouldn't we be a little more realistic with the bitrate? We have 20 years of experience and research and yet we still don't have a single Audio codec ( two dimensions ) that could perform better then MP3 128Kbps at half the bitrate. Opus only manage to slightly edge it out at 96kbps, and that is with selected samples. There is only so far we can go, 100Kbps is barely enough for Audio. And we have Massive MIMO, and 5G, both will bring immense capacity increase to current Network. There is so much in the pipeline to further increase efficiency, capacity, lower latency, cost, and power. It is a little hard to think designing a 100Kbps for Video.

Currently Youtube streams 1080p AVC @ ~2.2Mbps. Which seems to be fine with most people already, especially on Computer / Tablet or Smartphone Screen Size. HEVC can probably do similar quality with 1.5Mbps. VVC should be aiming at below 1Mbps. Netflix is doing 15Mbps 4K Streaming with HEVC ( And people are complaining about quality already, I have no idea why I don't watch Netflix) VVC should really be aiming at better quality with 8Mbps. We should aim we specific bitrate and resolution with Real World Encoder as anchor, and specific quality to achieve.

<comment><USER14> In most of your reply you have failed to account for the third world (and frankly a decent chunk of first world). It seems to me you don't have an understanding of your user base. Please dig into how many people are actually on HD-capable bandwidths.

I am glad that Silicon Valley is driving it since they have users all over the world, not just fiber-enabled users. If and when other people have a better aim, vision and understanding of the problem, I think you should find a good collaborative atmosphere.

In the meantime, let's not design for 100m users when we should be thinking about 2-3b users.

<comment><USER15> You aren't disagreeing with parent, who said that the 2-3B users don't have HD-capable connections. The parent is saying that the industry should try delivering SD-quality video before hand-waving about near-infinitely compressible HD-video.

For example, one solution for low-bandwidth environments is to edge-cache it (farther toward the real edge than "local ISP") and then spread it locally via peer-to-peer short-distance radio (wifi, bluetooth, local cellular). This is not a 100x data compression challenge; it's a local delivery infrastructure challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there transmission schemes that can transfer multiple independent streams that add up for better quality?

It could be streams containing information about smaller subblocs, etc.

If you take a fourrier transform, the more coefficients you include, the more faithful the reproduction is.

Splitting the quality level into multiple independent streams could have multiple advantages :

\- better use of Multicast, as viewers for different quality settings get the same data, so you use approximately the bandwidth for one full quality video instead of full quality + medium + low...

\- save on storage space for the same reason \- save on transcoding time, as only one pass is needed

\- better suited for distributed storage/transmission, on a platform like PeerTube, where every p2p client could contribute back instead of clustering by quality.

I am not working in this field, but I know a fair bit about compression, and this seems a no-brainer to me. Is it already done? Where? Or did I oversaw some issues?

<comment><USER17> This is known as scalable coding and has been included as an extension or profile in at least every ISO and ITU standard since MPEG-2, see for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding) (this article seems to be specific to H.264)

<comment><USER16> Thank you a lot for the proper technical term. Do you happen to know if it is widely used in web-based streaming applications (I would be surprised, as I don't think I encountered it before), if ffmpeg supports it (in the case of H.264),and if AV1 includes such an extension?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "new techniques are evaluated against the state-of-the-art codec, for which the coding tools have been refined from decades of investment. It is then easy to drop the new technology as "not at-par."

This seems to be quite a general technology problem that looks like it applies to car engines, batteries, computer memory and any other highly optimized mature technology. I wonder if there's some way to change incentives so others get a chance. It happens in evolution in nature too and it's sometimes solved by mass extinctions. Hopefully that's not the only way.

<comment><USER19> That's what research programs were supposed to do. The problem occurs when research is also evaluated against such specific things as wanted by industry that there's no room for new ideas to be fully funded for the long maturing process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want to see an encoding that is basically RLE using offsets and lengths of π.

<comment><USER21> You mean, FLIC?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLIC_(file_format)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLIC_\(file_format\))

<comment><USER20> I don't see any references to pi in that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A post about innovation and moving beyond block-based encoding and no mention of Daala's idea of lapped transforms?

<comment><USER23> There is no shortage of new ideas for video encoding. The post is welcoming both new ideas and encouraging more new ideas rather than being any kind of summary of current tech.

<comment><USER22> I guess there might be no shortage in general, but there are few which are publicly developed with the aim to make free codecs. Which other efforts are there besides Daala?

<comment><USER24> AV1

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1)

<comment><USER22> It's still block based. I was talking about new approaches which the blog post is referencing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The subtle difference between amateur and professional - <AUTHOR> http://www.blueflavor.com/blog/design/the_subtle_difference_between_amateur_and_professional.php

<comment><USER2> This is the difference between inexperienced and experienced, not amateur and professional.

<comment><USER3> Seems to me like the difference between bad and good. Experience doesn't always make you good.

<comment><USER2> Restraint is not the only component of good, but it is the component that improves most with experience. Conversely, the most common mistake made by the inexperienced (even if they are otherwise good) is to overdo things.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Restraint is not the only component of good" - What are the others ? Also, what's the diff. between amateur and professional ? Hmm, that sounds like another essay, altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The difference between amateur and professional is not very subtle. The professional gets paid, and the amateur doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER5> In programming, a subtle change in architecture may lead to a dramatic change in terms of lines of code.

<comment><USER6> really? than that is some really crappy architecture, or the app itself is really small.

In real applications, there are always subtle changes, trade-offs, workaroundts... on the architecture. That's part of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> An ametuer works when inspired, a professional works whether or not they feel inspired.</comment>


Anonymous posts over 4000 U.S. bank executive credentials - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/anonymous-posts-over-4000-u-s-bank-executive-credentials-7000010740/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it, they're demanding computer crime law reform by doing something that obviously is and should be illegal?

EDIT: Now it's unclear to me whether Anonymous placed the spreadsheet on the .gov server, or they simply found it and exposed it. If it's the latter then it makes more sense, but I suspect it's the former.

<comment><USER3> Should it be illegal? They shared a public link to a spreadsheet exposed on a .gov address. If anything, it's the owner of that .gov address that needs to get in trouble for placing sensitive documents in a publicly accessible location.

<comment><USER4> You think the government would have put the document under the URL "oops-we- did-it-again.html?"

C'mon, at least RTFA before falling over yourself to support the anti- government position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just discussing this with a lawyer friend who is concerned that it is only a matter of time before anonymous gets classified as a domestic terrorist group. The PATRIOT act defines domestic terrorism as:

> activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a > violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state, that (B) appear > to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to > influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) > to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or > kidnapping, and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of > the U.S.

Condition C is met, condition B(ii) is pretty much declared. How much of a stretch would it be for a federal prosecutor to argue that condition A is satisfied because exposing personal information of powerful people is dangerous to their lives?

<comment><USER6> I'd say they've got B.i and B.ii down pretty thoroughly and C wouldn't be difficult since the end result of the act occurred in the US.

A is the problem. If Congress expands that to economic crimes, then it's instant terrorist.

<comment><USER7> > A is the problem. If Congress expands that to economic crimes, then it's > instant terrorist.

On the other hand, so is lobbying.

<comment><USER8> Not really, assuming that it doesn't (otherwise) break the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The moment I saw this news I thought _false flag_!

And I may have been right:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/17v9zy/anonymous...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/17v9zy/anonymous_posts_over_4000_us_bank_executive/c899cdo)

The feds have been investigating the bankers, and I'm sure they had access to all that information. The feds are having their own terrorist plots (that then they "uncover" themselves). Is it really that far fetched for this to have happened, too?

<comment><USER10> It's much more likely that you're witnessing the confluence of confirmation bias and the inherent ambiguity created by many different sets of people operating under the same name. We have, in fact, been through this before with "Anonymous", because anybody can claim to be "Anonymous". (The post on reddit is hilariously out of touch with this fundamental reality.)

You, personally, have been making claims of false flag attacks for years with a similar lack of evidence. (e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659640>) You might just be seeing what you want to see, instead of drawing the most accurate conclusions you can make based on the available evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> /facepalm

Anonymous is really embarrassing themselves. Trying to connect the dots from doxxing "management at community banks" back to Aaron Swartz is so cringe worthy I can only shrug and assume they're doing it for the lulz.

row row fight the powah, I guess.

<comment><USER12> I'll take the secret police over secret vigilantes, if for no other reason that the policy of maintaining a secret police force can be debated as a matter of public policy, whereas vigilantes answer to no one.

Edit: though I'd rather have neither.

<comment><USER13> Secret police are used to stifle dissent; they aren't subject to it. The whole point of a "secret police force" is that they are an incredibly powerful tool not subject to public oversight, public debate, or even public approval.

<comment><USER14> Right? If the public knew about it and debated it, it's not a "secret".

<comment><USER15> The "secret" part of "secret police" refers to the hidden identity of the members of the secret police, not that the mere existence of the secret police is a secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another false-flag operation by the US Government, same as the ussc.gov fiasco. Escalating seems to be very effective at discrediting Anonymous based on the comments here and on reddit.

<comment><USER17> I think you give the US government too much credit.

<comment><USER16> I think you don't give it enough credit. Israel has a history of disinformation and misinformation campaigns and I think the Obama administration will take a page from their book.

This strategy may be at the forefront of Obama's domestic policy strategy for this term -- just look at how they're discrediting the pro-Republican anti- Democrat media and they're very successful so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Chrome gives a malware warning when you visit this site - watch out!

<comment><USER19> It is apparently due to sites embedding Netseer ads: <https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=netseer>

<comment><USER20> I started getting warnings from Crome on weeatherunderground today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another story about the Anon criminals.

<comment><USER22> Another thread of broken-record HN comments!

<comment><USER17> Well who is stupid enough to upvote these stories. Apparently there are a lot of confused people on this site.

<comment><USER22> I upvote them, because I find the entire Anonymous drama to be incredibly fascinating and _highly_ topical to the HN demographic. What I do tire of is the 'damn buncha hoodlums' comment cacophony that offers no contribution to the discussion.

<comment><USER17> Well the drama maybe fascinating but it is not productive or helpful to any cause other than giving hackers a bad name, a fact I think many miss.

<comment><USER22> I don't know about that. These acts highlight that the inarguably-real criminals can humiliate the government and not be stopped while public information activists get thrown away. One can say that they're Bad and/or criminals, and might be right, but to assume that the actions of Anonymous are in a vacuum apart from Aaron or Manning is short-sighted. Are their actions and reckless? Probably. So? The means-ends relationship is complicated, but Anonymous acts within their virtues and their intents are from the right place. And come on, this shit's hilarious!

And, this whole 'giving hackers a bad name' thing. Give me a break. Yes, 'hacker' is a dirty word to some. Most likely those that don't understand, nor matter to the greater interests of either types of who self-identify with the word. It will continue to be, regardless of however many Facebook/Google/Instragram/whatevers there are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anonymous is worse than useless.</comment>


Ask HN: Leaving My Own Startup, Need Advice - <AUTHOR> The situation: I started a company last November that finally saw some traction in the past few months and is currently making ~$1,200/month but is not profitable yet. As the CTO and co-founder I owned almost half of the company and our lawyer made a mistake of using a clawback clause instead of a typical 4yr vesting schedule with a 1yr cliff. So upon leaving, I will still own a small amount of the company, roughly 10%. We initially raised around $25k and also purchased a laptop for me with some of the company funds.
I'll be leaving the company at the end of the month to become a co-founder in another company with much more traction. The new company has a similar business model (subscription based) but in a completely different market, hence no competition. So my code may possibly be similar in some ways, or not. Ultimately, I want to make sure that we don't get screwed in the future by my old-cofounder if the new company becomes successful and they say they still own the IP on something.
The dilemma: Old co-founder wants my shares back. They want to me to keep my laptop (worth ~$1500) in return for the shares, but I know the laptop is considered IP of the company (unless there is a way to say it isn't). I'm not sure I should even trade the shares for any amount since that company could possibly be worth something in the future and I built everything from design and dev. On the other hand, I don't want any legal issues in the future if I were to keep my shares. Any advice would be helpful, thanks! <comment><USER2> Laptop is not IP it's just P. It's the company's if they bought it. Give it back if you're not going to be an employee.

The only reasonably safe way to walk away from this to a likely competitor is to have your previous company sign an agreement wherein they consent to the situation. That way if they try to sue you later you can show that it was all above board. Sounds like they're going to want some or all of your shares in exchange for that agreement.

You need a lawyer to be safe, otherwise you will probably end up settling for a part of whatever you create at the new company.

Not a lawyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, the new company is in a completely different market and will not be competition. They want all the shares back and I guess I will need to get something written up from a lawyer soon. Thanks for the info!

<comment><USER2> If it isn't a competitor then it's not nearly as risky. You still need to be very careful though. Don't take _anything_ with you. Don't use their laptop, servers, accounts, services, code, secrets, ideas, paper, clothing, anything. Walk away completely clean.

You could give them your shares back, but don't do it for free. If you want to be nice then sell them back cheaply or trade them for something you want.

<comment><USER3> Just in case it hasn't been considered, this is all stuff that can be negotiated with the original company.

With proper legalese (read: talk to a lawyer to get a proper contract) you can trade your shares for the company agreeing that they will not sue you for trade secrets/ideas/code/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you sign a non-compete? (If so, are you based in California?)

If those still at the company really don't like you and think that you screwed them, there are some shady things they can do to dilute you down to next to nothing. (They can sell the company you in-part own to a new company that you don't for a trivial amount. It happened to Eduardo Saverin and I've heard even Y Combinator in the early days. It sounds like the lawyer maybe wasn't good enough to prohibit this sort of thing.)

If I were you, I'd try and come to some agreement with them -- give back the laptop and split the difference in the shares. I'd also make sure not to re- use any code at the new company, as that would be unethical and would open you up to legal issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> To make things clear, the new company is in a completely different market, and we would not be competing. Anyways, I don't think I signed a non-compete and didn't see anything about it in our agreement paperwork. We are not based in California.

When you say split the difference in shares, what do you mean? Give back 1/2 my shares? Is there anything I should request in return as far as compensation for the shares? I don't think they are worth anything today.

<comment><USER4> My broader point is that if they are really upset with you, there are things they can do to dilute or remove your share of the company. To avoid all that potential legal nastiness, I would do my best to find a way to come to a signed agreement.

Obviously I don't know much about your situation, but I would immediately return the laptop, and offer to give back half (or some %) of the shares as a sign of goodwill.

By the way, I'm assuming you did take some sort of salary or other compensation. If not, I wouldn't be as giving in terms of shares.

<comment><AUTHOR> I took a very small salary (min wage) to get by and pay bills, not much else in return for equity. My co-founder has already offered to sell our software to another company for ~$10k which is why it's not an easy choice to give shares away for me. I may have to come up with a number that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering you are a co-founder and jumping ship instead of pivoting, I'd want my shares back too. I'd also be leery of accepting you on my team if you are so eager to bounce based on traction alone.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think your best bet is to negotiate something and get it in writing so you don't have it lingering over your head or negatively impact your new company.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot more to it than just traction, but I'd rather not get into it. I didn't mean to suggest that was the sole reason of me leaving. I'll be talking to a lawyer soon, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As others have pointed out, passive non-controlling ownership in a closely held company is worthless when your relationship with the controlling parties is adversarial.

Simple advice: Startups fail. What you will gain by walking away as amicably as possible and getting on with your life is worth far more than the shares. [1]

[1] 10% with 2:1 dilution requires a $150,000,000 exit to provide the FU money minimum of $7.5 million.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd just give them the shares back and even the laptop too if can afford to. Just start from a blank slate and don't risk the chance of something biting you in the future. The shares don't mean anything to you.. if you're leaving it probably means you're almost sure that startup won't make it big.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Should I be talking to our company lawyer (which my co-founder knows personally before we started) or another who knows nothing of the situation?

</comment><comment><USER8> My suggestion is lawyer up!</comment>


Face to GIF is Amazing - <AUTHOR> http://www.longren.org/face-to-gif-is-amazing/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've already got an entire folder of gif's. Just totally stupid crap.

My 3 year old is going to love this. I fully expect to come home from work tomorrow to a full hard laptop drive.

</comment><comment><USER2> Original discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5944764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5944764)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wonder how I missed that. Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the tool I used to optizimize the GIF from 3MB to 946kB.

[http://ezgif.com/optimize/](http://ezgif.com/optimize/)</comment>


Do you care about web security? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filipekberg.se/2012/09/21/friday-with-filip-do-you-care-about-web-security/

<comment><USER2> horrible attitude by the business owner. if you are onboarding a customer, does this means you don't give a damn about them?

besides, most people have one password for multiple places, so this client of yours is probably the weakest link in the chain</comment>


Show HN: John's Phone for Android, downgrade your smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.johnsphones

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like the idea for Christmas, so I built it for them last week.</comment>


Rethinking floating point for deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.01721 <comment><USER2> I'm astonished that floating point ever gets mentioned in the context of AI - I went to static point (integer multiply and bit-shift) in the 1980s for neural nets. I wasn't able to sell the idea to Hinton, way back then, but that was because he didn't give me time; he was busy tossing me out of his office for mentioning a new parallel-processing computer.</comment>


Promising hacker?  Want to eradicate poverty?  We'll relocate you to SF. - <AUTHOR> http://www.samasource.org/about/positions/RubyEngineer

<comment><AUTHOR> It says apply on Resumator, which you're free to do. Or you can just email me your Github name, Stack Overflow profile, resume, sample code, or random chit chat: firstname.lastname@example.com

Feel free to ignore all experience requirements. If you're talented and eager, I want to hear from you.</comment>


Use pgp with gmail (in-browser) - <AUTHOR> http://getfiregpg.org/s/home

<comment><USER2> FireGPG is useful (picks up on PGP blocks embedded in webpages) and I used the gmail functionality for a while, but gave up on it (for gmail anyways) since it broke with every little update to gmail.</comment>


Ask HN: Best CRM for a B2B client selling across Europe? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a CRM system for a business that sells B2B in all european countries. The company has around 25 employees speaking 10 languages so I18N is a must.
Other nice features would be build-in email automation, integration of 3rd party software e.g. Zapier, clean and web based UI.
I've looked at Pipedrive, Freshsales and Hubspot so far.
Are there any other providers worth looking at? <comment><USER2> Hi, worth looking at Livespace (www.livespace.io).

It's ideally suited for B2B sales teams. Built in email & task automation, open API & PieSync connection - all supported. The UI is really intuitive and the reporting is great.

Currently availbale in 3 languages (Polish, English, Russian)</comment>


Belief Reasoning with Subjective Logic - <AUTHOR> https://folk.uio.no/josang/sl/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that E.T. Jaynes Probability Theory, nor Ploya's Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning is mentioned at all in this book, even in the references.

<comment><USER3> Jaynes and Rescher et al. were the first to pop into my mind. Prima facie, sounds like some kind of epistemic logic with probabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So close, but just misses the mark.

This statement contradicts itself:

> We can assume that an objective reality exists, as "das Ding an sich" (the- > thing-in-itself) in the pholisophy of Kant, but our perception of that > reality will always be subjective.

in that the latter clause is an objective statement about perception necessarily, by its assumption, derived through said limited subjective means.

"Do not rely on your thinking in order to know the world"

<comment><USER3> Yes, I read that passage and was left irritated by the philosophical mediocrity of it. Name-dropping Kant only makes matters worse given that his conceptualism is incoherent.

The subjective/objective distinction is problematic. Obviously, knowing agents are always subjects -- something has to be doing the knowing -- but knowledge of that presupposes that the subject is able to know the world as it is in the first place.

<comment><USER4> All subjects exist in their environment. Their own individual truths are unique just as they are.

Suppose you look through a bucket of polluted water. It's difficult to see through it. Heck, it's difficult to tell what's even IN the bucket because the water is murky. If the water is clean, and you shine a light into it, then, things in it are visible.

The analogy is to the degree of truthfulness of an individual's consciousness. The higher the truthfulness, the higher the degree of precision with which they can make confirmations about what exists as it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the face of it, this phrase seems dissonant to me:

> However, in the long term it's detrimental to the stability of global > civilisation when we hold and promote different and conflicting subjective > truths.

If it's referring to "subjective truths" as identity beliefs, then yes, it could be an accurate statement. But if "subjective truths" is referring to more malleable beliefs decoupled from identity, then I'd say it's overstating things. Conflict that can be resolved with a positive outcome for all involved is better than no conflict, as a lack of conflict can lead to stagnation.

<comment><USER6> I think the point is that there are some opinions that must be based on objective truth (whatever that is), for civilisation to remain stable. For instance- accepting the fact that our activities are causing climate change is something that has the ability to affect our chance of survival as a species -etc.

I don't think the author means that _every_ belief held by any person must ultimately become "objective" (and, therefore, aligned with that of all the rest of humanity). For instance, I don't see how it is bad for human civilisation if I think I look ravishing in red, whereas everyone else thinks I look like a pillock.

<comment><USER7> They can appear to be objective, they cant ever be actually objective in any universal way. There cannot be a correct interpretation of reality in any logical system as all premises are fundamentally impossible to validate.

Luckily we dont need to know whether something is objectively true for it to be useful. And useful is really all you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The wikipedia page on Subjective Logic goes into more detail: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_logic)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this in any way a variation on fuzzy logic? I learned it on University 15 years ago, saw some applications in some cameras, never to be seen again.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could someone highlight a few applications of this?

<comment><USER11> It's an explicit formulation of a process that you, and everyone else, follow all the time.

You might, for example, trust your spouse. You have no problem giving them your car keys, because you believe they are unlikely to steal the car.

Now a stranger asks you to borrow your car. You would probably not give them the keys.

But then you learn that the stranger is a good friend of your spouse. Because you trust your spouse, and they trust their friend, your trust in the stranger just grew, and you would probably consider giving them the car.

Using many such chains, with some discounting as the length increases, you could, for example, create a trust score for a news story.

<comment><USER12> In my opinion, this possible application would be rather counter productive as social trust at any scale is generally based on little more than marketing and public relations. Most would now say Harvey Weinstein is one of the most despicable people in this country - and his behavior was an open secret. Yet if you did any sort of networking trust mechanism just last year, he would have ranked near the top. And this is assuming we could perfectly measure such things. In reality that measurements, and measurers, are themselves rife with potential issues. And any measurement would be completely gamed.

Fundamentally, this would seem to do little more than work to entrench already established forces who would tend to the score the highest, or equivalently have the resources to the game the system most effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meta: it's curious that this green account created two hours ago only has two submissions, both of which reached the top 10 on the front page.

<comment><USER14> Jealous of the unicorn points?</comment></comment>


Concurrent marking in V8 - <AUTHOR> https://v8project.blogspot.com/2018/06/concurrent-marking.html <comment><USER2> "Our real-world benchmarking framework shows about 65% and 70% reduction in main thread marking time per garbage collection cycle on mobile and desktop respectively."

Ships in Chrome 64 and Node v10.</comment>


Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/case-for-open-innovation/ <comment><USER2> Just to point something out.

IBM sponsored and was the primary contributor of resources to an independently developed Java work-alike called Apache Harmony. (about JDK 1.5 level, IIRC) Apache Harmony was, naturally, under the Apache license.

Google wanted something like Java for Android, so Google used Apache Harmony.

Sun was okay with Google having something like Java in Android and had said so. (perhaps reluctantly)

Oracle sees Sun for sale, and envisions a big "sue google" sign on Sun's back. Oracle buys Sun, to get Java and sue Google. Very soon after acquisition this becomes apparent. James Gosling leaves Oracle for reasons that were not quite clear at the time, but soon become clear.

Oracle claimed Google had used Java code. But Android had Apache Harmony.

So Oracle changes its argument to . . . But the APIs!!!

(Groklaw had documented all this back in the day.)

<comment><USER3> Google explicitly calls out in its brief the fact that Sun, as the original author of the code, very explicitly did not consider Google to be infringing.

Although I do wish Google tried harder to press the point that, based on Oracle's argument that copying the API infringes copyright, Oracle itself is in violation of others' copyright. Ars Technica has an example of that (Amazon's AWS), and the brief does give a vague allusion to this fact, based on what I presume is the trial records:

> Notably, Java SE itself "reimplements" interfaces from earlier programming > languages. JA154-157; see also JA211.

<comment><USER4> According to Gosling they did, just did had they money to do anything against it, and decided to make juice out of lemons.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s)

Also Google could have bought Sun and own Java, apparently they did not, as they thought they could get away with it.

<comment><USER5> This is inaccurate. According to Gosling in the video you link, Sun believed the clean room implementation probably wasn't clean. That has nothing to do with whether or not Sun believed that usage of _the API_ was infringing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who here remembers Groklaw? PJ was covering Oracle vs. Google with the same level of detail that she used on SCO vs. IBM. Coverage ran up into the first appeal, when she stopped updating the site.

• The list of all Oracle vs. Google filings (up to the site's closing), with links to articles that mention them. Not all filings had corresponding articles: [http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=OracleGoog...](http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=OracleGoogle)

• The list of all articles related to Oracle vs. Google, in reverse-order (newest at the top): [http://groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=archives&year=...](http://groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=archives&year=-1&use_s_page=OracleGoogle)

PJ, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well!

(Edited: Removed characters that messed up formatting)

<comment><USER7> Stopped updating it for a reason -- [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175](http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175)

<comment><USER8> Has that site been hacked? When I use Chrome's simplified view there is a paragraph injected talking about and linking to live porn.

<comment><USER9> > [http://](http://)

no donkey in this race but how sure this is not you and your circumstances rather than the site itself? Living in certain countries my ISP used to inject all sort of nonsense into every unencrypted site they could.

Anyone not using tls these days is intentionally exposing their readers to harm, which you seem to be experiencing.

Personally I won't view such sites on principle and block them with https- everywhere, though guessing many others do allow it, due to being the default setting worldwide.

<comment><USER10> It's not just them—the described paragraph is in the Google cache (search for xxx).

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RhVEwm...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RhVEwmGBrloJ:www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story%3D20130818120421175&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=1)

<comment><USER11> view the page source and there is a "position: absolute; left: -5294px; top: 0;" to hide the paragraph

<comment><USER12> As someone who doesn't dive deep into CSS positioning what is the significance of -5294?

Is there a reason it's not a round number?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This coming from the company that files patents like crazy and gives out t-shirts that say "patent heroes wanted". Call me cynical but I feel like google is narrowly interested in open innovation when they are at risk for billions in fines, and definitely also supports openness in other ways, but still supports a lot of proprietary and closed source work. There are lots of business reasons to be closed source, but don't talk up a big talk about the value of openness when you're really just trying to cover your ass. Lots of google tech fails on openness.

<comment><USER14> This is coming from a whole lot more than just Google. They are the ones who will lose money in the immediate lawsuit, but we all stand to suffer if Oracle's interpretation of the law is held up. Don't take my word for it, take the word of the entire software community who has weighed in on this to support google in the form of amicus briefs (which I really do encourage you to read).

Here is a partial list of other groups who have already filed motions in support of Google: Microsoft, EFF, Python Software Foundation, Mozilla, RedHat, (see the docket for a complete list).

In addition their was a very interesting brief submitted by a bunch of famous computer scientists, instead of an organized company. The names attatched included Edwin Catmull, Alan Kay, Brian Kernighan, Bjarne Stroustrup, Andrew Tanenbaum, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, Steve Wozniak. The total list of people is 78 long and they are all of similar caliber (though I did pick out the names I had the strongest recognition for), see their brief: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190225134131839_18-956_Oracle_v__Google_Computer_Scientists_Amicus_Motion_Brief_FILE.pdf))

This case isn't about Google making or loosing some money, Google being open or not. None of the amici care about that, the supreme court doesn't care about that. Only Google and Oracle care about that. This case is about the law that governs us all and what effects it has on us all.

And yes, Microsoft is agreeing with the EFF in a lawsuit...

<comment><USER15> I very strongly support Google's side of this case. But them claiming to champion open innovation is incredibly condescending and frankly bullshit. They're pursuing this case exclusively for financial motives (which I don't think there's anything wrong with to be clear). But the fact that there's some public good behind it is just a happy coincidence for their marketing department. They'd just as happily be on Oracle's side if that made financial sense to them.

<comment><USER16> Based on what precedence? Imo this statement is just false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Docket: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-956.html)

Direct link to brief: [http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/127663/20200...](http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/127663/20200106172508533_18-956%20ts.pdf)

Schedule:

Petitioner's (Google) brief: January 6, 2020

Respondent's (Oracle) brief: February 12, 2020

Reply (Google) brief: March 13, 2020

Oral Argument: Likely late March, possibly in April, otherwise delayed to October.

Ruling: If Oral argument is heard late march or in April, sometime this summer.

<comment><USER17> Sometime _before_ summer, right? Doesn't the court adjourn at the end of June or so?

<comment><USER14> The last day on the schedule is June 29th, you can view it here: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/2019TermCourtCal...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/2019TermCourtCalendar.pdf)

Depends on how you define summer I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FYI: [https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v- google](https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google)

<comment><USER19> _the lawsuit will now be known as Google v. Oracle, since Google asked the Supreme Court to hear the case. After nine years, we'll have to get used to calling the case by this new name_

Interesting.

Poetic.

Google can't win this fight (if they win) as a defendant, only as an aggressor.

<comment><USER20> > Google can't win this fight (if they win) as a defendant

Sure they can (and it's the only way they can), if they win _at_ the Supreme Court, it will be as a Defendant-Appellant. And if, as is often the case, the final formalization of the victory comes on remand back to the trial court from the Supreme Court after the Supreme Court declares the controlling law, _that_ victory will be as a simple Defendant.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the clarification. IANAL.

(It's been a beautiful saga. I hope they make a movie out of it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Question: My understanding is that the Supreme Court is here to interpret the constitution and other laws. When it now decides that Oracle is right and APIs are copyrightable, can't the other parts of the government introduce a new law making APIs not copyrightable again?

<comment><USER14> If the supreme court decides for Oracle, congress can absolutely pass a new law that reduces the scope of copyright to exclude APIs. The constitution limits what congress can say is copywritable, but doesn't require that they say anything is.

There's even a good chance that they will in my opinion, given the amount of lobbying dollars on the side of sanity in this case.

Still, I would rather not rely on congress doing anything sensible in a timely manner these days, especially when existing copyright law already sides with Google (IMO). It would also not be retroactive, so everyone under the sun can sue everyone under the sun over previous violations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oracle is no saint, but Google isn't a saint in this either. Google is one of the strictest companies I've talked with when it comes to people working on personal projects, contributing to open source, etc. even when in California and on your own time/equipment.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is a lot comments focusing on which side will win, but I would like to hear peoples thought about how the judges can reach the desired conclusion and what the potential risk or prospects to areas outside of programming API. As long there is not explicit paragraph in copyright about programming API I would think that there will be an effect outside the scope of this lawsuit.

One area of copyrighted works I have seen people also question the legibility of being copyrightable is standard documents and law texts. They seems to me as very similar to an program API, if somewhat less strict when implemented. It would definitive lower the cost of interoperability if such works would be lifted outside of copyright.

On the risk side however, I am wondering if the Idea–expression distinction get pushed towards the idea side, then will companies just use that finding as an argument in favor of patenting API? 20 years is better than the practically infinity that is copyright, but I am not sure it will make the situation much better in the general case.

</comment><comment><USER24> If software interfaces can't be copyrighted, how come CPU ISAs can...? Anybody know?

<comment><USER14> How come you assume they can be? My understanding is that they have generally been protected by patent but I'm open to being proven wrong (preferably by being shown a court case, but being shown big licensing agreements for _copyright_ would also be interesting).

<comment><USER24> I've just assumed it so because I've read it a few times in various contexts, but now that I google it more thoroughly it looks very much like you're right.

Perhaps this confusion stems from the fact that chip companies tend to license the ISA bundled with documentation and software tools, which are of course covered by copyright (see e.g. the MIPS Open license).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Time for Google to support open innovation for real.

Some Key principles for open innovation

Creating value is not an end but a means for making our world better. You embrace openness when creating value for your customers. You use an OSI approved license when developing software. You use an Creative Commons License to share documentation that has value. You embrace openness as basic value for knowledge sharing and growth. Think of open science, open data, open access, open research. Knowledge and improvements should be beneficial and reachable for everyone. Your organization is inclusive.

</comment><comment><USER26> Google should bring XMPP back to its chat application(s), Openess doesn't stop at API workalikes.

<comment><USER27> This is the new definition of open. A documented API, probably with no guarantees and many requirements. Is the Nest thermostat really open when you can only write values to it via the cloud? Why not a simple local mqtt solution? I would not call this "open".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Last year I went to refresh my memory on the status of the case and all pop press referred to "11,500 lines of code" copier. I couldn't find any clarification of those are all API calls. Anyone know or better yet have a reference with analysis?

</comment><comment><USER29> Would we need new software license with regards to Copyright protection once this case is closed in Orcale's flavour?

</comment><comment><USER30> I find the term "useful Arts" interesting in patent law, as it clearly suggests that there are "unuseful arts"!

</comment><comment><USER31> if Oracle loses does anyone think they'll be more or less open to relicensing ZFS so it's more GPL / Linux friendly?

<comment><USER32> Why would ZFS' license be related to the outcome of this court case?

<comment><USER31> They could open source it as a part of goodwill to the Linux community

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Google's arguments were already refuted in the earliest hearings. There's a reason this is going to the supreme court, the rulings didn't really match up with accepted evidence and testimony of experts in the court.

Google will lose this. You don't explicitly copy code, take other people's engineers after exiting licensing talks with the company you took from, and have it not be about stealing someone else's intellectual efforts.

The courts have already explicitly denied Google's claim they did this for compatibility or interoperability. The grey area is how much damage Google has done to Oracle, and it's hard to put an explicit price on that. But given the popularity of Android and how Google's has massively benefited from the platform, in no small thanks to the development community around it, and given the absolutely morbid failure of its other community dev efforts it's not really hard to see that Android wouldn't be what it is today without Java; having a familiar platform for developers to code against is priceless (but not legally).

Google wanted all the benefits of using Java without actually paying for it.

Sun put a lot, and I mean a lot of money into Java. Java had well defined licensing terms for how to use their code. Oracle bought Java. Oracle has the rights to license and price their code however they want. Google does not. Google was in talks with Oracle to license Java but backed out when they didn't want to pay to use it. Instead Google took engineers from the company they copied code from, and re-licensed said code.

It's black and white but people's blind hate for Oracle leads them down an argument or view point the courts have already denied and are now ignoring.

Don't sacrifice your principles for some cheap hit against Oracle. If Google can just throw their man power around to ignore your license, your open source license will not matter. You will not get credit for the work you do. Google and others can just feel like they don't want to abide by your license, take your code, and re-license it however they want. It's already hard to enforce any type of open source licence but if Google comes out on top it really won't matter moving forward. That is what is at stake here.

"What we've actually been asked to do (by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need." \- Email from Tim Lindholm, a Google Engineer

From the most recent hearing:

"Ultimately, we find that, even assuming the jury was unpersuaded that Google acted in bad faith, the highly commercial and non-transformative nature of the use strongly support the conclusion that the first factor weighs against a finding of fair use." \- [https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20180327178](https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20180327178)

<comment><USER5> This is objectively, very definitively false.

> You don't explicitly copy code

Google didn't copy code. Even if you believe that APIs are copyrightable, Google's clean-room implementation hasn't been part of the case for years. It's just about the API now.

If you want to make an argument that APIs are copyrightable, fine, make that argument. Make the argument that Google is infringing on Oracles API. But if you're trying to accuse Google of copying code, you're wrong. You're conflating two ideas that are not related.

> It's black and white but people's blind hate for Oracle leads them down an > argument or view point the courts have already denied and are now ignoring.

If this was actually as black and white as you say, the Supreme court wouldn't have agreed to hear it, they would have just allowed the lower court decision to stand. Unless you believe that Ruth Bader Ginsburg blindly hates Oracle for some reason?

<comment><USER33> >Google didn't copy code.

Yes they did.

<comment><USER5> No, they didn't. If you're referring to the infamous 9 lines of code:

      private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex {
         if (fromIndex > toIndex)
              throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
                   ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
         if (fromIndex < 0)
              throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex);
         if (toIndex > arrayLen)
              throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);
      }

that was removed in Android 4.0 and is no longer being litigated as part of the case. Google is not being sued for stealing code -- Oracle agreed way back in 2012 not to pursue statuary damages for those lines.

The appeal courts reversal of Alsups decision in 2014 was on the basis of copying the API. They wrote "that the overall structure of Oracle's API packages is creative, original, and resembles a taxonomy"[0].

You're conflating two separate issues, copying implementation code vs copying an API -- copying the implementation was resolved in 2012. Copying the API is still being litigated. If you have a docket or ruling or source that says otherwise, then of course feel free to list it.

Or if you want to make the argument that declarative headers for an API are _technically_ code, then... OK, whatever, fine. But it's still wildly deceptive to conflate declarative code and implementation code without mentioning that the law has treated them separately for decades. You're making it sound to a normal reader like Google wholesale lifted implementation logic from Java, which is just not what happened.

[0]: [https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20140509135](https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20140509135)

<comment><USER33> >copying implementation code vs copying an API

You said code. Not implementation code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just because Oracle: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2040s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2040s)

I await the day the lawnmower defense becomes the new Chewbacca defense.

</comment><comment><USER35> Google could lead by example here - perhaps by letting people download a reliable, usable copy of the data they're making 70 billion dollars a year from. But they won't even do that.

[https://beepb00p.xyz/takeout-data-gone.html](https://beepb00p.xyz/takeout- data-gone.html)

<comment><USER36> That blogpost is complaining that Google isn't keeping around as much data as OP would like. I mean, seriously? Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

<comment><USER35> Let's be real; it's not like your data is also purged from their predictive models when it's no longer available in Takeout. They'll still be using it for profit. The least they can do is let you download a copy of it.

<comment><USER37> Yes your data is purged when you delete it from your activity ([https://myactivity.google.com/](https://myactivity.google.com/)) (not instantly because there are many systems involved, but within a strict deadline). This is taken seriously, and there are teams at Google making sure this happens. (Not sure how much is public, but some details in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259)) (Note that anonymized data, such as aggregate data that cannot possibly be used to identify individual users, cannot be deleted this way: e.g. (say) the number of YouTube views for "Despacito" (if you had watched it) will not decrease by 1 when you delete your activity, because that number was never associated with you in the first place.)

If something used to be in your Takeout data but is no longer there, that's most likely because Google no longer has that data about you.

<comment><USER35> Well, today I learned. Thanks for the thorough explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First Google should provide the Java community an platform that actually supports Java language alongside its standard library instead of Google's version of J++, just like the NDK supports C and C++ standard library.

None of the other Java vendors has ever had any problem with either Sun or Oracle.

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

Or just like with Microsoft with J++, they can create their own .NET aka Android with either pure Kotlin/Native or Dart and see how successful it will turn out to be without piggybacking into the Java eco-system (Fuchsia).

<comment><USER17> The NDK does not (completely) support the C and C++ standard library. Certain parts (name resolution, at least, IIRC) are missing.

<comment><USER4> Where is name resolution (of what, DNS?) on ISO C and ISO C++ standard?

POSIX is neither part of ISO C nor ISO C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What great PR speak. The core topic of the article is an update in the ongoing copyright legal dispute between Oracle and Google. But the title and opening paragraph invoke an ethos of justice, which inherently frames Google as a valiant champion defending freedoms for its users.

<comment><USER39> In fairness, they are. The entire industry sans Oracle is against Oracle on this one.

[https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190225134131839_18-956_Oracle_v__Google_Computer_Scientists_Amicus_Motion_Brief_FILE.pdf)

<comment><USER38> Sure, but that's not really my point. I don't really care about Google or Oracle here. I'm saying that Google is spinning it really well, regardless of whether the spin is justified, so that the framing of their position is more interesting than just "Google v Oracle update."

That's a really effective framing for any company in a highly publicized legal dispute. If it happens to be true for Google in this particular dispute, that's nice but not necessary for the PR speak to be advantageous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> ... and this is why we're opening our web index so anyone can build applications on top of it?

Google built one of the most valuable companies in the world on intellectual property. They want open innovation when it's a competitor being open, or when being open has strategic benefits. They don't give a damn otherwise.</comment>


Introducing the new BBC iPlayer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Introducing-the-new-BBC-iPlayer <comment><USER2> > Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only

Yes, well. It's not like the publically financed television stations of EUrope have FUCKING MORAL OBLIGATION to help the free movement of people throughout Europe by making the programs that connect them with their home country and that they paid for available to them. And the BBC is _by far_ not the worst offender here.

I mean, even YLE, which should be happy that anybody outside of Finland wants to participate in the madness that is the Finnish language, blocks me based on my IP!

Of course, I am well aware that I am a German citizen and thus not paying into the BBC financing. This is of course an insourmountable obstacle, today in 2014.

It's not like there was any possible way to track which countries the programmes are watched from and then install some transfer payment systems between the publically financed broadcasters of the different countries.

Admittedly, our public broadcasters here in Germany have an annual budget of only 7.5 Billion Euros, so this is impossible to finance.

Man, I'm frustrated about this. Why is the media world so broken? Who runs a television station and then makes a significant effort to _keep_ people from watching it, even though them doing so has no or negligible impact on their budget?

<comment><USER3> Some of the time this will be an obligation based on content rights - e.g. the BBC only have bought the rights to show Premier League highlights or the Olympics in the UK, where as in the US NBC or ESPN might have bought those rights.

Other times, this will be due to the British government not wanting to be seen to be undercutting commercial providers in other countries (there's enough pressure on the government in how the BBC is run from commercial providers in the UK).

What's more frustrating is when the BBC produces content (e.g. via BBC Worldwide or BBC Foreign Service) which isn't available in the UK. Fortunately that's fairly rare.

<comment><USER4> I suspect it might go further than not be seen to want to undercut commercial providers (though in the case of this government that's absolutely true), I suspect that it might be illegal for them to do so - state subsidies and all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to see them put some more effort on content delivery for their TV partners. I have a Bravia EX and half the time the iPlayer streams don't work i.e. you get sound and no video. Then occasionally we get shot down for a couple of weeks at a time with content region warnings suggesting we're not in the UK.

Having spoken to Sony and my ISP, they're both suggesting that the administrative side of iPlayer is a mess. The former tell them that the BBC regularly breaks their codecs and metadata streams and the latter suggest that the BBC rarely update their geographical IP databases.

Not a great experience.

It's bad when you have to hit the proxy torrent sites to view content you already paid for with your TV license...

<comment><USER6> It's not just Sony. We have two LG TVs, one that's ~4 years old and one from last year. Funnily enough, the older one almost always works perfectly, the new one (a _far_ more powerful/responsive TV, with a much newer version of the iPlayer software) barely works at all. We've complained to LG and were informed that 'a new version will be released shortly'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish they made more of the programme information with links. Imagine clicking on the presenter's name and getting a list of other programmes they had done. This would be a great way to find things to watch. The same could apply with production companies and so on. This would bring in some IMDB style functionality they could build on to sell downloads of programmes currently not available. They could even start to sell movies.

<comment><USER8> I doubt the latter idea would be compatible with the arcane terms of being a "public service broadcaster".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I only recently discovered that there's another player lurking over at [http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/) that has the schedule overlaid onto the live stream with the ability to easily switch back to an earlier show and a channel selection overlay in fullscreen.

I'm hoping this is going to be incorporated into the new iPlayer when watching live, because it seems mad to have this functionality missing depending on which part of the site you're watching live from.

Also, I'm hoping the keyboard controls will be improved. It'd be nice for the spacebar to function as pause/play and the left right arrows to skip in much smaller increments so they're actually useful.

The skipping increment being too large also affects my Humax HDR-1000S, where you can only jump in 1 minute blocks, which is far too big to be useful when seeking to the start of something. 10 seconds would be far better.

edit: The site's just offered me a go on the trial and it looks like most of the things I wanted have actually been implemented. Excellent stuff!

</comment><comment><USER10> To announce a big new release and announce vaguely that subtitle support for iOS and Android downloads is still "coming soon" is a massive kick in the teeth. At this point they should at least be able to give us an ETA.

What is it that makes it harder to support subtitles in downloads rather than streaming? I suppose I can see that with streaming you can serve up subtitled or non-subtitled streams according to user preference, but iOS has native support for subtitles in video.

Is this some kind of crappy contractual/rights-holder thing, where "mobile devices" have to be negotiated separately?

<comment><USER11> Do iOS/Android natively support subtitles on video streams? If so, there's really no excuse for it.

<comment><USER12> I believe the answer for iOS is both yes and no: it natively supports text subtitles, but not DVD/Blu-ray-style bitmap subtitles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I HATE IT when you have too many search inputs on a page, that don't give you the same results: [http://cl.ly/image/3K111v1N1K1y](http://cl.ly/image/3K111v1N1K1y)

</comment><comment><USER14> Still requires Flash. BBC continues its long tradition of epic fail.

<comment><USER15> What would you it rather use? HTML5? Silverlight?

What is wrong with using an establish platform like Flash? iPlayer works, and works well. I happy to see BBC continuing to improve.

I don't see anything close to resembling epic fail with iPlayer.

<comment><USER16> Well, for one, Flash is a vector for viruses - why should I expose my computer to a much greater attack surface just to watch video. Secondly, Flash is often less effcient than the native implementation - on my Mac the fan ramps up frequently when running Flash apps, but rarely when running HTML5 / Javascript apps. Then there's the fact that Flash takes up space on my flash drive, which I would much rather keep for something useful.

That's just a few reasons off the top of my head. When you consider the fact that they support iPhones / iPads, they are already streaming h264, so why _not_ do it in HTML5?

<comment><USER15> Fair points. Flash is moderately inefficient and a vector for viruses. But it runs on practically all computers out there and works on older computers that doesn't have HTMl5 supported browsers. Hopefully this segment is shrinking but it still exists.

We don't know how their development cycle looks or their backend. There is probably a reason they chose not to do HTMl5 at this moment. It will probably come in due time. Worth noting is that Youtube mostly remains on Flash, though they do have HTML5 beta.

HTML5 is still quite a new technology while Flash is well established, despite its flaws.

<comment><USER17> Well, there are probably between 1.5-2 billion mobile devices that don't run Flash, and we'll probably see another billion over the next two years. I don't bother to install Flash on my desktop, I just use Chrome when I need it.

<comment><USER15> Luckily BBC only have to care about British citizens. I don't know how they do mobile streaming but it clearly works on at least some mobile devices. Native app for that? I only really use iPlayer from a computer.

> I don't bother to install Flash on my desktop, I just use Chrome when I need > it.

Most people don't know, care or understand what flash is. They want something that works and don't really care if it isn't as secure as something else or use slightly more resources. HN is not really representative for the public at large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The iPlayer is pretty great and has gone from strength to strength.

Things for me that I'd like to see (as I can see some of the devs on here)

1\. Content - I see no reason why the BBC doesn't put all of it's content on the iPlayer.

2\. Timelimit - Abandon the 7 day window time limit, it simply doesn't fit with our modern lives, Netflix has proved that.

3\. Ability to log in using my TV Licence as an ID, that way I could stream content from another country (on holiday for example, or a business trip).

Great work though guys, thank you.

<comment><USER19> They're moving it up from 7 days to 30 days at some point soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm still hoping that the BBC will take my money and let me have the iPlayer in the US. My wife is British, and would absolutely love to be able to watch all the BBC content. Let me pay a TV license fee [1], or whatever. Just take my money.

[1] For US folks: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)

<comment><USER21> This has always been my position, and seems common in the ex pat community. I would pay the equivalent license fee just to get access online via iPlayer in a heartbeat.

Some of the issues were touched on by QI creator John Lloyd, when they were trying to get QI licensed for the US(only source I found was dead link referenced by wiki). There are so many differences in licensing around the movie clips and songs used in episodes between countries that what the Beeb can play under fair use in the UK would be prohibitively expensive elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it weird that iPlayer will let me stream over 3g but refuses to allow me to download over 3g. (On iOS).

The radio iPlayer is a bit frustrating if you wanto listen to specific programmes rather than just streaming a station.

EG: searchin for "milton jones" doesn't reurn anything, but "thank you milton" does.

Having said that, the BBC is amazing and I buy a licence despite not legally needing to. The "in our time" archive is brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm really hoping this redesign is why the Xbox One iPlayer app is delayed.

<comment><USER24> It's interesting that the iPlayer team are so open about some things but so quiet about others. I don't expect ETAs I'm just interested to know the differences between PS4 and Xbox One app development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is anyone seeing the new design yet? I am not here...

<comment><USER26> It's a phased launch. Even though it's a responsive design website, we are launching it by routing mobile and tablet traffic to it first, to make sure everything works properly. There will be an opt-in mechanism on the existing desktop site later today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one wants to access the BBC from my Apple TV?

<comment><USER10> Indeed not.

However I don't feel that particular pain point because I can currently access iPlayer directly from my Sony smart TV, my Sony Blu-Ray player and my Virgin Media Tivo box. I can also use AirPlay to send from my iPad.

Sadly, apart from the iPad, seeking is real pain. Want to pop back to re-watch something in the last minute? Bad luck - you're skipped back about 20 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Will it be better than Popcorn Time?

[http://time.com/18867/popcorn-time-is-so-good-at-movie- pirac...](http://time.com/18867/popcorn-time-is-so-good-at-movie-piracy-its- scary/)</comment>


Firebug source base has been moved on github.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firebug/hacking-on-firebug/ <comment><USER2> Wait..they went along with it even after the recent hacking incident?</comment>


Y Combinator leans on WaPo - <AUTHOR> What's the story about YCombinator and their seemingly overciting paywalled news sites like Washington Post?<p>Net Neutrality, much? <comment><USER2> WaPo publishes a lot of original content that's relevant to users here so citing that content here would be expected. Not all of that content is paywalled so I suspect those who subscribed to WaPo don't check to see if it is or not.

Often, a WaPo headline will provide the gist of the content so it's still informative and other media often summarize WaPo content so I can still find the important details if I am interested.

This has nothing at all to do with "Net Neutrality" though. WaPo has no obligation to provide "free" content, nor does any other web based service.</comment>


FriendFeed gets real-time search. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/07/real-time-search-we-have-it-its-here.html <comment><USER2> Anyone know (and care to share) what FriendFeed's underlying search technology is? Entirely custom, based on Lucene or something else?

<comment><USER3> It's probably custom made, based on a bit of that Google secret sauce that Paul was exposed to.

<comment><USER4> You don't need special Google sauce for plain text search. The tricky bit of something like this is scaling it out to where it's instantly indexing every new bit of text that comes across, but that's still, while a decent bit of engineering work, is not a conceptually terribly hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I hear FriendFeed, I can only think of FriendFace: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNgCnY1lPg>

</comment><comment><USER6> Great we get all of Robert Scoble's posts in high speed.

</comment><comment><USER7> It appears to be accomplishing this using tight polling (from my investigation with FireBug). Interesting and useful, but not exactly innovative from what I can tell. Also, no way to pause or stop it?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what you mean by "tight polling", but we basically keep a connection open to the server at all times (often known as "long polling"). This is similar to how IM works.

You can pause it by pressing the pause button on the top-right of the feed.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see you can pause it only if you are logged in.

The jsonp requests I was seeing in FireBug did not exhibit the normal kind of long polling behavior I have seen on other sites, so I might have been wrong. Apologies.</comment></comment></comment>


A good example why unions aren't just "Razorfish" - <AUTHOR> http://libcom.org/news/papua-new-guinea-wildcat-causes-millions-losses-05092007 Sorry, it still bugs me. <comment><USER2> "According to Reuters newswires, the strike had "jolted" the world's gold markets, causing the price of gold to drop by US$2 per ounce last Friday."

Ah, right. A drop in gold supply leading to the inevitable drop in price!

Also, I don't understand the poster's point. This union, like other unions, is taking advantage of high fixed costs to shake someone down for money. Why is this cartel not like all the other cartels?

<comment><USER3> The employer, like other employers, is taking advantage of pro-corporate government to treat people like shit.

<comment><USER2> "Pro-corporate"? What does that mean? Anyone can form a corporation. It's like being "Pro-people-who-know-addition." Even if it's true, it's not sinister.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To put this in a bit of context, people in PNG are burying HIV/AIDS infected people alive for lack of proper medical care.

source: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6978421.stm>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, it still bugs me.</comment>


Unikernels – Rethinking Cloud Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://unikernel.org/ <comment><USER2> "Unikernels are specialised, single-address-space machine images..." -> I can also imagine a unikernel with virtual memory where core part/kernel would run in one process & memory space and the application part runnning in another process/memory space...</comment>