Calculating Pi: My Attempt at Breaking the Pi World Record - <AUTHOR> https://blog.timothymullican.com/calculating-pi-my-attempt-breaking-pi-record <comment><USER2> I appreciate the author sharing his experience but I must admit that it was less exciting that I expected it to be. He basically used off-the-shelf hardware, ran an off-the-shelf program and then waited for a while. There's no obvious innovation, anybody who cares enough to break that record and has ~$20k lying around can do it.

If anything it got me a lot more curious about this y-cruncher program and all the fun optimizations it must implement.

<comment><USER3> I understand your disappointment but I'd like to point out this is a really nice achievement on it's portfolio as a sys admin

<comment><USER4> It also is a great side project; And having tested his system he donated it for STEM research. There's lots to commend in this project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of my attempt to compute the number of Go positions, which similarly needed many TB of disk space and ended up generating 30 petabytes of disk IO.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9167781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9167781) Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950875) Number of legal Go positions computed

Not much point in breaking that record, as 19x19 is the largest (and standard size) Go board.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those that are interested in reciting digits of Pi (I would guess you can either memorise the digits or calculate as you go) the current record is held by a South African: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mGjJMVKWcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mGjJMVKWcU)

<comment><USER7> He only won the record for the fastest recall of pi. 1500 digits in 4 minutes. Daniel Tammet recited 22514 in 5 hours. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet)

<comment><USER8> the Guinness world record is over 70k digits set by Rajveer Meena: [https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most- pi-p...](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-pi-places- memorised)

<comment><USER9> Such an awe inspiring achievement, to store that much structured data accurately. What else is the brain capable of doing?

<comment><USER10> Structured?

<comment><USER9> Lossless, ordered set of symbols with no errors.

It's much different than remembering a story or a travel route or an image.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but structured is in general in opposition to random, which the digits of pi seem to be. No one knows of any structure in the digits of pi.

<comment><USER11> But pi defines its structure. By being seemingly random and irrational, it has created a specific ordered set of symbols and imbued that set with meaning because it has a referent: we call it pi.

<comment><USER10> It's not random, but that doesn't mean it is structured. And there's absolutely no difference between the digits of pi and a completely random sequence for anyone trying to memorise them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> As luck would have it, a transformer next to my house blew and the power went out yet again. This means I had to restart from the last checkpoint yet again, losing another 2 weeks worth of work.

Ouch!!!

<comment><USER13> Man, it fucking sucks.

I remember a time back freshman year of collage... It was an extra credit assignment. Who could factor the largest number (or something like this) in the least time before the due date. My friend and I devised an algorithm, and launched it on my computer. I honestly don't remember anything other than the fact the god damn power transformer downtown blew and fucked up our tests because of a large scale power outage. I assume we'd have not even come in top #5 for that assignment (who knows), but it's just so frustrating.

Basically, OSs should have better fail recovery mechanics than are the default.

<comment><USER14> The OS recovered right?

It was your program that did not

<comment><USER15> Running under EUMEL, L3, or KeyKOS would have enabled the program to continue from a recent checkpoint, without requiring any logic for this in the program itself.

<comment><USER14> Oh of course! EUMEL, L3 or KeyKOS! Why didn't I think of them?!

<comment><USER15> Probably you're so familiar with modern computing environments — and unfamiliar with any others — that you take their drawbacks for granted, perhaps even assuming they are unavoidable.

<comment><USER14> This got me thinking, and I have a few weeks spare time - can you please recommend something that's as fundamentally different as possible so that I can get way out of my comfort zone?

I can't reply to your below comment I'm not sure why - but you seem experienced in alternative computing environments, whereas I'm mostly a HPC python / c++ developer that's spent the last 10ish years doing deep learning and scientific computing - the newer environment doesn't have to be practical at all, I'm interested to use it for a change in perspective

<comment><USER15> Well, what's your comfort zone?

I wish I had a recommendation based on experience for one of these really strange operating systems like EUMEL, Guardian, OS/400, and L3. But I don't. I've used CP/M and MS-DOS, but those are just really limited, not really interesting. Although, with ZCPR and 4DOS, you could make them reasonably usable, it was like coming out of Plato's cave when I switched my primary operating environment from 4DOS to csh on Ultrix.

Squeak is a pretty different operating environment that isn't simply primitive. Oberon is another. They can both run as user processes on top of Linux, as well as on bare metal. Both of them are somewhat alien.

Are you comfortable with embedded development? If not, try Arduino. It starts out easy, since you program the boards in C++, but you have the opportunity to build things that will run for months on a AA battery with submicrosecond interrupt response time — because there's no OS. (It's routine for even programming novices to write their own interrupt handlers.) Arduino instantly gives you the ability to measure things on microsecond timescales, a thousand times faster than you can normally see. Modern boards like the Blue Pill have response latencies in the 100-nanosecond range when they're awake. That's the time it takes light to go 30 meters, as you're probably aware.

In retrocomputing land, VMS was the first OS I used that was really usable. The OpenVMS Hobbyist Program still exists, and it's actually possible to run old versions of Mozilla on it. F-83 was an interactive Forth IDE that provided higher-order programming, virtual memory, and multithreading under MS-DOS, in 1983 — without syntax or types. Turbo Pascal was also an IDE, in a way the first modern IDE, around the same time; the first versions ran on CP/M and MS- DOS. But I think that you kind of had to be grappling with the limitations of BASIC on those systems to appreciate that.

There are Pick systems that still have enthusiastic users: [https://www.pickwiki.com/index.php/Pick_Operating_System](https://www.pickwiki.com/index.php/Pick_Operating_System) but they don't sound appealing to me. Other systems with cult fanbases include FileMaker, HyperCard, and Lotus Agenda, which last I think you can run successfully under FreeDOS. Agenda is interesting in part because it's so alien. (It's easy to forget that it was normal at the time to have to use the program manual to figure out how to exit.)

There are a bunch of modern specialized development environments that can do strange things. Radare2 is an environment focused on reverse engineering. Emacs is focused on text editing, but for some reason it's also the main user interface for interactive proof assistants like Coq and Lean, which are shaping up to be pretty interesting. R is focused on statistics. Jupyter is sort of focused on data visualization, although not really. (Now I see you've been doing deep learning for 10 years, so I guess Jupyter is your best friend.) LibreOffice Calc is focused on rectangular arrays of mostly numerical data (although in many cases their most advanced users use Excel instead). You can develop applications in all of them.

How about math? It's one thing to invoke a Runge-Kutta integration method; it's another to be able to prove convergence bounds on it. And machine-checked formal proof is shaping up to be an interesting thing, like I said.

How about cryptography? That has the advantage that there are right answers and wrong answers, so you can test your code.

How about shaders? Shadertoy is accessible and super fun. Maybe that's too similar to HPC, but the shader parallelism model (similar to ispc) is pretty different from both AVX and MPI.

How about mobile development? SIGCHI papers are full of experimental user interface ideas to explore, and Android Studio is free and relatively usable, if clumsy. Have you seen Onyx Ashanti's Beatjazz?

In the neighborhood of beatjazz, there's livecoding. It's a thrill to get a nightclub full of people dancing to your code, and there are a bunch of different environments.

GNU Radio with an RTL-SDR makes it possible for you to run DSP algorithms on RF signals over a pretty wide frequency range, with applications in communications and sensing. Maybe if you've been doing HPC, DSP is already second nature, but if not it might be rewarding. And DSP has close connections to control theory and image processing, as well as the more obvious applications.

How about alternative programming paradigms? If you're comfortable in procedural and OO programming, how about extreme alternatives — answer-set programming like miniKANREN, constraint-logic programming (as supported by modern Prologs [https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/clpz](https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/clpz) not just Mozart/Oz), Erlang-style fault-tolerance-focused programming, APL- style array programming (though maybe you're familiar enough with that to take it for granted), or Forth? How about strongly typed programming like Haskell, Rust, or OCaml? (And of course Haskell is purely functional, and OCaml is mostly so.)

And STM solvers like Z3 can easily solve problems now that were infeasible only a few years ago.

Also, wasm.

Or maybe try hacking together some games in Godot.

I don't know, myself I find that it's hard to avoid getting out of my comfort zone in some direction, just because the world is _so big_ and my knowledge is so small. Deep learning is the out-of-my-comfort-zone programming thing I want to try next!

<comment><USER14> Holy moly. Over the past hour I've come back to your response and read it several times. There's so much to unpack there.

I started writing several replies but felt I wasn't able to give you the praise you deserved, but the passage of time compels me to respond so please know you have my full gratitude

Thank you so much for such a detailed reply

<comment><USER15> I'm so glad it's helpful! I was worried it might be overwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> By "compressed Pi digits", does the author mean simply an efficient encoding of decimal digits in binary, or there is some way to compress Pi digits further? I thought they were incompressible like random.

<comment><USER17> Typically, that means storing two digits in a byte (halves storage size compared to a text string), 9 in each 32 bits (gains another 11%), 19 in each 64 bits (gains another 5%), or something similar (at this scale, I would guess it uses at least the '19 digits in each 64 bits')

Idea is to not use "one digit per byte", but to keep addressing individual digits cheap.

 _"I thought they were incompressible like random."_

They're easily compressed, if you accept taking this program and it's configuration file as a compressed version.

(And yes, the output of a pseudo-random number generator compresses extremely well, too)

<comment><USER18> That's the notion of kolmogorov complexity. The smallest program that can generate this output. Pi and I guess any other algebraic number, no matter how randomly distributed its digits are, are not that complex.

<comment><USER19> Pi is transcendental, not algebraic.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, sorry, I was not clear on that one. I meant the downwritable ones. Of course, pi has no finite extension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But

> Did you win the Putnam? [0]

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35076)

</comment><comment><USER21> > I also saw that it cost them around $200,000, which is very expensive. I'm > aiming to stay below 5% of that overall amount.

He may have stayed below $10K in hardware, but there is no way that includes the electricity needed to run the machines 24/7 for half a year.

<comment><USER22> Assuming 3kw and a PUE of 1.5 for cooling comes out to approx 20,000 kwh of power. Assuming a high-ish rate of $.13/kwh it comes out to around 2.5k for 6m. Not too bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 19-digit-per-64-bit compression storage requires about 19TiB [0].

1-digit-per-byte requires about 45TiB [1].

Can anyone explain how it requires 38TiB for final output?

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=8+*+%285e13+%2F+19%29+%2F+10...](https://www.google.com/search?q=8+*+%285e13+%2F+19%29+%2F+1048576+%2F+1048576)

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=5e13+%2F+1048576+%2F+1048576](https://www.google.com/search?q=5e13+%2F+1048576+%2F+1048576)

<comment><USER24> If you cross byte boundaries, i.e. compactly pack the bits such that there are no wasted bits; then you have 4 bits per decimal digit, 50T digits becomes 200T bits == 25TB. Technically there is still some slack in there because each 4 bit block represents 16 values, and we only use 10 of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I got curious about the BOINC platform he mentioned. It reminds me of the SETI@home screensaver I used to run many years ago. I guess I'd just forgotten about it at some point, but I used to enjoy watching the data it was processing. It's pretty cool that there's another platform out there that lets you contribute to other programs.

<comment><USER4> The boinc wiki mentions seti@home is part of this platform. It probably grew out of this initiative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Did he calculate the value in decimal? The record would probably be a lot easier to achieve if he'd gone with, say, base 14. Everybody does decimal, even though there's no theoretical advantage, and no practical advantage since nobody actually needs trillions of digits of pi.

</comment><comment><USER27> Curious now to know how much would this cost to compute in AWS?

<comment><USER28> Using the setup for the 31.4 trillion digits that Emma calculated with GCP (previous world record): [https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-3...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-31-4-trillion- digits-of-archimedes-constant-on-google-cloud)

GCP Pricing Page: [https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator#id=2eca3cef-746...](https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator#id=2eca3cef-7460-4422-8dff-b267dae5a768)

So ~$200 - $250k

Could probably save a good bit with committed use discounts.

Spot / Preemptible instances would not work, in fact before Emma did this calculation a lot of people thought this kind of thing wasn't possible on public cloud because of perceived instabilities in a multi-tenant system.

<comment><USER27> Does AWS still give $100k credit to YC startups? I think a couple should team up..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how many bit flips are to be expected on HDDs or in RAM for that amount of data.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there a link somewhere where he published the result?

<comment><USER31> I found it, but clicking it caused my computer to run out of available memory.

Edit: on a more serious note, a site[0] that tracks these records says:

> Downloading of digits is no longer available due to the massive bandwidth > requirements. Your best bet is to directly contact one of the record holders > and see if they still have a copy of the digits.

[0] [http://www.numberworld.org/digits/Pi](http://www.numberworld.org/digits/Pi)

<comment><USER32> The compressed representation requires 44 TB of disk space.

Assuming the author has a typical home internet connection with about 5 Mbps upload rate, the transfer would take 2 years longer than it took to actually run the calculation in the first place!

<comment><USER33> Here's more info about the race between calculating and downloading digits of pi

[https://opendata.stackexchange.com/a/4024/1511](https://opendata.stackexchange.com/a/4024/1511)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Have the results been verified yet?

<comment><USER35> It appears they have, the y-cruncher program he used does verification. Alexander Yee, who wrote the y-cruncher program (which has been used for the previous 4 world record calculations of digits of Pi), has accepted it and posted it on their site, along with screenshots of the output of the program.

[http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/](http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/)

<comment><USER36> One cool note per my reading here - prior record holder Emma Haruka Iwao was working for GCP as a developer advocate, and GCP makes her 31.4 trillion digits available via cloud images. Neat :-)

For those of us with less insane needs, they also exposed an API to grab the specific digits of interest - [https://pi.delivery/](https://pi.delivery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What an irresponsible use of energy. At least mine Bitcoin...

<comment><USER38> Of all the "irresponsible" uses of energy, this is the one I endorse the most.

<comment><USER39> It's not irresponsible if the dude needed heat in his home. Far and few people realize that all electronics are heaters that happen to do computation in the process of conversion of electricity to heat. Sure, it's not convective if there aren't fans to disperse the heat.. but it's a beefed up computer so I am sure he had good PC fans.

In any case, heat that is created without convection fans to spread it quickly, will still diffuse into the home albeit at a slower pace. It has to go somewhere..

<comment><USER34> > Far and few people realize that all electronics are heaters that happen to > do computation in the process of conversion of electricity to heat.

Surely anyone who's used a computer with a fan in it knows this…

<comment><USER39> That's easy to say but pretty much everyone I've talked to, albeit the few oddities, thought that dedicated space heaters were way different than X-Box getting hot, or computer getting hot. Think of the cognitive dissonance to switch to all LED bulbs in a cold climate, because you're told it's more efficient, meanwhile using electric space heaters at the same time... It happens more often than you think, given the politics.

Of course, there are some heating methods that are cheaper than electricity - like natural gas. So one would have to factor that in, along with power plant emissions vs home emissions.

It's a complex entrenchment. It'd be interesting to produce a video of street interviews just to see what the average person thinks about electronics getting hot. It would make for a good case study of the intersection between common sense/basic physics knowledge/and energy/eco politics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Byten: Bit the size of file and turn it into human readable format - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pyk/byten

<comment><AUTHOR> simple go package. for learning purpose. criticism are wellcome :))</comment>


Why (most) High Level Languages Are Slow - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastiansylvan.com/post/why-most-high-level-languages-are-slow/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I buy the arguments about cache, or it's something where I'd want empirical performance analysis to back up the model claims. Allocators will tend to place allocations next to each other in memory, so one might reasonably expect that objects allocated near each other (in time) to have decent memory locality. Likewise, I'm pretty sure cache sizes have grown over time, and looking at the provided chart, even going to L3 isn't the end of the world.

I'd expect that one of the biggest slowdowns that's not talked about is dynamic dispatch. Among other things, having to invoke functions by pointer prevents a lot of possible optimization (e.g., inlining of short functions). Function calls are pretty expensive, and having to do lots of function calls "for real" could also be a huge performance problem.

Of course, yes, garbage collection is a huge problem.</comment>


How Twitter Is Going to Take a Billion Dollars From YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131004/how-twitter-is-going-to-take-a-billion-dollars-from-youtube/?mod=atd_homepage_carousel

<comment><USER2> Amazing how out-of-whack headlines are from the article copy even on sites like ATD. This is from the article:

> As a result, if Twitter continues to grow into the de facto public social > network, it could easily start taking millions (and perhaps billions) of > valuable ad dollars from YouTube.

So _" could"_ in the copy changes to _" is going to"_ in the headline, while _" millions (and perhaps billions)"_ changes to _" a billion dollars"_.

I'm guessing the headline writer knew something the writer didn't. I wish there were a way for me to take back my pageviews from sites with wilfully misleading headlines like these.

<comment><USER3> There's a funny Ali G clip, where he's interviewing Sam Donaldson about the media and asks if it's ok to title headlines "WAR BEGINS.... with a w"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H6OULO5R4Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H6OULO5R4Y)

It's funny thinking back well before the internet how physical headlines were used to capture people's attention as they walked by a newsstand.

<comment><USER4> Respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't buy the logic. If embedding is such a big deal then why does nearly every discussion forum allow you to embed youtube videos but not tweets? It's got nothing to do with who the community thinks could make ad money on it, it's all about the particular medium. Further, while youtube is full of content, twitter has a much higher meta-content volume. Good for 'news' perhaps, not so much for discussion forums outside of gossip.

<comment><USER6> It's pretty easy to embed tweets nearly everywhere

<comment><USER5> I don't think so, not as a discussion site participant. None of the sites I use allow it.

But the real point is people don't do it that often even when they can. Twitter is rarely a direct source of content. From what I've seen Vimeo and Soundcloud have a better shot at this than Twitter, even though YouTube has them both both beat on embedding frequency for their respective content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a non-Twitter user, I had always wondered how they were going to be generating long-term revenue. The possibilities for real-time interaction with TV audiences via a hashtag/tweet on a TV program sounds pretty enticing to me. It will be interesting to see how YouTube responds in the next 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not that I strongly disagree with the authors ideas of how Twitter could take on Youtube, but it is worthwhile to emphasize that Twitter's S-1 filing indicate no intention to do so.

"How I think Twitter Could Take a Billion Dollars From YouTube," would be a far less misleading headline.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most of the money on Youtube is from content providers who are paid by Google. (Like me)

Twitter doesn't have revenue to share. Without revenue to share people (like me) aren't going to move to Twitter for video.

Vevo isn't moving. iJustine isn't moving. ShayTards isn't moving. BBC isn't moving. Jenna Marbles isn't moving.

That's a lot of Youtube that won't move.

The people who make random commentaries and upload to be famous aren't Ad/Brand safe and might be happier on Twitter, but they won't make money and they won't bring money.</comment>


Arrington Rants about not getting a phone - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/14/god-help-phone/

<comment><USER2> Must be a slow news day and he got bored & made up a reason to rant and spam the internet with more stuff no one really cares about.</comment>


Ask YC: what will replace the music album? - <AUTHOR>

If in the future there will be no more CDs or music albums, how will people listen to music? Will everything just be "random shuffle"? Will they select genres and shuffle through them? Will they create their own playlists by arduous work? Will playlists become valuable content? <comment><USER2> I think it's interesting to look at genres of music where the album has never been particularly important - for example dancehall and ragga in Jamaica. Dancehall producers will create an instrumental (riddim) and then release it publicly as a dub plate for the many different MCs to rhyme over. This results in a large number of versions of the same instrumental being played by DJs in clubs around Kingston. Quickly the response from the dancefloor combined with the DJ's opinion filters out worse versions and leaves one track standing above the rest. This track will then be the big smash on that riddim and really blow up. That track is typically the best vocal on the best riddim. It's wisdom of crowds applied to the composite elements of the track.

As the free availability of individual tunes results in more remixing, more collaboration and more playlisting a system that determines the optimal permutations will be very valuable. My guess is that the optimal permutations will be inferred from the behaviour of music fans on the web so no one will own it as such, however the experts and tastemakers will become more visible and may be able to monetise this ability.

Live recordings will become more important because as albums get broken up by file sharing the selection an artist chooses in concert will become more meaningful.

<comment><USER3> its getting simpler to make and listen to your music.

<http://myplaylist.biz> is a good example

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really hope albums don't go anywhere. For a lot of groups, an album of songs showcases their artistic perspective at a certain point in time. Usually, the overall tone of a band changes between albums.

I'll even go so far as to say that the music will be less enjoyable if it wasn't for albums. For example, compare U2's The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, both of which are fantastic examples of "tone" albums. If you would have taken half the songs from The Joshua Tree and put them on Achtung Baby, and vice- versa, both albums would have sounded like a mess. I don't think the individual songs would have had the same impact as they did when combined with other songs with similar tone.

And that's not even considering concept albums, which are always interesting. A world with no Dark Side of the Moon is not one I want to live in! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Music will be free for individual use. Musicians will make money from concerts and licensing. The album may persist as a form, but lengths will start to vary more.

<comment><USER6> I agree.

Don't forget about that other "format" between single and album: the "EP". As a musician, I've always liked it: not as time consuming to produce as a 40+ minute "album" but more robust than a single track or two.

It's easier to digest and get your brain around (for listener and creator). Which means a lot...granularizing music consumption is good, I think more artists need to think in terms of EP when they are trying to break themselves. Plus, it trims the fat (i.e. filter _yourself_ ;-)

<comment><USER7> Allows you to release stuff more often as well. Every 3 months you release an "EP", let people pay what they want for it. As long as the music is good, people will buy. I hope. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Albums are great. Singles have always been released as a means to get people to stump up cash for the album, and this should still be the case. There are many albums that have great songs on them, but these songs are probably too unsuitable/unprofitable to be released to the mainstream audience; thus, the release of "appealing" singles to get fans and new fans to go and buy the album. Albums also provide variety by exposing listeners to different styles X if everyone just bought the singles, then everyone would only buy the "club bangers" that get released or become popular.

If the whole system goes to a buy-per-single model, albums, per se, will probably evolve into "bodies of work" for that period of an artist's life, which could actually benefit the artist because it will allow them to release material that would not normally make it onto an album, essentially allowing the artist to say "buy whatever you want". Buying-per-single will also be a real ball-ache if you have to preview every song to find the ones you want; hence, my support for albums.

If the music becomes free, then money will probably come from concerts, merchandise, etc. Heaven forbid that there will be no ad-supported model! Imagine having to listen to adverts between tracks...oh, the inhumanity!

Personally, I like albums and will buy them over a couple of singles because it will add up to the same cost and be much more convenient. Ideally, the whole industry should follow the model of a particular website where you buy music by the megabyte, which is obviously linked to the quality that you have it encoded at.

</comment><comment><USER9> My guess is new music services will emerge that will analyze your digital music collections, and create playlists for you. There are, of course, many of these around already but you'll see a flurry of activity soon. If the music labels were smart, they would be right in the middle of the action by offering a free service that would pay for itself by providing download services, Webcasts and advertising.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I want to see (this really applies to TV as well...with the writer's strike and all, the timing seems more apt to them):

I want an artist to release how they _want_ to release. I think some artists would be fine only releasing singles or covers or mashups. I think that others want a group of songs that are only meant to be together, with some physical content (album covers, etc, has anyone seen Tool's releases? I'm not really a fan of the music, but aesthetically and conceptually they are amazing), -and- some that may only be released with videos. I want to see distributors and publishers take a much smaller cut, but from more artists. This would take a cue directly from long-tail economics.

I want artists to be artists, and not to starve. The 'album' isnt dying, it's just shrinking, because it's relavence has dwindled, most artists make groups of singles that should be released as such, and the 'Dark Side of the Moon's and the 'Physical Graffiti's of the world are disappearing.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few months ago I saw on TV a story about people working as "personal music stylists", or something like that. Their job is to find the right music or set list for events and parties, or to define a playlist for a gym class, or to just load someone's iPod with music of a given genre.

In short, they get money to act as a music recommendation filter.

</comment><comment><USER12> Marshal McHluhen said that the medium is the message. This I think applys well here. Albums are a medium for music distribution, in otherwords albums are albums, and the other forms of distribution are different. I think that as we see the shift from destination, or event listening. ie popping the record on the turntable and consuming a whole album, to a networked fill in the cracks type listening we will see a new form of music consumption. Their will always be people who love the album, but I think the new world order is on demand anywhere in the world. That means short punchy songs, and everyonce in awhile something longer. The web can save the long format audio though, if you can think of a internet site as emmersive you might be able to do a long format animation and sound combined thing that you can watch on the web.

</comment><comment><USER13> For decades, singles were the main money-maker and albums were released afterward with not much expectation of success. Buddy Holly and the Beatles started releasing albums without filler material, and that became the standard mode for a while. Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a _single decent song_ anymore.

Truth be spoken, I'm not sure it matters anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Does anybody know any albums that can compare with the greats of the past?

As went classical, so went pop music. It's just finished, and all the artistic people seem to have shifted to video games, which just keep getting better and better.

<comment><USER14> _Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a single decent song anymore._

Don't mistake the pathetic state of pop for the state of music overall. There is loads of great stuff, perhaps more than ever - the difference is that little of the good stuff gets on the radio because the traditional music industry is killing itself, and is now in its death-throws.

I predict (or at least hope) that the web and a resurgence of live music will bring about a new golden age of sound (for all - not just those who make the effort to dig up the good stuff).

Edit: I'm not being allow to reply to mynameishere's request, "Name some", presumably because I've made too many comments in a short space of time (though I can't imagine there will be many spammers with 400+ karma). Anyway, here's what I was hoping to post:

It depends what genres you like - music is now extremely diverse and fragmented, and I am generally interested in less mainstream stuff, so I don't know about many great artists working in the traditional pop/rock genres. So here is a random, eclectic selection of groups that use guitars and that spring to mind (though I am a little out of touch for the past couple of years): Mars Volta, Deerhoof, OOIOO, Lightning Bolt, Strapping Young Lad, Mogwai, Neurosis, Godspeed You Black Empreror, Tool...

There are a host of other interesting genres with amazing artists and a lot of creativity you wouldn't hear from if you didn't look, like IDM, Dubstep, Hip- Hop...

I will readily agree that there isn't much like Hendrix or Led Zep and similar - but I would argue the current pop industy climate effectively prohibits the emergence of those sort of rock-stars.

<comment><USER13> _There is loads of great stuff_

Name some. I'm always willing to listen to new acts.

<comment><USER4> Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, The Bravery, Spoon, Rilo Kiley, The National, Interpol, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, Shiny Toy Guns, Foo Fighters...

The real problem is that ClearChannel has dominated FM and sapped all of the good content out, replacing it with the McNuggets and more advertising. Solution: get XM radio. Worth every cent.

<comment><USER13> _Modest Mouse...Foo Fighters_

Those two I'm familiar with and they don't compete at all.

Compare:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_in_music#Albums_released>

Highlights:

      Abbey Road - The Beatles
      Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
      Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
      Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones
      Live/Dead - Grateful Dead
      At San Quentin - Johnny Cash
      Ummagumma - Pink Floyd
      The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
      Yellow Submarine - The Beatles
      Yes - Yes (debut)

<comment><USER15> As time goes on, cherry-picking the list of amazing albums becomes easier, since you judge not just the music, but those albums' influence on all the acts of the next 30 years.

That said, 1969 surely was a watershed year for rock music, and there are few years that can compare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to find a way to assess the role that predictive popularity filters have on the longevity of new artists (<http://www.hitpredictor.com/about.php>). How does having something like this in place not invite continuously creating the moving average of derivative crap?

Further, is the current lack of quality a reflection that artists are pushed before they have time to develop longevity or that talent isn't 'recognized' unless it fits the mold du jour?

Is the ClearChannel effect, the automation of radio, contributing to this need for homogenized pulp? It's such a large system to diagnose.

</comment><comment><USER17> I could see picking and mixing singles right now because so many of the groups ... well... aren't all that good, so you only get the one or two good things they do. If people went back to actually liking groups that have more staying power, perhaps that would strengthen the idea of the album again?

</comment><comment><USER14> The notion of artists releasing a collection of ordered tracks in a batch is pretty ingrained, I don't see that idea going anywhere soon. Or are you posing a hypothetical assuming otherwise?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read news items that the album is already going away, for example the top sellers on itunes are individual songs, not albums.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure this means the album will go away altogether, its a nice format if you like the artists' work. The pick-n-mix thing is probably more suited to artists you don't care about so much, but like individual tracks. I think both albums and cherry-picking individual tracks can coexist quite happily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A set of bits of music with a consistent theme is a very old and good idea.

The shrink-wrapped $20 piece of plastic you buy today will soon be less common than vinyl.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd love to see mashups become more legit.</comment>


Not Your Father's FORTRAN - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/10/26/this-is-not-your-fathers-fortran/ <comment><USER2> I've liked more this article [https://bitbucket.org/eric_t/modern- fortran/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/eric_t/modern-fortran/wiki/Home)

</comment><comment><USER3> I first learned FORTRAN in high school, where we used optical sense cards to create code. The teacher took them each night to the board office and brought back our output for the next class. If you had ten days for an assignment, you had ten chances to compile/run. The next year the school got a Commodore PET and I had a chance to use that.

I still code - and have just finished converting some FORTRAN astrophysics simulation code from 1974 into C# for a Unity project.

<comment><USER4> > converting some FORTRAN astrophysics simulation code from 1974 into C# for a > Unity project

But FORTRAN is SOOOO fast. In R there is still plenty of FORTRAN code running. I still would want the code running FORTRAN and try to figure a way for it to run as is.

I understand the need for it to run in Unity but just I hate the idea of all FORTRAN code needs to be converted.

<comment><USER3> Yeah - I hear you. Converting 1000 lines was a BIG drag.

I did experiment with native and f2c versions - but when targeting for mobile it meant a bunch of Android and iOS packaging that was kinda irritating.

The specific code I targeted (3 body evolution using KS regularization, the triple code at [http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~sverre/web/pages/nbody.htm](http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~sverre/web/pages/nbody.htm)) was modest and not CPU intensive.

I'd love to do the same for NBODY6 and that would have to be native.

Look for an update to my ThreeBody app with this code (and a cool gallery of new 3B solutions) sometime late in the year.

<comment><USER4> So I am hoping you read the SciFi book the Three Body Problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pedantic point: Grace Hopper's work predated FORTRAN by several years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOW-MATIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOW- MATIC).

FORTRAN is the first general purpose computer language still in use, but that's not the same thing as being the first.

</comment><comment><USER6> "John W. Backus suggested to IBM a language to replace assembly language."

And today, in a world with far more CPU homogeneity, we have an endless stream of nerds suggesting to HN languages to "replace" C.

I am never sure what "replace" means when used in this context. I'm still using assembly language; other languages cannot match it. In the same way, FORTRAN is still being used. Perhaps "supplement" should be substituted for "replace".

Enduring fact: "Your Father's" languages are more performant than the new ones you hold in high regard.

Because performance will always be important to some people, I doubt these old languages will ever disappear from use.

Unless someone can construct a compiler that accepts a different "language" and produces more performant object code, these languages will never be "replaced".

<comment><USER7> > I am never sure what "replace" means when used in this context

It means the use of assembly is replaced with the use of Fortran. At which it was very successful in scientific computing.

I don't believe it was ever meant to mean exterminate. Bear in mind that all programming was done in assembly or machine code prior to the introduction of Fortran. Since then a relatively tiny (though important) proportion of programmers program in assembly _. That was the intent and it worked swimmingly.

_ And only masochists program in machine code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One reason Fortran is still so performant is that processor manufacturers devote a lot of resources to making sure that there are highly optimized compilers for their latest architectures. This is partly so that they will look good in benchmarks, but the scientific computing community benefits.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific- computings...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific-computings- future-can-any-coding-language-top-a-1950s-behemoth/1/)

</comment><comment><USER9> A language efficiency is about how convenient it is to use for humans to express and absorb ideas about solving a problem.

A lot goes into that. It starts with programmers training to look into problem some way, which allows to formalize the task - as in conversion of a physical problem to a mathematical model.

Then it proceeds to offer good abstractions to use for problem statement. Those abstractions should be convenient - a reasonable set, a generic nature, a good correspondence to "the real world".

Then composability of those abstractions should allow more convenient canned solutions to common subproblems - which are libraries.

Last two parts require to carefully select the language syntax.

It turns out it's tricky to have a language which is good enough for every possible problem to solve. It's also hard to have a good set of composability features - usually you have one set of several possible, and you don't have at the same time all possible mechanisms to combine and use primitives.

I'm not sure Fortran compares well with existing offerings. Literal "formula translation" is a basis of several language philosophies (APL comes to mind), and in non-numeric applications there are other issues.

<comment><USER10> > A language efficiency is about how convenient it is to use for humans to > express and absorb ideas about solving a problem.

That's one kind of efficiency. There are others. One kind that often comes up Fortran is "efficiency of using the CPU". Fortran is pretty good at that kind of efficiency. For people using months of supercomputer time, that kind of efficiency is pretty important.

<comment><USER9> > One kind that often comes up Fortran is "efficiency of using the CPU".

I think that's rather efficiency of implementation of the language's compiler.

Yes, given particular hardware properties, it might be beneficial to have language enforcing programmers to use mechanisms, which are easier (for translator) to convert to hardware instructions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <ahem> My _mother_ was a FORTRAN programmer in the early 1960s. :-P</comment>


The Apple iOS 9 Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/9605/the-ios-9-review <comment><USER2> > Obviously Windows has a similar implementation, but the unfortunate truth is > that the Windows tablet market is almost non-existent at this point outside > of the Surface lineup.

This struck me as an odd comment. Because the iOS tablet market _is_ non- existent outside of the iPad lineup.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing the author was talking about "Windows RT". And "Surface" in that sentence meant the tablets running regular Windows. The WindowsRT tablets from ASUS/Dell/Samsung didn't sell like Android and iOS.

If one does a search&replace: s/Windows/WindowsRT/ :

 _" Obviously Windows RT has a similar implementation, but the unfortunate truth is that the Windows RT tablet market is almost non-existent at this point outside of the Surface lineup."_

(I would appreciate if the downvoter who thought my interpretation was incorrect to reply with the correct way to read the author's sentence. It seems that Brandon Chester is quite aware of the difference between Windows RT vs Windows tablets : [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8736/best-tablets- holiday-2014...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8736/best-tablets- holiday-2014/4))

<comment><USER4> That seems like an unlikely meaning to me when Windows RT is effectively discontinued as far as I can tell. There is no Windows RT equivalent of Windows 10 and no Windows RT version of the Surface 3.

There are plenty of Windows tablets at all sorts of price points, but most seem to be using x86 instead of ARM.

<comment><USER3> _> There is no Windows RT equivalent of Windows 10 _

The author didn't mention "Windows 10" specifically but instead, just "Windows" which can include the previous incarnations (both Windows 8 & Windows RT 8). The non-premium Windows RT had "multitasking" several years ago when iOS did not and that was the particular point of comparison to trigger his hard-to-parse statement. He also qualified his sentence with " _outside of the Surface lineup_ " which seems like he was aware that Surface has turned into a somewhat of a success story for Microsoft.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-surface-hits-1bn- reve...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-surface-hits-1bn-revenue- mission-accomplished/)

[http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/23/microsoft-q3-2015-earning...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/23/microsoft-q3-2015-earnings/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else snicker at the bit about page faults on page 8?

Apple is apparently now promoting the use of mmap:

> While this is a "solution", it introduces the possibility of the user > encountering page faults, which is an error/exception that occurs when the > system is trying to access memory that is mapped into virtual memory but not > actually loaded into RAM. This is something that, for the most part, has > never existed on mobile devices.

<comment><USER6> "the possibility of the user encountering page faults" is absolutely hilarious. Clearly _trying_ to take a stab at Apple because the author thinks that there should be more RAM in the boxes, and trying to come up with some justification without understanding that page faults are a basic and normal thing that happen all the time on any sort of modern device.

Also, regarding the "never existed", check out this post from 2010 from John Carmack, discussing the challenges of dealing with iOS's mmap limitations at the time:

[http://www.bethblog.com/2010/10/29/john-carmack-discusses- ra...](http://www.bethblog.com/2010/10/29/john-carmack-discusses-rage-on- iphoneipadipod-touch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something that has not been mentioned (because it is such a small feature) is that you can now disable the vibration on a per alarm clock basis. I've been waiting for this for several versions now. You could argue that 3rd party alarm clock applications provide that, but they don't get the special treatment the built-in app gets, mainly that alarms set are still activated even if the app is closed. Maybe it is also the case for 3rd party but I couldn't get it to work.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's important. I've had to disable all vibration on my phone, which increases chances of me missing things, because the lady downstairs doesn't like vibration noise in the morning, haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The new battery widget seems cool. It's clearly designed for the watch but it's nice it works for other connected devices. My wife never has any idea how charged her bluetooth headset is, she'd find this incredibly helpful.

<comment><USER10> There have been Bluetooth battery level indicators since at least iOS 7, for Bluetooth devices which support the feature. Admittedly, those were harder to read and did not show a percentage. Here's a screenshot:

[http://community.silabs.com/t5/image/serverpage/image- id/391...](http://community.silabs.com/t5/image/serverpage/image- id/3915i627E9B4ADE9B59EF)

<comment><USER11> That feature was added to iPhone OS 1.1.1 with the Apple Bluetooth Headset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just found out (the hard way) that content block extensions for Safari does _not_ work on an iPhone 5c which sucks. According to Apple it is due to performance (the 5c uses the same SoC as the 5).

I can't help but think this is a massive failure on Apple's part as my daughter has a 5c as do most of her friends as they are/were the best (read: cheapest) option to get an iPhone. I would have loved to be able to load a content blocker on her phone to block adult content as well as ads.

They missed a trick there imho.

<comment><USER13> Content blocking requires an ARMv8 processor (so 5S and later) - must be a requirement of whatever they are using for regex.

<comment><USER14> Apparently it's a performance issue.

From apple[1]: Note: Apps containing content blocking extensions for Safari on iOS are available only on 64-bit devices, due to performance limitations of 32-bit devices.

        [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014305-CH9-SW9

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The satellite imagery in Google Maps is also much better; it never turns to > black and white like Apple Maps, and is noticeably higher in detail and > resolution.

That's not been my experience; at least in San Francisco, the satellite imagery in Apple Maps is remarkably good and noticeably sharper than in Google Maps. I wouldn't be surprised though if this varied by region.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, I find Apple Maps to generally look much better than Google Maps in London (more specifically west London).

<comment><USER16> I've never seen Apple Maps turn to black and white on satellite, and I live in fucking _Michigan_. Both of you live in huge, techie, heavily populated cities. I live in Michigan, and the satellite maps are just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I noticed the moralistic hand wringing about the propriety of ad blockers.

<comment><USER16> Which is odd, it seems like people who are outspoken against ad blockers are either becoming more numerous or are becoming louder. I recently had a conversation here where someone was arguing that ad blocking is akin to MP3 pirating:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013)

<comment><USER18> Even a few months ago, I was kind of like that. Then I started thinking about it in terms of my own "autonomy", for lack of a better word -- what gives them the right to "force" my browser to make extra requests to download and display ads, to use my home network for that, to use my bandwidth and data cap for it, to use my CPU, to use my eyes and brain to look and understand the ad. They have no technical ability to enforce some of that, and any agreement that viewing ads is "payment" is implicit and thus the moral argument is weak. They don't even implement some technical measures they could do, such as YouTube bundling video ads directly into the stream so it would be harder to detect and block, so maybe they don't really care enough either.

At some point it starts sounding too much like "it's stealing to watch broadcast TV if you mute your TV and look away from the screen during ads", and hopefully most people would say that position is insane. (And yes, I do recognize that automatic blocking is a bit different, but at the same time, sending instructions that your computer download and display something to you is different than changing the radio waves from a representation of a show to a representation of an ad.)

It only works because the majority of TV watchers and internet users are too lazy or unskilled to block ads. When the majority are blocking ads, the model will either change, or blocking be explicitly criminalized (a session of Congress I'd pay to watch.)

<comment><USER16> Courts have ruled that Tivo automatically skipping ads is perfectly okay. That's literally automating the activity you're talking about! So yeah, not really any different.

<comment><USER18> Maybe relevant case: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_Network,_LLC) It's a bit more complicated since it involves a contract between the provider of the ad-skipping device and the content creator. Hmm, it could get interesting if contracts arose between browser vendors and advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a list of features you want to disable if you care about privacy?

<comment><USER14> There's a dedicated "Privacy" setting in the Settings app. You could disable everything from there, including some Location Services, even the ones used for system services like Cell Network Search and setting the time zone.

Additionally, you can turn off Siri completely under Siri settings. You can also turn off Siri and Bing/Spotlight suggestions under Spotlight settings. iCloud could also be turned off.

That said, by turning the above features off, why are you using a smartphone in the first place?

Apple has been making great strides in user privacy lately, and I think they genuinely care about our privacy, what with them encrypting everything and not having the keys to decrypt it themselves (so they say).

I choose to trust my privacy with Apple. They've given me no reason to doubt them, yet.

<comment><USER20> _That said, by turning the above features off, why are you using a smartphone in the first place?_

Cheap shot but surprisingly close answer: Because I couldn't find a feature phone with decent build quality any more.

Slightly less cheap shot and still remarkably accurate answer: Because almost all I want in a smartphone is the phone itself plus mobile Web access on a usefully large screen.

My interest in mobile devices really has very little to do with apps, even less to do with cloud services, and absolutely nothing to do with "digital assistants".

<comment><USER16> Oddly enough, I feel the opposite. I can't find a smartphone with decent build quality anymore. The iPhone 5s was the last phone where I thought it both looked and felt good, but it's still so damn fragile. The Lumia 920 was the last device where I felt it was strong enough to withstand a normal level of use without treating it like an expensive hunk of glass and metal.

Big screen, I can understand. But build quality... for $700 you can do a lot better in an expensive feature phone than a cheap iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can the URL be changed to [http://www.anandtech.com/print/9605/the- ios-9-review](http://www.anandtech.com/print/9605/the-ios-9-review) which has all the content on one page?

<comment><USER22> I disagree. HN should not do this.

<comment><USER23> I think the downvoting you're receiving is unjustified. Content creators have a right to monetize in a manner they choose, even if it is shortsighted or easily bypassed. I would think the entrepreneurial crowd on HN would agree with that in principal.

<comment><USER16> Then perhaps they shouldn't provide an option to view it as one page...?

<comment><USER23> They provide an option to print which consequently puts the content on one page. Which you, me and everyone else is aware of.

Let's be real here: It's not even in your interest as someone that doesn't care for this to become the norm for aggregators like HN because content creators will start doing annoying stuff like referrer checks or other cat and mouse bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You should _REALLY_ consider adding an option to "show entire article".

<comment><USER25> Hit the Print This Article link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The new app-switcher screen is terrible. Shockingly terrible.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone point me to a more in-depth analysis than this rather superficial look?

:)

<comment><USER28> [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/ios-9-thoroughly- review...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/ios-9-thoroughly-reviewed/)

Ars thoroughly reviews iOS 9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The attempts to resolve cognitive dissonance by fanboys is a sight to behold. I'm not sure why people can't say "I prefer Apple, but iOS 9's split screen multitasking implementation is the same as Microsoft's from years ago". Rather than "It's not the same at all, because it's not about the feature, it's about how the feature is implemented" and all of these similar un-attackable arguments.

<comment><USER30> You do realize there are multiple ways to implement a feature, right? And if you want to talk about having two windows on a screen at once, that feature didn't originate on the surface, but on the 1984 Macintosh (with overlapping windows) and before that at Xerox (where Apple licensed some of the technology.)

<comment><USER29> The splitscreen implementation is completely different from windowed operating systems. I think every single person on hackernews is at least vaguely aware of the history of computing.</comment></comment></comment>


Misconceptions about Facebook Login and Politics - <AUTHOR> http://ctbl.us/AfQja

<comment><USER2> Excellent insights.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you attend a Hacker News Conference? - <AUTHOR>

Here at SXSW, and I had the pleasure to attend the "Life After YC" session with Brian Chesky (Airbnb), Dane Hurtubise (JobSpice), Drew Houston (Dropbox), and Jessica Mah (inDinero).  It was fantastic.  More than any other session, I felt like I was among peers.  I got thinking, screw SXSW, we need a HN Conference. Or at least a HN track at SXSW.<p>Make it hacker-oriented, with technical and startup topics, invite the YC partners, maybe current and former batch founders to speak, maybe some angels, maybe help for people interested in applying, maybe a hack day?  Who'd be interested? <comment><USER2> Sounds quite similiar to startup school, which I would highly recommend

While the speaker at startup school are generally the big name guys, lots of the YC founders are around during that time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should have been a poll. Short answer, interested if it's local to the Bay Area (where YC is located)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i think bay area for sure

(and how do you do a poll?)

<comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>

But I'm not sure if you need a certain level of karma.

<comment><USER5> You do indeed. For me that page says: "Sorry, you need 20 karma to create a poll."

<comment><USER6> I think that message is out of date. I have exactly 20 karma but it shows me the same message.

<comment><USER6> Amusingly it works now. Not sure if something was fixed or if there is an off- by-one error (my previous comment was upvoted to give me 21 karma).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Barnes & Noble Says It Won't Sell Books Published by Amazon  - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/barnes-noble-says-it-wont-sell-books-published-by-amazon/?hp

<comment><USER2> Is there a way to interpret this as a smart decision? When your disadvantage is having less selection at higher prices and less convenience, artificially excluding a publisher from your selection seems like it only exacerbates the problem. Imagine that you're one of the people that still drives out to a bookstore to get the latest novel from your favorite author, and when you get there, you learn that your brick and mortar retailer has refused to sell it. That sounds like a _terrible_ customer experience.

And even if they don't want to sell Amazon's books, publicly announcing that fact seems unlikely to achieve anything.

<comment><USER3> Authors will be wary of striking a deal with Amazon if it loses them the biggest retail market. The goal here isn't to make Amazon's books do poorly, it's to keep big name authors from signing up with Amazon in the first place.

I'm not saying it's the right decision, but it does have a strategy behind it.

<comment><USER4> Good point. I think authors will be especially wary because B&N not stocking the book presumably implies no book signings or other events promoting the book at any B&N.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first read this as any book that was sold by Amazon, but it's just the 'Amazon Press'.

While it might be somewhat of a big deal for the authors involved, it probably won't be much of an issue for anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER6> in other news, Chevy dealers refuse to sell F150s and Apple stores refuse to sell Galaxy Tabs

<comment><USER7> Amazon stocks B&N published books.

<comment><USER8> Amazon pushes for exclusivity in its own ebook contracts, preventing B&N from stocking certain ebooks.

Seems like an appropriate response to me.</comment></comment></comment>


A kid's PC for $25 to encourage programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-19-raspberry-pi-a-tiny-pc-that-costs-GBP10

<comment><AUTHOR> See also here: [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/raspberry- pi-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/raspberry-pi-computer)</comment>


Project Loon - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/loon/- <comment><USER2> Be interesting if mobile phone companies developed these to deploy temporarily in areas that have broken/destroyed cell towers after (or during) natural disasters.</comment>


What We Learned from a Year of Americans 'Risking It' Without Insurance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-28/what-we-learned-from-a-year-of-americans-risking-it-without-insurance <comment><USER2> I've tried to understand the circumstances _preventing_ socialized medicine in america. I understand there are arguments against socialized medicine, but they make no sense to me on their face (eg. the idea that long wait times would occur, when wait times for USA and wait times for other first world countries with socialized medicine isn't very differe. The idea that socialized medicine would cause less medicine research and advancements, when increasingly medicine advancements are coming from countries with socialized medicine- the US seems to be falling behind in this respect.)

Could someone explain to me this phenomenon? I struggle because I do not want to believe the easy, dehumanizing position that 'the people who do not believe what I believe are just too stupid to know I am right'.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by socialized medicine?

If you mean government required and subsidized, like the systems of France and Germany, which have great healthcare systems, that sounds _wonderful_.

If you mean single-payer healthcare, like Canada and the UK, screw that disaster.

<comment><USER2> What makes single-payer healthcare, like Canada and the UK, a disaster? I'm from Canada and currently live in the US. I don't have many complaints about the canadian healthcare system. I got a suprise bill yesterday in the US healthcare system for routine bloodwork.

<comment><USER4> I'll second that. Due to a couple of significant illnesses growing up my family would have been bankrupted two times over if we lived in the US. Also, when one of my parents passed after a couples months of hospitalization, emergency room visits and an ambulance ride, they didn't owe a single loonie (Canadian dollar coin) for the care.

If it was the US, my bereaved parent would not only owe thousands but they would have to be on guard to verify the accuracy of each bill, negotiate with the provider and then setup a payment plan stretching into infinity.

The US healthcare system is another area where capitalism and the 'free market' is failing the consumer.

Frankly, when I hear see someone stridently decrying socialized medicine or single-payer healthcare I wonder if their tune would change after their first medically induced bankruptcy or not being able to afford medication that would keep them alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, being used to Belgian healthcare... This article really makes America look primitive.

We pay a lot of taxes, but at least I don't have to worry about money, if i would get severely sick.

Eg.

\- A checkup at the doctor ( blood) costs 2€, results within 24 hours.

\- Additional costs are required upfront by law. If I'm not mistaken, you can't even get an estimate on the US.

<comment><USER6> What's the cost of a checkup at the doctor for a foreign tourist? (who I assume will get results also within 24h, and be informed about upfront costs if it's the law)

What's the medican income in Belgium? In the US?

I just don't understand how people in HN of all place complain about the costs of healthcare. I believe America has a better system, especially if you are in the hacker mindset (and with IT salaries!). Just fly to wherever, and get treated for a great price and quality.

And that's not specific to the US. I've heard Eastern Europe provides great dentistry services and that even Western Europeans fly there to get treated.

Medecine is a business just like any other. If your local shop tries to screw you, take your business elsewhere

<comment><USER7> You're basically saying "fuck you, I got mine".

Yes, medicine is a business, an industry, and obeys the same rules as other businesses.

But the goods it produces, "healthcare", are not like other goods. Demand is infinite, supply is scarce, and on a national level it makes sense to make sure it is distributed on a needs basis instead of a can-afford basis, because that leads to a healthier and more productive population, which is good for everyone.

<comment><USER6> > it makes sense to make sure it is distributed on a needs basis

"to everyone according to their needs" \- that reminds me of some political movement!

Joke aside, I just disagree. It is not the "FYGM" you said. It is reasoning about the problem. Some countries have higher costs. Some have lower cost. Specialization of labor is wonderful - everyone gets richer, even if a country has a net advantage in productivity in all sectors. That's economic 101.

There is no reason for healthcare supply to be scare. It takes money. Instead of spending thousands of dollars in the US (or your Euros in Belgium), spend them in another country where it cost less.

It will also create incentive to build more healthcare supply there -- good for the residents of this country, and good for you too.

<comment><USER5> It's cheap enough in Belgium, I can stay here.

Others won't go broke even, since the social system supports this...

That's the entire discussion of the article...

I don't even understand how your can also use Belgium wrong, in using it as an argument...

Your previous comment related "common healthcare" to IT-salaries, last time I checked, this isn't anywhere related.

None of your arguments make any sense.

Did you even read anything? All your arguments prove that the US healthcare is flawed, so I don't know why you are even arguing with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This might be a bit of a tangent, but I'll throw in my perspective as one of those who has been "risking it" for the last 4 months or so. (I won't go into why I'm risking it unless asked)

I think it's difficult for a lot of people to justify paying a lot for things that don't provide much of a tangible/measurable benefit. Ideally, insurance would cover a person if something catastrophic happens, but otherwise it's difficult for the human mind to believe it's not essentially setting money on fire when they pay for things that don't have an immediate return. This is probably true now more than ever given our culture of immediate gratification.

Someone might feel better about paying for insurance(aka health care) if they believed they were actually being taken care of today by the dollars being spent _today_. What I mean is that I know of almost nobody who has anything good to say about any aspect of the health care system; everyone seems to have to shop through several doctors to find one who knows what they're talking about, after having spent maybe 5 minutes with doctors a-piece before being sent home with a prescription for what the doctor concludes to be a textbook diagnosis. Many people complain that doctors don't listen to them, and I can attest to this myself having had doctors completely ignore my evidence that I have a specific genetic condition that can be traced to my grandfather who has the identical symptoms(as one example). A friend of mine with a chronic pain issue(I'm talking severe) regularly has to deal with doctors and healthcare staff not doing their jobs whether it's not refilling prescriptions when they said they would, not returning phone calls, failing to communicate with pharmaceutical firms, telephone ping pong caused by nobody knowing who has the authority to do what, nobody can tell you what the price for a treatment will be, etc. It's often chaos. And we're supposed to pay thousands a year for that shit?

People need to have faith in what they're putting their money towards. If someone doesn't have faith that the health care system actually cares for them, they're more likely to not pay for it out of spite and take the risk when they have to. Those with a lot of money and well established careers might have the time and resources to navigate the bullshit, but many people don't.

<comment><USER9> I know this has to do with health insurance, but I feel the same with auto insurance as well. It still feels like burning money. For example, I've been paying about $120/month for car insurance since I was 18, give or take. Never been in an accident. That's about $14k I've given to an insurance company for literally doing nothing.

<comment><USER10> And then when you do need it?

I was hit by a driver 6 weeks ago. He and insurance company accepted 100% liability. My 2015 Audi was totalled due to multiple airbag deployments (though the vehicle is largely intact other than frame, so will be healthily recouped by the insurer on the parts market).

Despite this...

I got a settlement offer from my insurer (who, bear in mind, are going to subrogate this to the opposing side) of $5K less than KBB for the vehicle (which was bought a year old, and is now 3 years into a 5 year loan), and $3K short of my outstanding loan (don't even start me on gap insurance - I've never seen that pay out, there's always a loophole).

So the insurer's idea of indemnifying me, mitigating my risk is for a 0% fault accident, I:

1) lose my car, which was in excellent condition, and barely 4 years old;

2) lose 3 years of equity in a five year loan;

3) do not have a car;

4) still owe my bank ~$3,000;

5) need to come up with a down-payment and a new loan for a vehicle within 7 calendar days of their (pitiful) settlement offer.

All the while getting condescending remarks like:

"Gap insurance would have protected you" (not in my experience, and my credit union 'neither recommended nor required it based on the FMV at purchase', and the only reason there's a deficit is your woefully inadequate settlement offer)

"We're looking after you - remember we've been paying your medical bills so far" (how ominous, "so far") - and I've been paying for a policy which included PIP for nearly a decade, so you'll forgive me for not lauding you fulfilling your contractual obligations _for which you have been compensated_.

To add insult to injury? They direct debited my premiums, including for the vehicle they totaled, and I had to explain this to a CSR. Who then said they'd take the amount they'd erroneously debited, and "apply it as a credit across the remaining 7 months of your policy on your other vehicle". No, thank you, I just want you to refund it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think more and more that the Medicare For All movement makes sense. If people want more, then they can buy additional insurance, but otherwise the basics are covered. I can also deal with long waits for elective treatment as long as I know that an accident or serious illness won't bankrupt me.

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem I see is that even if ACA was "working as intended," it would still be an incomplete solution.

We buy off our state marketplace, but can only afford bronze tier plans with the subsidy. All plans are the same at low tiers, and all make you pay the deductible before the insurance company pays a dime (not counting "negotiated discounts," which are completely invisible until after the bill is generated)

That means we're not really signing up to be able to go the doctor, but to not go bankrupt in case of major illness. We buy insurance only to cap our risk at the annual out-of-pocket max. That we get a "free" physical is just a consolation prize.

I think a lot of people don't see it that way. As others said, most people see it as money wasted if they don't get sick. And that's a problem.

I don't blame the ACA for our issues in the USA, I blame everyone in the government who worked tirelessly to ensure insurance companies can continue to tax our doctor visits for shareholder returns.

We need Medicare For All. No one should have to skip going to the doctor because the insurance requires $6k-$8k of blood money before they start performing their function and paying for healthcare, or even let us pay "just" a co-pay.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Keith and Diana Buchanan of North Carolina gave up their expensive health insurance this year, and bought a Bowflex exercise machine. Keith said he got into the best shape of his life: "A lot of it is a result of knowing that we're going to have to take care of our own health a little better," he said." Unfortunately, being in shape doesn't prevent so many health conditions.

</comment><comment><USER14> No insurance from my job since I'm freelance. It's $900/month for me and my wife.

<comment><USER15> I am in the same boat. Me and my wife had Kaiser Bronze for 750 a month. Recently my wife had to go to emergency and we were billed 6000ish because emergency room services are not 100 percent covered. It would have been more but our out of pocket Max was reached. This is northern Cal.

When we were in the ER I was too panicked to ask any questions regarding pricing for any recommended tests or if it was necessary. Later when we were billed I asked them to send an itemized bill. There was not much I could understand from the bill. We ended up setting up a monthly plan to pay the hospital bill.

<comment><USER14> I couldn't keep up with the payments in 2018. I lost my coverage in August and got lucky. I cant afford to go to the dentist even when I still had my insurance. I have a broken tooth, a cracked crown and probably 3 cavities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have the best insurance money can buy: a plane ticket to %anycountry (business class if needed)

Cost of emergency endoscopic shoulder surgery in a private for-profit hospital in France, when totally uninsured, and paying by credit card: 1900 Eur - including anesthesiologist fee, surgeon fee, facility fee, radiology, drugs, private room etc. So around $2200 total, done the same day, after being arranged by phone. It was in France just because I couldn't do that in Thailand (great hospitals and food, like France, but also great beaches during recovery)

Add plane ticket + out of pocket costs, divide by 12: about $200/month, 0 deductible - and $0 for the years I don't need anything.

Alternative options for the risk averse: purchase local insurance in %anycountry, all inclusive. Cost of health insurance in Europe for non residents: around $70 per month. Just pay, and get treated in that country if you need it. Of course, you still need the plane ticket to fly there.

Still getting treated abroad is way way way cheaper than the alternatives.

Am I risking it? No. I'm making an educated decision.

<comment><USER16> That's a good idea, but what if you cannot travel because of your health?

<comment><USER6> Not travelling because of some pain? Painkillers + business class.

Not travelling because I'm unconscious or in a critical condition? Foreign insurance + air repatriation.

Some countries do sell that, even to non residents. Just get world coverage - it's a bit more than $70, but if something bad happen, you get med evac'ed to that country and treated there.

I'm exploring that option as I discover the wonder of medical tourism.

<comment><USER16> Thanks, that's really surprising...not the stiff upper lip...but the repatriation.

I thought it's only for people with residence + VIP client in a bank or something.

<comment><USER17> Rega offers the service for 25.- a year iirc

[https://www.rega.ch/en/about- us/faq.aspx?kid=56&gid=250#Frag...](https://www.rega.ch/en/about- us/faq.aspx?kid=56&gid=250#Frage451)

<comment><USER5> > If travellers have a medical problem while they are abroad.

Just when you are travelling with them in the first place... Not for this use- case, where your fall ill in your home country.

And, nothing there says they will pay you back fully.

<comment><USER17> Rega is not a traveling agency. It's an air ambulance company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A health insurance startup with a medical tourism option to Cuba, Canada, or India would be a promising venture, for sure.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find this so strange and confusing. A healthy society is a productive society that pays taxes.

I'm also from Belgium, and this feels so retarded. And what's even stranger is that some people in America even support this system. Wtf?

</comment><comment><USER20> I need to get out of here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been "risking it" since my last job in 2009. I've had remarkably good health so it hasn't been much of an issue.

Even when I had great insurance and used it with all the correct providers and plans and centers there was still always some issue that would lead to insane bills for every minor visit. I've known two separate people who had good health insurance and skilled well paying jobs and they still got completely wiped out by medical bills and eventually decided to eliminate the six figures of debt by sticking a 12 gauge barrel in their mouth.

It's not really "insurance" if you're getting screwed with massive bills anyway. Call it something else, whatever label you choose the system seems to have stopped working.</comment>


Show HN: Nominal, a to-do list, habit tracker, and notes app - <AUTHOR> https://www.nominal.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I have been working on Nominal the past year and am hoping I could get some feedback/critique on the product, especially the design and business side of things as those aren't my strengths.

This is a solo project, a side hustle / lifestyle business. I originally built it to solve my own problem and have decided to open it up to the public. I intend to keep it alive as long as my (currently low) hosting costs are covered.

Nominal is a progressive web app, accessed through the web but available on mobile through Add to Homescreen with "native-like" features (currently only using service worker cache and push notifications).

This is the first paid SaaS that I have ever built on my own. There are a lot of options in this space, but I feel there might be a small niche of users like myself interested in a small paid for app that respects user privacy and data ownership.

Thanks for your time!

</comment><comment><USER2> I just started using a todo list app a few weeks ago. I started with any.do but I didn't care for the UX. I am on todoist now, and it works well but I'm not married to it. I do like how I can enter "every X days" in the due date to make a recurring task. It is very natural.

I haven't signed up for yours yet, but I might. Your UI looks good...Simple and clean. I like that.

My only hesitation is that I really like how todoist has an android app. I have a widget on my homescreen and I can mark tasks as complete without any effort at all. They are also constant reminders of what I have to do.

If you ever get native phone apps/widgets I would be all over this. I might even be able to stop using Keep for note taking</comment>


Using the new theming API in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/12/using-the-new-theming-api-in-firefox/ <comment><USER2> No mention of modifying scroll bar... sigh...

I kinda hope they will do something about it one of these days.</comment>


Ask HN: Review our product Beacon - a hosted Comet push service with WebSockets - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
We just recently launched our product, Beacon. Beacon is a hosted service for real-time browser messaging using WebSockets (with optional long-poll fallback for older browsers). It removes the troubles of hosting, developing, debugging your own Comet solution. We sort out the browser compatibility issues, so developers don't have to.
Features: * Hosted Comet service with WebSocket support * Cross-browser compatible clients for all major browsers (including iPhone and Android) * Easy to embed, plain HTML/JS * Uses a plain REST+JSON API * Scalable and hosted on Amazon EC2 * No monthly fees, only pay for what you use
As everything on the web becomes "real-time", we think a service like this is really helpful. Perfect complement to PaaS-services like Google App Engine and Heroku.
Feedback from you HN readers would be very much appreciated. What are your thoughts and what could be made better? As Beacon still is in beta, you can sign-up for free and try it out.
http://beaconpush.com
Thanks, Carl over at beaconpush.com <comment><USER2> Looks like a pretty cool product, especially for those who want to add on small real-time features to their application but don't want to have to deal with evented servers/browser support/etc. I started looking into doing something very similar about a year ago based on having those exact needs actually (the project was eventually scrapped).

\- The cost is listed as per million messages - what happens if I deliver 900,000 messages, what am I charged (if anything)?

\- Care to share any details about your infrastructure?

\- Have you thought about writing (and open-sourcing) a simple demo app, such as a chat room, to give people an idea of how everything works together?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

1\. Right now we offer up to one million messages for free. After that, we charge per each initiated million messages delivered. Meaning, if you send 900 000 you will be charged for 1 MM. Much how Amazon bills hours on EC2.

2\. Well, sure. Our endpoint server (where all browsers connect) is written in Java. We're using the Netty framework, which we are incredibly happy with. Highly recommend it for doing high-performance networking in Java. Also, using the JVM instead of, say node.js, makes it very easy to utilize all our CPUs.

The user-facing website is implemented in our own framework called Planet. Developed in-house using Python with focus on real-time web sites. Both Beacon and Planet share the same underlying push technology and we have some major customers using it. You can read more about it at <http://www.esn.me>

The REST API is also implemented in Python and coordinates the message sending among our end-point servers. It's quite simple actually, just 200 lines of code.

3\. Sounds like a good idea. It's just a few lines of code that's needed to integrate it. But yeah, a simple chat app hosted on GitHub would be helpful for newcomers.

\-- Carl

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are a number of similar services available and this is certainly something that should become commonly used over the next few months and years.

Other services are PusherApp, PubNub, Kwwika, Hookbox and WebSync on demand. I'm sure that more services will also pop-up over the next few years.

If you don't want to use a service you can always download, install and maintain your own comet server - but the whole point in a service such as this is that it removes the pain of doing it.

I've also heard rumours that Google App Engine will be adding native support for this. I believe Google already use the technology for things like the real-time news JavaScript API.</comment>


Do messages get lost when Erlang modules are upgraded? - <AUTHOR> http://pankajmore.in/code-reloading-in-erlang.html

<comment><USER3> Hot code reloading is really amazing in Erlang. We use it to patch a method without restarting on a regular basis. Getting reltool properly configured to deploy the new version of your application though is a MAJOR pain in the ass.

for the non-erlangers:

the 'simple' way (ie i have a tiny change i want to make, so i'll just ssh in and do it) is to just edit your code, then attach to an existing node, and do make:all([load]) to pick up the code changes. we added a makefile "make attach" that does this for us.

the 'reltool' way is you package your application into releases. We use jenkins build numbers as the third digit in our releases, so each one is packaged into a zip, encrypted, and then is ready to deploy. at deploy time, the zip is copied to all machines, then we use some escript to attach to the running nodes, and use the 'release_handler' bring up the N+1 version of our app. it's a pain but once it's configured it's amazing...

<comment><USER4> Could you talk a little bit about what happens to processes which are running different versions of the code? Do you make your code backward compatible so that old processes continue to work with the new process? Or do you just let the old processes crash?

<comment><USER5> You can upgrade state in many cases if the changes are trivial, though depending on the ephemerality of a process you might let it finish or crash and restart instead of doing this.

<comment><USER4> So, in the worst case, for achieving basic code reloading in other erlang like systems(ex.- cloud haskell), we could let every process in the cluster crash and restart with the new version?

<comment><USER5> It's rarely "only crash" as that eventually bubbles up to being equivalent to a reboot. It's simply that you can have subsystems that do that in effective isolation if the effects of a reboot are minimal.

On the code state upgrade side there are usually a few different issues that can arise and I'd be very curious to hear if there are ways Haskell would handle some of these.

The first one is type changes. I might have a record that has a new field added. Now it's not necessarily pretty to upgrade on call with a pattern match or using a code upgrade protocol but it's easily expressed dynamically.

Another is in the interface, like adding new arguments or changing from a synchronous call to an asynchronous one. These are a bit easier to handle via indirection though they show that you'll need to plan your entry/exit points for upgrades carefully (again, OTP has things like gen_server which make this much easier).

If Haskell can manage to get past they type boundary issue then it's really a matter of supporting at least 2 simultaneous versions of code so each process can be scheduled and upgraded in natural course. Handling more than 2 could be of use depending on how aggressively you want to purge, for example, a local rather than fully qualified call can be caught in a closure and passed around as in some value to be called later. These long lived references will need to be handled carefully or you might get some delayed surprises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my very early years when discovering coding I remember fantasizing about a system where I could start my creation as very simple endless loop and add to it without having to stop it what ever would make up an application (... more a coding experiment in logo or basic it was at that time ;)

Fast forward almost 30 years: in Erlang light-weight processes are (most of the time) tail recursive functions handling messages... endless loops. Those light-weight processes are running those endless loops.

The described module upgrade functionality allows for uninterrupted system upgrades of servers/services in the back-end which btw. is often serious business in production and the cause of the reltool complexities.

BUT: the same hot code reloading system allows for very sleek development experience. You start your first version of the service and from there on update the source and the service changes its behavior most of the time with no restart, no lost state etc. (with the help of some monitoring tools source changes can be picked up automagically...)

This kind of dev-environment is simply flow-inducing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty far from what other frameworks and systems can even dream about. Not everyone needs this but when they do need it, I only know about Erlang that can handle it.

<comment><USER8> I have to say "when one REALLY-REALLY-REALLY-REALLY BADLY need it". Because the same effect can be achieved by different means most of the time.

<comment><USER7> How? You have a C++ or Java object instance running in a process how do you upgrade that code without restarting the process?

<comment><USER9> I imagine you would do what erlang does for you, just manually - <USER2> individual server instances, do the update, then make them public again.

Say for example you are updating code in your service's web-tier. Have your LBs not send any more new traffic to the server instance, wait some reasonable length of time until existing connections are completed, deploy, restart, give LBs the A-OK to start traffic up again. Repeat until all web-tier instances are updated.

<comment><USER7> Ok but what if that server you isolated was holding a long run process. Yes for a web service that serves quick http request and responses you could do that. Not everything is short lived request and response messages. Some sessions and processes are long lived. So you have a socket open and data streaming into it, it is not easy to isolate it. You could say send it a message that says -- start isolating.

How do you hotswap with data held in the stack or the heap? Even more if two part of your code need updated instance data, how does it ensure that update is synchronous or happens in the right order? In Java they have a $transformer() method. Ok how do you regulate the order in which $transformer() gets called. Otherwise a new version of one instance will call an old version of another.

I am not saying it is impossible to do it, there might be a way, but it is just usually working against the framework and against the default setup of the system.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it can get very complicated trying to handle all the edge cases as you described. I would guess doing it the same way erlang does it is actually the simplest: let it crash.

This gets into coding mindset, my impression is that most erlang programmers expect their code to crash whereas most other languages seem to lend themselves to expecting the program _not_ to crash.

I am not very well versed in erlang but my readings so far imply that the graceful handling of crashes is really where erlang/OTP shines. Regardless of the framework, I would say it comes down to proper queuing, being able to safely retry work, and to some extent having some smarts on the clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a little confused by the title as it implied a relationship between a process's message box and some module which is not the case.

The article does at least demonstrate that processes can transition between two versions of the same code w/o resetting state, which is, at its core, the very thing that makes code upgrades remotely practical.

Other comments mention some more sophisticated machinery like release upgrades. Erlang also has many code upgrade options baked into the OTP as well. I make use of many of these features both during development but also in production with some careful review. I'm always disappointed when going back to a system that has to "reboot" itself after getting used to hot upgrades and distributed erlang (version discrepancies in a cluster can present a similar problem if you don't want to pause your system).

<comment><USER4> The title is confusing! It should have been "Do messages get lost during code reloading in erlang?"

In a prod env, how do you make sure that different versions of your code coexist peacefully?

<comment><USER10> You can have multiple sets of instructions for the same function but indicate that only one should be active. This makes it easy to rollback a deploy for example. Also, when you do a live upgrade, there must be at least two versions exposed to the VM at one point before the switch occurs.

Easy hot code reloading is one of the great benefits from CSP.</comment></comment></comment>


Slides from my Game Developers Conference talk - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/uncategorized/slides-from-my-game-developers-conference-talk/

<comment><USER2> I recently got an Oculus Rift Dev Kit (just yesterday in fact). The two things I immediately noticed were the "judder" Abrash describes, and more importantly, the lack of translation. Oculus is working on translation, but if they cannot get it in place the product will not work; I got motion sickness very quickly because of the lack of translation. Also, needless to say the resolution is really bad but will get better in the consumer version. It was the best VR I have yet experienced, but I was not really blown away like many reviewers were -- interestingly the only person I ever heard sound hesitant about it was Carmack, who noted that it still had a long ways to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt the submitter is Michael Abrash, so an edit of the title might be nice: "[Michael Abrash's]"

</comment><comment><USER4> Any ideas on how to view this on the web? Google Docs chokes on it.</comment>


Faster Ruby Gem installs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stevensoroka.ca/2010/04/06/faster-ruby-gem-installs

<comment><USER2> _To turn these off, modify your ~/.gemrc file and add the line: gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri_

Great tip. I sometimes remember to add these while I'm typing gem install..., but most of the time I forget, so this will help.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually use my local rdoc all the time.

I followed this guide <http://alkesh.vaghmaria.com/2009/07/offline-gem- server/> to have a local rdoc server running through passenger (so I don't have to run gem server manually).

This is great for working offline, and it also means that the docs are always usign sdoc, which is a great template which allows for good searching. >90% of projects have crap rdoc templates.

I do agree that building ri is a waste of time, though.

<comment><USER4> If you install your gems without rdoc on, you can just use open_gem (<http://github.com/adamsanderson/open_gem>) to build the rdocs on the fly with `gem read <gemname>`

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a sysadmin (who did a lot of gem installs on production for the devs) rather than a Ruby guy, I didn't know this was a tip. I always figured everyone wanted this stuff, and I was the odd one out. Besides, no one should be reading rdoc on the production machines anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> I prefer mine in /etc/gemrc</comment>


Ask HN: Interaction programming - <AUTHOR>

What would programming process and languages look like if the only way to reflect on a piece of code would be to interact with it? No interfaces, no objects. Sure, message passing, but without knowledge of what's on the other end nor what it likes to receive. Sort of like rumor-exploration framework. My thinking is to send test messages to explore, to reply with informative messages to test requests. But those are just example, primitive cases. <comment><USER2> Can you please elaborate, possibly with examples?

If I understand you correctly, are you asking for something other than reflection, runtime querying (a la XSLT) and heirarchy traversal (DOM)?

If you think of your "system" as a graph objects that can be traversed; you can require a few messages to be built into a every object, likeconstructors, toString, and generic type-conversion for type-pairs. You can even encode full type description of messages and their arguments, using an schema language XSD, exactly like SOAP does.

Gaaah, I hate underspecified problems that sound interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I overspecified the problem. I'm looking for ways to deal with maximum ignorance, because if you can deal with ignorance of the outside that means you have achieved independence. Dependencies specification is so popular today and I want something quite the opposite. There's bloat of dependencies, but there's bloat in independence as well. How would you deal with the bloat of independence?

<comment><USER2> I think for this to be a discussion, and not, say, an exercise for me to guess what you're thinking, you would need to explain yourself better and give concrete examples.</comment></comment></comment>