Did Texas execute an innocent man? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

<comment><USER2> Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time.

This is a more straightforward read: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham>

<comment><USER3> How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

<comment><USER4> The death penalty is far to permanent of a punishment to be wielded by organizations with such high false positive rates. We wouldn't put up with it with an anti-virus program or a SMART-esque hardware monitoring program, why do we put up with it when the price is not a few easily replicated digital files or some computer hardware, but rather an innocent persons _life_.

Capital punishment in it's current form is not a deterrence to crime, it doesn't fix the problems caused by the crimes it is punishing for (it doesn't bring back the murdered, etc), it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life without parole, and innocents have died at the hands of overzealous police, judges, politicians, and public opinion. So the question then becomes, why do it?

<comment><USER5> > it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life > without parole

Do you have a source to back that up?

<comment><USER6> 5 seconds with Google would have given you <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty> which links to multiple sources that have looked into the issue and found that the additional cost of prosecuting the death penalty is significantly more than life without parole. The amount of difference varies with jurisdiction and the methodology of the study, but the differences support the claim.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. I was on my iPhone and about to go to bed. It was an interesting claim and I wanted to know if it was founded or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I used to support the death penalty until I realized the government can't even run the Post Office." - my father, Moshe Yudkowsky

</comment><comment><USER8> That's the most outrageous, devilish thing that can and eventually had happened or will happen with death penalty. Someday, we will know we killed an innocent man, and in that day we will ALL be murderers. We all being murderers, we should all be sentenced to death (the Death Penalty Paradox).

<comment><USER9> Technically we would all be accomplices to murder (after all it is quite hard to find a not-Orient-Express scenario in which more than a couple of people kill another one), which does not usually get the death penalty, so paradox is avoided. I do agree with you, though :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of the people that contributed to his execution with their b.s. science and swayed testimony need to be severely punished IMO. Maybe a prison sentence will deter these "experts" from claiming their findings are 100% correct without some sort of scientific proof.

This reminds me of a similar story I read recently about bite mark experts being used in murder investigations... just like these arson experts, they had no scientific proof of anything they concluded. People were still convicted of rape and murder based on their "expert" testimony.

<comment><USER11> I thought the quote near the beginning of the article about how the death penalty proves the sanctity of life gave a pretty good solution to the "problem" of the death penalty:

Anyone who, either knowingly or negligently, contributes to the execution of any person later found innocent, is guilty of murder punishable by death.

Now, who wants to be the first to help put someone on death row?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just based on the title, I'd have to say "more probable than any other state". I should probably have flagged this article, but 'eh.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Me and Stacy's been together for four years, but off and on we get into a fight and split up for a while and I think those babies is what brought us so close together . . . neither one of us . . . could live without them kids."

Did Stacy have jealous boyfriend or secret admirer? She did work at a bar. Murdering Stacy's partner Willingham and their kids could bring them a step closer. Maybe someone was targeting Stacy. Who knows?

The system went for the dad because he was an easy target, and so the system could then move on.</comment>


A cry for help - <AUTHOR>

This is my cry for help.
Browsing HackerNews I read about geniuses creating the most amazing, seamless, intuitive tools year after year in the start-up scene. The results are absolutely astonishing, and frankly otherworldly, to a person like me.
I then close my browser window and begin my work in medical research, attempting to shed light on healthcare outcomes - how to change our current practices to be more evidence-based and directed toward the concerns of the patient. More often than not this research requires of me to look in 7 different places in 3 or 4 separate electronic medical records databases for something as simple as the time a surgery starts (This is at a single institution). It is this way for many reasons, the most relevant of which is that there exists no tool today that addresses the concerns of those taking part in every element of the healthcare delivery process, and so we're left with each element picking their own favorite tool and gluing them together as best we can.
In this day and age we have more data than we know what to do with, and sadly even if we knew what to do with it (And many of us have some great ideas) an army of people would be required just to figure out where the data are at. My cry for help is probably not going to do much - we all know how confusing this system can be, even if we're not in the healthcare field - my hope is simply that all of you with this unique gift of being able to create amazing things with programming will at least give this huge problem a second thought.
If this problem were tackled you and your team will have helped millions of people receive superior healthcare delivery, and will have indirectly saved some lives in the process. <comment><USER2> I associate with you!

At one of my last startups that I was employed at, I implemented a system that would provide one place for all types of lookups a front-desk person would want to have. This included integration with business searches for places like pharmacies etc., healthcare code systems like RVUs, LCDs, NCDs, NPIs, etc. with the end goal to save time to lookup - as well as cross-link similar data between these datasets. We gave the online access to this system for free in the hope that customers would buy our patient eligibility solution. Alas, after 5 years of constant living in the shadows of pre-established institutions (hospitals) the investors gave up fiscal support; the startup was no more.

Your cry for help can IMO be addressed by "think like a or even become a programmer", I say this because once you've programmed to solve your need, you can share your solution with others. I did not have this privilege in the healthcare space because of licensing restrictions that say AMA would impose.

For other HN readers (who knows some might be working at Dr Chrono or some such place), know that the healthcare system is rich with data lookups that mean a lot semantically. Yes you may not understand these independent data points, but there is immense value for the curators of these codes CMS, AMA and other health care agencies to defining the interfaces between them to simplify management.

Oh by the way.. USA is still on ICD-9-CM standard, whereas the rest of the world uses ICD10. I don't know when but from a governance standpoint, there's a hard date that all healthcare systems should honor ICD10 codes by that date.

So healthcare integrator's.. you may have a decent chance in this migration to assist with making improvements!

I'm not a business hacker, but really the disparity in 2012 in the healthcare scene exists because there isn't a business hack that can convince ceo's of health care institutions that profits can be made with a new way of thinking. I am observing and reporting what I have thus far witnessed first hand from the front-office and back office operations of some organizations that work in the healthcare industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a tough problem, but it's going to need more than just 3 engineers in a garage.

The type of project you're describing requires domain expertise - lots of domain expertise. It's not just about solving the problem from a technical standpoint, its about penetrating countless, complicated bureacracies with sales teams that have maneuvered that space before.

The reason that your software sucks is that the purchasing decision is not made by the person using the software. Facebook, Twitter, Google and the other great success stories of the digital age all counted on providing a great user experience to the end user in order to win their markets. But enterprise healthcare is not like that. Enterprise healthcare does not require great software, it requires great sales teams. The quality of the user experience is not a high priority to the either the company developing the software or the company buying the software.

It leads me to think that the way to penetrate this market is to get the individual patients more involved. An iPad app that allows you to chart your own medical history could make a lot of sense. If a nurse comes in to give you a short of morphine, and you put into your iPad that you're about to receive a shot of morphine, and the iPad screams because you just had a shot of morphine an hour ago, then that could be a way to solve a lot of problems in healthcare.

But, sadly, not your problem.

<comment><USER4> If you can actually get the potential users clamoring for your software, that can certainly make the sales team's job easier. It's a higher bar before you start even having an impact, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you provide some specific pain points ? Is it just the fact that there are several silo databases or records but there is no single centralized repository of EMR ? The question is: what is the incentive for a medical instituion to adopt such system ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Found this on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129306></comment>


Super Mario Bros Crossover - Flash Game - <AUTHOR> http://supermariobroscrossover.com/

<comment><USER2> I do love playing these, Kongregate is one of my bookmarks, but I don't think HN is the place.

Unless it's about a very interesting take on the Game of Life, I don't think Flash games belong here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Epic.</comment>


Customer interviews as a service. What's your thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://clientcrowd.com

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr

Here it is: [http://clientcrowd.com](http://clientcrowd.com)

What's your opinion?

Long version:

Assumptions

Entrepreneurs want to interview customers personally but they would rather like to spend their time on something else than finding people fitting the profile, and that would agree to an interview, then arranging each interview, and then organizing the output.

Ideally, they would like to have interviews in batches, so that they could for example clear one afternoon to do just that.

I can see two scenarios: starting with a customer profile spec or with a list of customer contacts. I'm not sure what is more common.

Assumptions about the audience

1) Early adopters and lean proponents (smaller segment, easier to reach out) Entrepreneurs familiar with the lean startup / customer development and appreciating customer interviews.

2) "what business to start" (adwords phrase) (larger segment, harder to convey the value of the solution) Entrepreneurs not recognizing value in 1 on 1 interviews. If interested in learning about their customers, they would choose anonymous surveys and marketing research publications over other, more involving methods.

Anyone out there feeling arranging customer interviews is a problem they don't want to deal with, and would be willing to get interviewed by me on Skype about it?

What's your thoughts about the idea and the assumptions?</comment>


Startup founders are building companies on WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/13/startup-founders-are-building-companies-on-whatsapp/ <comment><USER2> The Chinese government is essentially building a private Internet that they can fully control and censor when needed.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for Mentoring a Coder? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine asked me to mentor him. He started coding PHP several years ago and is now doing Ruby-on-Rails. He loves coding (like most of us) but doesn't have the foundational knowledge of algorithms, data-structures, and computer architecture.
I'd like to help him get started on that foundation in a way that's fun. Originally I thought we'd go through SICP together - the book and lectures are both freely available and the fact that it came out of the freshman lecture series at MIT make me think it might be a good place to start. On the other hand, it seems like it might be a little too much for the time we'll have (roughly an hour a week together and whatever time we spend working through it on our own). The "Little Schemer" seemed like it might be a good alternative, but I haven't read it so I don't know.
I'd love to hear recommendations for engaging books that introduce some of the more foundational CS topics while not straying too far from the actual writing of code. Or, if you think some other format would be more beneficial, please let me know. An alternative idea I had was to give a coding problem (for example, "Sort this list") and then work on refining it together while examining the runtime attributes.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I found this today and am going to take the course as a refresher. It's a crunchcourse for SICP, all free. And since other folks will be doing the same thing, it seems like it may have an active community paced along with it.

I work with another guy who has an EE MS, but is going to code for our startup (he's a cofounder). So we're going to do this course together, so that I can help bring him up to speed. Essentially, I'll be his more experienced study buddy, but there will still be a forum I can go to when I have questions.

URL: [http://www.crunchcourse.com/class/structure-and- interpretati...](http://www.crunchcourse.com/class/structure-and- interpretation-of-comp/2010/jan/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks really cool, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thanks for the link!</comment>


What is __all__ the fuss with importing `*` in Python? - <AUTHOR> http://shahriar.svbtle.com/__all__-the-fuss-with-import-star

<comment><USER2> How come _private_function is available in your 4th listing while it wasn't mentioned in __all__?</comment>


Ask HN: What can DevOps learn from the recent DDoS attacks? - <AUTHOR> Think about it...thousands if not millions of devices on different networks, hardware, OS, patches being made to act in unison by some hacker code...
Meanwhile, it sometimes takes many tries to install a simple docker daemon properly using Ansible, Chef or Puppet over a corporate network, having all the necessary permissions, on a perfectly standardized set of hosts.
What can we learn from the setup which made this DDoS attack possible to improve our daily DevOps tasks?
OK...yes...and security. <comment><USER2> DevOps is for web companies. Or at least companies who have devs AND ops (whatever they are called).

A pure hardware firm have no 'operations' in the strict sense. They don't produce systems, they don't require sysadmins. [There are guys to buy desktop computers and handle the active directory but that's really a different thing].

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, my thoughts were more along the lines of the malicious software somehow needs to make it onto the infected host and then must be reliably controlled.

How do you write/test scripts which are so reliable to work across all the different types of devices, networks, OS etc which participated in this attack? To infect and control this many devices your code must be rock solid.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to care that it works perfectly everywhere. It only needs to work well enough on enough devices to get the effect you want.

5 nines of uptime isn't the goal :)</comment></comment></comment>


I challenge you to take a month off this year - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/9a473e871454/ <comment><AUTHOR> My wife and I took off 8 months last year. I like the approach of a month or maybe a bit more. If you're good at your job and have a good employer, they'll figure out what to do to keep you happy.

Eight months was a bit much for us, so we're planning to try a 1-1.5 month trip at some point. My boss was very receptive to the idea.

<comment><USER2> I have to ask: how did you managed to take 8 months off? I can't think of any corporation that would allow this. Which leads me to guess you're not in the corporate world. Is that true?

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have been clearer. They didn't.

We saved for several years and let them know last spring that we'd be quitting. We had expected to travel longer than 8 months, so we had sold all of our stuff, including our house, and then quit our jobs.

Upon our return, my old boss (now at a different company) asked me if I wanted to come work for him.</comment></comment></comment>


We're doing HTTP right - <AUTHOR> http://fireteam.net/blog/were-doing-http-right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Last time someone submitted a draft of a blog post I accidentally published on my private blog titled "I'm doing HTTP wrong" about a talk I gave at PyGrunn 2012.

I since pulled that and rewrote it to better show what our infrastructure is actually like.

I'm more than happy to answer questions about that :-)

<comment><USER2> So, I am just about writing something that would describe my REST API (possibly generate handlers from description) and integrate very nicely with Sphinx for docs, and I can see (on slides) you already have something like that. Am I right? Do you plan to share something like that? Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we have something for that but it's customized for our type system. But I think I could probably write.something up about Sphinx customization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love that the tl;dr is at the bottom. Humor intended, I hope.

</comment><comment><USER4> The tl;dr should go at the top!

</comment><comment><USER5> Fireteam website looks nice!</comment>


Supreme Court Has Ruled; Now Games Have a Duty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/arts/video-games/what-supreme-court-ruling-on-video-games-means.html?hp

<comment><USER2> I absolutely agree with this. Video Games are certainly as much of an art form as literature or film. The stuff about banning the sale of games to minors is somewhat useless as the ESRB(although it has many of its own issues) rates games and any game declared to be too graphic gets an M rating and can only be bought by an 1y year old or older.</comment>


Best place to launch a company? Not the valley anymore... - <AUTHOR> https://poutsch.com/

<comment><USER2> I was actually surprised by where the link you shared led to. I found it was a great idea ! Just a comment though: on your homepage it reads (at the bottom): debate answers, ask questions, view analytics. It would seem more logical to me to reverse "debate" and "ask". Although I understand that you can debate existing answers, I still think it would make more sense ... Seems like a great product anyway !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is asking where you would go start a company, not where the best place to start a company is -- two different questions.

Also, SF/Silicon Valley is in the lead. "Other" includes NYC, Boston, Seattle, Boulder, Chile, Austin, Brazil, Israel, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rational people go where it's best no? But I agree with you the question could have been asked differently! Why don't you register and ask the question yourself? :)

<comment><USER4> most popular != best

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Poutsch is also a great way to ask the opinions of the community about your product!

</comment><comment><USER5> I can refresh the page and vote multiple times

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a feature inside poutsch that lets you cancel votes coming from users not logged. That way, you get a better picture

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How can you leave NYC out!!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very good question

<comment><USER6> Great question for us new entrepreneurs. Great platform</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mental barrier preventing earning more $$$ - <AUTHOR> Hi!
Does anyone have experienced this:
I could make about 3k - 5k per month with personal projects, but after more than 20 years developing digital products, I've never got to 10k/month for example. It's like a mental barrier. From the outside it seems I just got bored after a project is built and its running.
But internally I know there is something more. Like don't believe I really could make 10k or 20k / month.
Why do you think I cannot break this barrier? What would you recommend? <comment><USER2> Hate to sound like Zig Ziglar or Garyvee. Yet, you need to understand as a fact that you deserve that quantity of money. That even after 10k, 25k, 50k per month you are still underpaid.

Recently I read this quote by Jobs. "Everything around you that you call 'life' was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

I hope it helps to break that mental barrier.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also agree with Steve Jobs, and with you when you say that you have to "understand as a fact that".

For me it's enough to see someone that is doing it. If he can do it, I also can.

But I think there is also something related with imagination, knowledge, learnings. I cannot imagine the infrastructure a 100M business requires. I guess that is why so many ex-googlers or ex-amazon, after quitting, build great things. They have seen it before.

<comment><USER2> "I guess that is why so many ex-googlers or ex-amazon, after quitting, build great things". Yeah, that is true. You are your surroundings.

Yet, I believe you don't need to be brilliant to mix different services/skills to produce something high profitable.

I know success != quantity of money, but the person who I know has more of it is a guy that owns a zipper factory. Monthly, he sells millions of clothing zippers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are two types of people I believe. One is best in creating new stuff. The other is best at managing, running something. I see the same thing with me an my girlfriend. She always remembers to perform certain activities, but she will not easily think out of the box and do something else. I hate repeating activities, but I like to fix stuff or help here and there. She does not like new activities. This way we both can do the things we like and make the best of our qualities.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need a co-founder or a business partner / manager.

No need for someone fancy or connected. Sometimes a ham sandwich will do.

Separate yourself from the business. Build it, have someone else run it.

A business is not you, about you, or an extension of you.

<comment><USER5> What would be a typical compensation model if you build something and have someone else run it ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2 cents: there's a cap to earning if you are a 1 man shop and survive off low hanging fruit. the reason you can land those sales is you are charging little. you are charging little because that is what your skills demand - the skills you are marketing.

Change your skills AND clients. Its hard going from charging $1700 for a web widget that takes 1 day to do, to charging $17k for involved work. And the sales cycle for the latter is longer (1-2 months) vs a few days.

you can do it, you just need a new business model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one! THANKS

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Money is useful. To me, it is also one of the least interesting things to spend my time making. It requires thinking about the world in a rather dull way and doing rather dull things. YMMV, but that's how I think about my relationship to an analogous barrier.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but I think its interesting how everyone earns what HE has defined for himself to deserve. It's like Matrix. Your imagination build your world.

So, I'm not interested in making tons of money, I'm just interested on WHY I make 4k instead of $100 or 40k.

<comment><USER7> _I 'm not interested in making tons of money_

I was trying to say that is why.

<comment><AUTHOR> check mate

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you have a SaaS application watch this video by Jason Cohen. It's about reaching 10k/month. In short, he says to charge more, focus on businesses and not consumers, and to find 150 customers willing to pay $70/month. It's a realistic number where you can grind your way to finding 150 people by knocking on doors, sending emails, making calls, etc.

[https://vimeo.com/74338272](https://vimeo.com/74338272)

If you're referring to freelancing...

I remember watching Shark Tank (TV series where small businesses pitch to investors), and a lot of people would come on the show asking for 100-300k. When asked what they wanted to do with the money, it wasn't uncommon to hear they wanted to setup/update their website and online presence.

To me, that sounded absurd at the time. I'd be thinking in my head, they could setup a WordPress site in a couple of days, or grab some off-the-shelf shopping cart software and have it done for 1k. If they wanted something more customized, they could probably find a developer to do everything for less than 5k.

Then I realized they're a very small business, they're doing a million a year in sales, and their new site would be one of the most important aspects of their business that would directly impact their sales and how their business is perceived. 100k to set that up suddenly seemed very fair and reasonable. The outcome of that site could make or break their business. Why on earth would they only invest a few thousand into such a thing?

Or think about any small business with a dozen employees. They're spending a million a year on payroll. Is redeveloping their entire online identity and user experience worth a one time 100k expense? I think so.

Also, if you charge enough you can start bringing in outside help. For example, you're a programmer, but they also need a logo refresh on the project. If you're charging 100k, you can easily budget to bring in a designer that focuses on brand identity. You'll end up with higher quality work for your client, a better portfolio for your business, and in the future that'll allow you to quote higher rates. You can step back a bit into management and take on more work since you're not personally doing everything.

In short, recognize the value you're bringing to a business. Working closely with them over 6 months and building out a solution that helps them grow, reduces their headaches, streamlines their existing processes, and increase their revenue is very much worth 100k. If you're trapped in a bubble charging businesses 1k for a site you're never going to grow or produce the caliber of work you're capable of developing because you need to bang out one or two a week.</comment>


FeedBurner Finally Doesn't Suck - <AUTHOR> http://thinkvitamin.com/business/analytics/feedburner-finally-doesnt-suck/ <comment><USER2> The primary advantage of FeedBurner, for me, is the fact that it's an indirection between the RSS feed and the site. It meant that I could start with a blogspot blog, move it to a different domain, and ultimately transition to a different blogging stack, all the while not breaking subscribers.

The analytics were secondary. Google Analytics, while not specifically tailored for RSS feed usage models, still give a good picture of usage.

<comment><USER3> Also, the management of email subscriptions on top of RSS has been extremely valuable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using FeedBurner for years and am "sorta" locked in and the main value for me has been the value _others_ place in the subscriber counts. No matter how many pageviews I can demonstrate I get, the (inaccurate) subscriber count given by the official FeedBurner widget is a massive driver for my ad sales (which is odd, since the ads go on the site, not in the feed).

</comment><comment><USER5> My biggest issue with Feedburner is that the feed count seems erratic (and often inaccurate). After I post a new article to my blog, the Feedburner count sometimes jumps dramatically, and then within about 24 hours drops by 50% or more.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks better, but significantly less configuration functionality. Also, still no way to remove the ads in my feed that I've long since had turned off.

</comment><comment><USER7> When did it suck?</comment>


Your friends are lying to you. For $10, I wont. - <AUTHOR> http://brutalhonesty.io <comment><USER2> I, personally, cannot imagine any question to which I would get a more valuable answer from a 28-year-old software engineer in California interested in finance, men's fashion and weightlifting than I would get from my wife, family, friends and peers -- people who know me; whose lives actually overlap with mine in some way. What is "telling it like it is" if you don't share the same context? How likely is it he can pick up on something you should really know (like: "you interrupt women more often than you do men") if all he knows about you is what you've told him?

I imagine myself paying $10 and asking "hey, what do you think of my outfit tonight?" And he would kindly inform me that my chances of scoring (or whatever they call it these days) wearing these sandals, hiking pants (pull these zippers and they become shorts!) and grey kinda stretched-out long- sleeve t-shirt are next to zero. But my Friday night activity was going out with my wife, toddler & 5-year-old to have dinner with a bunch of retired English expats in the middle of nowhere in central France. I sat next to a guy who was a large-scale industrial engineer back in the 70s -- extracting helium & natural gas in communist Poland, in Iran when the Shah fell... And my little ones had great fun racing around and then choosing the winning tickets for the lottery.

But: there are plenty of people in this world (or at least in the more Californian parts of this world) who share his particular little slice of the human experience, who are a bit less far along than he is, perhaps, in figuring out who they are and who they want to be, and who have not yet built any meaningful friendships.

(It seems like it should go without saying: if you have built a meaningful relationship with someone who cares about you and has a bit of wisdom, they will find a way to tell you the things you need to know _with no brutality required_. You will also do this for them.)

<comment><USER3> He isn't trying to suggest this is a service which everyone will find useful or interesting. It actually takes a lot of honesty with yourself to even understand why you might need this service. Thousands of people every day make decisions on their own, or on the advice of others, which are badly informed decisions. This guy could help them.

For $10, he isn't going to send you a 5 word email and ignore you forever. He is going to have a reasonable dialogue pertaining to your question/concern. If you say "No bro, I am not looking to score" he will ask "OK, well what are your intentions? What is your actual concern with your outfit?"

<comment><USER4> Usually the consultants I pay or meet are much more expensive than $10.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure what the point of that comment is.

<comment><USER4> It is that people in any kind of business pay much more than $10 for quite bad advice. $10 is quite a small investment.

<comment><USER5> I'm usually willing to offer bad advice and uninformed opinions for free, so what is his competitive advantage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually an intriguing business idea. I believe that most of the upvotes the submission is getting here are genuine expressions of interest in a radically different idea. (It's also fun to make snarky comments about this submission.)

I won't be snarky here, but will suggest a news story of related interest. Journalist A. J. Jacobs turned on his full sense of humor as well as his honesty when he wrote a story for _Esquire_ magazine in 2007 about the "radical honesty" movement. The story's title gets him started: "I Think You're Fat."[1] When I read this story the first time, right after it was published, I laughed out loud and immediately shared it with my favorite online group of friends (this was pre-Facebook, for me). I shared it with a new group of friends this summer, and found out that they like the story too. Try it. I think you'll like it.

A guy who could take the business idea proposed in this thread and execute it with as much humor as A. J. Jacobs could become a millionaire.

[1] [http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707](http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707)

<comment><USER7> I think in this case we are dealing with a discrepancy between what people think they want, and what they actually want. I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of people try this once, but he might have trouble getting repeat clients and I have concerns about how helpful, outside the most narrow niche cases, this will be.

I'm a counselor, and going into the field I naively thought that straightforward evaluative statements were central to what therapists did. I thought that what people needed was "objective" feedback on their situations, and I thought myself ideally suited to providing it.

You can imagine my shock when I found out that "direct, reality-oriented feedback" is one of the most ineffective forms of intervention, and leads to a significant rise in client dropout. In other words, people don't like to be judged, however politely or compassionately, and it doesn't help them (1). People need love, not honesty - especially when they are going through troubles which are likely already causing them to question themselves.

The one exception is, as jtheory noted above, within the context of an already established attachment relationship, in which mutual respect and affiliation is already firmly in place.

In general, the best interventions are those which, rather than telling the client "what they need to hear", compassionately lead them towards the acceptance of what they more than likely already know. But it must come from the person themselves, and in their own time - that alone is what damns or saves.

Addendum: The research also reflects my experience. My internship was as a career counselor at a university and the most common client I saw were students about to graduate (often with little to no work experience) expecting to immediately get prestigious/lucrative jobs. I remember one philosophy major in particular who stopped by to see me 3 months before she graduated, whose only work experience was as a manager of a strip club and who wanted a 60k + job writing children's books right after she graduated. I told her, as kindly as I possibly could, that her expectations were more than likely unrealistic. Not only did I tell her but I sat with her and searched through the job ads for the position she wanted so she could see for herself what the requirements were for those positions. She left in a huff and I never saw her again. In fact, not a single client with whom I took a "brutally honest" approach did I ever see again. However, when I took a questioning approach, the difference was night and day.

(1) [http://mobile.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/2007ConfrontationinA...](http://mobile.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/2007ConfrontationinAddictionTreatment.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Are there any books that teach this leading/questioning approach that you particularly like/recommend? Non-pop books are fine.

<comment><USER9> You may want to take a look at Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata. It is basically a coaching technique based on questions, used on learning environments. Lean Education and Toyota Kata are also related, so you may find good info when searching for those keywords as well.

It is not exactly the same situation, but if you treat that person as someone who needs to learn something about herself that she didn't realise (or refused to accept), it might be very similar.

Here is a video explaining it with a bit more details: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3G0V7Wthbc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3G0V7Wthbc)

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Angry man: WHADDAYOU WANT?

Man: Well, Well, I was told outside that...

Angry man: DON'T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!

Man: What?

A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!

M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!

A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!

M: Oh! Oh I see!

A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.

M: Oh...Sorry...

A: Not at all!

A: (under his breath) stupid git.

<comment><USER11> Reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone - thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure how the response would be but it's been mostly positive so far.

I came up with the idea because I wanted to use such a service, but when I couldn't find anything I figured I'd create it and thought it would be fun. Most importantly I want to help people out - the $10 is so I can (somewhat) justify it from a time perspective. So far it turns out I'm spending a lot of time on each request, but that's fine because I'm enjoying it.

I'm really appreciating the snark as well!

<comment><USER12> The idea is terrible because you lack the qualifications to answer questions outside if your own personal expertise (whatever that may be). Second, assuming you get questions, you will be working at $20-10/hour. Not much money. So yeah, two thumbs down. awful idea

<comment><USER13> Dude, what a troll comment.

<comment><USER14> Brutal honesty. Dot io.

<comment><USER15> Well, this whole thing IS about being honest...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > I'm Jordan, a 28 year old software developer living in California. I've > always been direct and never had a problem telling it like it is. I have a > wide variety of interests outside of work that include Finance, Men's > Fashion, Diet/Nutrition, Weightlifting, Sports, Travel, Music, and countless > other topics.

Brutal honesty: nothing here leads me to believe that Jordan's feedback is any more useful than the feedback of a random person on the street. The fact that Jordan is only charging $10 and hasn't focused his offering on an area of interest where he has demonstrable experience and expertise leads me to believe that Jordan himself doesn't think his feedback is very valuable.

<comment><USER17> If anything he's in a bit of a bubble based on his age, location and interests.

If I pay for honest feedback I'd like to get it from someone who is not exactly like me.

<comment><USER18> Well, that depends on my goals for the specific feedback. If I want to know how to get a good reaction from people in bubble X, then asking someone in the bubble makes sense. Asking someone further is valuable for different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can get brutal honesty on Reddit for free. (And polite honesty, also for free, from Dear Abby.)

<comment><USER20> Reddit sprung to mind for me too.

This is a bad idea. Fine, you pay $10 for someone's honest opinion, but it's just one person's opinion, you really want to consult multiple sources to get a balanced view, otherwise you could make a bad decision based on another person being in a shitty mood (for whatever reason).

Plus, I find friends will be honest with you if you expressly give them permission to be, and promise not to take it personally.

<comment><USER21> Seems counterproductive to claim that this is a "bad idea". The only point you prove is why you're not going to be his customer. Lets see how many people take him up on this to wait and see if its a bad idea.

<comment><USER20> Yeah sure, let's see how many insecure people he can find to charge before we class it as a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know what this guy is talking about.

Maybe I'm lucky enough to have these friends, but this week I asked multiple friends and one person who I don't know that well about my current situation and they told me things like "You are really stupid you did that!" or "Get your shit together!", or "Do something already you idiot!". (Not joking or something, these were they actual, serious answers to me on the topic.) I don't know how could I get more honest opinion than these.

Also I think your best friends care enough to tell you the truth, and your responsibility should be also to tell them if you care enough! Yes, sometimes it's hard. One of my best friend says me things all the time which hurt my feelings very badly, but he always adds "I don't say this because I want to hurt you, but because I want the best for you.". He shouldn't say that because I know his intent and he is one of my best friend for more than 10 years now, even though he is brutal. :) Another example when I complained years ago to another friend about something, she told me how I dare to feel that way, I should feel lucky, I have a lot of friends and that's just stupid to worry about something like what I told her. She shocked me with her opinion but the more I think about it, the more I think she was right and I never heard an opinion like that before. We were very good friends at the time also!

</comment><comment><USER23> While the copyright attributes to "brutalhonesty.io" [1], the privacy policy [2] more accurately identifies this as a venture of "Warrior One".

The only "Warrior One" I can locate is a coaching firm for lawyers, with no one named Jordan listed on their about page [3] as a member of staff.

I've asked this Warrior One on Twitter [4] if they are the actual owner of the site, and will reply here if they respond.

[1] which implies that either a DBA filing exists for that name, or no such name exists

[2] "I reserve the right to transfer your personally identifiable information, as well as any other information, in connection with the sale or other disposition of all or part of Warrior One's business, assets, or both."

[3] [http://www.warriorone.com/our-story/](http://www.warriorone.com/our- story/)

[4] [https://twitter.com/floatingatoll/status/520745627278270465](https://twitter.com/floatingatoll/status/520745627278270465)

</comment><comment><USER24> And thanks to the psychological effect of effort justification, you will even like what he says.

</comment><comment><USER25> Since this is a product over email, would be less friction to support payments over Square Cash. Just ask the question and cc email@example.com. No need to visit the website and can be done from mobile easily :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't aware of this - thanks. Seems like a good fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It reminds me of this: (´・ω・`)

The Saga of Denko and Her Stalker.

[http://vgperson.tumblr.com/post/21533650696/help-the- girl-i-...](http://vgperson.tumblr.com/post/21533650696/help-the-girl-i-like- wont-respond-to-my-emails)

<comment><USER27> Bastard! 2 hours later and I'm still reading that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting...I was thinking about starting a site called comfortinglies.io, where I'll tell you how wonderful you are, how it's all going to be ok, etc. Maybe we could swap links?

<comment><USER29> Siri should implement a service based on Mad Magazine's "Don Martin's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a ridiculously awesome business idea. Either you'll make millions or nothing with that. But the costs aren't that high, and at least the buzz can be used for something else. Good luck!

<comment><USER31> He would have to respond to a lot of messages (100 000) to reach a million.

<comment><USER32> That's the thing about business ideas where revenue is directly tied to the work you have to do: scaling is super easy. getting more questions than you can handle by yourself? hire some friends to help.

<comment><USER33> >" _After you pay $10, I 'll email you to start the conversation. You then share whatever it is you're looking for feedback on, and I'll tell you exactly how I feel about it. Most submissions are handled within a few hours, but some might take up to a few days. All submissions are completely private._" //

Assuming he is an honest actor in this process he can't share your submission with anyone as then they wouldn't be private. It is specified that it is he, Jordan, who will email you, he will say how he feels.

It could have been set up differently to allow for scaling but part of the drawn I think is that it's a real, named and identifiable, individual that you are contacting.

Of course "Jordan" could be a made up person and this could be a way to gather information for social manipulation or straight-out blackmail, but you know ...

<comment><USER2> Presumably he'd update that bit of text as part of expanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If I wanted brutal honesty from my friends, I would ask them for it.

If they're not being brutally honest with me, it's typically for a good reason, and they'll do it on request.

I have no idea how a random software engineer on the other side of the world is going to be useful in regards to giving me brutally honest advice without seeing any perspective but my own (the only information he will have to go off is what I tell him).

</comment><comment><USER35> _Is (insert idea here) a good business /app/website idea?_

 _Would you pay (amount) for (product /app/service)?_

 _Do you like my app? (web /iOS only, for now)_

 _Does my landing page look professsional?_

Getting one guy's opinion about any of these things is anecdotal at best. It's not a comprehensive information source. And it would be foolish to use it in your decision making process.

There's better ways to collect data:

1) Spend that $10 towards an adword campaign for a pre-launch signup page for you website/app idea. Maybe this guy won't sign up, but maybe a dozen, a hundred or a thousand other people will. Why waste your money on one data point?

2) Put the money to buying beer. Invite your friends and family over, get them liquored up a bit. I guarantee you'll hear a great deal of honest feedback.

3) Post on HN, reddit, slashdot or any other number of web sites where armchair cynics freely administer scathing advice.

</comment><comment><USER36> The only thing he should be telling people willing to pay for his opinion on anything is "sucker."

</comment><comment><USER37> For those old enough to remember 1-900 phone numbers, there used to be 1-900-4INSULT (or something like this) that you called and paid $10. The person who answered would just insult you until you couldn't take it anymore. This reminds me of that.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does this remind anybody else of: [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/05/26](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/05/26)

<comment><USER38> also relevant: [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/06/30](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/06/30)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Okay. I did it, paid my $10 bucks and waiting for an email. I actually run a much more expensive, competing service:

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

<comment><USER39> Here's Jordan's first email:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Hey there,

Thanks for buying Brutal Honesty. What can I help you with? Ask away.

Cheers

Jordan

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

And then this is my reply:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Hi Jordan,

So I was hoping to get your honest opinion on a business idea I'm working on. It's a bit similar to your business I guess.

Here's our site:

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

Let me know if you think this seems like total bullshit, or if it's cool.

Thanks!

-Alex

<comment><USER40> Here is a free one: The "See More Creatives" link 404s hitting against makers.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would totally use this if the guy running it was closer to robot than human. A highly logical walkthrough of whatever problem I present is something I would value immensely, as I think anyone else who's watched any sci-fi films with all-knowing, oracle-like talking computers would.

But I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by ordinary people, and AI is nowhere close yet. Perhaps there's room in the world for Psychopaths-as- a-Service.

<comment><USER42> Perhaps you are looking for Spock-as-a-Service?

<comment><USER41> _Exactly_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why spend the $10 with brutalhonesty.io when you can just post your question on Ask HN? The way HN is going these days, your honest answers will be here within 24hrs!

<comment><USER35> Exactly. The Internet is full of people who have no problem openly and honestly calling it like they see it. Often cynically and viciously so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Paid version of "Nathan"

<comment><USER45> > Paid version of "Nathan"

You mean "Ethan": [http://www.textethan.com/](http://www.textethan.com/)

<comment><USER46> He's probably referring to Nathan for You, a recent comedyish show[0], though 'Ethan' seems like an interesting app. Have you tried it?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Honest question - Is there like a useful version of this for ,you know, hard CS/ML/... questions. Like what ML model should I use for training this dataset, & some advice on hyperparameter tuning ? That sort of thing. There's a void between the completely free stackoverflow ( even with bounty ) and an odesk. Some in-between system where you pay $10 for 5 minutes of legit expert advice. Anybody ?

<comment><USER48> [http://www.codementor.io/](http://www.codementor.io/), although you'll probably end up paying $30 for 15 minutes, since 5 minutes aren't enough to explain your question.

I saw it here, and I've been mentoring there quite successfully, although I haven't had any clients with really advanced questions yet, only beginners. I am looking forward to helping people with hard design issues.

<comment><USER49> You probably won't get hard design issues there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Shallow responses to shallow questions for $10? SOLD!

</comment><comment><USER45> So you watched the Ethan app go viral yesterday too, huh?

For those that missed it: [http://www.producthunt.com/posts/ethan](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/ethan) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434045)

</comment><comment><USER51> Not saying this is the case but if this guy is really thoughtful and insightful, then why not. The economics might not make a ton of sense. A thoughtful reply to a difficult question takes at least 15-20 minutes to compose. That's about $30-$40 an hour. You can make better wages as a counselor in private practice.

</comment><comment><USER52> Idea Fail, Internet's collective intelligence can do this better than 1 person plus these website are free to use:

1\. UX, Design: Dribble, Behance 2\. Code : Stack Overflow 3\. High Level Architecture questions: Stack Exchange 4\. Business Idea etc : HN, Reddit, Quora 5\. Miscellaneous other questions: HN, Reddit, Quora etc

<comment><USER29> And of course the best way to get a detailed informative reply from an expert for free is to post an incorrect answer, and then get your ass flamed off and handed to you on a platter for being wrong.

<comment><USER2> His name has just vanished from my head... but there's a famous chef whose secret trick for finding the best restaurants in a city he's visiting is to locate the most active community discussing food online, and post a comment saying how much he liked (random restaurant here) in that city.

Then just scan through the _flood_ of indignant response/corrections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 50 points in 13 minutes without setting off the anti spam detector? Impressive.

I still believe this is vote manipulation, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here - no vote manipulation. In fact, I don't actually know anyone who has a hacker news account, believe it or not. Just an intriguing title I suppose?

<comment><USER54> No vote manipulation but you used another new account 'RainSunshine' to talk sugar about yourself? That was a dumb move.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope - I'm actually trying to figure out if that is one of my friends and I just don't know it. I can certainly see why you'd think that, though. They must just really love the idea I guess!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> this is basically what management consulting firms do, except for a million times more money.

</comment><comment><USER56> This guy has turned Larry David's social assassin service into a business. I can see similar services popping up such as ask a New Yorker and ask a southie where people are real. Real opinions outside of high school may be marketable.

</comment><comment><USER57> So it's an online psychic. No idea if $10 is cheap or expensive for psychics.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would have done it on Fiverr or something so that payment was easy. Actually that could be kinda fun! Here's mine...

[https://www.fiverr.com/s/6e795u](https://www.fiverr.com/s/6e795u)

<comment><USER59> Any takers yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> If you focused it just on reviewing websites, it would basically be a weak and relatively expensive version of [http://peek.usertesting.com/](http://peek.usertesting.com/)

</comment><comment><USER61> Nice idea!

Some (all?) sample questions can be answered with yes or no. I know that you mention a conversation at the top but you might want to make it a bit more clear that your feedback will be more than yes or no.

<comment><USER18> Clearer than "There will be no one word answers - I'll make sure to elaborate and make my opinion clear."?

<comment><USER61> No that's clear enough. I must have missed it. sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn, I just paid $10 in Bitcoin and I'm not sure if the checkout works. The only thing I was asked was my email address, and I don't see anything in my inbox. Well, I hope they deliver.

<comment><USER3> Give it a bit of time. He is going to reply personally and probably got dozens of questions. It might take a day to reply to them all.

<comment><USER54> So, who are you, sockpuppet?

<comment><USER3> This site doesn't have a way to report troll posts like yours? Shame. Doubt I will make it a habit to visit here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Looks like we got more brutal honesty from the comments than your site.

</comment><comment><USER63> While this might be a good idea, but if you want the truth just post it to Reddit or Hacker News, those motherfuckers are brutal and won't take it easy on you, anyways, i wish you luck.

</comment><comment><USER64> Must be a cultural thing. In the Netherlands, you can get that for free. #1 source of culture shock for Americans coming over here. _" Did he just say that?"_

</comment><comment><USER65> You should put an option when people ask a question to allow you to post it on your public website. It would be interesting and might attract more traffic to your site.

</comment><comment><USER66> I think its not about paying someone $10 for a review of an app.Instead the real deal should be to make someone pay $10 for some idea/app.

<comment><USER66> and I think that is what he(brutally honest) is trying to do as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is this some kind of ironic/tongue-in-cheek thing? I feel like some of the people in this thread are taking it too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER68> Reminds me of [http://www.assholeconsulting.com/](http://www.assholeconsulting.com/)

</comment><comment> java-man Q1: what are your bank account credentials?

</comment><comment><USER69> Hey just gonna "tell it like it is"

There is already an army of unpaid critics working around the clock on HN and Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER70> Good stuff! I had an extremely similar idea a while ago:

 _2\. Brutal Outfit Advice

Pay to get brutally honest feedback on your outfit. Give commission to (vetted) critics.

Alternative name: What Would You Think?_ ([http://startupideas.posthaven.com/2-brutal-outfit- advice](http://startupideas.posthaven.com/2-brutal-outfit-advice) \- now defunct blog)

Good to see someone do executing on it. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER71> I can see the headlines...

 _Silicon Valley capitalizes on "penny for your thoughts"_

</comment><comment><USER72> He forgot "German Language capitalization Rules" among his interests.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is awesome, I love it. I want to try it but don't know what to ask

<comment><USER74> You don't think $10 for someone's opinion is a tad pricey?

<comment><USER75> Well the trick is that it's cheap enough that almost everyone can afford it while being pretty sure that, for that amount of money, he will probably take his time to write a decent answer.

Perhaps 5 bucks would be better, but considering an hourly wage and how much time I take to write stuff myself, ten bucks is not unreasonable. Also consider that, assuming this is a business (or could be), he's taking risk because there is no subscription or recurring payment whatsoever. I imagine this being a very variable business. If it would make a business in the first place.

<comment><USER76> $5 is Fiverr, and $5 on Fiverr gets you rubbish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I get all my brutal & honest feedback from IRC channels... for free.

</comment><comment><USER78> At the very least he is sure to make back the cost of the io domain.

</comment><comment><USER79> The LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This site is for entertainment purposes only.

Stupidity rules for ever.. ..the people who do it, and the people who buy it..

Please, send your valuable money to the people suffering real poverty, you might save some children from sexual abuse and raise your soul.

</comment><comment><USER80> Just ask a father in law

</comment><comment><USER79> I give you $10 when you give me your credit card nr, so I can take $20 from you if your answer is not satisfying for me. The $10 for me is for my time wasted on you..

Dude, the fact you propose this seriously, gives me the only answer I need from you.

</comment><comment><USER81> Weightlifting? Is this guy an actual "brogrammer"?

</comment><comment><USER82> Shit, I've been giving this away on facebook for free.

</comment><comment><USER83> No his landing page does not look "professsional"

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't know why, but "Pay with Bitcoin" at the bottom made me laugh. I think it's because that really just completes the picture of a certain sort of kinda tactless bro who Has Lots Of Opinions.

</comment><comment><USER85> I'm disappointed there are no samples.

</comment><comment><USER86> what if I give him some feedback for free?

</comment><comment><USER87> Whatever happened to feedbackarmy.com?

</comment><comment> java-man Are you really a head of Kwik-E-Mart?

</comment><comment><USER88> Hahahaha only in California!

</comment><comment><USER89> No money back guarantee?

<comment><USER90> good point :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Is this a joke?

<comment><USER92> Send him $10 and he'll answer that question for you!

<comment><USER93> >Nope, not a joke.

no need..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> love the bitcoin acceptance

</comment><comment><USER95> > I've always been direct and never had a problem telling it like it is.

I know _that_ type.

<comment><USER20> Yes, generally rude whilst ignoring the consequences (honesty should not be used as a 'get out of jail free' card).</comment></comment>


Review of annotated editions of Frankenstein - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/frankenstein-out-of-control/ <comment><USER2> First, yes, yes, all my yes. The more good guides to best-editions for various works that are written, the less time I have to spend tracking them down, which can take a _long_ time for some works (ugh, Eastern works in English translation are _hopelessly_ difficult to assess).

Second:

> It is now frequently required reading in schools, and passing classroom > references to "Shelley" may more likely mean Mary than Percy Bysshe (the > obscure author of Prometheus Unbound).

This is a joke, or at least intense hyperbole, right? I'd wager way more people have read "Ozymandias" than _Frankenstein_ (unfair because one's a page, and one's hundreds of pages, yes, but still, if we're talking frequency of mention) and several other of his verse works come up fairly often, while little other than _Frankenstein_ does for Mary. If someone just asked "are you familiar with Shelley?" I would 100% for sure think they meant PB. I'd easily concede, of course, that _Frankenstein_ itself is the most well-known (if not most widely-read) thing either of them wrote, though.

<comment><USER3> I read _Ozymandias_ more than once, but that was decades ago, and you had to remind me of the author.

I do think Mary has made a more lasting impression over the centuries. We read and discussed the romantic passages of _Frankenstein_ in my college comparative literature class. I've never read the whole novel...maybe someday.

<comment><USER2> Oh, yeah, it's immeasurably more influential than anything else either wrote. I just dispute the "mentions of name in classroom" and "who is probably intended by a bare, contextless reference to one 'Shelley'" metrics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The silly version of Frankenstein almost kept me from reading this excellent book. After finally reading it this year, I was irked that I had only known Hollywood's cheesy version for so long. Here are some of the major misconceptions:

1\. The monster is not called Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the Doctor.

2\. The monster is not a bumbling fool but rather extremely intelligent.

3\. There is no definite description of the appearance of the monster in the book and certainly no bolts in the neck.

4\. It is also unclear how the monster was animated. There is no lightning rod and no "it's alive" moment.

Frankenstein is at or near the top of many best of all time book lists. Shelly's _The Last Man_ is also one of my favorites.

</comment><comment><USER2> > "Sometimes, watching him, I thought of Dr. Frankenstein's monster, a > simulacrum of the human that entirely failed to express any true humanity." > But that of course is a remark inspired by film images rather than the > novel. For the debatable nature of "true humanity"—and whether Victor > Frankenstein (never Doctor in the novel) or his Creature can best express > it—is precisely the dilemma of Mary's original fiction.

Being alive but somehow, stomach-churningly inhuman _in appearance and expression_ is precisely what's so awful about the monster in the novel. Inhumanity (again, _of appearance and affect_ ). The difficulty of expressing this visually is probably part of why the Monster in film is simply cadaverish and covered in scars and bolts and such.

Its exact appearance—dimensions and general Lovecraftianly-left-to-your- imagination inhumanity aside—and the details of the process of its creation, get little page space in the book. There are (framing) story reasons for the latter to be lightly treated, in fact.

Whether one can pin the Rushdie quote's inspiration to the film depiction depends on how one takes "express". It could, and was perhaps intended to, cover film and book alike.

<comment><USER5> >and the details of the process of its creation, get little page space in the book .

I read it a long time ago so my memory is fuzzy but I remember being very intrigued by the lack of description of the creature.

IIRC, some kind of 'golem' made from base ingredients was more in line with what is described in the novel than a mesh of dead flesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Mary Shelley's original three-volume novel was published quietly and anonymously by Lackington and Co., Finsbury Square, London, in March 1818 and to little acclaim.

In fact it was an immediate hit and sold out quickly.

<comment><USER7> 500 copies!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes! I read a little bit of Frankenstein in college, but I think I lacked too much knowledge of the various other books that Shelly references and probably some historical context to fully appreciate it. A recent video by Extra Credits on YouTube [1] made me want to go and find an annotated copy to read.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnSmGFmP8qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnSmGFmP8qU)</comment>


Vodafone to install 4G network on the moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/27/vodafone-install-4g-network-moon/ <comment><USER2> That time when your town has worse mobile internet than the moon does...</comment>


Corolla fanbelt to help reveal Apollo data - <AUTHOR> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24626797-30417,00.html

<comment><USER2> "He also printed out about 100m of data."

What's "100m of data"? Is that 100 miles, meters, or megabytes?</comment>


CDN Fastly is down, breaking lots of popular sites - <AUTHOR> https://status.fastly.com <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they are back on up. Varnish errors are gone.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Language to Start With for Beginner (with good job prospects)? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to start a journey into web development that will (hopefully) lead to being in a good place to get a job in the web development field.
I know basic HTML and CSS but in regard to what comes after that I am a bit overwhelmed with the choices (Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, node.js, PHP etc).
I am a totally blank slate so I have no bias for any language, I would ideally like to learn one that will be in high demand within 6 months to a year when I will feel comfortable developing with it - I don't suppose there is a clear favourite language that most new startups are going with?
I guess my question is - if you were to start over again today, which language would you choose to start with? <comment><AUTHOR> After doing some initial research I think I've narrowed it down to either Python/Django or Ruby/Rails (unless someone else can suggest another option).

Which is the most popular in the industry at the moment (or the fastest rising)? I noticed on the Tiobe index that both Python and Ruby popularity is falling, but I don't know how reliable Tiobe is.

<comment><USER2> You can't go wrong with either one. The best way is to spend some time to learn the basic of both languages and find out which one suit you more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you know any programming? Or is your experience only with HTML / CSS?

Maybe start with " _Learn Python the Hard Way_ "

(<http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>)

See how you do with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some Java, C++ and a bit of Python during my CS degree, but I haven't done any in about 3 years.

Out of the 3 I much preferred Python, but I haven't done any Ruby or PHP so I don't know if I'll prefer them to Python. I also don't know if the job market for Python in the UK is very big, when I did a search it seemed PHP had many more jobs listed.</comment></comment>


It is 5:40:79 Simple Universal Time - change your time thinking now - <AUTHOR> http://telmich.github.io/sut/

<comment><USER4> Swatch Internet Time (or Beat) all over again: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time)

This idea was simple to understand, but didn't catch on!

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I actually like that approach as well, but that system had at least two major drawbacks:

\- being pushed like a marketing thingy for a specific company \- not resembling hours/minutes

I guess the latter point was crucial for it not being adapted. Or it was also too early (early internet time)

<comment><USER5> Not resembling traditional time notation is good thing IMHO, as one can't even accidentally confuse local time with non-local one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Adopting metric time, while a neat idea, would probably have a lot of consequences for all the SI units derived[1] from the current standard 'second', no?

On an unrelated note, in standard gravity (1𝘨) a pendulum with length 1m will complete half an oscillation in fractionally more than 1s (~1.006s), an annoyingly close relationship for one that's not supposed to correlate exactly.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, you'd have to use a new second definition. That's why I am referring to "simple seconds" (you can debate the name...) in the article.

I guess it's easy to find another molecule/atom to relate the time to - <USER2> are many around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This solves nothing - person X still has to take into consideration the daily routine of person Y on the other side of the planet. Announcing that you're disregarding time-zones does not have the effect of making time-zones irrelevant.

Something like SUT is only really suitable for things which are completely independent of human behaviour (i.e scheduling automated tasks for regular intervals).

<comment><USER5> Whenever one uses universal time or local time they still have to calculate (or look up some table) before they can consider whenever it's day or night in some unfamiliar remote place.

Universal time system solves the problem of discussing time. It works when you're talking to a person, negotiating time of some event - you can both be sure that you use same notion of time.

It's especially good if notation radically differs from usual HH:MM:SS (like swatch @BBBB), as one can accidentally misassociate time systems in their head.

<comment><USER7> But the world still spins regardless of how you end up talking about time - you will still need to figure out the human behaviour at the specific location on earth at that specific time. It is useless to schedule a conference call when the participants are all in bed. SUT does not solve this problem - <USER3> will still need to take into account the fact that night and day still exist and most people work during daylight hours.

<comment><USER5> You still have to negotiate when one's available. I.e. ask and tell time values - there's no other way of figuring out others' schedules.

And this is easier when you don't have to do any calculations on those values. This is the part which SUT (and alike) solves.

<comment><USER7> It solves a problem which does not exist - people organise things based on an agreed timezone already. The pain of transitioning to SUT is not worth the (debatable) gains.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I don't agree with you - I think if humans got used to SUT, they can (in their own time!) easily recognise the shifts around the globe. I.e. 2:00 SUT is the start of the day in Europe, 5:00 SUT is start of the day in US and 7:00 SUT in Asia.

I believe that due to talking about the same time, people can more easy remember the other times.

Compared to time zones, which are based on learning them by heart without a relation to your current time zone (only relates to UTC and your time zone to UTC again -> 2 calculations).

<comment><USER7> Yes, but you're missing the point - people talk about the time of day, almost universally in relation to the standard 9-5 working pattern that most of the industrialised world follows.

What does 'this morning' mean in SUT? 'This evening'? 'I'll speak to you tomorrow'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't solve the stated aim of having to work out a good time to call someone in a different part of the world. They have the same time (no timezones), but what time of day is OK to call them? They don't work 9-5 they work 3-11.

But if you think this idea is good, let's agree on a worldwide standard for electrical outlets while we are at it? You've got about as much chance of that proposal succeeding.

<comment><USER9> Right. The problem is that there are _two_ fundamental reasons for dealing with time across the globe, and their solutions are generally mutually exclusive.

Reason 1 is synchronization. Knowing if an event happens in place X at time T when that happens in place Y. This is what universal time simplifies.

But universal time messes up the other reason for dealing with time across the globe, which is knowing what part of the day it is in other places.

While timezone conversion pretty readily allows synchronization across the globe, universal time doesn't have a readily-available solution for knowing what's going on in New Zealand right now. (It's 2:30 AM there, so probably not a whole lot, but you knew that as soon as I said 2:30 AM, which is the whole point.) You are still going to need to have some way to say what the current time _means_ in other places. This is automatic right now. Two in the morning means the same thing everywhere. A universal time doesn't. So you'd have to say something like, "It's currently time T, which in New Zealand is several hours before sunrise." So you're basically coming up with ad-hoc local times anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Won't using UTC globally be enough?

Converting to decimal time will render most current time-aware devices obsolete, from wrist watches to microwaves to airport terminal software.

Also, scientific calculations rely on metric time[1], and need not to deal with minutes/hours.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that you cannot modify people's behaviour by pointing them to something existing:

harry: "hey, utc would be great, let's drop CEST." joana: "UTC was designed for something else ... <more offtopic arguments"

whereas with SUT, you have the chance to change behaviour:

harry: "There's a new time format, SUT. If we adapt to it, the world will become much simpler." joana: "Wow, so cool. Let's do that!"

<comment><USER11> And then you keep a list of work hours in each friend's contact card. So Sally is in New York, her work hours are 14:00–22:00. Frank is in Amsterdam, so his work hours are 09:00–17:00.

It is exactly the same as UTC, just using decimal. So just use UTC, or the time zone support in your calendaring software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure why the proposal uses "simple seconds", "simple hours" etc. We didn't call them "metric inches" or "metric yards" but rather centimeters and meters. A new naming system will be important otherwise some people are going to be really peeved to learn their "8 hour work day" is a lot longer now.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Simple" is just the reference to the name - in my opinion the name of the new hours/minutes/seconds does not really matter - it just needs to have hours/minutes/seconds in their name and needs to be distinguishable from the current scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that it is a bad idea because these measurements are not duodecimal by accident.

They are quantities and notions that we use every day, extremely frequently, and the mathematical properties of duodecimal bases versus decimal are useful in this context. I think this is why these things kinda evolve towards different bases.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't get the logic here. Why this switch will be helpful? Does this mean : If I live in Europe (e.g.) and the sunrise is at 3 SUT, I'll have to go to work at around 4 SUT, but in the states the sunrise is at 7 SUT and people will go to work at 8 SUT?

<comment><USER16> > Why this switch will be helpful?

I was raised in Britain towards the end of the transition from imperial to metric units. I would NOT go back.

So it worked for yardsticks. Why not clocks?

> If I live in Europe (e.g.) and the sunrise is at 3 SUT ...

You're catching on. It's simpler than Daylight Saving Time, don't you think?

<comment><USER15> From "Motivation" [1]

> To place a call, you have to find out

> in which time zone the target person is > how much offset to UTC this > particular time zone has > remember the delta from my time zone to UTC > > create the delta from both time zones > find a good time for a call > This > is quite cumbersome and wastes a lot of energy world wide, every day.

So now I will not have to find the timezone, but I'll have to take a look at something like "SUT Sunrise World Map" and figure out which part of the day- night cycle is the destination.

I agree, this will help me when I travel from Europe to the States - since I will not need to adjust my mind and freak out when I see my watch, but when I go there I'll have to adapt to something else, different than timezone.

P.S. I like the idea of 1 min = 100 seconds, My programmer's background and SUT will give me something like 10 megaseconds = 1 hour, which is nice.

[1] [http://www.nico.schottelius.org/docs/sut/](http://www.nico.schottelius.org/docs/sut/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's my (hopefully unique) take on this. A part of what makes analog watches beautiful is the number of hours (12) - hexagons (6 segments) and hexagon-like structures are aesthetically pleasing.

With SUT and its 10 hour system, clocks and watches would start looking / be reminiscent of car wheels (most car wheels are 5 symmetrical segments [1]).

My knee-jerk reaction is that I'm not willing to give up hundreds of years of watch face refinement for easy math conversions.

[1] [https://www.google.ca/search?q=car+wheel&tbm=isch](https://www.google.ca/search?q=car+wheel&tbm=isch)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can always use a circle (as with current watches) and just add the number of hours per day (does not matter if it is 12 or 10).

You could probably quite easy relabel analog clocks to use SUT, btw...

<comment><USER17> Not quite what I meant. Lots of watch faces play on the fact that 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. For example, take this [1] Ulysse Nardin watch. It has six nice "hexa"-markings (a common theme among watches). Some other watches go for the cross-hair (division by 4). Neither one of the styles would be possible with the 10 hour system.

Note: those watches do not reflect my personal taste, they were just the easiest to find.

[1] [http://www.ulysse-nardin.ch/ulysse-nardin- webseite/uploadfil...](http://www.ulysse-nardin.ch/ulysse-nardin- webseite/uploadfiles/4d551f00-cda0-4bd3-97df-bb43fe6ed11b.jpg)

[2] [http://www.tissot.ch/imageslib/cache/2011/png/image225png_T0...](http://www.tissot.ch/imageslib/cache/2011/png/image225png_T002_520_17_051_01_png.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are so many proposals for a different, better time system. This one is actually identical to my proposal for a change to O'Harean time (it's based on 20 hours, but for no especially good reason; I suggested changing it to 10). And I too invented my own kind of date/timestamp, which is somewhere midway between readable for humans and computers: [https://lucb1e.com/rp/othertimes/lucb1e-time.php](https://lucb1e.com/rp/othertimes/lucb1e-time.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer! It's always great to read about other ideas. Maybe you can explain how your proposal would make the world more simple?

<comment><USER18> Well unix timestamps are not quite readable for humans, this is a bit better. It lacks a system of weeks though, so I guess it's only a midway solution, not great for human usability either. And it's not so much of a system as it's an idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain the importance of local times needing to be the same? Who cares if I go to work at 3, while you start at 5. Do we think it will force a creep of the work day's starting and stopping time? Some of us already stay up (or get up) to deal with other parts of the world. Is it that we need to compare our bedtimes with others?

I actually wouldn't mind this. None of our relatives live in the same area as us and anything that requires coordination (e.g., planning to video-chat), requires specifying a time zone.

<comment><USER20> Major problem would be counting days. You know that 3 nights equal three days. But if day changes during your afternoon nap, that can lead to some unexpected complications. Eg the natural day would be out of sync with official day.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually only correct if you think locally - your night does not actually match with your neighbour's timezone night.

but yes, it means some people will sleep during "day" while some will sleep during "night". It may be appropriate to think about their definitions when using SUT as time base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Shouldn't they use a single unit and metric prefixes, instead of hours, minutes seconds?

For instance, meters are always meters. Whether millimeters, centimeters, decimeters, meters, kilometers, et al.

SUT proposes:

\- A day has 10 hours

\- An hour has 100 minutes

\- A minutes has 100 seconds

Instead, using using hour as the single unit.

1 day = 10 hours

1 hour = .1 day = 100 minutes = 100 centihours

1 minute = .01 hour = 1 centihour

1 second = .01 minute = .01 centihour = .0001 hour = 100 microhours

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think SUT fits its own motivation: instead of comparing time zones (for which numerous apps already exist), I have to compare local working times (for which no apps exist ;-).

Further, having seconds, minutes as multiples of 10 only makes very few things easier. Or when was the last time you had to find out how many hours are in 1234567 seconds? Did you have to do that more often than finding out how many months are in 1234567 hours?

Last, it totally ignores the concept of leap seconds.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a great idea. The French tried this after the Revolution. They also came up with a "metric" calendar: 12 months of 3 weeks of 10 days, with the extra 5 days per year (6 on leap years) being a holiday. The holiday was taken at the end of the year. Sort of like between Christmas and New Years now.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems the French have more than just good wine to offer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The French tried something similar after the revolution (Decimal Time). It didn't catch on either.

It's essentially pointless. Yes, it's a bit easier to represent times and handle them differently (5:50 = 5.5h = 550m) but it's not that hard with standard time either, as evidenced by the fact that I and everyone else in the world managed to learn to tell the time about the same time we figured out how to tie our shoelaces.

<comment><USER25> Actually telling the time to somebody else can be even more consuming. Some languages say half past 4, some half to 5, some even say "quarter to 5" when it's 16:15 and "three quarters to 5" when it's 16:45. In some languages you can say stuff like "3 minutes before 3 quarters to 5" for 16:42. People just like to make things interesting, I guess.

</OT>

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess these cultural differences will continue to exist - you even have 3 different versions for 1645 in German language.

I don't think this is a problem, as cultural differences are important to exist, as they resemble local differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The nomenclature invites unnecessary confusion, as the terms are all already used ("How many simple seconds are in an _actual_ second?").

Why not use metric prefixes on a day to come up with the names? This requires no new definitions, just a new application of existing terminology.

simple hour = deciday

simple minute = milliday

simple second = 10 microdays

</comment><comment><USER27> If I travel at a constant speed of 100 km/h (~62mph), it takes me one hour to travel 100km (~62 miles). This is not even math.

Do you want me to

a) convert between km/h and km/"simple h"

or

b) replace all tachometers, speed-limit signs and laws?

or

c) define "simple km" to fit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, it's 5:98:67 now - have to leave work before 6 SUT today, though usually leaving at 6:30.

When do you usually leave work in SUT?

</comment><comment><USER28> Just getting rid of DST would solve a lot of what this is trying to accomplish.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree - that was one of the initial things we were discussing when developing SUT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is much cooler than Joseph Franklin's Metric Leisure Week proposal.

</comment><comment><USER30> My computer just went from 3 GHz to ~2.6 Ghz... This may not fly... ;)</comment>


Why Dropbox decided to drop AWS and build its own infrastructure and network - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-drop-aws-and-build-its-own-infrastructure-and-network/ <comment><USER2> I recently switched from Dropbox to Google Drive (unlimited storage is nice) to consolidate all my cloud files (had an epiphany that iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and AWS were just too many cloud storages to pay for) and I miss dropbox's sync tool already. Was a nice quality product and I will miss it.

<comment><USER3> I have heard this several times, people really like Dropbox sync. What I cannot understand is what prevents Google from making a kick-ass sync client?

<comment><USER4> Google is going to split their sync tool into a consumer tool (Backup and Sync) and business tool (Drive File Stream); I think they stopped updating their main sync client a while back in preparation for this split. I think the business tool is the only one that will allow for files to appear locally that aren't actually downloaded. It's still in beta.

<comment><USER2> I am actually talking about quality of Backup and Sync. It's got about 90gb to upload and it's using 130% of processor and clicking it hardly shows progress because it's so bogged. Hopefully they fix soon, otherwise the selective sync is eons better than dropbox's implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is very vague with not enough technical or business details about the move and the reasons and challenges behind it.

<comment><USER6> This one (from March 2016) is way better in every way. Not sure why this TechCrunch article even needed to be written now.

[https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus- ama...](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud- empire/)

<comment><USER7> Revenue. TechCrunch doesn't make revenue off of Wired's articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My bet is they can't be competitive with Backblaze B2 when they're on top of S3. Every S3 based cloud storage provider is going to be S3 special negotiated price plus minimal profit. The pricing of B2 is almost unmatched for random access storage at half a cent a gig. That's literally half of Dropbox's 1TB price. I've been backing up to Backblaze B2 via Arq on OSX, so I can manage my own archives and not have things deleted from backup when I delete them from disk.</comment>


Take it from a software engineer: learning code can be a nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/301496/take-it-from-a-software-engineer-learning-code-can-be-a-nightmare/

<comment><USER2> Good read and good advice.

When I was starting out, I was jumping to different frameworks and languages every week or so, until I released that its completely pointless.

Fortunately, I found a thread on HN regarding on how to start and continue to improve. One of the commentators mentioned "just pick one language and stick to it". Simple advice that is better said than done as every week you hear "insert_this_weeks_new_javascript_framework" or "how_x_language_has_improved_my_productivity".

I finally picked python and I am sticking to it no matter how tempting another tool might sound. It's good to play around with other tools once in a while, just to keep up with what is going on but I think you should stick to a small set of tools and hone your skills from there on.</comment>


Writing a 9P server from scratch (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aqwari.net/9p/ <comment><USER2> 9P2000 is available on Linux with the CONFIG_9P_FS and related kernel compile options, which say things like:

 _" If you say Y here, you will get experimental support for Plan 9 resource sharing via the 9P2000 protocol. See [http://v9fs.sf.net](http://v9fs.sf.net) for more information."_

<comment><USER3> That's been experimental for a long time - [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/fs/9p](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/fs/9p)

I guess file systems don't go into staging/?

<comment><USER4> Maybe, once FUSE came along, 9pfuse made more sense than putting 9p in the kernel?

[https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man4/9pfuse.html](https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man4/9pfuse.html)

<comment><USER5> I was just wondering, as I began to read the article: which would perform better - in-kernel 9P, or FUSE?

Intuitively I get the idea that FUSE is going to be the better performer overall because of lack of network overhead.

But I wonder how much worse 9P would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm having a hard time finding any kind of feature comparison or list. What makes v9fs stand out?

<comment><USER7> 9p or v9fs?

9p is really easy to implement. That is a key feature as it makes it easy to create new clients and servers (and presumedly makes bugs rarer). Much like FUSE has been adapted to countless things. I don't know how implementing a FUSE server or client compares to this though.

Unfortunately, the simplicity also means giving up something. Where quite- complicated NFSv4 can be very efficient over slow links (leases makes it a bit like a cache coherency protocol), 9p requires all writes to be committed to the server (for coherency).

<comment><USER6> I was wondering how v9fs compares to vanilla filesystems like ext2... I suspect I'm comparing the wrong thing and it's a just a NFS-like protocol and not a on disk format? If so, what is the plan9 on-disk format?

I feel like I'm missing the point and should be asking "what's cool about 9p?" to which you provided a very helpful response. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> > If so, what is the plan9 on-disk format?

Which one? For most user storage, there's kenfs, fossil, venti, hjfs, cwfs, and a few others. But 9p is disjoint from where data is stored, it's just a protocol for doing RPCs on endpoints in a heirarchical namespace.

As a result, everything is served up over 9p on plan 9. iso9660, the device tree, the network subsystem, ftpfs, sshfs, hgwebfs, the vt100 emulator, the keyboard, the mouse, the CD burner commands, and so on. To a good approximation, the only things you can do without going over 9p is starting processes.

This has interesting implications; For example, the Plan 9 equivalent of ssh simply opens a connection to the remote system, and mounts the local /dev before the remote one. That means that remote programs simply open the local devices, such as the mouse and keyboard, and use them in preference to the devices that are connected to the remote machine.

The equivalent to VNC on Plan 9 is simply namespace management to redirect which devices programs use. Here's the full implementation: [http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/file/fd023f8fd074/rc/bi...](http://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/file/fd023f8fd074/rc/bin/rcpu)

Yes, it is just a shell script.

<comment><USER6> Cool. Is that sh? I'm not familiar with the [1=2] stuff... looks like it's remapping file descriptors, is there something special about 10, 11 and 12? I can feel my weekend slipping away...

<comment><USER8> It's rc ([http://man.9front.org/1/rc](http://man.9front.org/1/rc)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Everything really was a file

I wonder how that would change if the system was designed today.

Everything a stream of JSON objects?

<comment><USER10> If you were going to build a JSON based file system today, then I would study the Newton's Soup which was based on frames. It was pretty cool and had some interesting capabilities (remove half the storage from a running system, ok what's next). I would imagine queries would make a reappearance in a much nicer form.

<comment><USER11> Thats exactly what I thought. Newton Soups and NewtonScript were both awesome. I miss that kind of system these days, it still amazes me how it was all integrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish 9P was named differently. Would actually speed adoption with a bit of "marketing".

<comment><USER13> 9P from Bell Labs? :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is Upspin related to 9P?

<comment><USER8> It's not.

<comment><USER15> It's not so simple. The API is a simplified version of 9P and directly inspired by it.</comment></comment></comment>