How the Varroa Mite's True Diet Was Discovered - <AUTHOR> https://entomologytoday.org/2019/02/21/inside-look-how-varroa-mite-diet-discovered/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see more science reporting like this. I think the authors did a great job of explaining the process of discovery: anomalous findings made them question what was wrong with the current theory -> initial steps to see what could possibly replace the current theory -> verification of their proposed replacement. Plus the picture are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> The imaging in this article is incredible. Worth it even just for that.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a beekeeper, this is my bees' #1 enemy. Understanding Verroa mites better means better protection for our bees.

<comment><USER5> You might already be onto it, but if not, have a look for Randy Oliver and Oxalic acid [1]. Or, more locally for me, this mega thread [2] on homemade treatment strips. They work, they are cheap and so far there is no resistance.

[1][http://scientificbeekeeping.com](http://scientificbeekeeping.com)

[2][https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/10061-oxalic-and- glyceri...](https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/10061-oxalic-and- glycerine/?page=103)

<comment><USER6> If you are an amateur beekeeper and not concerned about the amount of honey you produce there is another way to get rid of Varroa. Just let colonies swarm naturally! Because the old queen goes with the swarm and new one doesn't lay eggs for a few days Varroa mites don't have anywhere to breed. That way their population crashes to manageable levels and colonies survive the winter without dying off. And yes, I did control Varroa this way for years. Obviously this doesn't work on a commercial scale due to colonies swarming just when it's time for them to be productive ;)

<comment><USER7> Now _that_ is an interesting story that I have not seen anywhere.

So if I'm understanding you right, this danger to bees is a sort of hack where our business-needs (namely being able to control what we pollinate and when) cause us to tend these colonies in a way that removes a security precaution (the honey bees "cleaning house" regularly) and these mites happen to be in a great position to shamelessly exploit that precaution and grow beyond bound?

<comment><USER8> You are correct in that the ways we commercially keep bees (our 'business needs') override the mechanisms honeybees evolved for defense against disease.

Swarming is just one of many natural behaviors that enhances the bees' ability to survive. This paper from a prominent bee researcher highlights 20 significant differences between how honeybees evolved to live and how we keep them today, all of which reduce the 'exquisite fit' with their environment:

[https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian- beekeeping](https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Articles like this are one of the main reasons I regret not pursuing a profession in entomology. Excellent article, nicely detailed. I wish I had access to the equipment and facilities used to make this amazing discovery.

</comment><comment><USER10> The structured approach taken by this team to answer their research question ("what does the Varroa feed on?") is exemplary, and inspiring to read about. Thank you for sharing this article!

</comment><comment><USER11> the mite sticking between the bee's exoskeleton plates reminds of a dagger hit under/between the plates of an ironclad knight.

Interesting that no self-cleaning (or mate-cleaning) behavior has emerged. May be, given the bees vision, the attached mite isn't distinguishable from the rest of the bee?

<comment><USER5> It has and is being bred for. It's know as hygienic behaviour. Results vary and it's far from perfect.

You can interrupt whatever that varroa are doing with icing sugar. You shake a cup of bees with icing sugar in there. Anything above 2-3 varroa per cup of bees is the standard treatment threshold. It's horrifying to see 15 fall off a cup of bees from a strong, healthy looking hive. Varroa are awful.

I've just noticed that for first pic in that article is labeled with a scale saying '200mm' presumably it's supposed to be .2mm (I cant get Greek on my phone).

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. The scale of one of the pictures appear to be mis-labeled as 200mm. I believe, based on the other pictures, it should be 200um (micrometres).

<comment><USER12> The article says "200 microns" as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great story, amazing and gruesome pictures! Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER14> That was a good read, thanks. I'm amazed by how we're constantly getting better at discovering the real cause of many things.

<comment><USER15> I'm always amazed at how little we actually know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sort of thing is a good reminder of just how shallow our knowledge of the world often is. There's often this perception that we know so much, but in reality our ignorance is not just vast but also readily at hand. Bees are the core of a multi-billion dollar industry in the developed world, and yet for decades we knew very little about one of the most important aspects of beekeeping (varoa mites).

Also, this is a reminder of the degree to which the modern world is utterly dependent on science and technology and yet at the same time vastly under- invests in critical research. Half a dozen people cracked this mystery. Imagine how much progress we could make if we had better funding for science and research across the board.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, I am assuming that the uptick in the volume of varroa during the August- September time frame might be because of the transition of the summer worker bee to the winter worker bee. The winter bee tends to have more fat, at least that is what I have read. Therefore, there might even be a correlation between the uptick during this time due to the bees developing more fat for the over wintering of the hive and a larger increase of the mite? Could this contribute to less 'over wintering bees' and hence the downfall of the hive due to lack of warmth?

<comment><USER5> Where in the world are you - the uptick relates to the season but I'm unsure which season your pointing to. I've inderstood it to be as follows: Treatment comes out as honey supers go on. Varroa numbers start to grow as brood area expands and more drones are produced (which they prefer). At the end of the season there are a lot of varroa but the brood area starts to shrink. This is disastrous for bees as the percentage of cells with varroa in them is now very high. Deformed wing virus et al start to become very obvious. This is probably the peak in varroa numbers that you refer to. Late autumn or winter arrive, bees are dying as the virus load is too high. Even treatment probably won't work at this stage. The brood is now longer all covered and starts to die. Swarms happen as bees try to abscond from the dying colony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_\(poem\))

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone know how the pictures are made? Are they colorized by hand or is there some algorithm for doing it?

<comment><USER19> Probably drawing a mask boundaries first and messing with the tone balance button inside the mask until achieving the desired tone

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazing scientific work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Oustanding work!

</comment><comment><USER22> Lovely science!

</comment><comment><USER23> Brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER24> So, what unilaterally "bugs" the Varroa Mite?

<comment><USER5> Psuedonscorpians! [http://apicultureconference2016.co.nz/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://apicultureconference2016.co.nz/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Poster-P-F-vanToor-ChelifersVarroa-v2-copy.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Would be a cool use for a cool animal, but the effect of pseudoscorpions was not signifiant in this article. Groups Untreated and with Chelifers having almost the same Varroa counts at the end. No effect in reduction of Varroa is the first conclusion of the article.

<comment><USER5> Yes - they definitely feed on varroa but getting sufficient numbers in the hive for varroa control is the difficulty. I'm away of a trial underway in New Zealand but that's about the extent of my knowledge.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vizflow is an ES6 interactive visualization engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vizflow/vizflow <comment><USER2> > Vizflow is a light-weight library for adding transition effects and > interactive visualizations to HTML5 documents with a simpler design compared > to other popular interactive visualization libraries like D3js.

This. It's not that d3.js is complicated when doing small demos, but it gets REALLY complex when doing anything non-trivial, like UI interaction (select, drag & drop, pan / tilt / zoom,... combined).

I don't know Vizflow yet, but the first paragraph of its description nailed it - will check it out.

<comment><USER2> Checked it out: missing license (both in repository and in source files), couldn't find any docs. Stopped looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Like it, but for stuff like this there is should be always some kind of live demo. A lot of devs underestimate the power of 'quick presentation'

<comment><USER4> He did have some live demos at the bottom of the page. He probably should've put them near the top, but that's being nitpicky: [http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/dannyko/viz...](http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/dannyko/vizflow/blob/master/examples/three_circles_canvas/index.html)

Also the repo has other examples to play with.

<comment><USER5> This example doesn't appear to work at all in firefox 47

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No quick live demos or examples to showcase what it can do.

No homepage/API documentations.

I choose to stick with d3.js.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of web visualisations, so I had to try this out.

Too bad that simple js libraries require a custom build process these days. Why not use a simple js file?

To try out the demo, I had to copy and modify the index.html file so that it includes the pre built js files:

[https://output.jsbin.com/pifogahege](https://output.jsbin.com/pifogahege)

This only works in Firefox. Chrome complains about the mime types Github delivers.

If I wanted to use this library, I would be completely lost on how to go about it.

Looking at the 3 circle demo, the animations are pretty sluggish. Does my PC with 8 cores and a GPU really struggle to move 3 circles around?

Let's try it in pure css:

[https://output.jsbin.com/layotohure](https://output.jsbin.com/layotohure)

Also not perfectly smooth. But feels a tad smoother to me. Not sure.

</comment><comment><USER8> The repo seems to be lacking licence information unfortunately.

<comment><USER9> Lots of developer forget that in the heat of the code battle :-)

I've opened [https://github.com/vizflow/vizflow/issues/2](https://github.com/vizflow/vizflow/issues/2) and asked for a license.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that, I didn't have access to a device to allow me to log in to Github at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for the comments, all. This is still a prototype and not production- ready code yet.

I've added a LICENSE file to the repository since this URL was shared to HN.

The latest example can also be found here:

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

and via GooglePlay at:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.electi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.electionfighter)

For a summary of what we learned from making this example, you can read my LinkedIn post here:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vizflow-testing-via-games- par...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vizflow-testing-via-games-part-i- election-fighter-daniel-korenblum)

Appreciate your interest, your comments are welcome!

Daniel Korenblum

Vizflow author

</comment><comment><USER11>
        Syntax error at line 63 while loading: expected expression, got '>'
         (resolve, reject) => {

</comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome! At Reflect (shameless: [https://reflect.io](https://reflect.io)) we think about "interactive" a bit differently but adding a layer on to the data itself is really smart! We've done some similar stuff on top of D3, I'm excited to dig in to how this library works.

<comment><USER10> Hi all, thanks for the comments and sharing! I just saw this thread. I have added a license file. For examples see the "examples" folder and links in the Readme. The latest example can also be found at:

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

Any comments or questions are welcome!

Daniel Korenblum Vizflow author</comment></comment>


Looking to build portfolio, will freelance for food stamps - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to build a portfolio of projects, and I'm willing to work for really cheap to do it. Unfortunately, the HN freelancer thread doesn't really seem to have many people looking for freelancers, and Elance/Freelancer.com have way too many low bidders from developing nations so I haven't had much success there either.
Skills: Ruby/Rails, Java (&J2EE), C, C++, some PHP & Python
Contact me if interested at username at gmail. Thanks! <comment><USER2> You could try [https://www.whitetruffle.com](https://www.whitetruffle.com). It's meant to be geared towards tech talent - I don't know how much luck there is with this since I'm a designer, dammit, not a developer! But it's got a number of hot looking start-ups on there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely looks interesting, but it seems more oriented towards full-time jobs and not freelancing. Will check it out though, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- How cheap/low are you willing to go? I still think you should try Elance/ODesk. If those don't work, try

a. Freelancer.com b. Guru.com c. PeoplePerHour.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on the project really, but I'd go as low as 10$/hour. Elance/ODesk/Freelancer.com don't seem to really do the trick, I'll check out Guru.com and PeoplePerHour.com, maybe there's some potential there. Thanks!</comment></comment>


The New Linode Cloud: SSDs, Double RAM and much more - <AUTHOR> https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/17/linode-cloud-ssds-double-ram-much-more/ <comment><USER2> Why do I pay Linode $20/month instead of paying DO $5/month(1)?

Because Linode treats their servers like kittens (upgrades, addons/options, support), and DO treats their servers like cattle. There's nothing wrong with the cattle model of managing servers. But I'm not using Chef or Puppet, I just have one server that I use to put stuff up on the internet and host a few services. And Linode treats that one solitary server better than any other VPS host in the world.

(1) I do have one DO box as a simple secondary DNS server, for provider redundancy

<comment><USER3> DO?

<comment><USER4> Digital Ocean - [https://www.digitalocean.com/](https://www.digitalocean.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I forgot to benchmark the disk before I upgraded but here are some simple disk benchmarks on an upgraded linode (the $20 plan, now with SSD)

      $ dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync
      1024+0 records in
      1024+0 records out
      1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.31593 s, 816 MB/s

      $ hdparm -tT /dev/xvda
      /dev/xvda:
       Timing cached reads:   19872 MB in  1.98 seconds = 10020.63 MB/sec
       Timing buffered disk reads: 2558 MB in  3.00 seconds = 852.57 MB/sec

Upgraded cpuinfo model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz

Old cpuinfo model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5520 @ 2.27GHz

CPUs compared: [http://ark.intel.com/compare/75277,40201](http://ark.intel.com/compare/75277,40201)

<comment><USER6> Throughput speed is not everything, in many situations latency is more important. Can you give results for this?

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=512 count=1500 oflag=dsync

I'm getting "6.40264 s, 120 kB/s" on my laptop's SSD, but on a proper server with a RAID card and cache enabled I get "0.187033 s, 4.1 MB/s".

<comment><USER7> dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=512 count=1500 oflag=dsync 768000 bytes (768 kB) copied, 0.3325 s, 2.3 MB/s

<comment><USER8> dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=512 count=1500 oflag=dsync

768000 bytes (768 kB) copied, 0.45329 s, 1.7 MB/s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome News. Competition really pushes companies to please their customers. Ever since Digital Ocean became the new hip, Linode has been pushing harder. My experience with them has been mixed. Forgiving their previous mishaps and the feeling that the level of Customer Service has gone down, they have been decent year long. I wouldn't mind recommending them.

[Edit: Removed the bit about DigitalOcean Plans. If you have Ghostery running, it apparently takes out the html block listing different plans]

<comment><USER10> [https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems pretty fantastic, I am excited to upgrade and think the SSD storage is going to be really helpful for improving the performance of my applications hosted there.

That said, I am not an expert on CPU virtualization but I did notice that the new plans are differently phrased than the old ones here. The old plans all talked about 8 CPU cores with various 1x, 2x priority levels ([https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/09/linode-nextgen-ram- upgrad...](https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/09/linode-nextgen-ram-upgrade/) for examples), while the new plans all talk about 1, 2, etc. core counts.

Could anyone with more expertise here tell me whether this is a sneaky reduction in CPU power for the lower tiered plans, or just a simpler way of saying the same thing as the old plans?

<comment><USER12> Somebody asked this on the blog post, here was the reply from Linode:

If you take the upgrade, you inherit the new plan specs, vcpus and all.

We've greatly reduced the contention on these new machines compared to our old structure, and in testing this new arrangement provides much more consistent CPU time with less potential for steal. We think it's great and totally worth the move, otherwise we wouldn't have done it. These machines are incredibly fast, faster procs, SSDs, the network is incredible, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks like Linode are still leaving the "incredibly cheap tiny box" market to DO. Linode's cheapest option is $20/month, which makes it slightly less useful for the kind of "so cheap you don't even think about it" boxes that DO provide.

<comment><USER14> > the "incredibly cheap tiny box" market

How big is that market, really? I keep a small VPS around for whatever (I like Hetzner), and I'm sure lots of nerds are the same. But for any usage that's even a little bit serious, $20/month is peanuts.

<comment><USER15> What if you want to have several tiny boxes? For example, if you want to host a mail server as a separate box for security, that's another $20/month. Or what if you need to use a different Linux distro for something? Another $20/month. A few examples like that add up fast.

<comment><USER16> Containers, e.g. through Docker, are good for that kind of thing.

<comment><USER17> Not with the tiny amounts of memory offered at that price. 2GB is very easy to burn through in short order. Anything less than 8 feels really claustrophobic.

I've always needed memory more than disk. Really wish I could pay some of these providers just for a one off increase of a few extra gigs of memory without tiering up which includes an entirely higher level of storage that I will not ever use.

<comment><USER18> Some types of sites need disk more than RAM, and that market is really weird right now too.

I run a service that could get away with only 8GB of RAM, but definitely needs at least 2TB of space, plus plenty of room to grow.

<comment><USER19> When numbers start getting up into that territory, I tend to look at the discount _dedicated_ servers.

WholeSaleInternet for example, currently has a Quad-Core Xeon E3 1230 for sale at $49/month with 5 IP Addresses. 1GBPS connection with 10TB bandwidth with 8GB of RAM / 250GB of Hard Drive.

If that 2TB Hard Drive is really needed, you can compromise on the CPU and go for a consumer-grade AMD Fx-4100 (Quad-Core AMD) from Datashack for $55 / month, with 5 IP Addresses, 8GB RAM / 2TB of Hard Drive space, 10TB of Bandwidth on 1Gbps

Most web applications seem to be Disk heavy or RAM Heavy... I rarely see CPU- heavy applications. So the AMD Fx-4100 can be good enough (its far far better than an Atom, although it isn't as good as a modern E3 Xeon).

I've never had the need for it, but since Dedicated Servers often come with 5 or 13 IP Addresses, and they can be as cheap as ~$60/month realistically... I think its better to just install Proxmox on a single dedicated box and spin up your own private VMs if you are honestly going to need multiple VMs.

<comment><USER18> Exactly, for that situation, I ended up going with an entirely overpowered dedicated server with an E5 and 32GB of RAM. I shopped around, but was very conscience of network quality, quality of support I'd get, and was still able to get away with paying about $250/mo, which is very reasonable compared to any kind of cloud offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still prefer OVH.com [http://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps- classic.xml](http://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-classic.xml)

for $7 you get: 2 cores 2GB RAM

for 10$ you get: 3 cores 4GB RAM

They don't have SSD, but SSD doesn't do everything, I prefer more ram.

EDIT: If some of you don't know OVH, it's because its new in America, but its not some cheap company, it's a European company that is very successful there. And just recently created a datacenter in North America. (I used to live in France, and have known them for some years).

<comment><USER21> Can you run [https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench](https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench) and see how the performance is to compare?

<comment><USER22> Neat script! Here are some low-end results for comparison.

BuyVM 128MB ram, 15GB disk, 15USD/year

      CPU model:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5520 @ 2.27GHz
      Number of cores: 1
      CPU frequency:  2266.746 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 128 MB
      Total amount of swap: 128 MB
      System uptime:   39 days, 22:35,
      I/O speed:  89.9 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 12.89s
      Download 100MB file: 50.0MB/s

QuickPacket: 128MB ram, 20GB disk, 15USD/year

      CPU model:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3470 @ 2.93GHz
      Number of cores: 1
      CPU frequency:  2933.228 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 128 MB
      Total amount of swap: 128 MB
      System uptime:   48 days, 6:07,
      I/O speed:  129 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 6.40s
      Download 100MB file: 1.14MB/s

A good aggregator for low-end deals is lowendstock.com .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Benchmarking using wrk the smallest linode (1024 now 2048) serving a page from an untuned Rails application using nginx/passenger getting almost no other traffic. Hard to compare of course given the various other factors, but produced slightly lower performance after the upgrade. Serving a page from nginx directly (no Rails) had no appreciable difference in performance, I guess the Rails web serving is more vCPU bound?

Before Upgrade:

      Running 30s test @ http://...
        5 threads and 20 connections
        Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
          Latency   308.91ms  135.01ms 985.82ms   80.00%
          Req/Sec    14.15      4.61    24.00     66.36%
        2206 requests in 30.00s, 28.51MB read
      Requests/sec:     73.53
      Transfer/sec:      0.95MB

After Upgrade:

      Running 30s test @ http://..
        5 threads and 20 connections
        Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
          Latency   321.74ms  102.45ms 957.74ms   87.32%
          Req/Sec    12.02      2.18    17.00     80.75%
        1858 requests in 30.01s, 24.03MB read
      Requests/sec:     61.92
      Transfer/sec:    819.98KB

<comment><USER24> It depends on the task. If your Rails app hits the database a lot, memory availability and disk speed will matter a lot, which favors the new Linode style. If your app just does one small query per page and then gets on with its work, then probably CPU is your most important thing (since most of your time will be spent on app logic, runtime housekeeping and rendering templates).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> About a week ago, I wrote a comment in another Linode-related thread asking how the new usage patterns that hourly billing encourages might affect CPU contention. At the time, I received 11 upvotes but no replies. Apparently, quite a few people were interested in my question but had no useful conjectures to share.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7564764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7564764)

Now it's obvious what Linode's answer to that question is: _Lower "burstable" CPU for lower plans._

The $20 plan used to be able to burst to 8 cores for short periods, but now it only has access to 2 vcores. The "guaranteed" processing power is probably higher with the newer CPUs, but at the expense of short-term burst performance.

Another minor detail that I find interesting is that the transfer cap for the $20 plan has been increased to 3TB, whereas the $40 plan still gets 4TB. Apart from the transfer cap plateau-ing at the extreme high end, this is the first time that Linode has broken its 11-year-old policy of "pay X times as much money, get X times as much RAM/disk/transfer".

</comment><comment><USER26> Most interesting part in this great upgrade is that they went from 8CPU setup to 2CPU setup. But yeah - 2x more RAM, SSDs will guarantee that I'm not going to switch anytime soon. Sadly I need to wait a week until this will be available in London.

<comment><USER27> "vCPU"

In a virtualized environment, the number of "CPUs" you can see is probably not a great way to measure how much computing power you have.

<comment><USER28> On a host that's mostly idle and where there are no CPU usage caps, seeing 2 cores instead of 8 is a pretty serious drawback if you use Gentoo on Linode like I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish Linode (or anyone else other than Amazon) provides a reasonable Plan[1] with GPUs on them.

[1]: Amazon charges $2 an hour thats about $1500 a month.

<comment><USER30> Here is a list with five other companies:

[http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu-cloud-computing- services.ht...](http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu-cloud-computing- services.html)

<comment><USER29> Thanks for pointing it out. I should have known better considering that I am in the space :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Linode's recent upgrades are awesome, but people are very quick to forget the period where they were being hacked left and right and didn't communicate with their customers until a defensive blog post weeks after the fact. No matter how good the servers may be, Linode should be a non-starter for anybody who cares about the security of their droplet; and, if you don't, why would you pay Linode's premium fee?

<comment><USER32> Ask DigitalOcean if they're wiping data on droplet cancellation and snapshot deletion yet. They've fucked that one up several times since the inception of the company and each time get a little more defensive about it. For a while there, I could spin up a droplet and get database passwords, keys, data, all day long from the previous owner. Then they told the guy that reported it that he was mistaken, and basically lied in a blog post and said no user data was at risk.

I'm told that's just the beginning of security faults in their platform, attributable to being a younger company and discovering these things for the first time; I have been personally shown evidence that DigitalOcean's platform initially trusted a hidden field called "userid" and allowed a user to operate on any other user without authorization, including restoring images, shutting down droplets, and so on. Their system at first had no protection against spoofed packets exiting a droplet, either, so ARP poisoning the gateway was (and possibly remains) a viable attack.

Linode is far more mature, obviously.

Every provider has security issues. It's how they rectify and move forward that should concern you. Watching DigitalOcean react to being informed that the issue they got burned on once had reappeared basically told me to _never_ use their services.

Also, and I actually consider this very important and not a grammatical nit, Linode doesn't sell droplets. They sell virtual servers. You're asking for a Pepsi from Coca-Cola. You might consider this a minor nit, but it's actually a serious confusion issue that I already see happening.

Allow me to promise you -- not predict, promise -- that DigitalOcean will be compromised just as badly. It's _going_ to happen. It's a matter of when and how they react.

<comment><USER31> I don't see why your (agreeable) sentiment about Digital Ocean affects the fact that Linode is bad at security and customer interaction. We can always avoid both.

I didn't mean to use the word "droplet," so I'm sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER32> That's certainly your prerogative, but avoiding a provider simply based on security issues will eventually leave you with nobody to host your services. Nature of the game. You simply mitigate and plan accordingly.

<comment><USER33> Sure you can claim that getting hacked is "nature of the game" \- but that's not the real issue.

The issue was with how they handled the public disclosure of the hack. Instead of immediately alerting their clients that there has been an issue (so that - as you say - people could take mitigating actions) they stalled on giving information and tried to cover up the whole fiasco. This should give people ZERO confidence in their moral integrity.

If you run a service like Linode or DO, you need to provide certain guarantees on disclosure of security failures and maybe get an externally audit from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> VPSBench result:

Before

\</comment><comment>-

      CPU model:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           L5520  @ 2.27GHz
      Number of cores: 8
      CPU frequency:  2266.788 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 988 MB
      Total amount of swap: 255 MB
      System uptime:   8 days, 12:03,
      I/O speed:  69.9 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 8.96s
      Download 100MB file: 47.2MB/s

After

\</comment><comment>

      CPU model:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
      Number of cores: 2
      CPU frequency:  2800.086 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 1993 MB
      Total amount of swap: 255 MB
      System uptime:   2 min,
      I/O speed:  638 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 5.10s
      Download 100MB file: 146MB/s

Test: [https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench](https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench)

<comment><USER35> Here is DigitalOcean's $5/month plan:

      CPU model:  QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.0
      Number of cores: 1
      CPU frequency:  2299.998 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 491 MB
      Total amount of swap: 0 MB
      System uptime:   276 days, 5:04,
      I/O speed:  253 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 7.83s
      Download 100MB file: 56.0MB/s

Here is Vultr's $5/month plan:

      CPU model:  Vultr Virtual CPU 2
      Number of cores: 1
      CPU frequency:  3399.994 MHz
      Total amount of RAM: 490 MB
      Total amount of swap: 509 MB
      System uptime:   28 days, 3:15,
      I/O speed:  485 MB/s
      Bzip 25MB: 3.17s
      Download 100MB file: 58.2MB/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Rackspace cloud customer here… These Linode upgrades are very tempting to entice me to switch.

I get I might not be their target market (small business with about $1000/month on IaaS spending) but there are a couple things preventing me from doing so: 1) $10/month size suitable for a dev instance. 2) Some kind of scalable file storage solution with CDN integration – like RS CloudFiles/Akamai or AWS S3/Cloudfront or block storage to attach to an individual server.

I guess you get what you pay for… infrastructure components and flexibility AWS > RS > Linode > DO which roughly matches the price point.

<comment><USER37> I'm in a similar boat. I use Rackspace for their servers and CDN, and Linode is definitely starting to look nice. It could actually be cheaper to go with Linode and a separate CDN provider, such as MaxCDN. MaxCDN has some of the features that are missing from Cloud Files, which is real nice too. The main thing holding me back is the time it takes to migrate. I know they target the higher end, but hopefully RackSpace will readjust their prices as well at some point.

<comment><USER36> Although, I guess there is nothing to stop me from running servers on Linode and continuing to use RS for Cloud Files/Akamai -- except for network speed of course. Linode can deploy to Dallas though, where I use RS so maybe the network speed won't be a big problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Congratulation on Linode

I stopped being a customer since migrating to DO but my needs were really small

But I think their strategy of keeping the price and increasing capabilities are good. Between $5 and $20 is a "big" difference for one person (still, it's a day's lunch), for a company it's nothing.

However, I would definitely go to Linode for CPU/IO intensive tasks. Amazon sucks at these (more benchmarks between the providers are of course welcome)

</comment><comment><USER21> Holy crap this is awesome. Good job guys at Linode. I said I would switch if the prices dropped about 25% because RAM was pricey.... So now I have to switch.

</comment><comment><USER39> I would love to see them still keep all those old disks and sell me some huge, cheap, and slow storage on them.

</comment><comment><USER40> So now they match DigitalOcean prices but offer slightly more SSD space for each plan. I wonder what DO answer to this would be. They haven't changed their pricing for quite a while.

<comment><USER41> DigitalOcean still beats Linode on price as half the time I don't need a 2GB server but I do want to keep servers separate (multiple 512s at $5 is better for me than 1 2GB).

<comment><USER21> I need 2gb - 4gb servers and DO's quality has decreased since they've grown so much.

<comment><USER42> Quality decreased? How? Please elaborate.

<comment><USER43> I would love to hear why as well! Our quality and stability have significantly improved over the last year and as a co-founder of DO, I would like to understand what specific issues you faced. Feel free to shoot me an email directly (email@example.com) to take this conversation offline.

<comment><USER21> Mainly around spinning up instances and network latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sometimes i just wish the pricing system would get better as you go larger.

What is the difference between the 16GB - 96GB Plan and a dedicated server? And why would i pay 3x the price? The advantage of those who offer Cloud / VPS and Dedicated Servers Hosting company is they can mix and match depending usage. If you are actually building an any sort of infrastructure with Linode those large box are extremely expensive.

</comment><comment><USER42> So this makes Lindode practically on par with DO's $20 plan. Up till now $20 plan at DO was better now its just the choice of the brand.

But here is one thing that DO provides and I think Linode too should, you get the choice to spin up a $5 instance anytime in your account for any small project or a test instance which you cannot on Linode.

<comment><USER45> Doesn't hourly billing address that issue? Linode now offers it.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, that's the impression I got with hourly billing as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Bummer, they're taking away 8 cores for the cheap plans and replacing it with 2. Does anyone know if the new processors will offset this difference? I don't know the specs of the processors.

Linode's announcements usually come in triples...I'm excited for number three. Let's hope its some kind of cheap storage service.

<comment><USER48> Cores presented to your machine by the hypervisor do not have a 1 to 1 relationship with physical cores. In the world of virtual machines, how many cores you have is meaningless.

For example, my VMWare server is a single 8 core processor, but my VM's only see 2 cores, as that's the way I prefer it and I believe VMWare recommends this or even one core. Those 2 virtual cores can access all 8 physical cores.

The only real way to find out your cpu performance is to run a benchmark.

<comment><USER49> If you had a host machine with 8 cores, and a virtual machine with 2 cores, the virtual machine will only possibly use 25% of the CPU resources of the host machine -- one vCPU cannot be schedule in parallel across more than one physical core.

However it is advisable to minimize the vCPUs in VMs because it greatly enhances scheduling -- if a VM has 8 vCPUs allocated to it, with some hypervisors that lack advanced co-scheduled it won't be scheduled until 8 cores are available, and in some situations it will sit on 8 cores during its duration whether it is only using 1 or all. If you have a large number of smaller VMs, scheduling can greatly improves.

This isn't true for all hypervisors and situations. You mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > Linodes are now SSD. This is not a hybrid solution – it's fully native SSD > servers using battery-backed hardware RAID. No spinning rust! And, no > consumer SSDs either – we're using only reliable, insanely fast, datacenter- > grade SSDs that won't slow down over time. These suckers are not cheap.

[http://techreport.com/review/26058/the-ssd-endurance- experim...](http://techreport.com/review/26058/the-ssd-endurance-experiment- data-retention-after-600tb)

Not to slam what Linode is doing here, and I'm sure there are probably lots of great reasons to buy datacentre-grade SSDs, but just thought I'd point out that slowing down over time (or data integrity issues) are not really consumer-grade problems any more :-)

<comment><USER51> What has changed? (Not advocacy; I'm curious.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could someone please explain what improvements can we get from SSD for web applications ?

I know it would read files faster, but in most cases reading a couple of PHP files is not such a big improvement.

My guess would be maybe databases ? Read time improvement for MySQL ?

</comment><comment><USER52> Updated benchmark results with 2GB vs 4GB vs 8GB vs 16gb plans from Linode vs DigitalOcean [https://blog.centminmod.com/346](https://blog.centminmod.com/346). Definitely Linode has the faster cpus and disk i/o as you move up in plans >2GB. 16GB plans are pretty close though if you look at subtests in UnixBench and ignore the subtests affected by different base Linux Kernel versions used.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great indeed. I'm happy Linode did this. I ran below command 10 times and used the average below:

dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync

Linode: 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.09063 s, 985 MB/s D.O: 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 3.23998 s, 331 MB/s

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=512 count=1500 oflag=dsync

Linode: 768000 bytes (768 kB) copied, 0.478633 s, 1.6 MB/s D.O: 768000 bytes (768 kB) copied, 1.01716 s, 755 kB/s

</comment><comment><USER53> I have mixed feelings about this. We're in the process of moving from Linode to Rackspace but haven't flicked the switch just yet - was planning to this weekend.

Our Linode server (16 GB plan) has been performing terrible lately wrt I/O (compared to, say, a Macbook Pro running the same computations), and we decided we've had enough. I guess we'll have to compare the two after the upgrade and decide.

<comment><USER54> Did you ever put in a support ticket? I've had I/O performance issues with Linode boxes before and it's always been quickly fixed when they are notified.

<comment><USER53> I did, they switched us to a new machine - no change. Their support was great, but the hardware needed to catch up. Perhaps this upgrade will help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> There's similar and then there's alike. I guess it makes comparison easy, but imitation certainly must be the sincerest form of flattery:

Compare the look and feel of [https://www.linode.com/pricing/](https://www.linode.com/pricing/) and [https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER56> And DO's looks like a million other plan pages that already exist. It's not some unique design to DO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Higher specs sound really nice, but on HN I see people commenting on the ease of DO's admin tools. How does Linode's compare?

<comment><USER58> The interface looks a little more clunky, but it works, and it is easy to work with.

<comment><USER59> It's not clunky it's more "dated" (and very functional).

It also does a fair bit more so apples to oranges a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I would love to see Linode going to large HDD drives option for storage as well. I am dying to find really inexpensive cloud provider with cheap data space (SATA is fine), reasonable bandwidth but low cpu and ram and Linode style support/caring. Give server with ~500 GB hard drive, 2 TB outgoing transfer, 1 core and 1 GB ram for ~$20-30 and I am all yours.

</comment><comment><USER61> I love linode. I switched from slicehost for its 32bitness back in the day, stayed for the awesome culture and independence. Slice host got sold to rack space.

However, I am seriously considering a move to Amazon Web services for one main reason: I need to decouple the hard drive space from the ram. The hard drive space is so expensive on linodes!!

</comment><comment><USER62> Cool news, but their website now has the same lame design as DigitalOcean. I liked the old site layout better.

<comment><USER63> Looks like library.linode.com has the same format, and is still the same fantastic resource.

I'm embarrassed to say that once upon a time I used library.linode.com to help walk me through my first Linux server setup... running on Digital Ocean. Yes, I felt like a complete douchebag. I _wanted_ to use Linode but I was one of those $5/month people.

However it left me with a sense of obligation to give Linode business someday when I could justify/afford doing so. It looks like Linode just gave me the opportunity to do that.

<comment><USER64> Yeah, the library is really excellent - easy to follow and very extensive. It's smart of them to do paid crowdsourcing to create the articles.

It's cool of Linode to make the library available to everyone, not just customers.

<comment><USER65> DO does the same thing, does it not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> A nice reward for those of us who have been using Linode from before they even had x86_64 images.

<comment><USER67> Yes. I'm actually looking at upgrading my server to a 64bit kernel just so i can take advantage of this. I've been on them so long i'm still a 32bit userland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> im really impressed by their new CPU specs. from experience those aren't cheap and it's possibly the fastest CPU out in the market. combined with the SSDs, it may be that Linode currently is the fastest of any cloud hosting right now.

</comment><comment><USER69> I would probably move back from Digital Ocean if they allow a 10$/mo plan.

I know that's not a big price difference, but some website really don't need a lot of resources. they work well on D.O's 5$ server, and I have really a lot of them.

</comment><comment><USER70> I resized a 1024 instance to 2048 last night and it looks like it is already running on the new processors (from /proc/cpuinfo): model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz

Should I upgrade? Do I want 2 x RAM for 1/2 vCPUs? =)

</comment><comment><USER71> I notice that Linode talked a good bit about their bandwidth and included outbound bandwidth in their pricing model which DO does not. I wonder if DO has a similar model or if transfer capacity the only thing you have control over.

<comment><USER72> I do not understand the difference between outbound bandwidth vs the transfer. Can you explain a bit please?

<comment><USER73> If you read below the price tables you'll get a good hint:

> What happens if I exceed my monthly transfer quota?

> You will be invoiced $0.10 for each GB over your pooled network transfer > quota. Please note that all inbound traffic is free and will not count > against your quota.

Bandwidth is the maximum Mbps that your VPS can spill out at any moment, whereas transfer is the maximum amount of per-month cumulative traffic that you can send out before incurring on additional traffic costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is really a fantastic upgrade. I've been hosting with Linode for a few months now and been very happy with them. I run a relatively transfer intense SaaS app and a 50% transfer increase makes quite an improvement.

</comment><comment><USER75> I was looking into alternatives but now I'll stick with them, I can't find another cloud provider whose stuff works so well.

edit: I just finished the migration, my disk speed test is through the roof, free ram is phenomenal!

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm actually a little unhappy, it looks like they reduced the CPU count for my $20/mo instance. At this point there's basically no reason to stay with them now.

<comment><USER77> tl;dr: If you had 40 VMs on 8 cores before, you have 10 on 2 cores now. It is the same ratio of VMs:Cores but with stronger processors.

Long version: "If you take the upgrade, you inherit the new plan specs, vcpus and all.

We've greatly reduced the contention on these new machines compared to our old structure, and in testing this new arrangement provides much more consistent CPU time with less potential for steal. We think it's great and totally worth the move, otherwise we wouldn't have done it. These machines are incredibly fast, faster procs, SSDs, the network is incredible, etc."

From Caker's comment on the blog. It seems that this was done to reduce fighting over core and provided more consistent fair availability of processing power when they tested it b/t VMs.

<comment><USER78> Makes a lot of sense.

If your hosts have, say, dual 4-way CPUs, and you're giving your VMs 8 vCPUs, then a single VM can execute per clock cycle since a VM needs all of it's vCPUs made available to the guest OS. With 8 VMs, that means one VM is executing every 8th clock cycle.

If you "downgrade" those VMs to 2 vCPUs, then 4 VMs can execute per clock cycle, and that VM can now execute every other clock cycle instead of waiting 8 cycles. More work gets done, even though the amount of CPUs has gone down.

Since most VMs are probably executing work that only has 1-2 threads, then there's no loss from lack of parallelism. Remember, a VM needs all cores available, regardless of how many threads need to be executed.

Of course, some workloads do need that many threads, and so balancing number of cores vs. available execution time becomes a little more tricky. but based on what you shared, it sounds like Linode took a closer look and came to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER79> _If your hosts have, say, dual 4-way CPUs, and you 're giving your VMs 8 vCPUs, then a single VM can execute per clock cycle since a VM needs all of it's vCPUs made available to the guest OS._

This seems wrong to me. We're talking about virtualization; technologically, it is absolutely feasibly to have only one physical CPU running a VM even if the VM sees multiple virtual CPUs. And it seems like having this capability in virtualization software from the very beginning is really a no-brainer.

Evidence for your claim, please ;-)

<comment><USER78> Certainly. Rather than retype the wheel though, I'm going to rely on some various posts:

Gabe spells it out pretty well here: [http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/how- too-many-vcpus-can-nega...](http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/how-too-many- vcpus-can-negatively-affect-your-performance/)

In a previous environment of mine, we ran dual socket, 4-way CPUs. VMs were configured with a mix of 1, 2, and 4 vCPU VMs. Our VMs appeared slow, especially on our 4-way systems. However, CPU utilization was low. More digging revealed that our co-stop values were high, meaning that the system couldn't schedule execution time effectively, meaning the VM had to sit in a READY state, which kept CPU utilization low.

Our first fix was to rebalance our cluster, so that 1 and 2 vCPU VMs were relegated to their own set of hosts, and our 4 vCPU VMs executed on their own set. Instantly, out co-stop values dropped, and CPU utilization rates went up...they were now doing work!

VMware briefly talks about the issue here: [http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&doc...](http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1005362)

If you'd really like the nuts and bolts of it, then those can be found here: [https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere- CP...](https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-CPU-Sched- Perf.pdf)

The VMware co-scheduler has improved over the years, but I still read (The "Mastering vSphere 5.5" book by Scott Lowe carries a warning on this as well) that carefully balancing vCPUs is a must in a VMware environment. (Again, I don't believe Linode uses VMware, so I can't say with any certainty that KVM or Xen exhibit this behavior.)

So why can't we run 8 vCPUs on one physical one? Because while they're virtual to some extent, they're not completely abstracted. Anytime the hypervisor has to perform a translation between the guest OS and the host, a performance penalty is incured. So while the hypervisor may abstract scheduling, it reveals as much of the physical CPU to the guest VM as possible. Here's a little blurb from an older VMware manual explaining a bit of the difference: [http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx- vcenter/index.jsp?topic...](http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx- vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.resourcemanagement.doc_41/managing_cpu_resources/c_understanding_cpu_virtualization.html)

CPU virtualization =/= emulation

For this reason, (again, at least in a VMware environment) we can't give a VM more vCPUs than exist pCPUs to align them to.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER80> Fortunately, Linode runs Xen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> DO's biggest problem is their lack of "zero-downtime snapshot backup and upgrading". i've not used Linode but anyone know if theirs is any different?

<comment><USER81> Upgrades/downgrades requires transferring all your data from one server to another - so that means downtime. The bigger the server, the more downtime in transferring.

As for backups, Linode backups seem to get a bad reputation. They do take a snapshot of a running instance - but reports from the forums indicate that they regularly fail, leaving you with a missing backup at some points. The only way of restoring a backup is to deploy that backup as a new server.

I'd recommend avoiding Linode backups and doing your own.

<comment><USER68> upgrades for ram and storage does not have to have any downtime. same for snapshots, through LVM/ZFS, they can be nearly instant in most cases. it just seems like DO have not been able to figure this out for whatever reasons.

<comment> grey-area Linode does not offer pain-free upgrades - your files are physically copied to another size of box, not just allocated more resources on the existing box. The bigger your files, the longer it'll take (around 30 mins usually).

I agree it would be nice to do upgrades in place but presumably they have very good reasons for not doing so. Are you aware of any provider which does this in a seamless way? I'm not really sure how they'd do it, particularly for RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Big shame the new $20 plan now only offers 2 cores versus 8 with the current plan. For my workloads, I don't need 2GB RAM or SSD disks, I just need the cores :(

<comment><USER83> Interestingly, I had the opposite reaction. I plan on running node.js applications on Linode, and as node cannot automatically take advantage of multiple cores (and even manually the support is experimental), the announcement of vertically scaled but horizontally contracted CPU cores was very exciting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Wow, that's beautiful. Currently I'm a DO customer (10$ plan), and if they had a 10$ plan I'd make the switch instantly.

</comment><comment><USER85> Semi-related: does anyone know of any good (but still fairly cheap) providers doing Atom C2750/C2758 servers yet?

</comment><comment><USER86> Shall we call this the DigialOcean effect?

<comment><USER87> sigh... just put 12 droplets in digitalocean last week. now thinking of switching back...

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> The specs for $20 is same for DO and Linode excepting for the 8GB extra HDD on Linde.

</comment><comment><USER89> This is nice to see. SSD has gotten ridiculously cheap lately.

</comment><comment><USER90> awesome, linode or DO, if you're small or media companies, no other options should be considered at all, even AWS or Google Cloud.

</comment><comment><USER91> Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is now available on Linode too.

</comment><comment><USER92> wow EC2 instance free plan :

$ dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync

1024+0 records in

1024+0 records out

1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 35.8268 s, 30.0 MB/s

<comment><USER93> Yeah, AWS doesn't have the best speed to drive, though if you have money, you can specify how many IOPS you want... you just have to pay for your declared use every hour whether you're using it or not. It's also kinda hard to predict if you're not familiar with that kind of thing.

Note that on AWS your hard drive isn't on the machine running your VM. If you want to test local disk speed, do it in /mnt, where local disk storage is mounted... but remember that data stored there won't persist if you turn your instance off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> ohhh yesss. DO is good for some locations like Southeast Asia but loving this upgrade for my London and Tokyo Linodes

</comment><comment><USER95> Without FreeBSD support, it means nothing to me.

</comment><comment><USER96> These upgrades are impressive but they are a bit too late to the game. DO still has these advantages besides the cheap monthly price:

\- DO has excellent and easy to understand API \- Step by step guides on setting up and running anything \- Minimal and simple

To entice me, it's no longer just a matter of price, DO has extra value added, largely due to their simplicity.

<comment><USER32> You mean like linode.com/api/ and library.linode.com?

<comment><USER96> yeah it's not as obvious and simple like DO's REST calls. shame I never discovered this while I Was with linode but it wouldn't have caught my attention any how like how DO did with their simplicity.

now I definitely don't think there's much linode can do further to entice me unless they matched digital ocean's pricing lower than 0.03/hr

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Goodbye, Digital Ocean!

<comment><USER97> You can downvote as much as you want, but having faster nodes from a long- established company, which doesn't keep your old images available to new customers to peek in, beats DO! I've been with DO since they launched and I can't say they are one of the more reliable services I've dealt with!

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Does any of LINode or DigitalOcean offer plans without any SSD? I couldn't find any.

I just want to install some personal projects there for which even SSD's are overkill...

<comment><USER24> Overkill never hurt anybody. Would you really want to ditch the SSD even if no other numbers changed at all? Even if you don't need it, I don't see why it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER98> It's just overkill to me to pay $20 a month for this when I expect a non-SSD plan would be half as cheap, if not more.

<comment><USER24> You can go with Digital Ocean or one of the other providers in the $5/mo range if price is your real concern here. That's what they're there for. No need to go through the indirection of talking about SSDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Do you know cheaper alternatives? Like DigitalOcean, as @catinsocks suggests</comment>


Ask HN: Why have we not been outsourced (yet)? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>IT jobs are easier to outsource than many other jobs who require physical presence. Yet, we are still earning a fairly decent salary and the outsourcing seems to have stopped at the lower end of the IT value chain. Why have we not been outsourced yet and will this change in the future? <comment><USER2> Communication. People think that software is a coding problem, but for anything non-trivial, communication is a far bigger bottleneck. The amount of code on a project is O(n) with number of developers, but the amount of communication required is O(n^2). Anything that makes coding cheaper at the expense of making communication less efficient becomes a net loss at scale.

This is why engineers who can communicate effectively make several times more money than engineers who can't.

<comment><USER3> Exactly!

I was doing research at a large European bank that has a lot of development outsourced. The project management primarily located at their HQ in Europe while the development is mostly in India.

They have had to resort to moving over a fair few people from India to their HQ as the communication just doesn't work as well otherwise. There is simply no replacing face-to-face communication.

The Communication has the be incredibly specific when outsourcing, not to mention the time difference which carries another set of issues. Both contribute to communication issues, at which point it may simply be better to do it locally, or at least move contractors over from outsourcing location to your HQ.

Remote work is popular right now but the value of just being able to walk over to a colleague to discuss a problem should not be underestimated.

<comment><USER4> I don't agree on the face-to-face part. Remote work does not predetermine bad communication. It IS correlated because most of people that do attempt it do it in this outsourcing style. If you have a company-wide remote-first culture your communication can be as good if not better than traditional arrangements.

<comment><USER3> You certainly have a point. Remote work doesn't have to have bad communication but there are barriers to communicating and if the organization is not set up to properly handle the barriers it can cause issues.

Outsourcing to a different country in a different time zone with entirely different management styles is asking for communication trouble.

A company built on remote work from the start seems to be more likely to succeed with remote work than one who has adopted it kind of ad hoc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Outsourcing has its fair share if disadvantages. It happens a lot, mind you; not remotely every company has its own IT department, builds its own website, etc. But if it's part of your core business, you probably want some direct control over it and not be at the mercy of other companies. And that means hiring the right expertise.

Whether to outsource or not is an important strategic decision that depends on how important the task is to your core business, what kind of expertise you've got in house, and how well you can guarantee the quality of that expertise. But in the right circumstances, having this in your own company gives you more control at a lower cost than if you outsource it.

Then there's offshoring, of course, which is outsourcing to a cheaper country. This was popular 10 years ago because from a management perspective, because of the lower cost per hour, it seemed to be cheaper. But if it takes more time, you lose that advantage. Most companies have finally come to understand that offshoring means you import a big communication overhead, and you hand over quite a lot of control over the quality of the project to a party that is not always capable of delivering the quality you need. Fixing the mistakes takes a lot of time and money.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's just a few factors:

– Security: possible to do background checks on citizens of your own country, easier to hold them responsible, less chance of rogue employee, etc.

– Communication problems: both in terms of poor communication skills being more apparent in limited telecommuting communication channels, and cultural differences (different norms of subordination, etc.). Language barriers and time zone differences also go here.

– "Outsourcing" is a misnomer for what you describe, and has a poor reputation for a reason. Turns out hiring cheap incompetent sweatshop workers using an intermediary/broker is apparently not a good idea if you want a decent result. And quality workers are not as cheap as you'd expect in their home countries because they are a rare breed globally.

– Telecommuting on the other hand, by which I mean hiring individual contractors to work remotely, can work out pretty well if you do quality control in-house. It will surely become more popular.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps lack of cost pressure.

I see that Europeans are now increasingly outsourcing more: likely driven by cost pressures.</comment>


Polymer 1.0 is released by Google (Production Ready) - <AUTHOR> http://www.polymer-project.org

<comment><USER2> Is the site really unresponsive for anyone else? It seems like I have to click a lot of things twice to get the click to register and there is always a noticeable delay after the click waiting for the next page/view to load.</comment>


China warms to idea of four more years of Trump presidency - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-15/china-warms-to-idea-of-four-more-years-of-trump-presidency <comment><AUTHOR> See also:

* Opinion | China's Man in Washington, Named Trump - The New York Times [1]

* Chuan Jianguo, Build-the-Country Trump,Red star Captain. - YouTube [2]

* Why do so many Chinese people call Donald Trump Chuan Jianguo(川建国)? - Quora [3]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/opinion/sunday/trump- chin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/opinion/sunday/trump-china-john- bolton-book.html)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_Ait3Es9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_Ait3Es9k)

[3] [https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Chinese-people-call- Don...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-Chinese-people-call-Donald-Trump- Chuan-Jianguo-%E5%B7%9D%E5%BB%BA%E5%9B%BD)</comment>


Bayes, Bletchley, JN-25 and a 'modern' optimization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/07/bayes-bletchley-jn-25-and-modern.html

<comment><USER2> Good to see my little town frequenting Hacker News so often :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent article.</comment>


Guide to Website Wireframing and Tools - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/website-wireframing/ <comment><USER2> I have been through so many of these tools - creating a really good wireframing/prototyping solution is obviously not a simple task..

Been looking for an alternative to Omnigraffle, mostly due to its lack in the prototyping department.

Really loved the way Mockingbird handled this but the nativeness and user community of Omnigraffle still makes it hard to beat..

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a shame that Fireworks gets mentioned only in the context of the "Dragnet Website Wireframes Kit for Adobe Fireworks". It's a great application in CS4 and even better in CS5 version. Highly recommended!</comment>


Contract workers in the US – what are you doing for health insurance? - <AUTHOR> I'm a senior engineer and would like to return to doing contract work.  The wife is worried about health insurance options however (options could be too limited, too expensive etc.)
So what are the successful contractors on this site using for health insurance?  Is Obamacare a long term system now, or could it be scrapped if the Republicans get in?
Thanks for any info. <comment><USER2> Obamacare is not that bad.

Obamacare rates are not far from what a private employer with a moderate number of employees would pay, and if your income is low in a particular year, the subsidies can get you to where you are paying $20 a month or so. If your income is unpredictable you get the subsidy first and can then pay the difference when you have the money.

The only plans that make sense to get on an Obamacare exchange are the "bronze" high deductable plans. If you look at the difference between those and the lower deductable plans the difference is pretty much the amount of the difference in the deductable, which is what you expect from adverse selection theory.

If you are having a good year in terms of money, make sure to fully fund a Health Savings Account because that has the same tax benefits as an IRA, you can spend the money like IRA money when you retire, plus you can use it to pay your health care expenditures NOW.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. If the Republicans get in can they scrap Obamacare? Don't want to make a big life change assuming it'll be there only to have it disappear shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are generally in good health then you might want to consider catastrophic insurance. Something that would cover you in the event you were in a car accident or suffered a heart attack etc.

A doctors visit for things like a sore throat or flu is around $30 bucks. Typically that might be a co-pay so it's a wash. What most folks want/need is to be protected if something crazy happens and that's where a catastrophic insurance plan can help.

It's typically less expensive than a full blown medical plan. Last time I had one was about 8 years ago and if I remember correctly it was around $1200 a year and covered me for any emergencies up to 250k or something like that.

I can't comment on Obamacare.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good for some situations. I have to take a few perscriptions per day, so I'm assuming they wouldn't be covered? That could be the dealbreaker.</comment></comment>


Facebook to open NYC Engineering Office - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/12/02/facebook-to-open-an-engineering-office-in-nyc-in-2012/

<comment><USER2> Great news for NYC. Personally I'm not that keen to immediately up sticks and go work for Facebook (or Google, or Twitter, etc.) because it's so big, but their presence in the city helps to establish it as a real tech hub of substance. I hope to see a greater Facebook presence at hackathon events and suchlike.</comment>


Animated GIFs the Hard Way – Jon Skinner  of Sublime Text - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.html#

<comment><AUTHOR> Former conversation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532146)</comment>


Read the public comments on Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=14-28

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is particularly nice, from a mother of two children:

[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521380101](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521380101)</comment>


Xkcd - TED Talk - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/541/ <comment><USER2> I'm not even joking when I say that I have this dilemma daily.

<comment><USER3> I usually use alternative parentheses.

This is a statement <its kind of goofy :)>

Or if I'm feeling particularly geeky and the audience will appreciate...

This is a statement qq{its kind of goofy :)};

<comment><USER4> I feel square brackets look better. Also they are not used in emoticons as much as angle brackets and flower brackets.

This is a statement [ its kind of goofy :) ]

and to continue your syntactic way...

         This is a statement /* its kind of goofy :) */

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, I was hoping for some serious discussion of the central issue - how _do_ you end such a parenthetical statement with an emoticon?

</comment><comment><USER6> Do we really need to have every single xkcd comic submitted here? I'm sure we're all aware of xkcd by now.

<comment><USER7> Do we really need to have someone complain about xkcd being submitted every time it is submitted? If you think it is that bad, flag it, don't complain in the thread.</comment></comment>


The Math Behind That Dick Joke in HBO's "Silicon Valley" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-math-behind-that-dick-joke-in-hbos-silicon-valley-3becdebe9118 <comment><USER2> Haha!</comment>


Thomas Cook: Other Opportunities - <AUTHOR> Nathan on Linkedin has created a quick spreadsheet on Google Docs which might help #thomascook employees as they navigate their way through the job search and identify relevant companies:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sShYUYzMY3RyH_MbYS0OwBJCLszCZvnfJnbaXLl5nNY/edit#gid=0
Here is Nathan profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanjefferson <comment><USER2> Useful spreadsheet, but there may be more than one Nathan on LinkedIn, might help to specify which Nathan :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, just updated his account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some more context: "Thomas Cook collapses as last-ditch rescue talks fail" [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49791249](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49791249)

<comment><USER4> And the HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045550)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is there not a regulation that states an airline must return its passengers safely home before being allowed to shut down all operations?

<comment><USER6> [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/23/how- secret-...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/23/how-secret-plans- saved-customers-of-thomas-cook-from-being-stranded)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some people are also trying to help the Thomas cook employees find jobs via this sheet i came across:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YnTzcqQn3NyqreuZrAlt...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YnTzcqQn3NyqreuZrAlt7u9QSphj4SJiTIU4eXTc9xI/edit#gid=0)

<comment><USER8> more like attempt to collect personal info, do they know what GDPR means?

<comment><AUTHOR> While it is helpful for the end users but definitely privacy goes for the toss in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is Thomas Cook? I have never seen their planes or their name in sites like expedia. Why is it even in news?

<comment><USER10> 1\. It might depend on your location. In Europe they are huge and it's impossible to miss the news. In America they might have no sales and no consumer business?

2\. They mostly sell holiday packages, not much separate flight tickets. So in a way they are the previous generation competitor to Expedia. One reason why they have been in difficulties.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the explanation. I have never seen this company in USA. Nowadays, algorithms sell holiday packages in sites like Expedia, it would be very hard to compete with computers with old business models.

<comment><USER10> That might be slightly different in Europe. Remember, that nearly every country speaks a different language. The traditional holiday package contains a guide local to the country of origin. That is more difficult to replace by an algorithm during booking. You still need a planeload of people meet the suitable guide at the same destination.

(Myself I speak 5 languages and can read 6-8 more to some degree, so I am not their customer. But there are huge groups that speak no foreign language at all. I might unscientifically guess, that Britain, the home country of Thomas Cook is over average in this category. Although Brits are at advantage in the destination, because at least younger locals are likely to speak English.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Welp... I guess I can finally throw out that 20-year-old uncashed traveler's check.

<comment><USER12> Why did you have a 20 year old uncashed travelers' check?

<comment><USER10> I also have them. I think 3 checks of USD 20 each. (Mine are American Express, though) 20-30 years ago this was the only way to travel intercontinenal. After the trip you did not exchange them back (in Europe) because both buying new ones and cashing old ones involved fees. The last 10-15 years cards have become mostly universal, so it gets less easy to spend them. It thought using them on my last trip to Australia 3 years ago, but I didn't happen to hit a suitable place accepting them, so I brought them back again...</comment></comment></comment>


Bug in HN - <AUTHOR>

When doing a 'submissions' on a user with a large history the server comes - after a long time - back with a blank page.
This only seems to happen the first time, when trying a second time usually there is content.
I'm suspecting the first is a timeout on the backend, the second the cached result from the first request.
I hope this is enough information to reproduce the problem. <comment><USER2> This is a known problem, it's been happening for a while. It's better now than it used to be.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482523>

</comment><comment><USER3> It only happens when the server has recently restarted. All but the most recent 15k stories and comments are lazily loaded from disk, to make restarts faster.</comment>


CryptoLoot, Most Dangerous Malware – Ever - <AUTHOR> https://onecryptonews.com/2018/05/26/infamous-cryptoloot-bashes-antivirus-industry/ <comment><USER2> LOL. Cryptoloop team are awesome. As an active network security technician, I full out agree with everything stated. The netsec scene has turned into a mainstream shitshow all about clickbait and scaring people into buying the latest and greatest antivirus. Funny thing is, windows defender is almost all you need these days. It ain't 2k9 anymore.</comment>


IDEA: A chmod777 jar. Every time you have to run that command... - <AUTHOR>

...you put a quarter in the jar. <comment><USER2> how about a library with a price list:

        * { chmod777.jar:   25c }
        * { chown-R-me.jar: 75c }
        * { rm-rf-star.jar: 1 dollar }
        * { rm-rf-/.jar:    monthly salary }
        ...

ultimate way to beef up savings</comment>


PressCoin is a cryptocurrency for investigative journalists and their readers - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/16/presscoin-is-a-cryptocurrency-for-investigative-journalists-and-their-readers/ <comment><USER2> What value is this? What will a PressCoin buy in the real world? This is like the Basic Attention Token (BAT). BAT is just a blockchain popularity contest. Both are totally worthless to anyone outside their respective community.

You can say you bought a coin. But without a physical object you can't prove you really own it. Digital currency can easily be wiped out in seconds. Just look at what happened to Ether last week:

[http://exilenewsservice.com/cryptocurrency/cryptocurrency- is...](http://exilenewsservice.com/cryptocurrency/cryptocurrency-is-not- safe-300m-in-cryptocurrency-accidentally-stolen-and-lost-forever-due-to-bug/)</comment>


Hystrix Dashboard and Turbine Stream Aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/12/hystrix-dashboard-and-turbine.html

<comment><USER2> I really Love the dashboard view. Also I love the fact that its working with EventStreams[1]. I am working on a general purpose event stream exporter for time series data and this looks to be a great consumer that I can test against.

1\. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Server- sent_events/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Server- sent_events/Using_server-sent_events)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you read Hacker News on an iPhone? - <AUTHOR>

I switched to an iPhone 4s from a Nexus One and shockingly realized that iOS5 doesn't allow you to increase the font size in the browser.
Also iPhone doesn't manage to click zoom many pages including Hacker News. It just zooms in with a very small fraction and the font size is too small.
If you pinch zoom further in you get horizontal scrolling on iOS5, but the Android browser does correct adaptive zoom.
iOS5 has the Reader functionality, but it seems to be triggered only on some selected sites and not on HN.
I have also seen some ways to increase font size using a bookmarklet, but this is too cumbersome for my likening.
So I wonder whats the best way to read Hacker News on the iPhone browser? <comment><USER2> <http://ihackernews.com> lets you read all the links as text. i found it to be better than the hacker news app that i tried.

<comment><USER3> iHackerNews looks great, except it doesn't seem to go past the first page of HN. Or did I miss something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HN doesn't have a <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml".... />; entry in the head, which is what most RSS/Atom feed readers (including, I suspect, Apple's Reader) use to detect the presence of a feed for the page. If you click the RSS link at the bottom of the page you should see the Reader functionality. Unfortunately, the feed only gives you the article titles, not the text. There's a comments link in the feed but it doesn't work in Apple's reader (it does work in Google Reader).

(updated: got a little happy with pre-escaping the HTML the first time :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> New Media Campaigns put together a pretty good mobile site with some apis: <http://hn.gethifi.com/#/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I use this. <http://newsyc.me/></comment>


Interval Training doesn't work as you think it would - <AUTHOR> http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article_issue/issue_636?s=indexTitle#interval-training-doesn-t-work

<comment><USER2> How did an article from t nation end up on hacker news... I wish I could down vote.

This is not a quality article. The article titled with the incendiary "Interval training doesn't work," doesn't say that it's primarily concerned with fat loss for bodybuilders (I guess the t nation should have been a give away), then goes on to cite studies where it does work. Its like Mark Young wrote this essay like one goes about a 5th grade science fair project. He starts off with a premise, then goes on to find evidence that refutes his premise, but sticks to it anyway?

(I admit I was baited by the title and only skimmed his essay until I realized it was full of shit)

P.S. to all those looking to get in shape: Sports "science" is junk and mostly ignored by coaches & athletes. If a study came out tomorrow that said "Interval training doesn't work" coaches and athletes would still use it because it's effective and has been for the past 50 years.

<comment><USER3> If something is effective and has been for the past 50 years then it seems like it would be easy to run a scientific study that proves it. If the science disagrees, or at least doesn't conclusively prove that it works, then it seems to me that our common sense assumptions may be wrong.

Case in point would be running in modern running shoes. Almost every coach and doctor has claimed that modern running shoes are the way to go. Yet in the past 40 years since they have been used there hasn't been a study proving that you will run faster or get less injuries than if you just ran barefoot.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't trying to say science is useless when it comes to sports, just sports science tends to be very very bad scientifically as a whole.

Modern recreational running shoes are the PERFECT example of how wrong sports science can be. All the scientific evidence from the past few decades supported the use of heavily cushioned, motion controlling running shoes to prevent injuries. This is why doctors recommend it. It was coaches and athletes that stuck to what worked - flats (take a look at any track and field/racing shoe) and barefoot training. No track coach in her right mind that would have advocated for the use of a heavy cushioned running shoe for a competitive athlete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the conclusion of the article: "go 8 seconds on and 12 seconds off for 60 rounds", where "on" is max effort, what does "off" mean? Is it medium effort or zero effort or is it something that you modify as your endurance increases?

"Sprint -> Jog" or "Sprint -> Walk" or "Sprint -> Lie on the ground, motionless" ?

<comment><USER5> He means "Sprint->Jog"

<comment><USER6> I.e., fartlek! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartlek>

I've been doing that for a long time (though it isn't exactly fartlek if you do it by yourself) to train for soccer, because it mimics the process of repeatedly sprinting and recovering. It's also easier on my joints than sustained running at a steady speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I wonder how long it's going to take for people to actually start doing proper scientific studies in this area? Are people who make money off the voodoo that is today's weight loss programs lobbying to stop grants into this kind of research or something?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me or do those photos make you suspect that this isn't about optimising for health? The author explicitly says it isn't for performance. Not sure how many avid bodybuilders there are at HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure, but I don't think the pictures are correlated to the article. There are just some pro bodybuilders, go for the content! ;-)</comment></comment>


Notes on Remote Pairing - <AUTHOR> http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2010/09/02/remote-pairing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+relevance-llc+%28Relevance%2C+Inc.%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Another easy way to get a level playing field is to ssh to a server and use 'screen' with two clients attached, it's comparable to the 'tmux' program but I think it is a bit more widely known, chances are you already have it installed.</comment>


Hacker meetup #2 for UK based hackers (London, this Friday) - <AUTHOR>

After this thread on news.yc (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79164) we hosted a meetup in London for UK based hackers. Around 40 people came along including one from as far as Italy. The Hypernumbers guys kindly donated a projector so we had some short demos and then went out for a meal.
There was a lot of enthusiasm to turn it into a regular monthly event and we've finally got round to setting that up - the next at 7pm this Friday (April 18th). Everyone who came last time already knows about it but I put this up here for any new members of this community.
If you'd like to come along just drop me an email [ian at songkick] or sign up to the Facebook group or Groupspaces group (Groupspaces is created by one of the hackers who came to the meetup so we're testing it for them).
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6677098162
http://groupspaces.com/ukhackers/join/
The goal is for hackers to meet up and discuss cool projects and get feedback on ideas - much like the atmosphere at a YC dinner. It's not focused on general entrepreneurship/business/VC stuff - for that there are already some great meetups e.g. Open Coffee.
Hope to see a few new faces on Friday. <comment><USER2> Cool, Snaptalent crew will be there as well. Come meet some more UK YC startups... I know WebMynd are also in town.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yep, count me in. Looking forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds great, I'll try to pop along

</comment><comment><USER5> will try for the next one.</comment>


The blood of poor Americans is now a leading export, bigger than corn or soy - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/12/09/leeched.html <comment><USER2> Colour me skeptical. That certainly doesn't _sound_ like a plausible number, and the article doesn't cite any sources.

This article [http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by- count...](http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-country/) total US blood exports at $1.4 billion, a distant second to Ireland. That includes both human and animal blood, and I'm not sure what fractions human.

Soybean exports, on the other hand, are closer to $17 billion a year: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-us- tra...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-us-trade/us- agricultural-trade/outlook-for-us-agricultural-trade/)

Total US exports are $2.5 trillion, so blood is about 0.06% of that.

Edit: found a couple of reputable sources that put blood plus blood plasma exports in the $20 billion range. Possible that the discrepancy comes from whether plasma is included.

<comment><USER3> Kind of crazy that they are able to generate off of the bottom half of the US population. So out of the 175 million bottom 50% American population, with the actual donors being much smaller, their actual bodies produce a crazy amount of wealth that they can't capture and remain poor.

<comment><USER4> 1.4 billion divided by 175 million is eight.

So a cheeseburger each, basically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what these for profit companies do with the red cells and platelets? These are both heavily regulated with short shelf lives.</comment>