An open letter to the media, by Anonymous - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/sK6Zi3EM <comment><USER2> The following quote is relevant here:

"WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal "solutions"? Part of the problem is that we've been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let's talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I'm responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren't dying because the world is running out of water. They're dying because the water is being stolen.

…Personal change doesn't equal social change." — Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Changes Does Not Equal Political Change

Even if every Guy Fawkes mask were made at Foxconn itself, a boycott wouldn't do anything to the working conditions. Teens would still purchase them based on the movie (or, heaven forbid, the actual comic book). What is necessary is restructuring the world to make Foxconn impossible.

[1] [http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...](http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/)

<comment><USER3> "wah wah wah corporations are bad, growth is bad"

Corporations and economic growth are directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion is happening: the internet, cheap and powerful computers, etc

Or even better: [https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/391943773963304960](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/391943773963304960)

<comment><USER4> "wah wah wah monarchy is bad, empire is bad"

The British government is directly responsible for the possibility that this discussion of "taxation without representation" is happening; colonization, trade, etc.

Sometimes when you stand on the shoulders of giants, you realize that the old ways were lousy. America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide.

I'm not comparing Capitalism to Genocide, but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things.

If you stop and listen for one minute, people like me are saying, "Maybe the current system is TOO excessive, and should be reigned in, in some ways." We think laws should help fight the excesses of unchecked capitalism.

We're not proposing the "share everything" that Kasparov ridicules, and posing our argument that way is an absurd straw man.

That said, I don't represent a united front of people who believe identically to me, but your argument is so absurd that I think it might practically be targeted at only a tiny minority of people currently saying anything negative about corporations and our current means of economic growth.

<comment><USER3> "but I am saying the form of argument you used is ridiculous, because I can use the same argument to defend awful things."

Except you just used a straw man. Of course it's ridiculous then.

"America as it is today wouldn't exist without slavery and Native American genocide."

Of course not. But those things went away, and the USA is still there.

But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet.

<comment><USER5> > _But you can 't have the internet without equipment, without servers built > by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet._

Now you're the one strawmanning by painting it as corporations existing or not existing.

It's not a binary issue. A corporation is just an organization of people with a specific legal status. There will always be organizations of people.

However, I don't think we need to confer the rights of personhood to a corporation even though they don't have the same responsibilities or vulnerabilities. Similarly, it doesn't need to be the case that corporations should be able to extract value from the commons at the expense of the poor so that the privileged upper-middle class can have the cheapest possible gadgets.

It is definitely possible to draw a better line between individual freedom and the wholesale rape of the environment. For starters, those things aren't represented in GDP, and so it's of no real concern to those in power. What gets measured gets improved.

<comment><USER3> "However, I don't think we need to confer the rights of personhood to a corporation even though they don't have the same responsibilities or vulnerabilities. Similarly, it doesn't need to be the case that corporations should be able to extract value from the commons at the expense of the poor so that the privileged upper-middle class can have the cheapest possible gadgets."

Good, I agree with that.

But the issue with cheap gadgets goes both ways. Chinese factories allow people in India and other 3rd world countries to have a cheap (read: affordable) mobile phone.

Yes, they could pay more and give better conditions, the profit gains coming from economies of scale would still be there.

<comment><USER6> >>But you can't have the internet without equipment, without servers built by guess who? Corporations. Take that away: no internet.<<

Partially correct - we need equipment, but mesh networking is becoming a reality. No corporate involvement beyond the hardware.

have a look:

[http://www.dailydot.com/politics/greek-off-the-grid- internet...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/greek-off-the-grid-internet- mesh/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand people who are even against sweatshops, do they really want to deprive these areas of the only jobs they do have?

The middle-class westerners have good intentions, sure. Do they really think though, but starving sweatshops to the point of closure, all the staff will walk into well paid work? No, in all probability, the lack of competition and the low budgets will mean they have to fight over even worse jobs, if not... starve.

If you really want to take the moral high-ground, you should _only_ buy from sweat shops, because the more they profit, the more you're contributing to bettering their lives and working conditions.

Buy all the masks you need!

<comment><USER8> That's cynical and easy to write from a warm chair in a western country.

The problem are the conditions that make sweat-shops the least worst alternative for a lot of people. It's power, money and corruption.

There is no financial gain for western corporations or governments to really solve these problems. We profit from the political and economical instability in these countries and therefore from the suffering these people have to endure. We make ugly deals using the World Bank and the IMF to destabilize their markets. We help to keep corrupt politicians in place and happily exploit natural resources in these countries.

But nobody cares.

<comment><USER9> _The problem are the conditions that make sweat-shops the least worst alternative for a lot of people. It 's power, money and corruption._

If the least worst alternative is taken away from them, then they have only the next least worst alternative. Asking to take this away is asking to take away the best thing they have.

It's easy to write from a warm chair in a western country that people should have better job conditions considering the availability of jobs that allow for consumerism.

<comment><USER8> I should have written that in a more neutral way. What I wanted to say is: Our corporations and our governments can and should be held partially responsible for these conditions. I'm not saying that it's only the fault of "evil corp" in the USA or any other western nation but saying it's their problem and sweat-shops are fine is in my opinion not the whole truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People are too in love with the idea of seeing others get "nailed" for being hypocrites. All you have to do is say something that sounds vaguely clever or ironic in a snarky manner and people go "Ooooh, snap" even if it really makes not much sense. For instance: "Julian Assange of Wikileaks wants to protect his _own_ privacy." "Ooooh, snap."

<comment><USER11> Accusations of hypocrisy are a form of ad hominem, so I agree it's amusing that so many people think they are good arguments.

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

<comment><USER4> I think hypocrisy is a valid argument specifically when someone claims that they should be trusted with political power because they behave in a puritan, unassailable manner, while their opponent is merely human.

When it turns out they're a hypocrite, it strikes at the core of why they were elected.

Moreover, it SHOULD remind people that the guy who claims his morals are unassailable is lying to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Unfortunate" is definitely the word for the fact that these masks that hold such great symbolism to Anonymous (and other groups) are owned by the companies that want to control the internet.

So they've called out the media for using products by Foxconn, okay. What do they expect to come from that? I'm really not sure.

The main thing I got from this is that we should find another mask, or face, for Anonymous and activism/protesting in general. One that maybe holds more significant value in freedom of mankind, and one that is free of copyright. As much as I love Alan Moore, I think it's time Anonymous finds/creates an open- source mask.

<comment><USER13> What is actually "unfortunate" in my opinion is that so many people are using the v/guyfawkes mask without any knowledge of its origin (efg, /b/) and its meaning (a joke)

<comment><USER14> When David Lloyd created the Guy Fawkes mask, /b/ didn't even exist.

[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120918184420/marvel_...](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120918184420/marvel_dc/images/4/4a/V_001.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does Ms Gill know that all those masks are made in the same factory and that all of them pay royalties?

It would have been fair to mention that in the west at least 3d printers are becoming more and more common and anyone can download a Fawkes mask model and 3dprint it at home. [http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/v-for-vendetta-guy-fawkes- mask-481...](http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/v-for-vendetta-guy-fawkes- mask-48144.html)

Or if you're feeling environmentally friendly, out of recycled cardboard. It's no rocket science really. Or how about this one as an origami? [http://www.instructables.com/id/Guy-Fawkes-Mask-in- Origami/](http://www.instructables.com/id/Guy-Fawkes-Mask-in-Origami/)

It took me 5 seconds to find these on Google. Ms Gill comes across as particularly lazy and not very well intentioned.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can we please stop with all this Anonymous BS? The point of the 'movement' is that it's decentralised. 'Anonymous' can't write 'open letters'. This is just pathetic.

<comment><USER17> Well, "Anonymous" didn't write that letter. Some specific activist wrote it, and has posted it under the Anonymous "brand". If the wider movement likes it (and they should because it's well written and spot on target) then they will promote it and adopt it as theirs.

We don't know who wrote the piece. The author is anonymous, but their words will probably reach a far, far wider audience than if they _had_ published under their own name.

That's the way the movement works. It _is_ decentralised. I'm sorry that you think it's pathetic.

<comment><USER18> Yes! Not enough people get this. Anonymous is a name for a loose, evolving affiliation of ideas, it is not a specific group of people. It personifies a set of beliefs, a view of the world, it allows a hive mind to express itself as an individual. It allows the ideas to speak for themselves. In so doing it allows those ideas to evolve more rapidly.

I am not well versed in history, so I can't say if this is novel, but it is a fabulous idea.

It is clear to me that, just as thought can emerge from the movement of charge between networks of neurons so can it emerge from the chatter of a million people. The same processes are at work, you might call it 'emergence' but I suspect that our mathematics does not yet capture it's description adequately.

This is the kind of system we need to develop and enhance if we are to create a better world. Our social structure is prescriptive and too rigidly hierarchical, it has broken away from it's dynamic, organic roots and lost touch with the magic that seems to generate flexible and resilient structure out of nothing.

If you accept the isomorphism between the mind and society, then you may see that the internet is radically disruptive. It has made communication orders of magnitude faster and it has changed the topology of the network described by society. This is changing us, quickly. For better or worse remains to be seen. But I suspect the effects of the internet revolution are only now beginning.

Perhaps I'm just seeing what I want to see...

The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'

(attribution should not be needed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are the Guardian, the Telegraph and the New Statesman notable for their fair and balanced journalism (or are they the fox news of europe)?

<comment><USER20> A famous quote from the satirical political TV comedy _Yes, Minister_ sums up the British press fairly well. Amusingly, one of the characters is named Jim Hacker.

Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

(The Mirror is a leftish tabloid, the Sun a rightist tabloid, both are strident and stupid. The Guardian is a lefty broadsheet, very 'liberal media' by American standards. The Times is center-right, the Daily Mail is middle- class outrage and celebrity gossip (and outrage about our culture of celebrity gossip). The Financial Times is like the WSJ without the axe-grinding editorials; the Morning Star is now defunct but used to be a mouthpiece for the USSR communist party. The Telegraph, sometimes referred to as the Torygraph for its unflinching support of the Tory party, is basically a serious newspaper for people who are convinced the country has gone to the dogs, global warming is nefarious plot, and so on. There's also the Independent, which didn't appear until some years later, which can best be summed up as 'worthy but boring.')

<comment><USER21> Here is a the clip: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M)

<comment><USER22> The really amazing thing about that show is that all the jokes apply to day as much as they did in the 80's when they first aired.

I am not sure if that scary or a good thing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Defending the Press is almost universally unpopular. However, I think there's a important distinction to be made here. Namely that Martha Gill's piece is comment and not news. Hence it's filed under 'blogs'. Opinion is free to be responsible or irresponsible, informed or misinformed, constructive or destructive but, by definition, it cannot be true or false. I don't see anything wrong with someone expressing an honestly held view based on photographs. It seems hundreds of Anonymous supporters have done exactly that beneath the column.

<comment><USER24> "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Just because it's filed under "blogs" does not make it above refutation.

<comment><USER23> I'm not saying it's above refutation, quite the contrary. What I'm saying is the article is opinion--not fact--and it's presented as such.

<comment><USER24> Saying something is an opinion and that thing actually being an opinion are two fairly different things. It's sort of along the lines of saying "no offense, but" and then saying something obviously offensive.

Regardless, Martha's piece is publicized and therefore open to criticism and debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If I would be part of them, I would create a 3D-printer model of the mask and share that all over so people can organise their own distribution...

<comment><USER26> Or you know, papercraft the suckers, its not like there aren't papercraft versions of it. My roommate made me one.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, this gave me a smile

People think "oh let's build a startup for 3d-printing model this on the cloud, blah blah blah"

Where anyone with modest skills can build this using scissors, some cardboard, or Papier-Maché or some other technique.

<comment><USER27> But this kind of mask won't protect your face against rubber balls shot by police - in Brazil, for example. Yeah, neither resine mask will do, but its slightly better.

<comment><USER26> In that case you need a gas mask. And kevlar. But those kind of protest require more organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Daily Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers who also own Shop direct, which transferred its call centers to Serco which outsourced them to India and South Africa because it is cheaper. Profit. You can connect anything to low wages and "poor conditions." The point is completely overhauling the corporate government and finding real freedom, real true freedom. The issue is finding people who are aware that the government and media have failed us in their original watchdog approach. Media employees have been sucked into the same trap, that maybe they can get ahead if they stick to the winning side. They are only winning because we, the people, are too comfortable with settling instead of opening our eyes to the truth. You cannot trust the media; it is ran by corporations that influence what we can see and what we can know. It influences what we think. The world must wake up, or we will all be hypnotized by the newest marketing ploy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great Work my brothers and sisters at Yan It is indeed an outrage how they spread liez about us to get the world against us. we will cont To expose justice and light on there corrupt world and Make action many more times Our fight is far from over they cant ignore us forever seeing many more have came to join us after Nov 5 and will cont to do so with each passing day --- @AnonHeadLines

</comment><comment><USER30> What if Anon was a 'covert' branch of the NSA? Or Wikileaks a CIA sub- contractor? Wouldn't that be an awesome twist on an already convoluted saga?

I just like imagining such possibilities, of course this is probably not the case, but the implications ... I guess I have been watching too many Homeland episodes lately. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> The masks represent: Unity Equality Struggle against oppression

That is all. Fuck warner brothers

Guy Fawkes was the only person to enter the houses of parliament with honourable intentions

<comment><USER32> There is little honourable about Fawkes intentions, however the actual quote is "the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions."

Which makes a lot more sense. He said he was going to blow things up, he went in to blow things up.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Naww their feels got hurt.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn about the design/architecture of backend systems ? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in learning the backend systems of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Loopt or any other startups. I'm mainly interested in design/architecture and scaling. <comment><USER2> For web applications, understanding the concept of state and managing it takes you a long way towards building a scalable system (on a related note, any time spent really understanding HTTP is time well spent). It's very useful to read books, presentations and war stories, but for me, reading code in applications designed for scale was far more important. I strongly recommend the Amazon Dynamo paper. Read and think about the design decisions they made. Then go read the Cassandra code for the actual implementation (pretty much, in terms of the big ideas, at least as it was back in 2008).

As with any learning it's very hard to truly grok the importance of loose coupling, service oriented architecture, embedding statelessness in the architecture etc., unless you try to build something, get it wrong and then fix it. So, the very best way to learn would be to put yourself in a place where you get an opportunity to do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> My answer comes from the perspective of a recent grad who has spent a year at a mid-sized SF social gaming company, working only recently on the back-end (i.e., not a scaling expert).

A few things I've learned w/respect to scaling in my context:

\- I/O is likely to be your bottleneck, so design your db well and anticipate splitting it across multiple machines (and what that means for your access logic)

\- don't spawn a new thread for every request (a la apache)

\- keep your services simple (perhaps: one for handling web requests, one for data access, one for caching, one for your payment system) and their relationships even simpler (one hop max from RPC caller to callee)

\- cache like a hoarder

\- find/write an efficient serializer for RPCs between services

What helped me get a grip on this stuff was sitting down with an architect who has done it successfully multiple times. I asked for an elevator pitch description of scaled web architectures, and then ask him about his failures. Voila bullet points.

<comment><USER4> Apache does not spawn a new thread for every request.

<comment><USER5> Every _request_ does not require a thread to be spawned (depends on configuration/load), but every _connection_ would require its own thread.

"The worker MPM uses multiple child processes with many threads each. _Each thread handles one connection_ at a time. Worker generally is a good choice for high-traffic servers because it has a smaller memory footprint than the prefork MPM.

The prefork MPM _uses multiple child processes with one thread each. Each process handles one connection at a time._ On many systems, prefork is comparable in speed to worker, but it uses more memory. Prefork's threadless design has advantages over worker in some situations: it can be used with non- thread-safe third-party modules, and it is easier to debug on platforms with poor thread debugging support."

<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/perf-tuning.html>

<comment><USER3> thanks for the explanation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> here an article about various techniques to make github (a rails app) fast:

<http://github.com/blog/530-how-we-made-github-fast>

very interesting but also full of intimidating stuff:

"[...] For requests to the main website, the load balancer ships your request off to one of the four frontend machines. Each of these is an 8 core, 16GB RAM bare metal server. Their names are fe1, …, fe4. Nginx accepts the connection and sends it to a Unix domain socket upon which sixteen Unicorn worker processes are selecting. One of these workers grabs the request and runs the Rails code necessary to fulfill it. [...]"

I think they know what they are doing ...

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm still not the world's foremost expert, but what I do know I've learned through a combination of trial and error, reading books (I'll edit this later and put in a couple of specific titles), reading stuff on the 'Net and classes I took in school (I did a degree in "High Performance Computing" which had some useful aspects to it).

A good place to start, if you're not already familiar with it, is High Scalability: <http://highscalability.com/>

Edit: book recommendations:

Scalable Internet Architectures -

[http://www.amazon.com/Scalable-Internet-Architectures- Theo-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Scalable-Internet-Architectures-Theo- Schlossnagle/dp/067232699X)

Linux Clustering - Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters - [http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Clustering-Building- Maintaining-...](http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Clustering-Building-Maintaining- Clusters/dp/1578702747/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279001787&sr=1-1)

High Performance Linux Clusters - [http://www.amazon.com/Performance-Clusters- OpenMosix-Nutshel...](http://www.amazon.com/Performance-Clusters-OpenMosix- Nutshell- Handbooks/dp/0596005709/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279001787&sr=1-2)

Linux Enterprise Cluster - [http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Enterprise-Cluster- Available-Com...](http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Enterprise-Cluster-Available- Commodity/dp/1593270364/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279001787&sr=1-3)

Java Message Service - [http://www.amazon.com/Java-Message-Service-Mark- Richards/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Java-Message-Service-Mark- Richards/dp/0596522045/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279001930&sr=1-1)

Java Message Service API Tutorial and Reference - [http://www.amazon.com/Java- Message-Service-Tutorial-Referenc...](http://www.amazon.com/Java-Message- Service-Tutorial- Reference/dp/0201784726/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279001995&sr=1-4)

Enterprise JMS Programming - [http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-JMS- Programming-Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-JMS-Programming- Professional-Mindware/dp/0764548972/ref=pd_cp_b_2)

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide - [http://www.amazon.com/Hadoop-Definitive-Guide- Tom-White/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Hadoop-Definitive-Guide-Tom- White/dp/0596521979/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279002071&sr=1-1)

Pro Hadoop - [http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Hadoop-Jason- Venner/dp/1430219424/...](http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Hadoop-Jason- Venner/dp/1430219424/ref=pd_sim_b_2)

Wikipedia:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_nothing_architecture>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_%28database_architecture%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_%28database_architecture%29)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish/subscribe>

It's important to understand the difference between vertical scaling and horizontal scaling. Horizontal is very en vogue these days, especially with commodity hardware. Why? Because you can add power incrementally without spending tons of money upfront, and without requiring a "forklift upgrade" (that is a reference to needing a forklift to bring in a new mainframe or minicomputer). This is a pretty good article on the topic:

[http://www.scalingout.com/2007/10/vertical-scaling-vs- horizo...](http://www.scalingout.com/2007/10/vertical-scaling-vs-horizontal- scaling.html)

As popular as horizontal scaling is, don't ignore the possibilities of going to bigger hardware though. It has it's own advantages, especially when you start talking about physical floor space to store servers.

Of course "cloud computing" changes some of this, both by making it cheap and easy to add VPS's to scale horizontally, or by making it possible (sometimes) to easily add more processing power, RAM, etc. to your "server." Read up on Xen, KVM, EC2, etc. for more on that whole deal.

<comment><USER7> Forgot to include it originally, but it would probably be good to study Map/Reduce as well:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce>

<http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html>

Caching is huge too... IO is expensive, RAM access is cheap. The more you can pre-load, pre-calculate, and/or pre-sort stuff and store it in memory, the better (in terms of avoiding expensive IO anyway). Caching has it's own issues though: if you cache so aggressively that you exhaust physical ram and cause more swapping, you can actually hurt yourself. Also, you have to deal with the possibility of stale data in the cache, and determining when and how to expire and reload items in the cache. But still, caching is essential, it's just not necessarily _easy_.

Also, for perspective if nothing else, read the papers and stuff on SEDA (Staged Event Driven Architecture). There's still debate about how effective the SEDA approach is, but reading the discussion(s) will help you appreciate the issues involved. <http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/proj/seda/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found Cal Henderson's book "Building Scalable Websites" (which describes pretty much everything he learnt while scaling Flickr) incredibly useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go work at Google. Even if you have to pay for it.</comment>


Rodeo – A data-centric IDE for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yhat/rodeo

<comment><USER2> This looks great, but they really should give some credit to R-studio. R-studio clearly inspired them more than SublimeText and Eclipse.

\- "It's heavily inspired by great projects like Sublime Text and Eclipse."

<comment><USER3> This IDE looks practically identical (even using the same tab names!) to RStudio.

It seems a bit disingenuous of op to not mention such a glaring copy. Not that it is an issue, the creator of RStudio seems pretty chill ... but still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rodeo, like RStudio is built on the ACE editor. This is why they look the same, not because it is a "copy" of RStudio. Plus they fulfill the same function; so they are bound to look very similar.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm excited about this as an alternative to the IPython notebook, but with more of an IDE feel. This means the notebook can focus on what it's good at without adding more IDE-like features.

<comment><USER6> IPython notebook looks great for what it does, ideal for scientists who need one off scripts and be able to show their working, but that and the rise in online IDE's seem like a step backwards for a serious developer. They are great for getting started, but are seriously lacking in other areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks really interesting (not to mention aesthetically appealing)!

In what situation would Rodeo be more appropriate than, say Spyder [0] or other native applications, and how do they differ in terms of functionality?

[0]: [https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder](https://github.com/spyder- ide/spyder)

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks exactly like R Studio... but browser-based.

<comment><USER9> I would have said spyder, since that's the de facto Python IDE for data science.

But aren't both really just matlab?

<comment><USER10> Matlab and ipython notebook are totally different things

<comment><USER9> Nobody mentioned notebook in this thread. Maybe you clicked reply the wrong place? Spyder is the Python IDE that takes after matlab, not ipython notebook.

<comment><USER11> Nobody said it in this thread, but it _was_ stated in the article:

> You can think of it as an alternative UI to the notebook for the IPython > Kernel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Getting a connection refused when I run it locally...</comment>


GitHub Audio (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://github.audio/ <comment><USER2> Very similar Brian Eno's Bloom app in both design and sound. Except the GitHub data backend.

Some of my most productive work was done while listening to that app (and a lot of Brian Eno's ambient output).

There's an interview where he talks about how Bloom will never repeat in our lifetimes (or Reflections, one of the two). He wanted to achieve that with music for airports 1, but was limited by available technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> how do trademarks work for this kind of thing. It's cool and I enjoyed it but I did at first think it was an official GitHub project and my rudimentary understanding of trademark law is that it's meant to prevent just that.

<comment><USER4> If I remember correctly from previous posts about the use of 'Git', this also violates the Git trademark.

Edit: Okay, I decided to not be lazy and provide more information.

Official Git trademark policy: [https://git- scm.com/about/trademark](https://git-scm.com/about/trademark)

Also, if the OP / creator wants to, they can ask for wriiten permission to use the name. Although, I've read instances of them simply saying no.

<comment><USER5> The relevant bit:

> In addition, you may not use any of the Marks as a syllable in a new word or > as part of a portmanteau (e.g., "Gitalicious", "Gitpedia") used as a mark > for a third-party product or service without Conservancy's written > permission.

<comment><USER6> This is fascinating. Has GitHub received permission, or is their trademark in jeopardy? And, what about Gitlab, Gitea, and all?

The growth of git as a distributed service has suffered greatly at the hands of GitHub.. makes me wonder if the Git Conservancy would be inclined to push back.

<comment><USER7> Github was trademarked before git. The git trademark was only granted with a documented understanding they wouldn't conflict. Projects existing at that time got exceptions, and new ones are still sometimes granted.

EDIT: some more details: [https://public- inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...](https://public- firstname.lastname@example.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Naively optimistic part of me thought this was going to be some grand accessibility endeavour for sight impaired people, but this is cool too.

</comment><comment><USER9> How does this website bypass blocked audio playback on Firefox? It doesn't even require click on webpage.

<comment><USER10> Interestingly, I can't find a way for it to play audio whatsoever on Firefox for iOS.

<comment><USER11> On iOS Safari it started playing after I clicked on the page itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A bit disappointing, I thought it's going to be a GitHub for audio

</comment><comment><USER13> For those wanting to try this, I'll note that it didn't play any audio in Safari so I had to switch to Chrome to experience it.

<comment><USER14> works in Firefox for me too, but not safari.

<comment><USER15> It works in Firefox for me for about 10 seconds, then stops producing audio unless I refresh. Running 79.0b3.

<comment><USER14> 78.01 on Mac for me. ran fine for several minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was really so much cooler than expected! Might actually use it to replace brain.fm when working.

I'd love to see this applied as a general streaming API ingestor, or even used for live tailing log files and playing sounds that match particular events.

(This is where people will comment below with all sorts of examples I haven't heard of, one of the reasons I love HN)

</comment><comment><USER17> I love sites like these. I use to listen to [https://www.bitlisten.com/](https://www.bitlisten.com/)

Bit Listen was a bit distracting though, because it has some really oversized transactions.

</comment><comment><USER18> Lichess uses this same type of nice, pentatonic audio to notify when pieces move

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow like the author says, it is nice to leave open in the background :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635247)

</comment><comment><USER21> Any information on why are these sounds so pleasant? These are not random frequencies/durations for sure.

<comment> phoe-krk These sounds are likely chosen at random from a predefined list of sounds along a given musical scale; possibly the background drones also have a say in the matter.

You can read the source at [https://github.audio/static/public/js/main.js](https://github.audio/static/public/js/main.js) and possibly infer some information from it/

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> R.I.P. laptop speakers.

Make sure you guys turn the volume down before clicking on anything.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh my gosh I so much want this for our own internal GitLab instance!!!!

</comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't seem to load in iOS Safari.

<comment><USER25> Loads for me on iPhone. Click into the page to enable audio. (Autoplay is not allowed without interaction with a site in most browsers.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> doesn't work in Safari

</comment><comment><USER27> I thought the volume slider was an Apple Watch for a minute.</comment>


The Flaw in the System: The Bankers Don't Care About the Banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/2/115827/7121/136/703638 <comment><USER2> This is actually only recently true, when investment banks became PLCs. Back in the days of partnerships, everyone was highly incentivized to put the institution first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, somebody needed to point out this (the obvious).

It might be the perfect time for bank startups: with "the new guy" bank image. Whoever lost money starting a bank?</comment>


Google Reader is dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/reader/about/#overview-page <comment><USER3> Google Reader kept the content of RSS feeds cached forever, meaning it was the last surviving record of a huge number of dead and deleted blogs. The Archive Team have spent the last month or so fetching those blogs out of Reader to serve as a permanent archive. They posted a few days ago on HN asking for some last minute help, and managed to archive 46.23M feeds.

Check out their efforts here: [http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google_Reader](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google_Reader)

<comment><USER4> My former startup Twingly [http://twingly.com](http://twingly.com) has hundreds of millions of blog posts stored (everything collected since 2006) in 128 MySql shards with a unified query interface. The last few months of data are indexed and searchable for free from their website, but the entire archive is kept forever.

<comment><USER5> Would you donate your data to the Internet Archive?

<comment><USER6> Or Common Crawl so other people could actually download and use it?

<comment><USER5> I didn't realise you couldn't download and use the data from Internet Archive. If not, that's pretty silly to back up the feeds to them, and I'm a bit annoyed to have contributed. I'd like to make them available to everyone to download, analyse, plug into their reader etc etc etc...

<comment><USER7> You can from the Internet Archive. The GGP is talking about Twingly, and the discussion is about integrating their data with the Archive Team.

<comment><USER6> For anything substantial (like say, their actual crawl), they'll only do it on a case by case basis with a rather restrictive license and you have to drive up there and plop down the machines to copy it onto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "... we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience."

Yeah, Reader held back the development of the robot car, glasses, floating balloon internet and the brazilian social site...

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere.

Honestly I think Google went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice as well as linking to alternative products.

Sure it sucks for those who used it, but can you imagine a company like Apple or Facebook doing all that for a product they're killing?

<comment><USER10> Understanding the position you are explaining doesn't make the shutdown of Google reader any less regrettable or irritating.

It's my impression that it's a little bit cliché and borderline to trolling: every time a "free" product is shutdown and people complain or discuss about it there is a good free-market capitalist soul coming with condescending comments about how people shouldn't expect anything when given something for "free".

We know it. It's still pissing users off. Deal with it.

<comment><USER9> I don't think my position is any closer to trolling than the also cliche comments of 'Google have so much money, running reader must be next-to-nothing for them', 'if Google gave me the option, I'd gladly pay for it', 'yeah sure, the (maybe) one full time staff required to look after Reader is really taking energy away from other projects' which is basically all of the comments on these threads.

That was what my post was meant to refute, and the weird sense of entitlement that Google is somehow in the wrong by killing a product which is a waste of resources for them. There are plenty of alternatives (and I suspect we'll see a whole bunch more over the coming months), complaining like we deserve reader to still be available (when consumer-pays products are clearly outside Google's business model) isn't helping.

<comment><USER11> The "weird sense" comes directly from Google's pitches, which amount to "use our free service: Trust all your data to it! Nothing will go wrong, we're here forever!".

Which is a pitch they continue to make, with Drive and Hangouts and each successive launch, but never once cautioning "btw if this doesn't work out for us we'll kill the service". They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid?

They can't have their cake and eat it. They can position themselves as the trustworthy guardians for whom organising the world's information is the only goal, or they can position themselves as the ruthless capitalists where business is the ultimate goal, but they can't do both.

That's what people object to. You can say that they're naive for believing that a business won't put the bottom line first, but Google has always pretended otherwise, right from the first line of the IPO. "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."

Fine, but then "any conventional company would do this" is not a good enough defence for your actions.

<comment><USER12> >They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid?

This gets repeated a lot (understandable given its launches proximity to the Reader shutdown notice) but its inaccurate. Keep doesn't address the same use case as Evernote/Notebook at all and isn't trying to. Its more of a Notepad/Apple Notes competitor if anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> BREAKING: In a surprise belated April Fool's joke, Google revives Reader, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt, "just to fuck with everyone who spent money developing a shitty alternative."

<comment><USER14> V2: Google Reader reads you.

<comment><USER15> Ha. Very smooth. Upvote for you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

<comment><USER17> As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down at the last minute.

Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.

<comment><USER18> For me at least, having Reader shut down made me realize that depending on products delivered for free is ultimately unsustainable - I have no control over those services and if I can't figure out how that company is making money from me, there's little justification for that provider to continue providing that service, unmodified, for perpetuity. Self-hosted services are the only ones that you can truly rely on.

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that has come to this conclusion.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, the fact that you're paying for a product isn't a particularly better signal that it's sustainable, unless you individually can cover the costs of running that product. I've had for-pay services I used discontinued because they weren't profitable or because they were bought by another company and deprecated (Slicehost) even though they were profitable.

It seems like a better strategy is to assume that no service or company is forever, and demand reasonable ways to export your data or setup in the event they shut down (and time to do that export before they turn off.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For me, this was a good move.

It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video hosting etc). Google's wants to know as much about me as possible. Putting all of my eggs in their basket seems like horrible idea. I've now come quite far in my exodus. Yesterday I found [https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) (uses Google) which gives good results (roughly same as Swedish Google but not filter bubbled). DDG (uses different sources, but seems to weight Bing) is downright terrible when not using English as search language.

<comment><USER21> > Google's wants to know as much about me as possible.

Which is the reason they shut it down most probably. They can data mine your documents, emails, social networking etc but something like google reader doesn't help much. They most they'll get out of it is a few rss feeds and can analyze what you like, but hell they already know what you search for so it's useless data.

<comment><USER22> I have the opposite view - when I use Reader the folks at Google know how often I click on certain topics, and how long I spend reading each topic. My gut tells me that such information would be quite useful to their search product, even if they have already know my search history. And for some users Google will _not_ know their search history and social information.

A similar logic applies to Google Checkout (aka Google Wallet). I would have thought that knowing my purchase history would be very useful to the search algorithm.

So I really don't understand Google's approach. Their search algorithm is their prime asset, but they seem willing to degrade it bit by bit.

<comment><USER23> I think that the number of people who use Google Reader is tiny in comparison to the number of people who use gmail, which itself is probably fairly small compared to the number of people who use the search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google lost _a lot_ of trust and goodwill from a lot of its power users with this move. I hope for them they had a good reason.

<comment><USER25> Why do they need the trust and goodwill of a lot of power users?

<comment><USER26> read Crossing The Chasm. You don't get the late adopters unless you get the early adopters first. Google may think they've got to a point where they can just cram stuff down people's throats, but if so, it's the beginning of the end for them, like it was for Microsoft.

<comment><USER27> I am curious on what basis you say that Microsoft thinking that it could cram stuff down people's throats was the beginning of the end.

It seems to me that Microsoft behaved that way for over a decade. It resulted in some pissed off geeks, and no real problems until the Europeans fined Microsoft enough to scare the company. (A fear they never recovered from.)

<comment><USER26> I don't know that there's any one authoritative answer, but they fended off the initial Internet threat by cramming IE down everyone's throat. They did that in a number of cases, were fast followers and put people out of business by integrating/bundling. I think the attitude was they could do it again if they had to, thought they could do the same in phones and tablets, didn't listen to their customers, didn't update IE and XP for years.

Partly Microsoft got lazy and didn't execute the products customers wanted, maybe the senior people were wrong generation to realize they had the wrong products and Google and Apple were leapfrogging them, maybe all the legacy cruft in their ecosystem slowed them down, maybe the world changed so they didn't have the same market power. I don't know that fines ever really scared them into changing behavior. They flushed more money down the drain in online services than anyone ever threatened to fine them.

Even more than most, Google's business depends on trust. Once people feel they're going to get screwed over after investing time and trusting Google with their information and data exhaust, they'll go to DuckDuckGo, Apple, Facebook (ha), whatever. Google has nothing like the moat Microsoft had. On the Internet, the switch to the competition is a click away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Organizing the World's Information... and setting it on fire 8 years later.

</comment><comment><USER29> It'll be less important now than it was 3-6 years ago, but get ready for all those FeedBurner subscriber count widgets to show huge subscriber # crashes as Reader no longer checks in.

Back in the day, they were a sort of informal auditing system and definitely helped me land advertisers for my blog (simply because I could "prove" I had 20,000 readers or whatever).

Thankfully I ditched the Web and moved to e-mail and know exactly how many subscribers I had, but this was certainly more luck and not any great piece of foresight on my part ;-)

<comment><USER23> This is going to sound antagonistic, but I'm genuinely curious: How many subscribers did you lose when you switched from RSS to email, and how do you know that all of them are receiving and reading your dispatches?

Personally, getting an e-mail instead of an RSS feed is sub-optimal - I can't easily add things to pocket from e-mail. I'm also wondering how many people trained their clients to re-route to spam.

<comment><USER29> I didn't do a like for like switch from the Web to e-mail, it was more specific for the format, so I can't make a direct comparison sadly. Because e-mail proved way more successful for me, I've basically let the Web properties die but that was not the original intent.

With e-mail, the engagement and revenue are way higher, and it's possible to get an accurate feel for how big the audience is (as in, I know I have 123k subscribers or whatever) _and_ how many of those are engaged, reading, and clicking on stuff.

I was very skeptical at the start and just tried it out because of all the e-mail newsletter hoopla on HN 3-4 years ago but it's now my main business and growing more rapidly than my Web publications ever did.

There are, of course, many who are not fans of e-mail but like Facebook oriented businesses can make good money even though not everyone likes Facebook.. so too can e-mail companies do very well off the majority who are still using e-mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use The Old Reade, which I can use exactly like Google Reader, with the exception that k does not always skip to the next article; if you're reading an article it skips to the top of that. Same strange behavior as Google Reader is that while the number of unread posts is correct, the content of your feed is not up-to-date, so you first have to click on the result number, then it is updated.

Apart from that, it's really nice. I never used any social features of the Reader, just the aggregation. That's why I couldn't care less if they implement RSS support or a recommendation engine in G+.

<comment><USER31> We'll see how it takes off when more users will come. It works fine feature- wise for me, it's just noticeably slower than Google Reader was... they probably don't have a large enough infrastructure yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wish there was a decent alternative out there. They all seem to be a bit unpolished.

The most polished alternative I've seen is Feedly. I wrote to the founder about this many moons ago explaining that in trying to be 'innovative' with the UI, for me the whole user experience detracts so badly from the functionality I want from the app that I don't want to use it.

Where is the alternative, with the polish, without the 'innovation'. Perhaps I should build one...

I'll get my coat.

<comment><USER33> There are a few I have come to like:

These ones are all simple and much like google reader. Digg, BazQux and The Old reader all have pocket and/or similar services integrated and are all nice. I have decided that I will be using BazQux for my reader needs, it is fastest and seems to be nicely designed and is robust. It will also not be going away because it is currently profitable.

The Old Reader [http://theoldreader.com/](http://theoldreader.com/)

Digg Reader(yes that digg) [https://digg.com/reader](https://digg.com/reader)

and BazQux reader [https://bazqux.com/](https://bazqux.com/)

Comma feed [http://theoldreader.com/](http://theoldreader.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> RIP Reader. For those looking for a replacement, especially those with an Android phone, check out Newsblur. It's all open source, the developer is accessible, and most importantly it works insanely well. I honestly like it better than Reader.

<comment><USER35> I'm trying it, but it has a few things that bug me.

They messed with the arrow keys - they no longer scroll the page. I'm always accidentally going to the next or previous article. ARGH!

I miss the smart sorting order that Reader had - it was really good about bubbling stuff I cared about up to the top and letting me whip through the rest.

<comment><USER36> The developer has listened to the feedback on scrolling and added configuration options so you can now use the arrow keys. Bugged me as well, but I'm happy with the new options.

<comment><USER23> I dislike those options. I do not want to set a percentage to scroll by; I want to use whatever my browser would normally scroll by natively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've been using Google Alerts via RSS for years now, primarily consuming the alerts by way of Reader, but more recently Feedly.

One thing I didn't expect was to have Alerts drop RSS support coinciding with Reader's death. However, today in Feedly I'm staring at a wall of "Google Alerts no longer supports RSS delivery" items.

This suggests to me that RSS was an output for Google products insofar as it served as a way of feeding content (and eyeballs) into Reader. Now that Reader is gone, why would Google output RSS?

Anyone seeing any other Google RSS feeds failing in a similar fashion?

</comment><comment><USER38> I have no gmail account, no Youtube account, and no Google Reader...Google's always been a little too big for me to want to trust more than I have to, so I've gotten by without accounts on their services...

And that means I get to feel smugly superior to everyone else in this discussion.

<comment><USER39> You can, at least about Gmail. Especially since there is no way to export your Gmail data using Google Takeout.

<comment><USER40> Or use something like Thunderbird to copy over your email to a new provider using IMAP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nobody mentioned tinytinyrss - I found it to be the best rss reader as a google reader alternative.

Its open source and also has an android app that rocks.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sad, sad. I love seeing all the stealth replacements pop up in the last week or so.

Still, it is a sad day for RSS in general.

Google, this will not help me use G+.

Sad.

<comment><USER43> If they'd integrated it into G+ I would have been less hesitant to use it.

<comment><USER42> They arguably did do a half-ass integration with G+, removing other sharing options and removing the nascent social network that lived inside Reader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I liked Google Reader, but all those great posts queued up with no time to read them properly felt like neglected homework. It's a shame to lose it, but maybe for the best. I won't be rushing to recreate it.

Links posted on Hacker News and Twitter allow me to find something interesting to read when I need it, without making any kind of commitment. For the very rare thing that I don't want to miss, I subscribe by email.

</comment><comment><USER45> RIP By the way, I quite like the Digg Reader but it doesn't display the unread count regardless of the settings. Is it only me?

<comment><USER46> I don't see any unread counts either, despite turning them on in settings (the FAQ mentions that there's such a setting, although it implies it's turned on by default, whereas it was turned off for me...).

In fact, I also don't get any icons—or text, they're just blank space—for buttons... to even open the settings dialog I had to click randomly in likely- looking blank spaces on the main page. ><

I get the feeling they really rushed this out, and maybe didn't do a whole lot of testing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've found a decent experience using Feedly in Chrome for the desktop and GReader for Android using the Feedly API. Still not as good as EasyRSS, but it will suffice until the dust settles.

In other news: EasyRSS has been open sourced: [https://github.com/davidsun/EasyRSS](https://github.com/davidsun/EasyRSS)

</comment><comment><USER48> If you're looking for a new reader to try, check out www.readuction.com .

It's a different take on RSS, that intelligently gives you fewer articles to read. A friend and I built it over a few months, and we'd love any feedback you have.

You can import and export your feeds, so no need to worry about having data locked in.

<comment><USER49> Looks good. But how do you resync?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

</comment><comment><USER51> On the topic of Google Reader alternatives: most of the popular alternatives involve a central online storage. I may be unique, but I'd be quite happy for an iOS app that allows me to import my OPML file of feeds and sync it locally.

Given those constraints, could anyone suggest an app that would fit the bill? I've been looking, and the only app I could find that fit the criteria so far is RSSRunner by golden-apps.com -- which I'm not quite happy with.

<comment><USER52> Sounds like Vienna would interest you... Not sure you could import your feeds directly, but it is not hard to set them up...

<comment><USER51> unless I missed something, Vienna looks like a Mac OS X app… I was looking for an iPhone/iPad app

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If you still haven't found a replacement, here's our list of alternatives that was on the front page of HN on Friday: [https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader](https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader)

It now includes the additions mentioned in the comments and the countries where the service is hosted for those that are concerned by Prism.

</comment><comment><USER54> In future, G+ also dead like this.......

RIP for GReader.....

<comment><USER55> My hopes are on Google Groups, which is just absymal. Hopefully it's next ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> If you've left finding a replacement to now, please take a second to check out kouio:

[https://kouio.com](https://kouio.com)

We posted it to HN a few days ago, and since then have had over 600 signups and processed over 1.5 million feed items!

We've made a ton of tiny improvements since then, with many more to come.

<comment><USER57> I tried it when you posted it, but I gave up on it when it took 15 seconds to load any content after logging in :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I didn't want to accept this would happen. So it's kinda hard to believe it actually did.

Oh well, more free time.

<comment><USER59> I've not enjoyed using any of the new readers so far, so will be spending my "free" time going though my Pocket and Kindle backlogs (The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches is insiprational).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious question: Why no one offered to buy or take over the service? Like Google Wave - Apache Wave

<comment><USER60> From what I understand, Google Reader was fairly tied into Google's infrastructure (e.g. piggybacking off of Google's web crawler for feed updates), so there wouldn't be much left if you separated Google Reader from Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Even though Google Reader is dead you can still migrate to alternative services, like Feedreader Online: [http://feedreader.com/online/](http://feedreader.com/online/) Just use OPML files to import your feeds and categories.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm curious; given that HN represents a community that could very well be construed as the "power user" archetype, how much would people here have paid for Reader as a service? $5/month? $100/year? Free with a Google Drive subscription?

<comment><USER23> For Google Reader specifically, probably $0.00 - it would feel too much like a hostage negotiation at this point.

I am, however, paying $24/year for NewsBlur right now, so I guess $2/month is my starting bid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Just cant figure it out why?? Anyways , using Feedly on web and android. Looks ok!!

</comment><comment><USER64> It is their right to choose to discontinue a product, I would have appreciated them more anyway if they would have chosen to give back to the community and put in the limited amount of work needed to opensource it though.

Goodbye Reader.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is hardly news now is it?

</comment><comment><USER66> Quick poll:

Where do you stand on this?

-> Focus (1...10) Keeping the product

I´m a bit conflicted.. on one hand they lost user confidence by discontinuing Reader, on the other I completely get the approach to focus on a few things and really do them well.

</comment><comment><USER67> This sucks. Hitting RE in Alfred has become muscle memory by now.

I've switched to Feedly and it's pretty decent. Something feels a little off, but it does most of what I want.

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER68> Gmail's days may be numbered -- you never know..

<comment><USER69> Perhaps, but I doubt it - it's a freaking goldmine of data. RSS feeds - <USER2> Google know a little bit about you, but not in the way that your personal searches and your personal communications do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Should be a fun next couple of weeks as all the Reader replacements get a big spike in traffic and deal with inevitable scaling problems.

</comment><comment><USER71> Who actually paid money directly to Google for this service? If your answer is 'not me', then I find it tough to complain.

</comment><comment><USER72> So what! My native RSS reader is still working.

</comment><comment><USER73> Its for the better. First step towards a 'news push'[ex. Google currents] rather than a 'news pull'

</comment><comment><USER74> All data deleted is a dick move. Google should at least be able to preserve takeout data for eternity.

</comment><comment><USER75> The Android application still seems to be working, but they'll probably kill it soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER76> 3rd party apps are still working, I wonder how long until they are cut off?

<comment><USER77> Reeder has been cut off (or at least for me). It just had in update that adds feedly and feed wrangler.

<comment><USER76> Yep, it's gone now. The reeder update was just in the nick of time. I wonder if someone at google was waiting for it to update ;-)

<comment><USER78> Note that Reeder (on iOS) had Feedbin and Feedburner support prior to this update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Good-night, sweet prince.

</comment><comment><USER80> Ultimate dick move for them to link to Google Reader alternatives.

<comment><USER81> Really, or are you being sarcastic? That seems pretty classy to me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Now if only Feedly will allow me some way to pay them...

<comment><USER20> There's NewsBlur for that... :)

<comment><USER83> Feedbin have been using the money I and others have been paying to enhance their service. [http://blog.feedbin.me/](http://blog.feedbin.me/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Happens all the time… You are the product not the customer… Thats why we built Pixter - [http://pixter.in](http://pixter.in)

</comment><comment><USER85> Bastards, they killed reader :)

</comment><comment><USER86> RIP

</comment><comment><USER87> no news.

has been chewed over and over. here and everywhere.

yet, get the top position at HN.

What does this means?

<comment><USER88> The stages of grief each take time, and the amount of time varies from person to person. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler- Ross_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> A Sad Day. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER90> Long live to Google Reader! I hope, it will allow some startup to come up with great products, but please ,think users first , not showing off your html5 skills or whatever... RSS is about reading text content and suscribing to feeds , not bells and whistles or closed social networking plateforms.

</comment><comment><USER91> Good Lord people. Get on with your lives!

</comment><comment><USER92> Last time I ever trust that company with a service I rely on.

and before you ask no I have never used GMail

<comment><USER93> Because they closed a service? I think you'll be hard pressed to find _anyone_ \- company, non-profit, whoever - who will maintain a service indefinitely.

If you want to keep something running for as long as possible, you need to eliminate single points of failure like those (except yourself, of course). That means building a stack where each part is either ran by you or a replaceable commodity.

For example, I run my email, RSS and website on a generic VPS (of which there are many providers) which runs an open source stack that I know how to configure and maintain.

I still rely on other people, but not on a single person or company.

<comment><USER94> I feel exactly the same way - wherever possible I run my own services on my own servers, so I know where my data's going, and I'm not at the mercy of someone else changing or removing a feature I like, or shutting it down completely. If I fall out with the hosting company, I can just get another server elsewhere.

I only switched to self hosted for RSS recently though - when google announced they were shutting reader, I figured I'd write my own for an existing django site. Quick shameless plug: I released it on Sunday, in case anyone's interested - [https://github.com/radiac/django- yarr](https://github.com/radiac/django-yarr)

Which brings me on to my main exception for self-hosting: public repositories on github. The collaborative features they provide seem worth the loss of control - although their recent UI enhancements (making it harder to check issue counts, find repo addresses etc) does rather prove my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> So it goes.

</comment><comment><USER96> i can not belive..google reader is dead..

</comment><comment><USER97> .

</comment><comment><USER98> We hardly knew ye.</comment>


Turns out, Klout does work - <AUTHOR> http://simplereach.com/blog/klout-scores-retweets-pageviews/

<comment><USER2> This looks like an analysis going the wrong way. Klout probably uses retweet counts as a signal in their score so it's not surprising to see Klout score being positively correlated with retweet counts at all. It does show that "Klout does work" but in a very simplistic way.

<comment><USER3> Causality: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality>

Klout scores are assuredly based on how many retweets you get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a Klout score of zero and I'm proud of it. :)

Seriously, I opted out. I haven't seen a single redeeming thing from Klout. Turning social media into a game to be won or lost is the express route to removing all utility from social media. It may already be too late.</comment>


Contributors for open source projects - <AUTHOR> Would you be interested in learning or coding for some of the open source applications we are trying to build. Scala/Python/Java skills in extending some of the applications or writing some machine learning libraries. <comment><USER2> I'd recommend you tell people more about what you're doing, who you are, and existing code/site.

If it's open-source, no need for stealth mode, and you're much likelier to attract people that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Im interested</comment>


HardCaml: Register Transfer Level Hardware Design in OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://ujamjar.github.io/hardcaml/ <comment><USER2> I've coincidentally just ordered an Altera SoCKit to play with this more over the summer. There's a nice tutorial on getting started with HardCaml and the SoCKit at [https://ocaml.io/w/HardCaml](https://ocaml.io/w/HardCaml)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the motivation for this? I've seen a few HDLs recently similar to this[1][2].

I'd love to know why someone would develop one of these HDLs rather than work with one of the "mainstream" HDLs (i.e. system verilog, VHDL, System C)?

[1] - [http://www.clash-lang.org](http://www.clash-lang.org)

[2] - [https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/](https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/)

<comment><USER4> If you have ever worked with a mainstream HDL you know how frustrating they can be.

<comment><USER3> care to give an example?

I've worked plenty with HDLs (mainly system verilog) from large ASIC projects to smaller FPGA prototyping projects. I could guess at a couple ways these new HDLs could possibly address some of the pain points, but it's not clear that's even their purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HDL newbie here -- how does this compare to Chisel (Scala -> Verilog)?

<comment><USER6> Here are some module design equivalents: [http://www.ujamjar.com/hardcaml/chisel.html](http://www.ujamjar.com/hardcaml/chisel.html)

As far as performance of what it synthesises down to, I have no idea as I have used neither.

Are you complete newbie to HDL?

<comment><USER5> Not total newbie, I've played with System Verilog and Chisel. Done some fiddling in simulators. But never synthesized to FPGA, though I have a board here I'll find the time to play with someday. I'm a software guy dabbling in hardware.</comment></comment></comment>


Car2Go Reduces Car Ownership, Transportation Research Center Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/07/car2go-car-ownership-vmt-ghg/491825/ <comment><USER2> Car ownership seems to be on the decline anyway. I'm end-20ies and socialize in a group where everyone could afford a car, yet almost none of them do.

Granted it's Berlin which has a somewhat peculiar culture but even in the US it seems to be catching on, at least in the large cities.

It seems like the car has lost its cultural appeal as a symbol of freedom & wealth. Now it's just one of many options for transportation.

I cannot wait to see how this could transform cities. Car sharing together with self-driving cars means we need far fewer and they can disappear into a depot when unused. A typical road has four lanes (two for parking, two for driving). You could cut that in half by eliminating parked cars, possibly also eliminate one of the remaining lanes if automation allows for more efficient usage. Suddenly the space available for pedestrians / green / street life has more than doubled, noise and pollutants almost eliminated by electric cars... For dense cities, it could dramatically improve the quality of life.

<comment><USER3> _For dense cities, it could dramatically improve the quality of life._

Which is why I'd like to see cities or housing developers taking a more open minded approach towards integrating something like car2go into their projects.

But for municipalities car2go's "commercial-ness" is some sort of stigma (which is wierd because it's not really being a high profit raking venture).

To "dramatically improve quality of life" the many low hanging fruits would have to be tackled by local government. (smaller) cities should consider franchising it somehow (ie paying Daimler for being part of the car2go network).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I absolutely LOVE the car2go service. Cheaper than Uber, more flexible and the cars are seemingly everywhere. I prefer to bike/walk most places, but it's sure nice to have the option when needed, without the burden of ownership... and paying for/worrying about parking.

<comment><USER5> In my experience it's not cheaper.

I remember I got a credit for $30 the last time I used it and spent about $20 to get to downtown Austin from about 3 miles away and had to keep circling around to find a spot to park it in which I was paying for.

I haven't used it since then. It's far easier to just take the bus and walk from the bus station.

<comment><USER6> I've use it a few times to drive from downtown to my apartment on the west side of town, and payed <$5 for 3 miles. I used it once to try to get from my apartment to downtown, but I found it really difficult to find a parking spot downtown during rush hour.

It was slightly cheaper than Uber when they were still in Austin, but not by much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SF regulations (something about requiring the rental be roundtrip vs one-way I think) prevent Car2Go from existing in SF. This is really annoying as it's just sitting there while I have to rush to make sure I do my task in the allotted time I've set then race back to the car's parking spot before time is up.

Zipcar has been quietly asking about this in surveys they give out. My guess is they're probably going to fight car2go if they try to get the regulation overturned and if not, just join them in the same game.

<comment><USER8> Zipcar has been rolling out "one-way" trips in several cities: LA, Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Seattle... You still have to return the vehicle to a Zipcar parking spot, but it can be at a different location from where you started your trip.

Given that Car2Go and ReachNow (BMW's car-sharing beta in Seattle) seem to be thriving, it seems wise for Zipcar to explore true one-way trips (i.e., park anywhere).

<comment><USER9> I'd point out that ReachNow actually started life as DriveNow here in San Francisco. They left town once they made the poor decision to move from having "stations" to on street parking only. On street parking + limited parking availability + all electric fleet = lots of dead cars in hard to reach locations.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't really seem to be a poor decision based on usage here in Seattle. (There are other issues, but so far my main complaints with it have been software issues, not running out of battery). Point to point and parking anywhere you want is amazing. Cheaper than the bus for two people if you're going only a few miles, and faster too.

In fact if I had to park in designated spots I'd basically never use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > car2go's services are also a way of exposing potential future car-buyers to > Daimler's automotive products.

That confirms my long-standing tin-foil hat theory about car2go: it's just an advertising venture disguised as a car sharing service. It doesn't have to make money, just cost less than they would spend on advertising and put smartcars all over major cities.

We recently got a locally owned car sharing service, and I choose it first whenever possible.

<comment><USER12> It can't be a very effective strategy. From the next line of the article:

> Given Smart cars' somewhat dismal U.S. sales records, it seems unlikely that > legions of former car2go members will one day clamor to put Fortwos of their > own in their garages.

I use car2go all the time and I can attest that the Smart FourTwo is total garbage. It's the worst car I've ever driven.

That being said, while I'd never buy a FourTwo, the car2go _service_ is great. Driving a terrible car for a few minutes for some errand that requires a car is no big deal.

<comment><USER13> Agree. The cars are absolute shit and I'd never own one, but am happy to rent them.

I'm convinced the placement of the key, though, is going to end up the cause of someone's death. I've bumped it and turned off the engine while driving more than once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If it wasn't for car2go I might have been a vehicle owner 3-4 years earlier. Once they stopped operations at my city I was so accustomed to get to my destinations by car though, that going back to public transit wasn't an option (given that I could afford a car by then).</comment>


Earnings Guidance Is Going Stale. Was It Ever Useful? - <AUTHOR> https://interconnected.blog/earnings-guidance-stale-was-it-ever-useful/ <comment><USER2> Ooh, ooh, another thread where I get to use Betteridge's Law of Headlines! No, it was never useful.

(This kind of headline doesn't really fit the Betteridge's pattern, but the answer is actually "no" all the same)</comment>


A Weekend With Chrome For iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.virtualpants.com/post/26340670877/a-weekend-with-chrome-for-ios

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone figure out a way to get bookmarklets like Instapaper to work correctly in Chrome for iOS? (other than typing their name)</comment>


Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than murder - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/aug/24/razing-palmyra-mass-murder-isis <comment><AUTHOR> Original title "Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder," I had to cut a word to conform to the character limit and could not think about a good alternative title for the post.</comment>


Online Ads Are Worse Than I Thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.iateyourblog.com/2012/04/online-ads-are-worse-than-i-thought.html

<comment><USER2> iateyourblog.com is a spam blog, would be great if it could be completely killed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa buddy, there aren't even any ads on it. What's your problem? It does have some formatting issues from a theme I tried to apply to it though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Mixergy for the adult industry - <AUTHOR> http://elmaveshow.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been interviewing people in the adult industry to see what their world is all about. It's pretty fascinating... let us know what you think.</comment>


How can a startup understand if it's the right time for a pivot? - <AUTHOR>

When is a pivot necessary?  Before the MVP because of feedback on a demo? To help formulate an easier customer acquisition and sales strategy? <comment><USER2> In many cases, an MVP shouldn't take a whole lot of time to build. If this is the case, you're better off getting the MVP out there, and getting feedback from that rather than the demo.

If, on the other hand, the demo is getting consistently negative (or "meh") feedback from prospective users, you may want to re-examine your value proposition.

Obviously, thinking about your customer acquisition and sales strategy is always a good thing, and if there are changes you can make to your product development to make those things easier, do it. Just remember what people say that they want isn't always what they really want-- which is why it's good to get the MVP out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree with everything here. We are in the processing of getting our MVP out by the end of the month. This also might help clarify some things--the feedback was from a group of investors that were run through an investor pitch and product demo.

That said, they might not be able to totally define how the product will be received in the market, but they might be right on the money about customer acquisition and sales strategy. The main feedback was to have a lower cost and more scalable sales and acquisition model. This is why a product pivot may be a good start, because the product in development now might not be able to successfully find a good fit with customer and sales strategies.

However, not having the MVP out there to understand how users interact makes a product pivot question harder to address.

<comment><USER2> If your MVP will be ready at the end of the month, I'd definitely put any pivot thoughts on hold until after that-- better to spend the next 3 weeks focused on getting the MVP to the customers, and then you can take all the feedback into account for the next iteration/pivot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When what you're doing is starting to look a lot tougher or is not working, and you see an adjacent (and somehow related) opportunity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any examples of startup pivots?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Second – solution to decentralize - <AUTHOR> Second's goal is to be your fully decentralized, AI twin that runs everywhere (in the cloud, in your browser, on your phone or smart tv), managing all your data, connections, and software. You give it instructions, and it follows them, answering only to you.
Decentralization has three major problems:
- Identity: how do I know I'm talking to you? ("Zooko's Triangle" = decentralized, secure, human-addressable) What is your reputation for X transaction? Where can I find Y thing that you made?
- Language and Storage: What is the format of the data we exchange, where is the data stored, and who has access?
- Hosting/Install/Upgrades: The UX of installing software sucks for programmers, even more so for non-programmers. How does a non-technical user install/upgrade without knowing anything technical?
Second solves those problems:
- Identity: stored on the Stellar blockchain as usernames/namespaces.
- Language and Storage: everything is a "node" that has a "type" that defines the schema of the data. NodeChains are tied to identities, have permissions, and are easily mirror-able over IPFS.
- Hosting/Install/Upgrades: a Second is a thin shell around a VM that runs nodes (nodes are both data and logic). Upgrading capabilities or UIs is as simple as replacing nodes (based on who you trust).
Two videos are on the homepage that give a technical overview (basically same as above, with a few more details), and a walkthrough of the alpha software.
https://www.getasecond.com <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [https://www.getasecond.com](https://www.getasecond.com)

Video Links:

Technical Overview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVRCsuoHmak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVRCsuoHmak)

Walkthrough of alpha: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SUaWFHoog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SUaWFHoog)</comment>


Show HN: 0Doc is the simplest documentation generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/josephernest/0Doc/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here to see it in action with a big doc (C.H.I.P. computer): [https://josephernest.github.io/0Doc- chip/](https://josephernest.github.io/0Doc-chip/)</comment>


Super Resolution from a Single Image (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html <comment><USER2> I just can't understand how it manages to make this image [http://www.pics.rs/i/2cuoM](http://www.pics.rs/i/2cuoM) look like this image [http://www.pics.rs/i/IEz0N](http://www.pics.rs/i/IEz0N), especially the last line of letters.

<comment><USER3> I guess the key reason why this works so well is because the lower resolution has been calculated from the higher resolution. So you have detailed information on how exactly the downscaling was calculated, which enables you to "cheat".

If you apply the same method to a completely different downscaling method, it probably wouldn't work out as nicely.

The ultimate test would be two different photographs taken at the same time - one with high and one with low resolution. Almost certainly this wouldn't work out as nicely. There is a huge difference between (a) having a low-res image due to physical effects, and (b) having a low-res image calculated by a known algorithm where all parameters are also known.

<comment><USER4> This is plain wrong. As others have pointed out, it is independent of the scaling method - it just looks for similar patches (at different sizes, mirror images, and perhaps even rotations - I don't remember) on the same image to find the best one that matches, and uses that for information.

In this specific case, you have _all_ the letters there to match against, so there's no surprise.

Note that it uses the _entire_ image to look for matches. If you tried to enlarge only the last line, it would probably NOT look as good.

There's a good reason that it works: Many pictures include similar elements at different scales, which lets you infer things from one scale to the other. In fact, in the eighties there was a lot of hype about "fractal compression" based on the same principle, see e.g. [http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~agupta/_projects/image_proce...](http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~agupta/_projects/image_processing/web/FractalImageCompression/) ; In the end, they couldn't improve on JPEG, and has been essentially forgotten - but ... it did match the JPEG coders at the time in terms of compression rate (did much worse on speed and memory requirements); and, it could decompress pictures to much larger geometry than the original while still looking good -- technically, very similar to what is described in this paper. Everything old is new again.

<comment><USER5> >This is plain wrong. As others have pointed out, it is independent of the scaling method - it just looks for similar patches (at different sizes, mirror images, and perhaps even rotations - I don't remember) on the same image to find the best one that matches, and uses that for information.

Which is much harder to do when the scaling method isn't known.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't even have to be scaling. It will work just as well copying only from _similar_ images (e.g., if this was a frame from a movie, they could use nearby frames to the same effect; or if it's a picture taken of the same thing from a different angle).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of things happened since then. References up to spring 2014 are e.g. in our own work to super-resolve arbitrary sized images with convolutional en/decoders: Super-Resolution with Fast Approximate Convolutional Sparse Coding, [http://brml.org/uploads/tx_sibibtex/281.pdf](http://brml.org/uploads/tx_sibibtex/281.pdf) (which still has a lot of possibilities to be extended (e.g. color) and improved upon).

<comment><USER7> Interesting paper; I'd be curious to see examples of how that performs. Are any online?

<comment><USER6> No, sorry :( Clearly a TODO for some future work.

<comment><USER8> I realize you mention there's no online example, but is your latest research available to try ourselves, using our own source images? This is neat!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your kind words! There is some stuff floating around, PM me.

<comment><USER8> It appears there's no PM system available to use. (At least not on my account, which I created to ask you this question)

<comment><USER6> Check my 'about' section here, should lead you to my mail :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to see what some of them did since [https://sites.google.com/site/dglasner/](https://sites.google.com/site/dglasner/)

Pretty original research.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, if I understand from the abstract, for every pixel they look through the image for similar "pixel neighbourhoods" of the same or varying size, and collect them into a kind of database of examples to be used for scaling up that pixel. Pretty cool idea!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the algorithm they use in all those movies. "Enhance!"

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if the same techniques could be used for compression as well.

<comment><USER13> Some photocopiers have actually replaced numbers with different numbers in copied documents because of pattern-based compression: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238)

<comment><USER14> Photocopiers use Mixed Raster Content (MRC) with JBIG compression, which is indeed able to confuse symbols at the same scale, but across-the-scales substitution is beyond the current MRC capabilities afaik.

<comment><USER15> One way around that problem is to use lossless compression.

Unfortunately, if you have merely 1 bit of static noise per pixel (so +/\- 0.4% intensity), you won't achieve better than 12.5% compression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there an implementation of this available?

<comment><USER17> There is a link in the old thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4242002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4242002)

<comment><USER18> I guess I fail the IQ test. Where's the download link?

<comment><USER19> It looks like the page header/navigation got lost in time. Archive.org shows a lot of now-missing content [1], perhaps in the move to GitHub Pages?

In any case the download page _does_ still exist: [http://mentat.za.net/supreme/download.shtml](http://mentat.za.net/supreme/download.shtml)

Which leads to the repo: [https://github.com/stefanv/supreme](https://github.com/stefanv/supreme)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140204102520/http://mentat.za....](https://web.archive.org/web/20140204102520/http://mentat.za.net/supreme/index.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To clarify my understanding of this post, would it be possible using this method to: 1\. start with a high resolution image 2\. create a low resolution version 3\. using the low resolution version produce a high resolution version that looks good

</comment><comment><USER21> It has a visual style that looks like a "photorealism" painting. Quite amazing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealism)

<comment><USER22> Hmmm? The idea of photorealism is that it should look as much as an actual photograph (or reality) as possible. And the best such painters, do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Original code @ [https://github.com/stefanv/supreme](https://github.com/stefanv/supreme) (repost from downthread). Looks like it's BSD licensed and in Python.

<comment><USER14> As I see from [http://mentat.za.net/supreme/](http://mentat.za.net/supreme/), this is an implementation of wholly another method, neither single-image nor self-similarity–based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Zoom and enhance

</comment><comment><USER25> Discussed in 2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266).</comment>


Desktop Sneak Preview: Creating a Web Based Calendar from Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://neomjs.github.io/pages/node_modules/neo.mjs/dist/production/examples/calendar/basic/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> The project is deeply inspired by the Google Calendar as well as the native MacOS Calendar.

This is a very early preview version: I started this project a week ago, so please don't expect it to be functional yet. I think it will take 2-3 more weeks to get finished.

Based on neo.mjs, it is multithreaded out of the box.

What you can do already:

Switch the theme.

Open the Settings Container, change settings for the weekly view. Ideally with the Weekly View as the active Card to see the delta updates.

I will add infinite scrolling for all views soon (similar to the DateSelector at the top left).

Drag & Drop for Events, mobile support and creating, editing & removing Events are on the todo list.

You can take a look into the source code here:

[https://github.com/neomjs/neo/tree/dev/src/calendar](https://github.com/neomjs/neo/tree/dev/src/calendar)

The Calendar is already pretty extensible & configurable, will add more options on the way.

Feedback appreciated!

Thx & best regards, Tobias</comment>


Google just published a free, three-month course on deep learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/22/10813984/google-deep-learning-udacity <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10951276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10951276)</comment>