A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613845/the-planet-has-a-fever-and-the-cure-is-more-capitalism-a-prominent-economist-argues/ <comment><USER2> This is also called the Environmental Kuznets Curve (1991) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Ku...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve) .

There's a lot of criticism in the literature. The statistics rarely live up to the theory at face value. ([https://steadystate.org/wp- content/uploads/Stern_KuznetsCurv...](https://steadystate.org/wp- content/uploads/Stern_KuznetsCurve.pdf)). And often, new pollutants emerge in rich countries as others decline.

For example, in the USA, water pollutants targeted by the Clean Water Act (1972) have declined, but new pollutants have emerged which aren't measured or managed by the policy. Recent years have seen an explosion in estrogen hormones that turn male fish to hermaphrodites that lay eggs, coming from unchecked fertilizer runoff and birth control sewage. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/160203-femin...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/160203-feminized- fish-endocrine-disruption-hormones-wildlife-refuges/)

<comment><USER3> > The researchers found intersex smallmouth bass everywhere they looked. About > 85 percent of the males collected in the refuges were intersex. At least > some males at every site had female egg cells. It was less prevalent in > largemouth bass—about 27 percent.

Wow that's the vast majority, sounds like it could be a serious issue. What's interesting is how it's been found near cities and Agriculture but also in remote areas.

I'm curious how much of a role the waste treatment centers have played which was noted as a potential source.

Since water can travel long distances via rivers and rain its going to be hard to pinpoint who or what is to blame. Hopefully they keep digging into that question.

I also now understand what Alex Jones meant by "gay fish" in one of his popular rants he was mocked for.

<comment><USER2> > What's interesting is how it's been found near cities and Agriculture but > also in remote areas. I'm curious how much of a role the waste treatment > centers have played which was noted as a potential source.

There are generally two main sources. 1. agricultural runoff related to fertilizers. 2. Urban sewage, because birth control products get flushed down toilets and the wastewater treatment plants don't even try to filter for hormones (it's not part of the Clean Water Act). And even if they tried, the methods to do so are nascent ([https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/06/19/4153363...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/06/19/415336306/hunting-ways-to-keep-synthetic-estrogens-out-of- rivers-and-seas)).

> I also now understand what Alex Jones meant by "gay fish" in one of his > popular rants he was mocked for.

Yes, he got unfair criticism for calling attention to this -- it is actually a huge environmental problem that needs more public awareness. The ecological impacts are huge, and yes because the water treatment plants don't filter, you might be drinking similar concentrations through tap water. (edit: to be clear, the concentrations that harm fish are nowhere near enough to cause the same level of harm in humans, so no you will not turn gay from drinking tap water)

He's still a nutcase con man though, IMO. Mixing in a few grains of truth makes the poisonous ideas go down smoother.

<comment><USER3> All charlatans mix truth with falsehoods.

Alex Jones knows exactly what he's doing with his character. Anyway yeah the lack of treatment options sounds like a big roadblock.

It seems people can find any fertilizer that doesn't harm the environment somehow either, whatever is being used has already had to jump through a hundred hoops first :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It brings this up in the article, but I have a very difficult time believing this isn't just because rich countries have shifted manufacturing and mining to poor countries. Look at recycling. We all thought we were so environmentally aware by recycling, but turns out so much "recycling" was just "ship to poor countries to deal with the fallout".

<comment><USER5> Where do you draw the line?

How about Thailand or Malaysia (as an example)? They are both fairly developed and hoping to avoid middle income trap and become developed countries within few years. In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is just sad. Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

When is the moment that a country decides that it is rich enough and it is time to clean its act?

[https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1643388/chiang-...](https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1643388/chiang- mai-air-pollution-worst-in-the-world)

[https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-monks-adorn-robes- ma...](https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-monks-adorn-robes-made-from- recycled-plastic-bottles/?amp)

[https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/08/06...](https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/08/06/haze- hits-malaysia-no-area-records-good-air-quality/)

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/13/two- incid...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/13/two-incidents-of- pollution-in-pasir-gudang-affected-thousands-heres-what-we/1771022)

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/19/incinerat...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/19/incineration- not-the-way-to-deal-with-plastic-waste-environmental-ngo-tells/1773034)

<comment><USER6> > In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is just sad. > Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

That was trash that was illegally dumped there by UK, Australia, and other Western countries, right after China stopped accepting Western trash. [https://asklegal.my/p/waste-dumping-malaysia-canada- pollutio...](https://asklegal.my/p/waste-dumping-malaysia-canada-pollution- plastic-illegal-recycling-environment)

You use a strong sentence "disregard for environment". What facts lead you say that? Wouldn't the behavior of the Western countries shipping trash over to poorer countries indicate a much stronger disregard for the environment? Or are you implying the environment/nature can be split into one that is local to Western countries and another that is present in developing/poorer countries?

<comment><USER7> I don't think dumping is really the right word here. As it says in the article, importers are illegally accepting the waste and making a good chunk of money from it. The private companies who are disposing of waste from Western countries are happy to pay these guys to get rid of it. Still they could try to check what happens to the waste, rather than just turning a blind eye. But when the mafia can dump nuclear waste in your own back yard, I guess it's hard to see what happens on the other side of the world to some plastic bottles...

[https://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-dumping-nuclear- wast...](https://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-dumping-nuclear-waste-across- italy-1513190243)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Makes sense: when a country has an industrial revolution it just wants to grow fast.

Then when the extreme growth part passes it starts to stabilize: this is when the country & the people start doing well enough so that they can look at other issues (environmental impact) without having to sacrifice their livelihoods.

The human will always prioritize his own and his families livelihood. Only once that is stable can one afford to look at the impact.

If you're poor and can hardly afford basic stuff for your children you obviously won't care about the environment, it's last thing on your mind.

And if anyone writes "yeah but even poor people should care": no, that is not how human nature works. First you & your family, only then everything else.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly what I think of when I see hopefuls talking about climate change, among other topics. The guy who doesn't have enough money for rent? He's not buying the expensive free range eggs.

If I were in a developing country, I would be worried that climate accords become a other way for those on top to stay there.

<comment><USER10> > The guy who doesn't have enough money for rent? He's not buying the > expensive free range eggs.

I suppose you were just providing a random example, but if you're curious the production of free-range eggs almost certainly pollutes more carbon than caged eggs [1] while being less ethically sound (assuming that was the consideration for cage-free), environmentally responsible, and typically more expensive than plant alternatives.

[1] [https://www.smh.com.au/national/free-range-hens-boost- carbon...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/free-range-hens-boost- carbon-20-percent-20111216-1oyvp.html)

<comment><USER11> What's the ethical concern of free-range?

Also, the report you cited was the (conventional) egg industry researching itself, not an independent study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently finished Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker and this exact point was made in that book. I'll paraphrase a salient quote from the book: poverty is the greatest polluter.

Intuitively this makes great sense: when you're eking out a subsistence living you're not going to care about the environment, but when resources are plenty you can afford to consider other living things too.

<comment><USER13> That's just not true. The US emits 16 tons of CO2 per capita. For many African countries, that number is 1-2.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#Annual_carbon_dioxide_emissions_%5Btonnes%5D_per_capita)

The greatest polluter is everybody living in large single family homes full of things manufactured on other continents, with AC, multiple cars, eating red meat every day.

<comment><USER14> The greatest polluter is the economy where the only profitable business model is planned depreciation to make people buy new stuff. Nobody makes durable razors because it's a financial suicide. Nobody makes reliable cars, laptops, toothbrushes. People don't have a choice but to keep replacing things that break. Manufacturing these things wastes oil, coal and pollutes the environment. The businesses don't care because disposing the junk is not their problem. Change rules to make businesses accountable for stuff they sell: the recycling facility needs to do something with a mountain of broken fridges? Let it send an invoice to manufacturer. Many companies will go bankrupt. We'll see how reliable things replace the junk. The economy will slow down because people won't need to spend so much. There won't be much progress either if you drive the grandfathered car: no money for R&D, so engineers become repairmen. No more demand for STEM because the market for making new things is tiny. The big tech will collapse because its paid by ads and there will be nothing to advertise. Stagnation, deflation, unemployment, good stamps. As you see, the solution exists and it's called stagnation. TBH, I'm not sure if it's bad because currently the world is rapidly consolidating 99% of resources in the 1% people s hands (and make no mistake, they will survive any global warming that may come). P.S. Single family houses aren't the problem. They actually store CO2 in the form of wood, which is an easily replaceble resource. If houses were built from aluminium, I'd agree with you, but they are made from wood in the US.

<comment><USER15> That's nonsense: you have to look at the whole economy as an ecology of different waste streams.

The $X money you saved on non-disposable goods would instead be $Y spent on consumable goods (e.g. some wine or steak - both near 100% "pollution") or $Z spend on services (e.g. travel - near 100% pollution too) or other permanent goods $U (an expensive jacket that could last 300 years except it got thrown out because it looks ugly and smells of Uncle Jack).

If you want to save the world, you need to _directly_ do something that saves it e.g. protect some native forest, or buy some farm land and let it revert to wilderness.

Anything else where you are participating in the economy is virtually guaranteed to have a high degree of waste (buy some eco-friendly meat, but 50% is retail markup, and the the hippy producer uses the money on a "wasteful" overseas holiday).

Very few people calculate the total ecological footprint of their actions: e.g. buying an electric car can easily be far worse for the planet (depending on cost, location, usage, and other factors).

<comment><USER14> Permanent goods cost more, so there will be less money for travel and food. If your point is that in the long run permanent goods cost less and people will have more disposable income, then I can't agree with that. Who's going to pay that income? Companies that no longer have money?

Asking people to do something for the greater good won't lead you anywhere. People are driven by greed that capitalism wisely directs into something productive. This powerful stream of greed won't disappear anywhere, but it's possible to redirect it somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Developing nations can follow-suit, by outsourcing their own pollution intensive activities to ... developing countries?

> rich countries have figured out how to grow with lighter environmental > impacts—and developing nations can follow suit

</comment><comment><USER17> How does that reconcile with the actual (admittedly outdated) facts? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

<comment><USER18> He is looking at carbon efficiency - emissions divided by GDP. On top of that, he's looking at the change in efficiency rather than the actual efficiency, thus he can boast that the US is increasingly efficient, instead of noting it is already very inefficient.

Of course, the planet is based on physics and doesn't understand GDP, so this is all in a wider sense irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> > the planet is based on physics and doesn't understand GDP, so this is all in > a wider sense irrelevant

Per

[https://xkcd.com/435/](https://xkcd.com/435/)

economics (GDP) would be to the far left (or between sociology and math if we're on S^1), so if efficiency became a part of the exchange rate or tax on goods, it would become immediately understandable by planet.

I like BTW, the suggestion that the planet's understanding things. I can imagine she feels rather itchy these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ignoring all the cost reaching to current state. Isn't this what we call fake news?

<comment><USER20> Maybe propaganda is a beer name, as this is not really news just a twisted storyt that serves certain interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is all fine and reassuring and soothing, but the fact is that we need to entirely decorrelate economic output from resource usage, and that just doesn't happen, nor is there any way to make it happen, even in theory. This sounds for me like a call to wishful thinking, something like "we can go on like we always did, we won't crash and collapse but will find a way out".

Basically, a propaganda piece for neoliberal capitalism which is driving us into the ground fast. Borderline criminal, maybe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Assertion pretty obvious, non? (Of course a knowledge-based economy is going to pollute less than an industrial- and/or resource-driven one.)

Then the first line of the author's thesis (more capitalism needed) doesn't follow from the premise:

As China and Sweden demonstrate, advanced economies need not necessarily be strictly capitalist.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think another attribute of this is education and being aware that there is slightly more to life than just the pursuit of money. Sure, people with means fall for this all the time, but I think poor people also commonly enter the same trap. Note that a pursuit of saving face and appearing rich is entirely different than the pursuit of wealth - but a pursuit of money could take either path.

For instance, understanding why burning down a rain-forest to make $100 might not be worthwhile, akin to uber drivers endangering drivers and pedestrians to make $15.

Sometimes developed western countries seem to have sympathy for people who are willing to deforest African nations (whom are also usually helpless to act against these transgressions) and poach endangered animals (an obvious heinous act) and oddly sometimes progressives will state that it's less-bad because they're poor / uneducated...

<comment><USER24> I'd argue that this is a huge issue in the Western world that we could theoretically solve, though how it would happen practically I'm not sure.

Stable homes for all, reduce and/or eliminate the worst forms of advertising.

With some luck you then have a relatively happy populace, content to spend time with their family and on leisure etc without wanting to get big 4x4s or jet around the world or whatever. Kill off the rat race.

Quite incompatible with our current economy though...

<comment><USER23> I don't necessarily have a problem with people being motivated and as a result of their efforts making money - moreso that most people seem to be motivated just to save face and "show" others how rich they are (mostly a media driven idea). I think these kinds of narratives harm poor people more since they are inclined to make horrible financial choices to be like these "rich" people, who in reality are probably in nearly just as much debt as actual poor people.

I think the most interesting thought experiment here is when you consider extremist progressives who want to "kill the rich and elite" \- in reality if this actually did play out I think they'd just end up killing people who are most evidently "rich" but not actually withholding wealth from the poor. In essence, they'd be killing all the self-obsessed and narcissistic consumerists. Anyone who was actually rich or still in control of banking infrastructure would be smart enough to not be showy. (yes, I understand this is a pretty extreme tangent)

All in all, I do think the rat race is empowering to people who are able to understand what is really valuable to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now do it in consumption growth adjusted for marginal utility of the growth.

</comment><comment><USER26> Modern, rich countries externalize their polution-causing activities to developing nations.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The book... says there are four main forces... that enable decoupling in > mature economies:

> * the efficiencies driven by capitalism

> * technological progress that has allowed us to "dematerialize" our > consumption (by, for instance, cramming atlases, compasses, calculators, > recorders, cameras, stereos, and other gadgets into a single device in our > pocket)

> * public awareness of environmental damage

> * governments that respond to those concerns by putting regulations in place > to reduce those harms

> So, McAfee argues, what we need to address climate change and prevent other > environmental catastrophes, while maintaining modern living standards for > billions of people, is … even more of each of these [four forces], working > in concert.

<comment><USER27> There currently seems to be a big hole in this approach, which is that rich jurisdictions need to be aligned with poorer ones to work in concert toward these goals, otherwise rich jurisdictions can just "pretend" they're meeting goals when they're just moving them to poor jurisdictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's long been known that businesses that produce a lot of waste have lower profits. This is a large part of why businesses try to combat _fraud, waste and abuse_ : For their financial health.

[http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding- less-...](http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding-less-waste- means-more-profit-ep-403017472-357515301.html/)

I guess it's nice to see this well-known fact applied at a broader level. I haven't seen that before.

But it also makes me feel a bit like "We're dummies, no?" What pretty much everyone knows to be true at the micro level shouldn't be some kind of big news at the macro level, yet it is because everyone thinks capitalism is ruining the planet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Because rich countries brings their products from somewhere else, they don't have to produce them, they don't have to deal with the environmental impact of producing them.

<comment><USER18> This is true. China's environmental impact is 22% lower if you exclude their exports, and many countries in Europe would have 30% higher impact if you include their imports.

Figures from the abstract - somewhat out of date but true to a lesser extent today - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851800/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851800/)</comment></comment>


Judge to Dell: Dude, you're defrauding your customers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-judge-to-dell-dude-youre-defrauding-your-customers.html

<comment><USER2> "We have won an important victory that will force Dell to live up to its responsibilities and pay back its customers for profits that were pocketed but not deserved. This decision sends an important message that all corporations will be held accountable for the promises they make to consumers."

I think the message is more like:

"You can try to screw up your customers for profit, but if you fail you'll just lose those profits so you have nothing to lose, try it!"</comment>


Glitter – Dead-simple boilerplate for OpenGL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Polytonic/Glitter <comment><USER2> FYI one of the lesser known features of cmake is that it can invoke your build tool as well:

        cmake ..
        cmake --build .

This smartly invokes make/ninja/msbuild or whatever directly from the command line; very useful on windows machines or to have 'universal' cmake runners for CI that touches multiple platforms.

(Also, tutorials; `cmake .. && cmake --build .` _should_ smartly determine the correct compiler for the system and build it; you don't need the -G "FOO" stuff unless you're specifically doing something fancy)

<comment><AUTHOR> TIL! This is awesome! I never knew about this.

What does it do under Windows? Does it run say, devenv.exe/msbuild in the shell, as opposed to in Visual Studio?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's exactly what it does, if you're using the VS backend (which is the default).

(So you can actually be in 100% console mode in windows if you want and never launch VS. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To help improve my OpenGL/graphics knowledge, I've started going through GPU Gems ( [https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/10/10/http.developer.nvidia....](https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/10/10/http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_part01.html) ) and building my own examples of the concepts in each chapter. I was very happy to find Glitter recently, as it made the obnoxious hurdle of setting up all the dependencies unnecessary.

Also, setting up Glitter was what led me to finally "getting" what CMake was for and how it fit into a development pipeline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, CMake is a bit of a complicated beast to "learn" so to speak. I spent a fair number of hours pulling my hair out trying to get it working.

This is the result! Hope you find it helpful!

<comment><USER4> Is there a particular reason you choose to explicitly add CXX flags ('-std=c++11') over CMake's compiler feature support? The later is, in principle, more portable and future proof than hardcoding the flags.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was asked in an issue earlier today. It's a combination of 1) I didn't even know such flags existed! and 2) I had some compatibility issues with older versions of CMake on my test machines.

I'll look into adding it in the future though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This might be easier on the eyes for people as well: [http://polytonic.github.io/Glitter/](http://polytonic.github.io/Glitter/)

Looks a bit prettier than the default GitHub repository page anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> Neat, thanks for your work!

Newbie interested in OpenGL here, I followed the instructions but get a segfault, any idea? I pasted my session at [http://pastebin.com/hxXauQSQ](http://pastebin.com/hxXauQSQ)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, can you open a GitHub issue for this? Would prefer to keep problems centralized to the repository.

<comment><USER5> Sure, will do, I was just thinking it was some error of mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I noticed you haven't actually opened an issue. Did you work through your problem or ...?

<comment><USER5> Sorry, got busy just after posting. Here's a GitHub issue: [https://github.com/Polytonic/Glitter/issues/8](https://github.com/Polytonic/Glitter/issues/8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super cool! How does this compare to the (now mostly defunct) GLUT?

<comment><AUTHOR> GLUT is a windowing library. GLFW3, SDL, SFML mostly replace everything it does in terms of windowing and input.

:)</comment></comment>


UART Receive Buffering - <AUTHOR> http://www.simplyembedded.org/tutorials/interrupt-free-ring-buffer/

<comment><USER2> Important to remember for each data byte in the buffer to also store the LSR along with that data. Windows serial port driver fails to do this, meaning you can tell there was (for example) a parity error on a byte in your fifo, you just don't know on which byte.

<comment><USER3> How would you implement that though, assuming memory is tight? The simplest would be to just store a multibyte entry for each item in the ring buffer: the actual data, and the status flags set at the time it was copied. But that doubles your memory requirements, and you'll (probably) not need that status info all the time.

I suppose you could define 'normal' and keep a smaller structure which holds only abnormal values, but then you need a way to map which input byte each value refers to, and make sure it's invalidated when the ring buffer rolls around.

Or you could put some of the error-handling logic into your buffering code (but it'd be in an interrupt handler, which you probably don't want), and you might need your higher level framing or packetisation to know how far back you need to invalidate.

I'm not sure there is a single optimal solution (although if you know of one, I'd love to know). Windows getting it wrong is interesting/odd though, unless it just dates to a time when tehy were cpu/memory restricted, adn it's just stuck about for compatibility.

<comment><USER4> I assume that your serial port will run some kind of machine-to-machine protocol, and not just a serial console with user data (for which, frankly, I'll just ignore most errors). These serial prototols (like modbus, or the 10000s of ad-hoc specified "proprietary" protocols many devices speak) are usually _very_ simple.....

And if memory is tight, you'll probably also want to move some part of your protocol handling down the stack, probably up to the interrupt handler, because otherwise you'll needlessly have double buffers (characters, and decoded protocol datagrams). For most stuff running on serial ports the code will be simple enough not to create too many headaches. Then just store the fact that you've encountered a parity error next to your datagram. (msg->flags |= MSGFLASG_PARITYERR );

And yes, I know that this is a "blatant layering violation" for a proper operating system, but on a microcontroller really no one cares that you have two variations of an interrupt handler, specific to your protocol handling.

EDIT/ADDED: It's not only parity errors, but there are also things like RS485 links with 9-bit addresses, BREAK characters with semantic meaning and sometimes your communication protocol might specify when you switch directions of half-duplex links, with hard timing requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mix of global buffer and passed-in struct defining the buffer made me sad. So did the lack of atomic increments and decrements (volatile ain't sufficient). Don't get me started on the getchar routine.

This stuff just isn't hard. Sigh.

<comment><USER6> > The mix of global buffer and passed-in struct defining the buffer made me > sad. So did the lack of atomic increments and decrements (volatile ain't > sufficient). Don't get me started on the getchar routine.

It's for MSP430, and seems to be oriented in single core embedded microcontrollers. Those things _have no atomic operations_ , other than disabling interrupts.

You'd be right for multicore chips or if data type is larger than word size or if data is not aligned.

But in this case, this code is correct for this architecture. All of those things you mentioned are perfectly normal and acceptable when programming microcontrollers.

[http://www.simplyembedded.org/tutorials/msp430-architecture/](http://www.simplyembedded.org/tutorials/msp430-architecture/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_MSP430](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_MSP430)

<comment><USER5> I guess you're assuming the compiler will issue an "increment" instruction for the ++, and that instruction is atomic.

It's not a great coding practice. Move to a different processor (this happens!) and your code turns into a load-add-store, gets interrupted halfway through, and you scratch your head for a while about the mysterious and flaky FIFO failures.

Been there. At least a gesture towards an atomic operation would be nice, when you have data shared between interrupt and non-interrupt code.

<comment><USER7> How about putting

#if !defined(__AVR__) && !defined(__MSP430__)

#warning "Fix this FIFO - ++/\-- possibly not atomic!"

#endif

into the header of that thingy then. Save work on small uCs, and be warned when moving it somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's at least 1 simple bug that I found: ring_buffer_get() returns an error code, but it's being ignored in uart_getchar().

</comment><comment><USER9> Love seeing embedded stuff on HN!</comment>


Ask HN: Linode vs. DigitalOcean in 2018 - <AUTHOR> I'm currently looking at my options for a VPS for a SaaS I'm building and from what I can tell (with my very basic understanding of servers and performance), they're nearly identical (https://joshtronic.com/2018/10/15/vps-showdown-october-2018/).<p>Any other points I should be taking into consideration? <comment><USER2> I would go with D/O as they have everything Linenode seems to have and they have a kubernetes solution they are opening up to everyone (soon) and they will also offer managed Postgres and Mysql databases as a service in the future. And you can upload your own images.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/](https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/) [https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/](https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas- beta/) [https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom- images/](https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/)

<comment><USER3> I'm super excited about the managed Postgres instances, and that might be enough to pull me back to their service, especially if it can grow in CPU, memory, instances, and storage as needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have used Digital Ocean and Linode both in the past and have not found any major differences between the two of them. I have found Linode servers slightly more efficient but the speed tradeoff is negligible as compared to what Digital Ocean provides as a service. I really like the Floating IP and the fact that load balancer rules are so easy to create.

Again, it depends on you and your use case. I'd personally use Linode if the project is one off which I'd deploy and forget. DO if I am spinning 2-3 servers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you anticipate making use of DO's feature beyond running raw droplets? For example, their Kubernetes support or one-click images.

I have not used Linode in a long time but DO has really nice product offerings these days as long as you don't require a true VPC.

I really like DO's predictable building compared to AWS and to some degree GCP.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have used Linode for over a decade, and never had a problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Linode is still a little better in Hardware Spec, but DO has caught up to all other advantage that it used to hold. IPv6, Private Networking, pooled bandwidth etc. Its block storage and Space offer CDN by default and its faster than Linode. It now has Managed DB solution in beta. At the rate things are going there will be no reason to choose Linode over DO next year.

You could also take a look at upcloud, which is also very good.

I could only wish next year upgrade of DO will up the CPU optimised Droplet to 1:1 CPU Ram Ratio.

</comment><comment> barrow-rider I switched to DO from Vultr a couple years back. No ragerts as they say.

Aside from the FreeBSD options, the other reason I went to DO was that a former sysadmin I used to work with went over there as support lead and had good things to say when I poked them.

Heard good things about Linode, but also not so good things due to a couple security incidents back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Any other points I should be taking into consideration?

Yes.

Linode has a poor security track record (and culture .. wink wink) and a tradition of chronically getting owned.

AND every time they come out like "lulz everything secure now no problemo here dis last time for sure promise"

<comment><USER9> Would you be willing to show some recent security failures? Whenever I searched, I found a few things from 2016 but that seemed like the latest thing. 2 years is a good bit of time without any incidences.

<comment><USER10> They still are using their old CF manager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We use both for small and production projects.

I have found DO to have more additional features, but we use few of them.

The new DO K8 support looks interesting as we currently use Openshift (Red Hat), IBM, AWS and Google.

</comment><comment><USER12> Both are very, very easy to use.

Both have a very, very cheap option.

I'd say that all things being equal, you should spin up a server on each of them and see which one is easier to work with for you.

Personally, I use DO.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you are considering other options take a look at Ramnode. My experience with them was great both with support and a little server with an uptime of 2 year or so.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've used both and I don't think you can go wrong with either. However, I found DO's API to be somewhat easier to use.

</comment><comment><USER15> DigitalOcean is what we use for [https://www.appearme.com](https://www.appearme.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> If you are in Europe, go with Hetzner.

<comment><USER17> My experience with Hetzner support has been poor, to say the least. I had the exact opposite experience of Linode and DO.

Last time I used Linode, IIRC their API was limited compared to DO, it was more than a year ago.

<comment><USER18> Every feature of the new Linode cloud manager [https://cloud.linode.com](https://cloud.linode.com) is backed by the new Linode API (v4) [https://developers.linode.com/](https://developers.linode.com/)

The previous version of the API (v3) was definitely missing parity with the old manager interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Give aws light sail a try. I would prefer Linode than DO.

<comment><USER10> I've reviewed Lightsail and it's throttled heavily:

[https://www.karoly.io/amazon-lightsail- review-2018/](https://www.karoly.io/amazon-lightsail-review-2018/)

<comment><USER20> has anyone experienced Linode or DO doing any such throttling?</comment></comment></comment>


Massive Breach in Panera Bread - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/21H28TA1 <comment><USER2> A similar flaw exists in the Denny's Canada app. Reveals usernames, email, full name and phone number. The API is entirely unauthenticated and account hijacking is very easy. The app is used for reward points that grant you free meals.

I tried reaching out to them multiple times and was ignored. I tried contacting the firm that developed the app, and they ignored me. Maybe I should have made a pastebin dump :)

<comment><USER3> You should post your method. I could scrape it for data if you want

<comment><USER2> Would rather not. I've made scripts that take all the data possible, I'll probably post a dump and repro instructions some time later.

<comment><USER4> Might be worth getting in touch with Troy Hunt, over at [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> API seems to be down for maintenance. Nice to see Panera is taking action, sad to hear that this seems to be way, way after the original vulnerability was reported.

</comment><comment><USER6> Verified the vulnerability, but it looks like they have taken down the API now.

Hopefully they will publicly acknowledge.

<comment><USER7> I anticipated this and made archived copies of the hyperlink referenced in the Pastebin entry in case they tried to pretend there was no leak.

[https://www.webcitation.org/6yNwbyvu0](https://www.webcitation.org/6yNwbyvu0)

[https://archive.fo/h9mjp](https://archive.fo/h9mjp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There whole system seemed a bit odd to me, given a password to your "account" is optional. Using the terminal you can login with no password, then at the end it asks you if you want to save your credit card to your account. Maybe it requires a password at that point, but I wasn't going to try.

<comment><USER7> Oh no no no no no please don't tell me that's true D:

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      Access Denied
      You don't have permission to access "http://www.panerabread.com/" on this server.
      Reference #18.96d8f648.1522702964.2a61eebf

The Web Archive can access it just fine though: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180402210155/https://www.paner...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180402210155/https://www.panerabread.com/en- us/home.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> For non-Americans and as their page is down: What kind of accounts do you have at such a company? I never had an account with a restaurant, why would you use that and store personal information there?

<comment><USER11> I'm American but I have made accounts with restaurants to order for pickup (or delivery). It's especially helpful if you eat in an a busy area with long lunch lines. It's also less error prone having the order in written form than trying to order over the phone. I think most restaurants use a vendor like Yelp for their ordering service, but I guess some big ones like Panera can afford to build one themselves (poorly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh boy. I just verified this with a few phone numbers of folks that I know personally, and their personal data came back just fine. This isn't good! I hope it's patched ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's back online and they're verifying sessions now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone manage to scrape all data? If so please provide a link so it can be archived for a database search tool.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's exactly what you should do when you see a vulnerability. "Internet" "businesses" has proven that they don't understand kind words. Take all those lawsuits, or promises thereof, and _shove_.

Do this until they plead mercy. Are they? No they aren't yet!

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, this looks pretty bad.

<comment><USER16> If in doubt, put a catputer photo. Cats always look fabulous.

Update: It seems that error-cat has gone now. In resume, anybody could download a list of all people eating at this restaurants, their telephones, addresses, pastry preferences and last four numbers of their credit cards. Am I right? It seems that entering a single telephone they obtain a dozen of diferent users. Is a sort of wildcard or something?.

Wouldn't be much better to talk with Panera Bread directly?

<comment><USER17> I'm going to pick on your post a little:

Why would you assume a security researcher who put in that much effort and kept the pastebin mostly anonymous didn't put in the effort to contact Panera Bread?

Is there a reason you automatically assume that the security researcher is irresponsible, but companies, who almost daily, have data breaches, are responsible in these scenarios?

"Hey, maybe you should contact the company?!" Thank you captain fucking obvious.

<comment><USER16> > Why would you assume...?

Because there is not data that specifies the opposite in the link (and extra info was lacking when I wrote it), thus is a reasonable and logical first thing to check.

> Is there a reason you automatically assume that the security researcher is > irresponsible...?

Please, don't put words in my mouth. I didn't called irresponsible anybody and I didn't automatically assume anything. To be honest, I couldn't care less about who, if one, has the responsibility here. I'm trying to learn something. Not more, not less.

Captain fucking obvious is a nice title. We'll have a safer world when people start paying notice to a lot of fucking obvious and boring things. This reminds me a lot to the outrageous lexNET case (that was much, much, worse than internet knowing who has a sweet tooth for buns).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Verified this is legit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps I'm naïve, but the fact this "breach" is being disclosed anonoymously, via a medium commonly associated with nefarious data dumps suggests to me that there really was little consideration paid to allowing Panera an opportunity to correct this situation.

Disclosing this as such was irresponsible, despite being an important discovery.

<comment><USER19> Given the number of times well-meaning do-gooders have been prosecuted or sued after publicly disclosing a breach, I find this approach entirely reasonable.

The caveat, of course, is that the poster should definitely have first attempted to contact Panera. I would not be surprised at all if Panera responded by doing absolutely nothing, which eventually led to this post.

<comment><USER14> If you contacted them, you just opened yourself to potential persecution, even if it would not be you who actually pastebined it later.

Not even once.</comment></comment></comment>


Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities and Stack Them Sideways - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/12/160996525/odd-things-happen-when-you-chop-up-cities-and-stack-them-sideways?sc=tw&cc=share&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=f34b7

<comment><USER2> An interesting article, sure, but there's a small problem. The section of Istanbul that they've chosen (centered here: [https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&spn=0.04...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.044081,29.096603&spn=0.043954,0.090895&t=m&z=14)) is actually on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, and it's one of the newer neighborhoods. The streets are actually arranged like that because of the terrain, more than because of history.

That said, this is a case of being right for the wrong reason. Istanbul is an _amazing_ city to walk through. It's like the worlds largest living maze, and you're never quite sure where you'll pop out.

For example, the first time I was there, we turned a corner down an alley to try and get to one of the main roads. The alley started out wide enough for us to walk three-abreast, but quickly narrowed. At some point I looked up and noticed that there was now a roof over our heads. Eventually the alley narrowed to where we had to turn sideways to squeeze past people coming in the opposite direction, and there were shop counters on either side. A few feet more, and we stepped out onto the main street we had been looking for. I turned around, but where I expected to see the alley was, instead, what looked like a regular store-front, identical to all those next to it on either side...

But you don't have to believe me. Yandex has great walking maps of Istanbul! Here's the location I was just describing: <http://harita.yandex.com.tr/-/CVeLjW60>

<comment><USER3> Came here to point this out, too. Would be interesting if they redo the analysis on the old part of town. Where was teh alley that you are referring to? Near the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi)?

<comment><USER2> No, just off of Istiklal Caddesi. Actually, Istiklal is interesting in that it is somewhat isolated, and almost every alley leading you to it (except for a few major ones) is a different adventure. Istiklal also has a number of "pasajlar" that are their own adventure (but sadly, don't appear in Yandex last I checked). Kapali Carsi has some more amazing routes, and just down from Istiklal is Cezayir Sokagi which, despite being called a "street", is more of a staircase but also has some of the best French restaurants in the city.

If you haven't been to Istanbul, you really must go!

 _Edit_ : Oh, and I imagine if they did this analysis with one of the _really_ old parts of town, it would be even more extreme...the problem would be finding an accurate map!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paris shouldn't be too surprising. While the city is quite old, it was reshaped and modernized in the mid-19th century.

See, for example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmanns_renovation_of_Paris>

<comment><USER5> Interesting article. But the link does not (currently) work without the apostrophe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris)

<comment><USER6> Now it does. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been transfixed with the idea of 'Digital Comparative Studies of Cities' (or some similar turn of phrase).

With the advent of mapping projects (GoogleMaps, Openstreetmap, etc), environmental sensor networks (my startup's area), and cheaper LiDAR arrays (for point cloud mappings of buildings and terrain...now in CMOS form) - we'll be able to quantify the homogeny of surbanization, architectural 'themes', road uniformity, development rates, etc over time.

There are lots of similarly clever projects cited on BLDGBlog [1] if you're into this kind of thing.

[1] <http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER8> > quantify the homogeny of surbanization, architectural 'themes'

You'll be interested in this paper <http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/whatMakesParis/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Istanbul's layout is downright Byzantine.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I see what you did there :). Have an upboat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _all those crooked, lopsided, curvaceous streets, going off in so many directions, I can't help wondering, what would it be like to wander there?_

It would be like the suburbs in the US. Houses are all on cul-de-sacs that wind around and eventually join larger streets which eventually join arterial streets. Pretty much like the map of Istanbul they chose.

<comment><USER12> Something tells me you've either never walked around Istanbul, or you've never walked around a suburb, or both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would love to see Boston added. (Most believe that Boston city planners used the throw-spaghetti-against-the-wall method of city planning.)

<comment><USER14> I heard that Boston's layout was the result of paving cow paths.

<comment><USER15> That may be partially accurate, the large park in the center (Boston Common) was originally a public grazing area. But Boston was originally a small round island at the end of a long isthmus and many streets are spokes or perimeter arcs around the waterfront or older obstructions. Incredible amounts of landfill in the 1800s changed the borders of the city but by then core roads had been long established.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to live in Istanbul, I actually lived in the section shown on this map. I can verify from walking hundreds of miles through those serpentine back roads that wandering Istanbul is a beautiful experience.

</comment><comment><USER17> Allan Jacobs' book _Great Streets_ contains dozens of this type of map, not chopped up, but showing the street systems all at the same scale. It's absolutely fascinating to compare 'Cisco to Houston to Paris to Venice. A highly recommended book. [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B- Jacobs/dp/026260...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B- Jacobs/dp/0262600234)

<comment><USER18> where is "'Cisco"?

<comment><USER19> I am assuming San Fran'cisco' is being referred here.

<comment><USER17> Yep. People used to call it that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Humorous post. I can't say that I am surprised by Paris dissected. All those small streets and alleys creates a lot of small segments and those small segments, when looked from above, will seem monotonous and all in the same shape. It seems that it is mostly the larger segments that are oddly shaped and that is not really surprising.

<comment><USER21> Something that also doesn't carry over this interesting approach is the land area. Paris is only 105.4 km2, New York City is roughly 7 times as large, Berlin 9 times and you could fit 50 Paris inside Istanbul as a whole. Those tiny segments are really, really tiny - they don't have the time to be oddly shaped over just a few dozen meters ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There seems to be a value judgement here: that curvy and uniquely shaped streets are superior in some way. This can be decided with objective evidence: look at how city districts flourish, and see whether it is related to the shape of the city blocks.

<comment><USER23> I'd be amazing to see that data (which I doubt exists) over major technology changes in living style and transportation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Original URL (with a few more cities):

[http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berli...](http://www.armellecaron.fr/art/index.php?page=plans_de_berlin)

<comment><USER25> Thanks!

But it still doesn't mention what sorting key was used to arrange the pieces? Similarity in shape, obviously, but by what measure?

Since it's an art project, it might even have been done semi-manually, by eye?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Paris looks more homogeneous than it is simply because they analyzed a bigger area, or at least an area with more pieces. For example if you analyzed the entirety of Istanbul, then for almost every piece you could probably find a very similar piece elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've always thought that American roads suck for exactly this reason.

They're so boring. -__-

<comment><USER28> In the cities (where this is true), that is a good thing. City streets are about efficiency of transport. A road that seems to go straight to your destination but then ends abruptly is not a good thing. Freeways are boring for the same reason. They're not meant to be exciting, they're meant to be roads.

Country roads in America are anything but boring, though. Some of them are bordering on downright dangerous with the twists, turns, and hills. I've never heard anyone argue that city streets were too efficient.

<comment><USER29> You may hear the first argument from me, though it's not mine. The Interstate Highway in America was modelled after the Autobahn in Germany. But we made two dramatic changes: (1) we put the highways right through cities instead of alongside them, and (2) we cut through the landscape rather than adhering to it (so our roads could be straight instead of winding).

There have been a few unintended consequences of those decisions. First, the highways literally divided cities like walls, cutting neighborhood access off from one community to another. I live close enough to my downtown to walk, but to do so, I'd have to cross a highway.

Second, there's some consensus among researchers that the long, straight stretches of highway contribute to driver fatigue in a way that a more active driving experience (from the occasional turns) does not.

While the autobahn curves with the landscape, it's not as dangerous as a country road. And by not dissecting the cities, it makes life in the city more efficient and connected.

<comment><USER30> Note that it wasn't always an unintended consequence. When Robert Moses built the expressway and parkway systems in NYC, he expressly targeted black and puerto rican neighborhoods to bear the brunt of the impact. On Long Island, his bulldozers sliced small farms in two, but avoided the great estates of the mega rich -- at huge expense to both taxpayers and generations of commuters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Love this project! I'm curious to find out how Indian cities would hold up to this exercise. A city like Delhi that is made up of 7+ old and new cities, Mumbai which is sea front and hard pressed for real estate (which important city isn't?!) and Bangalore which has very old green parts and very new barren areas would all be fun to map.

One other interesting exercise would be to map the cities over time. A satellite view image from the 1960's and one from 2012. Could throw up interesting anthropomorphical results.

</comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of Ursus Wehrli's work. <http://www.ted.com/talks/ursus_wehrli_tidies_up_art.html>

</comment><comment><USER33> I have a fondness for geography and maps, so I am delighted to see this posted here. _Big Think_ covered this back in February, 2011: [http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a- taxon...](http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/502-hung-out-to-dry-a-taxonomy-of- city-blocks).

The above article is part of Big Think's _Strange Maps_ , a fantastic blog which has many, many more interesting articles!

</comment><comment><USER34> What are the odd things - I only scanned the article but it seemed pretty much to show expected results. The whole is more than the sum of parts.

</comment><comment><USER35> He never says what "odd things" happen. He just organizes blocks and then marvels at what it looks like in a completely boring way.

He spent all his allotted time making the figures, apparently, and took no time to thinking of anything interesting to say about it or describe these "odd things" he teases in the title.

</comment><comment><USER36> Glad to see this article is up on the front page. I submitted it two days ago and it never got traction.

Question about article submissions - in the past when I've submitted a duplicate article it takes me to that HN posting instead. What are the edge cases where identical articles get posted separately on HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops--I had no idea! And I was shocked to see that it had this much traction myself.

<comment><USER36> No, it's cool that you got it up. I thought it was really neat from a visualization standpoint. You probably just submitted at a more fortunate time of day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We have so much rich geographical data and it's always refreshing to see someone (the artist / architect) asking simple questions about it. I'm much more excited about the work itself than Krulwich's commentary (for as much as I like him). Cities are rich with spatially disjoint points of similarity.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd be curious to see how old cultural cities like Mumbai, Cairo etc. will look like when they are "chopped". I'm sure they won't look anything different from Istanbul.

</comment><comment><USER39> Including Salt Lake City would be humorous.

<http://tinyurl.com/8e2f27l>

</comment><comment><USER40> Mumbai is an excellent case for dissection.

<comment><USER41> Or New Delhi for that matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nice. Would love to see Tokyo. My guess is it would be a mix of NY and Istanbul chunks, depending on the area.

</comment><comment><USER43> Doesnt say anything about the sources or methology. I guess footways and the like were not used in this.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't find this interesting at all. What is the point of doing that?

</comment><comment><USER45> The Situationists meets William S. Burroughs</comment>


Fighting Antipiracy Measure, Activist Group Posts Personal Information - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/activist-group-opposing-antipiracy-bill-posts-information-on-media-executives

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I feel this kind of tactic has the potential to backfire. The efforts by Tumblr (phone campaign), NY Tech Meetup (<http://nytm.org/sos>), and the boycott of Go Daddy represent the right way to fight SOPA.</comment>


What Do You Do With A Failed Product? - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/what-do-you-do-with-a-failed-product/

<comment><USER2> 6 days ago, we launched

[http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)

I wouldn't call these projects "failed", but many developers abandon, pause, stop their projects for various reasons.

So far, we have had more than 50 projects posted and as of this morning two projects have been sold.

Loved the approach that Sacha is taking as suggested in the post, sideprojectors could be another way of saving an interesting side project that could benefit others!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea. Maybe I should submit [http://thetoolbox.cc/](http://thetoolbox.cc/) ? I still like that project but I don't have the time to keep it up to date…

<comment><USER2> That would be super. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Done: [http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/70](http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/70)

Although I'm a bit wary about selling it, because it's the kind of project that could easily be used for spammy purposes…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem with Folyo is the upfront fee. If the intended market is startups, most projects are bootstrapped. They'd kill to get a great designer, but $100 posting fee is a huge psych barrier.

IMHO, the proven formula of service providers shaving off their earning for you should work better. There are other innovations possible, like peer review for design, design critique from an expert, outsourced usability testing etc.

Its always easier to swim downstream.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what you mean by "shaving off their earning for you"? Do you mean taking a cut of the project budget?

I could do that, but A) it would end up being more expensive for customers (although maybe that's irrelevant if they don't perceive it that way?) and B) it would be more complex logistically.

So I will probably stick with the current model at least for now, even though I know it has its flaws.

<comment><USER4> I really like folyo.me, even though I ended up finding a designer off Behance, I certainly considered folyo.me for a while. However, I still disagree with your business model. At $100 a pop, you would need so much traffic from this niche to pay the salary of a full-time developer (or designer, in your case), unless you broadened the scope.

Elance/oDesk/99Designs and other sites just have more room to monetize than a one-time $100 upfront fee. If designers get a lot more inbound from this, you're essentially giving them leads, so it makes sense for the startups to find great designers and the designers take a percentage cut for having much of the heavy early lifting done for them.

I also don't think you're going to reach much scale with a domain like folyo.me -- it's just not good. I love your design work, but branding is key too, and while a domain like that might be good enough to validate your idea I don't think you can have a runaway hit with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have to think about the business model thing. But what's wrong about the domain? Is it the .me you don't like? Or the name itself?

<comment><USER4> I think there is a lot more upside in tweaking the business model. For example if you wanted a few employees working on a $1 million revenue business, that's 10,000 projects per year going to fruition in your current model.

The reason people use .me is because all the good .com's are taken, but folyo.me isn't a very easy name to say out loud to someone and remember. Your competition scoutzie.com isn't the best domain in the world but it's a .com and it sounds more like a brand than folyo.me -- I know domains are expensive if they're good so not sure if it's worth the investment in something better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need to put more links to your homepage near the bottom of your blog post.

"I rethought the homepage's message from the ground up to really explain what Folyo does, instead of just projecting a nice image (compare [THE NEW HOMEPAGE] with the old homepage).

"So take a look at [the new Folyo](I'm a link!) and let me know what you think!"

Also, add: PPPS: Perhaps a fresh design is what your startup needs. Guess where you can find new designers? [Hint: Folio](link)

Anyway, good luck with your next shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a good point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If your launch didn't work, launch again. We launched 3 times" \- Something similar to a quote from the Airbnb guys I think. I'm too lazy to look it up, but this is the Internet! Keep launching! Coffitivity.com launched 3 times before literally anyone used it, and a million people have used it the last 4 months. Re-launch, reload, recycle - then give up!

</comment><comment><USER7> The examples of designers on the site are almost too cool. There's a benefit to edgey designer types, but not everyone is looking for that ultra cool, high-personality type.

I say this as a designer who is going to submit on the site.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I've always done is this:

Die a little inside when something you labored on for 18 months ends up being sold for half cost on Woot.

That's just me though...

</comment><comment><USER9> What Do You Do With A Failed Product? -You could Open Source it. That's what I did.

<comment><AUTHOR> What were the results? Did people end up using it? Did they start contributing?

<comment><USER9> They get the power to change it something else.. something that could work or not failing ... in the end It wasn't a failed project anymore.

(sorry for the late comment)</comment></comment></comment>


PHP Framework Survey - short questionnaire about preferences - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10cor2270kHKA2yexJjC70QSdAJ6VUywINaMtu6X6PuQ/viewform

<comment><USER3> Github required, Social media required. Fuck that.

I use Fossil SCM, I personally regard git as having one of the worst CLI's I've ever seen. But I still wouldn't impose my choice on others the way github retards attempt to.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no need for this immature hostility. I didn't call you a retard because you can't figure out how to use modern version control, and I don't appreciate being called one just because I use a certain website.

Social media is required as a form of identification without invading on privacy, I don't want a bot army skewing the results.

I'll make the Github link optional.

<comment><USER3> "Social media is required as a form of identification without invading on privacy"

I have some bad news for you...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Please list all the frameworks you're proficient with, and examples of their > use as proof. [..] App must exist on Github profile, or must be live > somewhere online as proof.

Well that rules me out - too many internal company applications, and the few that are 'live online' (without needing a VPN) would only show a login screen. And source code of any serious app I've written on GitHub? Pah - they're commercial. You've made a very small audience for your questionnaire.

<comment><AUTHOR> You must have used a framework even for the internal ones, no? If not, simply file that under "other". And as for links taking us to login screens - that's perfectly fine. As long as it exists online it's ok, no need to show the source code. Like I say in the question description - either Github, or just link to a live site.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the internal ones that are behind VPNs etc - there's no way to link to those. The one where the client didn't choose such security I could link to, but that's one site out of approaching-a-dozen using a mix of frameworks...

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. Well, good to know either way, thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good question. I have some pretty significant projects I wrote in PHP, but as soon as my knowledge was advanced enough and I had a fresh project that called for a framework... I skipped out on PHP and chose Django.

My relationship with Python hasn't worked out like I expected, though. Due to the ongoing PHP project, and use of a mixture of Python and PHP, my Python/Django skills still lag behind my PHP proficiency years later. I've written significant projects in Django, and started writing maintenance and utility scripts in Python... I can't figure out whether it's the languages or me, but I find it a lot easier to sit down and write a simple script in PHP vs Python.

I've considered selecting a PHP framework to learn, but am somewhat perplexed by the profusion of choices and inadequacies I perceive in the language and each framework (such as clumsy syntax, over-complexity, lack of support for newer php features...). Overall I'm still searching for a language/web framework combination to call home.

I feel like Wordpress has basically become a framework and should be included as a valid option. You can do just about anything with wordpress these days. It's the only PHP codeglob I've used significantly other than my home brewed non-framework framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> This survey aims to, eventually, help with these choices. Thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't use a framework, and I don't have php projects on my github, yet I've been a PHP developer since 2005.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then, if you'd be so kind, could you submit a project you've built without a framework (doesn't have to be open source either - simply link to it) and state that in the answer, and put "no framework" or "none" in the "other" section?

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _Enter the URL to your Github profile - you must have a profile with PHP projects on Github to be taken seriously in this questionairre_

The GitHub fallacy in action yet again. Normally you would expect developers and people immersed into technical culture (this excludes 9-to-5 enterprise developers) to be quite skeptical of mainstream solutions and not accept a one true medium. Yet in the case of where they host their software projects, the hipsters have elected a solid winner: GitHub. Ignore all other Git-based services like BitBucket and Gitorious, or... heaven forbid, version control that isn't Git.

Carry on.

<comment><USER7> Not only that, non-PHP-developers with opinions, no matter how well-informed, apparently aren't to be taken seriously.

You must also have at least one active and public social media account.

Plus, you have to have a favorite. Just one, and it's stated that this will be the only one that comes to mind for new projects. And you need to explain why you hold this incredibly narrow view of your toolset.

It'd have been hard to make such an objective 'survey' useful in the first place, but the selection bias and questionable assumptions behind this one certainly make it worse than it could've been.

<comment><USER5> I'm experienced with php, but after reading the list and realizing I had experience with zero of the frameworks it was apparent that my input was probably not useful for the purpose of the poll. That's fine with me - <USER2> polls not about people who haven't used any php frameworks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, to quote "Masters of Sex"..

> Non-performance is an equally valuable part of the study

If you could submit links to a non-framework app or two you've built, and elaborate on why you don't use them in your answer, it would also be tremendously helpful.

<comment><USER5> Cool, I've done so. My hesitance is based upon performance, learning curve, difficulty of selection and perceived lack of benefits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good stuff, cheers! Very good to know

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be interested in what feedback you get, so I can make sure all the top ones run well on HHVM. Can you email me your results?

Thanks (email at the top of [http://paultarjan.com/](http://paultarjan.com/) )

<comment><AUTHOR> This result will be published as an article on SitePoint. Feel free to follow [http://gplus.to/sitepointphp](http://gplus.to/sitepointphp) to be informed as soon as it happens. The survey will stay online for another week.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The survey results are now out: www.sitepoint.com/best-php-frameworks-2014

</comment><comment><USER9> Where's Silex?

<comment><AUTHOR> Added to list</comment></comment>


Parallax.js with HeadTracking Support - <AUTHOR> http://topheman.github.io/parallax/

<comment><USER2> The tilt-sensing feature doesn't seem to work on my iPhone 5 (iOS 7). I didn't get even get a permission request popup, though I'm not sure if I was supposed to.</comment>


Getting Fiber to My Town [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg <comment><USER2> Awesome talk. And, looking at the video connection quality, a spotless live demo!</comment>


Why I'm betting my retirement on Facebook stock today - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2012/betting-retirement-facebook-stock-today/

<comment><USER2> I hope he's not actually putting his retirement money on the line here.

It's not about the quality of the ads, which he argues will get better with more data. It's about intent.

When I search on Google, my natural next action is to click a link. That link can be organic or an ad. If it's an ad Google stands to make money.

When I browse Facebook, my natural next action is not to click a link to an outside service/store. It's to continue to read status updates and browse around. Clicking an outside link is unnatural and unpleasant in this context.

This is the same reason ads on other Google properties such as gmail do so poorly - they may know exactly what you're likely to buy and could therefore present you with the perfect ad, but the activity you're engaged in does not naturally lead to clicking on ads.

<comment><USER3> I just checked and Facebook gives you the option to buy ads per click, around $0.25 per click in my category. So why does it even matter if it has a low CTR? If the user didn't click, you didn't pay for it anyway. If the user does click, well there's your intent.

From my point of view as an advertiser, how is the CTR even relevant? Why do I care if google has 1% CTR and Facebook has 0,1%? If you assume both has the same cost per click. And I spend $100 on each. I'll still get the exact same amount of people clicking my ads on both.

Why does everyone keep repeating that facebook ads are only for branding, there's no intent, CTR is low? Doesn't the pay per click auction makes all of these irrelevant?

<comment> jack-r-abbit CTR is one piece. But conversion in another. And intent is important. Take two identical ads on Facebook and Google, with the same CTR and CPC, if the Google traffic has more intent to take action _beyond_ the click (I'm not saying they are necessarily) then Google traffic is worth more. I worked in the LeadGen space for a good number of years and conversion rate is a very important piece of the puzzle. Generally speaking, intent leads to a better conversion. Plus, advertisers do them selves a disservice to attract higher clicks if that means their conversion rate is lower because the ad was bait. I've noticed that FB ads tend to have a spammy/scammy feel to them... bait.

<comment><USER3> That perfectly answers my questions, thanks a lot.

Does anyone happen to have some real world example data of conversion rates between these ad platforms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Say I decide to buy a new set of speakers. Do I tweet that I'm looking for speakers? Do I announce on facebook that I'm looking for speakers? Or do I just start googling?

Twitter and Facebook might occasionally be clued in about some of my purchases, but google is in on virtually all of my purchases that are considered while I'm at a computer. They're first past the post and privy to a much higher percentage of what I buy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google's pageviews have more value (because they know exactly what people are looking for), Google IPOed at a valuation of 20% of what Facebook wanted in valuation, and Google is already entrenched into the market that the author is suggesting Facebook is going to have such an easy time moving into.

My money is on Google.

<comment><USER6> Sure, 20% of Facebook's valuation but also 1/2 of Facebook's revenues.

Facebook still has a lot to prove, but they also have a lot more opportunity to improve.

<comment><USER5> > but they also have a lot more opportunity to improve.

What's your case for that? They have almost a billion users. How many more are they going to get, and are users outside of the US and Europe (and a few scattered nations) of any value to Facebook at all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebook has a lot of data about what you say you like, but Google has a lot more data about what you actually like. Hope you really didn't bet your retirement.

</comment><comment><USER8> Betting one's retirement on a single security seems like a bad strategy regardless of how successful it's likely to be. I'm hoping the title is just hyperbole.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've never clicked on the ads in Facebook. I've clicked on more ads while using Google. When I'm looking to buy something, I use Google. As with tworats, I do hope he's not actually planning on retiring with Facebook stock. Privacy laws could easily render the data that we give to Facebook off-limits.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit So... Facebook has some code you can put on your page and you have an instant like button. Well... what if Facebook starts providing a neat little bit of code that also embeds an ad? If the Like button knows who you are... so will the ad widget. So now they are serving "Facebook ads" on other sites. Of course that is what Google does with AdSense... but does Google know as much about _you_ on that page as it does about that page? I could see it _possible_ for Facebook to grab eyeballs on other sites... sites that are currently monetizing with AdSense. Not that I'm convinced they would make a dent with this approach... but you can't just compare the ads ON Facebook to the ads on Google search. If Facebook was putting the ads on pages that had a different focus than what you do on Facebook... there is a chance.

</comment><comment><USER10> AdSense has much lower margin compared with AdWords because Google has to pay publisher for displaying the ads. In the early days, (AdSense revenue around 1B) I remember google was almost paying every penny they got from AdSense back to the publisher. Only later, they started to make money, but still capped by the competition from microsoft/yahoo.

Facebook entering the AdSense market? It won't generate a lot of profit for facebook. The true profit engine for facebook is still the facebook site.

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like the author is overstating the benefits of a like button on every page. Google - and many other ad networks - also know the products being viewed if the site owner is using retargetted ads. Might facebook offer compelling retargetting? Sure. But I imagine the conversion rates would be, at best, comparable to other retargetting networks. Probably not a game changer.

I'm not even mentioning the reach of analytics.

</comment><comment><USER12> All the author of that article managed to convey is an overwhelming sense of fuzziness in his thinking. e.g.

>Do the math on this: instead of growing it organically, we wake up one day and Facebook has taken over Google's Adsense business. That's $10B in revenues alone.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bit awkward given the recent happenings over the weekend [http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/lawsuits- pile-...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/lawsuits-pile-up-over- facebook-ipo-20120524-1z5yy.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> The graphs he cites as evidence are referring to google's display network verses google's total revenue. If that is the case, then the author is presenting no information about facebook. I hope that he did not invest based on these graphs.

</comment><comment><USER15> This struck me: "Even if you didn't click on the Like button, Facebook probably has a pretty good idea of what your next purchase will be."

I imagine the people best able to predict my next purchase issued my debit card, no?

</comment><comment><USER16> You should never substitute a belief for an investment strategy. Seriously, even if your idea of Facebook's long term potential is correct, you can take a haircut on whatever random thing occurs today. Balance the utility of what you gain if you're right compared to the utility of what you lose if you're wrong (think twice if you _really_ want to make a "heads, double your house's square footage, tails live off dumpsters at 65" bet).

If you want to start investing based on your beliefs, go ahead. But have a pool of money for that and be ready to lose it.

But for your retirement, diversify.

<comment><USER17> Agree. Did not read the story because once you say "I'm putting all my eggs in [this one basket]" then you are taking WAY too much risk on a single investment.

The guy probably should take some courses on retirement/investment planning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't do it, unless you plan to work long years and/or die young. FB price might well be around $10 before long.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sensationalist headline. Bad mistake.</comment>