How to create a handheld Linux terminal - <AUTHOR> http://n-o-d-e.net/post/107977286006/how-to-create-a-handheld-linux-terminal <comment><USER2> I think the key point to efficient mobile linuxing is neither the hardware nor the basic software but the language input. I feel touchpads and mobile keyboards are both not handy to communicate with bash/vim in the subway. We need a better mobile keyboard for that. Does anybody know who's working on something in that direction?

<comment><USER3> I was trying to find a small Blackberry-like keyboard for a side project I was working on about a year ago. Doesn't exist, at least not in a form-factor that is easy to integrate (USB, Bluetooth, etc). The best I could find is a USB wireless keyboard that they sell on Adafruit that really, really, really sucked and was still way too big.

<comment><USER4> Too bad a Blackberry can't function as a BT keyboard.

Nokia N900 and E7 had good keyboards.

<comment><USER5> I think this app: [http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/38050888/?la...](http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/38050888/?lang=en&countrycode=CA) allows you to do just that.

<comment><USER4> This looks excellent, thanks much for the pointer.

<comment><USER6> Yup, it is. I use this to control my HTPC. It works very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is truly one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. I can't help but think of the little Atari Portfolio John Connor has in Terminator 2.

<comment><USER8> > I can't help but think of the little Atari Portfolio John Connor has in > Terminator 2.

Late eighties/early nineties seemed like an interesting period for these sort of handheld computers. Another great example is the HP LX series, eg 95LX or 200LX [http://i.imgur.com/pHa8YWD.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/pHa8YWD.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Also this little sony thing from late 90s:

[http://www.apj.co.uk/technology/apple_sony_clie.htm](http://www.apj.co.uk/technology/apple_sony_clie.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool and inspiring. I'm doing something similar [1] by replacing the guts of a Toshiba Libretto 50C (a _tiny_ laptop from 1996) with a Raspberry Pi and upgrading its screen to a 7" widescreen. It's slightly larger than your terminal, but in my opinion, will be much more usable as a PC with the larger keyboard. But, to each his own :)

What kind of battery life do you get with your machine?

[1]: [http://restoringmylibretto.tumblr.com/](http://restoringmylibretto.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER11> Estimated 8.6h with idle CPU, based on my calculations. Raspberry Pi A+ 0.52W usage at 100ma 5.2V on CPU idle ([http://raspi.tv/2014/raspberry-pi-a-how- much-power-does-it-n...](http://raspi.tv/2014/raspberry-pi-a-how-much-power- does-it-need))

Adafruit PiTFT - 2.8" Raspberry Pi Touchscreen with full-on backlight the current draw is ~100mA. ([http://www.adafruit.com/product/1601](http://www.adafruit.com/product/1601)) 0.1 _5=0.5W

Powerconsumption of Rpi and TFT should be 1.02W at idle.

PowerBoost 500 Charger - Rechargeable 5V Lipo USB Boost @ 500mA+ ([http://www.adafruit.com/product/1944](http://www.adafruit.com/product/1944)) 2.500Ah 3.7V LiPo 3.7V_2.5Ah=9.25Wh Boosted to 5V at 95% efficiency 8.79Wh

8.79Wh/1.02W = 8.6h

*Edit: I did a mistake when I calculated the Watt-hour. The Watt-hours of the battery can't increase just because the voltage increases, changed it.

<comment><USER10> You should let it run idle and see how long until the battery is depleted. I underestimated the losses due to efficiency with my Libretto project (boost converters run at different efficiencies depending on the power draw).

I was able to get about 4 hours on a 6600mAh battery pack powering a Pi and a 7" touchscreen with wifi and bluetooth enabled (the project draws about 8W when the screen is turned on, about 5W with it turned off).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the Zipit Z2, which was a handheld messenger toy that could be hacked to run linux: [https://mozzwald.com/zipitz2](https://mozzwald.com/zipitz2)

Not as much power as an RPi though.

<comment><USER13> >Reminds me of the Zipit Z2

Yep. That, and Ben NanoNote ([http://en.qi- hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote](http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote)), which is another Linux device in the same size category as the Z2 and with similar specs. The notable differences between the NanoNote and the Z2 is that the NanoNote has a USB 2 host port and no Wi-Fi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey author, link to the parts, with a referrer id and monetize this stuff!

</comment><comment><USER15> Powering this with something slightly more powerful than a Raspberry and it should completely be usable. [http://socialcompare.com/fr/comparison/low-cost- arm-boards](http://socialcompare.com/fr/comparison/low-cost-arm-boards) (from 2013, does anyone have an up to date comparison list?)

<comment><USER8> [http://linuxgizmos.com/ringing-in-2015-with-40-linux- friendl...](http://linuxgizmos.com/ringing-in-2015-with-40-linux-friendly- hacker-sbcs/) is one list, but frankly there are ridiculous number of these boards/modules available.

<comment><USER16> and the guy from novena laptop just posted recently that in china, you can get much more models with much more interesting hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love how the author found consumer components and put them together to build the handheld. Looks really good!

There are a lot of inspiring projects over the web, but very often they require tools that aren't available to everybody or they're not cheap for one- off projects (laser cutter, 3D printers, etc).

<comment><USER8> > There are a lot of inspiring projects over the web, but very often they > require tools that aren't available to everybody or they're not cheap for > one-off projects (laser cutter, 3D printers, etc).

This is why hackerspaces are a rising phenomenon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A Raspberry Pi accessory similar to this would probably sell pretty well. It might make sense to use the Raspberry Pi "Compute Module": [http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-compute-module- new-p...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-compute-module-new-product/) It would be cool if Adafruit made a PiTFT that just accepted a Compute Module directly.

I put together a Motorola Atrix Lapdock Raspberry Pi, like this, but it's pretty bulky: [http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Raspberry-Pi-Lapdock- Con...](http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Raspberry-Pi-Lapdock-Connection/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The end result looks nice, I'd say even surprisingly so all things considered. This sort of thing is something I have wanted to do for some time, but have been pushing back due lack of money/time/tools/skills. Albeit in my grandiose plans I was thinking of more "engineered" approach, using some nice ARM module[1] instead of stripped RPi, bare LCD[2], custom keyboard[3] etc.

[1] e.g. [https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/colibri-arm- fami...](https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/colibri-arm- family/freescale-imx6) looks quite nice and so-dimm form factor is inherently relatively thin.

[2] e.g. [http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-6-1280-800-TFT-LCD- HV056WX1-100-Lc...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-6-1280-800-TFT-LCD- HV056WX1-100-Lcd-Screen-Panel- Display-/221287754996?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3385c72cf4) bit bigger than what OP has, but still should be very portable

[3] This is surprisingly something that seems quite difficult to do. Maybe I'll need to 3d-print some keycaps. Or use mechanical switches, like these ones [https://www.e-switch.com/product-catalog/tact/product- lines/...](https://www.e-switch.com/product-catalog/tact/product- lines/tl1240-series-illuminated-tact-switches)

</comment><comment><USER19> If you don't want to build your own, you can buy one:

[http://openpandora.org/](http://openpandora.org/)

Its not just a terminal, though .. ;)

<comment><USER20> Everything related to Pandora has seemed sketchy as hell from day one. For instance, right now, both of the resellers on that site that service the USA don't appear to actually sell the damned thing. I also recall stores of pre- orders not being served for upwards of a year with little to no contact by the seller.

<comment><USER19> Yeah those days are over .. the survivor of the OpenPandora project - EvilDragon/Michale Mrozek - is the owner of the DragonBox Shop, and he has been the only trustworthy guy in the project so far, which was severely hamstrung by the financial mis-management of the originator of the project, Craig Rothwell. That is all water under the bridge now - EvilDragon has been selling the OpenPandora through his shop, and he is the principle organizer of the sequel to the Pandora, called the Pyra.

(You can follow EvilDragon and see his involvement in the community here: [http://boards.openpandora.org/user/1-evildragon/](http://boards.openpandora.org/user/1-evildragon/))

I'm the happy owner of two of the original first batch Open Pandora machines, and was lucky to get them (F5 for the win) .. I've signed up for the Pyra too, as I really believe that EvilDragon, and his minions, are a fantastic group of like-minded adventurers, and I have absolutely _zero_ hesitancy in recommending him to anyone interested in this project. He has been a stable part of this whole party ..

<comment><USER20> This is great to hear - the Pandora is a cool enough device and really needs some more love, but the experience for a random person wanting to buy one is still _fantastically_ bad. Opaque storefronts which lead to opaque "unavailable" messages (despite the previous page declaring "in stock now!"), a news page that looks like the default from some ecommerce package.

Let me give you my money! Please! :(

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the Pandora is a sweet little device. I love mine! I hope you tune in and get a chance to find yourself one - they do come up on the forums at board.openpandora.org fairly frequently. Or, just wait for the Pyra .. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hm, the 'fi' & 'fl' ligatures seems to be replaced as a middle dot in the text, making it a bit funny to read at places.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice. I've been using a Ben Nanonote ( _) for the past few years. It 's a nice open hacking platform, not very powerful but very open and tweakable.

(_) [http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote](http://en.qi- hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote)

<comment><USER23> Mine is lying around, not much used for the past years (somehow I can't get it to run a debian image from SD, so I'm stuck with openwrt... Missing some interesting packages then). What do you use it for?

<comment><USER22> I managed to install Debian on mine without trouble. I've written a mostly- functional Apple II emulator (minus the graphics modes) and enjoy having an Apple II in my pocket. I also use it to learn Chinese by listening to audiobooks.

What I regret most about the Nanonote is the lack of wifi support (unless one buys an expensive and hard-to-find gizmo). With wifi, it would make a very useful ultraportable computing platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be great to see someone make a small keyboard/screen accessory that can have one of these plugged into it:

[http://www.highsnobiety.com/2015/01/12/intel-compute- stick-t...](http://www.highsnobiety.com/2015/01/12/intel-compute-stick-turns- hdmi-display-computer/)

Maybe we'll see it this year, I predict ..

</comment><comment><USER24> Ah, the good old Libretto[1] form factor.

It actually used to be moderately popular back before smartphones became ubiquitous. It's just amazing what you can build nowadays on a shoe-string budget with off-the-shelf parts...

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

</comment><comment><USER25> Step 1: Get an N900

Joking aside, this is really cool, and I'm glad there are still people out there who recognize the value (and want it this badly) of a handheld Linux terminal. Meanwhile, the batteries on my N900 keep getting shorter and shorter charge cycles . . .

<comment><USER26> the battery is cheap to replace. I stay with my N900. I did not see anything better.

<comment><USER25> It's getting harder and harder to find actual BL-5Js, not just cheap knockoffs that won't hold a charge. I've been through at least three already, still have about 4 left. But I'm with you on the "nothing better" front. The org-mode app on Android is a joke compared to having an actual full-blown emacs with org- mode on N900, not to mention how straightforward the FS layout is and the fact that git works nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bandwidth limit exceeded on the images.:(

Edit: He switched over to imgur and the images are now loading fine.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very cool project! Would it be possible to upgrade the screen to a little larger?

<comment><USER29> From the conclusion:

> If I was to make this again, I would do a few things differently. First I'd > probably add a slightly larger screen like this one from Tindie > [[https://www.tindie.com/products/hwlevel/40-ips-screen-for- > ra...](https://www.tindie.com/products/hwlevel/40-ips-screen-for-raspberry- > pi/)]

<comment><USER28> Yes, i saw that one as well - but the 17FPS update-rate was very small. I'm looking for more like 5-6" panel with faster updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pretty neat. I still like the concept of the kindleberry a bit better though: [http://maxogden.com/kindleberry- wireless.html](http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html)

<comment><USER31> I love that this is totally self contained. Best of the best would be an e-ink version of this (using something like this: [http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/74](http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/74) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> OpenBSD (and Linux) runs on the Sharp Zaurus, they are neat little devices for carrying around an SSH terminal.

[http://www.openbsd.org/zaurus.html](http://www.openbsd.org/zaurus.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Despite the whole AlphaSmart thing, I still think there is a small market for the TRS-80 Model 100 or 200 style computers. I would love to have an OpenBSD machine in that form factor.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think this is pretty neat, and I would have loved this 10 years ago. I now already have a handheld Linux terminal, it's called an Android smartphone.

<comment><USER35> Yes; and "terminalIDE" includes busybox to fill in the missing commands, vim, tmux, git, javac and gcc. It's fun, usable, but limited: you have to work around a few things.

Wintel is making a push, with extra cheap quad-core Atoms and Windows 8. I wonder if this might be easier to get full linux on?

BTW: The big problem with proper linux distributions on ARM/Atom is not not getting them to run, but power management.

<comment><USER36> There is also GNU Root and Linux Deploy/a few other ways to get full linux on Android devices after they are rooted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very cool! Also I love the design of your blog

<comment><USER38> I would prefer if I knew which sections were links without having to hover over everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I had one of these in 2001. It was called the Sharp Zaurus.

</comment><comment><USER40> Please sell this.

</comment><comment><USER41> Or you can get an Open Pandora :)

</comment><comment><USER42> delightful font!</comment>


Ask HN: [Help] How do I become under performer to a decent developer? - <AUTHOR> In my last job- which lasted for 2 years (it was also my first job)- I was given "needs improvement" rating. After that, I changed my job.
In my current job (it has been 1 year), my first 6 months have been fairly productive, though I have been alluded to pace up. Last few months have been rather slower productivity wise.
I find it hard to concentrate (though I am technically capable of completing the given task, or to reach the answers/solutions when I don't know them at first) and miss my deadlines. I don't feel much motivated to work (though, I always intend to perform better and be a better developer).
As much I would like to blame my depression for it, I know that isn't the cause. I also feel inferior because of missing my deadlines and lagging behind.
Has this happened to you? Is there a way out- did you become from "bad hire" to "valuable asset" to the company? <comment><USER2> One word. Relentless. That is how you make and stay in this business. I am relentless so that I can look at yesterday's code and giggle at what a fool I was.

I've hit several plateaus in my history -- mostly around the time I feel comfortable with something. Thats my sign that I need to learn something new.

You're going to be called a lot of things when you start out, Its all about how you take it. To this day, After ~7 tech jobs, countless "needs improvement", 2 companies founded, and about 1.4M in VC funding --- I still feel like a damn rookie.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know there is relentlessness in me. I am always trying (or actually thinking about) to be a better developer but my action fails to show my intentions. And I end up wherever I am in a worse situation

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you run? I'd run every day if I were you. You may think this is tangential. Try it and you'll be back here to thank me.

Also, if you suspect you might be depressed you should talk to a therapist/professional/clinician. There's no shame in taking care of yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I do run. I started it 4 weeks back.

I felt depressive a couple of weeks back for 2-3 weeks. Now, I feel better but I will still consult a doctor.

Thanks for your input.</comment></comment>


HTML5 Fractal Playground - <AUTHOR> http://danielsadventure.info/html5fractal/docs/intro.html

<comment><USER2> Love it!

If you're studying HTML5, the next thing to try is to execute the Mandelbrot iterations on the GPU with WebGL - GPUs are very well suited for fractal rendering; with a beefy GPU you should find you can render at 60fps

[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4df3Rn](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4df3Rn)

(if it's a little slow, on line 5 set 'AA' to 1)

<comment><USER3> [http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/](http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/) shows how far you can get with shaders and webgl

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a project I created in my spare time to practice implementing various HTML5 features such as canvas element, web workers, touch events, etc. I also use the experimental asm.js for performance enhancement, which works best in Firefox, for now.

This draws beautiful fractals, such as the Mandelbrot fractal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Beautiful! I saw another way of rendering these recently, which shows the increasing definition on the fly, here: [https://guciek.github.io/web_mandelbrot.html#-0.5;0;2;1000](https://guciek.github.io/web_mandelbrot.html#-0.5;0;2;1000)

</comment><comment><USER5> This took me way down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Makes me think that fractals are a nature information compression technique.

<comment><USER6> You aren't the only one who thought that. Dr. Michael Barnsley ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnsley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnsley)) was an early fractal researcher and started a company called "Iterated Systems" to commercialize the use of fractal compress tech. They were somewhat successful, but I think they were a bit before their time as finding the IFS to "compress" an image was computationally extremely heavyweight and the tech had to catch up with the theory. Disclaimer: I worked in Dr. Barnsley's lab at Georgia Tech in the mid-80s but was never involved with Iterated Systems.</comment></comment>


R 3.0.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-project.org/

<comment><USER2> Release Notes - <http://cran.ma.imperial.ac.uk/src/base/NEWS.html>

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I don't know why open source projects tend to make it so difficult to find out what the new features are in a major release.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that applies in this case does it? On the front page for all of the mirrors it says: "The latest release (2013-04-03, Masked Marvel): [R-3.0.0.tar.gz], read [what's new] in the latest version." With the [] as links to the release and release notes.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting: for me, the homepage just says "R version 3.0.0 (Masked Marvel) has been released on 2013-04-03." without any links. There's a What's New link in the sidebar, but it just takes me to mailing list archives.

<comment><USER6> While it initially looks like all that page, at the very bottom is a "Changes in R" section that has a link to the NEWS file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats, R is probably the most interesting language I tried in some time :)

And I really do dig the '95 retro chic of the site.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's source code for the release on GitHub: <https://github.com/SurajGupta/r-source>

The R team maintains an SVN repo, but I prefer browsing source on GitHub

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems to compile ok (under my home drive) on Scientific Linux 5.9 using the instructions at

[http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.h...](http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#Simple- compilation)

Passes all the supplied tests and my simple scripts run just as they did on 2.13.

I had to get the source tar from a US mirror as the UK ones have not sync'ed yet.

PDF manual did not build as the version of LaTeX on EL 5.9 is fairly ancient. ggplot2 installs fine though.

</comment><comment><USER9> And I wished the R main website would get a face-lift as well :)</comment>


RSA Signatures in Emacs Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2015/10/30/ <comment><USER2> Every new thing I learn about emacs astounds me.</comment>


Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online - <AUTHOR> http://pagesix.com/2014/08/04/hotel-charges-500-for-every-bad-review-posted-online/ <comment><USER3> What a horrible policy, it won't end well for them.

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-street-guest-house- hudson?sort...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-street-guest-house- hudson?sort_by=rating_asc) 10 negative Yelp reviews have been posted today (so far), ouch...

[http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g47931-d490934-Revie...](http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g47931-d490934-Reviews- Union_Street_Guest_House-Hudson_New_York.html#REVIEWS)

Their website navigation is a very discrete image map in the middle of the page, [http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/](http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/) obviously this was someone's first website.

It's probably not legal, if it is then it is unenforceable in court, even if it was in their terms contract.

Here is the page with their $500 review fee policy: [http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/events_weddings.shtml](http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/events_weddings.shtml)

I don't condone leaving negative reviews if you haven't stayed there, but if you do be sure to note that you have not stayed at the hotel and are just commenting on their policies to warn people, unless that is against the review sites policy, then don't do that.

<comment><USER4> Nice:

 _If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and /or attending your wedding or event If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review. (Please NOTE we will not charge this fee &/or will refund this fee once the review is taken down). Also, please note that we only request this of wedding parties and for the reasons explained above._

<comment><USER5> _> for the reasons explained above_

Being lazy and not reading it myself: do they attempt to adequately explain the policy other than "we'd like to be able to be dickish without getting bad reviews" in "the reasons explained above"?

(edit for those only reading this far: it appears that they do, see the replies to this post for detail)

<comment><USER6> "Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not. This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer - therefore we expect you to explain that to them. USGH & Hudson are historic. The buildings here are old (but restored). Our bathrooms and kitchens are designed to look old in an artistic "vintage" way. Our furniture is mostly hip, period furniture that you would see in many design magazines. (although comfortable and functional - <USER2> all beds are brand new) If your guests are looking for a Marriott type hotel they may not like it here."

<comment><USER7> I actually kinda see where they're coming from. I'm sure they do get complaints from people who never stay anywhere besides upscale chain hotels. But obviously this is not the way to address the issue. It's mean and ultimately self-defeating.

<comment><USER3> A piece of paper asking guests to keep this in mind when giving reviews would suffice.

A company that threatens to fine me for giving them a negative review is much more likely to actually receive a negative review from me.

<comment><USER8> _A company that threatens to fine me for giving them a negative review is much more likely to actually receive a negative review from me._

And a company that actually fines me would be much more likely to receive a chargeback, formal complaints to any relevant regulators, or even for that kind of money a small claims suit.

I'm not really sure how they expect to win with this policy, particularly since they're presumably about to get more negative publicity than every bad review they ever avoided and searching for them on-line will probably lead to dozens of critical comments forever now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken.

When reviewing rated product/service offerings, I go straight to the 1-star reviews. Skimming those, I differentiate the "valid complaints" from flukes (a small failure rate is understandable), unrealistic expectations (it's a vintage hotel, not a new Hilton), tangential problems (Amazon didn't smash the box, the shipper did), hysteria (political opposition isn't a reason), humor (Family Circus isn't peer-reviewed), etc.

We need a way to express these, especially a "for what it is, it's good (whether it met my needs/interests or not)".

<comment><USER10> As bad as the star system is, I'm not sure there's anything better. I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons, though that may not work quite as well for Yelp if you consider the possibility of review-burying by owners.

<comment><USER11> >I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons

Doubtful. "Was this review helpful to you?" is actually the "I disagree with this review" button in practice.

Amazon reviews are so crappy. There is tons of reviews that say JUST "I haven't used this product/read this book yet." plus any number of stars.

<comment><USER12> > Amazon reviews are so crappy. There is tons of reviews that say JUST "I > haven't used this product/read this book yet." plus any number of stars.

While it's extra work I love those reviews.

"I haven't read this book but $THING IS WRONG, thus one _" mean I can ignore some of the low ratings.

While reviews and ratings are weird and probably need some tweaking at some point[1] they are not nearly as bad as the weirdly broken search. I've got to the point where _I would pay money to have better Amazon (also ebay) search*.[2]

[1]along the lines suggested in this thread - I might dislike a movie but love the genre; I might love a movie but generally dislike that genre; etc. So some method of saying why you like something so much would perhaps be handy.

[2] I go to Amazon.co.uk and I search for [microwave oven]. I chose a department - kitchen & home. I then sort by price, low to high. I am flooded with totally irrelevant items. (Egg cup; aluminum foil; salt&pepper shakers; children's cutlery sets; etc). You're not supposed to use search to find microwave ovens, you're supposed to drill down the tree of department, items, specific items.

<comment><USER11> Found a review of such a nature

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R35GSCGMDIAI9G/ref=cm_cr_pr_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R35GSCGMDIAI9G/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0743264363)

>Have not read

>At this time I am caught up with so many pressing activites that is not one of my priorities. Will get to it probably this summer

One star review.

I agree completely about the searches. I'm starting to avoid Amazon cause I can't find what I want on there.

>"I haven't read this book but $THING IS WRONG, thus one " mean I can ignore some of the low ratings.

There are equal number of higher ratings and mid ratings of this nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Makes sense. Asking for a functional ice machine in the middle of the summer at a wedding is a pretty unreasonable expectation.

We're talking about Hudson, NY here. It's practically a wilderness... having an appliance repairman come would be impossible!

<comment><USER14> [http://www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowUserReviews-g47931-d490934-r13...](http://www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowUserReviews-g47931-d490934-r139248459-Union_Street_Guest_House- Hudson_New_York.html#CHECK_RATES_CONT)

Ice is of obvious importance, but it sounds like they did get ice, and the complaint was about the attitude concerning it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes. And because of this you should definitely go to Yelp and give them a one- star review. And destroy their Facebook page. And maybe go take a shit on their doorstep. That's definitely the answer when a small business makes an error like this. They're frustrated by something they don't feel is fair and made a ham-fisted attempt to fix the problem. Ruin them.

(The ice machine thing, though -- that actually seems like it's much more indicative that it might be worth staying somewhere else...)

<comment><USER16> In fairness, I'm guessing a lot of the people virtually stomping on this hotel are doing so in an attempt to nip a potential Overton window shift in the bud. If this hotel were to get away with such a policy, other hotels and perhaps other types of businesses would likely follow suit; that's how changes in what's considered normal behavior come about. Punishing the first defector can be an effective way to forestall that.

<comment><USER17> I think you're being way too generous. They're trashing them because they can and it makes them feel powerful. A virtual vigilante mob without any risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another business introduced to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like it would violate Yelp's rules. If you fine people for bad reviews, is that any different than paying people for good reviews?

<comment><USER20> It's illegal to sue people for bad reviews (SLAPP); I think it's just against Yelp TOU to pay people for good ones.

<comment><USER21> They way you write it is not quite right. SLAPP certainly would make it illegal to sue people for defamation for online reviews (depending on the state, it may only be for politics related stuff)

That is not quite what is happening here.

Having a contractual penalty, freely entered into and mutually agreed upon, for something harmful to their business, probably does _not_ interact with SLAPP in most states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow the Internet has already taken them down to 2 stars. I can't image this is going to end well once this news spreads to other internet communities.

</comment><comment><USER23> Imagine if this ridiculous policy on their website is actually the result of a malicious hacking.

Then the hacker sends pagesix.com an anonymous tip about the policy.

Then the hacker posts the pagesix.com article on HN.

Now, that would actually make a good story...

[EDIT: Typo & Grammar]

<comment><USER24> This policy is in the same tone as other policies found on their web-site (e.g. cancellation policy). So I suspect it was written by the same individual and potentially at the same time.

Interesting theory though. Reminds me of the Amy's Baking Company "hacking" of their Facebook page.

<comment><USER23> Yeah I saw the cancellation policy too. Crazy.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of the Amy's bakery thing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Is there any proof this is happening other than this post? I hope so otherwise internet vigilante justice is destroying a business and people's livelihoods.

Edit:

I took a look at their site and apparently they only enforce this policy for weddings:

"Also, please note that we only request this of wedding parties and for the reasons explained above."

The reasons seem to be that as guests are not booking the hotel themselves (presumably the bride/groom has done that for them) it may not be to their tastes and they feel it's unfair to leave a negative review of something you never would have booked in the first place because it's not to your taste.

I can kind of understand this reasoning, although it's not great.

<comment><USER25> I don't see any evidence that they've actually enforced the rule, but the rule is posted on their website: [http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/events_weddings.shtml](http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/events_weddings.shtml).

<comment><USER26> Looks like the part about negative reviews is gone now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow. Pretty bold of them to think they could fight social media and the consumer powered era with such an outrageous policy. While I am amazed at their lack of embarrassment, (especially since the policy is still up on their website), it's great to see how people can win > businesses today. Power to the people!

</comment><comment><USER28> Feels like a place Reddit or 4chan would tar and feather and then let it hang out and dry until it's dead.

<comment><USER29> Not needed. Already there are more 1* reviews than other ones. Mostly about the policy. The internet is a harsh place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm enjoying watching their Facebook page going down the drain: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Street-Guest- House/1175...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Street-Guest- House/117548518271464)

</comment><comment><USER31> They appear to be backpedaling. From their Facebook page:

"The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago. It was meant to be taken down long ago and certainly was never enforced."

[https://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Street-Guest- House/1175...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Street-Guest- House/117548518271464)

<comment><USER32> They may be trying to claim that, but they tried to use the policy to bully a guest into removing his review as recently as 11/21/2013: [http://bit.ly/1nkV80v](http://bit.ly/1nkV80v)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to work. They say they'll take it out of your deposit. But a review would happen after the wedding has taken place, yes?

So by then wouldn't you have paid in full and settled everything? In that case, they shouldn't have any money you would be expecting to get back from them. So what are they taking it out of? Are they just going to send you a bill for $500 per bad review? Is there anyone who will not just laugh and throw it away?

<comment><USER34> I have no idea either, they say if you take the review down you get your money back. I'd just take it down and wait to receive my deposit then post the bad review afterwards. If they still charge me somehow(holding my cc), then they're probably in way bigger trouble as that seems like credit card fraud or something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> They posted this to their facebook:

 _The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago. It was meant to be taken down long ago and certainly was never enforced._

The commenters on the post do not believe this not surprisingly.

</comment><comment><USER36> Basil Fawlty would be proud!

</comment><comment><USER37> So I agree with what appears to be the overwhelming majority that this policy is probably legally unenforceable and was destined to backfire as soon as it was posted on the interwebs, but...

I think they have a legitimate problem and I'm wandering what alternate solutions we can come up with. The person planning the wedding (may or may not be the people actually getting married) thinks this is a good place for the wedding, but many of the guests do not enjoy it. The reviews exist to help that person make that decision. Whether or not guests usually hate it, is part of that decision, but I agree with the venue that what the people getting married want is the bigger part of that decision. How can the company manage expectations better?

<comment><USER38> It does seem a bit unfair, but at the same time the reviews aren't just a measure of how much the bride and groom will enjoy the place, it's also a measure of how much everyone else does as well.

Perhaps "many of your guests will hate this place" is a valuable signal to couples picking venues.

Honestly, if you've been a legitimate guest of a particular venue IMO it's perfectly fine to leave a review about it. The people that foot the bill aren't the only ones who get to chime in.

<comment><USER39> But then it's just as valid to write a bad review about a McDonalds restaurant your group of friends decided to go to, because the wine selection sucked.

<comment><USER11> Valid? Yes. Reasonable? No.

As I mentioned before - there are unreasonable customers with a chip on their shoulder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If the hotel is clear about these terms, then I don't see much of a problem with this. It makes it really easy to know to pick a different hotel.

<comment><USER40> I should be stating the obvious here, but the fact that I even have to post this means that obviously, I am not.

Just because something is written into the terms of an agreement doesn't make it legal.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, you are not. Say someone writes a contract saying that they can slap me in the face and each time they do I must pay $100, if I carefully read and then sign that contract, and they then slap me three times — have I been assaulted or do I owe $300, or both?

<comment><USER42> This is actually a tricky question. Your assault & battery law probably says something like "unconsented _or_ violent touching," so the fact that you consented doesn't matter, so you've been assaulted. And you can't enter a contract to perform an illegal act, so you don't owe $300 -- it's not a good contract.[1]

But it depends why you're being slapped! Obviously we can't go prosecuting everyone who intentionally whacks into someone else according to the rules of whatever sport they're playing, so we make an exception for that. This gets tricky with sports like boxing where the rules require you to do something that looks pretty much like a brutal assault, so the exceptions in that case get pretty finicky -- we might insist that you make your mutual-battery deals in public, in licensed boxing rings, instead of by giving Brad Pitt a nice manly handshake in the basement of a bar and refusing to talk about it later.

And then there's the whole gray area of less socially-accepted sports, like Quidditch or BDSM. We (even prosecutors) often approach things from the perspective of, "if this activity seems normal to me, it must be legal; if it seems wrong it must be illegal." When moral judgments and fear of the unknown creep into that analysis, it can lead to some twisted logic to justify the outcome we know must be right.

[1] Now consider whether you can be prosecuted for A&B as an accomplice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What I wonder is how this is traced.

If I leave a review ~6months after would my sisters bridal party be charged or the party that is currently renting the hall?

I assume the later since they assume reviews are placed within a short span of time. Which then if there are several books one-day-after-the-next how do you migrate reviews? Or do you split the difference between all parties?

Even if the policy is clear, and the market is free. There is no way this policy can be enforced fairly.

<comment><USER44> I would presume you'd be safe to leave the review much later as the $500 is withheld from returned deposits.

Wait for deposit return, make bad review. All is well :)

<comment><USER45> Send the bride an invoice, then send it to collections if they don't cough up $500.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Looks like a really malicious way to punish Bridezilla: "When I stayed here for the Smith-Jones wedding on July 26..."

</comment><comment><USER47> Viral business suicide surely.

<comment><USER48> What about "no such thing as bad publicity"?

<comment><USER49> That may not hold as true as it used to in a market where many purchasing decisions are informed by the consensus instantly accessible and distilled into a single number from aggregators like Yelp. In such cases, it's crucial that you receive positive indicators from those sources. In the past, angry articles or reports faded had less staying power; they would raise the profile of the business or person by directing discontent for a while, but the discontent would fade and the subject would retain some elevated portion of prominence. These days discontent doesn't fade as easily, since Yelp et al provide it a permanent home.

<comment><USER50> Also "will bill you $500 for a bad review" has a particular sting about it unlike any other I suspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> In a sense this strategy could be somewhat ingenious on their part, as after some exploration some people might assume that all negative reviews (even ones from customers who legitimately received poor service) are spurious ones associated with the fact that the internet doesn't like their review policy. With that being said, most people won't even bother to explore a hotel with a terrible review, so they're probably screwed.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wow - just for some perspective on yelp yesterday these guys had a four star rating.

At lunchtime (UK) today they had 39 reviews, and had dropped to 1.5 stars. At end of day UK they have over 500 reviews, as far as I can tell everyone a 1 star and they have 1 star rating.

One day and years of work undone.

For those who want to sell SEO services to real businesses (yelpEO?) this is a major marketing event. For some poor fucker in NY this is likely to be bankruptcy and layoffs.

</comment><comment><USER53> I really do feel for businesses negatively affected by Yelp. Yelp is far from perfect, and I know plenty of small business owners who got a couple bad reviews when they were first figuring things out, and weren't ever able to recover from it.

But, I'm not sure if this is even legal. As imperfect as Yelp is, at least it's democratic. Fining somebody for their guests' opinion of their place is not okay.

</comment><comment><USER54> Well this is how we goona do this

Fuck Union Street Guest House, Fuck Policies, Fuck Reviews

And if you want to be down with Internet review policies, then fuck you too

All of y'all businesses, fuck you, die slow motherfuckers

My Enter Key makes sure all y'all businesses don't grow

You motherfuckers can't be us or see us

We motherfuckin Internet Thug life-riders

anonyimized till we die

</comment><comment><USER27> The irony of getting one huge bad news article that does more than enough to account for every bad review they evaded.

Pretty bold of them to think they could fight social media and the consumer- powered era with such an outrageous policy. Power to the people!

</comment><comment><USER55> On Yelp's review page:

"Your trust is our top concern, so businesses can't pay to alter or remove their reviews."

And yet see we stories like this about Yelp all the time. Yelp reviews aren't worth the paper they are not printed on.

</comment><comment><USER52> Is it possible to do meta analysis on review sites - effectively "people with your tastes liked this hotel / restaurant" ?

I would think that getting e-receipts working will destroy yelp as well.

</comment><comment><USER56> I used to work in Hudson. A lot of places like this down there. I'm sure this will be featured on Hotel Hell in no time.

</comment><comment><USER57> Great idea, right up till the point they announced it and later tried to enforce it.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can someone living in the US tell me how this could be legal? Surely it's not?

<comment><USER59> Relevant XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/1357/](http://xkcd.com/1357/)

<comment><USER60> That's fine, I just wish people would stop pretending free speech is some great American value then. What they really value is the right to silence people by any means possible, stopping just short of imprisonment.

<comment><USER61> I wish people would stop defining "free speech" for themselves and getting disappointed that it doesn't mean what they want it to mean.

<comment><USER60> Well if all it is is a protection from imprisonment, and not some higher ideal, it's hardly worth talking about.

There's the First Amendment and then there's free speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Before mob justice drives this place out of business, perhaps those posting 1 star reviews should promise to take them down if the policy changes. Not that I agree with the policy, but a mistake like this might not be worth ruining some's life.

<comment><USER63> seriously? They are in hospitality business and such level of rudeness, lack of empathy for their customers and such superiority feeling about themselves should ideally take them out of business.

<comment><USER62> I agree. But mob justice rarely has only the intended consequences. I am all for teaching them a lesson, but I believe that's where it should end. You are talking about ruining people's lives over this incident. If every angry user of your product reacted like this, would you be a happy camper?

Once again, not defending their practice, just pointing out that the angry mobs don't usually produce the best outcomes.

<comment><USER12> Indeed - nothing is happening to all the other hotels that have the same policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is beyond stupid and this is not even untrue.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is just a gimmick story to promote Yelp.

</comment><comment><USER66> Just write a sarcastic positive review.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is ridiculous. Someone needs to sue them.

</comment><comment><USER68> Yelp is useless anyways.

</comment><comment><USER69> "If you exercise your rights to freedom of speech and post anything other than a stellar review, we are going to penalize you, to improve our business reputation online instead of finding out why there are negative reviews in the first place."

</comment><comment><USER70> A bride is a business partner, forcing guests to stay at the hotel. How is this different from docking an employees salary for unsatisfied customers?

<comment><USER33> I've been to many weddings. I've never been forced to stay at any particular hotel. There are usually several in the area that the bride and groom suggest, and you're always free to seek out another hotel if you don't like those.

The bride is not a business partner, she's a paying customer. A business partner would be receiving a share of the profits from the transaction, a bride is not.

How is it different from docking an employee's pay? Well, to start with the bride has no employment agreement with the hotel and is not receiving any pay, so that's a pretty big difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I think this is a sort of wacko reverse psychology gambit.[1]

The Yelp page is now attracting comments like "This place should be relocated to china. They have a policy about reviews that is unamerican."

So, if you're looking for a hotel that actively dissuades the sort of redneck who likes to throw around words like "unamerican", congratulations - you've found it!

[1] ok, ok, I don't.

</comment><comment><USER72> Why don't people understand that free-speech protections only means the government cannot throw you in jail for what you say (but they do anyway under the "try to stop us" method [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/07/12/201422486](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/07/12/201422486) ).

It has no meaning against other individuals.

<comment><USER73> They don't because it's not true. The reason civil libel/slander between private parties is more restricted in the US than elsewhere in the common law world is because of the First Amendment free speech and free press guarantees. The idea that it only apples in criminal disputes or where over party is the government is false; it's a limit on government, sure, but on governments power to make law, which applies both to laws governing dispute between private parties and to law governing criminal or civil cases where the government is a party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> After reading this article, I'm surprised to see that the guest house still has a high rating on Yelp and Google+. Our immediate response should be to post negative reviews based on the revelation that none of the other reviews are trustworthy.

EDIT: Yelp rating is no longer high, but there's still TripAdvisor and Google+.

<comment><USER75> No, posting reviews of a service you've never used because of something you read on the Internet five minutes ago is not OK.

<comment><USER76> That's true in a vacuum. However, the high rating they have is clearly unjustified since they have been extorting people to remove negative reviews. Some collective action against the gaming of the system is called for and, I think, ethical in this case. Try thinking of it from the perspective of their competitors that don't extort their customers.

<comment><USER75> _clearly unjustified_

You don't know that.

 _they have been extorting people_

You don't know that.

 _Some collective action against the gaming of the system is called for_

Oh, geeze. If gaming the system is bad, then _stop gaming the system_.

If someone really wanted to put the screws to these people, then they would find a patron who has actually had that $500 policy used against them, implicitly if nothing else. It would require some kind of investigative journalism to find an actual victim. But that's a lot more slow and boring than getting out the Internet pitchforks and just burning their online presence to the ground _right now_. (If we wait too long our anger might dissipate!)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't Hand Our TVs Over to Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/opinion/dont-hand-our-tvs-over-to-google.html <comment><USER2> A key sentence in this article is false.

"It lacks access to providers' proprietary programming information — what shows are available when."

Two weeks forward information is available commercially via Tribune Media Services and probably a competitor or two. It's available for free for a shorter time period via each channel's data service.

Outside the US, there are a variety of methods, many of which can be seen here: [https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/XMLTV](https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/XMLTV)

<comment><USER3> But what are the license terms for that data? Perhaps a statutory license from the FCC would give Google more freedom to repurpose guide data (or not).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a Hadoop alternative built on non-Java technologies? - <AUTHOR> For distributed or "big data" scale computation Hadoop has been so successful that, one is not able to find information about any alternatives that exist. For one, it will be good if any of the ML family of languages/ LISP etc., had an viable alternative. There are Python bindings that exist and DSLs like Pig/Hive simplify things a bit. But beyond that, without knowledge of Java it's hard to navigae the Hadoop ecosystem. Hence this question. <comment><USER2> It depends on how tightly you define "Hadoop alternative" and exactly what you're trying to do. But generally speaking, the answer is "yes". There are technologies for doing large-scale distributed computation on clusters of commodity computers that don't require Java. In fact, many (most?) of them predate Java. You can, for example, build a Beowulf cluster[1] using something like Rocks[2] and program using MPI[3], OpenMP[4] or PVM[5].

The one big difference is that you don't get the advantage of the (relatively speaking) easy to understand and code against Map-Reduce API. Programming in MPI requires a bit more low-level fiddling... something like the difference between, say, programming in C vs programming in Java. Which is, I suppose, quite appropriate since most MPI programming is done in C (or using the C bindings from another language).

There are also some Map-Reduce implementations natively written in C++ floating around out there.

Note that if you do something like a Beowulf cluster you still need a distributed file-system to serve the role HDFS plays in the Hadoop world.

There's also this:

[https://gigaom.com/2015/02/18/google-open-sources-a- mapreduc...](https://gigaom.com/2015/02/18/google-open-sources-a-mapreduce- framework-for-c/)

but I haven't used it and don't know much about it.

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

[2]: [http://www.rocksclusters.org/wordpress/](http://www.rocksclusters.org/wordpress/)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface)

[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMP)

[5]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Virtual_Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Virtual_Machine)</comment>


Ask HN: Help to get us feedback (v2) - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
We are working on a project management webapp called Route. We already asked you for feedback some time ago, but at that time only the most curious hackers gave Route a try, others were stopped by a tedious registration form. So we simply got rid of it. Also we introduced a nice walkthrough to show the basics of Route.
So, check it out and tell us what you think!
http://routehq.com <comment><USER2> So I've only been playing around for a few minutes and have decided I actually quite like it for its simplicity.

However, I have a bit of feedback:

* I don't really like the tasks jumping to the bottom once I set them as complete * A strikethrough on complete tasks would be nicer than just dark grey font

* The backlog doesn't function as I'd expect. The number seems to refer to the total number of incomplete tasks across the whole project, but clicking it takes me to the index. I'd expect the backlog to be any tasks which haven't been assigned to a goal (sort of like the index is now), then a separate function to show all incomplete tasks across the index and goals

* After adding a milestone and selecting it, I have no idea how to get back to the normal project view with the goals and tasks I have already added, except going back to the workspace view then back into the project

* Oh, looks like I click Backlog to get back from a milestone. The backlog feature now makes a little more sense. Maybe it would be better to have the Backlog link close to or on the milestone bar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi James, thanks for feedback! It is very helpful, since you've shown us that we need to demonstrate the relation b/w tasks, goals, milestones and backlog more clearly. The backlog holds tasks and goals which haven't been assigned to a milestone. Each milestone has its own tasks and goals (but you can move them to another milestone or the backlog if you need). In general, all the interesting stuff happens in milestones, while the backlog holds tasks and goals whose time has not come yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"To use Route in Internet Explorer you need to Install Google Chrome Frame Plugin"_

Practically speaking, the site is broken for a large segment of the Project Manager population. This suggests a disconnect with your intended customer base.

<edit> change "intended" to "potential."

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the most popular browsers of our target audience are Google Chrome (the lion's share), Safari and Firefox. Since supporting IE is such a pain, we decided to go without it, at least for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool product tour. Is it custom built or did you use some kind of 'tour library'? Hope that's not a dumb question. I could swear I've heard of such a thing being developed before.

First issue is that clicking inside the tour pop-ups causes the tour to advance to the next step. I know there is a 'next' button but at least on chrome, clicking anywhere inside the tour pop-ups advances the tour with no way to go back.

Will edit this if I find more to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for response! Actually this pop-up behavior is intentional, so that you don't have to aim at the "next" button. The product tour is custom built - nothing fancy, just CSS3 animation.

<comment><USER4> perhaps a back button would help. I just ended up missing part of the tour by accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do you think separates route from trello? It seems like a similar service, but with a flat UI and less features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Route was designed with milestone-based workflow in mind. You create milestones, you set due dates on them, you specify goals for each milestone - at the end you get a nicely delineated route through the project plan. Trello is a more general solution.

<comment><USER5> OK, I get what you are going after. From your market research (and I'm curious here), do people tend to work better with such deadline-driven approach? My experience with Trello (and other PMs, is that they do not. But we are operating in different markets). Also, who is this made for (who is your market)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently the focus of our attention is on small software companies, but we believe that the milestone-based approach would be beneficial to projects in any industry. Milestones bring visibility - the project route is explicitly defined, everyone on the team sees where the project is headed. The other advantage is flexibility - since the project is divided into smaller parts, it's easier to spot problems as they arise.

Of course, this approach is not for all use cases. For example, it won't work for very short projects - too much hassle setting up all those milestones.

<comment><USER5> Good points. I appreciate taking the time to explain further. I did not see any trial plans in there, is there one available? I'd like to give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Route is in the early preview stage, there are no plans yet. Just register and you're set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://routehq.com></comment>


Parse Adds Support for Windows Phone 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parse.com/2012/11/15/parse-adds-support-for-windows-phone-8/

<comment><USER2> Didn't they already announce this? How is this different from the last blog post?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our previous announcement was for Windows 8 support. This adds support for Windows Phone 8 (whose SDK came out after we launched the Windows 8 version) as well ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested to find out what motivated you to target this platform. Do you have an internal requirement to target every single one of the mobile platforms out there? Does this platform offer something the others don't? Has the vendor provided incentives (like we know they are forced to do by market conditions)? Would you still consider targeting this platform had the vendor not provided any incentives?

Also, how would you compare the experience of working with this particular SDK compared to the others? More streamlined? Less streamlined? Hopelessly frustrating technology soup? Best thing since sliced bread?</comment>


Taco Bell Programming - <AUTHOR> http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell-programming.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me a bit of "Master Foo and the Ten Thousand Lines"[0], except replacing C code with a bunch of stuff in The Cloud™.

The problem with Taco Bell Programming is that those "ingredients" need to be versatile enough to actually be useful enough to not warrant reinventing their wheels. Unfortunately, that usually translates into complexity, ever-growing manpages, etc. If you're only using 8 ingredients, it's pretty unlikely that any of those ingredients are going to stick to the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well.

Additionally, at some point the task does end up being complex enough or atypical enough to involve coding for different corner cases and such. The only thing I'd dread more than ten thousand lines of C is ten thousand lines of Bash.

[0]: [http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/ten- thousand.html](http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/ten-thousand.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not even sure how to interpret this. It's sort of a know your tools post, with a hint of don't over optimize. Having done both the Hadoop and shell script type solutions, generally error handling and debugging are what cause you to move into blatform solutions.

<comment><USER4> To me, it was more of an "don't over-engineer" post.

As another example I could see the author using...if you have tasks to run on a regular basis, do you really need Jenkins? Or will cron do just fine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot to be said for this approach. With the size of today's machines (say a TB of RAM, 16/32/or more cores, many TB of SSD) you can do a stunning amount of work with smart programming. For example, I've developed a tool to do some file processing that uses Go's excellent concurrency mechanisms to reach speeds of ~40-50k files/second on a moderate laptop.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, there's merrit to this, but up to a point. The problem is that the "glue" you're using to connect your ingredients is bash, and that quickly gets unwieldy >100 lines or so.

<comment><USER7> I always keep cutting to seperate script files which I call. Makes it more reusable and clearer imho. Like the author, I do a lot in bash and I do not have scripts even close to 100 lines: I do have 1000s of scripts though. Works well for me.</comment></comment>


Php - <AUTHOR>

Advantages/disadvantages between building pure PHP vs. a MVC PHP Framework? <comment><USER2> The advantages to using a framework in PHP are the same as using a framework in any other language. You're provided with a set of abstractions which make the code easier to reason about, and deal with in a modular fashion.

Having written raw PHP where you have to manually include libraries and have to manually escape everything that gets echoed to the browser, and having also worked with frameworks, I find the benefits of having a PSR compliant autoloader and Composer to deal with dependency management, and a sane templating library to separate the concerns of data and presentation, make it much easier, and faster, to get a site up and running with less time wasted reinventing the wheel, and greater confidence in the general safety of the code.

Raw PHP, while tempting, can very easisly encourage poor design practices, and lead to spaghetti code which is a nightmare to maintain.

Disadvantages to a framework would be, to take full advantage of it, you have to couple your code to the framework. Eventually frameworks go out of fashion, may cease to be updated, and may no longer have a decent development pool to draw from. Also, frameworks simply by having more code to run between requests are slower than raw PHP, but frameworks can also mitigate this by caching, generating optimized classes, and whatnot.

But of course, you can pick a microframework like Slim and have the advantages of both if you want. But the way I see it, with anything beyond a basic site, you're going to wind up with something resembling a framework anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well a framework has done all the heavy listing, you add in your stuff and can be good to go in an extremely short time. Drawbacks are you are married to the framework, have to keep it updated as well as live with its idiosyncrasies and quirks (sometimes you just cant easily do something in a framework and have to kludge it in..., and it will probably get worse as time goes on). Another fear is that the framework may end-of-life or go through some massive refactor at sometime and you would have to re-configure to project to keep going.

Pure PHP is good but takes time to develop code to something mature, you will get maximum flexibility (you will eventually get what you want), but you are dependent on your skills and research. Pure PHP can be safe, just you have to research and implement whatever safe code/practices you need.

Kind of depends on what you are going for. If you want to fiddle, try both. If you want something that would be complex quick, probably a framework. If you want something that you can't see done with a framework and are willing to put in the time and effort, pure PHP would be a good route.

I read if it is short term good to go with a framework, long term, you should expect to end-up with something more robust (start with framework, build into a more stable long term pure PHP for the long haul).

</comment><comment><USER4> Thought about that but found Codeigniter to be extremely powerful yet lightweight. Managed to do URI routing easily, got my db/functions into Model working fine and everything is clean and reusable. Other frameworks looked too bulky. Not quite sure if pure PHP is safe. You might spend a lot of time securing it. Then there are also issues with caching and shit.</comment>


Twisted textile cords may contain clues to Inca messages - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/twisted-textile-cords-may-contain-clues-inca-messages <comment><USER2> I always loved ancient record keeping as it is fascinating the overlap that you can find in methods from culture to culture. It demonstrates the connected nature of human behavior which I find fascinating and informative.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is likely that they are mnemonic devices that encode information. Read The Memory Code by Lynne Kelly for more information. It's one of the most interesting books I've read, right up there with The Art of Memory by Frances Yates.

[http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/the-memory- code/](http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/the-memory-code/)</comment>


Ask HN: What if gmail was compromised? - <AUTHOR> I vaguely remember years ago reading a hypothetical post about what would happen if gmail was shipped with a vulnerability that disabled password check. And essentially it would lead to the world ending.
The author's claim was that it might not be so farfetched because there was a time when dropbox shipped a version with the password check disabled.
I was hoping someone would remember it and or link it.
Or failing that, what are people's thoughts on what would happen if such a vulnerability was shipped today. <comment><USER2> It's actually on my TODO list to write a book about that.

The idea being:

\- Every geographic location you ever visited, every password, every google search you made is now available to anyone publicly, with a convenient web search interface.

\- People are digging through your data to figure out that you visited this brothel in Thailand, or googled the N-word back in 2009, and activists will send that information to your employer, friends and family. Every query you entered on a porn site. Every time you bought drugs online. Every comment you left on any site. Every sex toy you bought. Every photo you thought was deleted. Everything.

\- Finally, the hacktivists who performed this selectively left out roughly 50% of the data, the data of the people who are on "their side", their supporters, and included only the data of the groups they don't like.

<comment><USER3> This was so scary and well written, I applaud your style.

Do you know if there is some similar material to what you're describing online? I'm not talking about the leaks themselves, just stories/books about these distopian scenarios.

<comment><USER4> At an abstract level, "Animal Farm" is not far from such a theme.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I read that book, phenomenal read. Was more thinking of something focused on potential big tech giants' leaks implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well my theory is that if Gmail was "hacked" or exposed, huge parts of the internet would be compromised.

Hundreds of millions of Gmail accounts are the central point of failure in a lot of people's lives. Each account can be used to:

\- reset other website accounts

\- blackmail

\- identity theft

\- password discovery

\- socially hack connected friends, via phishing

It's a cascading failure that would completely undermine the trust of Google in the public perception.

Although this is possible I'm sure it's highly unlikely...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found the "article" I was talking about:

[https://youtu.be/y4GB_NDU43Q](https://youtu.be/y4GB_NDU43Q)

It's a talk by Tom Scott

<comment><USER5> Years ago, when I first saw this talk, I wasn't paying attention at the beginning and thought this really happened.

These days it would surprise me if this kind of event happened tomorrow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even worse could be an RCE vuln in Chrome at the same time that the google.com search page gets compromised...

Also I think the post you're talking about is this video by Tom Scott: [https://youtu.be/y4GB_NDU43Q](https://youtu.be/y4GB_NDU43Q)

</comment><comment><USER7> Even worse, slack.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not much would happen. Another minor flutter in the tech world, a bunch of people finally realizing just how much they've given up to one company, and then everything would go back to normal, and everyone would forget that Google rules their existence. Besides, GMail is already compromised - it's a Google product and they can (and do) examine the contents of your mail for potential advertisement and to build their internal profile of you.</comment>


TechCrunch Down  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com

<comment><USER2> Oh noes! Who will tell us when GMail and Twitter go down now?

</comment><comment><USER3> still down at 2:57pm PST</comment>


Backblaze B2 Drops Download Pricing by 60% - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-drops-download-pricing/ <comment><USER2> We have always tried to squeeze costs out of storage. That required a ton of tech/ops work. Bandwidth it turns out isn't that expensive - seems to just typically be overpriced. Hopefully lowering the price will enable people to do more with their data.

I'd love to hear what you haven't done in the past due to bandwidth/download pricing that you'd have wanted to...?

Gleb @ Backblaze

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested to know, have you looked into reducing/eliminating bandwidth prices further for clients close to your network? It seems like you're with Unwired, which has heavy inbound traffic and peers at a number of facilities in the Bay Area. It'd be really interesting to know if you could, for example, offer free traffic to Linode, DigitalOcean or Vultr, all of which have offerings in the area and could help balance out Unwired's traffic flow (I think that's a thing ISPs care about).

The big thing missing from B2 for me now, relative to the other big players, is the ability to process my data once it's stored with you. If I store my images in S3 for example, I can use EC2 to thumbnail them without paying anything for retrieval. At the moment I can't do that with B2 and it seems unlikely to make sense for you to build your own compute cloud but perhaps you can integrate with others.

<comment><USER2> I would love to do this. Cross-connects aren't free, but they are certainly less expensive than going out across the Internet. And enabling compute/storage use cases by (possibly) partnering with other providers would be excellent. I'll reach out to a few of those compute providers and explore.

Can you tell me more about how you use/would use cloud storage? (with or without compute)

<comment><USER3> Currently I don't really use cloud storage, it's cheaper for me to colocate a 2U stuffed with disks and buy transit.

Primarily though I store media. I have (for a home user) large amounts of high resolution (lossless audio, RAW images, high bitrate (even ProRes) video) media that I like to keep for archival and transcoding but don't need for playback. I want to store the original media somewhere safe and cheap but have the ability to transcode it to a format suitable for playback/streaming on demand.

Actually it just occurred to me that it might be worth you talking to the folks at Plex ([https://plex.tv](https://plex.tv)) about this too, as they're working on their Cloud product and need more places for their users to store media.

<comment><USER4> If I was a storage company, I would consider Plex a hot potato and would stay far, far away. There is a reason Plex isn't building out their own storage and the reason isn't cost. It's because they know that 99% of all the media their customers handle is pirated content. At some point, Plex will become large enough to get on the radar of the MPAA and at that point, I assume they will go after the cloud storage providers.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Plex has nothing to do with _how_ users are getting the content, it just offers playback and cataloging after they've already retrieved it.

I'd agree if they allowed something like library sharing between users, but I don't see them as a likely target just for allowing playback of consumer media.

I use a (local) Plex installation for home videos, downloaded clips, and various other non-infringing things. It's the most convenient way to share the library out to a Chromecast/phone/Roku.

<comment><USER4> Ya, I don't think Plex would be necessarily at fault, although they could be susceptible to DMCA takedown notices. But a storage provider could get into deep trouble if they know tons of pirated content was being uploaded. Kim Dotcom claims MEGA had no idea if the content being uploaded was infringing.

<comment><USER5> Megaupload (which I assume you mean because afaik MEGA has not been in legal trouble) was a distribution platform; the purpose was to upload something and give the link to others. If it was a personal file locker that couldn't link out or be shared, as Plex intends to be, it probably would not have had issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Backblaze is doing to S3 what I dream about doing to Amazon Retail after several years working for them.

The amazon philosophy is quite a bit like the underpants gnomes: 1) grow, 2) ..., 3) profit. Where there are natural monopolies with obvious economies of scale, this is an incredible strategy. But outside of that (retail, for example), it just doesn't work. Economies of scale come coupled with diseconomies of scale, and #2 needs to be an intentional and deliberate approach to managing those diseconomies of scale. If you look at their financials, it is obvious that Amazon retail has had a miserable time managing this...over the last 15 years they have steadily lower inventory turns, steadily increasing logistics costs, availability inconsistency, etc. Anybody who works there now or worked there in the past can see how inefficiently they run things and how efficiency improvements one day are ameliorated by political and speculative decisions the next day.

Combine this with their typical acquisition strategy, as exemplified by the Quidsi approach. Lowball, and when they don't accept, spend money subsidizing your own product to undercut their market and make them more desperate to sell.

The Backblaze approach is genius for taking on Amazon because it inverts the priorities to 1) meticulously manage costs, and then 2) directly engage amazon by competing on price. Backblaze can compete on price because their cost structure is lower than Amazon. Amazon can always subsidize their product, but by doing so _Amazon is in the weaker position in the endurance race_. Backblaze can ride out the attempts at undercutting them because they have a lower cost structure and prices need to drop a lot before they affect their cash flow safety. It's also a resilient strategy; Amazon can know that's exactly what they're doing and they can't do anything to stop it apart from beating them at their own game of cost management. It's a slow and steady road, but it can work.

Now, if only they would start running more than an S3 competitor :)

<comment><USER7> > Now, if only they would start running more than an S3 competitor

But then Backblaze don't have the cost advantage! Amazon uses their profits from S3/EC2 to subsidise all the new AWS services (and feature development for the existing services).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I asked if you guys can offer a similar price to OVH's prices and got rejected. After 3 weeks I moved literally 48 million objects to OVH, you guys decide to announce this. Cool. I hope all goes well.

<comment><USER9> Brian from Backblaze here.

I've been begging the pricing team at Backblaze to drop this price for about a year. I'm just glad it finally percolated through.

As far as we can tell, all the cloud storage providers are gouging their customers on outbound bandwidth prices. I'm sorry we couldn't get this pushed through sooner.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the detailed reply. I still like what you guys do and appreciate the effort of the team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have they added any non-credit/debit card payment options (e.g. PayPal) yet? I'm from the UK, and my bank charges me a flat 'non-sterling transaction fee', which overshadows the actual usage costs. This means, for smaller projects, B2 is actually much more expensive than the competition that allows me to pay in my native currency either directly, or through a service like PayPal.

<comment><USER11> If it's for personal use, investigate the cards listed at [http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/travel-credit- cards#...](http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/travel-credit- cards#bestbuys) \-- I have the Halifax Clarity card, which I use for similar services.

I don't know if any of those banks also offer a similar deal for business accounts.

<comment><USER12> Another option worth considering is a pre-paid debit card like Monzo's [1]. This doesn't have any fees when used outside of the UK.

I think in the not too distant future you'll be able to get a regular (non- prepaid) debit card from them now that they have a unrestricted UK banking license [2].

[1] [https://monzo.com/](https://monzo.com/)

[2] [https://monzo.com/blog/2017/04/05/banking- licence/](https://monzo.com/blog/2017/04/05/banking-licence/)

<comment><USER10> What's the online purchasing experience like? I previously tried Revolut, but too many payments were declined when I used it online.

<comment><USER13> As expected. You just get a notification if it works (and if it doesn't and why)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking of cheap object storage, has anyone had any experiences with OVH's Object Storage?

[https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object- storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/public-cloud/storage/object-storage/)

It seems to be more expensive for storage but nearly half the cost for transfer.

<comment><USER15> I tried it a while back, maybe it was just me being stupid but I found no CLI, or decent tool for the API. Ended up giving up because the barrier to entry was too high. I'd suggest they work on tooling.

<comment><USER16> Don't they use Swift API for which lots of tooling is available?

EDIT: And Backblaze B2 invented their own API, so no tooling at all.

<comment><USER9> > Backblaze B2 invented their own API, so no tooling at all.

At first that was true, but now we have a list of 3rd party tools you can use. Check the list out here: [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html)

Here is a sample from that web page: CloudBerry, Rclone (mount B2 as a hard drive on your desktop), Synology (this is a NAS drive), Retrospect, Cantemo, Cubix, Cyberduck, Duplicacy, Duplicity Linux, HashBackup, NyNAS, NeoFinder, Odrive, Qbackup, SmartFTP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now if they just had an api compatable with s3: [https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/218513487-Is- th...](https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/218513487-Is-the-B2-Cloud- Storage-API-Compatible-with-Amazon-S3-)

Or full support for hosting a static website: [https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en- us/articles/230383208-Hosti...](https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en- us/articles/230383208-Hosting-Website-Content-via-B2)

Great prices though!

<comment><USER2> Tell me more please... is support for the S3 api because you use a product that you want to use with B2? Or you've written your own code to S3 apis?

<comment><USER18> For me, it would be because I use a product that I would happily use with B2 if possible.

[https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e](https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this the cheapest place for storing another copy of your photos? I have 150GB worth atm with 3 copies and I don't mind another copy if it's cheap enough.

<comment><USER20> Glacier currently is .004c / GB

[https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/)

GCE Coldline is .007c / GB

[https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/](https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/)

<comment><USER15> You mean $0.004 / GB? So only 20% cheaper than B2, but not realtime?

<comment><USER7> More like 0.004/0.02= 20% so Glacier is 20% of the _cost_ of B2, i.e. 80% cheaper (but yes, not realtime).

<comment><USER9> Brian from Backblaze here -> I don't quite understand your math?

$0.004/GByte/month - Amazon Glacier

$0.005/GByte/month - Backblaze B2

Furthermore, I think if you price it out, Backblaze will be cheaper than Glacier in most examples. For example, Glacier charges for uploads (5 cents per 1,000 uploads). If you ever download the data, it costs 9 cents/GByte to retrieve it from Glacier(!!!)

Use anything you like, but just make sure you consider all the charges and give Backblaze a fair consideration.

<comment><USER20> It is $.03 GB for expedited and $.0025 for bulk now it seems.

[https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/)

<comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sure I'm reading this correctly (because Amazon pricing is so ridiculously confusing) but I think you are reading the prices to get data out of Glacier and into an EC2 instance (which is still inside Amazon). THEN you get charged an additional 9 cents/GByte to get it out of EC2 and downloaded onto your laptop.

At Backblaze, we cannot figure out the business case of why Amazon prices things so that the small customers get really expensive prices (9 cents/GByte for less than 10 TBytes), and as the volume increases the price drops to 5 cents/GByte (for 250 TBytes). It makes no business sense to drive away small companies. A byte is a byte, the WHOLE POINT of a large cloud storage farm like Backblaze B2 or Amazon S3 is that we bundle together 200,000 small customers and together they get the economy of scale of a large customer! That's the whole point, the whole strategy! And what Backblaze has seen over and over again is that over time, some of our small customers became really gigantic customers. So driving away the small customers by gouging them on price means the small customers go to some other provider, then they get large with the other provider. But hey, I'm just thankful Amazon thinks this is good for them because it leaves the market wide open for Backblaze to gobble up all the small customers (which we are really super happy to have as customers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm looking for the cheapest gigabit based NAS solution that supports B2. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking about replacing my aging Core 2 Duo laptop running Plex with an attached USB hard drive and BackBlaze with a combination NAS with Gig E and an NVidia Shield. I would use B2 for backups.

I have gigabit internet up and down and a house wired for Gig e throughout.

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for a NAS, Synology boxes support Backblaze B2 directly via Cloudsync. I know some of their models support Gig E; not sure if all do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gleb: Understanding that it's not a CDN per se, would using this primarily for large file distribution (meaning, not images on web sites, etc.) instead of backup be a bad idea?

<comment><USER2> Should be a fine use case. B2 is fine for backup, but designed to be used for all sorts of storage use cases. Would be happy to have someone on our team explore with you the specifics of your use case (performance, etc.); You can shoot me an email at gleb.budman at backblaze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd love to hear anyones opinions on how this compares to Arq, which I'm currently digging quite a lot.

<comment><USER3> Backblaze B2 is a storage service, Arq is a storage client. They're different but complementary tools so you can't really compare them.

At some point Arq could even support B2, though the most recent record I could find of this suggests that it's not planned right noW: [https://twitter.com/arqbackup/status/662037695879880704?lang...](https://twitter.com/arqbackup/status/662037695879880704?lang=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> ... the day after I signed up

<comment><USER2> After you signed up for B2? We're dropping prices for everyone - you too then ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They only have 50 employees, [https://www.linkedin.com/company- beta/2749627/?pathWildcard=...](https://www.linkedin.com/company- beta/2749627/?pathWildcard=2749627)

I really wonder if you'll get the same level of reliability as the leading providers.

<comment><USER9> Brian from Backblaze here.

> They only have 50 employees

We are larger than that now, but yes, still in that ballpark.

> same level of reliability as the leading providers

How is reliability related to number of salespeople? (That was a joke.)

But seriously, we published the EXACT reliability and the design in our blog post here: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage- architect...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage- architecture/)

In a nutshell, any one byte of data is spread across 20 different computers in 20 different physical locations in our datacenter through Reed-Solomon encoding. If we lose 3 full computers in 3 separate locations your data is still fine.

We have been doing this for 10 years now, and we take it very seriously, and we have 73,000 hard drives in our datacenter. We are the only company on earth to publish our drive failure rates: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard- drive-benchmark-stats-20...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive- benchmark-stats-2016/)

<comment><USER26> Yev from Backblaze Here -> I updated the employee count on LinkedIn ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Making an iPhone game in 10 minutes - Whack a Kitty - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se2mi_kfUko

<comment><USER2> This is really, really inspiring. And cute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) I had a lot of fun working on both the game and the video. I thought HN would get a kick out of it, but I guess only a handful of people saw it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this is awesomeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!</comment>


Show HN: Alphazero chess re-analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CYHSM/chess-surprise-analysis#update-on-alpha-zero <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a simple library for finding surprising moves and wanted to re-analyse one of AlphaZero's games against Stockfish.

Just tell me if you want to see more games analysed like that.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can you explain the heatmap in more detail? Im not following when you say Stockfish believed it had an advantageous position at move 19.</comment>


Evi Nemeth, retired Boulder computer professor, missing at sea near New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_23553916/retired-cu-boulder-computer-professor-evi-nemeth-missing <comment><USER2> Shit. Nemeth is the author of _The Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook_, which is one of the all-time great Unix books, up there with Stevens.

<comment><USER3> I desperately hope she makes it back, she's kind of an amazing person.

Every edition of that book has been better than the last and it's insanely useful, especially to people who aren't familiar with the way Unix & Linux work at a low level. It's the first book I toss at new sysadmins and devs who need to learn about Unix, even before "Essential System Administration" or "The Practice of System and Network Administration". The latter two are good for why you should do things, but ULSAH tells you what, where, and how and explains the different methods and tradeoffs. I haven't picked it up in a year or two, but I keep it around because when I do get stuck with some random AIX box or creaky old Hockypux system it's essential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shades of Jim Gray. :(

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist)#D...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_\(computer_scientist\)#Disappearance)]

<comment><USER5> I hope she is OK, I too thought of Jim when I heard she had not checked in as expected. For all of our technology, the ocean can and does pose essentially unbounded risk to mariners to this day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It bothers me that finding someone's location is such a problem since the technology exists to do it. How much would it cost to track a boat by GPS? Search and rescue missions over ocean must cost a fortune. Why don't governments subsidize the cost of GPS tracking?

<comment><USER7> This is what you are looking for: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System) Many of these do not transmit particularly far (especially horizontally). Class B's, like you might expect on a personal ship, only broadcast at two watts.

You have to keep in mind though that for all of our advancements, the ocean is still a fundamentally hostile environment. One rogue wave takes your ship out and by the time that search and rescue people can be in the area any survivors could potentially be hundreds of miles away. They had a satellite phone with them, so I am inclined to think that they also had a AIS transponder, but these sorts of situations are difficult regardless.

<comment><USER8> AIS is for traffic control mostly. What you are really looking for is an EPIRB [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon#EPIRBs_.28...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon#EPIRBs_.28marine.29)

It is standard equipment on an oceangoing boat.

<comment><USER9> And they had one, albeit not the type that goes off if submerged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Southern Ocean can get rather rough in winter. It's not the best time of year to be sailing in the open ocean there.

<comment><USER11> It can get quite rough in Summer. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race frequently claims lives and it's in Summer.

<comment><USER12> That's the Tasman Sea I think - not that this is any better. The Tasman side of NZ is the wild side, and it gets pretty damn wild.

<comment><USER11> It's the Tasman and the South Pacific, the latter being precisely where someone going from NZ to SE Australia is sailing.

<comment><USER12> I meant to reply to the post yours is a parent of sorry. I get South Pacific as a description, its just Southern Ocean that seems a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't it be cool if we got the current satellite photos and asked millions of people to look at a small piece of the area where she is suspecte to be? We could find her quick if she's still afloat.

<comment><USER14> We all tried that with Jim Gray (I know I did at the time), and nothing :(

<comment><USER13> Yes, if nothing's there, nothing can be found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is so scant on details. It's very odd that they have not yet found _any_ debris. There is _always_ debris.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article as a great deal more detail:

[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/7-aboard-u-s-boat- miss...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/7-aboard-u-s-boat-missing- south-pacific-article-1.1383782)

<comment><USER3> Weirdly enough that article mentions Dyche as the skipper and she's only listed as "a woman named Evi". AFAIK she's the shipowner and has plenty of experience as captain as well as being the most well known person on board(1), but I guess either the reporter didn't do their research or the authorities only mentioned Dyche.

(1) Beyond her general profile in CS and administration a quick google check shows 136,000 hits for her name and 13,000 for "David Dyche", almost all of which appear to be someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw this on the news in Australia this morning, no mention of his status or background, just a "US family". Things aren't looking good either.

<comment><USER3> She - Evi Nemeth is a woman and one of the most influential on my approach to sysadminning. Even more than the Armadillo book or Limoncelli the handbook she and her collaborators put out was pragmatic, sensible, and incredibly useful. I really hope she makes it back somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it me or have there been a lot of old-school UNIX hackers dying recently? I guess they were all around the same age, so not TOO surprising...but still...

<comment><USER18> You can do the math yourself if you want, though estimating the cohort size may be a bit challenging:

[http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2705802-a-morbid-...](http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2705802-a-morbid- python-script)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First submitted here yesterday. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5954536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5954536)</comment>


OpenVPN Installer for Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS and Arch Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Angristan/OpenVPN-install <comment><USER2> FYI there's a PR going on to support OpenVPN 2.4 new features : [https://github.com/Angristan/OpenVPN- install/pull/96](https://github.com/Angristan/OpenVPN-install/pull/96)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't ask me to support a system you've run random magic script xyz on.</comment>


Ask HN: Local State School CS major vs. Math/Econ Name Brand Uni? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a rising college sophomore, who applied for transfer admission to some schools, and got off the waitlist for a Name Brand University (think Michigan, UVa, Rice). My current uni has a solid CS dept (top 25 based on grad rankings), but the school's I'm looking to transfer to have a better overall rep and more recruiters come to these schools. I applied to the arts and sciences colleges for transfer, and at the moment I'm a Math/Econ major. I can try to switch into CS, but I'll probably end up with a B.A instead of a B.S. (same classes though). Worst case scenario, I'd major in Math/Econ with a minor in CS, would I still be a strong candidate? I know C/C++, Python, Java, R, and Javascript. Also familiar with some open source projects, andhavesome side projects (post on github and all that). Most of the stuff I know is self taught, so I'm not worried about gaining skills. Will employers care if I have Math/Econ degree instead of a CS one? <comment><USER2> "Will employers care if I have Math/Econ degree instead of a CS one?" <<< Unless you are pursuing a specific area in computer science then its not necessary to do computer science.These days, certain employers don't look for specific degrees...But if you have a mathematically intense degree, employers will be more flexible in selecting you for assessment/interview.

A computer science degree is more about understanding computers on a theoretical computational level.Computer science is a "subset" of mathematics.I currently finished my second year in CS and from what I've learned, its all about self initiation and how far you want to "dig deep" in this field.

Either way you will gain useful knowledge that can be applied in what ever you want to do.</comment>


Students Should Learn Bleeding-Control Methods to Prepare for School Shootings - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/us/dhs-training-students-mass-casualties.html <comment><USER2> While I can see the benefits, it's hard to fathom why they are not looking at the cause more seriously and just accepting as a fait accompli and say it's going to happen, here's what you need to know.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your reading list? - <AUTHOR> Hey all, I was wondering how do you handle your reading lists.
I found myself constantly having tens of tabs open with interesting articles to read later, interesting project/library on github that I'd like to look into at some point, interesting blogs that I'd like to explore more. And to make the things worse have the same situation on my phone.<p>what systems do you have to easily save links for later consumption? I tried different things like pocket and Instapaper, but didn't really work well enough. In browsers reading lists and bookmarks don't work either since different devices and no tags plus can have loads of duplicates :( <comment><USER2> check the bookmarklet here: [https://pinplz.com/](https://pinplz.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting, thanks for the link, but it doesn't look like a good solution for mobile, seems to be desktop oriented</comment></comment>