Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/national/apnewsbreak-ringling-bros-circus-close-after-146-years/xvF7F5yxPt6yICFGIGcXFK/ <comment> nommm-nommm >when the elephants left, there was a "dramatic drop" in ticket sales. Paradoxically, while many said they didn't want big animals to perform in circuses, many others refused to attend a circus without them.

This isn't paradoxical. The people protesting the circus are obviously not the same people buying tickets to the circus.

They seriously half assed it. They only dropped elephants, and pretty suddenly at that.... But left "lions, tigers, camels, donkeys, alpacas, kangaroos and llamas." Not nearly enough to keep the animal welfare people happy but just enough to annoy the ticket buyers. People who want to see tigers jump through flaming hoops also want to see elephants "perform." 99.9% of the people who object to elephants being in circuses are then going to object to other wild animals being in circuses. Removing elephants but leaving lions doesn't please them and it doesn't even make sense.

By getting rid of one without the other they made exactly nobody happy and signed their own death certificate. How the hell did nobody see this?

I guess it was a knee jerk reaction?

They might have used the opportunity to have reimagined themselves as a modern circus without animals... Maybe, if they reformatted themselves and modernized. But I think their identity may have been too interwoven with animals to be able to move forward.

But the question posed remains, would people bring their kids to this kind of show without the allure of exotic animals? Probably. But maybe not under the Ringling Bros name.

Maybe the writing was on the wall for years and the elephants were the last nail in the coffin. I, personally, feel that Ringling Bros always was kind of still an outdated sideshow act. Sorry, Ringling, you stayed in the wrong century.

<comment><USER2> I haven't been to any circus show for ages. I don't think it would have changed at all when they would have reinvented themselfs without animals.

You see so much stuff online already.

The only relevant circus are already those with international acts. Casting globally for a tour with 1-4 different shows.

<comment> nommm-nommm Modern circuses are a thing and are popular. Cirque de Soleil being the biggest example. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_circus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_circus)

It's a different sort of show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > But it seemingly was no match for Pokemon Go and a generation of kids who > desire familiar brands and YouTube celebrities.

I hate how stuff is just thrown into articles like this as if it's fact. The circus was passé when I was a kid 30 years ago.

I could throw out unsubstantiated garbage like this as well and claim that kids today are actually much more understanding of animal welfare and would rather see animals in their natural habit on Youtube than see them perform tricks on a stage.

<comment><USER4> Back at the beginning of of 2016 my circle of friends in their 30's was excitedly forwarding each other links to a 50% off Groupon [1] for this circus. We all have small kids, ages 4-10 and probably never considered the circus before - I don't think most of us went as kids. The excitement died pretty quickly after someone found the PETA website with videos of the animals being abused [2] and that was the end of that.

[1] [https://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-ringling-bros-and-barnum- ba...](https://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-ringling-bros-and-barnum-bailey- presents-legends-24)

[2] [http://www.ringlingbeatsanimals.com/](http://www.ringlingbeatsanimals.com/)

<comment><USER5> Personally, aside from something passive like a zoo, I don't care for anything that relies on animal performance for entertainment. That includes dog racing, horse racing, and things like circuses and even Seaworld.

I know many people don't care but it bothers me.

<comment><USER6> Zoos are inhumane for many animals in my personal opinion. Many animals should be ranging a territory in the wild, not confined to a tiny plot of land to be gawked at.

I don't find the 'conservation' excuse all that acceptable either. What if the millions spent on Zoos were instead spent to conserve the native territories of the animals and to improve the lives of the people who live near them so they won't resort to poaching or habitat destruction.

<comment><USER7> Yes, some animals get stressed out living in zoos. That being said, it is probably the least stressful way that people can appreciate animals in real life. There is some value in bringing people face to face with animals, I think it reconnects us with the basis of our humanity, and leads us to treat animals better overall. Does the moral math work out in the end? I don't know, but it isn't a one sided issue.

<comment><USER8> This is my thinking as well. Zoos are kind of a necessary evil so we don't completely concrete all jungles, etc.

Humans are horrible caretakers of this planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Step right up to one of the many amazing animal-free circuses. Cirque du Soleil in particular puts on an incredible show.

[http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/amazing- anima...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/amazing-animal-free- circuses/)

<comment><USER10> I think the decision not to have animals in the Cirque du Soleil was also a business decision: animals are expensive and unreliable, so cutting them reduced expenses a lot. The downside was that there were no exotic animals to draw people to the show, so maybe less demand.

Times had changed though. Back when Barnum & Bailey got started, elephants were truly exotic: many people who went to the show had never seen them before. Even photographs were rare. When Cirque got started in the 1980s, elephants were not mysterious exotic creatures any more.

<comment> nommm-nommm I always thought of Cirque de Soleil as a more of an adult show? No? Not that there is adult content, but I had the impression that they are marketed towards entertaining adults. Do they market to families as well?

Ringling Bros always were a thing to bring your kids to, they were always marketed primarily towards children. I can totally see an adult couple going to Cirque de Soleil, I can't really see an adult couple going to Ringling Bros without children.

I may be way off base here.

Wild animals appeal mostly to children. I gotta agree though, animal acts are totally outdated. Especially now.

For Cirque, I think it was a business decision but also a different market than Ringling Bros.

<comment><USER11> I would say that cirque markets itself to both adults and families, while Ringling Bros. and traditional circuses market themselves solely to families. We took our 3 year old to Cirque and he was talking about it for days. There's plenty of packages / concessions / etc. when you go to a Cirque show that are obviously targeted at kids.

<comment> nommm-nommm That's awesome they do both. I only ever even heard of them as an adult so I didn't know.

(I wanted to go to a show but my other half vetoed....)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All the slights about 'kids these days' with their TV, YouTube, Pokémon Go, and short attention spans seem pretty unfounded. I see tons of kids lining up to see Cirque du Soleil, or Wicked, or Penn & Teller. All of those shows are just as long as the circus, and much more expensive.

If I had to guess I would say that our standards for 'awe-inspiring' have changed. Dancing elephants are a lot less exotic when you can watch them in 1080p with David Attenborough narrating. The human acrobatics are nice, but not as thrilling as Cirque du Soleil or the X-Games. Add in the nagging feeling that watching animals perform is unsavory at best, and it's no wonder that the business was unsustainable.

<comment><USER13> > All the slights about 'kids these days' with their TV, YouTube, Pokémon Go, > and short attention spans seem pretty unfounded

...and people have been saying it for years. The distracting thing has changed over time.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_touch_that_dial.html)

<comment><USER14> First (not really, but gotta start somewhere) it was books, then it was comics, then it was television, then it was computers, then it was smartphones, then it'll be VR, and then it'll be...

Kids these days...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've got a lot of mixed emotions about this. It was interesting that CBS aired a story on Friday about the 'first female ring master'[1] and then it drops that the show is closing.

An acquaintance of mine from grade school has pretty tirelessly crusaded against circuses for their mistreatment of animals. And for them, even the notion that you could "take excellent care" of an animal in your care that your raised from birth is an abomination if that animal is not allowed to run free in their original habitat (not that they would survive at that point but still...) But I've always enjoyed people pushing themselves to the edge to see if they can. As a result high wire acts, trapezes, and even the clown routines are fond memories for me.

If I'm honest with myself though it is just nostalgia for a different time. That time is past, whether or not there is a circus to go to.

[1] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ringling-brothers-woman- ringmast...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ringling-brothers-woman-ringmaster- first-kristen-michelle-wilson/)

<comment><USER16> "an abomination if that animal is not allowed to run free in their original habitat"

So I'm abusing my kids if I don't air drop them in the Rift Valley in Africa and hope for the best.

<comment><USER15> That is of course the logical extreme of the argument. I too don't agree with it, and wonder what will happen when we discover a species that has evolved to live only in EPA Superfund sites, do we destroy its habitat by cleaning up the pollution or do we preserve the species and leave the planet polluted?

Both arguments speak to the futility of arguing staticism in an evolving world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Should be noted some zoos do spend enough on habitats to make them worthwhile, however this is very slim as well as not doable for all animals.

In my state (Colorado) we have something called a sanctuary [1]. From humans being put high up into the air (via a 40 foot tall bridge that crosses the entire complex) which simulates a more natural way for us to observe the different animals they house (they specialize in carnivorous species), to larger and more natural feeling habitats for each different species (over 720 Acres devoted to over 450 rescued animals)

They spoke of Zoos and how bad they are most of the time, however the Denver Zoo they said were better then most other Zoos in our country when it came to building decent habitats. However in my opinion the sanctuary is an example of how every Zoo should alter its setup. I wouldn't even mind helping donate to my local zoo for this change and I highly believe the masses would contribute as well.

[1] [http://www.wildanimalsanctuary.org](http://www.wildanimalsanctuary.org)

<comment><USER18> That zoo expands on the Hagenbeck concept – an idea Carl Hagenbeck developed in 1907, where he wanted to construct a zoo without glass or fences – and researched how far and high animals could leap, and just built moats of the appropriate size around their habitat sin his zoo.

You can read more about the original concept here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierpark_Hagenbeck#Panorama_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierpark_Hagenbeck#Panorama_exhibits)

<comment><USER19> If you live within a drive of the Washington D.C. zoo, much of the zoo is built in this way. There's even a rope over the humans that monkeys can climb across to navigate between different parts of their habitat.

However, some of the harder to contain animals still end up behind glass or bars. But then you can also get up to within an inch or two of a mature Gorilla and interact with him a bit.

I can't help but feel sad for the animals, but you can also learn tremendous amounts about them by seeing them so close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's kind of sad as we were just at the Miami show this Saturday. I've never been to a circus and this was the first time for our son and I. I didn't even realize the elephants weren't in the show. It just never occurred to me that they were a requirement.

The show was really good. The audience was full of kids. For a 11AM showing I was expecting a half filled arena but it was surprisingly full. Tickets were $18-$35 which for a live performance really is good value compared to a movie theater.

The theme for this show was space exploration so they had a lot more human daredevil stunts. The animal entertainment I do remember were the big cats, horses ridden by kazakhs, and domesticated animals doing parlor tricks (dogs, a big pig, and llamas). The ice skaters, motorcyclists, and flying acrobats had a bigger impact. Okay, the big cats too. They were really amazing.

Sad to see it go, it's my first time and now I see it will be the last time.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of my most vivid childhood memories is waking up early in the morning to see the elephants come through the Lincoln Tunnel.

It was a truly wonderful experience, one that I wish I could share with others without supporting the overarching practice of show elephants.

<comment><USER22> They could make them animatronic.

<comment><USER23> The entire point of having elephants at the circus is to see elephants. Real, living, breathing elephants, social creatures which weigh several tons with a brain three times the size of yours - and, in the best case, to see them interacting with humans as part of an elaborately choreographed performance showcasing the strength and skill and agility of man and beast alike.

Animatronic mockeries? Why bother?

<comment><USER13> Royal de Luxe seems to do well with their giant elephant puppet.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_de_luxe_%C3%A0_Amie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_de_luxe_%C3%A0_Amiens_en_2005.jpg)

<comment><USER22> Precisely. You can celebrate the animal without keeping them captive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At this point, it's pretty tough to feel good about a circus modeled around 19th century nostalgia.

We all kind of know that we're well beyond sheer domination of all things earthly and bestial. There's not much to revel in, and it's not valuable to teach your children to revel in such displays.

Maybe it'll put a smile on their face, and they'll talk about it for weeks afterward, but there are other things going on in the world right now, and it's probably a good idea to figure out how to entertain our kids more wisely.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps we should stop sending our kids to schools designed around a model of classroom learning in the 19th century, also. Overdiagnosis of ADHD is the result of forcing kids to sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day

<comment><USER26> Perhaps we should, but what does have to do with the topic at hand?

<comment><USER25> It is a response to the grandparent comment. Sending kids to institutions that are substantially in the same mod as when they were founded in the 19th century. In the case of school, they are forced.

[http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damag...](http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/)

If you still don't believe me, read the comparison between school and prison by none other than Paul Graham in his essay "why nerds are unpopular". That should get me some upvotes lol.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

<comment><USER26> It doesn't matter what I believe. The topic at hand is circuses, not all 19th century institutions.

<comment><USER25> The topic of that comment was 19th century institutions that kids are sent to today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's no doubt that people want to see exotic animals. Reputable zoos made a transition from entertainment to conservation, but many still have issues. There's no way circuses could ever do that. It's just antithetical to what they are.

Animal issues aside, it's a very dated form of entertainment. Frankly, I'm surprised it made it as far as the 1960s.

<comment><USER28> Go to Africa or India and see an elephant or lion where it lives. The zoos are only slightly less horrible than the circus.

<comment><USER29> It's debatable whether introducing humans into wild animal habitats causes less harm than introducing wild animals into human habitats. Certainly better for the individual animals, but I'd imagine that having a bunch of jeeps running around on safari in the middle of virgin wilderness has all sorts of negative effects on the ecosystem.

<comment><USER28> Sure, but it's the only option. Without safari parks, it'd all be farms/cities. Conservation doesn't make sense unless it makes dollars.

<comment><USER30> Not sure why the downvotes for this; maybe it was the way it was said? Ultimately, I feel that conservation that balance _some_ of the local interests in mind will run into much fewer problems than those that don't.

I also feel that you need some of the natural habitat to remain humanly accessible, in part so that people can experience nature and thus get behind preservation efforts. Creating walled off territory where no one but a few Specially Approved Scientists and deep backpackers can enter does not seem to be the best way to build public support. For portions of land, it may be necessary (hence the wilderness preserve designation in many places) but for much of the land, there is a fine balance between preservation and accessibility.

Safari parks are imperfect but in my opinion fall into this category. Even in the US, the politics of parks can be contentious. ([http://www.mnn.com/earth- matters/wilderness-resources/storie...](http://www.mnn.com/earth- matters/wilderness-resources/stories/why-it-so-hard-create-national-park)) I can only imagine what a developing country would be like.

That said regarding an earlier comment, I don't view all zoos as 100% horrible these days. A lot are making genuine efforts to try and improve animal welfare as much as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Shame. I went when I was a kid and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The elephants were my favorite. I was in awe of a HUGE bull elephant with giant gilded tusks straight out of an indian fairy tale. I think I still have a poster from that event.

<comment><USER32> Not really. The animals don't deserve this treatment.

<comment><USER31> "The animals don't deserve this treatment."

That sounds an awful lot like an opinion stated as fact.

<comment><USER33> I'd be interested to know what an animal could do to deserve to be beaten to preform tricks and then ferried around in small cages for human entertainment.

<comment><USER31> fairly certain they don't beat them anymore.

<comment><USER33> Well certainly now that they're out of business.

They did at least 8 years ago[1], though. Not sure how anyone could believe that they could make animals do unnatural tricks day in day out without coercion.

I can see why someone would want to believe though. Tf you don't think about it, it'd probably be more enjoyable.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww8YQKpTu-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww8YQKpTu-4)

<comment><USER31> >PETA

Going to need a better source than a group who considers pets "animal enslavement"

<comment><USER33> If you're claiming there's context to the beating of the elephants in the video, I find that hard to believe.

If you're claiming it's staged, pretty sure Ringling would have had a field day with that.

A conversation is pretty much done when a side doesn't have anything reasonable to say and resorts to ad hominem attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sad. It will be tough on the circus folk. That's a culture of its own, with hard-won skills useless elsewhere. Now they have to find other jobs.

<comment><USER35> There's always politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> We debated this in our household years ago. Seeing live animals like orcas and dolphins and elephants etc.. gives children an appreciation of those species they can't get any other way. To see them is extremely important to understanding why they should be protected.

Is it better to not be able to see them for yourselves live - the enormity and grace - or just not learn about them at all. Having sea world and zoos and circuses benefit the cause for conservation.

(I lost the debate in my household)

<comment><USER37> Yes, it is important to understand the awesome beauty of nature and why we should protect it. Ironically, you would be harming these animals by supporting the institutions that enslave them. There are many ways to learn about subjects without observing them first-hand, especially these days with immersive media technology. Alternatively, there are sanctuaries that exist primarily for the well-being of the animals, though they may take some effort to discover and visit.

<comment><USER36> <There are many ways to learn about subjects without observing them first- hand,

The crux of family debate. I do not agree that vr or any other form has the same effect and affect as seeing and touching these love creatures. Zoos etc teach and discovery is personal ( not like a video or lecture)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is so incredibly sad. :( My parents used to take me so often in Boston. I hope the performers manage to land on their feet.

<comment><USER39> 10/10 pun

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure if anything is as indicative of changes in these modern times as this.

</comment><comment><USER41> That's a really long time. I'm curious what other really long running shows of any type are still going out there.

<comment><USER42> The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie has been running for almost 65 years (it's been running continually since it opened in 1952).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is good news. I believe that circuses and zoos will be viewed, in retrospect, quite harshly in the future, and we'll wonder why the unnatural confinement of animals was so normalized. I have fond memories of these places as a child, but I went to the San Diego Zoo last year and the animals just looked miserable in the summer heat - especially the polar bears.

<comment><USER44> There are species that _only_ live in zoos. In other words, if it wasn't for zoos, these animals would be extinct (in part due to human over-hunting). Some species that were once on the edge of extinction have been re-released into the wild due to the efforts of the zoos, and they should be commended for this kind of effort.

<comment><USER16> If feelings and social signalling get "us" to a place, you can't expect logic and reason to get "us" out. Zoos are utterly doomed, it doesn't matter if they're logically or rationally good or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What happens to all the animals?

<comment> nommm-nommm >The [owners] say their existing animals — lions, tigers, camels, donkeys, alpacas, kangaroos and llamas — will go to suitable homes... the company will continue operating the Center for Elephant Conservation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The circus is an affectation of nostalgia held by people that weren't even born when the circus was still a thing. They may have read a book when they were children that was 40 or 50 years old at that time that showed clowns and happy lions and bears dancing on balls. Like other cultural touchstones, horse racing, boxing, the Harlem Globetrotters, their time is past. They've been existing on fumes for decades and, now, those fumes are dissipating.

<comment><USER47> >"The circus is an affectation of nostalgia held by people that weren't even born when the circus was still a thing."

So identical to "mixologists" with Reconstruction-era facial hair that make pre-prohibition era cocktails for adults. These are are hugely popular though and seemingly everywhere these days.

Also circuses are for children, thats the target demographic. I don't think a 5 or 6 year old has an "affectation of nostalgia."

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Big Apple Circus, which has only used domesticated animals for years, is liquidating. The Ringling Bros. closing would have eventually happened, with or without the protests.

</comment><comment><USER49> I went to a circus here in Germany and it only featured domesticated animals such as camels, goats, donkeys, llamas and sheep. Wasn't too bad but I still felt sorry for them =\

</comment><comment><USER50> Could have evolved into a 100 youtube channels. Failed opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER51> If you're ever in Sarasota, FL check out the Ringling museum. The circus was a remarkable moving city.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is good news.

There's no reason to treat animals like they do, in 2017. Do a VR one.

</comment><comment><USER53> VR will pick up on this space :)

</comment><comment><USER54> We've gone from a time where entertainment was one size fits all, to a world where all sizes try to fit you.

<comment><USER36> I'm stealing this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's just the shakeout of a shifting entertainment marketplace.

All markets are cyclical.

Though I'm sure PETA will take plenty of credit.

</comment><comment><USER56> Fuck 'em.

</comment><comment><USER57> Lol, we shoot animals in the head, cut their flesh from their bodies and consume it for fun.

Should we give animals a life without predators(aka murders) shelter and food it's bad.

> "I applaud their decision to move away from an institution grounded on > inherently inhumane wild animal acts."

Humans are wild animals, yet we don't want to live in the wild, it kinda sucks bigtime.

</comment><comment><USER25> _In recent years, Ringling Bros. tried to remain relevant, hiring its first African American ringmaster, then its first female ringmaster, and also launching an interactive app. It added elements from its other, popular shows, such as motorbike daredevils and ice skaters. But it seemingly was no match for Pokemon Go and a generation of kids who desire familiar brands and YouTube celebrities._

I think if they made a great app and some kind of brand phenomenon, it could have gone very differently.</comment>


Best 404 "page" ever - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/26858445

<comment><AUTHOR> One gripe: his partner isn't giving him cover when he says he will. That could have been fatal.</comment>


Email down due to "Security Attacks instigated by Matt Inman" - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlescarreon.com/temporarily-unavailable/

<comment><USER2> The irony of this situation is that I've met Charles Carreon on several occasions and he's the IP and tech lawyer I recommend to friends and associates. He's an honest and intelligent lawyer who seems to have inadvertently kicked a hornets nest.

Think of the other lawyers of note out there: Godwin, Lessig, Meuller and the like. Carreon is not as well known but equally capable and ideologically similar.

I think there's still time to turn this around and make it a win - win. But not everyone is willing to capitulate, rollback and dump a client that's left you out to dry.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this not constitute libel? I'm not a lawyer, so the question is in earnest.</comment>


Programmer Time Translation Table - <AUTHOR> http://coding.abel.nu/2012/06/programmer-time-translation-table/ <comment><USER2> Two comments. To me providing good estimates for a single task below a half a day seems like a pointless exercise in estimation. It feels like below that threshold you're working in a micro-management environment where the task tracking is taking away from time-on-task getting things done.

For planning larger projects of multiple man years, I think the threshold is even higher for productive estimation. In those long term planning situations estimates below a half a week to a week are more appropriate, because you'll get a better plan focusing on improved requirement specs or use cases etc. This is because the uncertainty of the project completion is better reduced not via better estimates, but better definitions of the tasks or developing a better feel for the technical uncertainties leading you to better estimates. A more precise estimate is not the same as a more accurate estimate.

The second comment I'd have is that the most frequent mismatch in estimates is that programmers instinctively estimate the time narrowly focused on implementation, or the time for getting over the hump of the core problem (subconsciously I think thats because after that's done it's boring stuff that few people want to dwell upon). The estimation fix is to separately estimate design and or implementation separate from testing (fixing) and deployment. A good rule-of-thumb there is that testing and deployment will be Pi times the implementation estimate. That factor is even higher if you have a complex multi-layer subsystem / system integration testing scheme required for the project. There are so many shops that like to pretend none of this exists, and they can even manage to succeed doing that, but there's a lot of bad side effects. They're not as effective long-term, often implode after rolling that dice too many times, or will depend on the technical side to grind it out with heroic measures.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, don't blame (plan # actual) on programmers' poor estimating alone. There are plenty of other reasons.

Here's are a couple of my typical instances:

[http://edweissman.com/it-takes-6-days-to-change-1-line-of- co...](http://edweissman.com/it-takes-6-days-to-change-1-line-of-code)

[http://edweissman.com/dear-boss-for-a- programmer-10-minutes-...](http://edweissman.com/dear-boss-for-a- programmer-10-minutes-3-hours)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wait, so does this mean that if you can plan and execute a program of work which will take longer than a week, you're suddenly an "architect"?

<comment><USER5> Well, maybe. If you can put paint on a paintbrush and transfer it to a canvas, are you suddenly a "painter", or just a guy with Cadmium Yellow smeared on his shirt?

<comment><USER4> If you're talking about art, you'd have to ask Jackson Pollock about that ;)

I'm not bagging on 'architects', I just think the article pulls its punches when it says... "and for everything else, ask a grown-up". Well what if you ARE the grown-up?

In a sense, what the table is saying is: "don't commit to estimates longer than a few days". I think that is great advice if you can get away with it.

Understanding the problem and coming up with the detailed design is what usually takes time. The problem is that this information is expensive to produce. In fact it is usually the majority of the development effort.

Development tasks come in at varying levels of well-defined-ness:

* Imperative specification: Implementing a trivial, well specified feature, where all the edge cases have been specified. "Add a new field to form #37, store it in table 'blah', valid input is this regex...". Of course there is usually no problem with estimation in this case.

* Declarative specification: That is; the customer or stakeholder knows what they want, but you will have to do the design work. "We need I8N support in our webmail product. We need a dropdown in the compose window, and a language selector here and ...". Usually the edge cases in the specification are fuzzy and often it will turn out later that the customer didn't understand certain aspects of the problem themselves. Estimates will vary wildly depending on how much time is allowed to produce the estimate, and what approach towards a solution is envisaged initially. Most of the work is actually understanding the problem and producing a detailed design. It requires an intricate understanding of the existing code-base and the problem domain (in this case I18N). This how things really work in most of the industry. Not saying that's right though.

* Debugging: The pathological case. Fortunately, beyond triaging, most people don't expect estimates for this. When fixing really complex bugs (e.g. perf in a huge distributed system), sometimes the best you can do is produce a plan and demonstrate progress.

If the solution to difficult estimation problems was just "give it to an architect to decompose the problem" then estimation wouldn't be hard. This approach would work, if we assume the existence of some mythical architect who can instantly decompose any problem into day or two sized chunks. Unfortunately there is usually no mythical all knowing architect to whom the problem can be punted and the team and PM have to work it out. Of course, estimation has costs too...

Hey, and I know you're really busy right now, but could you get that to me by Friday? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The time translation is dead on. Just a caveat. In my last job I used to give the actual time estimate and the PM was always frustrated because I was always estimating more that my colleagues. I am a literal person, which always gets me in trouble. So when I hear someone say I need 30 seconds I always reply that the time it'll take you to go back to your desk is already more than 30 seconds. Anyways, when I started giving the coded* time estimates it made everyone happy and I had more credibility with PMs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Missing entry:

        6-8 weeks ==> Never

If you're lucky, the programmer is Jeff Atwood (but it will still take a year.)

More likely, the task will never be finished, unless management intervenes by splitting it into smaller tasks.

At that scale, you're probably overlooking whole features (as in, feature A depends on feature B.) And feature B may be something you will need a specialist for, like fraud prevention or database replication.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that your opportunity to become a specialist?

<comment><USER9> Depends on the context. Doing so is risky and expensive, but if you're a startup you eat risk for breakfast and can just cut back on sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article was posted (twice) a few months back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4116554>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4110296>

<comment><USER11> not to mention <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328660> where the author posted the same article to another site.

my reaction, then and now:

"4 hours: This is probably the only realistic estimation. It is large enough to have some margin for unexpected problems, while the task is still small enough to grasp."

        1. Estimate everything in 4 hour increments
        2. 100% accurate estimates
        3. Pizza party

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some of the stranger things I've come across when non technical people have tried to estimate time-scales to develop something.

* This feature will not take long because <giant technology corp> has already developed something similar.

* This feature will not take long because it will not be used frequently (or because the 100s of edge cases will not be encountered regularly).

* This feature will not take long because it will only be one button click in the UI.

* This feature will not take long because it integrates with a lot of existing systems.

And of course:

* This feature will not take long because I need it tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Two things when doing esimates, the engineering muliplier factor and fully understanding the task multiplier.

If you have somebody who knows the task well and knows exactly what do to then the task muiltiplier is 1x, engineering multiplier is usualy always 3x, some unwritten rule. If the person is not fully aware of what is needed to do the task exactly but near enough then you increase the tast multiplier. Combining the pair without any unit shifting for me works well. I'm sure others will explain why the engineering factor is never 1x.

It is also worth noting that any engineers or programmers estimate time is for the consumtion of you line manger and internal and not customer directly presented. Reason being is that managers will either increase that more or come back to you as to why it is so long.

Now manager will increase things as they will want to increase company profit and what might be a 5 minute change for a programmer, could be something that can be charged as a 50 hour change. There are situations were a 50 hour change from a customers perspective is only a 5 minute change and it is the managers role to adresss and educate were needed and juggle and balance tasks and costs with others.

Saying all that if your a programmer and dealing directly with teh customer with quotes, then you will learn your own time stretching approach multiplier that works for you and your clients. Just remember egos can be costly if you charge for 5 hours something that takes longer in the end, learn from it as we all do, every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a humourous demonstration of the planning fallacy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy>), which is a direct derivation of the the anchoring bias (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring>). This bias causes humans to be unable to adjust conjunctive (multiplicative) probability sets down low enough to accurately predict the total time to completion of complex tasks.

Basically - even though the actual chance of implementing any part of a program is very high - the multiplied probabilities of all the parts working together fall geometrically towards 0. Due to anchoring, humans don't adjust down far enough which in turns leads them to underestimate the total time to completion of various tasks.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article can be summarized as follows:

Programmers tend to underestimate tasks.

Software estimation is an extremely complicated topic, this post barely scratches the surface.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's also missing is the client point of view, where a feature gets requested, the developer provides an estimate and then the feature gets changed over and over again by the client during development, yet the client is asking why it takes longer than originally estimated.

A little bit unrelated, but another fun one that happened to a friend recently was the redesign of a website over to wordpress. Once it was done & ready to be deployed the client mentioned that they don't have any servers with php support available - he was the same contact who confirmed and approved all the original specs, heh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Everybody is bad at estimating tasks. When I ask project managers how long it will take them to get the specification drafted "1 week" means at least two :)

I'm not being defensive, I agree with the OP, just think it extends to everyone.

Specifically in programming there is a problem when working with suboptimal teams. Many times as a freelancer I've worked for an "experienced project manager". Don't get me wrong, these are charismatic and smart people who know how to motivate and organise a team. But can't for the life of them write a proper technical specification.

So obviously that means an unexpected drafting process (back and forth between us) or I work on an incomplete spec (and all the delays that entails).

It works the other way too. I've still not been able to pin down the best way to do design feedback with clients (if anyone has tips, please let me know: firstname.lastname@example.com). Currently they spec what they want and then we trade emails and phone calls to make tweaks until it is ready.

When you work remotely this gets even harder - catching each other in phone calls is difficult, you have to trade several emails just to organise it. And usually that even gets scuppered by a last minute flake out. If you have a good project manager at the other end that's not so much a problem of course.

Estimating time is hard, but I always overestimate by about a factor of two. On the basis that when I make it under time it looks good, and the client doesn't get disappointed. When contracting this is even harder because "2 days work" isn't a completion estimate, so you have to say things like "It's a couple of days work, and if I get it into my schedule I should have it done by next Friday").

And then there is the inevitable; "oh yes, but we meant that as well..."

The bottom line; get. a. proper. _specification_. :) Saves most headaches.

<comment> grey-area I approach this slightly differently when contracting in order to get a spec everyone can agree on.

1\. I ask the client for a brief (an outline of what they want, not a detailed spec, the general _what_ rather than how, when or why).

2\. I give them a spec which satisfies the brief, highlights any areas they might not have thought of, and outlines exactly how the work will be done and what it will entail (and what it won't), and how long it will take in days of work (not days on the calendar), broken down into small subunits of several days each.

3\. We sign off on the spec (with any revisions they want), agree on a schedule (based on the time estimates with plenty of padding added for feedback, approval stages etc), and I start work.

The padding for the schedule (perhaps 3 x work days) won't cost them extra, and is there to cover the inevitable friction that working in groups produces, but if you're contracting you can spend that time waiting for feedback doing other work, so it comes at no cost to both parties. Probably the padding increases as the size of the company you're working for does.

I've never received a spec from a client that I was completely happy with, so it's easier to turn it around and accept a brief describing their goals in general terms, then give them a detailed description of how, when and why I would produce what they want. Asking them for the detailed specification, or even accepting one from them without lots of discussion, usually leads to problems as you're relying on the client to specify things they may not fully understand, you're asking them to tell you exactly how to do all the work, and by starting with their spec and mangling it or forcing lots of compromises, you make them feel they're not getting what they want. Whereas turning this around and giving them a spec lets you explain the cost/benefit of all decisions up front, and still gives them room to add/remove things as they wish as they approve the spec.

I do this even for design work as well as programming work, as there are a surprising number of constraints which a client may not consider, but will wish by the end of a project they had. All that said, most of my best ideas come from clients half way through a project, so you can't expect things not to remain fluid - that's just the nature of creation - as long as changes _improve_ the end result and don't have knock-on effects I welcome them.

I'm not really convinced the article is correct in estimating 1 day as the horizon over which most developers can't see - in my experience that's too low, and it'd be more like several days, and as long as you split tasks up when estimating, it's not hard to estimate the _actual hours worked_ \- far harder is to estimate the friction introduced by bureaucracy and politics in larger organisations. I suspect that's where most inaccuracies in scheduling creep in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've seen the inverse of this, though. For example, I estimated it would take me a couple days to do finish one part of a project, but I told the PM one week. She in turn multiplied it by 3 when she actually turned in the project schedule. So at the end I was given 3 weeks for an estimated 2 day task.

</comment><comment><USER19> That's why devs should scotty-factor their estimates.

<comment><USER20> <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ScottyFactor> for those like me that didn't know that term :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The solution: break your task into smaller chunks (< 1 day). Then estimate for the week, max. "At the end of the week, X will be done.". After then, scope will be more clear for the tasks following...

PS: I've noticed that code gets estimated too low in general, but anything involving manual (repetitious) work gets estimated way too high.

<comment><USER4> I think you just invented agile ;)

Well OK, not all of it, but if you add iterative design that is the core idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is an interesting article in wikipedia [1] which summarizes some models used to assess the time estimates.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_effort_est...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_effort_estimation)

</comment><comment><USER23> Using the same multipliers for everyone is bound to be sub-optimal, due to Parkinson's law.</comment>


The Chaocipher revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2010/07/03/the-chaocipher-revealed

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool! I was curious about this, so I built a 50-line Python version to confirm my understanding. Feel free to check it out and use it (LGPL): <http://bitbucket.org/carver/chaocipher/src/tip/chaocipher.py>

It could use things like a configurable key and interactive enciphering command line, and I would be happy to pull such changes.

 _Edit_ updated link with improved comments about the rotation part of the cipher

<comment><USER3> Your code serves as a _much_ better explanation than the linked paper in the article. And that Perl code o_O

<comment><USER2> Thanks! The paper was maybe a bit pedantic, but I appreciated his checkpoints and test cases. The perl was way overkill, though.

<comment><USER4> Why did you use state?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cracked it

<http://github.com/mavxg/chaocipher/blob/master/chaocipher.hs>

<comment><USER3> (have not run, but from the description) :

Impressive work :) If you manage to get plaintext from just cyphertext, be sure to spread it around; I'd imagine a lot of people would be interested in it.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't quite do that yet. Given a section of known plaintext of about 50 characters it can find the original key used (or at least enough of the key to then turn the problem into a mono-alphabetic cipher).</comment></comment></comment>


Thrift: scalable cross-language services implementation (pdf 84Kb) - <AUTHOR> http://developers.facebook.com/thrift/thrift-20070401.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> _"... define data types and service interfaces in a simple definition file. Taking that file as input, the compiler generates code that can be used to easily build RPC clients and servers ..." ~<http://developers.facebook.com/thrift>

Core facebook code for mobile, notes, search, posts and platform.</comment>


A simple Motion Blur demo using WebGL - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8554242/dmitri/projects/MotionBlurDemo/MotionBlurDemo.html <comment><AUTHOR> I've written about an unexpected outcome I've learned from this demo.

[http://shurcool.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/the-effect-of- motio...](http://shurcool.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/the-effect-of-motion-blur- on-our-perception-of-frame-rate/)

It does a lot to explain the discrepancies we often see when people argue "you can't see more than 24 frames per second" vs. "I can tell 60 vs. 120 fps".

 _It matters how DISTINCT the frames are._

<comment><USER3> I was actually thinking about motion over the past few days. High frame rate does matter, but it's for a different reason. Human eyes can track objects extremely well.

Here's a simple test to do with the demo. Try tracking that motion-blurred cube on the left with your eyes - it's all blurry. Now, try tracking the one on the right - it will be sharp, but "jumpy". Now, try tracking the one on the right with your 120Hz monitor - the motion should be MUCH smoother - <USER2> that's where the need for high frame rates comes in. The higher the frame rate, the better the object will look when you're tracking it with your eyes.

Ideally, if we only account for objects travelling across the screen in 2 seconds, and a screen is ~2000 pixels wide, and we want to have an error of <=1 pixel, then theoretically, we need (2000px)/(2sec) = 1000 Hz frame rate for high motion realism. Unfortunately, I don't see it coming anytime soon...

<comment><USER4> So if the screen is really dense, say 20000px wide, you would need a 10kHz refresh rate. That contradict the contrast experiment.

<comment><USER3> In order to keep the increase in sharpness that you get from 10x the pixels - yes, you would need 10kHz, 10x the refresh rate. The moving picture would look sharper than the moving picture on the 2000px display. If you use 1000Hz refresh rate, then the crispness of moving objects on the 20,000px display would degrade to approximately the crispness of the 2,000px display. I hope that made sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great demo!

This is probably obvious, but for the first time it occurs to me that motion blur is essentially the same as anti-aliasing. They are eye-tricking hacks to work around a lack of resolution in the medium -- screen resolution, in the case of pixel anti-aliasing, or "time" (framerate) resolution in the case of motion blur.

Recently I've been wondering if as very high-resolution displays become commonplace, anti-aliasing will become obsolete. If I could play an FPS video game on a 500dps monitor, would anti-aliasing make any perceptible difference? At some pixel pitch, even text anti-aliasing won't matter.

The same thing seems to apply here. If we had 5000Hz screens (and could run our animations quickly enough to keep up), would applying artificial motion blur buy you anything?

<comment><USER6> Those are some extremely insightful and promising thoughts that deserve more research. If you venture more in those explorations, I'd love to read thoughts you have :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If there's enough interest, I can share the original C++/OpenGL code (with Xcode project in latest version, MSVC project in older code).

The problem is that I doubt the code has much value, because the C++/GLSL code does a very poor job of communicating the higher-level abstractions that are going on, and the documentation is nonexistent because I was just doing it as a demo.

In other words, it's not very reusable nor is it easy to learn from. :( Its main value is the running demo.

This problem is one of the things that inspired me to work on my current project which tries to make code/functionality/value more reusable by default (i.e. with less extra effort on your part).

</comment><comment><USER7> Tastefully done! The one thing about motion blur I've seen is almost everyone overdoes it. You got just about the right level where it looks natural and not gaudy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. :)

It's likely because I don't fake the motion blur effect as it is most commonly done (nothing wrong with that, I'm just describing it). Instead, I calculate what your eyes would realistically see. I render the triangle with a non-zero exposure time (the exposure time is equal to the duration of 1 frame).

There are definitely some shortcuts and approximations taken (I don't compensate for how CRT/LCD displays display images, no colour correction, etc.), but the "big picture" is 100% based on real physics.

The motion blur is calculated with the assumption you keep your eyes still. If you track the moving square, then by definition there should be zero motion blur (if your display were perfect). However, it still looks okay with motion blur even if you track the square.

<comment><USER8> > but the "big picture" is 100% based on real physics.

Having implemented motion blur numerous times, this is actually super interesting to me. However I was reading through your source-code and was having a hard time following along. Any chance you could explain what the physical models you are basing your algorithm on and how that ended up translating to code?

Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> First I'll link you to these two replies [1][2]. I can go in more detail if you'd like.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211294>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211332>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crashes the whole phone if I run it under Firefox on Android. I should probably report that, any crashing bug is a potential security vulnerability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. I wrote the web code quite sloppily, and it was my first time. I just wanted to port my native C++/OpenGL code to the web.

<comment><USER9> Not your fault. If it crashes the whole phone, that's a bug in Firefox and/or Android. A Web app should never be able to crash the browser, and the browser shouldn't be able to crash the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gives an alert as soon as I run it: 0:15(87): error: Arrays cannot be out or inout parameters in GLSL 1.10

Firefox 18 on Linux, with WebGL otherwise supported.

</comment><comment><USER11> Feels great to my eyes. The non-blurred square looks far choppier and eye- straining by comparison. Would love to be able to easily add this effect to CSS3 animations since it'll probably be awhile (3-ish years?) before WebGL is more commonplace.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought so too, so I wanted to experiment with applying the same type of (physically-accurate) motion blur to scrolling text.

Screenshot: [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8554242/dmitri/projects/Conception/...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8554242/dmitri/projects/Conception/images/Scrolling%20Motion%20Blur%201.png) Source: <https://github.com/shurcooL/Conception/tree/motion-blur>

I've realized the effect in motion looks quite nice, but it HAS to run at full 60 FPS at all times. If there are dips in the framerate, the effect is horrible (partly because the 16.66 ms number is hardcoded rather than calculated). My implementation is very naive and not optimized, but it funs well with a dedicated card. Not so much with Intel 3000. It was just a mockup so I didn't develop it further for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this work? It's way too fast for me to see anything, other than that it looks great; what is the difference between this and, say, drawing a lots of transparent rectangles lerped between current and last position?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's simple conceptually: I just draw a quad with non-zero exposure time.

For each pixel, I calculate how much exposure it receives during the last 1/60th of a second (assuming it runs at 60 FPS). So, if a pixel is backed by the triangle for 100%, it gets the full colour. If it's only 24% of the time, then it's 24% of the full colour, etc.

That's what happens conceptually. In order for it to run faster, I have to optimize the solution and basically calculate the same result, but by drawing some triangles and calculating some distances... It's hard to explain, but it's nothing more than an optimization.

<comment><USER13> You can make it look even better by adding support for shutter (in)efficiency: <http://www.dctsystems.co.uk/Text/ShutterPresentation.pdf> resp. <http://www.dctsystems.co.uk/Text/shutter.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very interesting. I'm very curious how this relates to the human eye.

I remember playing around with adjusting something similar to this, but it was mostly to compensate for how monitors display images.

<comment><USER13> Shutters with an efficiency between 75% and 50% just look more natural, from my experience.

The stuff proposed in this papers made it into blockbuster VFX production renderers ca. 2005 (3Delight) and 2007 (Pixar's PhotorRealistic RenderMan).

There is no information available on what full CG features use this. However, when you look at a still frame that exhibits heavy motion blur in isolation, you can usually tell right away if a perfect of imperfect shutter model was used. The latter looks smoother/more natural.

As far as VFX in live action films go: it makes sense to match the virtual shutter to the one of the camera that was used to shoot the footage the VFX need to be integrated with.

The high end offline rendering plug-in, my company produces, has a setting for this. The default we use (and that most of our customers leave untouched, I believe) is 75% shutter efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks good. Shocking amount of code to achieve that effect though.

<comment><USER15> its actually pretty "short" me thinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't this only work because the square is a uniform color?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the existing code could not handle overlapping objects of different colours, nor textured objects.

However, in theory, the technique and code can be extended to handle those cases. It's just more demanding computationly-wise.

Adding overlapping objects of different colours is somewhat easier (but still hard) than adding textures.

<comment><AUTHOR> To make overlapping geometry possible, UAVs could be used.

See here: [http://www.gamedev.net/topic/622099-representing-interval- se...](http://www.gamedev.net/topic/622099-representing-interval-set-with- values-for-pixel-values/)

It's the same technique that can be used to achieve Order Independent Transparency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well done and nice to see that some understood that motion blur is more important than just high fps.

</comment><comment><USER18> After looking at the code, not sure if I would use the word 'simple'. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could you do this with the system mouse cursor?

<comment><AUTHOR> In an open source operating system, it could be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> On MBP i5 works in Firefox but shows white screen with no console errors in Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's strange, I developed it by testing in Chrome first, Firefox second. It has always worked for me in Chrome on all computers I've tried. Which version of Chrome do you have?

<comment><USER20> Chrome 24.0.1312.57 on OSX 10.6.8 MBP i5.

I've had crashes and blank screens running some ROME demos in Chrome here. Pretty sure it's the fancy shader use.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the exact same version of Chrome I have running on my 2011 MBP with 10.8.2. Either there's something up with your video card, Chrome install, or maybe Snow Leopard is to blame (no idea why).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> doesnt work here , what is it supposed to do ? (latest chrome)

<comment><AUTHOR> Move your mouse, and the two squares should follow. Left one with motion blur, right one without.

In motion it looks something like this (but you can't convey the effect with a screenshot, you need to see it live): [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8554242/dmitri/projects/MotionBlurD...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8554242/dmitri/projects/MotionBlurDemo/MotionBlurDemo.png)</comment></comment>


Remap Your Caps Lock As Backspace - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaeljaylissner.com/blog/remap-caps-lock-as-backspace

<comment><USER2> I use my caps lock key as a right arrow key. Reaching for escape in Vim doesn't really bother me, and I find it surprisingly useful pretty much any time I'm typing.

I use AutoHotkey (<http://www.autohotkey.com/>) to remap it on Windows, and xmodmap/xset under X on Linux. If anyone has suggestions for doing this easily under OS X I'd love to hear them.

The AutoHotkey script is this: SetCapsLockState, ALwaysOff CapsLock::Right

And the xmodmap/xset commands are basically the same as those mentioned in the article for remapping backspace: xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock" xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = Right" xset r 66

</comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty common for emacs users to remap caps lock to the control key. In fact, it's the first tip in Steve Yegge's Effective Emacs essay.

<http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs>

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Caps Lock as Escape for an easy to access escape in vim. I am so used to this now that it is one of the first things I have to change when setting up a machine before I go crazy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For Vim I use tab as esc, and s-tab as tab. Auto-indent turned on.

Caps as right arrow is an interesting idea.

Basically, caps lock is silly.</comment>


Only 10% of Americans spend $1000 on a smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2019/12/12/smartphone-1000/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not surprised at this.

$450 used to get you a device running current Android, current SoC, 1080p screen, headphone jack, removable battery, SD card slot, and IR blaster. ([https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_3-5665.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_3-5665.php))

You just about cannot get that today at any price point. Remove the IR blaster, headphone jack, and removable battery and you start to see what is on offer at the 'flagship level' for more than double the price.

<comment><USER2> This is why I have not upgraded yet, although it would be effectively free to me through my (rather expensive) plan. Is there anything semi-current full- featured phone?

Somebody, anybody, take my money. I am asking for the same thing as you made 10 years ago with a newer baseband chip and some more ram. Its not $@!/?@ complicated.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: "Do Not Call" for domains? - <AUTHOR>

For weeks after registering a new domain name I am bombarded with e-mails and phone calls asking if I want web design help, etc.<p>I guess I could always pay to private register the domains to combat this. However, why must we incur additional fees to protect SPAM and telemarketers? Are there other options available? <comment><USER2> This is exactly why I wont register any domain that do not allow whois guard. I would suggest using whois guard, NameCheap has one of the cheapest ones. Alternatively, you can have separate disposable email address on your whois info.

<comment><USER3> Google Domains have Whois guard free.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for pointing that out. Does google have DNS management and CNAME wildcard support ?

Found it: [https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3290350?hl=en](https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3290350?hl=en)

" We include 10 million resolutions per year for each domain you register with Google Domains. "

Question: What happens when you reach 10 million ?

Also found disturbing article about google whois guard:

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/epic-google-snafu- le...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/epic-google-snafu-leaks-hidden- whois-data-for-280000-domains/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _why must we incur additional fees to protect SPAM and telemarketers?_

For the same reasons that if you had a sales team, you'd have them make cold calls.</comment>


devAny – Programming using iPhone, monitor and bluetooth keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.devany.net <comment><AUTHOR> I made devAny which is essentially a thin client of Unix to write programs on iPhone(and iPad). This requires bluetooth keyboard and backend server (and monitor/connector to the monitor if iPhone) though, it comes with the followings.

* Provides 3 tools to write code, which are editor, terminal and browser. -- They are the required tools for programmer

* Most of the operations can be done by only external keyboard. -- Not using soft keyboard but physical bluetooth keyboard

* Having Unix(ubuntu) environment -- Server processes needs to be set up by yourself on your server. But it comes with docker, EC2 images and packer, so you can install easily.

Technically this uses WebDAV and ttyd to communicating with backend server.

Any feedbacks are welcome.</comment>


BMW, Daimler merge mobility services to take on Uber, Waymo - <AUTHOR> http://media.daimler.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/BMW-Group-and-Daimler-AG-agree-to-combine-mobility-services.xhtml?oid=34636751&_lrsc=4870703a-0fe4-40f7-ac18-67b47527f108 <comment><USER2> Seems this merger brings a very broad portfolio of mobility services under one roof. Combining and leveraging the relationships of the units (charging, parking, car-sharing, multimodal offerings and car-sharing) might turn into a competitive advantage and as an entry point to compete with Uber & Waymo.</comment>


Pornhub women in tech scholarship - <AUTHOR> http://www.pornhub.com/cares/stem-scholarship <comment><USER2> Should have the title of "Women In Tech $25K Scholarship from PornHub"

For college students who are in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math majors.</comment>


Show HN: View Htop over Web - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/crislin2046/htop-over-web <comment><USER2> I can admit that sometimes I don't bother with long commit messages, but this project takes the cake.

"OK", "OK but some bugs"...

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds interesting, but might need a readme?</comment>


On the Unfairness of California Proposition 13 - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/rich-celebrity-landlords-benefit-from-californias-prop-13.html <comment><USER2> I'm glad there's a chance the commercial exemption may go away. That never made sense.

The bigger problem is that prop 13 is structured in a way that screws up neighborhoods. On my street in Palo Alto is a widow in her 90s who can still afford to stay in her home, which I think is great. There's also an older couple in a different home who would like to move out of their largish/multistory home but couldn't afford to pay the rent or property taxes on a small one-bedroom. As a result there's only one family with kids on the block.

As for prop 58...well if you are the sort of person who considers inheritance at all legitimate I'm not sure you have grounds to complain.

<comment><USER3> If it is an older couple and they sold, presumably at a steep profit, why couldn't they use that for rent?

<comment><USER2> FWIW this is Palo Alto.

Their property taxes (you can look them all up online) are about $1500/year. Mine are about $2K/month. The young couple across the street pay about $5K/month in property taxes alone.

Indeed they could sell at a large profit but probably their house is worth 2.5-3M; any small house would cost a lot too -- there isn't much choice so house prices are compressed. There's very little rental property -- my real estate friend thinks my house would rent out for at least $25K/month. It's a large house, but there was an apartment in the paper the other day that rents for significantly more!

They could move out of Palo Alto of course, but who wants to do that when you've lived here 40+ years? And the retirement place ("V") next to Stanford (neighbor is a retired Stanford prof) has a minimum buy in of something like $3M.

<comment><USER4> They could retire in Kansas - Taxes on my home are $525 a year. I live in a 3br house with a detached 2 car garage.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps -- some people do move away when they retire. But moving away from your (surviving) friends and the environment you've become used to (weather, shops, etc) isn't generally attractive to people late in their life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not anomalous to progressivism in California; it basically defines it. Rich heirs with massive trust funds, inherited real estate subsidized by tax advantages, and no income on a need scholarship at Berkeley complaining about how we need to raise income taxes so the rich can pay their fair share.</comment>


Home was not where the heart was for the Enlightenment's intellectuals - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-restless-spirit-of-the-enlightenment/ <comment><USER2> Pythagoras was a child prodigy who traveled the world with the desire to meet all the wisest in each land. He then assembled the knowledge into what he called "philosophy". Integrating empirical science and communal spirituality, he taught that the "cosmos" is made of math.

Source: Iamblichus, "Life of Pythagoras"

<comment><USER3> It's less strange if you call it ma-the-matica, as in the-ology, pan-the-on, ...

<comment><USER4> you can think of it that way, but, etymologically, it is unrelated to those words. the root "mathema" is more like "learning" or "knowledge".

<comment><USER2> Pythagoras had two types of students, the akoustikoi and the mathematikoi. The latter had to take a 5 year vow of silence and live communally. Both men and women -- and mixed races (specifically the Mongolian "visiting scholar", Abaris)

Recent scholarship (Creese, Zhmud, Barker) attributes to the mathematikoi the first hypothesis-driven experiments in the history of science -- testing theories of Consonance and Dissonance.

<comment><USER5> Can you cite the claim that Abaris came from Mongolia? Whoever would make such a claim is speaking far too confidently. The details provided in the actual Greek sources are ambiguous and could apply to anywhere in northern Eurasia.

<comment><USER2> Yes! Def. It is Peter Kingsley's new book, "a story waiting to pierce you". It is very, very good.

<comment><USER5> Alright, I see. I hope you understand that this book, published in New Age circles, is a not a reputable work on history or even a reasonable pop-sci distillation thereof. Consequently, I feel it is irresponsible to make the claim in the post above.

<comment><USER2> Not so! Kinglsey is a great scholar and respected as such. This book is extremely well referenced -- more than half the book is notes and references. It also has a blurb from Walter Burkett just before he died. Yes, it's not standard history -- and he takes a spiritual perspective. But it is extremely appropriate for the subject matter.

Impuning the book because it is published in new age circles is unfair. I recommend refreshing your perspective by reading "esotericism in the academy" by Wouter Hanagraaf. Or, "western esotericism: a guide for the perplexed"

<comment><USER5> > Kinglsey is a great scholar and respected as such

He is not however respected as a historian or archaeologist of Northern Eurasia, which would allow him to claim that any figure in Greek history came specifically from Mongolia. If he says in the book that this is merely his own speculation, that would be fine, but the fact is that speculation is all it would be.

> I recommend refreshing your perspective by reading "esotericism in the > academy" by Wouter Hanagraaf. Or, "western esotericism: a guide for the > perplexed"

Esoteric philosophy and its validity or lack thereof is irrelevant to the historical–archaeological claim that you made in your post above.

<comment><USER2> > Esoteric philosophy and its validity or lack thereof is irrelevant to the > historical–archaeological claim that you made in your post above.

I mentioned the work on esotericism in history in reference to the dismissal of kinglsey on the basis of new age affiliation.

And speculation can be essential for creating plausible narratives in a world with limited data. But I agree, speculation should always be labeled!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any data on this? Seems to make sense but I don't think the greatest intellectuals of the past centuries say Newton, Mozart, Einstein, were avidly interested in traveling. And even if they were, they could only reach a very small fraction of what we can reach nowadays with planes.

<comment><USER7> I agree. The article smells of confirmation bias.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with you. One of the unusual, perhaps unique features of Western civilization is the great hunger for direct knowledge of other societies and other parts of the natural world outside the West. Think for instance of Herodotus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I travel and speak to locals, they are often very open and honest. Both when I lightly press them for information on their condition, hopes and aspirations - and when they are just happy to confide in and share something personal with a complete stranger just passing through. Many touching moments, often more memorable and enlightening than the beautiful places I visit.</comment>


A case against syntax highlighting (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/

<comment><USER2> I don't even "see" it, but it's nice to have colors.

Like I don't give importance to what color is what (is green a variable, yellow a keyword, etc) because that's like trying to do math an relying on fixed notations (i is an index, x is a variable, etc). I've seen many people get puzzled if you change letters they're used to in an equation, which is kind of funny :D

But to say that I'm against syntax highlighting, I'm not. It's simply a feature. If you _rely_ on it, then..</comment>


Samsung To Launch 5G By 2020, Hits Speeds Of 1Gbps In Tests - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/12/samsung-to-launch-5g-by-2020-hits-speeds-of-1gbps-in-tests/

<comment><USER2> Key bit of info in the article, "It transmits data in the millimeter-wave band at a frequency of 28 GHz at a speed of up to 1.056 Gbps to a distance of up to 2 kilometers" while the 1gbps figure is impressive, most consumers would experience something possibly a few hundred megabytes lower, still impressive though.

But seriously, 2020? 4G is only just starting to be rolled out in Australia now and the only carrier with decent 4G is Telstra and the speeds are pretty impressive, data is expensive though.</comment>


Ask HN: What will happen with Mac as a dev platform after ARM? - <AUTHOR> Is it worth it to buy an Intel Mac as your dev workstation anymore? <comment><USER2> We'll find out more later on today, I'd imagine, but my feeling is that ARM on desktops is likely to be ~2 years away. If you buy computers about every 2 years, go for it. If you buy computers every 5+ years and can wait, then wait.

</comment><comment><USER3> There will be a rough period as toolchains are ported over and then it will be business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER4> What kind of dev?

Web dev or embedded dev? Shouldn't make any difference at all whether you go with Intel Mac, ARM Mac, Windows, or Linux, except for your personal preferences regarding which OS, tools, and (maybe) the platform you will deploy to. So yes, it's still worth it today iff it was worth it (to you) last year.

Native Mac or iOS app dev? Yes, it's not only worth it, but it will be your only option for a while and then an equally good option for a few years thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most toolchains are cross-platform already. Even some that build to native code. Systems programmers may steer clear for a while but they probably already weren't using Macs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have they demoed anything with bootcamp? I imagine that anyone doing Windows work could be impacted?

</comment><comment> noah-kun Why would anything change?

<comment><USER7> I'd be concerned about a lot of Homebrew packages needing some porting, for instance.

Tho that seems like it'd get sorted within a year or two.</comment></comment>


Over 50% US green card holders plan to return home - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Over-50-US-green-card-holders-plan-to-return-home-Survey/articleshow/8161107.cms

<comment><USER2> The headline doesn't match what's reported in the article: "Survey participants included permanent residents, US citizens and work visa holders."

Many "work visa holders" BY LAW are supposed to not have intent to immigrate to the United States, or in other words are expected to have intent to return to their countries of citizenship. Until this sample is described more carefully than it is in the submitted article, it's not clear that this is a meaningful finding.</comment>


Lionel Trilling's Hottest Takes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/10/11/lionel-trillings-hottest-takes/ <comment><USER2> On Allen Ginsburg's "Howl": "all prose, all rhetoric, without any music"

You could certainly debate the merits of these poems, but how can you NOT hear the music?

        I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
        dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
        angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

<comment><USER3> When I read this I literally hear the music :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgztPP_CWNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgztPP_CWNQ)</comment></comment>


Apple and IBM: This Time It'll Be Different - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/08/24/shift-happens-apple-ibm-this-time-itll-be-different/

<comment><USER2> This time _is_ different. It's like comparing apples to lemons (pun intended).

IBM is now a professional services company. They have almost half a million employees worldwide, not considering the many thousands of contractors. That's 5x more people than Apple.

IBM is in the business of 1) selling people's time, and 2) selling some software, to justify selling even more of people's time. Hardware is not a priority anymore.

Those who have worked in professional services industry know there's a cap on how much you can charge for each employee. Maybe 2-3x the salary, which will get you to the $200-250K range. Maybe a bit more if you have teams with unique skills (e.g., lawyers, scientists, creative talents), but nothing even close to the revenue per capita that a product-based company commands.

Case in point: IBM just got to #1 position on AdAge's ranking of digital marketing agencies [1]. Yes, digital marketing agency. A few years ago they weren't even showing up in the rankings.

Apple, on the other hand, is in the business of creating products out of hardware + software. That requires a much smaller scale, given that 80% of the manufacturing is outsourced. So when you look at the revenue per employee, you'll end up with much bigger numbers.

But a better comparison would be to add _all_ the employees of Apple's direct suppliers. Just Foxconn, for example, has 1.29M employees and 40% of its revenue coming from Apple. Add it all up, and things start to look a lot more similar to IBM.

[1] [http://adage.com/article/agency-news/2014-agency-report- reve...](http://adage.com/article/agency-news/2014-agency-report-revenue- staffing-stocks-digital/292849/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _These aren't isolated bad endings. If you have the time and inclination for a nostalgic stroll through the list, you'll see many more such disappearances._

This seems to be true at the smallest scales of businesses as well as the largest ones. I wrote about the phenomenon among smaller businesses here: "In business there are very few true partnerships" [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/in-business- there-a...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/in-business-there-are- very-few-true-partnerships/) .

A lot of junior consultants take a surprisingly long time to learn this. Evidently a lot of large companies suffer the same challenges.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to stir the hornets' nest and throw out a simple challenge:

Apple has lost their mojo. The implication is that Apple has lost their way "post-Jobs."

...

When they partner with the company they used to poke fun at (1984 Commercial)...

When the big news in the article is: "Valley gossip has it that IBM issued an edict stating that Macs were to be supported internally within 30 days. Apparently, at some exec meetings, it's MacBooks all around the conference room table — except for the lonely Excel jockey who needs to pivot tables."

Is this Apple ascendant to fill the power vacuum as Microsoft crumbles? I think it's actually Apple being assimilated into the larger corporate world where Microsoft was only ever a small fish, even in their heyday.

"Hi, I'm a mac, and I'm a PC." Geeks always knew that Macs were, technically, Personal Computers. But I think I can see cracks in Apple's claim to "think different."

Apple set a high bar with Mac, then iPod, then iPhone and iPad. When they haven't had a WWDC keynote I've bothered to watch in years...

I'd love to be proven wrong. :)

<comment><USER5> If you haven't seen the last WWDC, or if you have seen it but didn't like it as a programmer, I guess you'll be hard to convince.

<comment><USER4> I shouldn't need convincing. Apple's own actions should be proof enough, don't you think?

<comment><USER5> Well, maybe that's my sketchy English, but I guess that's what I said. The last WWDC was the one to convince you, not me or anybody else outside of Apple. Proofs are effective if you don't degrade them constantly to worthless actions because of a former prejudice (not saying that's your case, but it's the case for many).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple and IBM both survive due to blind fans and platform lock-in. In Apple's case it's consumers, and with IBM it's corporations.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I asked WolframAlpha for per employee, per year revenue and profit comparisons and got this:"

What? You did division of some trivially-obtainable numbers. Why do I care that you did this in Wolfram Alpha, and why on God's green and spinning earth did you need to put the answers in two PNG screengrabs, rather than just typing the answer out into a single sentence?

<comment><USER8> Because the author, probably not the submitter, decided to do that in their article on their website. Also, as trivial as it may be to get revenue and employee numbers from annual reports, it only takes a few seconds to do in Wolfram Alpha.

<comment><USER7> I feel like most of the time savings were eaten up by making a bunch of little screen grabs to show us it was done in Wolfram Alpha. And it makes the information take up about five times as much space as it would if it was just written out in a sentence, and since the alt-text for each PNG is "Wofram IBM Apple Revenue" and "Wolfram IBM Apple Profit" the information is entirely lost for, among others, search engine bots, blind people using screen readers and any cached copies that have the text but not the associated images.

<comment><USER9> I came here for a bit of expert commentary on the article. I can only assume it must be pretty water-tight if we're sitting around arguing about _this_...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Depression and patterns of sleep loss are often interconnected - <AUTHOR> http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/7/eaat1294 <comment><USER2> In case anyone is depressed and reads this, I'll add an anecdote that isn't as heavy as the article. When I was depressed, I would wake up at 4am every night and not be able to fall back asleep. So I'd get up for a few hours, work, then go back to bed for a sleep cycle before actual work. Over the course of a few months of recovering, this completed stopped. Now I can tell how depressed I am by how many times a week this happens, but generally only every few weeks compared to every day no exceptions. For me, they are very closely related.</comment>


Citi suspends senior bond trader over alleged theft from canteen - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/b7c1952a-467b-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 <comment><USER2> Sincere question, how is this not transparently a pretext technicality for with-cause to avoid settlement, given what banks tolerate from people who make them money?

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://outline.com/qvE7Gw](https://outline.com/qvE7Gw)

Also, "canteen" is British for "cafeteria"

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do people upvote paywalled links? This post has 8 upvotes already. Why? Were those 8 people actually able to read the article somehow?

Mirror without paywall: [https://archive.is/r1cXt](https://archive.is/r1cXt)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is it legal to post on HN links to stolen content?

<comment><USER4> Between this comment and your submission history consisting almost entirely of FT links, you really aren't trying very hard to conceal the fact that you work for FT.

Why are links with paywalls even allowed to be submitted to HN? I imagine if I submitted dozens of links to my personal website where the only viewable content was a bunch of donation links, my account would be banned.

<comment><USER5> Good Point, maybe we should just start flagging all posts that are pay-walled? Why feed traffic to a site and pay their advertisers when they don't want us.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Three Ways Agile Has Gone Astray - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ard_adam/three-ways-agile-has-gone-astray-165acf3fd3c0 <comment><USER2> Wait, what.. No mention, re problem numero uno, that Agile has deprecated the word "Sprint", that word no longer appears in its glossary (just iteration)? This was done expicitly to discourage abuse and misinterpretation which they recognize had become rampant.

The converse of iterations being too rigid is that open source projects can be too unstuctured, and leave key bugs flagged but unfixed for eons. Including security bugs. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524403](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524403) (discussed at HN very recently)

The best balance probably is very short iterations with defined goals and a process for prioritizing which need to be next up (which is the Agile way); but it's hard to impose those on volunteers (in open source projects) of course. And yes, stick-managers frequently try to pervert iterations into longer death marches, but that's Agile Theater, not Agile.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Because developers are more akin to architects, designers, or artists than > factory or construction workers, the best process is the one that defers to > their judgement and trusts them to do the best work they can. When managers > reach for metrics to motivate developers rather than focusing on working > code, they are on unstable ground.

Exactly.</comment>


Ask HN : mobile app that would be great for programmers - <AUTHOR>

I'm a programmer and I constantly find myself using a small collection of the same keyboard shortcuts all the time, I would really like a mobile app which when the mobile is plugged into the pc would then provide me with a few buttons on the mobile which i could then program with multi keyboard presses, eg, i press a single touch button on the mobile and it presses cntr+tab for switching windows etc<p>Anyone want to take up the challenge, I'd be happy to spend up to £5 on something like this and I imagine quite a few other programmers would as well <comment><USER2> You want to use the phone as an extended keyboard full of macros. Neat. However, we all usually do not use lots of keys on the main keyboard like F1-F12,Scroll Lock, Pause|Break etc. So why not convert these keys into your macros? There are a bunch of programs out there that do this. I myself created one such program at my work which, when detects a PRINTSCREEN press, takes the screenshot and saves it in a specified directory in a specified format!

Let me know if you need that! As far as your offer of doing the same on a cellphone, i am afraid I am ill-equipped to be able to do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The mobile app I want to see is one that:

using the camera, from a photo, does OCR and searches for same / similar code on-line

OCR is a hard problem, but its fairly constrained when we use fixed-width fonts in IDEs etc generally; this is finally within the realms of solvable on modern smartphones

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Keymote app. It does a lot of what you want (over wifi).</comment>


It is not called the "Desert Desert," dammit - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2012/01/20/10258838.aspx

<comment><USER2> See also The Los Angeles Angels, and the La Brea tar pits.</comment>


A mathematical trick allows people to scatter their computer files - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/tm/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12081445

<comment><USER2> Reed-Solomon coding is an old fella. Whenever you have a link which is unreliable and you can't afford to retransmit packets on the link when errors are introduced, RS is your friend. Mobile phones are among the prime users of this.

If I remember correctly, the PAR/PAR2 formats used on usenet is using RS- encoding as well.

An alternative would be to plot the file in N-dimensional space and define a set of vectors to pinpoint it. When you have enough vectors you have the precise pinpoint. Additional vectors gives the error-correction capability. Some microsoft guys played with this idea for Bittorrent-like networks a while back. But there is a disadvantage in the time it takes to decode the data, and it probably doesn't help the swarm that much :/

Another interesting viewpoint: We might need RS-encoding on the _local_ harddisks soon (implemented in hardware or software), as it would circument the bit-error rate problem with those disks.

<comment><USER3> What I am wondering about is how much faster TCP could be with RS for recovery instead of the current resend-packet technique.

<comment><USER4> I would guess it would be slower and you would break the internet. You would have to introduce enough redundancy to cope with the worst tolerable loss rate which would increase the number of bits to transmit. Worse, it is the noticing of dropped packets that tells TCP to slow down and decongest a link. If enough senders fail to decongest then packet loss on the congested links skyrockets wasting bandwidth elsewhere and doing silly things like favoring the sender with the biggest pipe.

<comment><USER5> Obviously you can't just eliminate congestion control, and the coding rate should be adaptive to reduce overhead.

At least one startup has gone broke on this idea already, but maybe it's possible to do it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The economist doing error correction codes?? Are you guys _sure_ the LHC didn't do anything to the universe?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure whether I'm excited that this was in the economist, or pissed off that they reduced error correction codes to "a mathematical trick"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We have an open source project <http://allmydata.org> that has been doing this for quite awhile. I'm also involved in the commercial side which does online storage and we've been running a business on a P2P backend (nice low costs) with non-peer clients. We tried a business model with a full peer grid and users were extremely uncomfortable storing "data" from other people on their computers. Possibly the market is better educated now and/or more used to this idea, but it may be a hard sell.

</comment><comment><USER9> We learned about a Hamming distance at University. But I could never figure out when what or why it should be used. It was either predicting the future, or just sending more bits to compensate for error.

But what if you get errors in the new bits? It's daft.

<comment><USER10> Beyond a certain error rate, you will definitely end up with bad data. The point is, with error detecting or correcting codes, you're introducing redundancy by encoding the information into more bits than minimally required to represent that information.

The simplest form is adding a parity bit, which allows you to detect (not correct) up to one bad bit. (so, say 1/8 bits or 12.5% if you store a byte of information in 9 bits)

Using R-S codes you can crank up the number of bits used for encoding, which also drives up your error tolerance. Plus, in addition to detecting errors, you can even correct them. So it doesn't matter if some bits come up bad (or missing) - the redundancy is spread equally across _all_ of the transmitted/stored bits, so it's irrelevant which bits suffer from the failure. There aren't any "old" or "new" bits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Erm.. I see tons of comments about the 'maths trick' behind the tech.. but have any of you tried out the app cos it's really amazing! A great idea, great execution. If this gets the news coverage it deserves then this could be huge I think.

</comment><comment><USER12> Even if this is all worked out to be amazingly effective.. how are you going to convince regular users to put their data on other peoples' computers?

Yes, I realize that it's all put into chunks so people won't be able to snoop on them, but just try getting that concept past my mom.

It's neat but I'd rather my data on my encrypted and fast S3 account.

<comment><USER13> Why is S3 different? "My data is on other people's machines" is still the case there. Encrypt it before you send out the blocks, and you're exactly where S3 is.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The anonymous p2p-project Freenet does similar forward error correction --- and did it for ages.</comment>