Chris Espinosa: Fire - <AUTHOR> http://cdespinosa.posterous.com/fire <comment><USER2> One could argue that Opera Mini has been doing the very same thing for a while now, and it did not appear to cause any major uproar between the privacy proponents. This might be a typical "Ah, that's Opera, cool stuff, but who cares" attitude, but it might also indicate a profound shift in surfer's attitude towards their privacy. You press them long enough and they will grow to accept that intrusive Web surfing is a damn norm.

That's the shift I am personally _really_ afraid of, but by the looks of it and as upsetting as it sounds, it is inevitable.

<comment><USER3> I believe Opera is not generating any uproar simply because they are acting as a "dumb pipe" in the truest sense - they're not trying to mess with the stream of data that they're entrusted (even though they're in a best possible position to do so), and so we trust them with the stream of data.

I think it would be different if they were intruding on the stream, and I imagine the backlash against Amazon if they do will be major.

<comment><USER2> But the thing is that Opera now sits on a trove of highly valuable information, and I can't imagine them not doing anything about it. As benign and non-evil as they are, they must feel pressure - be it internal, external or both - to capitalize on this "asset". Do you trust them enough to keep resisting this pressure, which is only guaranteed to rise?

<comment><USER4> All we know is that they've resisted it so far, right? I know the bar for ethics here is pretty low, but give credit where due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > This is the first shot in the new war for replacing the Internet with a > privatized merchant data-aggregation network.

Doesn't this already exist? Google has the information from toolbar data. DoubleClick has already classified everyone on the internet based on their interests based on what sites they visit. How much better are Amazon's product recommendations going to get based on this new source of data? My guess is some, but not much.

A cheap tablet with a fast browser will bring new people into the Amazon ecosystem, and that will be worth far more than the clickstream data.

<comment><USER6> _Doesn't this already exist? Google has the information from toolbar data._

... and if instead, Google built reporting of visited sites _and all their contents, cookies, and your personal information_ into Chrome?

<comment><USER7> I don't know why this keeps coming up. It would violate their privacy policy to do anything like that, they've said they're not going to do anything like that, and if they _did_ do something like that it would be easily detected and there would be a massive, unrecoverable backlash.

If you want to play conspiracy theory, why don't you ponder what percentage of sites have Google Analytics or +1 javascript installed?

<comment><USER8> I think you've misread the parent. nupark2 is distinguishing between what Amazon is planning and what Google do. jcampbell is saying "doesn't this already exist" and nupark2 is saying no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Opera Mini's been doing this for more than a year. And Opera Mini is one of the main browsers on Android phones.

Works fine with Opera for iPad. Better than Safari imho.

<comment><USER10> Opera doesn't have the other concerns raised here. They aren't vendors of anything else themselves, and have no particular reason to use their data to further other goals they may have.

The question of whether this technically "works" is uninteresting. The answer is yes.

<comment><USER11> Opera inserts ads via this proxy. They bought AdMarvel last year. I'd say that's a good reason to check out your data.

<http://www.admarvel.com/OMAE.html>

<comment><USER10> Oh dear. I'm surprised someone hasn't had a major-league lawyers-involved hissy fit about this. Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I doubt end users will care as long as the TOS aren't absurd (e.g. Amazon has the right to sell your non-anonymized data probably wouldn't fly). People _will_ care that their Silk browser is screaming fast, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> ISPs have been doing this for ages, maybe not as fine grained as what Amazon plans, but all traffic in general is data-mined and sold.

<comment><USER14> Is this true? If it is, why don't the RIAA and MPAA just buy the information they seem so desperate to get so they can sue you with it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about pageviews: If Amazon stores one copy of NYTimes and serves it to 1000 users, will NYTimes record it as a single hit?

<comment><USER16> Theoretically, Amazon could "replay" the 1000 hits back to the NYT in the background while the users are getting served the cached page. In addition, it appears that JavaScript still runs on the client (though compiled down to bytecode before reaching the device), so any JS-based analytics would still get fired off.

<comment><USER17> And Amazon could also do filter out any malware distributing websites.

Would it be wrong to call the Fire some sort of thin client? (just for the browser)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Think about this: So Amazon can learn about people's browsing habits and can infer a user's interests. Now, based on this, it can put ads in the screensaver (say with "$20 off on the Kindle fire if you let us do this"). An extreme case would be to modify the webpage with their own ads (hopefully will not happen and is unethical). But nevertheless good move, Amazon.

<comment><USER18> I think their IPs will start getting blocked if they substitute ads. However, the Kindle ads would work wonders. Just inferring the main categories in which the user makes purchases from their Amazon history and showing the top five best sellers in those categories would be sufficient, but having the web history is huge. That said, the potential abuses are also massive if they start getting hit by warrants/national security letters.

<comment><USER15> Or they could start a SilkAds service like AdWords/AdSense so content providers can display ads using Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Android Apache's license allows just that. Google was aware that was going to happen. There have already been android phones released that were locked on Bing as the search engine and many other devices with no android market. So nothing unexpected here for google.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sensationalist.

<comment><USER21> Is it? Sounds like a strong privacy argument to me. Especially if Silk doesn't offer an opt-out. There will be wayyy too much useful data in Amazon's lap for them to simply ignore it.

<comment><USER22> Is there a point where even "anonymized" data can be mined and recombined into something that is used to personalize and sell things better?

<comment><USER23> Absolutely. Even if you only know what people are doing/buying in aggregate, that's still very valuable. And you can still correlate between various anonymized streams of data if you know how they correlate -- i.e. 32-year-old male manga fans are more likely to buy Pokemon and Pocky than average.

Amazon already gets (and uses, vigorously) a lot of this kind of data from Amazon.com, but I'll bet they're salivating at the idea of getting to cross- compare against all the non-Amazon.com data on the same topics. If they're not, they should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Speaking of caching, are browsers already doing all the caching that is practical on modern machines? I vaguely remember years ago downloading a special program that sped up the internet by performing more aggressive caching than the browser was capable of (basically it was just a caching proxy). Everything was noticeably quicker.

Though these days things probably feel slower because every website is loaded down with 3rd party JS from 100 different sites...

<comment><USER7> Just a guess, but that program might have had more to do with adjusting Windows' TCP/IP settings, which used some very antiquated defaults until rather recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apart from the technology provider, amazon is a giant e-commerce outlet. The implications - Amazon knowing what sells, can be misused to foster its growth on e-commerce. And such things are not even related to user's privacy at all.

User might benefit for a short while, by getting their products under the same roof. But in long run it only serves to create e-commerce monopoly and drive mom-pop/small businesses out of the market, in turn eliminating the competition.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this the same data stream that Microsoft is grabbing via most IE users?

It's a big privacy violation, but not a major advantage for amazon.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is stopping you from installing another browser on the Fire? Wouldn't that entirely bypass Silk?

<comment><USER19> Silk has an option to turn off the cloud proxy browsing mode.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't streaming sites like Netflix use internal torrents? - <AUTHOR> Their bandwidth is a noticeable fraction of all internet traffic. It seems they could drastically lower their bandwidth costs. This would allow either lower subscription costs (or make a gap for competition). <comment><USER2> I think Spotify when iT stated as a New company under the hood worked with Torrent likely to save on bandwith.

Maybe Netflix doesn't becuase a lot of customers have deplorable slow connections as it is, and uploading next to downloading makes the experience worse...</comment>


MIT's Flyfire Turns Swarms of Autonomous LED Copters Into Floating 3-D Displays - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/mits-flyfire-swarms-helicopters-3-d-displays

<comment><USER2> That is very cool. How might they keep the helicopters from bumping into each other at such close proximity?</comment>


Show HN: Decentralized LAN based P2P file sharing commandline application- iWant - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nirvik/iWant <comment><USER2> Works only in python 2?

Close.</comment>


Show HN: An Outlet For Your Views And Your Wallet - Shop Your Values! - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glia-social-values-shopping/id895988434?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, happy to answer any questions and would love feedback. You can check out our website and video at www.glia.is</comment>


The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration - <AUTHOR> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239 <comment><USER2> "Rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM"

In the cases I've seen 'open offices' implemented, its been to cram more people into the same space, and save on real estate costs.

<comment><USER3> And I can hear someone droning on in the background now, and it's stopping me from concentrating.

<comment><USER4> Huh, me too!</comment></comment></comment>


Living near Si Valley but with lower living expenses? - <AUTHOR>

I have been thinking about trying to locate to Sacremento in the hopes of being close to Silicon Valley but being able to afford to live.  Are there good startup opportunities in places like these? <comment><USER2> The Fresno Bee had an article about this recently, suggesting Clovis: <http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/99048.html>

It gets a little hot, and it's about 3 hours from Silicon Valley.

If you just want to live in a cool place that's startup-friendly, Portland rocks. It's also much less expensive.

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

Open Source Development Labs/The Linux Foundation is here, too, and so is Linus.

There's free wireless all over the place, and Portland was the "Most Unwired City in America" in 2003.

<http://map.personaltelco.net/>

Oh yeah, and there's no sales tax. A lot of people move just over the border to Vancouver, Washington (which has no state income tax) and shop in Portland.

</comment><comment><USER3> You may want to consider finding a location near public transportation; e.g. Pittburg near the BART. That way you can live outside SF affordably but BART into events; <http://bart.gov/stations/map/systemMap.asp>

</comment><comment><USER4> Sacramento is _relatively_ close, but if you really want to be involved in the startup community, San Francisco is a much better choice.

Sacramento is far enough away to make you think twice about attending all the cool events that happen in San Francisco and Palo Alto and Mountain View.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of neighborhoods in the Bay Area. They are not all expensive.

<comment><USER6> The only one I can think of is Oakland, and the parts of Oakland that are not expensive are not places I'd recommend to a Bay Area newbie. If you can think of others, please list them, and I'll politely let you know why you wouldn't want to live there.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly what I've seen so far. I've lived in enough "bad areas" in my life that my quota is all used up. I want to live somewhere relatively safe. I also want to keep my "personal burn rate" low. Oakland is totally out. I'm not sure anywhere in the city qualifies. My current plan is to either commute a long way or give in and pay a lot in rent.

Anyone have suggestions of safe areas that aren't overly expensive or too far away?

<comment><USER8> Santa Clara is relatively cheap, safe and pretty central. Take a look at

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/roo/401753275.html>

for example (800/mo for a 2bd/1ba). But there's no 'atmosphere' compared to Palo Alto, or Berkeley.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the panic over Detroit real? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/11/18/isThePanicOverDetroitReal.html

<comment><USER2> The biggest problem with these arguments is that when you cancel everything out on both sides of the equation, what you're left with is using tax dollars to build (lousy) cars that we don't need.

Yes, of course allowing that many people to suddenly be unemployed is simply untenable. I just think that there has to be a better way to employ them. Whatever you think about the "new deal" the roads and bridges we got out of it a are quite a bit more useful to all of us than 400 more acres of "Aveos".</comment>


Cancer Doctors Cite Risks of Drinking Alcohol - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/well/live/cancer-doctors-cite-risks-of-drinking-alcohol.html?referer=https://news.google.com <comment><USER2> It would be better to know at what age this increases risk. If a lifetime spent drinking delicious, delicious red wine ends up taking me out 5yrs before Alzheimer's would, so be it.

<comment><USER3> How old are you? I'm just a touch over 40 and even at this age the poignancy of life really starts to reveal itself to you.

You would trade 5 years of your life for being able to drink wine? Because it's that delicious, right? Sorry, but this is either hyperbole to the point of silliness or you have no idea the value of your life.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget that the X years always come off the back end. If you'd speak to my 90 year old grandmother about the poignancy of life right now I think she might have a thing or two to teach you about how great it is at the end.

You've also chosen wine as the enemy here, I bet for any given person earth (including you) we could find something you could have done more of (or not done at all) to improve your lifespan. Very few people trade everything off for life expectancy, and those that do often have dreams of singularity or life extension as their only goal.

<comment><USER3> One more thought...it doesn't always come off the back end. My mother is obese due to lifestyle choices. She has an artificial knee and hip. She is still a vibrant 67 year old woman, but she lost almost 2 years in rehabilitation and now does and will have mobility issues for the rest of her life. I still don't think when the end comes that she would have wanted to miss all the things that happened (good and bad) during those years, or even as she deteriorates further in the coming years.

Edit: spelling

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The N.Y. Times once reported on the lifespans of the people of Ikaria, who apparently have the longest recorded lifespans, as a group, in the world. Their diet includes moderate amounts of wine.

"Wine — in moderation — had been shown to be good for you if consumed as part of a Mediterranean diet, because it prompts the body to absorb more flavonoids, a type of antioxidant"

Not a medical research study, but I wonder how oncologists would reconcile their recommendations with reports such as this. Presumably the studies they have reviewed control for other factors such as diet and lifestyle.

(Original article: [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island- wh...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people- forget-to-die.html))

<comment><USER6> Are we sure the lifespan thing isn't just a statistical quirk? If you take a thousand small places, one is _bound_ to have the longest-living people in the world.

<comment><USER3> OT: @StavrosK did you use to frequent metafilter?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately no, I never got a subscription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alcohol is definitely one of the most harmful drugs out there. In terms of addictiveness, physical side effects (short and long term), and the kind of behavior that people are likely to engage in while under the influence, the only things worse are probably IV painkillers and smoked meth/crack.

As a society we need to get our heads out of our asses and challenge our notions of what kind of drug use is and isn't acceptable. It's happening with weed, but unfortunately doesn't seem to be transferring to all/most other illegal drugs that aren't that harmful. It's perfectly fine to tell my boss that I got too drunk on Friday but if I tell him that I took psychedelic mushrooms or my friend's ADHD meds I probably wouldn't be employed much longer.

Alcoholism and propensity to addiction run through both sides of my family. Three out of four grandparents alcoholics, three out of four aunts/uncles alcoholics. I have nothing against alcohol use and drink myself, but I have to wonder how successful my family would have been if they lived in a society that hadn't (implicitly, if not explicitly) pressured them to drink, or if they had access to something they could "focus" their addiction on that wouldn't be as harmful as alcohol.

<comment><USER3> Alcohol is shilled so hard in America. It's disgusting. I honestly don't know why it isn't more strictly regulated.

I used to binge drink every few nights when I was younger. Like most people that have drank more than they should have, I have lots of stories of mischief and questionable (at best, sometimes straight illegal) behavior. And these are the stories I used to trade with friends and coworkers. Oh man, they were legendary, right?

This is the thing I see most often that just disappoints menow that that's not me anymore and I have realized that alcohol is a terrible drug. The celebration of behavior that is written off to alcohol and thus, totally fine and even funny. Everyone has a story. It's like when you quit smoking and are no longer blind to cigarette butts on the ground everywhere.

<comment><USER8> > Alcohol is shilled so hard in America. It's disgusting. I honestly don't > know why it isn't more strictly regulated.

Total drunk behaviour or total abstention are both extreme and symptoms of other, deeper issues. Alcohol can amplify existing issues, but there's also plenty of people who drink moderately, in family settings, without getting wasted or violent.

<comment><USER9> So you are saying that I have issues because I don't like to use a popular drug?

<comment><USER8> Of course not. If you don't like it, you don't like it. I dislike 99.9% of all drinks myself, including the distilled ones if they are not mixed with something.

But if you like it, and you taste a drop and can't control yourself, then yes, that would mean you have issues. And most importantly, that would mean the society around you, and their lack of a good support net, healthy extended family and so on, also has issues.

Why? Because I think when people live in a good non-toxic community most of the issues with abuse stop happening, and living in a toxic community is a factor for abuse, and it is a bigger factor than the access to the drugs themselves.

<comment><USER3> I feel like it is a lot more nuanced than "taste a drop and you can't control yourself", and that's not the argument I am making anyway.

Like most things, it's a spectrum. Some people are exactly as you described. I have them in my family. Others, like me only have a problem once we tip over the point of "Yeah, I'm good. One more is fine."

Alcohol is a strange drug. I think one of things that makes it so popular in the USA is that it is a "masculine" drug. I mean it's "liquid courage", right? The image of the frat boy that can beer pong all night and then take advantage of drunk sorority girl is so common as to be a trope. Media of all sorts is rife with examples of violence and damage caused by alcohol. Barfights. Barflys. Cougars. Roofied. Broken families. One night stands. Blackouts.

Alcohol, in my view, is a drug that tends to bring out the worst sorts of base desires and behaviors once a dosage level is crossed (different for everyone of course). I see no medicinal use for it, now that we have modern anesthesia. It has a high rate of abuse and addiction. Alcoholism is a real disease, and it is progressive. I still would be interested to hear any arguments against classifying alcohol as a Schedule I substance according to the language in the FDA statute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't this connection pretty well known? Colon cancer and all that. Plus like cmon its no secret alcohol os tough on your body, cancer is probably the least of your worries.

</comment><comment><USER11> As someone who has never drank and often has discussions with people about alcohol, it's amusing to see how many people go straight to defending their choice to drink alcohol in this thread.

<comment><USER12> Low doses of alcohol are a very effective anxiolytic medicine for many people.

I don't drink too much, but when I'm extremely stressed out (e.g. when enraged, extremely scared, in shock, etc. to the point of being unable to use higher brain function, being ready to fight or flee, etc.), one drink goes incredibly far toward taking the edge off, reducing both mental and physical symptoms of anxiety, and bringing out calm, rational thinking.

Alcohol also helps a lot of people with social awkwardness/fears, which is why so many social meeting places (especially places where strangers meet) serve alcohol. It serves a real useful function there, helping people to be more trusting and open.

Obviously when people drink more than they can handle, it also can have severe negative side effects, and can cause people to have emotional breakdowns, lose their inhibitions to the point of idiocy, lose their basic coordination, suffer memory loss, etc. But the same is true for many medicines/foods/drugs.

Many problematic uses of alcohol are related to people's other severe emotional problems (post-traumatic stress, ongoing abuse at home or work, working through the death of someone close or a bad breakup, extreme loneliness, depression, etc.). If self-medicating with large doses of alcohol was not an option, it's not clear what alternatives they would turn to or whether those would be preferable. The real lesson IMO is that we need much better social support and mental healthcare in this country.

<comment><USER13> We desperately need Synthehol - [http://memory- alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Synthehol](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Synthehol)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have read these studies before, and they've compelled me to drop my beer drinking down to about 1.2 standard drinks a day. Works for me: still get to drink, still get to pop a bomber of the heavy stuff once a week, and have more incentive to explore low-ABV styles like gueuze and lager. I haven't found any studies at all that describe the risks of alcohol consumption for men at 1 standard drink per day — which isn't to say that the risks don't exist, but they're probably pretty low.

However, the article implies that the size of a standard drink as 10g, whereas almost everywhere else I've heard it as 14g. So which is it?

</comment><comment><USER15> Of course alcohol increases the risk of some cancers - it's a known carcinogen. On top of that it can be highly addictive.

On the other hand, though, it's something a lot of people enjoy as as social lubricant, and there is also the evidence that drinking in moderation lowers the risk of heart disease.

So like many things in life the question is whether the positive outweighs the negative - that of course depends largely on your own risk factors for cancer, heart disease, and, yes... alcoholism.

<comment><USER16> The best evidence we have suggests that there is no safe amount of alcohol from the standpoint of heart disease[1]. The data supporting the safety (or even benefit) of a small amount of alcohol came from observational studies, which are often heavily confounded. This study used Mendelian randomization (MR) to get around that limitation. MR can be confounded by pleiotropy, but this study (which suggests harm from alcohol intake) is still higher quality evidence than the observational studies done previously.

1 = [http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4164](http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4164)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cause or correlation? Given the (bad) dietary and lifestyle habits of the majority of people, it's too easy to attribute something to X when in fact it's likely Y or Z.

Full disclosure: I'm half way through Grain Brain (having read Wheat Belly a couple years ago) and the current "ideal diet" is anything but.

</comment><comment><USER18> Did they demonstrate that there was a causative and not correlative effect being observed?

<comment><USER19> I thought the article was pretty clear. From your reading of the article, which part is confusing on this point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most Americans drink very little, it seems. Being in the top quintile means something like one serving per day, about a third of Americans abstain entirely.

</comment><comment><USER21> Alcoholic should periodically go for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha- fetoprotein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein) diagnosis

</comment><comment><USER22> Slightly sarcastic, but on point: Doctors say a glass of red wine per day is good for your blood. But now, they also say it'll increase chances of getting cancer. So I guess I need to choose between these two. Too much of anything is a poison.

<comment><USER16> See my other post here [1], but alcohol probably isn't good for your cardiovascular system.

1 = [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15666791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15666791)</comment></comment>


What's so new about news? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/news-has-never-been-pristine-always-entangled-in-time <comment><USER2> We feel more engrossed in the Happenings of the world when they're directly relevant to our life and limb and the welfare of our family and friends. This is the sensation the author appears to have been experiencing during the Bataclan attacks; the spontaneous ad-hoc information-sharing networks that develop after such crises are enduring and timeless, as the author's research reveals -- especially when such crises are relatively rare, such that we are not yet conditioned to "accept" them.

Despite an enchanting retrospective on the moods of news-consumers and news- suppliers throughout the ages and across the world, as well as a recap of the less-than-flattering Eurocentric malobversations of olden times, the essay's sophistication ends here; not really making or refuting a coherent point about modern news and how it relates to anything that was said. Seemingly, the implication is that some have suggested that "current panic about false news" is in part because of peer-to-peer dissemination of news made easier by today's social media, though it's not clear until the last paragraph that the essay set out to disprove this particular hypothesis.

The article recounts that peer-to-peer spread of news has been commonplace for as long as people communicated at all, notwithstanding whether organizations came together to process sources, gather facts, and disseminate them many-to- one; but otherwise falsely equates others' incredulity at manufactured fiction, misleading reporting, and cargo-cult cognitive dissonance with his post-adrenaline sensory overload of trying to make sense of nearly becoming a piece of news himself; that, I think, is too much of a reach.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting, high level view about how people respond/react to news.

"The current panic about false news, then, does not tell us much about the role of social media in sharing information. It reveals, instead, that we feel like change is accelerating unpredictably and that we are looking for ways to make sense of it."

While fake news is certainly nothing new, social media and technology has certainly abetted the proliferation of fake news.

I've found people in general are trusting, and willing to believe what they heard, without checking/verifying the source. "Don't believe everything you see on the internet" is an (relatively) old adage that most people know and believe they follow, but the large growth of fake news is a real sign that that clearly isn't the case. I feel this also may be part of the current panic.</comment>


Why Did Seventeenth-Century Europeans Eat Mummies? - <AUTHOR> http://resobscura.blogspot.com/2015/12/why-did-seventeenth-century-europeans.html <comment><USER2> Saving you the read: superstition. The same reason Chinese people eat powdered rhino horn today.

<comment><USER3> ...or modern, seemingly intelligent Western people believing in homeopathy. You don't have to look far, superstition and pseudo-science is still as prevalent as in the 'dark' ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Gastroprotective effect of mummy on induced gastric ulcer in rats." [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00580-012-1610-7](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00580-012-1610-7)

<comment><USER5> From the paper you linked to:

"Mummy semi-solid material is extracted from seams in caves and contains a composition of hydrocarbons, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur. These materials are used as wound dressings... Some researchers combine known materials, such as bitumen chemical and spectral analysis, to indicate the presence of hydrocarbons. Two types of mummy: fat-soluble and organic materials, such as alcohol chloroform (localised type) and water soluble (type of food), have been characterised."

I may have misunderstood something, but I don't think the "mummy" of the paper is the same thing as the "mummies" of the post to which HN links.

<comment><USER6> You're correct - "mummy" or "mumia" was originally used to describe the resin created by human remains and embalming materials, but by the 18th century it had started to shift over to describing various kinds of hydrocarbons. I think it was because the two actually looked fairly similar - black, resin-y, bituminous, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Suddenly, a scene in Futurama makes sense to me.</comment>


America's Most Promising Startups - <AUTHOR> http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/06/0627_fresh_entrepreneurs/

<comment><USER2> _"Next up: a $2,000 to $3,000 device, launching in March, that makes its user's arm feel weightless. It is intended for use by dentists, surgeons, and other professionals who work for long periods with arms outstretched."_

Equipois -#5 on the list - is launching a new device that could make Kinect- style interactive UI feasible over long periods of time, overcoming the problem of "Gorilla arm".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#Gorilla_arm>

</comment><comment><USER3> That list is OOOLD. Please refrain from posting stuff that's 2 years old.</comment>


Cameras know you by your walk (2012) - Pick-A-Hill2019 https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528835-600-cameras-know-you-by-your-walk/ <comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 The reason why I chose a 2012 link was to allow people to freely dicuss what the current state of the art is or might be. I know it is bad form to self- comment on a submission but thought the clarification worthwhile</comment>


Public defenders use billionaire's plea deal as model for others - <AUTHOR> https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/public-defenders-to-use-generous-plea-deal-offered-to-billionaire-henry-nicholas-as-model-for-future-plea-deal-requests <comment><USER2> _each make a $500,000 contribution to drug counseling programs in Clark County_

Justice isn't a right. It's a product you buy. If you can't afford it, well...good luck in prison.

 _contribution of 0.0128 percent of their net worth_

Clever strategy by both the original private lawyers, and now the public defender. The billionaire is co-founder of Broadcom Corporation, Henry Nicholas. He'll miss $500,000 like I'd miss $6.</comment>


Twitter experiencing serious problems - <AUTHOR> http://adrusi.com/twitter-experiencing-serious-issues-for-certain-users/ <comment><USER2> Just checked your account. It is back up as is Kanye West's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, no. You must be on an unaffected network. Can I ask your approximate location and ISP?

<comment><USER2> I am in the New Orleans area.</comment></comment></comment>


Bad Reasons to Start a Company - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/bobpoekert/dfe891301678d3de515d <comment><USER2> "Mummy and Daddy are giving you a seed round because they want to get you out of the house"

Granted that it would suck to have this kind of relationship with your parents, if they are willing to give you seed money why would you _not_ use it to try to create a company? Is it better to spend it on video games and mountain dew?

<comment><AUTHOR> People in this position generally don't start successful companies. Do charity work with the money instead.</comment></comment>


Serverless Architecture – The Way Forward? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetcurry.com/windows-azure/1316/serverless-architecture <comment><USER2> It's not 'serverless'. You are allowing another company to run your entire infrastructure. They run the servers. It seems like this is just another way of saying it's in the 'cloud'.

We seem to have this obsession with creating businesses that give complete control over to large companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter.

<comment><USER3> Even if you run your business from a server rack set up in your own house... who has control over your DNS? Dyn? How about your domain name?

I've had a website temporarily taken down due to an invalid complaint from Amazon, and it wasn't my hosting that was the problem, it was Dyn, who gave zero notice. The same company that's now owned by Oracle.

Seems pointless to worry about ceding control of your infrastructure hosting -- especially when you can craft it to be easily replicable on another service -- when there are plenty of other means to wipe out your online presence with little recourse.</comment></comment>


Half Of Consumed Fish Now From Aquaculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006529.html

<comment><USER2> Looks like a bit of backward reasoning. The article starts out talking about fish and shellfish in general making up half of the consumption, but the payload concentrates on salmon and fish fed on fishmeal.

From what I've seen of fish farming locally (catfish) and in the Philippines (bangus), the feed is corn and grain based.

</comment><comment><USER3> _What is really needed: Genetic engineering to get land-based crops to produce the omega 3 fatty acids DHA and EPA._

This will not provide me with delicious sashimi. I somehow doubt the majority of the increased demand for fish is because people want their oil for health reasons. A better source of food for the farmed fish would be a more practical way to mitigate the environmental stress caused by aquaculture.</comment>


Google Android Director on Nexus Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/android-nexus-strategy/ <comment><USER2> Kudos to Google for ditching the LTE buzztech in favor of better battery life and better global compatibility while offering ample bandwidth performance for a mobile device with these rendering latencies.

Jeers to the blogopress for piling on iPhone 4s for making the same right call a year earlier, and to Apple for putting out iPhone 5 that is less "world compatible" than the 4s in order to offer the LTE buzztech.

// disclaimer: own Google Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4s

<comment><USER3> According to AnandTech, the Nexus 4 gets about half the battery life while browsing on 3G compared to the iPhone5 on LTE.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and- nexus-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and- nexus-10-review/2)

<comment><USER4> From the same article:

> As always we test across multiple air interfaces (3G, 4G LTE, WiFi), but due > to the increased network load we actually find that on a given process > technology we see an increase in battery life on faster network connections. > The why is quite simple to understand: the faster a page is able to fully > render, the quicker all components can drive down to their idle power > states.

If you compare the Nexus 4 on 3G (4.18) and the iPhone 5 on 3G (4.55), the scores are actually very close.

<comment><USER3> The post I was responding to praised Google for ditching LTE buzztech in favor of (among other things) better battery life. Real world data shows that this isn't the case - the "buzztech" actually provides an enormous boost to battery life.

<comment><USER4> I'd be very careful claiming that LTE provides an "enormous boost to battery life" based on a benchmark that loads web pages at a fixed interval, with fixed brightness, and with minimal caching.

In this particular benchmark, it is very clear that LTE is the winner across the board. In 'real world usage', I have to disagree. I'm sure anyone with an LTE phone will tell you that disabling the LTE radio absolutely gives a boost in day-to-day battery life.

<comment><USER2> > "In 'real world usage', I have to disagree. I'm sure anyone with an LTE > phone will tell you that disabling the LTE radio absolutely gives a boost in > day-to-day battery life."

This has been my experience as well. I find that in every day use, especially in areas not saturated with strong LTE, it can become a battery suck.

I'm certain downloading a 200 mb PDF over LTE in Manhattan takes less power than downloading that PDF over HSDPA+, GSM, or GPRS. But in my experience with several devices, having LTE on all day in Fairfield County, finding it sometimes but often not, takes more power in so-called "standby".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 are going to sell really well IMO. The Nexus 4 is the most compelling phone for anybody who prefers Android and doesn't need LTE. The Nexus 7's advantage on price and display will mean that some will prefer it to the iPad mini.

But what about the Nexus 10? It's price point is high enough that the price difference against the iPad is not as significant, and it's expensive enough that you can't buy it as easily on a whim and assume that "the apps will come". It's biggest advantage against the iPad is that it has an open ecosystem, but that's not an advantage unless there are apps that take advantage of that.

Any thoughts on potential "killer apps" for the Nexus 10?

XBMC may be it for some.

Another might be its potential as a laptop replacement for developers. Some people use an iPad for remote development, but a Nexus 10 should be powerful enough and open enough to support local development.

<comment><USER6> For my family with six kids, the killer feature is multi-user support. We have an iPad but I find I don't use it effectively because I don't stay logged into e-mail, facebook, etc.

However, stubborness will probably prevent me getting one because here in the UK there is a delta of £40 between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 7, but a £70 delta between the 16GB and 32GB Nexus 10 - all else being the same (I think getting a 16GB device is a bit risky with increasing app sizes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "$299 for an unlocked Nexus 4 — I think that's pretty revolutionary."

Yep. Rather than LTE or OIS, this is in fact the killer feature of the Nexus lineup for this year and it's going to make a huge difference to a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio (like the forthcoming Nexus 7) could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device?

The form factor seems to be right in the sweet spot for portability versus usability, i.e. it's much less bulky than a full-size tablet, is much less expensive and also offers substantially better battery life, whilst retaining a screen large enough for pleasant video watching, gaming and especially web browsing and ebook reading, criteria which even the largest smartphone cannot compete with.

I'd love it if there was a Nexus 6.5 and a Nexus 6 to compare with the Nexus 7 though, as I think 7" is definitely right at the upper end of the ideal size range.

<comment><USER9> >I'm really happy with my new 32GB Nexus 7. I'm wondering whether a device of this size with cellular radio could replace both larger tablets and smartphones as many people's only portable device?

You are not the only one: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google- nexus-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57491099-1/google-nexus-7-is- almost-the-only-device-i-need/)

An important constraint IMHO is whether the user can pick it up with one hand when the device is lying flat on a horizontal surface.

The iPad does not meet this constraint: although my hands are very large compared to most men's and although I can technically pick up an iPad this way, doing so is very uncomfortable and my grip cannot be particularly secure. Even the Surface RT is smaller (.54 inches smaller to be exact) in the relevant dimension (the dimension that has to be spanned by thumb and middle finger) despite its screen having 1.166 times as much area as the iPad's. (This is possible since the Surface RT has an 16:9 aspect ratio versus the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad).

ADDED. Most heavy users of computers will of course want at least one device that meets that constraint (namely, being able to be picked up and held comfortably with one hand) e.g., a smartphone or a 7" tablet or a 7.7" tablet (like the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 or the Toshiba Excite 7 -- the only 2 shipping tablets with AMOLED btw) or (if they have big hands) a 7.9" 4:3 tablet (the iPad mini). I predict that in the years to come many of them who want a second, bigger mobile device will prefer a device with a 11.6" screen (like the small Macbook Air or one of the many Windows 8 tablets with an Atom or Intel Core processor) or a 13.3" screen (like a lot of popular clamshells or the announced-but-not-yet-available Android-ARM-powered Toshiba Excite 13 tablet) over an Asus Transformer (with their 10.1" screens) or an iPad (with their 9.7" screens).

<comment><USER8> I agree, and would add that it's also important to be able to comfortably hold a device in one hand for extended periods.

Interesting article you linked to. Add a comprehensive range of productivity applications and improved voice recognition, and we could also replace laptops as well (at least for most use cases, and with a docking station perhaps for all use cases). I can't wait!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Inductive charging is a really great addition if it works well. All I need now is for it to come to the iPhone!

<comment><USER11> What about the weekend travel scenario? Instead of bringing a wire to charge your phone, you have to pack a charging station. Is that still worth not plugging in the phone?

<comment><USER12> The dock is optional. You can still use any 2€ micro USB cable to charge the Nexus 4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I were Samsung, and I read this, I'd dump or fork Android in a heartbeat.

Google is clearly just peeing in the pool with Android. Their goal is to disrupt the industry by sucking margins out.

From their perspective it makes sense. It may even be a positive thing for consumers. But it is really bad news for other companies trying to make a profit from hardware, especially Apple and Samsung.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure Samsung would do it if they had a modicum of competence in platform building -- see Bada, Tizen, SLP (Samsung Linux Platform). They've spent fortunes on these and gotten nowhere; they know what's going on and are completely unable to gain leverage.

<comment><USER13> Completely agree on Samsung's proven incompetence in platform software. But that doesn't mean they won't try again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As an aside, the title is a little misleading. I was expecting this to be Andy Rubin. But that's a minor nitpick.

I, for one, am very pleased with this Nexus lineup (disclaimer: I work for Google).

The Nexus 4 for $299-349 seems to be outstanding value given the competition is typically ~$600 unsubsidized. I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still immature, to the point I'm almost surprised Apple has adopted them. I don't know what they add in cost but they certainly, by all accounts, drain battery life.

The Nexus 7 for $199 seems to be outstanding value. Google Play isn't quite the iTunes ecosystem yet but it's getting much better. I also think it's better than an iPad Mini in that it's widescreen not 4:3. I've lined up a Nexus 7 against my iPad playing Netflix. Playing widescreen the Nexus 7 is only marginally smaller. 720p seems to be a good baseline to aim for on this size of device (IMHO).

I'm also pleased to see the Nexus 10 for $399. It looks like a very nice device.

I also think Android is starting to coming into its own. I've often been critical of it compared to the consistency, ease of use and general pleasure of iOS but that shortcoming is rapidly disappearing.

I compare it to the Motorola Droid, which I have. It's a _terrible_ phone. Everything about it is just bad.

My only gripe with Android phones these days is that they continue to get bigger. I like the form factor of my iPhone 4S.

Plus the Nexus devices has the vastly superior Google Maps. :_ I for one like having public transit directions on my maps.

<comment><USER16> > I also consider the lack of LTE to be a feature. LTE chipsets are still > immature

Not to mention the speeds with LTE are not actually that much faster than T-Mo's HSPA+, especially now that there are lots of iPhone 5s in the wild using up LTE bandwidth: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the- nexus-4-the-v...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3582684/the-nexus-4-the- verge-and-lte) (the data in the post is pre-iPhone 5, so the LTE speeds will be much slower than even that now)

<comment><USER17> When at full bars in my local area (in my brick-and-wood office in Vancouver, BC) on 3G, I can get 13.83 megabits down, 1.68 megabits up.

On three bars of LTE, I get 20.92 megabits down, 15.60 megabits up. This is roughly equivalent to the fibre connection I have to my home.

Typically, when I'm outside on full bars of LTE, I get closer to 30 megabits down, 30 megabits up. This is significantly better than my fibre connection at home.

So I would say the LTE speed difference is pretty impressive. Whether networks have sufficient coverage is another question entirely, and LTE on different frequencies can have severe penetration issues which can negatively impact your signal strength and download/upload speeds. Still, the numbers reported in that Verge article are pretty depressing and speak less to LTE as a technology and more to the poor situation that US mobile networks are in.

Thus: If you are targeting a purely US audience, then LTE might not make sense, but if you're selling to people outside of the US's broken mobile situation, LTE is a huge boost.

<comment><USER5> Why is a comparison of 3G vs LTE even relevant? HSPA+ vs LTE is the relevant comparison to this conversation.

<comment><USER17> Because outside of the US, '3G' typically includes HSPA+ (and usually means anything shy of LTE). It's only in the US that carriers have started making the '4G' claim about HSPA+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> There are players in the industry who were unhappy about more competitive pricing for the consumers. They want to keep the prices high, they want to force the price to be so high that operators have to subsidize the devices very highly. That's not only the Cupertino guys but also for the guys up in Seattle. They want higher margins, they want to charge more for software.

We simply believe there's a better way of doing it without extracting that much payment from end users, because there are other ways to drive revenues. Patents were used as a weapon to try to stop that evolution and scare people away from lower-cost alternatives._

Of course it's Google, the only company other than Amazon with such a non- SW/HW revenue stream that takes this position. (Google's revenue stream being ads, and Amazon's being content)

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone else find the use of "the Cupertino guys" just odd?

What's he trying to achieve by not mentioning Apple? It's not as if anyone interested in the article wouldn't know exactly who he's referring to.

That said when discussing tablets not sure whether the Seattle guys are Microsoft or Amazon...

Otherwise interesting piece - in tone the price pitch feels a lot like Amazon when they talk tablets.

<comment><USER18> That's a good point about Seattle, since he's clearly talking about MSFT (Amazon's devices are dirt cheap), so the ambiguity is actually quite counterproductive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Basically we felt that we wanted to prove you don't have to charge $600 to deliver a phone that has the latest-generation technologies."

That's disingenuous. Without LTE this phone does not have the latest generation technologies. I think Google screwed up with the Nexus 4. The previous Nexus phones were definitely flagship, top of the line devices. This one is already obsolete before it even ships.

<comment><USER21> LTE is not widely available. Where ever it is available its unreliable and inconsistent. You can have LTE chip but what would it do if there is no network.

<comment><USER17> Living in Vancouver, BC; LTE has a few weak spots here, but in general LTE is fast and reliable, and gets me download and upload speeds of between 20-30 megabits per second. It's a faster download than my fibre connection to my apartment (by 20%), and faster upload (by 200%).

I'd say that's pretty significant. I get that Google maybe can't fit an LTE chip into a phone cheaply, and that LTE is the card that carriers are willing to withhold playing to get concessions out of Google, but saying that LTE unavailable, unreliable, and inconsistent just sounds like the sort of apologetics that iPhone users have been accused of for years (since back when LTE _was_ unavailable, unreliable, and inconsistent).</comment></comment></comment>


Prime Minister of Singapore shares his C++ code for Sudoku solver - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/04/prime-minister-of-singapore-shares-his-c-code-for-sudoku-solver/

<comment><USER2> This is very interesting. Maybe this is connected, but Singapore seems to be doing a lot of good things to try and inculcate a culture of tech innovation. E.g. National University of Singapore runs an amazing internship program that places undergraduate students to spend an entire year in US tech startups. I've never seen anything like this from any other university anywhere in the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9485237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9485237) (13 hours ago, 139 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419035) (12 days ago, 126 comments)</comment>


Show HN: Porla – a programmable BitTorrent client for servers and seedboxes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/porla/porla <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Author here. I've been working on this BitTorrent client for a while now and would like some feedback!

It's a Node.js based BitTorrent client aimed at technical users looking for a powerful server (or seedbox) setup.

It uses native Rasterbar-libtorrent bindings and I'm providing pre-built binaries in the NPM package for linux-x64 and linux-arm (for Raspberry Pi setups). Installing on Windows or OSX is currently unsupported, but is in the works. Sorry for this.</comment>


Ask HN: How to drive traffic to a side project - <AUTHOR>

I started 300dayweekend.com as a side project for myself and other travelers to share short travel stories. Friends and a few random visitors have given me great feedback on the content, but I'm struggling to drive traffic. I've had some success on Reddit, but submitting too many links to the same base URL gets posts hidden.  I'm open to other thoughts? <comment><USER2> From a pure SEO perspective...

Your meta descriptions aren't useful. You are just repeating the title. Adding some descriptive descriptions less then 140 characters in length with help. You appear to be using Wordpress so install SEO Ultimate to help with this.

Its hard to find content on your site. I thought you only had a few stories since it took me scrolling to the bottom and clicking left to find more. I guess the tags help with this but you are missing all of the extra links to find content. Your sitemap will help overcome this for Google, but not for users.

Your domain and title are at odds. Not sure what you are looking to target in terms of keywords, but assuming its "1 minute travel stories" you are going to find it hard to compete with [http://giveme1minute.wordpress.com/](http://giveme1minute.wordpress.com/) without getting [http://1minutetravelstories.com/](http://1minutetravelstories.com/) or [http://oneminutetravelstories.com/](http://oneminutetravelstories.com/) etc....

Otherwise,

Move your subscription submit higher. I'm going to assume you want people to subscribe so make it prominent. I would do the same with the twitter link. I liked the stories so started looking for twitter so I could follow and get more of them and it wasn't obvious to find.

You need more content to get more traffic. No idea what your goals are but I would be using [http://www.hittail.com/](http://www.hittail.com/) (try it for a month for free) to work out what sort of keywords you should be targeting. This should land you on the first page of Google/Bing for those keywords.

The design isn't fantastic (may or may not be an issue) which made me think this was just someone's personal blog at first. Maybe you should look into spending $10 or so for a nicer looking theme. Nothing fancy, just something more modern and clean to appeal to your audience.

I say this as someone with a side project pulling in 4,000 unique's a day, and having targeted keywords to get No 1 on Google/Bing successfully quite a few times.

Looks like an interesting project. I added your feed to my newsblur and will follow what's going on so long as the content remains interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Think about your ideal visitor: What would that be? Where do they hangout online, what do they read?

It seems to me you want to focus on travelers - Go through Alltop ([http://travel.alltop.com/](http://travel.alltop.com/)) as they already get traffic. Try to leverage that by outreaching and interacting.

Leverage Twitter by going through [https://twitter.com/search?q=travel%20blogs&src=typd&f=realt...](https://twitter.com/search?q=travel%20blogs&src=typd&f=realtime) finding people who travel and favoriting a tweet from there. Put your URL in ur byline and slowly gaining traffic.

Just some thoughts :) Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure what your traffic goals are, but there are a lots of ways to skin this cat (no cats were harmed in the making of this comment).

Have you:

      * looked in google webmaster tools (and the others, sure, why not) and made sure the googlebot likes what it is seeing
      * considered PPC/adwords?  How about facebook ads?
      * created a facebook page or instagram/twitter account (depending on your demo) and followed people that are interesting to you w/r/t this area?
      * joined communities that are interested in what you are doing--and contributed to them?  (It's not enough to just drop in, leave a link and go.)  Email list, facebook group, web forum, wherever.  I've had success with this, and just a signature block.
      * reached out to bloggers in the same space and offered to do a guest post
      * sent emails to travel writers with helpful info that refers back to your site
      * started a tumblr/linkblog/real blog that can point to this

(I have a side project that gets ~2k visits a month: [http://coloradocsas.info/](http://coloradocsas.info/) \-- couldn't resist putting that in.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Thanks for the ideas. Many are good, my favorite is the guest blogging idea.

<comment><USER4> No worries. Pick something and do it consistently for a while--all of these take time in our attention scarce world--well, all of them except the advertising, which is trading money for time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would suggest:

1\. Change the color scheme. The white text on blue is jarring and looks old.

2\. More detail to your content. If you write posts that are 2,000 words each that contain multiple links (internal and external) as well as multiple images, that will be much more engaging. I think your posts are too short, both from an SEO perspective and an engagement perspective.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can check my project: [http://metrics11.com](http://metrics11.com) It could help increase search traffic to your website. It finds profitable keywords niches you can use on your site to get free traffic from Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> like this: Checkout my side project [https://github.com/digitalmaster/MongoCMS](https://github.com/digitalmaster/MongoCMS)

It's a MongoDb client :)</comment>


Savable Sharable Rich Text Editor Fit in a Tweet - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mkldny/status/617841181716779008 <comment><AUTHOR> The address bar will update automatically</comment>


A DSL in 5 Languages: Ruby, Python, PHP, C#, Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/devblog/a-dsl-in-5-languages <comment><USER2> A quick tips when creating block DSLs in Ruby:

        def search(&blk)
          if blk.arity == 1
            blk.call(self)
          else
            self.instance_eval(&blk)
          end
        end

        # Then the user can decide what he want to use:
        Foo.search { bar }
        Foo.search { |s| s.bar }

<comment><USER3> So, the first invocation is similar to calling `Foo.search(&:bar)`, right?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but the whole point is really repeating local variables vs capturing self:

        # This wouldn't work because it binds the block to Foo, and the @bar
        # would lookup inside Foo instead of the proper context:
        Foo.search { bar == @bar }

        # This works fine though:
        Foo.search { |s| s.bar == @bar }

Besides, if you're setting accessor, it can get a little weird:

        # Explicit and nice:
        Foo.search { |s| s.foo = 123 }

        # This actually sets a local variable:
        Foo.search { foo = 123 }

        # In order to fix it, we're back to the explicit one:
        Foo.search { self.foo = 123 }

There is no silver bullet here, and I believe the best way is to provide both techniques and let the user decide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the PHP version: Why is the search method static? You are forcing whatever class you are using to be tightly coupled. Dependency injection can be done in PHP, too.

Better:

        $bt = Braintree_Transaction_Search::someFactory();
        $collection = $bt->search(array(
            $bt->orderId()->startsWith('a2d')
            $bt->customerWebsite()->endsWith('.com'),
            $bt->billingFirstName()->is('John'),
            $bt->status()->in(array(
                Braintree_Transaction::AUTHORIZED,
                Braintree_Transaction::SETTLED
            )),
            $bt->amount()->between('10.00', '20.00')
        ));

If you're really up to it, there is no reason you couldn't use an even more fluent interface in PHP...

        $collection = $bt->where()
            ->orderId()->startsWith('a2d')
            ->and()->customerWebsite()->endsWith('.com')
            ->and()->billingFirstName()->is('John')
            ->search();

Also, please make sure the search method returns an iterator, not an array. Just because PHP allows you to shoot yourself in the foot, doesn't mean you should.

<comment><USER5> Gosh, every example (even in languages I don't know) are much easier to grok than the PHP one :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Lisp I would write a macro that could be used like this:

        (for-each (transaction)
              :where
              ((order              :starts-with "a2d")
               (customer-website   :ends-with   ".com")
               (billing-first-name :equals      "John")
               (status             :one-of      '(:authorized :settled))
               (amount             :between     '("10.00" "20.00")))
           :do
           (print (id transaction)))

<comment><USER7> God that's elegant. S-expressions for the win.

No, no, remember: all other languages need a chance to incrementally catch back up to Lisp. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Python tip: instead of making the user contstruct a list literal, just use (star)args in the function definition. Python will automatically pack up any number of positional arguments into a list for you!

        def search(*args) : ... # args is a sequence

        search(this, that, the_other_thing)

Edit: found the HN FAQ entry on formatting comments, finally.

<comment><USER3> > Edit: found the HN FAQ entry on formatting comments, finally.

Really? Where?

<comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

<comment><USER3> Swell! Would you happen to know how to format quotations?

<comment><USER10> As in the "Ask HN" type posts? You can simply enter something into the text field when making a submission. It will then ignore the URL field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not using 'var' (or LINQ, for that matter) in C# seems an odd choice. 'Separate steps for creating the request and performing the search' seems more like an advantage (for Java and C#) to me than a disadvantage, since you can easily eliminate the overhead with a helper function and the separation of a request and a search means that you can reuse a single request instance if you see the need.

I also consider statements like 'search.amount.between "10.00", "20.00"' or 'Amount.Between(10.00M, 20.00M)' to be vastly inferior to the native alternatives: for example, in C#, you could write that predicate as '(amount) => (amount > 10.00M && amount < 20.00M)' and in Python, it would become the even shorter 'lambda amount : 10 > amount > 20'. In each case the native way of expressing the logic requires no special knowledge of the 'fluent' API.

<comment><USER12> kevingadd -

We tend to use var when the return type is obvious, but we wanted to be explicit in the examples. Unfortunately, LINQ is not an option for us as we support .NET 2.0.

Your C# and Python predicate examples are quite readable, but in this case they don't work for us. The return type of each of these statements would be true or false, whereas we are building XML requests to be sent to a server to perform the searches. The call to Amount.Between(...) builds an XML node behind the scenes representing the search data.

Drew Olson (Braintree Dev)

<comment><USER13> You mean you support C# 2.0, since var, LINQ, et al run on .Net 2.0 :-P

Doing a full blown Linq Provider would be pretty cool, but would also be very very very time consuming to get right. Expression trees are pretty cool, but you're still dealing with the AST so it gets crazy. There needs to be a Linq Provider framework / library to work at a slightly higher abstraction level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fluent interfaces are cool, but they throw away the semantics of the programming language like meaningful return values.

The DSL in the article is a good example of this problem:

      OrderId.StartsWith("a2d")......

So the StartsWith() returns a TransactionSearch, instead of a bool as you would expect. Once you do this often enough, you really get objects full of state-information, rather than methods with return values.

An alternative to doing this is using Expression Trees, but somewhat harder (and not without faults) It would look like this:

      search.Where(s => s.Order.Id.StartsWith('a2d') &&
        s.Customer.Website.EndsWith('.com') && ...)

Two benefits come to mind: 1\. StartsWith() can return a bool as you would expect. 2\. You can use StartsWith() on strings, like OrderId \--- I am not sure how you pulled this off in the DSL example (is OrderId a custom type, since you can't use Extension methods there?)

The biggest drawback of course is: 1\. Harder - You will need to parse the Expression Tree.

<comment><USER15> I replied to say as much but then I tossed my reply, because the guy says he's on .NET 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can make it without any 'weaknesses' in Python:

      collection = Transaction.search(
          order_id__starts_with='a2d',
          customer_website__ends_with='.com',
          billing__first_name__exact='John',
          status__in=[
            Transaction.Status.Authorized,
            Transaction.Status.Settled
          ],
          amount__between=("10.00", "20.00")
      )

the implementation could look like this:

      def search(**kwargs):
          for arg, value in kwargs.items():
              action = arg.split('__')
              attr = getattr(self, action[0])
              if len(action) == 2:
                  method = getattr(attr, action[1])
                  method(value)
              etc.
              .....

EDIT: removed unneeded quotes, thanks for correction, postfuturist

<comment><USER12> When we began building our Python library, we looked at both django[1] and sqlalchemy[2] for inspiration in designing our search DSL. Your example seems to closely match the django style. We preferred the sqlalchemy style, but both are solid choices.

[1][http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/topics/db/queries/#chai...](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/topics/db/queries/#chaining- filters) [2][http://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/ormtutorial.html#common- filte...](http://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/ormtutorial.html#common-filter- operators)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In Java, I would do this:

      new Search().equal(Search.NAME,"Joe")
                  .between(Search.AGE,18,25)
                  .go();

Just as concise with less voodoo. And it's a single statement.

With the existing method, you can still ditch the empty parens by using public final fields. You just have to pre-populate them all with respective grammar objects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your syntax is definitely simpler. One reason we did it the way we did was to get compiler checking for operators. We've tried to follow idioms in different client libraries, and for the statically compiled languages, we've tried to make it so if it compiles, it will work.

Since the field comes first (orderId().startsWith()), if you try to call an operator on a field that does not support it, it will not compile.

<comment><USER18> You should make it clearer in the commentary that you're holding the static languages to a higher standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really enjoy reading these articles comparing different implementations in different languages. I wish we had more of that on HN.

Concerning the article, call me grumpy if you want, I like better when there is no mass overloading even thought it's more verbose. From my maintenance experience working on various project, I always cry when after 3 hours of searching I find that "+" is overloaded and that's where the bug was hidden.

Also, for this particular implementation, we could simply use a builder.

SearchBuilder sb;

sb.equal(Search.Name, ".."); sb.equals(Search.AGE, ..);

Search s = new Search(sb);

Even thought it's more verbose, we clearly see that we configure the builder as we want, and then, we create the search object. A good side effect of that is that we get an immutable Search object. Also, we could use the "fluent" interface on the builder.

Another verbose approach might be using lots of Objects..

Search s; s.add_contraint(SearchEqual(Search.Name, "bob"));

This way, it make it easier to add constraint without modifying the Search class.

<comment><USER20> Overloading basic operators is the road to hell. Yes, you can do wonderful and elegant things but when it goes wrong your whole mechanism for analysing what you look it is screwed up because the more experience you have in a language the more you tend to be on autopilot for stuff like that.

'test your assumptions' suddenly expands to include checking if basic language operators still do what you expect them to do.

and

      v2 = vec_add(v1,v3);

really isn't that much better than

      v2 = v1 + v3;

I know this is not a popular opinion but that's how I've always felt about it and those that complain about how difficult languages like c++ care usually painted themselves in a corner by excessive use of such features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let's clean up the Ruby example a bit, shall we?

      collection = Braintree::Transaction.search do
        order_id.begins_with?       "a2d"
        customer_website.ends_with? ".com"
        billing_first_name ==       "John"
        status.in?                  Status::Authorized, Status::Settled
        amount.between?             "10.00", "20.00"
      end

      collection.each do |transaction|
        puts transaction.id
      end

<comment><USER22> are the tabs breaking it into two "columns" idiomatic ruby? I prefer them all flowing "naturally" together.

<comment><USER23> I used to vertically align things into columns in Ruby. It's easy to maintain when you're editing individual lines, but it can easily be messed up with a find-and-replace in file. At that point, it becomes harder to read with some lines off, and a pain to maintain the alignment.

<comment><USER24> If you use Vim, the Align plugin handles this quite well: <http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Align_text_plugin>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the Ruby code, you include

      search.status.in(
        Braintree::Transaction::Status::Authorized,
        Braintree::Transaction::Status::Settled
      )

, but wouldn't it be better to allow just

      search.status.in(:authorized, :settled)

? (And I agree with judofyr's comment that "search." shouldn't be necessary on every line.)

</comment><comment><USER8> You can also handle a variable number of positional arguments in PHP instead of making the client send in a literal array.

        function search() { $arg_list = func_get_args(); ... }

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm confused in that none of the examples look like a DSL to me. They look like a library API - implemented in five different languages but I can hardly classify any of them as a DSL. Am I really that obtuse concerning this question?

</comment><comment><USER27> What about doing it like this in Ruby:

        collection = Braintree::Transaction.search do
          order_id /^a2d/
          customer_website /\.com$/
          billing_first_name "John"
          status :authorized, :settled
          amount 10..20
        end

        collection.each do
          puts id
        end

It might be more difficult not having the specific methods (in, starts_with_ ends_with, and so on), but I think it's quite readable. If we don't want the regexps, we could go for a MySQL style '%.com' and 'a2d%' or something similar.

<comment><USER28> They said above that they were turning the conditions into XML in the request. That's one of the reasons why C# expression trees were out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why dont they just take a string as the argument to search() and parse it? They could use a very SQL like Syntax:

      $collection = Braintree_Transaction::search("
       orderId LIKE 'a2d%'
       AND customerWebsite LIKE '%.com'
       AND billingFirstName='John'
       AND status() IN ('AUTHORIZED','SETTLED')
       AND amount>=10
       AND amount<=20.00)
      ");

<comment><USER30> Yeah, i've never done any research into DSL's, but I always thought they would have some sort of custom syntax. Since DSL's seem quite the hype ATM, I'm a bit dissapointed by these examples. Sure, nice coding and all that (even though I would have used LINQ myself, but then again I'm not restricted to C# 2.0), but I fail to to see where the L of DSL comes into play.

If this is the latest hype I didn't have time for to research, I'm not missing out.

<comment><USER31> There are two types of DSLs, internal and external. External ones are the custom syntax you talk of, internal are DSLs that use features or quirks of a host language to appear different.

XML or SQL are external DSLs, much of the cool Ruby stuff like Rake and Rails are internal DSLs. The examples presented are all internal (presumably for a good reason). There are advantages to both approaches. Read Martin Fowler's discussion at <http://martinfowler.com/dslwip/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why no Scala?</comment>


Why I Won't Be Buying an Oculus Rift - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/01/06/oculus-rift-vs-playstation-4-virtual-reality-price-comparison/ <comment><USER2> Spoiler: It's because he bought a PS4 to play games on instead of a PC.

<comment><USER3> What they ACTUALLY said was that a combination of the Rift's price ($599) plus the cost of the minimal PC needed according to Oculus ($900-1200) will price a lot of people out of buying one.

Even if the Sony version costs the same ($599) it will likely be cheaper to utilise since a PS4 costs roughly $300, and that's ignoring how many PS4 units have already been sold (which is a legitimate argument, in particular when you compare it to how many PCs people own who can drive a Oculus Rift (not many)).

Overall I think their argument has some weight. But obviously without knowing what the Sony version of the Rift can do, it is hard to evaluate fully. But in price terms, it is going to an easier sale when you work with a $300 console, and not a $900 PC.

<comment><USER4> No, the reason the writer won't be buying a Rift is exactly that. A PS4 was purchased to avoid paying more for a PC and that couch playing was desired. That is the answer to the statement in the headline.

But what you said was also stated, but that's about people other than the writer.</comment></comment></comment>


Purity - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/435/

<comment><USER2> I thought of making a knowledge map like this, except two-dimensional. The other dimension would be practical vs. theoretical (this one would be hard vs. soft sciences). I wonder if there is a quantitative measure for the hard vs. soft, such as the number of axioms vs. "rules" based on those axioms?</comment>


Clarifying recent coverage of Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/clarifying-recent-coverage-of-wikipedia/ <comment><USER2> Lot of spin here</comment>


"Japanese Lindberghs" Made a 10k Mile-Flight in 1937 - <AUTHOR> https://www.airspacemag.com/airspacemag/japanese-lindberghs-180975338/ <comment><USER2> A couple of days ago I discovered DeOldify [0], so I decided to colourise the pictures from this article. No copyright infringement intended, IANAL but I guess these are old enough to be public domain by now.

[https://imgbox.com/ED7IqzyD](https://imgbox.com/ED7IqzyD)

[https://imgbox.com/9kUgPmJa](https://imgbox.com/9kUgPmJa)

[https://imgbox.com/Jt1ngFre](https://imgbox.com/Jt1ngFre)

[https://imgbox.com/RElPFDJf](https://imgbox.com/RElPFDJf)

I've also started colourising photos of my grandpa's 1937 cycling tour of Germany, Austria, and Italy [1]. To make peace, we must actively reach out and befriend all kinds of people. I'm thankful for communities like this where we can all learn from one another without discrimination.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24162561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24162561)

[1] [http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/](http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/)

<comment><USER3> This is very cool.

I'm pretty sure the flags in the first photo weren't that color, however...

<comment><USER2> I'm sure they're red! It's interesting to see the limits of the AI. If I were better at art, I'd try to fix it manually, but I'm sure that I'd just end up making it look fake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More technical information:

[https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/masaaki- iinuma/](https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/masaaki-iinuma/)

And a lovely illustration of the route, curiously absent from both articles, can be found here:

[https://www.oldtokyo.com/tokyo-london-world-record- flight-19...](https://www.oldtokyo.com/tokyo-london-world-record-flight-1937/)

Mitsubishi, of course, also made a famous long-range fighter. Per Chuck Hawks:

> Not only could the Zero out fight any Allied fighter, it also out-ranged > them. Many people do not realize that the Zero was the world's first long > range escort fighter. Zeros flew long range bomber escort missions during > the war in China, before the Pacific war even began. If the Germans had the > long range A6M2 Zero instead of the short range Bf 109E, the outcome of the > Battle of Britain might have been very different.

[https://www.chuckhawks.com/best_fighter_planes.htm](https://www.chuckhawks.com/best_fighter_planes.htm)

<comment><USER5> Wasn't that range bought in part by the omission of protection comparable to what e.g. Grummans had?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems that most others have been relegated to relative obscurity in comparison with Lindbergh, including these Japanese pilots (hence the story).

Australia saw Charles Kingsford Smith just about a year later do a similar (if not more impressive) feat across the Pacific, and many other aviation achievements. But all he is now (pretty much) is an airport name.

Aside from all that, I'm always wowed at how these early pilots could set off into the unknown with the most rudimentary maps, no knowledge of what fuel awaited them. And no credit cards...

<comment><USER7> My grandfather made me a beautiful wooden model of Kingsford Smith's biplane the _Southern Cross_ , complete with spinning propeller. But we moved a lot when I was a child and at some point it got lost or left behind. I greatly regret not still having it, mainly as a reminder of my grandfather and his woodcrafting skills. My grandfather was born in 1910 and I think his imagination was caught by the exploits of Kingsford Smith and other early aviators, as was the case for so many people at that time.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why I wrote 'biplane' above. The _Southern Cross_ was of course a monoplane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We should not forget the military implication of these aircraft. These were not peaceful soaring propaganda machines. A craft that could fly for days, remain aloft across the vast pacific, would have been seen as an ideal reconnaissance platform for spotting approaching fleets. In the skies of the 1930s pacific theater speed was secondary to range and reliability. If they turned and ran, even the most powerful fighters of the time would have had trouble running them down before running out of fuel themselves.

<comment><USER9> Altitude. Any fighter they scramble from the ground to intercept is going to be trading speed for altitude, and unless they vastly outclass you, they won't be able to close while climbing.

With any luck, any planes already in the air will have to close a larger distance, and you can dump altitude to increase speed and thus distance. You'd just better pick a direction that doesn't put you over another airfield, or you'll be out of the pan and into the fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a really interesting, semi-true story about a Japanese warplane engineer in WWII, I highly recommend watching *The Wind Rises&. Probably one of Miyazaki's finest works (although that's just my opinion).

It gives you some sense of the sense of the nationalistic feelings in Japan as they entered WWII, and the tremendous pressures their country faced to prove themselves.

</comment><comment><USER11> "nine-cylinder Nakajima radial engine, was named Kamikaze, or Divine Wind. "

Never knew there was another meaning for Kamikaze.

<comment><USER12> There's only one meaning for the word, it can just be used in different contexts. For an example, in English, take "hellfire". It's a biblical reference to a conflagration in the underworld. Someone in the US military industrial complex thought it'd also be a very apt name for a type of missile. Same word, same basic meaning, different use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> More detail on the Ki-77 disappearance from Wikipedia.

" Their intended destination was the German airfield at Sarabus (now Hvardiiske, Crimea, WikiMiniAtlas45.118236°N 33.976564°E.) but they were to disappear over the Indian Ocean. British fighters likely intercepted them as they were aware of the flight and its route (via air grid squares 3420, 2560 and 2510) thanks to the ULTRA analysts at Bletchley Park decoding intercepted German communications to Sarabus warning of their impending arrival.[2] Slow, unarmed, without armour protection and with a substantial amount of fuel on board, the Ki-77 would have been vulnerable to Allied fighters, even had no mechanical problems occurred."</comment>


Chattp: It lets you add a secret chat to any webpage. Click to join the HN chat  - <AUTHOR> http://chattp.com/channel/1TdHZP

<comment><AUTHOR> Made with: node.js, express.js, pusher, mongodb and hosted on Nodester

</comment><comment><USER2> Javascript can be injected into the page via nick changes.</comment>


Amazon Building a Tech Business for the Long Haul - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/amazon-building-a-tech-business-for-the-long-haul <comment><USER2>
        Certainly, a good part of A.W.S. software is open source,
        which means it could be used elsewhere, and companies
        like Microsoft and Google also have big clouds. But
        neither of them, nor IBM, which also wants the cloud
        business, created more than 500 new features and services
        last year, as A.W.S. did.

Not sure about the precision of that number, but the speed and agility of AWS compared to MSFT/GOOG/IBM is astonishing. I still don't quite understand how they do it.

<comment><USER3> >I still don't quite understand how they do it.

Why maintain and improve your existing services when you can get credit for launching a new shiny thing? Steve Yegge called out this tendency in his (in)famous platforms rant [1]:

        They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention
        and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to
        matter in the long run. So even though it's given them some competitive
        advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it
        something less than a slam-dunk.

Amazon's "speed and agility" comes at the cost of not updating anything, ever. If you want new functionality, you'll have to integrate a new service.

[1]: [https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

<comment><USER4> There's benefits to immutable/stable services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This discussion of Amazon's agility meshes well with Steve Yegge's famous rant on Google and Amazon. He attributes Amazon's success to their focus on designing all their software as a service, and actually credits this strategy as the very reason that AWS came to be in the first place.

[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

<comment><USER6> Such a good read. Fun fact: it was first published 4 years ago to the day.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Great stuff. Just reading it ...

Yegge sez: "a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product."

I guess that's true. If I had to defend that statement, I'd try to argue that a platform, especially an open platform, will be tested, poked, prodded, evaluated, evolved and maybe even documented by many more developers than some monolithic piece of software in some closed code base.

But what other arguments are there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's this talk about "no vendor lock-in"? i though that(lock-in) was the idea behind AWS's many services.

<comment><USER9> not really, everything i've used so far is pretty interoperable with whatever. The exception I guess would be their metaservices that do logging and auditing of AWS services, but the SDK is pretty developed to let you shove, say, S3 into whatever you want.

I'm open to be corrected on this but I don't think it's good to confuse "our different offerings have lots of interoperable synergy" with "it's fucking impossible to migrate off this"

<comment><USER10> Personally, I don't think lock-in means "it's fucking impossible to migrate off this". It just means it will be sufficiently painful that it is a strong deterrent. A service can be great and still come with a lot of lock-in; it's just another trade-off to consider.

<comment><USER9> Okay, what do you think is painful about migrating off of AWS that is unique to their design? Or painful about it at all?

<comment><USER10> I don't have the right experience to answer that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano I think AWS and similiar cloud providers have a tough challenge for the long term.

The big question is how cheap will computing get, and how will the demand of that computing increase over time? If prices continue to decrease rapidly, it becomes very difficult to maintain large revenue growth, even with unit-volume increases.

In 20 years, how cheap will core services like S3 and ec2 be, and how will AWS' revenue on those services compare to today?

They are also developing a lot of AWS software that probably won't decrease in price over time. For example, over the past 30 years database hardware has decreased dramatically in price, but Oracle software licenses have not. AWS has a lot of services that are some combination of complex software and hardware components.

<comment><USER11> Hardware hasn't really decreased that much not if you count what services you want to run these days on it compared to 10-20-30 years ago.

If you just run a simple web-application sure it's much much cheaper today than it was in 2000, but as technology evolved that isn't enough for big business today, if you look at companies that still build their own servers then unless they have unlimited space the servers these days tend to be much more expensive and exotic hardware is more and more common (it's not that uncommon to see SQL/BI servers with quite expensive compute/GPU's these days, 5 years ago it was all those "IOPS accelerators" or "specialized" SSD's, in 5 years it will be something else).

As far as looking at the price of S3 or EC2 in 20 years that's completely irrelevant because those services for the most part will be irrelevant in 20 years, yes their might have their own counterparts but it's not like you will still use the same services, just look at how drastically the way you build and deploy applications has changed in 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It was pretty strange seeing AWS written as A.W.S. It took me a second to realize what they were talking about.

<comment><USER13> The New York Times style guide requires periods between all initial-isms. They also write "F.B.I." and "C.I.A.". Drives me nuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I started using uBlock's default-deny setting 2 weeks ago (it rejects all requests to secondary domains unless the domain is explicitly allowed). It's amazing to see how many websites use AWS or amazon ads these days.

It is really strange to think about how the average consumer views Amazon as an online retailer, but that is really only half the picture. As the end of the article states:

>Maybe someday A.W.S. will be the company that also happens to own an online retailer.

<comment><USER15> I actually don't see how AWS and Amazon remain together in the long term. They seem like two totally different businesses with different goals, long term prospects, etc.

<comment><USER16> Because the concept that a company has to have everything align with a "core business" is a relatively new, and incredibly stupid concept. The business of business is making money, not being in a specific industry. Nokia has made paper, rubber products, wires, capacitors, robots, computers, phones and networking equipment. Samsung has an even more broad array of products, as do most Korean, Japanese, and Chinese conglomerates. The idea of a "core business" is a relatively recent invention of western business which mistakenly argued that a company could only do one thing well as though a company and a person were the same thing. Dow, GE, P&G, Johnson Family Enterprises, and Berkshire Hathaway would all disagree.

Jeff Bezos sees Amazon as the GE for the next 100 years. He has a long view that left American corporate culture in the late 1970s. Japanese corporate culture takes the long view, they have business plans that look out across decades, rather than quarters. Bezos is making amazon a very wide company, because it's harder to fail as a wide company than it is a deep company. Now, in some ways Amazon IS a deep company, with Amazon products delivered through their supply chain, marketed by their website running on their platform, and a rich media ecosystem on Amazon consumer devices. However it will survive damage to one of those sectors because of the breadth of the company.

The idea of cor businesses and splitting up companies that do "to much" is rooted in the quarterly corporate culture, which sacrifices the future of the company in exchange fore shareholder (and executive) rewards today. Business stagnant? Split it up into aligned companies for a quick stock boost. Did you actually create anything new or useful, or change the way the businesses operate? No, but it looks good on paper.

<comment><USER17> Agree that American business culture is too short-sighted.

The question is size is far from decided, though. Though these Japanese firms may _survive_ long-term, they often aren't good stewards of shareholder capital as measured by return on equity (ROE) and other financial metrics. But it does seem that conglomerates are making a comeback, with Alphabet, Amazon, and the perennial favorite Berkshire, whose own CEO has said their size is starting to present problems. Definitely an interesting question.

<comment><USER16> I completely agree that the Japanese might not be the best model, but as usual, I feel the truth lies in a third path. Not quarterly, not 50 years, but maybe look for a path for the company to survive the next 10-20 years, and always be willing to change. "Plans are worthless, planning is priceless."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We use AWS and this is what I can tell you:

1\. Its really expensive: about 5 times as expensive as dedicated servers.

2\. Not reliable: they will shoot down servers any time they like. You will need to make sure you have redundancies in place and pay for them.

3\. Lock-in: their services (beyond EC2) come with a set of proprietary APIs that your app will depend on. This creates a lock in.

4\. Still need DevOps: so you pay a lot, get locked-in and still need to put everything together by yourself and make sure it runs reliably? Yep, you still need devops/admins which at the end is probably the biggest cost of your operation.

So, here are my suggestions:

You have a low-volume and don't mind a lock in: use a dedicated mobile/web cloud ala Firebase/Parse/etc or go with a true PaaS solution like AppEngine/Heroku.

If you have a big volume: you will need to bite the bullet, hire some devops and setup+maintain your own dedicated servers. You will at the end pay much less for servers compared to AWS, have full control over hem and have no lock- in.

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazon.com is more than 20 years old. It's not surprising they are in markets for the long haul.

<comment><USER20> Yea, the headline is poorly worded. Of course they're in tech for the long haul... especially considering their latest quarterly earnings report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could Amazon be just a front/testing platform for AWS?

<comment><USER22> This should be higher.

<comment><USER23> No, it shouldn't. The relationship between Amazon and AWS is, um, complicated.

<comment><USER21> Would you care to elaborate? AWS is a Business Unit of Amazon, how is the relationship complicated business wise?</comment></comment></comment></comment>