Rent a Mac in the cloud for development - <AUTHOR> http://www.macincloud.com/ <comment><USER2> So let's see who your potential customer is:

\- Someone who owns a computer, with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse (of course)

\- Someone with a decent internet access

\- Someone who has either invested or going to invested 100's of hours to properly learn the iOS/Mac frameworks

\- Someone who is hoping to either make a living off his Mac development or threats this as in important hobby

\- Someone who will be able to afford to pay $20+/monthly = $240+/yearly

\- And finally, someone who is either unable to afford an older mac mini ($200-300 as noted in other comments) OR someone who has no cheap way to deliver older mac hardware to his home country.

From all the above, the potential market size seems too small to me to be an interesting business. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Yes, you're missing something. I run a small iOS contracting shop that does continuous integration. When the contracting market is good, we _never have enough_ build servers, which can only be Macs. Virtualization only gets us so far.

There _IS NO_ aws / EC2 service for macs. I can't just spin up some instances to handle the load and spin down after the engineers go home. The options are literally run to the Apple store and blow a few grand on a couple of boxes, which are hopefully in stock, which we then upkeep indefinitely in a physical closet. To handle a big spike, we really need like 10, but that's a big cash outlay for machines that will be idle in 6 weeks.

I am a developer, and hunting and installing Mac Minis, dealing with RMAs and AppleCare, etc., is not being productive for me. We're small enough that getting a network guy to handle that (assuming you can even find Apple network guys) is not economical. This looks like an easy solution.

<comment><USER4> BTW, maybe you'll be interested – I develop hosted continuos integration service specifically for iOS / Mac developers, see it here <http://hosted- ci.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's ridiculous that this service has plans that allows you to "log in from 9am to 5pm, max 5 hours per day". It looks like it's 1999 all over again where you have online services that are only available during certain hours because the servers are rebooted or turned off every day. This is not "cloud"-like at all, and is especially bad when you don't live in the same timezone.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't appear to be due to server reboots, instead it's to spread the load. If you're an after-hours coder--doing things as a side project after your day job is finished, or just like being up at night--the 9a-5p plan isn't for you. As someone who is up all night (basically 9p-5a), I appreciate the ability to pay less because I'm never going to use the "peak time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea, but the pricing is just much too complex. By having to choose between monthly/weekly, morning/day/evening and then number of hours there are perhaps 50 different plans available? I'm just too confused to make a choice.

<comment><USER8> That's how I feel too. I saw the title, and I thought: "Wow, I could really use this". Looked at the pricing, and was too confused to continue any further..

<comment><USER9> The pricing isn't just confusing, but (unless I'm misunderstanding it...) also plain stupid.

For example, as a monthly plan it's $30/month for anytime access up to 5 hours a day; but also $30/month for _evening_ access up to 3 hours a day!? Who is the later plan targeted at, exactly?

<comment><USER10> It says "Total Login Hour Options _(Limited Time Discount!)_ " for the anytime access--so it seems that it normally costs more.

Still a pretty complex pricing model, wonder what they're doing on the backend to swap sessions around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Conceptually awesome. Poorly delivered. Someone do this right and you will be making money.

What I'd like: Personal files/certs etc. on my local HD, then I log in to my cloud mac and it uses my local HD files as an external hard drive of sorts. or even uses dropbox for my files. Is this possible?

<comment><USER12> I was going to try it out, but once you've registered, you have to raise a _support ticket_ to ask them to put a free trial on your account.

 _> Step 2 - Experience a Free Trial After registering your MacinCloud website account, please log in and create a new Support Ticket under Help > Support > New Support Ticket. Click New Support Ticket -> MacinCloud Trial -> Sales, and request for a trial. Please attach a note and let us know if you have any specific needs._

Um, no, sorry. I don't have that much patience. Honestly this could be a great service for Windows-based web developers who just need a few hours on a Mac now and then for testing, but the signup process needs to be instant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I run OS X on VMWare, it's fast, it's perfect.

I wonder if they're doing the same (virtualized OS X, which works well but is, I believe, against Apple's EULAs) or if they use actual Macs (which would be quite burdensome)...?

Edit: confused iOS and OS X. I feel stupid.

<comment><USER14> iOS or OS X?

<comment><USER15> This conflation is happening all over the place .. people don't understand that iOS and OSX are different, it seems. I wonder if this is going to, at some point, work in Apples favour .. ?

<comment><USER16> > I wonder if this is going to, at some point, work in Apples favour .. ?

Many people have speculated about the changes in 10.7 that made it much more like iOS, with the exact idea that one day iOS and OSX will be essentially the same thing (at least from the user perspective anyway). I certainly see them heading in this direction...

<comment><USER15> Me too. I imagine the next iteration of Macbooks will basically be an iPad- formfactor device, albeit with Macbook-scale screen sizes, and a removable/attachable keyboard/trackpad combination, with some variation in the onboard OS that allows either 'iOS'-style touch interaction, or traditional OSX WIMP-style interaction for those that need it. I'd certainly buy an iMacBook-thingy that was a 17" iPad'ish thing, that could work in both modes.

Going to be interesting times .. I suppose I have to hold onto my aging 2007 MBP another year or two and then upgrade on the next generational bump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might be a good missing link for PhoneGap Build - <https://build.phonegap.com/> \- which requires that you have a Mac for your certificates. I've seen a few people complain about not being able to use PhoneGap to build an iOS app because they don't have a Mac and don't want to buy one.

<comment> k-mcgrady I'm not sure that this would solve the certificate problem. With the standard iOS dev program you can only use 1 machine to develop on. If you want to move to another machine you have to invalidate all your old certificates. If you are working off the same part of the server every time it might work but otherwise it would still be problematic.

Also it might not be very secure for the company to allow you access to Keychain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gonna be brutally honest here, those pricing plans are shit. Allow me to log in for an unlimited amount of time and lower the price a bit, and we'll talk.

<comment><USER19> While you are at it, get me a cup of coffee... Aren't you asking for a bit too much (specially on the "lower the price" bit.

<comment><USER20> I really don't think it's asking to much. Maybe they could charge a smaller amount for command line/shell only access. The premium you're paying here seems like it's just to stream the OSX GUI over the RDP protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really? I need to submit a ticket after registering to give it a try? Ok, cool, thanks but, too much work to try it out. Would make more sense to queue me in and limit sessions to 5 minutes or something like that, but that much interaction is a deal breaker.

<comment><USER21> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How would one deploy a iOS app using this service?

It seems interesting since i don't own a Mac and am interested in iOS Development, but don't want to fork out the cash for a mac mini or something similar.

<comment><USER23> "I'd like to become an electrician, but don't want to fork out the money to buy wire cutters or something similar."

Yes, the analogy falls apart because you don't run proprietary software on wire-cutters. I understand that you might want to "try before you buy" with Mac and iOS dev, but I'm speaking to a slightly different issue.

If you want to do a job, you either acquire the tools to do the job (wire cutters/a Mac) or you Work Harder rather than Working Smarter (bend the wire until it breaks/shoehorn OS X onto a Hackintosh.)

<comment><USER24> That analogy is utter nonsense.

With a Linux or Windows desktop equipped with a good toolbox we can cross- compile to a wide range of architectures. That this range doesn't currently include the iPhone is completely accidental; it's merely a consequence of a business decision by Apple (and it might even be a good business decision for all I know). It doesn't tell us anything about the adequacy of a Linux/Windows desktop as a tool.

<comment><USER25> Cocotron or GNUStep plus Chameleon will get you most of the way to developing iOS apps on other platforms. I imagine there is some work to do to round out the experience, but tis the nature of open source.

There's definitely nothing stopping you from developing iOS apps on other platforms though. It's just going to be a bit more work than using the polished packages from Apple.

[1] <http://cocotron.org/> [2] <http://www.gnustep.org/> [3] <http://chameleonproject.org/>

<comment><USER26> This is pretty cool, thanks. Do you know of any tutorials that would guide the Apple-noob through the process of compiling a "Hello, world!" type of App for iPad/iPhone entirely on linux ?

The ones I found were talking mostly of Objective C development for other platforms, not on other platforms. Being pretty much 100% linux-only, I do not feel like purchasing the Mac just for toying around. (And maybe this kind of service "in the cloud" could be for me - but would be curious if one can do it on linux).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does it seem weird to anyone else that it requires a connection speed of 1 megabyte (not megabit) per second? Also no contact information? No mailing address?

Edit: By requiring 1 megabyte per second you're technically requiring the same data rate that you would need to stream dvd video. Requiring that data rate seems more consistent with the VNC protocol and not RDP.

</comment><comment><USER27> The pay system should be "pay as you go". Obviously, the daytime hours are going to be more expensive, and they can easily chart it out. Kind of like how toll bridges scale their cost based on traffic: <http://wstc.wa.gov/highwaytolling/SR520Bridge.htm>

</comment><comment><USER28> Awesome service. Way to complex pricing. Make the user choose between two choices. Plan A: limited to X hours/day, Plan B: unlimited usage.

Price each accordingly to achieve the desired outcome. My bet is, the actual usage of "unlimited" users will be similar to users of the limited plan, with a few outliers.

<comment><USER19> A simple "help me choose a plan" type of wizard would definitely help strip the complexity of the pricing to the buying process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The customer base seems to be people who do not own a mac , but would like to spend some time on one. this is truly a fleeting and shrinking population. Think about this...on a macro scale, if mac's marketshare goes up, your user base goes down. if the share goes down, then your service is irrelevant. there are plenty of virtualization/remote solutions out there. some as a resource addendum ( aws) and some for variable platforms ( deviceanywhere-for phones). aws - cause an individual developer cannot own such resources ;deviceanywhere- cause the phones and their os platforms change at a rapid pace. where does your service fit in this landscape? i can see your product being used by offshore dev teams , but still paid for by US companies. that again is an even smaller market.

</comment><comment><USER30> Personally, I would use it. I don't feel like shelling $600 for a Mac, I but I would shell $20/month for 6 months and get some work done. Time value of money is worth a lot.

The pricing turns me off however. Keep it simple with free month trial and simple monthly dues after that based off of hours/day. Why do I have to pick a specific time zone? Why do I have to pick a specific time to develop? I understand the need to scale I suppose but, really, forcing users into one time zone doesn't quite help scale if they all pick the same one.

</comment><comment><USER31> I saw this service before I purchased my Mac Mini for iOS development.

I opted out because tho it was more affordable and would probably fit my needs, I just didn't want my code on someone else's mac somewhere in the world.

So, tho this seems pretty suitable for development, there are probably a lot of developers like me who like to keep their code in their own hands.

<comment><USER32> I appreciate the notion, but the massive success of github's private repositories (which of course are stored on their servers) would suggest otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you buy a used mac and end up not liking iOS/Mac development you can most likely sell it for the same amount that you bought it for.

If you're renting time on a mac like it's AOL back in the '90s you're almost certainly losing out in both the short and long terms.

</comment><comment><USER34> Very interesting technology. The problem I see with this is that the product is directly competing with Macs.

For instance, at the high end of Rent-a-Mac you will be paying $49 a month or around $600 a year. In this case it would make more sense to buy a mac mini for $600 which will no doubt perform much better than a virtualization.

I think there is probably a pricing model for this type of service, however I'm guessing it would be geared toward large groups (companies) that don't want to invest in buying 20-50 new Macs. It would need to be much much cheaper than the current model or most companies will choose to just buy new Macs especially because they can get a tax write off for new equipment.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good idea but there is just so much text in there. It makes it seem too complex.

Just have a look at the "getting started page" <http://www.macincloud.com/getting-started>

</comment><comment><USER36> Nicely done! We have just launched a similar concept for Windows desktops at leostreamdesktops.com.

I think the growth of tablets is really going to drive the cloud desktop market as people switch to tablets as their primary access device.

</comment><comment><USER20> Check out a company called Aqua Connect for a similar concept. Except that you purchase the server software for your Mac. Also uses RDP.

Edit: I do not work for this company and have not used their product.

</comment><comment><USER37> With the way that apple computers hold their value, I'm surprised that there aren't physical leasing systems from third parties. $30/mo on a mini, $45 on a low-end air seems doable.

</comment><comment><USER38> As an iOS Developer, what I could see the value in was getting access to older development version of Xcode/iOS SDK for short periods of time. 30-60 minutes at most. I'd pay a small amount for that.

Another opportunity is for academic classes to teach iOS Development. It's cost prohibitive right now, but it's something to look into to.

The problem is that I don't see the business being one that has long term clients. If anyone is developing for more than 4 months, they'd probably have obtained a machine by then.

</comment><comment><USER39> Has this been done before? If not, then why not? With all of the available services like this for Windows and Linux, why not Mac? Is there some sort of license fee or restriction that makes this type of service difficult to profit from? I'm just trying to figure out why I have not seen more of this type of service for Mac, especially with the large number of responses to this that seem to be really interested in it.

<comment><USER40> Licensing I think. IIRC, Previous versions of os x did not allow virtualization. Lion does not have this restriction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What a novel idea. I have many friends without Macs who would be interested in this. (I am a little curious about the logistics though.)

</comment><comment><USER42> I have an overseas developer (with a mac), but that wants to test xcode/ios simulator and have the location services work in the US as it does for a US- based developer. Are the servers in the US, or is this configured such that the ios simulator thinks its in the US (and if so, what location?)

<comment><USER43> If your developer needs to be somewhere physically to test location services, he's not very good at researching alternative solutions:

<https://github.com/futuretap/FTLocationSimulator>

<comment><USER42> Thanks coob. This was my requirement on a testing scenario to ensure my app is working correctly with Core Location, and my app is U.S. locations only right now. He's in Europe and he used a different 'fake location' work around (BTW, thanks on your link!), which is nice generally speaking to test app, except when the point of the test is to make sure everything OK with Core Location against my U.S. service data. While he can remotely use a mac on my network for this test, my question is to explore if this is viable option in place of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Ah finally. I was wondering why not more people would come with this. I need this so often. Thanks guys :)

</comment><comment><USER45> Your screenshots show an out-of-date version of Xcode. Hopefully that's not the only version you're providing.

What is the "2-Hour Daily Minimum" on the weekly plan or the "3-Hour Daily Minimum" on the monthly plan? Does the customer not have it for the full week or month?

</comment><comment><USER46> Is there a similar WinInCloud, where you're able to easily rent a windows pc in the cloud? Needs backup, automatic upgrades and web interface. I know WMWare and others do this for enterprise customers all the time, but I am a private customers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've been considering something like this for outsources who don't have access to macs.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone tried them? What the interaction lag/jitter is like?

(edit) Also, it seems there might be an issue with using their Macs for developing commercial software. Who knows where the contents of these Macs will end up being copied or backed up.

</comment><comment><USER49> So how did they work this out, licensing-wise? AFAIK, MOSX is only allowed to run on Apple HW to be license compliant. Did they develop their own VM or are they using something like ESXi 5 for the virtualization on Apple HW?

<comment><USER50> It's a real Mac. From their FAQ:

> Am I renting a real Mac?

> Absolutely! We use only authentic Mac computers made by Apple. We do not use > any virtualization or sandbox technology to synthesize the Mac experience.

<comment><USER49> Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Too bad they don't support Linux as a client. Wonder if they're using VNC?

</comment><comment><USER52> Neat. This will allow my team in India to develop without using logmein.

<comment><USER48> Logemin is free though, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Arguments for/against this service miss one other notable point: development anywhere anytime. Pull out your iPhone or iPad (heck, even a $200 iPod Touch given open WiFi) and work away.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm looking for a good solution for continuous integration of OS X/iOS builds. By the looks of these comments, this isn't it. Does anyone have more worthy suggestions?

<comment><USER4> I'm launching such specific solution – <http://hosted-ci.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hopefully this includes alternate versions of OSX for testing purposes? Then I can really see this being useful. Running a bunch of versions is hard / expensive.

</comment><comment><USER56> Cool for people who want to try things out / test on macs, but complicated pricing and hassle of key management would put me off using this as a real dev platform.

</comment><comment><USER57> Has anybody been able to register? I signed up with my email/password and now it says to use username to login , which wasn't even in the registration form :/

</comment><comment><USER58> How exactly do you try the app that you built on the device if it's running in a remote VM? Does it somehow remote-map the usb port?

</comment><comment><USER59> Interesting idea. I wonder how the UI would feel, though, given the considering amount of compositing that Mac OS X uses.

<comment><USER23> It's going to composite everything into a buffer on the Mac just as quickly as normal. Transmitting that buffer across the Internet is going to run into lag. It will be anything from a minor annoying delay to a completely unusable lag. You probably aren't going to do gaming or videos (or Quartz Composer, etc) on your remote Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> you should fix the free trial flow. i just signed up to try it out. the first obvious thing is that you ask for my email but the login form asks for a "username", which is my email, but it is confusing.

the important bit, though: after signing up i have to open a support ticket to get started? that's where you lost me.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is the least expensive service of its kind, and yeah there are a few too many options for times, but it is a great idea to limit it to X hours and provide a cheaper monthly rate. The closest competitor is much, much more expensive. I don't have the money to buy a decent Mac, and I really need to set my new web software system up to run on OSX.

</comment><comment><USER62> Interesting concept/idea but a business model? Really theres a demand?

</comment><comment><USER63> What kind of Mac developer wouldn't just get a mac?

<comment><USER64> Someone who doesn't have $1,500?

Edit: Well a Mac Mini is $600 (with no monitor), but still... if you could rent a virtual Mac for $20/month that's still over two years before you're money ahead.

<comment><USER65> Also, someone who lives in a country that is not loved by Apple.

Here in central Europe, a Mac Mini goes for 1200$ without a monitor, and that's in the cheapest online store (where you will have to wait for over a week for it, as they do not have them in stock).

Also, since there are no Apple stores, repairs and warranty in general is a pain to deal with.

Considering these circumstances, a "Mac in a cloud" seems appealing, especially if you need it just as a testbed.

<comment><USER66> Ship to a USA service that ships to your country. Apple has free US shipping, and DHL costs around $120 from US to Africa (Tunisia, I think EU will have the same price).

<comment><USER9> You'd be likely to hit import taxes on that.

<comment><USER67> Are import taxes of 100% ((1200 - 600) / 600) realistic?

<comment><USER19> They are in Argentina. _If_ you are lucky enough that they will actually allow you to receive the package at all. Just try to buy a Kindle, once it reaches customs they keep it there and there is basically nothing you can do about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I don't own a mac (never have probably never will) but I find this service to be awesome! I don't even need to sign up for a year - rent one for a couple of months is all I'd need.

</comment><comment><USER69> Timeshares!

</comment><comment><USER70> meh

</comment><comment><USER71> You can even develop on an older PowerPC which is what I did years ago when I wasn't sure I was going to like Xcode. It is an amazingly simple change to the installer script and simulator settings. I paid short money for an 04 iBook, did some coding and eventually upgraded. My girl inherited the iBook and its still runs like a champ.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695558/development-for- ip...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695558/development-for-iphone-on- ppc-based-computer)

</comment><comment><USER72> hahaha, the existence of this service... are macs expensive? How expensive are they really? "Yo a desktop mac is so expensive there's this service to give DEVELOPERS (knowledge workers) access to one on TIMESHARE." Like real estate.

</comment><comment><USER73> And then you could rent another max from that mac. How deep can you go?

</comment><comment><USER74> So what kind of "developer" can't afford a computer of their own?

<comment><USER75> I am a developer, I can't afford a Mac (and thus have never learned iOS). Are you suggesting that I should be able to afford any sort of computer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Should offer a boot CD iso that works in recent x86 devices with as many NICs and wireless adapters as possible, and support all inputs on almost all x86 PCs, and most display adapters, then I might use it as a virtual Hackintosh on my underpowered x100e netbook.</comment>


Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/pythagorean-theorem-proof-in-zhoubi-suanjing#email-newsletter <comment><USER2> So... considerably after Pythagoras died? Roughly in an era where there was considerable trade between the European Mediterranean and India and beyond - to the extent that Pliny, presaging similar arguments about the India and China trade a millennia and a half later, claimed that Rome was beggaring itself importing foreign baubles.

Goods and ideas have always flowed back and forth across Eurasia.</comment>


How to Use Bash History to Improve Your Command-Line Productivity - <AUTHOR> http://www.gauravkgupta.com/use-bash-history-improve-command-line-productivity/ <comment><USER2> Awesome info. I would love to see some of the illustrations as gifs.</comment>


Don't launch - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/03/dont-launch.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the great advantages of a public beta -- once you've ironed any problems, you can have your media launch and justify it by saying "we're no longer in beta".

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent article and blog from a programmer entrepreneur whose been there.

Some other points he makes include -

\- Startups should be optimized to learn [product and customer are being discovered]

\- Sales metrics are a good thing [start small with $5/day search engine marketing, iterate until this yields results ]

\- Bite off small chunks of development [and release them, as they often are a distinct usable feature]

<comment><USER4> Agreed, Eric writes an excellent blog and is based on real world experience.

Coordinated marketing and product launches make sense in the context of a Product Development model but cut into your ability to learn in the context of a Customer Development model. Instead of allowing your initial customers to teach you about your product, you are skipping that step and going straight to teaching the market about your product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always been a fan of launching early. Until now.

A few months ago, I launched my pet project to the public, with some nice publicity on websites like TechCrunch, but it was incredibly difficult to capitalize on the benefits of launching a premature product.

I thought it was successful. (it was certainly better than not doing a marketing launch at all)... but this didn't take into account the fact that it would have been significantly better if we had launched with good timing and with a better tested product.

I'll know for next time :)

<comment><USER6> What did you launch?

<comment><USER7> internshipIN.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He links to SEM on $5/day ([http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/sem-on- fiv...](http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/sem-on-five-dollars- day.html))

In that post, he mentions bidding directly against searches for competitor products. If the competitor has trademarked the terms, is it legal to use them as keywords? I've heard of companies receiving "cease and desist" orders for such behavior.

<comment><USER9> I've heard of people getting "cease and desist" _letters_ (i.e., from the competitor's lawyer) for this behavior, but never an actual C&D order, which is a court order.

The general approach seems to be, unless the trademark holder specifically complains, you can place ads on their keywords, and even use their trademark in your ad, as long as you're not pretending to be them. "We're better than X", for example. And if the trademark holder does take issue with it, they're at least as likely to take it up with Google as they are to take it to court.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I accidentally submitted his front-page instead of the actual article url, which I've since deleted. Thanks for resubmitting peter!

<comment><USER11> that was the product launch, and this is the media launch then

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That is the best blog post I've read this month. Truly helpful.

</comment><comment><USER13> This advice is great for tempering the more unsophisticated "release early, release often".

Joel makes similar points eloquently in "Good Software Takes Ten Years": <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Launching enables you to catch your competition by surprise so that they have to play catch up on your features. They also have to go after your customers and your momentum, so there are two aspects of launch: revealing what was once secret, and publicizing that offering as best as possible - which is what a good launch should do -- and then also harnessing feedback.

If one can't execute all those simultaneously, it's better to sit back and watch competition do it instead, and whilst doing this, it may or may not be advantageous to be public.

</comment><comment><USER15> A soft launch (the product launch in my nomenclature) is also pretty a fairly common/typical technology de-risking exercise.

</comment><comment><USER16> This post does not take into account that before launching you have no idea whether your project is something people want.

<comment><USER17> "So don't combine your product launch with a marketing launch. Instead, do your product launch first. Don't chicken out and do a closed beta; get real customers in through real renewable channels. Start with a five-dollar-a-day SEM campaign. Iterate as fast and for as long as you can. Don't scale. Don't marketing launch."</comment></comment>


Are We Being Too Nice to Women at Work? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/are-we-being-too-nice-to-women-at-work-47e2a0ea419d#.i819fqiyv <comment><USER2> Possibly related: there is a tendency to give more vague feedback to women at work. [https://hbr.org/2016/04/research-vague-feedback-is- holding-w...](https://hbr.org/2016/04/research-vague-feedback-is-holding- women-back)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The game is rigged)) this is à textbook catch-22 situation</comment>


Made a "Selenium IDE" Chrome extension – great for making QA tests quickly - <AUTHOR> https://www.snaptest.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> let me know what you all think!

<comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> ah thank you - i'll do this.</comment></comment></comment>


This tiny brain parasite seems to make rodents braver–and it likes humans, too - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/a-tiny-brain-parasite-seems-to-make-rodents-braver-and-it-likes-humans-too/ <comment><USER2> The headline is misleading as the main body of the very interesting article is actually about how much we still don't know about how _Toxoplasma gondii_ affects its hosts' behaviours.</comment>


There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love? - <AUTHOR> http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/12/14/the-overjustification-effect

<comment><USER2> there's nothing worse than a high rising terminal</comment>


Looking for radical patent reform - look again (Patent Reform Act of 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.haynesboone.com/files/Publication/9bbac289-c2c6-447a-ad82-77d39b4ef017/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/1b2be6bc-dcb4-470c-8f96-8201c49ed0ec/Proposed_Patent_Reform_Act_2010.pdf#page=1

<comment><USER2> The new act conspicuously avoids revisiting the vague definitions of what qualifies for patent protection. This is rather surprising, considering the ongoing contention over patents for semi- or intangible things (eg software, business methods).

Do you have idea why that is?</comment>


Ask HN: Why did I just get a new password emailed to me? - <AUTHOR>

About 4 hours after the startup school email, I got an email from info@ with a "New Hacker News pw".  I'm still logged in to HN (my session wasn't killed in the process)... did something happen that necessitated regenerating passwords for people? <comment><USER2> I can go to the login page, attempt and fail to login, then click the "email yourself a new password link". Asking the user to confirm the email address used for registration will avoid this problem.</comment>


The evolutionary origin of depression  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13899022

<comment><USER2> Already posted 2 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=677381>

It got 63 comments, so it might be worth reading it there.</comment>


My Fiancé Jamal Khashoggi Was a Lonely Patriot - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/opinion/jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-fiancee-mbs-murder.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how this plays in tech, slack is backed by Saudis for instance, and that's a reason why we never started using it, despite a lot of young developers liking it.

Of course _we're_ the public sector, so we probably see more political motivations in our choices of tech, but I think it is interesting when your investors become a liability.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a source that Slack is backed by Saudis?

I find Slack worrisome since all data is centralised and can be read by Slack. And we do that for discussion of development no less! Such discussion should be held in private. Its questionable whether management of a company should be able to read such a papertrail (there are pros and cons) but I don't see pros for a third party reading such. Especially not such massive amount.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.recode.net/2017/9/18/16317902/uber-softbank- visi...](https://www.recode.net/2017/9/18/16317902/uber-softbank-vision-fund- big-investment-saudi-arab-emirates-apple-qualcomm-sharp)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank- shares/softbank-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank- shares/softbank-shares-fall-55-percent-as-saudi-ties-cause-concern- idUSKCN1MP05F)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is true that Khashoggi likely was a much more complicated figure than just some sort of Western-oriented Saudi dissident and a journalist. He was a member of Muslim Brotherhood. He was likely a player with the Saudi intelligence. Here's a link to a widely quoted piece from John R. Bradley at The Spectator. And Bradley is someone who actually worked and knew Khashoggi very well. Judge for yourself: [https://spectator.us/2018/10/jamal- khashoggi/](https://spectator.us/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi/)

<comment><USER6> "In Washington in 2005, a senior Pentagon official told me of a ridiculous plan they had to take 'the Saudi out of Arabia' (as was the rage post-9/11). It involved establishing a council of selected Saudi figures in Mecca to govern the country under US auspices after the US took control of the oil. He named three Saudis the Pentagon team were in regular contact with regarding the project. One of them was Khashoggi. A fantasy, certainly, but it shows how highly he was regarded by those imagining a different Saudi Arabia."

Sounds like a story full of conspiratorial fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't remember any prominent consulate killing during the cold war as a fan of John le Carré novels. Maybe they were covered by Soviets and the West?

Are there any other examples of consular services being used to trap and punish opposition, except the Saudi Khashoggi case in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate?

<comment><USER8> They had resources to kill or kidnap their targets in a way that creates much less problems than a murder in a consulate.

<comment><USER7> I rather suspect a bloody pulp-fiction-esque accident a la Tarantino at the consulate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently he also was part of the security aparatus in Saudi Arabia.

Not meant as an excuse or an explanation, but important to keep in mind.

<comment><USER10> > Apparently

Could you provide some links that detail how we know that?</comment></comment>


Love for LuaJIT - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/01/love-for-luajit.html <comment><USER2> LuaJIT 2.0 is an amazing achievement. On the programming language shootout's "flawed benchmarks", LuaJIT outperforms almost every other dynamic language (including JavaScript V8, Python, Ruby 1.9, JRuby, VisualWorks Smalltalk, CPython, PLT Scheme), and is competetive on many benchmarks with highly- optimized language implementations like Sun's JVM, and GHC:

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/which-programming- lan...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/which-programming-languages- are- fastest.php?gpp=on&java=on&csharp=on&ghc=on&sbcl=on&luajit=on&hipe=on&v8=on&vw=on&mzscheme=on&lua=on&python=on&php=on&perl=on&ruby=on&calc=chart)

Mike Pall wrote LuaJIT and now LuaJIT 2 as essentially solo efforts. Thanks to Google and the other sponsors for helping him continue!

<comment><USER3> For an apples-to-apples comparison you'll want to look at the single-threaded performance:

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all)

<comment><USER4> Spoiler: LuaJit compares even better when comparing single-threaded performance.

Edit: replaced "performs" with "compares", eliminating ambiguity around competitive performance vs clocktime performance

<comment><USER3> Spoiler: The Lua benchmark submissions are not parallelized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _We use Lua internally at Google_

Interesting! Anyone know details?

<comment><AUTHOR> Joshua Haberman gives some details here: <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/62321>

_Our Lua usage isn't too widespread at the moment; it's really one infrastructure project in particular that uses Lua to allow user-defined functions to run within a tightly controlled container. Lua was the best choice, because of its low overhead, fast execution, and the ability to set limits on execution time._

 _Unfortunately I cannot be more specific, since the project is not public._

<comment><USER6> Man, you only have to say something once and then the Internet replicates it for you. :)

<comment><USER7> Well, if there is someone motivated enough to search for it.

<comment><USER8> and a company with a mandate to publicly index _everything_...

<comment><USER9> ...well, almost everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mike Pall's annoucement on Lua list: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/62316>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's been on my todo list to take some time to grok luajit's internals for awhile. Awesome to see Google parting ways with some cash!

This sort of makes me want to try to write a Python->Lua compiler.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone using Lua for web apps? What's the current state ofthe ecosystem? Anything good, stable, and easy to deploy?

<comment><USER12> That's something I've also been wondering lately, since the Kepler and Orbit projects haven't seen activity for ages (at least according to their webpages).

I found this Sinatra clone for Lua called Mercury (<http://github.com/nrk/mercury>), but it lacks documentation and does not seem to be very mature at the moment.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I've poked around a bit as well, but didn't find anything that seemed like it was getting traction.

I was excited when I heard that mod_lua was going to be included with Apache by default [1] ... but I haven't really heard anything since then.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=452396>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> it makes me wonder why languages like ruby are so slow.

<comment><USER2> Ruby _might_ just need a better implementation with more time spent on optimization. <http://maglev.gemstone.com/> is going in this direction.

But also, Lua was always designed with cleanness and simplicity of implementation in mind. Its developers have strong backgrounds in both theory and engineering, which you can see in their interview in the book _Masterminds of Programming_. They've been very conservative about the design of the language. In contrast, Ruby feels much messier and more "evolved" - look at its Yacc grammar[1], for example, compared to the grammar of JavaScript or Lua[2]. Even the Ruby lexer is full of weird edge cases. Much of MRI is like that, and for years it was the only "spec" for the language; now its decisions have been reverse-engineered and inherited by all other implementations.

[1]: [http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/10/27/visualization...](http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/10/27/visualization- of-rubys-grammar)

[2]: <http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#8>

[By the way, I've used Ruby for years and like it at lot, while I've written only a few lines of Lua code and like it but am not deeply familiar with it.]

<comment><USER5> Also, "The Evolution of Lua" — an interesting paper that shows how they came to this fast and somewhat elegant language: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72.3859&rep=rep1&type=pdf) [PDF]

<comment><USER14> Also good: "The Implementation of Lua 5.0" (<http://www.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/~lhf/ftp/doc/sblp2005.pdf>).

Past discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=617278>

If you want to learn Lua, Ierusalimschy's _Programming in Lua_ (<http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/pil2/>) is by far the best book. Lua is one of my favorite languages. While it's good on its own, you'll get a _lot_ more out of it if you're comfortable with C. Lua+C is an excellent combination.

<comment><USER15> Just chiming in as another Lua fan; I really like it because it's like the Scheme of imperative scripting languages. And while we're passing around links to papers, I've found the following the be good for additional insight:

Lua Performance Tips: (<http://www.lua.org/gems/sample.pdf>)

A No-Frills Introduction to Lua 5.1 VM Instructions: ([http://luaforge.net/docman/view.php/83/98/ANoFrillsIntroToLu...](http://luaforge.net/docman/view.php/83/98/ANoFrillsIntroToLua51VMInstructions.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't wait for the x64 version.</comment>


Interview Heuristics - <AUTHOR> http://jackg.org/interview-heuristics

<comment><USER2> While this list does correlate highly with the list of good developers I've worked with, it makes me a little uncomfortable to use any of these as a filter - none of these are essential. There are probably other questions you could ask that are just as quick and actually are skill-related (how do you list the disk volumes on a unix machine? what's a good library to parse HTML?) - maybe it will still have some of the same biases (e.g. I don't know how .NET people parse HTML, their answer might not convince me), and maybe it will end up selecting the very same set of people - but it's just easier to defend as being about _technology_ rather than about _fashion_.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, but I'm assuming technical questions are asked too. But given several candidates who seem to do well on that portion (which is more of an academic exercise), you have to differentiate them on metrics which you have not (or possibly would have a difficult time) capturing. Hence a set of heuristics which rely on the observation that correlations between practical developer quality (or possibly just the archetype the poster prefers) and seemingly meaningless series of choices exist, you can (hopefully, favorably) bias your decision based on the latter. Choices to speak a lot about the person, especially when it deals with something you work with for such a large fraction of your professional life (e.g., OS, go-to language, sources of information). Sure, you could be selecting mostly mainstream developers and denying potentially stellar candidates, but there is also risk in taking chances with people who fall outside the norm (or what might be the norm for "solid" developers) too. Having said that, I guess I just want to make the statement that while the premise of the post sounds appalling, I'm not entirely against it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a huge fan of this .net hate. It smacks of fashion. Yes, .net is used heavily in the enterprise and probably 90% of the time .net projects are CRUDdy big balls of mud, but C# is actually a great language, visual studio is an amazing environment and (from what I hear) ASP.NET MVC is pretty great too. A good hacker who made the informed choice to use windows and .net would get unfairly penalised here. Just because it isn't cool doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(I speak as an OS X/emacs/go/prolog/javascript/... hacker, who was up until recently using .net/C# a lot)

<comment><USER5> This person (jackg) either does not know or realize that a great software engineer can use any platform, language, and tool to do whatever she needs to achieve. I'm also not a big fan of his own choices of "trendy" technologies. This post almost seems like trolling IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> For some context, I work at SeatGeek, Jack's startup, and participate in the later stages of the hiring process referred to in the post.

I think something that a lot of the recruiting/hiring discussions on HN miss is that the hiring process is not only about finding people who are capable of doing the job. It's also about finding people who will thoroughly enjoy doing the job and get along well with the rest of the team.

For example, I spoke to a candidate (in other words he made it through this set of heuristics) whose background was in security and whose primary platform was windows. He was definitely very bright and very well accomplished, but by the end of the interview, I genuinely thought he would have been bored out of his mind at SeatGeek.

Similarly, if you don't use at least one of OSX, git, ruby or python, there's a decent chance SeatGeek just isn't for you. An important caveat, that should probably be in the post, is that if your answer to any of the specific-tech related questions is "no, but I saw that you use X at SeatGeek, and I'm interested in learning more about it", that's probably equivalent to a "yes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm struggling to respond to this post.

I've been reading and participating in HN for a couple months now. It's become clear, like in every social group, that HN has a "popular" crowd. It might not necessarily be specific people, but that there's an aura of an HN mainstream that bubbles to the surface on and off.

This post stinks of that popularity. For someone like me who is generally a contrarian, it puts me off. I don't have anything personally against the OP. I certainly don't want to insult him, and I'm not even sure that my feelings are correct or warranted. I don't know him and have only casual familiarity with his startup, but his list read like a list of "popular" topics on HN. PG! YC! ShowHN! git! Python! Ruby! OS X!

I apologize for being off topic like that, this post just brought it out of me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know these are your heuristics, but find it quite puzzling that you think the average web designer using ASP or Windows is an immediate rejection. What are you saying here?

<comment><USER8> As you mention, it's a heuristic. If I had infinite time, I wouldn't use that shortcut. But alas...

You mention web designers--out of the dozens of designers I respect, I don't know a single one who uses Windows. Do you?

<comment><USER9> There is a difference between a designer and a developer. If you are hiring for designers why do you care if they can program at all. I know dozens of designers who couldn't write a hello world in Python yet have a beautiful web portfolio and yes some of them use windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> lol "Windows is a deal breaker?"

I know quite a few RoR/Java/Linux/Unix sys admins who still use Windows on the desktop (inc. me).

OS choice shouldn't be a deal breaker.

Is having a Windows Phone also a deal breaker?

As a side point, is there really that much difference between OSX/Windows now a days? I've have Macbook Pro's, Imacs and Windows things as main machines and nowadays I don't see that much difference between them (esp if you're working on web dev). From Mac -> Windows or back seems like just a new novelty tech to learn not a deal breaker any more. From your article it seems unlikely that Mac OSX or Windows is running your servers anyway.

(Same with Android vs iPhone - both are so similar now)

<comment><USER11> What about command line skills? How many people that choose Windows are proficient on the command line vs those who use *nix?

<comment><USER12> Exactly. I'm no command line whiz but access to linux/unix command line programs makes me much more productive.

grep / sed / awk / tail / ps / cat - then you add being able to pipe output between them

Then you have command line editors like vim for quick edits.

night & day vs the windows command prompt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the implication that working in PSD's isn't challenging because it's easy. Maybe not _interesting_ to programmers, but by no means is designing a product a trivial task.

<comment><USER8> Completely agree. I meant the raw PSD->HTML conversion, after all design is done. The sort of thing these outfits do: <http://www.psd2html.com/>. I'll update the post to make that more clear.

<comment><USER13> Much better - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are several hot-button issues that I can't help but think you drizzled over your posting to increase the likelihood of visceral reaction by the demographic this posting targets.

Either that, or I have to conclude that the Heuristics you mention are sullied by personal bias, and if so should be reviewed.

It may also be that your blog is part of the svbtle network that has triggered my personal biases.

</comment><comment><USER15> These heuristics, if they have any validity at all, are industry specific. In AAA game development, everyone (with a few statistical outliers) is Windows based for their development environment. For that reason, it's not surprising that most of the good programmers I know personally use and prefer Windows. I'm the only one of my coworkers who uses OS X at home.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. This was only intended to be applicable to web development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lord knows I wish I were "overwhelemed" with resumes. Unfortunately I'm not sure everyone experiences the flood he mentions...

<comment><USER17> Generic software development posts on craigslist can often net you a flood of resumes -- there's quite a few unqualified people you have to filter through

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having "automatic dealbreakers" is a fantastic way to miss talent who don't subscribe to your personal preferences...

<comment><USER12> Agree - but your going to miss talent anyway, right? He just reduces the pool of candidates quickly since he doesn't have time/bandwith for an exhaustive search.

I like his 'fail early' approach</comment></comment>


Calling Vault - a private Google Voice (sort of) - <AUTHOR> https://callingvault.com/

<comment><USER2> If you guys want this for free you can install our stack using our GITHUB or Chef Scripts and it can do all of this + a heck of a lot more.

If this is too much work and you want someone to host this for you, you can sign up for our beta at <http://invite.kazoo.io>. We closed the beta down at 300 or so folks but we're going to be opening it up and adding a lot of new invites in the next couple weeks.

I just don't think this is a service people should have to pay for and before anyone jumps down my throat, yes we charge for calls, but you can bring your own carriers so you don't actually have to pay us anything if you have 5 devices or less on our infrastructure.

Source: I'm the Marketing/Community guy at 2600hz.com, the Open-source Cloud Telecom company.

Wiki Chef Solo link: [https://2600hz.atlassian.net/wiki/display/docs/Deploying+Kaz...](https://2600hz.atlassian.net/wiki/display/docs/Deploying+Kazoo+with+Chef+Solo)

The other part that kills me is the cost structures. 100 minutes for $40 is a tad high. We charge $.0099 per minute, so $40 would buy you over 4000 minutes...

If somebody from CallingVault wants to reach out to me, I think we should chat because there's clearly a lot of design effort here, I just think that something has to be wrong on the infrastructure side. I'd honestly love to talk about what this might look like as an Enterprise product because I see more value there. But I digress...

</comment><comment><USER3> "Privacy" is not the problem set I'd pick to compete on in this space unless you are going full crypto like Silent Circle.

Instead, I'd focus on GV's actual weak points (instead of some invasion of privacy suggestion which ends up sounding like FUD, usually).

Weak points like no real team set up, no good multi-number international support, etc. There is a huge laundry list of things you could be going after.

Instead, this looks like less of a service for more money.

Offered in the spirit of constructive criticism. I use GV all day every day and am very happy with it, but it has a several glaring flaws (privacy isn't one of them as far as I'm concerned). The next step up to a full service vpbx system is a HUGE leap in terms of cost and complexity. The gap between those two is wide open.

</comment><comment><USER4> $39 for 100 minutes - that comes out to 39 cents a minute. Even the cheapest you can buy minutes ($22 for 1000, or 2.2 cents/minute) is more expensive than comparable web-based services. Is there anything that this actually does better than normal, in exchange for those prices?

<comment><USER5> Frank here – one of the co-founders of CallingVault. Here's how we look at it:

We wanted to charge the lowest price possible for a CallingVault line, so we made text and minute purchasing a la carte. This way, you get the line (including unlimited voicemail) for $3.25/month and you add only the texts and minutes that you need. We think our rates on texts and calls (as low as 1¢/txt and 2.2¢/min) are competitive.

We're always looking to get our prices as low as possible without jeopardizing the sustainability of our business (which means never showing ads, never selling customer data in any way, and ensuring that we can be around for the long haul to provide the kind of support we do now) and our goal is to be as transparent as possible (except with our customers' information). Can you point me to other services that charge less?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A bit more than I'd want to pay for this.

I like the idea of Google Voice competitors though because while I use and like Google Voice a lot, the service seems pretty much stagnant these days. Like it works okay, but Google doesn't seem to be investing much into it in terms of adding new features or fixing long-standing problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can I port an existing number?

Will the I be able to receive from SMS shortcodes?

 _What if I want more than one number? Your CallingVault account is linked to your email address, and each account gets one number. If you'd like more than one number, simply sign up with multiple email addresses._

That is less than optimal. Any plans on allowing more than one number per account? Or would I need to juggle multiple emails?

edit: And it looks like a useful feature is scheduled availability but I'm inferring that from the twitter quote: _"I freelance in the fashion industry, and CallingVault keeps me in touch with clients on my schedule. Not theirs."_

Do you provide a way to schedule availability hours/hours of operation?

<comment><USER8> Oddly enough, I built something similar with Twilio a couple weeks ago: [https://github.com/caseysoftware/upgrading-google-voice- with...](https://github.com/caseysoftware/upgrading-google-voice-with-Twilio)

There are hours of operation and then white/black lists managed by SMS. I have a few other features in mind that I haven't gotten to yet.

Disclosure: I am a Twilio employee but started this project as a proof of concept on my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Calling Vault - a private Google Voice (sort of?) (callingvault.com)"

Is this somehow implying that Google Voice is public?

<comment><USER10> It's similar to what Gruber posted on daringfireball:

"Great new service, sort of like Google Voice but private."

I guess implying that Google have access to your phone calls and this company isn't going to.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I couldn't figure out what Gruber meant by that. I guess it means that it's like Google Voice, except you have to pay for it, and it's not run by a big company that you can count on to stay in business for a long time.

<comment><USER12> Mostly it just means that Gruber is a clueless one-note hater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems sketchy that I can't view the available numbers before signing up. I almost signed up but without that information, I was skeptical and opted not to continue.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't seem to be clear beforehand from "you'll be able to choose from the following area codes" whether you can pick the full number (vanity number), or just the area code and having the rest of the number being randomly assigned (similar to how telecoms usually give numbers).

I also almost signed up, but decided against it over the lack of clarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "It is possible that we may need to disclose Personal Information, profile information and/or information about your activities as an CallingVault user when required by subpoena or other legal process, or if CallingVault has a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary:" -TOS

Doesn't seem very private to me

</comment><comment><USER16> I have no idea why I would pay for this over the free, amazing Google service I already have. I don't care that an algorithm scrapes my data, and I love that I get email transcriptions of voicemails. Someone enlighten me.

Edit: Actually, the only thing I can think of that Google Voice doesn't do for me is international text messages.

<comment><USER17> Or allow you to forward your number to an international number when you are out of the country.

But I checked, this doesn't do that either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like a simple to use product. Does it cost minutes for call forwarding (when someone calls me?)

<comment><USER5> Minutes are used for call forwarding and outgoing calls, yes. :) Thanks for the question. We're adding it to our FAQ shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hey, looks like you guys are getting some flak for the prices. Personally I doubt I'll use the service, but I just have to compliment you on the site. It's gorgeous. Readable, clean, great logo, just overall beautiful. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Expensive and not unlimited :(

</comment><comment><USER21> what do I get beyond google voice for these prices?

<comment><USER22> Yep. That was my question off the bat. (That and what did Gruber mean by "private"). I think the TL;DR is "they don't sell your information to advertisers/use your call information to market to you". And perhaps some ease of use advantages, especially for iOS users.

At first, that didn't seem appealing to me. I've been a GV user since way back in the GrandCentral days. But, frankly, it is an essential service for me. And you know what they say, "If you aren't the [paying] customer, then you are the product." It would be nice to have actual customer support and actual accountability. GV is wonderful, but it's also a complete support black hole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> was anybody else put off by the fact that it asked for money before showing you the numbers you could choose from?

Offering a proxy number like GV, means that you want to be able to choose the number you want (area code, easy to remember, similar to your current one).

perhaps this is something that only bothered me.

</comment><comment><USER24> well, it does answer my internal question of whether I could find a consumer facing service that would replace GV in case that service goes down the tubes.

GV has become my defacto number these days. It would be tough to lose that functionality.

</comment><comment><USER25> No plans offering unlimited texts? Isn't that a little unusual for a phone service?</comment>


Show HN: Search Explorer – A new kind of WMT-based SEO tool, needs alpha testers - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchexplorer.com

<comment><USER2> Just a quick note... the icon in use for "Segment Your Queries" is the Bitbucket logo. [https://bitbucket.org/](https://bitbucket.org/) Might want to change that? Maybe the cubes icon would work well for that item: [http://fortawesome.github.io/Font- Awesome/icon/cubes/](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icon/cubes/)

<comment><AUTHOR> D'oh. Good note. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Calorie-counting works: investigation into the iPad's weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/524984926 <comment><USER2> They could have made it smaller. An inch or so less diagonal for the display and a slightly thinner bezel would be ideal for my purposes.</comment>


Go, Nginx, and TLS Termination - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gopheracademy.com/advent-2016/tls-termination-bench/ <comment><USER2> You should do the same test with Keep-Alives enabled to the backend.

Add this to the server block.

proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection "";</comment>


Ask HN: Software to visualize DB Data (generate dashboard) - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a software to build a dashboard view for approx. 6 Databases (MySQL, MSSQL) to visualize our current process performance/operating numbers (eg. visitors, logins, free service agents, closed service tickets).
Maybe something like google Datastudio, which unfortunately cannot be used due to the fact that the software should run in our LAN.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Redash? [https://redash.io/](https://redash.io/)

Or maybe Apache Zeppelin? Zeppelin is a notebook/worksheet based setup similar to Jupyter/IPython.

[http://zeppelin.apache.org/](http://zeppelin.apache.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll take a look at it. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Western officials say Chinese agents contact foreign citizens using LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china-linkedin-spies.html <comment><USER2> Or they could recruit directly from the OPM database [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach).

Even more interesting is that a Chinese company owns most of Grindr. Think of all the possible blackmail opportunities if they could cross reference those. At some point there were security and privacy "concerns" and US, i.e. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States) ruled that the Chinese company had to sell Grindr by 2020.

<comment><USER3> Being gay in the US is about as blackmail worthy as being left handed.

<comment><USER4> There is a large amount of stigma associated with homosexuality. You are incorrectly assuming that the rest of the population has the same world view as you do. For example, being outwardly homosexual is a great way to lose the muslim vote - a sizeable portion of the Canadian population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is not a hot news story. It is meant to get the word out to politically connected folks, possibly with emphasis on those on the West Coast, and possibly low-key focused on the relatively large contingent of Democratic policy folks sitting in non-governmental jobs right now (it is the New York Times after all).

I suspect the government sources in the article would appreciate it if the politicos above keep themselves relatively clean of unnecessary foreign contacts for the next year as the remaining few folks still in government are probably giving at least 50% odds that the Democrats win again in 2020, and are thus anticipating the possibility of large backlog of background investigations checking in about 1 nano-second after the election.

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between "contacts" and being a witting or unwitting spy.

Having foreign contacts, despite current furore, is not a crime, or improper. Now if you're doing bad things, that's obviously a crime and will result in disqualification, but simply "contacts"? No, that's no reason for DQ.

<comment><USER7> I was using LinkedIn to get leads for a sales campaign years ago and wound up talking to all sorts of people who told us things that they probably shouldn't have.

At the time I thought it would be the bee's knees for espionage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I figured they already knew since they're watching all social media and communications anyways. In addition, foreign adversaries also hide messages in seemingly random but innocuous comments on forums and blogs made to look like real user communication but makes no sense to anyone but their intended target.

<comment><USER9> I've been contacted once.

We had an intrusion on some dev boxes. The vector was an open management service on some public facing Tomcats, deployed open by accident. The intruder installed a custom Tomcat container that apparently sent some 443 traffic to a .cn domain. We figured they got some class files, not much use to anyone without the rest of our products. We never got to see their actual payload. So we killed the instances and that was that.

A week or two later, a few of us at $work got recruit pings on LI from a Chinese company to work abroad. None before or since. We figured either it was a coincidence, or whoever got our class files wanted some help learning how our product worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related discussion 2 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547)

</comment><comment><USER11> The original paper previously discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222547)

</comment><comment><USER12> This didn't really strike me as a very profound story. I'm sure in a bygone era newspaper classifieds would have been used instead.

<comment><USER13> Maybe, but when people working in sensitive positions post their entire history, clearances, and build their own network and all you need to do is pay a nominal fee to become a LinkedIn "Pro" to get access, it makes fishing for the right targets quite a bit easier than classifieds.

Recruiting agents abroad is one thing - I'd think this would also be useful / more useful for social engineering attacks and other deeper attacks on sensitive networks. "Hey I was with you at university - want to grab coffee? Friend me!" > Now has access to the entire network of cleared professionals working at [place X]

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's naive thinking that organizations like CIA and their analogies in other countries do not track as much people as possible. And there are not so many, right? Population of the Earth is close to 8 billion, so at least a detailed global social connections graph is what they already have.

</comment><comment><USER15> A) Obviously.

B) It might be better spycraft to use this obvious entry to Chinese intelligence in the other direction. Of course TFA may just be cover for that... are there any details that seem plausible but perhaps misleading?

C) These people ain't playin'. No one wants to end up like Shane Todd.

</comment><comment><USER16> Chinese should be aware of self styled thought leaders and experts pop-up based on current demand on linkedin. I am sure someone would be updating CVs claiming a 10 years of deep experience in suppressing protests worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER17> im 100% sure western agents don't contact chinese citizens on chinese social networks. that would NEVER happen. no way.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, be careful with these people. I'm a virtual nobody and I've had some _very_ weird experiences with Chinese state actors.

<comment><USER19> Care to share your experiences? I'm interested!

<comment><USER18> The one that particularly stuck with me is phonecalls from embassy numbers to people I know in Canada, claiming that I'm trying to enter China and that they would need to confirm details for me to gain entry. AFAIK this is an actual thing that they do for some entrants.

Since most people don't record phonecalls, it's easy to deny this sort of thing; and since it's similar to an official activity of the government there, I suspect for a lot of people it goes unnoticed, if it is more common.

I've never visited the PRC, and I have no intention of ever visiting it as long as it is run by the party.

Chinese students here are under watch as well, and it's not all that subtle. You should read some of the things that go on in North American schools.

<comment><USER20> It's a simple scam. There is one about DHL as well you don't have to read so much into every little thing.

<comment><USER18> I've received the "DHL" one before, where they read you off a tracking code in Mandarin hoping you'll call back and tell them you don't speak it, this is not that.

You can think what you want, but this is not that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And the US uses DICE owned ClearanceJobs.com. So?

</comment><comment><USER22> Quiet hypocritical considering all social media is banned in China for usual citizens

<comment><USER23> From TFA:

"LinkedIn is also the only major American social media platform not blocked in China because the company has agreed to censor posts containing delicate material."

<comment><USER24> Is LinkedIn really "social media", though? From the perspective of a non-user, everything I've heard about it suggests that it's purely work-focused.

<comment><USER25> You would think so but it looks more and more like Facebook everyday.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Live stylesheet editing - <AUTHOR> http://annevankesteren.nl/test/contenteditable-style.htm

<comment><USER2> As a side note, the web developer toolbar in FF (and maybe chrome, I haven't checked) is able to do this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting find. I could use this idea in Stylebot (<http://stylebot.me>). It's a Chrome extension that allows you to live edit a custom stylesheet for any page on the web.

</comment><comment><USER4> In Firefox <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/179/>

<comment><USER5> Does this have any functionality over what web developer and firebug provide?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny...I can't see the source code. But I can edit the stylesheet.

This is pretty cool.

1) How is it done?

2) How are you hiding how it's done?

Edit: Is it done through a Chrome extension?

<comment><USER7> It looks like he just uses the "contenteditable" property ( <http://valums.com/edit-in-place/> ) to make it editable, and then displays it as a word-wrap: pre element.

While I can't think of any immediate applications, I had never realized that contenteditable was so widely supported. I'm going to have to try using it in my next project...

<comment><USER8> There's no such thing as a 'word-wrap: pre element'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would have been more interesting if the first thing I did wasn't to change em's to px's. Apparently I can't read 2px text.

</comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't much like Adblock. It displays all the code, but doesn't allow editing it.

<comment><USER11> I doubt that is a problem with Adblock itself. I guess you mean you are using Adblock Plus with a filter subscription? Check what things are filtered on that page based on your filters.

<comment><USER10> Oh, sorry, just realized that may have been interpreted incorrectly. The page works, but only with the example CSS - the Adblock code on the page is uneditable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> contenteditable="" is that all?</comment>


Lisp: Surprise! You're soaking in it - <AUTHOR> http://tekkie.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/lisp-surprise-youre-soaking-in-it/ <comment><USER2> I think it's more fair to say that s-expression is analogous to XML, Lisp just happened to be written in s-expressions. Lisp could also be written in XML, but I doubt it's a wise choice. In fact, Lisp could be written in any nested tree structure, since the idea is to write code in parse-tree directly, instead of letting the compiler transform your code into parse trees. So Lisp macros manipulating s-expression is like manipulating parse-tree directly, and thus you can create new language constructs.</comment>


Drogon – C++14/17-based rapid HTTP and web application framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/an-tao/drogon <comment><USER2> Always glad to see another contender!

The documentation is very thorough and gives a good overview. Every library should be like this.

That being said, I have written a lot of HTTP servers and clients in C++ so I have some opinions on the design of this library.

Modern C++ really tries to avoid preprocessor macros for the reason that it's really hard to know what is going on. Macros can do anything. So I would suggest you get rid of the code generation including dragon_ctl. Write a library that doesn't need code generation. C++17 has all the tools needed to do this.

<comment><USER3> I have a question. I have also implemented my C++ web framework. I found it is difficult to conform to http spec. There doesn't seem to be a Conformance test?

How do people do it?

<comment><USER2> If you're writing one for general consumption, I wish you luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Developing a trust accounting application for law firms in Drogon. It's an excellent framework written in Modern C++. Very easy to work with. Check out the Source code on git, it is beautifully written. If you are proficient in Modern C++, then this is the framework to use for speedy development. Just as an aside, I migrated the project from Go to C++.

<comment><USER5> > I migrated the project from Go to C++

Any particular reasons why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since you are shooting for modern C++, why not use Botan rather than OpenSSL?

[https://botan.randombit.net/](https://botan.randombit.net/)

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the use case for a C++ web framework? Would higher level languages/frameworks make use of this to do some of the heavy lifting? Would a company migrate to something like this once at scale? Or, are there just some people/companies who prefer to use C++?

<comment><USER8> If you're writing a C++ application, it can be quite useful. I've shared this before:

I worked at a company once that had a really decent HTTP server library... That they put in every program.

You'd launch an app, and to debug it, you'd access [http://localhost:9001](http://localhost:9001). From there, you could go to URLs for different libraries in the app. Like, if you had a compression library, you could go [http://localhost:9001/compression](http://localhost:9001/compression). It would show stats about the recent work it had done, how long it took, how much CPU, RAM, disk it used. The state of variables now, etc. You could click a button to get it to dump its cache, etc.

If you were running a service on a remote machine, accessing it over HTTP to control it was just awesome. [http://r2d2:9001/restart](http://r2d2:9001/restart). [http://r2d2:9001/quit](http://r2d2:9001/quit). [http://r2d2:9001/logfile](http://r2d2:9001/logfile).

Oh, and the services running on that remote machine would register with a system-level monitor. So, if you went to [http://r2d2/services](http://r2d2/services), you could see a list of links to connect to all of the running services.

...and every service registered with a global monitor for that service. So, if you knew a Potato process was running somewhere, but you weren't sure which machine it was on, you could find it by going to [http://globalmonitor/Potato](http://globalmonitor/Potato), and you'd see a list of machines it was running on.

Just all kinds of awesomeness were possible. Can not recommend enough.

And, I mean like, programs with a GUI. Like, picture a game. Except on my second monitor, I had Chrome open, talking to the game's engine. I could use things like WebSockets to stream data to the browser. Like, every time the game engine rendered a shot, I could update it (VNC-style) in the browser window. Except annotated with stats, etc. It was just the most useful way to organize different debug information.

And what was great was that writing a library, and wanting to output information, you wouldn't write it to std out... You'd make HTML content, and write to it. Want to update it? Clear the buffer and write to it again. As a user, if you ever want to read the buffer, you just browse it. Want to update it? Refresh the window. Or better yet, stream it over a websocket. Like Std Out on steroids. If you need to combine the output from a few libraries in a new window, you just write a bit more HTML in your code, and you're doin' it.

It's just another example, in my mind, of the power of libraries. We all get used to thinking of frameworks (IIS, Apache) as the only way to solve a problem, that we forget to even think about putting things together in new and unexpected ways. HTTP as a library - HELL YES.

Using HTML to debug programs, live, is highly under-utilized.

<comment><USER9> I would say that debugging a program live is highly underrated. There is no inherent reason why building a webserver into everything and using html for visualization is the best way to go. Shared memory can be used and be 100-1000 times faster, which can make a huge difference if you want to visualize large amounts of data like point clouds, pixels, etc. as they change.

In your scenario it sounds like an easy way to make a big step forward, though I don't think that takes it far enough.

<comment><USER8> Well, for one thing, you're presuming the person who wants to inspect something a) has a debugger, b) knows how to use it, c) that the machine running the application allows access through those ports.

<comment><USER9> I didn't presume any of those things and I'm not sure where any of those ideas come from. A program can write to shared memory that is read by a separate program. That doesn't take a debugger and it doesn't take 'ports'. I'm actually not sure what you mean by ports.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I feel like we're really mis-communicating.

I proposed an idea, and you proceeded to tell me "There is no inherent reason why [my idea] is the best way to go." I think that's a pretty rough way to respond to someone suggesting an idea that might be useful under some circumstances. It's a possibly new tool in your tool-belt. I didn't mean to suggest that a hammer "is the best way to go" for any job. But sometimes the problem is a nail, and a hammer is the best tool.

You highlighted the value of "debugging a program live," which is true, but I thought you meant using a sophisticated debugger (gdb / Visual Studio, etc). For instance, Microsoft Visual Studio has (or used to have) the ability to have plug-ins to help you visualize complex structures in memory of the running process, for instance showing a Bitmap as an actual image on your screen. I thought that's what you meant, or just using gdb or some other sophisticated debugger. But yes, that was my misunderstanding.

Shared memory is nice, and I've used it before, but it required me to store all of my interesting objects in shared memory structures. Which meant changing how my application was written. Yes, sometimes I could see that being amazing. Or I suppose you make a large copy of them.

I've also done the trick where, if I hit a URL on my app, then it took the point clouds, pixels, etc, and provided a rendered PNG image of them. But it could do it without requiring me to restructure my program's memory layout (other than a few multi-threading locks, when needed.) And I've done that over WebSockets, with interactive rendering rates, basically like a VNC. And what was nice about that, again, was that I could run a process on one machine, and debug it (through HTML) from another. And grant that ability to other users, without having to tell them how to install a debugger app, and giving that app access to connect over the network, and etc.

The ports thing was in reference to the ability of Microsoft Visual Studio (and presumably other debuggers) to do remote debugging, attaching themselves to a process running on another computer. So, you have to be able to connect to that process. Whereas my proposal could work on normal HTTP / HTTPS ports, and with authentication, could enable a user to access debug views.

Anyway, yes, I very much agree with you that debugging a program live is highly underrated, and I think it's good if people share different ways to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Drogon is similar to "drogón" in Spanish, which means "junkie" or someone who takes a lot of drugs.

<comment><USER11> I guess if we're doing random tidbits.

And "junkie" is a very harmful term to use and implies a moral failing of the drug user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I knew that name was familiar. Drogon scores nicely in Techempower's benchmarks:

[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r19&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r19&hw=ph&test=plaintext)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes indeed it is one of the top performers. But I feel need more real-life examples of companies and systems using it.

Hope it generates some interest among programming community to also look at modern C++ as viable web development platform.

<comment><USER13> The problem isn't performance, the problem is developer productivity. C++ isn't known for building things quickly. Why would anyone use this over DotNet Core, which is also highly performance but significantly easier to understand. Also building anything in a complex language like C++ means more bugs and errors.

<comment><USER9> I don't find this to be true at all with modern C++. Doing the same things ends being more straightforward in my experience. Setting up compilation is often more painful and sooner or later I run into some snags with const and map iteration, though those don't end up being long term time sinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was looking for a C++ HTTP framework a couple of months ago for a hobby project of mine. However, the whole debacle with WinGet and AppGet really left a very horrible taste in my mouth, that I did not want anything to do with a framework built by Microsoft. So I opted for Boost::Beast

</comment><comment><USER15> edit: I am wrong, see comment below.

Since this project was submitted by project creator, it deserves "Show HN" status ([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)).

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not the creator, just stumbled on it looking for examples in modern C++, was especially looking for C++ 20. Found it interesting and try to share on HN.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if this is interesting to anyone. But, I wanted something a bit more lightweight, so, I'm writing my own kinda/sorta Drogon thing. It's using git and cmake to (hopefully) serve as a better library management system. Here's the 'app' I'm devoloping: [https://github.com/brighton36/vuecrudd](https://github.com/brighton36/vuecrudd) and here's the project itself: [https://github.com/brighton36/prails](https://github.com/brighton36/prails)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unless I missed something, it says it can auto generate code, but I don't see anything regarding Swagger/OpenAPI

<comment><USER18> I think it means code generation using drogon_ctl.</comment></comment>


Unfair comparisons - <AUTHOR> http://tiamat.tsotech.com/unfair-comparisons

<comment><USER2> Benchmark Nazis will always complain about _any_ benchmark, no matter what. Don't let them dissuade you from continuing work on this amazing project.

Personally, this project has prompted me to change my career path from C# to something else, due to the abysmal performance of ASP.NET. I'm still waiting to see more tests, especially the asp-stripped one, and hopefully some OWIN/Katana in the near future. But for now, I'm seriously considering JS/Node.js or Scala/JVM as my main development platform. So thanks.

Is there any date for the next round?

<comment><USER3> I worked on improving the aspnet (on Windows) results and I committed aspnet- stripped (based on @pdonald's aspnet tests) and HttpListener.

As that committer, I have to ask: Why would you change your career path due to supposed 'abysmal performance' reported on a website?

Keep in mind that the 'abysmal performance' of many of the frameworks can still handle millions of requests per day. Plus, many of the 'slower' frameworks have other development benefits like ease of development, community ecosystem, static type checking, etc.

The reason I replied is because I'm considering jumping from aspnet to a 'slower' framework like django and I'm not basing my decisions solely on the results of this collaborative benchmark where I don't even know if experts have tuned the results, and where I don't know _why_ the results are 'poor'.

<comment><USER4> You can actually know that experts often haven't tuned the results because many PRs are being ignored ever since the beginning of this project. There is a pretty clear agenda.

<comment><AUTHOR> Say what? Which of these [1] is old and being ignored?

[1] [https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pulls](https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pulls)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The area that I would be the most critical of the benchmarks is that it's unclear whether frameworks that use process based concurrency are being set up well. With frameworks that use process based concurrency, generally one wants to run as many processes as can fit in RAM with a nice amount of headroom. That way, when one app process is waiting on I/O, another will be handling another request (and the operating system handles the context switching).

Right now, the setup.py for Django specifies that it will create 3 * NCPU worker processes. On the i7, that would probably be 24 processes and possibly using an eighth of the RAM in the box. Similarly, for Rails, the Unicorn configuration specifies 8 worker processes (one process per GB of RAM) regardless of whether it's on EC2 or the i7 (while Django goes from 6 to 24 processes depending on the box it's on since it's 3 * NCPU). For all we know, the CPU usage might be around 25% and the RAM usage even less. As such, it's hard to determine if the speed achieved is because of the limitations in the framework or whether the box is simply being under-utilized due to sub-optimal configuration.

If you're going to do another around, more than any other changes, I think a view of the CPU and RAM usage would really help - if for no other reason than to show that the test is accurate. Right now, I have questions about whether the process concurrency frameworks are well set-up. Why would Django benefit from getting 4x the number of worker processes on the i7, but not Rails? Is 24 processes utilizing the i7 box with Django? CPU and RAM numbers would help provide answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> To the degree feasible given the breadth of submissions we've received, we have worked to ensure that frameworks that use process-level concurrency are configured to in fact use multiple processes. See question #5 from our questions section [1].

That said, across the board, inclusive of both process-concurrent and thread- concurrent frameworks, we never rule out the possibility of a configuration glitch. We've asked that any subject-matter experts for any framework perceived as underperforming review the code and configuration. To date, we've received a great deal of pull requests to deal with many such matters. On the other hand, very few such tweaks have had a significant impact on performance data.

We do intend to capture CPU, network, and IO utilization in the future. For the time being, we invite fans/SMEs to review the code, run the tests on their own multi-core machine and/or EC2 instances and determine if there is room for improvement.

[1] [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=motivation](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=motivation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for compiling the Web Framework Benchmarks! [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6)

I discovered some interesting and speedy platforms like OpenResty. And PHP performance for multiple queries isn't too bad either - top five.

For round #7, I suggest an addition of the HipHop-PHP (hhvm) Facebook's speedy open source PHP implementation. [https://github.com/facebook/hiphop- php/wiki](https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki)

<comment><USER7> AFAIK hhvm doesn't have namespace support yet. So Symfony2, laravel, ZF2 can not be run in it. But basic PHP performance would skyrocket I assume.

<comment><USER6> HHVM is moving fast - Namespace support arrived. I heard reflection compatibility with PHP.net needs some work. They are fixing bugs that prevent top PHP project from working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it would be interesting if respective technology vendors could be motivated to tune the configuration, and be bound by some rules. eWeek did a DB shootout like this 10 years ago, and (as the rumor goes) led to the creation of the MySQL query cache to specifically beat the benchmark.

Getting the various vendors involved would require a lot of clout though :(

Here is some commentary on the MySQL configuration: [https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...](https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/config/my.cnf)

* innodb_log_flush_at_trx_commit is not specified, so it's going to default to 1 (durable). This is a little unfair, since other databases won't do this.

* innodb_buffer_pool_size isn't specified, so it's going to default to 128M. A database that uses mmap files will have an atvantage here - since it can automatically use free memory and won't require this level of tuning.

* I thought it was fair to disable query cache though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, mostly in an informal matter, we have in fact received many test implementations from maintainers of frameworks directly. If you go through the pull requests, you may recognize some folks. I don't want to name drop though.

I had in passing asked a few if they would be willing to apply an "official" indicator next to their rows. But the response had been uniformly "not interested." Maybe later I'll ask again. :)

Thanks for the notes on the MySQL configuration. There are a lot of gray areas in setting up the configuration, but we do seek recommendations such as these. Aside from concessions we've made to the matter of running a benchmark, the overriding goal for configuration is that "production-class" configuration is preferred.

I'm not an expert at InnoDB tuning, so you might tell me that "innodb_log_flush_at_trx_commit = 1" is not typical for production environments, in which case I'd want to make a change. But if it _is_ typical for production, I'd like to keep it as-is.

If the point is that other databases do not have something comparable, that speaks to the point of the linked blog entry. These things are not directly comparable, feature-by-feature. We would like Postgres and MongoDB to be deployed in a typical "production-class" configuration, but that may or may not be feature-identical with MySQL.

<comment><USER9> In many production environments where a few lost writes in the event of OS crash aren't entirely the end of the world, innodb_log_flush_at_trx_commit is set to 2. In some it will even be set to 0 (in that instance, data is lost in the event of MySQL crash). If you care deeply about every write definitely hitting disk in a recoverable manner, you set it to 1, but at that point you may have to do other stuff (is the OS lying to you? Is your RAID controller lying to you? Is your disk lying to you?)

> If the point is that other databases do not have something comparable, that > speaks to the point of the linked blog entry.

Other databases do have something comparable. It looks like MongoDB actually doesn't, but that's highly unusual. Postgres does (I believe it's on by default), Riak does, Voldemort does (one could make an argument that it's safer to leave it off in the latter two cases than elsewhere).

<comment><AUTHOR> If I am parsing you right, it sounds like "innodb_log_flush_at_trx_commit = 2" is what you would recommend for a majority of production environments.

<comment><USER8> Durability will typically be very expensive to implement unless you have a fast SSD or RAID controller with NVRAM, so it will skew the test considerably if you make MySQL offer it, but say MongoDB does not have to.

But I do recommend it for the majority of people. Shameless plug: [http://www.tocker.ca/2013/06/19/deciding-whether-or-not- to-m...](http://www.tocker.ca/2013/06/19/deciding-whether-or-not-to-make- mysql-durable.html)

Also: [http://dom.as/2013/08/09/on-durability/](http://dom.as/2013/08/09/on- durability/) (Domas works on MySQL@Facebook).

<comment><USER9> Incidentally, on the EBS durability thing, it's addressed here: [https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=27590](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=27590) \- An fsync isn't a guarantee, or wasn't in 2013, but they estimate the risk of loss after fsync to be very low.

Can't find anything on whether their newer SSD-providing instances guarantee durability, though.

<comment><USER8> That's really cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A moving background makes it easy to read! Thumbs up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! Glad you like it.

Jokes aside, if you hate it, you can turn it off at the bottom right. Maybe some day I'll disable it by default. But for now, I kind of enjoy these responses. Edit: very well, it's disabled by default. :)

<comment><USER11> It does a fantastic job of pegging one CPU!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've noticed that Chrome is especially bad since it still does very little to GPU-accelerate SVG. Frankly, one reason I had left it enabled for so long was to make a point about Chrome's bad GPU+SVG support. Why should it be necessary to use the CPU to move a semi-circle?

But in any case, I'd rather not distract from the points I'm trying to make in the blog entry, so the background is now off by default.

<comment><USER9> Where does it actually run well? It doesn't peg a core on Safari, but scrolling still feels laggy and unpleasant. I initially assumed you'd implemented your own inertial scrolling, as with old Google mobile sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> It runs well on all my PCs, which admittedly are all Windows. It's just an SVG+SMIL animation. My opinion is that in 2013, it should run entirely on the GPU. But I acknowledge that's not the case as much as I think it should be.

On my box, it uses ~2.1% CPU and ~16% GPU in Aurora.

<comment><USER9> Ah, yep; it actually works quite acceptably in Firefox. Very unpleasant in Chrome and Safari, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because benchmarks are usually just useless. It is like what has better acceleration on free fall? Race car or truck?

</comment><comment><USER13> Since we're throwing fruit onto the stand..

I'd love to see Perl Mason on here (the benchmarks)

Make the DB something CPAN like tie::Storable and load it in RAM. Lets see how that stands up XD</comment>


IBM-Maersk blockchain alliance cuts oceanic shipping times by 40% - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-maersk-tradelens-blockchain-alliance-cuts-shipping-times-40-percent/ <comment><USER2> This article says that IBM charges for access to the chain and says it's private. But what I want to know is how does something get onto the chain, how do you know the data reflects reality, and who is computing the blocks.

<comment><USER3> Probably by paying IBM & Maersk. It has to reflect reality otherwise since you signed it everyone else will know you signed off on bad or invalid docs. No more missing or smeared paperwork.

<comment><USER2> How does that differentiate this from a centralized system then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is that 40% claim realistic ? How? I find it hard to trust anything IBM says, after Watson.</comment>