Istio Observability with Go, gRPC, and Protocol Buffers-Based Microservices - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/istio-observability-with-go-grpc-and-protocol-buffers-based-microservices-d09e34c1255a <comment><USER2> Also published (free access) here: [https://wp.me/p1RD28-6k1](https://wp.me/p1RD28-6k1)

<comment><USER3> Have you considered doing a similar writeup for Linkerd? ([https://linkerd.io](https://linkerd.io))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this interesting and an excellent general overview of today's monitoring practices while using microservices.

I have to say, though, that I am always perplexed by these toy microservice architectures because they are not solving a problem but creating it. For example, we would not need sophisticated distributed tracing if we used less moving parts; we would not need to use highly optimized (but hard to debug) protocols like grpc and protobuf if we did not have to rely on a massive graph of calls for each service, and so on.

Of course, there are a bunch of lovely use cases for microservices, mostly around "how do we make 1k developers collaborate over our codebase?" (answer: enlarge the codebase!), which always sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me, but then again, I loathe working for huge companies.

If that is your case, then these tools will make your developer life a little more bearable. If you are playing with microservices because they are fresh and new, please consider a more conservative architecture first.

<comment><USER5> These solutions didn't appear out of thin air because people get bored one day. Micro services solve tangible, real world problems.

gRPC isn't necessary hard to debug, and it brings a whole host of improvements over whatever ad-hoc mess you used before.

<comment><USER6> Improvements like...?

<comment><USER5> Speed, schemas, code generation, built in backwards compatibility, extension points, public service definitions, introspection to name a few.

<comment><USER7> You forgot real bi-directional streaming but otherwise I agree :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a developer who uses go microservice architecture and is in the process of containerizing our services at work, this is very valuable. Thank you!

As an elixir/erlang enthusiast, haven't we just reinvented BEAM and observer?

<comment><USER9> Yep. No small amount of Erlang/Elixir programmers are kind of amused how K8s is trying to invent OTP for nodes.

<comment><USER10> I wish we could somehow convince the undoubtedly very smart people working on K8s to just get on the BEAM and go from there? You know, work on Dialyzer, fix my code highlighting issues in VSCode, make Elixir faster, somehow make it easy to create cross-platform binaries, and give me a platform-native Observer ;).

<comment><USER9> I suppose it's not easy to part with the illusion that containers should not be ephemeral.

I mean, that's probably easy to do for microservices; you fire off a function, it does something useful and returns back _quickly_. Having K8s do a home- grown lambda hosting for you is useful there.

But the moment you introduce any state, the whole idea of ephemeral containers is much more of a hindrance than something actually useful. A singular BEAM VM might run (realistically) tens of thousands of processes that do a lot of useful work. It's just not practical to kill off such a container and hand- wave away the huge costs of spinning it back up.

IMO K8s and Erlang/Elixir are mutually exclusive at this point, sadly.

There are projects in progress that attempt to solve the distributed supervisors ideas -- Swarm, Firenest, Horde -- but even without that, any Erlang/Elixir app can go a _long_ way before needing distributed coordination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The complexity and amount of code involved is staggering. I'm not sure how we can possibly justify the Kubernetes, Istio, Docker, Envoy, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Kiali, Helm stack.

What problem are we solving that we were not solving 15 years ago, again? How much time and effort are being saved (by organizations smaller than google)?

<comment><USER12> It attempts to solve the problem of managing elastic container infrastructure, in which everything is changing all the time.

The industry is in a big transition. First we ran VMs in datacenters, then we ran them in cloud providers. Then we started running containers and realized that their ephemeral nature made it possible to treat deployment like code, and Kubernetes is now the standard for doing that.

So, Kubernetes gives us easy abstractions for deployment. But having lots of little ephemeral containers that are constantly changing creates problems of security and visibility and routing. Service mesh is an attempt to solve that problem.

I would point out that Kubernetes has become an industry standard at this point. A few years ago it was reasonable to think Mesos would become a standard, or that multiple solutions would coexist. In fact, Kubernetes has destroyed its competition and Mesos is basically dead. It would currently be insane to adopt one of Kubernetes's competitors or try to roll your own.

If your organization standardized on Mesos a few years ago, you probably regret that decision today, and you are probably forced to plan a transition to Kubernetes.

The service mesh market is very immature at the moment, and the barrier to entry is still low. Witness the recent arrival of AWS App Mesh, which is probably going to do quite well. I would be very wary of committing to a particular mesh until the dust settles a bit and we see a clear winner. Otherwise you run the risk of choosing the Mesos of the mesh world.

<comment><USER13> As a small counterpoint of anecdata, I work at one of those companies that standardized on Mesos(with Apache aurora for scheduling, Kerberos+LDAP for access control). While our devs have small axes to grind with aurora, I have never heard our SREs complain about Mesos. The only complaint one might plausibly raise is that it's not Kubernetes(!), in the sense that 5 years from now it might be hard to find an SRE with Mesos experience vs K8s experience.

Mesos's "batteries not included" approach means it does not now and will not ever have feature parity with K8s, but we've managed to cobble enough batteries together to make it operationally sufficient for our needs. We certainly aren't planning a transition away as far as I can tell. Anyways, just my 2¢! :)

<comment><USER12> I expect that you will eventually be forced to transition in the next few years. Mesos will fall further and further behind Kubernetes due to lack of development and lack of integrations with new service meshes, telemetry systems, etc. Most new projects boast Kubernetes integration, and omit Mesos integration. Although you may want to hold out with Mesos so you can wait and see if Kubernetes gets supplanted by a newer model.

Even Docker, which competes directly with Kubernetes via Swarm and Compose, has felt the need to include a Kubernetes cluster in Docker for Desktop. That's how comprehensively Kubernetes has taken over the container orchestration market.

In any case I was not specifically criticizing Mesos, but rather using the Mesos vs Kubernetes example to point out that committing to a particular service mesh this early in the evolution of the concept is probably unwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nevi-me Is Istio/Envoy supported on a non-k8s deployment?

We're deploying an application that's in containers but not running on k8s, and has:

* an Angular front-end, using grpc-web

* a gRPC-web proxy (improbable-eng; golang)

* an nginx proxy (for Angular, and routing grpc traffic)

* an authentication manager (grpc+rust)

* an audit logging service (grpc+rust)

* a database service (grpc+kotlin)

* a 'logic' engine thing (grpc+kotlin)

* jaeger for distributed tracing

It's been a joy to develop, but I wouldn't mind reducing the 2 proxies to 1 with maybe Envoy. I tried rewriting grpc-web proxy in Rust, but gave up after struggling and not having enough time to complete it.

<comment><USER7> How is Rust support for gRPC last time I checked it was very slow / broken compare to supported languages? Also I quiet don't understand using 3 different languages for a tech stack, why don't you stick to one language?

<comment><USER14> My understating is that the Linkerd folks have a production grpc client and server.

<comment> nevi-me Yes, I'm using Tower-grpc from them. Stable and has the features that I need.

<comment><USER15> Do you not need bidirectional streaming, or do they support it now? There were no examples of how to do it last I checked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't read due to medium free access limit policy.

<comment><USER2> Also published on my own blog: [https://wp.me/p1RD28-6k1](https://wp.me/p1RD28-6k1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Things I don't get:

1\. why are they choosing gRPC over REST if the application is entirely web based. With REST you have a standardized system of verbs and not specific application functions (GET /user/id , 200 OK <data> vs.... MyGetUserFoo(ID) , some return data unique to application). With RPC both sides need very specific knowledge of the functions each other have and their arguments all the time, service discovery seems harder and an update to application seems to nearly always imply and update to web.

2\. What is the model supposed to be for typical protobuf schema sharing? I like PBs, but it seems a little harder than JSON or CBOR or MessagePak or other schemaless serializers in that the proto file has the same sync issue among all of your endpoints.

3\. Wouldn't be really swell if serializers were supported by cloud providers and Microservices a little more? I have a project right now that every time a message goes from our services to an endpoint it needs encoding and decoding. This is kind of a header now for every Microservices we have, it would be nice to not have the option of making so many mistakes.

<comment><USER18> gRPC's responses are backwards compatible, so you aren't mandated to update all clients at the same time.

<comment><USER19> You're still blocked from using later features potentially even reaching a dependency chain deadlock until you update.

Systems like this work far better when you just work to not break backwards compatibility full stop.

Similarly, they work better when you don't tangle up dependencies in a bunch of shared code, generated or otherwise.

<comment><USER20> I'm unclear what problem your describing.

Your always blocked from using later features until an update because we'll, you won't have application code that can take advantage of those features until you update.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stan Lee dies at 95 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/11/legendary-marvel-comics-creator-stan-lee-has-died/ <comment><USER2> There are many new submissions from as many websites confirming this, I wouldn't know which to upvote.

His cameos in every new Marvel movie will be missed.</comment>


Google OAuth API Is Down - <AUTHOR> This is the only Google status page I can find and it's all green still: https://status.cloud.google.com <comment><USER2> Google only hires the best of the best. Looks like all of that algorithm memorizing is working out really well.

</comment><comment><USER3> My go-to sources for crowdsourced "is it just me" while waiting for official status page updates are:

* [https://twitter.com/search?q=Google%20login](https://twitter.com/search?q=Google%20login)

* [https://downdetector.com/status/google](https://downdetector.com/status/google)

</comment><comment><USER4> Finally up on Google Cloud status:

[https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/developers- console/...](https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/developers- console/19008)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the status page: We are currently experiencing an issue with authentication to Google App Engine sites, the Google Cloud Console, Identity Aware Proxy, and Google OAuth 2.0 endpoints.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yup, seeing 500s on some internal products that use Google as an auth wall. Mostly for users that are logged out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Using an incognito session on Chrome worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> No status on their official status pages yet

</comment><comment><USER8> Seeing the same here

</comment><comment><USER9> Same here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Same here

</comment><comment><USER11> plus one</comment>


Ask HN: What is your company's internal code of conduct? - <AUTHOR>

It's easy to find example codes of conduct for conferences [0] and company public events [1]. But what about for behavior within the company?<p>[0] http://www.steelcityruby.org/policies [1] https://www.heroku.com/policy/events <comment><USER2> Hmm! I was originally going to say I've never heard of companies having codes of conduct, but I guess that's more because I'd have heard of them as internal "policies" or similar.

And I wasn't aware that companies made them public, but I just googled and found this (not very recent, admittedly) article that lists some big players: [http://drdianehamilton.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/top-10-compa...](http://drdianehamilton.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/top-10-companies%E2%80%99-code- of-ethics-and-conduct-2011/) \- interesting!

Curious to see others' replies to your question.</comment>


Show HN: PaperCSS – The Less Formal CSS Framework - <AUTHOR> https://www.getpapercss.com/ <comment><USER2> Great looking and easy to use … what more could one ask for? Also, the Github community that is springing up is already making cool improvements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Making it easy to use and understand was really important to me, especially with flexbox.

Also, the community has been a wonderful suprise! I expected maybe a couple of comments with feedback, not a dozen pull requests in the first week. It's been a lot of fun seeing what others add to PaperCSS, and I'm excited to see how it evolves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This could be interesting for rendering mock-up interfaces/wireframes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what I'd use this for, but I love it - thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I appreciate that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great job Rhyne. Looks awesome

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I appreciate that!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: SaaS Customer Notification best practices? - <AUTHOR> I've been scouring the internet for information on SaaS deployments & customer notification. There is no single source of info, the only stuff I was able to find was by searching a company website, like Salesforce for example, and trying to see what info I can dig out.
Don't suppose anyone here would have an idea what to do next beyond Googling? I could post a LinkedIn topic perhaps, but I work for a SaaS company so it may look a bit stupid :lol:
Info required: When to take downtime (evenings or weekends or combo) , how far in advance to notify end users, when not to notify (e.g. Patch with no downtime). Bonus would be some info on deployment processes to roll out a product to different geos.
I have all this documented and defined for ourselves, but now there is pressure from above to see can we cut corners or deploy faster so I am trying to gather information on this topic. Thanks <comment><USER2> I do not think there is a golden standard to follow, however I can share with you my experiences from the past.

I have analyzed traffic patterns from web logs and google analytics to determine the best time of day to schedule maintenance. Problem there is no one likes deploying at 3am!

I have added a feature to allow showing a notification banner on websites and mobile apps (typically via a new database entry) and used that to show the scheduled maintenance notice 1 to 2 weeks in advance.

In the past on more legacy b2b systems (several hours of downtime) I would even send out email notifications. This is really important if you are going to make an IP address change as customers will likely have to update firewall rules.

We would store the notification email list in an external resource / system in case of system outages.

Update your SLA to include these policies, add a section that states emergency maintenance may be performed without notice.

This is really about implementing SOP / policies and following them.

Your long term goal should be to achieve continuous deployment after achieving continuous delivery. This will likely mean removing that 'back office architecture requires downtime' hurdle. On a modern PaaS service you typically deploy to a staging environment, validate, then swap ips (production goes to staging, staging goes to production). And if everything goes to hell swap ips again to essentially roll back. This has become much easier with newer platforms and databases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I have the SOP and policies defined, but product team are questioning why we need to take so long to notify customers (i.e. the product is ready, why can't we deploy to production yet). So I was hoping to find some ammo to say "Hey, Salesforce and Workday are doing xyz, this is industry standard". But it seems like I will need to make my SOPs more robust and add justification at each level. Perhaps over time I can gain some reference info. Agreed about the system architecture, but this is SaaS not PaaS

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me it would depend on how long the downtime would be. When I deploy new code and change the database structure it usually takes only a couple of minutes. That's not something I announce days in advance if at all. Most of the time I simply deactivate the system, show a maintenance message, update code and database, and three minutes later activate the system again. Since I don't do it during usual working hours (9-5), nobody has noticed anything yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately the software downtime is longer and there are hundreds of customers using it. The risk of something happening is something I need to consider too

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What exactly do you need to take downtime for? With careful planning this should rarely be necessary unless you're doing something like upgrading the database version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it would be for software upgrades, db, hardware maintenance etc. The product is built in this way, I agree life would be simpler if it was more robust

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Use a PaaS for your SaaS. Near-to-zero downtime on deployments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Back office architecture requires downtime. There may also be security announcements, IP changes etc</comment></comment>


Broccoli vs. Animals - <AUTHOR> http://www.vegetus.org/essay/plants.htm

<comment><USER2> Yes. It's also okay to kill animals. Why? Because it's _natural_. Why is it natural? Because every single animal kills either plants or animals.

And while we as a species can use our brains to resist eating animals, we can't resist eating both fauna and flora.

<comment><USER3> Why should naturalness inform morality?

<comment><USER2> It shouldn't. But this isn't a moral issue. Both flora and fauna are living organisms. You must eat one or both of them to survive. Deciding which one's inherent value precedes the other is offensive, and illogical. Both are edible, ergo, everybody will eat a combination of the two. Are you saying my combo (both), is less moral than yours perhaps (flora only)? If so, I simply disagree. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Poe's law (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law>) is in full effect here. I can't say whether this is cleverly formulated sarcasm, or a real opinion.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm an omnivore, but I also believe in reforming the farming industry to minimize suffering to below levels for the average natural death in the wild (being torn apart by other animals, dying in pain of a crushed leg, infection, etc). In doing that, raising animals in a safe healthy manner and then killing them humanely is logically more humane than not.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't have any problem with eating meat, but I do think everyone who does so should hunt at least once. It's too easy to get divorced from the reality of eating meat if you just buy it packaged from the store.

<comment><USER7> The reality of hunting is far from the reality of most animal farming.

<comment><USER6> True enough. I don't mean that though; I just mean the acts of killing, field dressing, butchering, and eating an animal. If you've never done it yourself, it's easy to gloss over the fact that that stuff happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While there were a couple of interesting ideas mentioned... the article mostly sounded like the author was arguing with himself. It's pretty easy to let your favourite side win in that case.

</comment><comment><USER9> Killing plants == cutting hair</comment>


How Cheap Can Energy Storage Get? Pretty Darn Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://rameznaam.com/2015/10/14/how-cheap-can-energy-storage-get/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised Nickel-iron batteries[0] aren't used for this type of grid-scale storage. They are _extremely_ time and cycle-durable: 20- _50 years_ , almost immune to repeated deep discharges, relatively cheap and simple to produce. Cons: they need a bit of maintenance (not a big deal at grid scale), and have a less-than-stellar efficiency.

The problem with compressed air is that the Ideal-gas law [1] actively works against you to reduce efficiency, assuming it will be kept at ambient temperature. Inserting energy by compressing gas heats it up, which increases the pressure of the gas in the tank, which makes you work harder to put more gas in. Extracting energy cools the gas down, which reduces the pressure of the gas, which reduces the amount of energy you can extract from it. You can mitigate these issues by carefully controlling the temperature of the gas (more energy) or having a much much bigger tank so a single cycle only thermally cycles by a small amount (more $$).

Another option I hadn't considered until now is to let it heat up -- and insulate it to let it stay hot. It will cycle in both pressure _and_ temperature on a nearly daily basis so you may not lose all that much energy in heat. But I doubt this is an original idea.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery)

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding the compressed-air problem you mentioned, have you seen LightSail Energy's ([http://lightsailenergy.com](http://lightsailenergy.com)) solution to it?

"Our innovation: an elegant method of capturing this heat energy and regenerating useful energy from it. We inject a fine, dense mist of water spray which rapidly absorbs the heat energy of compression and provides it during expansion."

Maybe one of the founders, @DaniFong ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DaniFong](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DaniFong)), can chime in.

<comment><USER3> You've pretty much got it. The author mentions us actually.

The parent commenter does accurately locate the challenge to date with compressed air energy storage, but we've directly and successfully targeted that loss channel :-)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for replying.

Most compressed air systems attempt to pull as much moisture out of the air as possible to prevent corrosion, but your solution to the heat problem means actively making the air and interior even more wet. This wouldn't be a problem in the short term, but your product is meant to be used over a very long period (~20 years); how are you approaching the issue with corrosion?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Secret blog published in robots.txt file - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt <comment><USER3> Very interesting blog I see! Don't think it's only hype because of the title, the content is really worth a read, and no doubt much more interesting than many blogs that get to the front page.

<comment><USER4> I second. It dawns on me today - the web is made unnecessarily heavy. For most blogs and content all we need is simple text :) so light, so clean.

PS: Repeated the note as it was hidden and in the wrong context.

<comment><USER5> _"... For most blogs and content all we need is simple text :) so light, so clean. ..."_

Plan files?

Back when linux was new and lots of servers started popping up, .plan (dot plan) files ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol> where the blogs of that era. Easy to read, quick to load you get a heads up of what was going on via text - a lot like HackerNews. And the best .plan files to read had to be iD & John Carmack.

       3/23/1997 - Damaged F40

       Someone ran into my F40 in the
       parking lot, then took off. Words
       cannot do justice to how I feel
       right now.

       If anyone knows a tall white male
       in the dallas area that now has
       red paint and carbon fibre on their
       tan pickup truck, turn the bastard in!

Not only did you get the best technical insight in to programming they where more personal than blogs, funny even. No ads. No cutting edge design to get in the way of the information. Plan files don't really exist now. Carmack closed his down in 2005 ~ <http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates> and now blogs like the rest us. An archive exists at [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14193/John- Carmack-Archive-plan-19...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14193/John-Carmack- Archive-plan-1999?from_related_doc=1) Port 79 and plan files went the way of telnet and the Dodo. Btw it was reported the esteemed Rtm and his pesky worm exploit ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm> that had a part in plan files demise. After exploiting a buffer overflow in fingerd (among others) [0] _"too risky"_ , ISP admins claimed.

[0] Not confirmed ~ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol#Security_concer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol#Security_concerns) but mentioned ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#The_worm>

<comment><USER6> I have to admit, I miss finger (and would take it over Twitter any day)

<comment><USER7> I don't tweet, but I might update my .plan. I'd even hack something together to generate RSS from it, but Firefox and Safari don't support finger:// so it would be kind of useless.

<comment><USER8> Also write an aggregator and call it 'hand' :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google did index it, but only with an extra URL parameter: <http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt?view=producecode>

<comment><USER4> Google has it in its pages - <http://www.google.com/search?q=brett+tabke+blog> and with a nice meta description

Brett Tabke experiments with writing a weblog in a text file usually read only by robots. Commentary on the world of search engine marketing. www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt - <USER2>

It dawns on me today - the web is made unnecessarily heavy.

<comment><USER10> It's listed on Dmoz:

[http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Develo...](http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Weblogs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fans of this might also like outguess by Niels Provos.

<http://www.outguess.org/>

</comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome.. it kinda reminds me of _why's hoodwink'd.</comment>


The Trefle Botanical API is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/treflehq/trefle-api <comment><USER2> [https://trefle.io/about#pricing](https://trefle.io/about#pricing) Trefle is currently in beta and still learning how it can be most helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> is the raw API data accessible ?

<comment><USER4> This: [https://github.com/treflehq/trefle- api/blob/master/db/botani...](https://github.com/treflehq/trefle- api/blob/master/db/botanic_seeds.rb) ?

<comment><USER5> That's tiny. There are around 390,000 plants in the world. That file contains more than just plants, and has less than 2,000 entries.

1: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-36230858](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36230858)

<comment><USER6> According to the blurb they have 1 million indexed.

<comment><USER7> There are around a million _names_ for plants, but due to changing scientific hypotheses, limitations of science and communication centuries ago, new technologies (DNA sequencing etc) and so on, over 600,000 of those names are synonyms for other plants.

I was going to give the synonyms for _Solanum tuberosum_ L., the potato, but it has tens (maybe hundreds) of them. Look at the bottom of the infobox: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato)

<comment><USER8> There are 359 synonyms listed in the infobox.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Trello as CRM? - <AUTHOR> http://gregoiregilbert.com/blog/trello-to-manage-sales-pipeline/ <comment><AUTHOR> We're busy validating our business model/onboarding clients and want understand which functionalities we really need before deciding on a tool. Any thoughts are appreciated</comment>


We're in a brave, new post open source world - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nayafia/we-re-in-a-brave-new-post-open-source-world-56ef46d152a3#.1yyreuae7 <comment><USER2> Free Software is just as strong as it always has been. It's now swimming in a larger pond of "Free enough".

If all software is open by default (pretty much the chinese "gonkai" concept), that is a wonderful start. it means proprietary software is losing, and means that working on/with proprietary software is an evolutionary dead-end.

But I think, especially for software that secures our individual rights/liberties, Free Software (in the GPL sense) will still need to exist with much the same toothy license as today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Duplicates [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990719) .

</comment><comment><USER4> This is why using GPL is important.</comment>


Google and Facebook lobbyists try to stop new online privacy protections - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/google-and-facebook-lobbyists-try-to-stop-new-online-privacy-protections/ <comment><USER2> Protect the citizen, from all treats to their safety domestic and abroad, full stop. Money is no excuse to be feeble of mind and moral.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless every service we use becomes non-free, I think it is not lobbying, but very reasonable. The opt-out option is a necessity, but the average user doesn't give two cents about that.

<comment><USER4> I am pedantic and want everyone in every discussion to agree about the definitions of the words they use.

"Lobbying" is defined as seeking to influence a politician or public official on an issue.

Lobbying can be (and often is) an extremely reasonable thing to do. It is one of the main ways that public officials become fully educated about the various sides of issues that concern their constituencies.

If you, as a private citizen, seek a meeting with your congressman to express your opinion about some policy or complain about some state of affairs in your district, you're lobbying. And you need to if you want them to be aware of your opinion or your plight.

A lobbyist is simply a person who make a profession of lobbying (usually on behalf of others). They exist, in part, to educate legislators about the ins and outs of policy decisions that require significant research, data gathering, technical expertise, or complex reasoning. A senator cannot make every decision, or even have an opinion on every issue without the help of private citizens or organizations who have a more extensive background in the particular domain at hand.

So you should probably say something like "Unless every service we use becomes non-free, lobbying is a very reasonable thing to do."

<comment><USER5> Unlike Google and Facebook and their execs, chances are individuals don't have the resources to be handing politicians millions of dollars and throwing massive parties for them. This is why lobbying is a problem, and rarely something that helps the majority of citizens.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/technology/google-in- post...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/technology/google-in-post-obama- era-aggressively-woos-republicans.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would rather see legislation prohibiting businesses from engaging in mass mailings through the USPS and filling up everyone's mailboxes with rubbish every day.</comment>


In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be - <AUTHOR> http://60secondstatistics.com/for-manufacturing-and-retail-companies-using-automated-robots-is-cheaper-than-actual-slave-labor-would-be/ <comment><USER2> As is only appropriate, given the word's etymology.

> ro·bot (n.) 1923, from English translation of 1920 play "R.U.R." ("Rossum's > Universal Robots"), by Karel Capek (1890-1938), from Czech robotnik "forced > worker," from robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery," from > robotiti "to work, drudge," from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church > Slavonic rabota "servitude," from rabu "slave," from Old Slavic _orbu-, from > PIE_ orbh- "pass from one status to another" (see orphan).

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot)

All that's old is new again.

<comment><USER3> > from Czech robotnik "forced worker," from robota "forced labor, compulsory > service, drudgery,"...

I am not sure if this is correct. In Bulgarian we have almost the same word работник (rabotnik) and it just means "worker". No forced, slave connotations. Also checked with google translate and it doesn't find Czech translation for "robotnik" but it suggests to switch to Polish and translates it to "worker" as in Bulgarian. And работа (rabota) means "work" in Bulgarian and google translate shows the same for the Polish translation.

Someone from Czechia here?

<comment><USER4> It does mean that in Czech. Which is strange, because in Slovak it just means work.

I've translated a paragraph from wikipedia for you:

"Robota neboli poddanství je ve feudálním systému osobní služba sedláků a rolníků pro jejich pány. Robotník je pak výraz pro poddaného robotujícího pro svého pána, někdy též vyššího správního či soudního úředníka, drába apod."

"Robota is a feudal system of personal employment to the owners of estates and country houses. A robotník is a person who works for his/her lord."

[https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robota](https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robota)

Edit: I listened to the play by Karel and Josef Čápek, and it is most inanely stupid, sexist, pseudo-religious drivel I've come across in a long while. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R).

Edit2: The verb robit means to make something and has nothing to do with slavery.

<comment><USER5> I liked Asimov's quote on it.

> Capek's play is, in my own opinion, a terribly bad one, but it is immortal > for that one word. It contributed the word 'robot' not only to English but, > through English, to all the languages in which science fiction is now > written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up.

Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, _slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders_.

Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-generation slaveholding families have a fundamentally different way of looking at themselves and their culture than people who do not own slaves. Once we enter an era where every person is effectively coddled by multiple robotic "slaves" that do their every whim, we're going to be hacking into the human social ecosystem in ways never anticipated before.

<comment><USER7> > slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders.

What's the negative as a slaveholder again?

<comment><USER8> Not the OP, but one might argue that slavery disincentivises the slave-holder from innovating the labour process.

The (Nietzschean?) counterargument here is that slave-labour enables division of labour and frees enough from non-specialised labour (e.g. individuals being responsible for all of producing food, building dwellings, providing security, raising children, caring for the elderly etc, and thus not being particularly good at any of them) to allow the emergence of a 'caste' of full-time scientists, engineers. Such a 'caste', such division of labour is required to drive technological progress to a level where slavery becomes unnecessary.

My historically uninformed and naive suggestion would be that ancient Greece was an example of the latter while most other societies with substantial slavery (such as South America and Africa) were examples of the former.

 _Aside_ : Any serious discussion of slavery must begin with the question: what do you mean by "slavery", for the term is used in wildly different ways.

<comment><USER9> Then it's a negative to society but only if all of society was run by slave owners.

In any other case the slave owner would have a benefit over the non slave owner when it came to cost of production.

<comment><USER10> It's both hilarious and excellent to watch both of you try to justify the utility of human labour.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what you mean. Human labour has utility, that why we work.

<comment><USER10> From a certain perspective human labour is the most perfect waste of time. But keep going.

As long as you keep it up I'll pretend I want to keep working.

<comment><USER8> Is that "certain perspective" interesting? Nobody wants to work that's a given that doesn't need to be argued, whence work needs incentives (in a generalised sense) from salary to force.

Most human labour has historically related to food production, production and maintainance of dwellings, sanitation, health, care of the young & elderly, and security (from animals, natural forces, other humans). Since division of labour became possible additional forms of labour emerged, such as science, engineering, and organisation of labour whose raison d'être is to lighten humanity's workload. One can and should certainly ask if work could be organised better, but there is a base load of things that need to be done to perpetuate humanity.

<comment><USER11> I disagree that no one wants to work - in many ways, working (being of use), is enobeling.

What will replace it culturally when we don't have any work?

<comment><USER8> I'm not denying that some work has enobling aspects (e.g. social recognition (in various forms)), but much work doesn't. Speaking from years worth of bitter experience ...

Moreover there is probably quite a bit of rationalisation going on: since I can't avoid work I might as well pretend I like it, for that makes life more bearable. More importantly, there is a virtue-signalling aspect to finding work enobling: since human emotions are contagious and human behaviour involves a lot of mimesis (= copying others), my public display of taking pleasure in my own work increases the probability that others find their work enobling, which in turn increases the amount/quality of their work, and that leads a better / more productive society which in turn is in my own selfish interest.

Aside: Max Weber uses a somewhat similar (but more elaborate) argument when he seeks to explain the emergence of modern society out of the protestant spirit. The issue of whether we do good because doing good is intrinsically good or because we crave the social recognition of good works, has been discussed since antiquity, see for example Plato's Republic.

       What will replace it culturally
       when we don't have any work?

Why not look at the facts? Society has always had some members who did not have to work, for example children, pensioners, the sick, the offspring of the very rich, wives of middle/upperclass husbands (until recently), women who divorce a rich husband (under current US alimony laws), the Saudi/Qatari/Bahreini/Kuwaity royal families. Etc. Most of them don't have a major problem spending their time. Typically they engage in a variety of play, fornication, sleep, sport, shopping, eating, hunting, socialising, playing music, drawing and the like. Moreover, even those who work have leisure time (e.g. weekends, evenings, holidays) and generally have no problem filling that time. There is no reason to believe that this will change when all work has been automated away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If it takes $2,000 to install what is basically an iPad and stand for customers to order from at McDonald's or Chipotle, a restaurateur is looking at less than a month before recouping their entire investment if they eliminate just one cashier position."

Obviously it takes a little bit more than that. You need to develop the software that runs on the kiosk. You also need a back-end system so the kitchen knows what to prepare. So the investment is a bit higher than that. But you will recoup it very quickly on McDonalds scale. And they will be able to provide better and faster service.

<comment><USER13> I do think that automating cashiers at McDonald's would be a big mistake.

We tend to underestimate the human interaction, however it's far harder to refuse a " _would you like fries with that?_ " type of question coming from a human, rather than from a stupid interface on which we'll tap " _Skip_ " as an automatic gesture and without regrets.

Talking with another human is also good when you're _undecided_ about what to buy. Of course, it's not like McDonald's is a varied restaurant, when in fact they are famous for having those 15 dishes taste the same wherever you go, but there's still choice involved when picking one of those burgers. And think of how in restaurants, even with a detailed menu with pictures, etc. people still ask the waiter " _what do you recommend?_ ".

So yes, you can automate a cashier, but this means that the customer <-> McDonald's interaction also gets automated in that process, this being a doubly edged sword and my guess is that it's not the customer that loses.

Oh, and the irony of this automation trend is that in the end there won't be enough people left to pay for McDonald's shitty burgers, unless we progress towards some socialist society with minimal income and so on, in which case McDonald's raison d'être will cease to exist.

<comment><USER14> I like McDonalds and have been to quite a few. I have never, ever been asked if I want fries with that or otherwise upsold. Not sure where this meme comes from.

<comment><USER13> In every McDonalds I've been they ask:

1\. Would you like a menu? (+fries +juice)

2\. Make it big menu for just $X ?

3\. Would you like a pie for desert?

I also have acquaintances that worked there. From where I'm from, if you don't ask such questions and smile at the same time, you tend to get fired.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if it's an NYC thing.

<comment><USER15> > I wonder if it's an NYC thing.

I think it's a US thing.

I remember that when I was younger I would get asked those questions every time, but not any more.

In the past few years (decade?) there has been a lot of push back against upselling fast food due to obesity concerns. If I had to guess I would say it probably started around when the movie "Super Size Me" was released (2004).

Now, if I order a meal, I might get asked "what size" without any suggestion. Or if I order a sandwich by name, I usually get asked to clarify if I want "the meal or just the sandwich." But I can't remember the last time they actually tried to upsell me.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if upselling still happened outside of the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Automation will turn capitalism will turn into somewhat benevolent corporate city-states. Imagine a city run by a corporation which tries to automate, and optimize everything that is not its core business. To make the employees and their families happy, the corporation will provide the best care (child, health, environment) possible. In time this will turn some of these city- states into efficient, clean, healthy, happy places to live, but only relatively small groups of people will be able to enjoy it. Some of these city-states will be very dystopian and people living in there will be miserable. Technological and societal progress in these "utopian" cities will be much faster than in "dystopian" which will possibly lead to wars.

We will not solve automation driven unemployment by taxing robots, and UBI will generally not work on a country wide scale. Partial solution will be Corporate UBI, which basically will mean that if you work for Corp X, you and your family will have everything they desire provided for them. As for everyone else..

This is already happening on some smaller scale. All these corporate campuses are beginning of that. They will eventually grow to become self-sufficient cities.

Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them?

<comment><USER17> > This is already happening on some smaller scale. All these corporate > campuses are beginning of that. They will eventually grow to become self- > sufficient cities.

Heh, that's actually funny. Corporate campuses are nothing new. Corporate cities have been a thing for the last 60 (70?) years. They're actually on the decline, not on the rise. I doubt automation will change anything about that.

<comment><USER16> I could be wrong, but I believe automation will change that simply because it will be easier for the corps to provide more services to employees without having to hire/control more people that are not necessary for the corporate city to function. It will also be easier to manage all these people using advanced automation/ai, and make the whole enterprise more profitable. It might not look like the old school corporate campuses with one corporation controlling everything, but more like cities with high concentration of similar businesses. These corporations usually have so much power in these cities that they basically control them.

Also, when automation starts to really impact most jobs on the market, we can expect that there will be some increase in crime. People will move towards safer areas, and corporations will be happy to provide them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This rings home with me soo much. I've interacted with a few startups designing robots to replace human labor. Was scary to see that automation is here its just too expensive compared to human labor. But technology generally decreases in cost over time while human labor gets gradually more expensive. So its only a matter of time that all manual labor is replaced by robots.

<comment><USER19> People have said that it's only a matter of time before all manual labor is replaced by machines since the industrial revolution started.

Yet it keeps not having happened just yet.

EDIT: I'm talking about all human work, not just physical labor. The "manual labor" part of the quote confuses my intended point.

<comment><USER20> > People have said that it's only a matter of time...Yet it keeps not having > happened just yet.

That's incredibly facile. Were there solid state digital electronics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Was there machine learning? Motion control? Systems engineering? A robotics industry?

Just aping the "power source of the future" line from the fusion joke and pretending it's the trenchant result of long experience is the tactic of a 15-year-old.

<comment><USER21> Why do you think that the future will similarly not have jobs that you can't conceive of now?

As far as I can tell the only special thing about automation in today's world is that the jobs being created are more often being created abroad than they are in the US (e.g. the million or so people employed by Foxconn in China) and _predictions_ of automation destroying jobs are very blatantly being used politically as a way to draw flak away from job destroying trade agreements and austerian measures.

<comment><USER20> The first thing I feel I need to point out is that my horse in this race is not whether or not jobs will go away, but whether or not the original commenter to whom I was replying advanced the discussion at all with their remark. I think that the remark–that people have always been saying that automation will take over but it never has–is facile in that the thing that "people have been saying" is not the same over time. In the late 18th century, it could only really have been a comment about capital concentration and the death of the trades. In the 1950s, it was very probably a naive comment about the power of as-then-understood computer technology's capability to replace manual labor or work. In the 1990s, it was very probably a naive comment about the state of the art of AI at the time.

Now, the remark is about actual inexpensive robotics in the context of what seems to be a genuine AI and computer vision and control renaissance, funded by government and corporations. Those are all just different remarks. To package them all up as one "thing that people have been saying" does a real disservice to the discussion. And it's a pose.

In the current case, I find it difficult to say whether the remark will turn out to be naive. However, any competent discussion of whether or not it is has to rely on an assessment of the current situation of computer vision, AI, control theory, economics, and law.

<comment><USER21> "In the 1990s, it was very probably a naive comment about the state of the art of AI at the time."

And it's exactly the same right now.

Any competent discussion also needs to take into the account the various special interests who _want_ it to be believed that AI is taking over irrespective of whether that is the truth or not... and _why_ they want that.

It also needs to take into account the various crass errors in many of the economics papers on this topic - including basing the probability of automation on how "creative" an economist considers a job (Oxford) or creating economic measures which make no mathematical distinction between a Chinese factory worker and a robot (Ball State University).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So it's now harder to say with a straight face "we're using robots because it's more ethical than exploiting people".

"No, it's just cheaper."

<comment><USER23> It can be both. The fact that we say "it's cheaper" doesn't preclude "it's more ethical" especially when everybody agrees already that the presented alternative isn't ethical.

Burning coal to generate electricity is both cheaper and more ethical than burning live toddlers. You don't say "we use coal for electricity instead of toddlers because it's more ethical" because that's self-evident to anybody but a true psychopath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sooner or later, the robots and AI will be able to provide 100% of humanity material needs. AND The very nature of each societies will be shuffled by that new reality.

When every material need is fulfilled, a lot of questions arise:

1- What's the essence of private property when the working robots can already fulfill all the needs of the humanity ?

2- What's the essence of political power where nobody feels anymore the need to elect good policymakers because their life is already perfect ?

3- What will be the safeguard to prevent a maleficient/egoist minds to lock the access to all that abundancy ? That's quite philosophical question as humanity never experienced that kind of pure evil mindset. Every dictatorship, slavery, oppression were always driven by the context of competition towards the control over a limited economic resources.

4- And fundamentally, what will be the next thing that will drive the humanity towards evolution ? Knowledge curiosity ? Space exploration and adventures ? Spiritual achievement ? Perfection (and what's perfection ?) ? Are these goals philosophically equal ? Do willingness/laziness to adopt such a noble goals affect your share in the pie ? Does even "share in the pie" matter when the pie have an infinite surface ?

Only the future, and futuristic/philosophical writings will tell us where all that game will lead this world.

<comment><USER25> There is a really good short novel Manna [1] that explore two models of Post robotic world.

1\. [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER26> Well, the 'good' model is quite depressing in my opinion.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

In the end, the protagonist chooses to be just waisting lots of resources just doing something of no value when he could choose to join the people that make all the advances and, with this choice, generating the conditions for more people to not live caged.

<comment><USER27> > protagonist chooses to be just wasting lots of resources just doing > something of no value

In your opinion. Obviously they find it a good value for their resources.

Study history for interesting human actions. Some strive to improve the human condition, most go through life with no wake, and some, are evil and proceed to actively inhibit the human condition.

<comment><USER26> I meant no value for anyone else. For instance, they could use these resources to support more people that was jailed in the complex he came from. Or to advance the state of the art of science and technology. But he choose to waste lots of resources like light and materials just for himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The consequences for societies that define the status/value of their members based on their employment/job will be disastrous. In, let's say, 20 years robots most likely will have overtaken agriculture, manufacturing and driving - by far the biggest job providers.

And I see no movement at all by our politicians to prepare societies for this shift, except a couple countries playing small scale UBI... and the USA actually try to go the opposite route.

<comment><USER29> I agree. In agriculture, the revolution has already taken place though. Even supersize tractors navigate themselves. A farmer can get by with a lot of machines and only a few extra hands, most of the time.

<comment><USER30> Depends on the crop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The concept that machines will become the problem and not people is absurd. Completely absurd. People make the machines and people prevent machines from increasing the quality of life for most people. The only change needed in the progression of technological advance is people allowing labor saving devices to actually save everybody from laboring, not just a few. The problem remains the use of slavery by people to increase wealth.This notion of "we must fear computers because they are going to rule us" is frankly moronic, just a distraction from the inability of capitalists to share the rewards of advancement.

</comment><comment><USER32> Slave labor is economically inefficient, and slave based economies have fared very poorly compared with free labor economies.

<comment><USER33> > slave based economies have fared very poorly

that may be true for the economy in general, but what about the slave owners specifically? that is the central point in the context of this discussion, since it is the factory owners that are making the decision about replacing human workers with robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Which will hopefully brings us to an inevitable change in our economics. If technological advance is going to create millions if not billions of unemployed people, the answer won't be rioting down the street and burning all machines in sight, although for many people this will appear the only viable solution.

<comment><USER35> This can also bring back collosiums where unwanted die for the pleasure of ruling class.

People rioting down the street can be crushed by autonomous machines remorsely and effortlessly.

There is a need to start political lobbying instead of hoping for an automatic economic change.

Those who will control the means of production will not relinquish control once they realize their power. Once they understand that those millions doesn't matter anymore.

<comment><USER36> > This can also bring back collosiums where unwanted die for the pleasure of > ruling class.

Not dying, but the abundant talent shows where a whole generation seems to sacrifice all regular career ambition for a nonexistent fairy tale already comes close. On the other hand, maybe the kids somehow have a very prophetic hunch that taking a crapshot at becoming the nation's "next top model" or whatever will eventually turn out to be a less terrible bet than fighting for scraps in an environment of increasingly automation-driven capitalism that simply does not need them anymore.

The Black Mirror episode (spoilers!) with the training bikes nailed that quite well. When I watched it I was disappointed with the implausibility of a high tech society powered by the meagre 2 kWh you might realistically extract from a human per day. But this could actually be a subtle point made by the authors: the bikes are not really powering their economy, they are just a semi-plausible bullshit job made up in-world to make handouts look like a hard-earned wage, probably intended to fool those spinning the bikes as much as the elite who enjoys having the plebs nicely boxed up out of sight in underground caverns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My first thought was: "Oh, great! If slave labor is not efficient anymore there will be no more slave workers in the world". On a second thought (and based on our history), that probably will be true, but only because people that today are working just for a plate of rice will starve to death.

<comment><USER38> the sad truth is that slave labour needs no startup cost beyond a fist.

<comment><USER2> Fists ain't cheap.

Slaves are capital, and, like all capital, acquiring and maintaining them has nonzero cost.

In the antebellum American South, some tasks like ditch-digging were sufficiently hazardous that a plantation owner would rather not risk their investment in their slaves, and so would hire Irish ditch-diggers by the day, as the plantation owner would be out less money if they died while digging the ditch.

<comment><USER39> Somewhat off topic, but I can't figure out how ditch-digging would be particularly hazardous? The only danger I can think of would be a wall collapsing, but that could surely be avoided..

<comment><USER40> I'm assuming heat related conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > On the other hand, if institutionalized slavery still existed, factories > would be looking at around $7,500 in annual costs for housing, food and > healthcare per "worker".

What makes a lot of things like food so expensive is human work. If you had access to slaves you could probably also reduce those costs.

We still have a lot of people living for under 1$ per day on this world. That's a factor 20 off from the cited amount of money per year.

<comment><USER42> > We still have a lot of people living for under 1$ per day on this world. > That's a factor 20 off from the cited amount of money per year.

Those same people living under $1/day now would have their costs greatly increased if they became factory slaves. Can't be malnourished, so food costs go up. Can't live just anywhere, so housing costs go up to live on-site at the factory. Can't work with untreated illnesses and injuries, so healthcare costs go up.

<comment><USER43> >Can't work with untreated illnesses and injuries, so healthcare costs go up.

Unless it's cheaper to train a new slave and euthanize the old slave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just to throw in a thought/data point:

Nvidia is currently selling their 'industrial' deep learning system DGX-1 for $129,000. It doesn't have the IQ of a mouse yet, yet it can beat humans in some tasks (as can mice?).

[0] [http://www.nvidia.com/object/deep-learning- system.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/deep-learning-system.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> Cost effectiveness is also why farmers use tractors and other large machinery.

</comment><comment><USER46> Robots, or no robots, it's very important from a national security perspective to have a sizeable domestic manufacturing base.

</comment><comment><USER47> forget about the former title of coffee shop barista, our cotton and tobacco trade is about to go into overdrive!

</comment><comment><USER48> anyone know who/what is behind this site?

</comment><comment><USER49> > _On the other hand, if institutionalized slavery still existed, factories > would be looking at around $7,500 in annual costs for housing, food and > healthcare per "worker"._

There is a wrong assumption that factory has to cover those expenses. In reality this cost is often offloaded to government or another party.

<comment><USER23> Uhh, when they're property of the company and not actually considered people?

I'm pretty sure you have to be considered a person in order to qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, and Section 8 housing vouchers. I mean, idk because all of those things came about after slavery.

<comment><USER49> Prison?

<comment><USER23> Prison labor is mostly out of fashion, isn't it? Not that many chain gangs anymore. The ones I do hear about are usually doing dumb things for the government instead of "manufacturing and retail."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What collaboration software does your team use? - <AUTHOR> At my company, we use Slack (and email) for messaging, Jira for project management and Confluence to plan and document. But I'm not very satisfied with them, especially Confluence, which I feel is clunky to use and I find documents got lost in.<p>What do you use, and would you recommend it? <comment><USER2> I've used mostly email for messaging, skype for talking, Jira for development work and MS Word for planning/documenting. Not a big fan of Slack, preferring a quick email or a call for longer discussions (or preferably in person chat, but I'm currently remote).

Haven't been happy with Jira for a long time so decided to start thinking about what a replacement would look like. Created [https://tasks.withcomb.com](https://tasks.withcomb.com) as a placeholder to see if others are interested.

But in my research I've come across ClickUp & Clubhouse for project management. Never used Confluence, and while I don't really know what it does beyond being a documentation site/wiki, I'm pretty happy with Word to type up requirements & GDrive/dropbox/OneDrive to share with the team.</comment>


Dear internet: We must ban targeted advertising immediately - <AUTHOR> https://usefathom.com/blog/targeted-ads <comment><USER2> I dislike these articles that try to manufacture outrage by using emotionally- charged terms from the physical world - like "stalking" - in the context of targeted advertising, to make things seem more threatening than they really are.

Someone stalking you in real life is pretty damn scary, and not at all comparable to an automated Facebook algorithm showing you ads for mountain bikes because you joined a mountain biking club.

EDIT: I realize now that it was actually a HN commenter who used the word stalking, not the article, which is slightly more circumspect, though still uses manipulative language in my view.

<comment><USER3> I agree - I also remember a comment a while back from someone on the google ads team and a lot of the targeted ads help small businesses the most.

Large brands already have a lot of market presence and a lot of money for advertising campaigns. Small businesses that can find targeted customers that might want their thing on a nation or country wide scale get huge benefits from that and would be hurt the most from losing it.

People have such strong and over-confident ideological positions without really knowing the issue in depth or thinking through consequences.

<comment><USER4> Thinking about my past experiences —- I can definitely see how that may be the case.

That being said — we have got a problem here and we ought to try and solve it. The ability to target people with potent advertisements tuned using machine learning on large scale populations is fearsome in its potential. At the very least it should not be allowed to continue without basic restrictions and oversight. Like it should be obvious that targeted political advertisements in liberal, free-market democracies will lead us to bad places! Yet we do nothing.

<comment><USER3> Totally - I think there lots of things that can be improved and lots of rules/laws or data policy that makes sense around privacy and civil liberties.

I thought Zuckerberg's Georgetown talk on political ads was actually pretty good (digs into some of the complexity: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/zuckerberg- standing-voice-free-expression/))

I'd also recommend this: [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033714.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033714.do)

The main issue I have with the HN post is that it's arguing against this nuance in favor of just banning it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tax it.

Advertising, in general, is under-taxed. Should it even be tax-deductible as a business expense? Overall, in the US, most people are maxed out on spending. The savings rate is low. Advertising does not stimulate demand, it just moves it around, while adding cost.

Think of a tax on advertising as mutual disarmament for manufacturers. Less spent on fighting with competitors, more price cutting.

<comment><USER6> It can draw people to buy on credit, thus stimulating demand. And fundamentally businesses are taxed on profit, and advertising is an expense, so if you start saying advertising isn't tax deductible, you start fundamentally changing the way corporate taxation works and opening up a whole can of worms. Adding a tax on advertising spend like a sales tax would be far less messy - but it would benefit brands with large existing recognition at the expense of smaller/emerging companies. Without advertising, warby parker would never have been able to grow, leaving luxottica unchallenged as the largest frame maker. You'd just cement current market leaders.

<comment><USER5> Only short term. Someday, the credit card bills have to be paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To play devil's advocate, advertising is a social good, and better advertising is even more of a social good.

How many times have you heard someone complain, "I just bought a desk lamp, and now I'm getting loads of ads for desk lamps. Don't they know I don't _want_ another desk lamp?" And surveys back it up -- people would largely rather the ads they see reflect the things they're interested in. Because a well-targeted ad is good for the viewer. Sometimes they want the thing, and they buy it, and their life is improved.

If I'm statistically more likely to buy a particular item because of some demographic I belong to, and you have my demographic information, by all means use it to decide which ads to show me.

Maybe you _having_ that information is a breach of my privacy, but if you do have it you should at least use it for something that'll benefit me.

<comment><USER8> This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of business in maybe the last twenty years.

Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. European baby formula manufacturers advertising to middle aged single men in Wyoming shouldn't happen, and it's because targeted advertising that we prevent that waste. We are all better off for it.

<comment><USER9> Can't tell if sarcastic.... _squints_

How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it.

That _really_ reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.

<comment><USER2> No one really needs anything except oxygen, food and water.

Everything else is a want.

Sometimes people invent things that others want, but that others don't know about yet. That's what advertising is for.

<comment><USER10> Why can't they target the ad to content instead of to people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article. Then I dug in more about the author and no wonder he runs a competing user tracking service that competes directly with google analytics. Sure it does less targeting - but then also provides less data points.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - privacy is important to the author. Less data points but protecting users' privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's an idea: let people have a public advertising profile they have personal access to. I'd do a lot less adblocking if I knew advertisers were picking off a defined list of my interests. New iphone? No. Android flagship with a headphone jack and a telephoto camera? Oh yeah I'm interested. Allow people to make it known they're interested in classic computers or new rifle accessories or LEGO videogames or books from John Scalzi. It would be nice if advertisers knew enough about me I could cancel all my Google Alerts.

</comment><comment><USER13> What this ignores is that non targeted advertising means less money for publishers. As advertisers are willing to spend more when they have more info about a user. According to a Google study [1] the impact can be as high as 50%.

I prefer targeted advertising that's relevant to me. Especially because the advertiser doesn't actually know anything about me as an individual, I'm just an id, one of billions.

[1] [https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third- pa...](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third- party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Why does it matter whether it is the advertiser themselves who know about me? The wrong is that I am being stalked in the first place.

Why does it matter that advertisers pay more for targeted advertising? The wrong is that it is an option for them to choose in the first place.

<comment><USER8> You'll see twice as many ads, and most will be irrelevant to your interests.

It's better to see half as many and have them be able to pique your interest.

The publisher wins, the advertiser wins, and the consumer wins.

<comment><USER15> I'll see no ads because I run several different ad blockers, as should everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wired published a well researched article a short while ago laying out the arguments in a little more persuasive manner.

[https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted- ad...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/)

</comment><comment><USER17> We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly 3rd party.

If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself.

I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.

<comment><USER18> Once upon a time, cable didn't have ads, because theoretically it got money from cable subscribers. Then they realized they could have subscribers _and_ ads and make even more money.

The vast majority of sites don't treat "paying subscriber" and "sell information" as an either-or. They treat paying subscribers as people they get money and more information from.

Also, there's a third option: keep improving ad-blocker-blockers, so that they don't just block ads, they also block "we see you're using an ad blocker" messages.

<comment><USER10> When was once upon a time? Over 40 years ago.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be- inv...](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by- commercials.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This may be unpopular on HN. But I dont mind ads, I dont mind target ads either, in many cases I like them. What I do mind is creepy, personal ads.

"Your Friends _Joe_ just bought a wallet, you might like this too."

I am OK with recommending me a wallet, since in real life I would have sales coming around me if I was in the Wallet counter and interested in one. I am absolutely NOT OK with being told my friend _Joe_ bought a wallet. How did they know Joe was my friend, why are they telling me he bought a new wallet?

Amazon are allowed to collected data when I am in their store, but those Data should not be sold to any other company.

Right now there is a whole market for personal Data, and to me, that should be illegal.

<comment><USER20> Names follow a power law distribution, there are millions of guys named Joe and everyone has a friend with that name. Half of the men in the US have only 100 different names.

Do you think it was just a coincidence in Amazons serie "The man in the high castle" the main character is named John Smith?

<comment><USER19> I think it was more specific like Joe Smith, which was indeed my friend with his Facebook Profile pic, it was many years before there was any backslash against Facebook. It was that time I decided to drop Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The idea that it is ok for Amazon to show you targeted advertising on their properties but its not ok for third parties to do so seems like a pretty easy way to entrench Google and Amazon.

In fact, targeted advertising is _already_ extremely low margin outside of Facebook and Google. The big dollar ad campaigns follow context (Ford doesn't want to follow you around the internet, they want to show you every ad on ESPN.com and their other properties).

This is a proposal that would a) make Google/Amazon/Facebook even more powerful on the internet and b) kill small publishers.

</comment><comment><USER22> While I agree with the overall sentiment in regards to supporting end-user privacy, this article's title is a bit sensational and the body fails to provide enough substance to support such a dramatic claim. It's an overly idealistic solution to the problem and therefore is not of much use.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes. This would be good but it is impossible. Washington is moved by profits, not people.

Could there be a better example of this than what's happening right now?

</comment><comment><USER24> More laws, less justice. This can only backfire.

</comment><comment><USER25> What would the text of the law say? All in-person sales activities are personalized. Would it simply forbid the use of automation for this in a list of specific ways? What would it say about YouTube video recommendations?

<comment><USER18> There's an easier solution: drop the word "targeted", and ban all unsolicited advertising. You have to define "advertising" either way, and this way you don't have to define what "targeted" means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> AsGuard DNS. Works on ant device and unsucks the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER26> It will effectively put vast majority of the Internet behind a paywall. Just turn it into a sort of a cable TV of today. With almost all small publishers closing and the rest just charging for what you see, and turning it into a largely unidirectional, top-to-bottom source of information... Because there is no way in the world non-targeted advertisements are going to pay for things, remember those mid-1990s sites all flashing with banners - and yet never making enough.

</comment><comment><USER27> Knee-jerk decision IMO. Advertising will always be at the core of businesses, and they all compete with each other on lowering the costs of advertising. Why would they agree on non-targeted ads if at least one of them has incentive to target their own ads? People began using ad blockers exactly because ads were not targeted.

<comment><USER28> I'm using an adblocker because most ads are deceptively trying to push garbage products. And I feel like I've never been offered some valuable information by an ad. Having them push stuffs we want (good and relevant products) it's different from having them push targeted trash. I believe that selling trash anonymously on the internet (think drop shipping, malware and bloatware) is so lucrative that genuine products and companies have a hard time competing.</comment></comment>


Difference between Nerd and Geek - <AUTHOR> http://zuvvu.com/article.php?id=979d472a84804b9f647bc185a877a8b5 The Anatomy of Nerd and Geek. Which species you belong to? <comment><USER2> This is the most pretentious thing I've seen in awhile and draws needless distinctions. That said, according to this I'm more of a geek than a nerd.

</comment><comment><USER3> But what about those of us who like Anime, Android and green tea?</comment>


HP Slate Promo: Camera and iTunes and Ports, Oh My - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5509868/hp-slate-promo-camera-and-itunes-and-ports-oh-my <comment><USER2> Why can't Apple take the hint about flash, usb and a sd slot. ipad would be much better off with those included</comment>


Show HN: Traken, Clear Mobile Dashboards for Devs - <AUTHOR> https://www.trakenapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm Miguel, founder of Traken. We are a fully bootstrapped startup from the Canary Islands (Spain).

We've created a platform where you can build clear mobile dashboards, not only for metrics but also for business operations or device monitoring.

Traken is a product made for developers, by developers. Integrating Traken dashboards with your data source is as easy as discover a RESTful service.

Our approach is deliver simple and effective mobile dashboards, believing in "less is more".

In Traken, you can also receive push notifications. Be sure of missing nothing!

Traken is free to use with our "Solo" plan. If you need more users or push notifications, I'll be glad to give any member of the community a paid account for free during an extended period.

Any questions or feedback would be more than welcome :)

Best, Miguel

</comment><comment><USER2> A suggestion for the website: the one thing I really want to see is a picture of the dashboard. I think I saw one amidst the airplanes and coffee shop shots.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree with you. I'll work on it. Thanks the feedback!</comment></comment>


Why Firebase might change the way we think about web development - <AUTHOR> http://blog.angular-university.io/angular-2-firebase/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Now that Angular 2 is out, a lot of web companies and enterprise companies > are starting to adopt it. And when building new apps we will need to choose > a backend to go with Angular 2.

In this post I will go over some reasons why I think that the latest Firebase might be just as impactful in web development as Angular 2 itself, and why the two combined could be the best thing that happened to web development in a long time.

After all the advances in technology, building web applications is still way harder than what it should be, but maybe not so much anymore if we can use something similar to Firebase.</comment>


Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto Takes Apple's Stage to Introduce Super Mario Run - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/nintendos-shigeru-miyamoto-takes-apples-stage-to-introduce-super-mario-run/ <comment><USER2> It would have been nice to watch this live, but since I don't have an Apple device, my only option is to watch it on Microsoft Edge running on Windows 10. Nice job shutting out a huge portion of your audience, Apple.

 _Requirements: Live streaming uses Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later, a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or a PC with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. Streaming via Apple TV requires an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) with software 6.2 or later or an Apple TV (4th generation)._

<comment><USER3> Open the stream directly with VLC, HLS isn't supported by Chrome and Firefox: [http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1609lijbsdf...](http://p.events- delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1609lijbsdfvoihbadfvohbsdfvljhb/m3u8/hls_mvp.m3u8)

but there are plugins / extensions for both browsers that utilize hlsjs to enable functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will probably sell like hotcakes, but even for a (recent) Mario game, this seems unimaginative. Hopefully the Fire Emblem game(s) will make it Stateside.

<comment><USER5> > This will probably sell like hotcakes

To be honest, I don't see it. The novelty of it being Nintendo and Mario will wear off eventually, and beyond that you are left with a very average endless runner. In the current landscape of mobile games in general, I'd be inclined to think that it will flop despite being Mario.

<comment><USER4> I don't see long term success for it, but the first few months will probably be lucrative enough for Nintendo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the interesting things about the announcement was that they specifically said you pay for the game up front and play as much as you want (i.e.: not freemium / in-app purchases).

I'm so happy to see that! I also expect that the game will be able to command a pretty decent price in the app store. Maybe even something like $20? With any luck it can lead the charge on a re-normalization of expectations about app prices.

</comment><comment> tuna-piano Ninendo's ADR is up 25% on the "news" (how was this not expected after Pokemon Go?).

1\. Wasn't the expectation that Nintendo would go into the smartphone market already baked into the price?

2\. Why is the ADR up so much more (20 percentage points or so) over the past year than the stock trading on the Tokyo exchange?

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish Apple would just buy Nintendo already. What an incredible portfolio of IP to own. Imagine how amazing Nintendo's hardware would be =P</comment>


Use of SPLC considered harmful to balanced media - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/06/conservatives-sign-letter-warning-media-against-southern-poverty-law-center.html <comment><USER2> I'm no conservative, but I do think the SPLC is pretty much a joke. They were part of that whole "thing" of getting everybody all keyed up about sovereign individuals, "anti government extremists" and gun owners a while back. Yeah, because being a gun owner, anti-government, and an advocate of individual sovereignty obviously make you a bad person, and somebody who needs to be "observed" etc. What a freaking joke.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The SPLC lists several religious groups as hate groups.

Notable left-leaning organizations like Antifa and BLM are not listed.

<comment><USER3> Antifa is no more an "organization" than "the alt-right". It's more like a designation without any central authority or unifying views. It's also highly debatable whether "antifa" could be called "leftist", considering many of them are anti-government (and "left" in the US usually means "supportive of strong federal government").

BLM is often said to be similarly disorganized, but there actually is an organization now that claims to speak for the movement. Assuming you're referring to that organization, whom do you think they hate? Where can I read a member of their organization saying that they support violence and/or the hatred of a specific group?

Note that SPLC _does_ include leftists among its hate groups, including the New Black Panther Party[1] (a group that rallies against police brutality, capitalism, and Zionism).

1\. [https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist- files/grou...](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist- files/group/new-black-panther-party)</comment></comment>