Hetzner removes traffic limitation for dedicated servers - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php?title=Traffic/en&curid=2842&diff=30324&oldid=29871 <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm the odd one out, but apart from the new cloud stuff 've had nothing but bad experiences.

Many years ago: HDDs died like I've never seen it before, one every few months with just a couple of servers.

ca. late 2013: We had some production systems running on Hetzner hardware, we regularly! called their support to tell _them_ the DC lost connection because our monitoring apparently was better than theirs and they acted surprised for not hearing something yet.

Only like 2-3 years ago: Got a new server, had SMART issues and had to have the disk replaced before the first 24h after ordering were up.

An ex-coworker of mine joked they must have added the "please change the disk" option in the support form just for him because he was running 20+ servers and actually had to call them every week to replace a dying disk.

Yes, this was all years ago - but I'd rather pay servers out of my own pocket than be oncall for production servers there, ever again.

<comment><USER3> Most of your comments are about disks. If you read the fine print, when you order a new server, you don't get brand new disks, but used ones. When they die, you don't get new disks, unless you pay a premium, but used ones. They recycle the same broken hardware until it's untenable, and then some more.

<comment><USER4> Didn't know this. Recycling is good for ecology.

At work we have some Hetzner servers. About two times a disk broke; with RAID it was not a problem, a hassle, at least the first time, it was, yes.

<comment><USER5> > Recycling is good for ecology

Looking at the recycling issue I wonder if you are using so many disks (that fail) if it is possible to ship them to a low wage (sorry) country have them taken apart and rebuilt using parts from other disks where different parts failed?

<comment><USER6> It's possible to combine the parts from a disk with failed bearings and a disk with a failed controller to end up with one working disk, but it's not worth the effort unless your goal is data recovery.

<comment><USER5> Hah why I said 'low cost country'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On AWS or GCP the cost per GB transferred is around $0.10. Even if you put a cheap CDN on top, it costs around $0.01 per GB.

How is it possible that Hetzner (and other unmetered hosting) are giving it out for free? If you max out the 1 Gbit for a month that's ~300 TB.

GCP and AWS would've charged you $30,000 for that!!! Are the cloud providers just not competing with each other on price? How has the price remained so high for so long?

<comment><USER8> At e.g. 3GHz and 8 cores, you only have 24 instructions to calculate one bit. I guess the limit is the processor.

<comment><USER9> AWS and Google's ASNs are big enough that they probably buy very little transit at all, it all goes out peering ports at major IX points. And PNIs for bgp sessions with major carriers (example: Comcast, RCN, Shaw, Verizon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have been a customer for years now... they're one of the really innovative hosters from Germany with dead cheap competitive pricing...

Also their new cloud options are top notch.

<comment><USER11> I absolutely love Hetzner -- they're pricing is near unbeatable. To be a bit more precise, I believe that they offer cut rate pricing (which is not a bad thing if you're the consumer) but _not_ cut-rate service -- there is _just enough_ for a DIYer to be very productive and cost effective. This gets _even easier_ if you use Hetzner Cloud directly, and they've got fantastic prices for beefy machines there too -- while a t2.micro on AWS is ~$10/month on hetzner cloud CX51 with 8 vcores and 32GB of RAM & and 250GB SSD with 20TB of traffic allowed is 29.90 gbp.

Discovering the robot marketplace[0] (thanks to HN) was an eye opening experience for me that showed me dedicated servers were viable and could be competitive with the VPSes I'd been purchasing/using for years (I was so excited I wrote blog posts about it). I've recently been thinking about making a subreddit for hetzner (r/hetzner), so fellow users can talk with each other but I am worried it would do more harm than good (increasing the burden on them in terms of having to do PR in yet-another part of the internet that can be pretty toxic in terms of community at times).

You can even deploy to them with terraform[1].

\-- warning, rant/ramblings below --

I feel like I say the same thing all the time, but I'll repeat it again here -- if devops/infrastructure goes at all correctly in my mind, going to one vendor for both your compute/data and your value-added services (so asking AWS for EC2 machines _and_ to run RDS on top of them for you and offer support) is going to dissipate.

Smaller companies can run sufficiently niche (many might disagree but I think running postgres is within this ) with more innovation and decent support for less cost than Amazon can. The vast majority of people who run RDS with something like Postgres as a backend are unlikely to run into crazy issues simply due to how well postgres is built, and how well known it is, outside of gross misconfiguration.

Companies are already offering on-your-cloud solutions that use EC2 machines to run their own software and offer support on top -- as container orchestration systems become even more widespread I think people will stop asking AWS or GCP for more than basic compute/data and a few tools they're really good at, and go to more specialized smaller vendors.

[0]: [https://robot.your-server.de/order/market](https://robot.your- server.de/order/market)

[1]: [https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/hcloud/r/server.html](https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/hcloud/r/server.html)

<comment><USER12> > they're pricing is near unbeatable.

If you really want to penny-pinch unbundled solutions that charge you separately for compute, storage and ip addresses might be even cheaper, e.g. on scaleway you could get way with 1€/month if you go ipv6-only on their smallest instance type with a minimal amount of storage. Plus you get unlimited traffic with them.

<comment><USER13> Personally tried Hetzner, Scaleway and online.net, it's parent. Online.net and scaleway have payment issues and their payment systems failed me more than once, their website kept logging us out and their support staff did not seem to bother. So I called it quits with online.net/scaleway. Hetzner has been rock steady for me, however. Just my $0.2.

<comment><USER14> I also had payment issues. It is so wierd. Payment system is the one thing that even shady business wants to work 100%. I mean if i owe you money for server and i am not able to pay with any of my cards that work anywhere else... I just switched lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Long time customer of Hetzner, and can't more than praise them. Cheap, reliable & super fast support.

<comment><USER16> I totally agree. I have used them (occasionally) for years whenever I need extra compute for a few months, or for long term development servers. I especially like running large Haskell builds after updating to new versions, overnight machine learning runs, etc. on a rented server rather than my laptop. For me, GCP is a close competitor to Hetzner for a different use case: when I want a lot of compute for a few hours at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm always hearing good things about Hetzner and especially the value on their auction servers.

Tried buying one on the auction once, went through a whole rigamarole to confirm my identity, send them ID pics, etc. In the end they decided to cancel the order due to "suspicious activity". I was baffled by that as we hadn't had any conversation besides sending them the order info & credentials. I assumed it was a weird false positive... wonder if I should try again sometime.

<comment><USER18> I don't remember providing them with ID but I've been a customer for a long time, maybe it's a recent requirement. It's worth opening a dialog with them if you're having issues - you'll be conversing with a real person and they can probably be persuaded.

<comment><USER19> A couple of months ago I purchased a VPS from them. They also required ID (passport) to verify identity, but what was surprising that they suggested using their gpg keys to encrypt the image before sending.

<comment><USER20> Their argument is, that requiring an ID has solved most of the fraud problems.

<comment><USER21> They lost my business when they required a passport. Like hell I'm showing you that. If they wanna see my face they can look up my name on social media.

<comment><USER22> They don't want to see your face they want to see official papers proving you to be a unique person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hetzner is great. We host about a petabyte of search data on them over at [http://www.datastreamer.io/](http://www.datastreamer.io/) (my search company).

I'm working on a new startup around a personal web archive and annotation system ([https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)) which uses Firebase but I would love to figure out how to use Hetzner as their prices are amazing.

<comment><USER24> Is there any reason u r not supporting epub?

Is it just prioritizing or are there licensing/copyright complications ?

<comment><USER25> Same Q here, burtonator. Please consider supporting EPUB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My personal server is with them, their response has been better then some 'enterprise level' server solutions in my country. while costing hundreds of times less.

</comment><comment><USER27> Link in the title might be slightly confusing as it is showing differences between current and previous versions of the page. Here's the current page: [https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en)

</comment><comment><USER28> This is pretty great news. Reducing bandwidth costs is definitely a good thing.

I've always wondered how people run their own (personal use or side project) services on bare metal or VPS providers manage them without spending too much time. I've found that trying to run even a few services and have a reasonable solution for backups, software updates, etc to take more time and effort than it seems is worthwhile, it makes Heroku and App Engine particularly appealing as a lot of the issues are kinda solved with managed cloud providers. I would love to hear how people make this work.

<comment><USER29> When you realize AWS/GCE/Azure costs you about $0.1/GB for bandwidth, it scares me it can be DDoSed to the point your bill goes out of the normal proportion so easily. Other places have TBs of bandwidth within their < $50 plans.

<comment><USER30> If you do move to Hetzner, you will quickly realize the value of premium bandwidth. Maxing out your Hetzner pipe is quite difficult in my experience. OVH/AWS (my other two experiences) on the other hand maxes out the pipe without issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hetzner rocks, have used them for years and they are super reliable and their (more recent) cloud hosting options are dead cheap but also really good!

Great to see them features on HN!

<comment><USER32> Honestly, I was a bit worried when switching from Digitalocean, but everything still works perfectly for half the price. The only lacking part is the general Linux documentation and how-tos, but whatever DO writes still applies to all other providers.

They are the best kept hosting secret.

<comment><USER33> +1. Smart move switching away from DigitalOcean. I dont know what the heck is going on with them recently but I started moving away as well. What broke camels back was limit on number of servers you can have which is 12 at the moment i believe. How the heck am i going to grow a startup if thats a ceiling? Google is also full of stories of abruptly interrupted and frozen accounts that you have tiny chance of getting resumed because they don't tell you what is wring due to "security concerns".

<comment><USER34> Hey friend,

I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience, but we can help. Our support team will gladly increase that limit for you on request.

On the stories that you read, I hear you. It's a tough situation because I don't want to discount anyone's story. What I do want to point out is that there are two sides to every story, and in such a relationship one party has the duty of protecting privacy of the other. Sometimes we make mistakes and we need to correct it. Sometimes what we do upsets people when we work to protect our customers from those who would seek to abuse our platform. Abuse of our platform lowers quality of service for everyone, and that is why it is our duty to manage that. Each story will have it's own variables, and I'm happy to discuss anyone's situation with them personally.

If you have any questions or there is anything I can personally help with, please feel free to reach out at firstname.lastname@example.com.

Jarland

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been a Hetzner customer for several years. I'm yet to have a faulty disk experience with them, but that's not what this post is about.

This month I "purchased" another EX41 server. Something made me wonder if the hard disks on the machine allocated to me were old ones previously used for some other customer, so the first thing I did after installing Linux was to look at smartctl output. Not only were the disks new (power on hours) but as part of provisioning the machine, they seem to have performed a "long" self- test on the disk (see smartctl -t in its manpage). I was impressed by this, because they seem to have checked that I didn't get bad disks on arrival. This is probably expected of such a service provider.. but I've seen worse.

<comment><USER36> They wipe smart before giving you drives. Ovh does the same. Most drives have a serial interface you can connect to with a special cable to do it.

<comment><USER37> Any reference for that? Didn't know it was possible. Is it just to minimize customer complaints about otherwise good-enough hardware?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Recently got a very neat server box from the auctions page, having the traffic limits removed would be amazing indeed.

Quite satisfied with support too. (Though I wish I could get a hold of a /48 IPv6 subnet from them, pfSense doesn't like /64 only networks).

<comment><USER19> Are you running pfsense on remote server??

<comment><USER38> It works great, have used it in the past. Right now I'm using openwrt/lede in a VM as a NAT for VMs that don't need a dedicated external IP. It took seconds to set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Satisfied customer of their cloud. Was a satisfied customer at Linode for 10+ years but found Hetzner's offer too good to not at least try and I've seen no reason to switch back.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am considering some servers from hetzner. Does anyone know of a decent solution to put a few of these servers on the same "protected lan"?

<comment><USER41> You can get physical private LAN! Usually an overkill, but it's possible.

When you order, you can specify extra things you will need. For example, you can ask for a secondary NIC on each server, and to connect up the secondary NICs through a dedicated switch. There are some caveats though:

* more expensive. When your servers have non-standard configurations, Hetzner charges a fixed extra per-server, per-month fee ("Flexipack"). The fees add up.

* The servers need to be in the same rack. If you order them all at once it's fine. But if you order, say, four servers now, and the fifth server a month later, the fifth one will go on a separate rack and won't get the private access to the four.

* Setup takes longer. If you order standard configuration, it will be ready in minutes/hours. When I ordered the extra NICs and switch, it took about a week to complete the order.

* A bit more configuration required. Primary NICs work out of the box. For the secondary NICs to work you need to tweak /etc/network/interfaces and the routing table.

<comment><USER42> Flexipack is gone. [https://www.hetzner.com/flexipack/](https://www.hetzner.com/flexipack/) just shows the additional hardware prices. I posted this to [https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/148931/hetzner- drops-f...](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/148931/hetzner-drops-flexi- pack) mid-July.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hetzner has been fantastic, been using their dedis for several years now. You can get rock bottom prices on their robot-auction-house thing too.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fresh Hetzner customer here. I've been using their services for personal use for about 2 months now without any problems. I'm running speed and benchmark tests regularly and they are actually very positive. I heard their old Cloud panel was crappy but this one seems very promising. It's modern and simple like those in Vultr or Digital Ocean.

</comment><comment> gator-io We get a ton of bot traffic from Hetzner servers.

<comment><USER22> I recommend to nag their abuse mail, they tend to forward abuse information to the server owner first (which is awesome for people running stuff on their service, I got locked out of a previous provider in the US after someone fired a malicious abuse complaint against me)

<comment><USER45> We had some of our legacy setup on hetzner used in a DDoS reflection attack a year ago. That was handled really professionally by Hetzner imo. They null routed the systems and requested us to get in contact with them within a couple of working days or they'd void the contract. We handed them our office IP to whitelist. Once I could get back onto the systems, I could finally overrule all the stupid legacy hesitation and setup firewalls on the systems. From there, the support confirmed the ports are closed and the servers got freed again.

Good experience, in spite of the circumstances.

And the remote hands at hetzner are good, especially if you know how to work with DCOPs. You know, have redundant systems, shutdown the broken system so they can just do whatever they have to do once they're around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Hetzner is great - we run a couple of Ethereum nodes (non-mining) on there and we've had zero issues with it for nearly a year. Great support, had SSDs installed almost immediately, almost no downtime. Cheap!

</comment><comment><USER47> Their virtual servers are really very cheap. How do they compare with AWS/Vultr/Digital Ocean? Do they have an API for automation and is it reliable?

<comment><USER48> I "downgraded" from a physical server to a VPS with them when Cloud launched and have saved a ton of money and the performance isn't miles off. Great success so far. Network is solid within Europe though have noticed the occasional bit of weird routing to the US.

<comment><USER47> Could you elaborate on the weird routing in the US please? I ask because my app has a bunch of US users.

<comment><USER48> I'm not a qualified networking engineer, but we had some US users report outages which we investigated from US-based servers and noticed the normal routing was screwy (in the sense that the normal direct routes weren't being taken so latency was high). These incidents lasted under ten minutes and I wrote them off as being peering related incidents as they had no effect on European traffic.

I accept minor things like this as part of the price for hosting in Europe, and have certainly experienced the same issues going the other direction (i.e. me reaching US-based services) more often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> does anyone have a tutorial/guide on how to use hetzner for a k8s deployment, the one of GCP is rather expensive for something of that size..

<comment><USER50> This is a really good starting point; [https://github.com/hobby- kube/guide](https://github.com/hobby-kube/guide) I've used it for several projects and it works a treat.

<comment><USER49> well, i need a cluster not just for hobby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> How is the connection speed/latency for these for someone in the US? Been shopping for a hobby/personal server

<comment><USER52> Canada here but I get 40-50mbps single threaded / connection. Anything multithreaded I can max my 200mbps home connection out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Anyone want to compare experiences between OVH/Soyoustart and Hetzner?

<comment><USER22> I'm currently moving from SYS to Hetzner, the prices are much better and support has been great. If you want to get something cheaper than SYS Dedicated boxes I definitely recommend looking at the server auction (which is basically SYS but different). I managed to grab a 128GB server for very cheap.

If you don't have an account you'll likely need ID verification, it was a while ago but to my recollection they'll simply hold the purchase for you while they verify so you don't loose a good spot. Plus you have to do it only once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hey guys, so after i saw this on the front page, and visited the site, there rates were surprisingly really low, I actually decided to try out the service.

TL:DR Its not as rosy or great as some people here suggested, and their response on contacting them came off as a little harsh to me.

Here is what truly happened, I registered, entered my personal details, confirmed my email, entered my card details, they then deducted about USD 0.010 from my card, which is okay, many cloud services do that to test the card validity or something like that.

So the next step is you have to submit a copy of your ID or passport, the reasons they give for this made perfect sense, so i sent in a photo of my ID, then in the morning, about 7 hours later, I got an email saying my account was rejected.

Easy, so I try to call their support team, to find out what i had submitted incorrectly, or what i had missed. The answer is not what you would expect given the praise their customer reps had on this thread, I was told the rejection is a management decision and i had to reapply with another email. note that even if i had wanted to reapply, now i couldn't because i wanted to know what data i had not included or submitted incorrectly.

I call in again and I am told the same thing. So i try to login and my account is deactivated, thats expected.

So that's my experience.

Sidenote: Do not start with a greeting like "good morning" when you call their support team, both of the people i called did not answer to that and waited for me to speak again, before they said anything, which i felt was quite embarrassing, like as though saying I should know better and go straight to the point when i call in.

Maybe someone else who got through has a different narrative, but if you also failed then your story is similar to mine. but If you want to have a great week, don't try them b'se they will steal your happiness for a day. Stay with AWS or GCP or Digital Ocean or whatever

<comment><USER54> I was also asked to signup again with a different email address if i needed help....sad, right?

<comment><USER54> Sorry guys, i re-applied, and went through successfully, the problem is, I have no zipcode, in my country, so i had initially used 00000 as my zipcode, i changed that and i got verified, thanks Hetzner!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> That's what, up to max. ~300TB / month, at 1Gpbs?

<comment><USER56> 648TB (assuming 1GBit up and down each), see [https://www.heise.de/netze/tools/bandbreitenrechner/](https://www.heise.de/netze/tools/bandbreitenrechner/)

<comment><USER57> You can't saturate 1 Gbit up and down at the same time. It would be either 1 Gbit up or down, or 500 Mbit both.

<comment><USER58> Why? 1GBit Ethernet is conventionally full-duplex.

<comment><USER57> Looks like you are right. I must have mixed up something I read recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> this is gonna be great for my gaming server ... not that i ever reached the quota

</comment><comment><USER60> I was a customer of Hetzner for years but my experience was way worse than others unfortunately.

I have lost my data twice on different hardware. The first one was totally Hetzner's fault since they have failed to identify the faulty disks when they check the disks for it. They were like `oops, sorry, it seems second disk was faulty too` AFTER I tried to re-build the RAID array on a recovery attempt. And the second one was being a bit unlucky, the RAID card didn't detect the faulty disk and tried to sync the broken disk with the healthy ones. So I lost data on a RAID-10 array, twice.

I asked them to do tests on the faulty hardware to identify the problem, to confirm my suspicion, so I could go back to my clients with a proper explanation and things got interested at this point;

While I was talking to the technical people at Hetzner and trying to explain why I think the RAID controller is the problem and how the RAID logs are confirming that, a guy called Arno, Head of Product Advice and Sales took my ticket over. He said;

``` First of all we want to apologize for what happened. Why it happened is hard to say. As you wrote at least one disk was so faulty that your data was corrupt.

Those things can happen and from our point of view no one can prevent from happening again. The only things that help are good backups and a good recovery strategy, which I think you have both.

Of course extra efford on your end occurs for recovery and since it happend the 2nd time, we want to compensate you for that.

What compensation would you expect from us? ```

which was kind of ridiculous because I didn't ask for a compensation, I didn't even imply that I want a compensation for what happened. I was simply requesting a solid explanation and/or confirmation and this guy was saying that I lost my data on a RAID-10 array because 1 (ONE) of the disks were faulty.

I asked him to handover the tickets to the technical people since he's from sales and what he says doesn't make sense. Also provided him some numbers about how much money the sites were making on that lost server, just to prove how wrong he is to approach to the matter from that perspective and guess that was the bit what triggered him.

He fought so hard to not handover the ticket back to the technical people, explained how much he knows about RAID-10, how loosing the server is our fault while making so much money the sites because the server was cheap (WTF?), they won't do the testing because they host many more servers with the same hardware and they are just working fine etc.

After using Hetzner for 7 years, I cancelled the service I take from them, along with other 11 company accounts and tens of dedicated servers and never looked back.

Hetzner is a company that ask you to move from their network to some other provider when you ask what happens if you get DDOSed (this happened before they introduced the DDOS protection).

So never again...

<comment><USER60> Dear people who downvotes this comment, care to elaborate why?

Is it just because you don't like to see something negative about the provider or is it something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> As the submitter of the link I cannot even downvote your comment, but something feels odd about it:

Hetzner provides unmanaged dedicated servers, thus _you_ are the one responsible monitoring the hardware. The only thing Hetzner does is swapping HDDs you identify as faulty (you provide them the S/N of the faulty disk via the support form).

Personally I rent the super cheap Serverbörse servers for personal use. The HDDs in there are fairly old (as it's their older generation servers). Over the past 6 years I needed Hetzner to swap about 5 HDDs. When my server logged issues when accessing a disk, I requested a swap, they swapped it less than 30 minutes later and I started the rebuild of my RAID. All without issues.

> The first one was totally Hetzner's fault since they have failed to identify > the faulty disks when they check the disks for it.

Did you mean to say that they removed an incorrect disk when you requested a swap? Or did you expect them to monitor the hardware for you?

<comment><USER60> Hey Tim,

I totally agree but working on a remote machine it's not always possible, even through KVMs, so Hetzner had to step in on this one.

There were 2 faulty disks from the same 4-disk Raid but once they have found the first, they assumed that first disk was the issue and didn't test the rest, so that ended up with loosing everything.

Even if they are helping as a courtesy, they should test all the disks and do this right before let the customer continue.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid, I still don't understand. We are talking about a rented dedicated server here (not about some managed one), right?

> but once they have found the first

How did they find the HDD? As I said: They don't monitor your server. Did you request replacement of the HDD? If you request replacement of one disk, they swap one disk.

> Even if they are helping as a courtesy, they should test all the disks and > do this right, before the customer continue.

How should that work? They remove all the HDDs from the server, put them into a different computer to run a test? That would be a privacy nightmare _and_ add unnecessary downtime. I keep track of my HDD status (smartmontools, mdadm Events, ZFS Event Daemon). I _know exactly_ what HDDs I want replaced. They just perform the actual, physical, replacement for me. And that is absolutely fine.

<comment><USER60> This happened 4 years ago so I found the emails to refresh my memory. Here's what happened according to the emails I have;

1 - I woke up to an unresponsive server in the morning. Couldn't reach to the server in any way.

2 - Got in touch with the support and they asked me to give them like 50 mins to check the hardware and disks and get back to me with;

 _Dear Client,

We have found this disk S/N xxx defective. Please confirm the full data loss on it in order to replace it._

right after that they wrote;

 _Dear Client,

We have found this disk S/N xxx defective. Please confirm the full data loss on it in order to replace it._

I asked if they mean data lost on this single disk or the whole array, they said;

 _Dear Client,

We cannot tell you how is going to react the raid controller as can happens also data loss if it is defective. For that, we recommend before to take Backups of the data. When you are sure to replace the disk tell us, confirm data loss and we will do it._

after many emails and sharing error messages I've got from the raid controller Hetzner said;

 _Dear Client,

We see our test reported that 2 drives are faulty, but we have replaced one of this only. Now, we could offer to replace the second faulty one (SN: xxx).

Could we do this anytime?_

I don't know what kind of test they did but I believe the report he mentioned is from the very first diagnose they did.

I wouldn't know the details since I didn't argue on how they could oversee this, I tried to find a solution.

Edit : I fixed the order of messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for looking that up. Hardware usually does not fail from one day to the next, so to me it appears like your HDD monitoring was insufficient in the weeks / months leading the full crash.

It should have detected the disks going bad and allow you to request a replacement with 3 of 4 disks being good and then later a replacement of the second bad disk with 3 of 4 being good, no?

> I asked if they mean data lost on this single disk or the whole array, they > said;

IMO this is the correct answer from Hetzner. They cannot know whether you run RAID 1 (which would be good), RAID 5 (which would have killed the array), RAID 6 (good) or RAID 10 (might or might not be good). Asking before replacing could possibly allow you to save data in case the disk is not completely dead, but rather has a bunch of faulty sectors only.

The only issue I personally see is the bad English. I am German like Hetzner and even I have issues understanding that grammar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> A mere decade after French hosts.

</comment><comment><USER62> They should rather pay for DTAG transit than do such shenanigans.

<comment><USER63> IIRC they ended the DTAG transit agreement due to DTAG having unreasonable pricing requests for the renewed agreement (i.e. DTAG holding Hetzener hostage, you can read more about it here [1]. If you are interested you can still buy DTAG transit for your Hetzner servers via [https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en), do keep in mind however that this is a metered connection, not unlimited like for regular web traffic.

[1] [https://www.golem.de/news/hetzner-und-netzneutralitaet- extra...](https://www.golem.de/news/hetzner-und-netzneutralitaet-extrakosten- fuer-bessere-anbindung-an-telekom-kunden-1511-117711.html) (German)

<comment><USER62> I know perfectly fine about this. It has nothing to do with being held hostage. DTAG simply wants to charge more money, which is just business. You can either pay it or not. Hetzner decided that it's not worth it for them, the victim is the customer, because you probably are only able to download with around 5mbps in the evening from a DTAG connection. The upgrade is not possible with their cloud services, so it's a nightmare if you are a DTAG customer.

The same as Level3 charges more than others (even though not as extreme as DTAG) because they think their pipes are premium.

<comment><USER64> Hetzner simply wants to pay less money, which is just business. You can either sell at that price or not. DTAG decided that it's not worth it for them, the customer is the victim, because you probably are only able to download at around 5mbps in the evening from a Hetzner server. The upgrade is not possible with their internet connection, so it's a nightmare if you are a Hetzner customer.

I mean, yeah, sure, it sucks for the customer. What I don't understand is your implication that this is Hetzner's fault. Both sides could accept the other side's conditions, neither side did, all of that is "just business".

What isn't "just business" is asking much higher prices than the competition for the same kind of service and expecting customers to buy it. And if you find that there are customers who do buy anyway, that's a hint that you are dealing with a monopoly situation, which is appropriately described as "holding people hostage".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DropZap 2 v2.1.2 released and is free for a limited time. - <AUTHOR>

Check it out:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropzap-2/id378977964?mt=8
Any feedback would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Just got the updated version. It's a great game.

You can bet I'm going to be borrowing your "Tweet your score to gloat" feature for some of our apps in the future.

linkage:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropzap-2/id378977964?mt=8></comment>


Show HN: Monitor and alert when there are events on AWS, Azure or Google cloud - <AUTHOR> http://cloudstatus.eu

<comment><AUTHOR> We monitor the status of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud platforms, any issues or outages we send an alert email, letting you know of issues that might effect your site or app.</comment>


Ask YC: Have you, or anyone you know, won the lotto? - <AUTHOR>

How unlikely is it, really? <comment><USER3> Very unlikely, but I know three people that have won.

One of our neighbors won over $200 million in a tri-state lottery. They were very nice, sociable people before their win. Everyone liked them.

After?

Well, they built a HUGE 'modern' house (30K+ feet or so, and it looked like someone mixed a neon sign and a Lego set in a blender. It actually glowed in pastels at night.) They basically lost all taste. That didn't go over well with the neighborhood, but people still liked them and assumed it was just a weird splurge. Then the father of the winning family accidentally ran over the dog of one of our mutual friends with his new SUV. He had known the family with the dog for years and had attended barbecues with them almost every weekend in the summer. Their kids were on a soccer team together. The 'winner' refused to even talk to them about the accident - no apologies and no comforting words to the children of the family - because he was terrified they would try to sue him to get his money. He became a HUGE dick. He was eventually "shamed" out of our neighborhood, and he and his wife divorced. I think they're still fighting over their dwindling assets now, about a dozen years after their win. Their house was torn down and only their driveway gate remains.

The second winner I know is one of my uncles. I bought him a six-pack and a couple lotto tickets for Christmas as a joke once. He won around $2,500 with one of the tickets. I've never bought a lottery ticket for myself. I don't like the odds and I don't think I would do well with lots of money if I hadn't earned it myself. The third person I know that won doesn't really count (he became a client of my firm only because he had won and had assets to invest in our venture fund. I never would have known him had he not won.)

In other probability news, I know two people that were struck by lightning ;-) One of them was an alcoholic who worked for a beer distributor. He was wheeling a handcart of brew into a pub when he got zapped. It blew out his heels. He took it as a sign: no more drinking, new job. Now he's "born again" and annoying. I liked him more as an alcoholic ;-) The other guy was just a moron that must have missed the Ben Franklin story in school.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're much more likely to be struck by lightning or bitten by a rattlesnake than you are to win a lottery (even assuming you buy a ticket.) Not being struck by lightning or bitten by a rattlesnake is one of my major goals and so I never buy lottery tickets.

Investing in the stock market or starting a business is risky enough - <USER2> with those activities you have much more control - and less potential for needing CPR.

To answer the original question, though, no - no one I know has ever won the lotto (or been bitten by a rattlesnake or struck by lightning.)

</comment><comment><USER5> A founder's elderly mother in the first startup I ever joined won the lotto, in the $100 million range. He he got swept up in the general excitement surrounding the win and lost focus. The other founders booted him, but I'm fuzzy on the details because I wasn't in "the loop" at the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> My dad won $1 off a lotto ticket somebody gave him as a birthday present. I don't know anybody who's ever bought one.

So based on my experience, your chances are better if you _don't_ buy a ticket. That's pretty darn unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER7> umm the odds are public knowledge?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the odds of winning are known for a sample set that is all lotto players in the population. This <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=137729> got me wondering if readers of HN would know more or less winners than one would expect.</comment></comment>


Ask YC:"Lawyers get paid so well, because you can't get decent answers from Google" - discuss! - <AUTHOR>

Earlier I tried to find out what are the implications of your employer changing your job title and description.  Google came up with nothing decent, Ask came up slightly better.<p>Why is specialist search so rubbish? - opportunity here? <comment><USER2> Laws and taxes are two areas where everyone is afraid to give any actual advice because of the liability it can cause.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear what you are saying. It is starting to happen in the UK as well.

What frustrates me is not advice, but actual facts.

e.g. If my employer wants to change my job title and description, what are the standard rules/laws regarding this sort of change?

<comment><USER3> Well, it's like when people ask medical questions online or write into newspapers - most of the time the correct answer is 'go and see your doctor'.

Having said that, have you looked at the direct.gov.uk site? It seems about as straightforward as goverment information gets:

[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/EmploymentC...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/EmploymentContractsAndConditions/DG_10028079)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - I did. What was your Google query? - assuming you used Google.

The reason I ask, and the reason behind the post, was that it is actually quite difficult for people to ask real questions of a search engine and get decent results. I know, I tried. Yes I hit the Uk Gov site - but to say it is vague is being kind.

....."Well, it's like when people ask medical questions online or write into newspapers - most of the time the correct answer is 'go and see your doctor'."

In the UK going to see the doctor is free....Not so for legal advice.

<comment><USER3> My point was that it a doctor would probably consider it inappropriate to give specific medical advice on the web without examining the patient. The same probably goes for most legal and financial advice.

I can't remember the exact Google query, probably something like 'employment law job description'.

The 'Where to get help' section of that page gives details of where to get free advice, e.g. Citizens Advice Bureau, trade union. I know lawyers are expensive but depending on the circumstances many people might be better off paying for proper legal advice.

I also think the problem with setting up a site to give legal advice, aside from the liability issue, would be that you'd need to be a good lawyer to do this - and good lawyers make enough money already!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.freeadvice.com/>

<comment><USER5> DO NOT go to FreeAdvice.com. It's overrun by trolls who pose as professionals and insult everyone who has a legitimiate question. At one time it may have been useful but now it's worthless and lame.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-is-an-arbiter-of-truth-whether-he-likes-it-or-not/ <comment><USER3> > Zuckerberg should take note. Yes, it's crazy for one person to have such > massive control over what people say online. But like it or not, our system > gives leaders of huge corporations massive power. In his total control of > Facebook, he must be the arbiter—of harm. We must demand that he perform > that role in the best possible way, minimizing the toxic speech posted by > his customers, whether they are peons or presidents. His employees are > speaking out. His billions of users should let him know as well. And the > government should back off.

And when Zuckerberg steps down as the CEO of facebook and his successor is someone leaning towards a different political ideology - what happens then?

The next CEO of Facebook is not an elected official. Unless you count Wall Street appointed board of directors approving a successor as somehow being representative democracy.

I still believe that tech companies should focus on building tech - <USER2> engineers have incredible impact in connecting friends and families all over the world. Changing company policy to be aligned with the Bay Area's political inclinations seems to me to be very short sighted.

<comment><USER4> Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here?

<comment><USER5> > _Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about > the real problem here?_

That is a useful question to showcase an important aspect that I don't see discussed.

There is a single government, while there must be multiple competing private corporations.

Twitter vs. Gab, Youtube vs. Liveleak: each corporation is defined by what it refuses, NOT by what it accepts.

So, if Alex Jones becomes CEO of Twitter and puts "Did you know? The Earth is flat." on all tweets mentioning SpaceX, users will simply move to a greener pasture. Twitter will die when its business model loses viability.

Twitter's moves are not political, they are economical first and foremost! The same goes with Nike's Kaepernick ad: greenlit because the corporation estimated that being on the right side of history would bring more value long- term.

> _[T]he company claimed $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand > value increase, and a 31% boost in sales._

– [https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what- did...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did-we-learn- from-nikes-blockbuster-colin-kaepernick-ad)

<comment><USER6> >The same goes with Nike's Kaepernick ad: greenlit because the corporation estimated that being on the right side of history would bring more value long- term.

This is extremely charitable to Nike, assuming that they internally had some meeting about correcting racial injustices or something and not that they decided to capitalize on a moment in the political zeitgeist. Even if the ad was hated it would have generated enormous free marketing for the company. I tend to agree that these companies will make economic decisions first, most of the time, but over the last couple years we've seen many companies explicitly intertwine the two - where making political statements as marketing is now common. I'd be very very skeptical that they have anything but dollar signs in their eyes.

<comment><USER7> I would second this, and mark it as maybe one of the strongest indicators of where the zeitgeist is at the moment. It makes the "there are evil fascists at every turn" argument pretty weak, when all the money is being bet on woke advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the realm of corporate censorship, I still believe that politics is much less important to companies than profits. My takeaway from censorship on YouTube and other social media is that it's levied at content that could reflect poorly on advertisers. Inconvenient and controversial content more so than any specific political views. Granted, controversial does overlap with politic and especially fringe politics.

Personally I'm much more worried about infrastructure becoming closed off than any specific sites. I don't know whether companies' moderation is effective or not. I trust the market to sort that out. What would be really concerning, though, is if the underlying infrastructure starts conducting censorship of their own.

We've already witnessed this to a degree with 8chan being effectively wiped off the face of the internet for the better part of a year. Square and other payment providers have started refusing to do business with certain people and groups. I'm less concerned of a world where Facebook censors its content, and much more concerned with a world where someone can't even run their own personal website because DNS providers, payment providers, and hosting services have blacklisted them.

<comment><USER9> I think it's always been this way to a degree. But the mob can't completely exclude companies beyond a certain appeal, only the most extreme fringe. E.g. when they try to "excommunicate" firms over more mainstream views it doesn't work.

Groups also use various forms of harassment to censor individuals which I think is a much harder problem online.

<comment><USER8> Payment processors refusing to do business is a new thing. As is cloudflare and dns providers refusing service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More mental gymnastics and gyrations to justify muzzling the opposing narrative.

<comment><USER11> People are clamoring for facebook to censor, mostly because they think that facebook will censor in their political favor

<comment><USER12> The real problem is that ~40% of America supports/votes for the POTUS, following him on social media, re-shares his memes, etc.

People are looking to generally open communications platforms like Facebook and asking them to censor, but if they carried their logic to its conclusion, the President's emails, texts, mobile Apps, and press releases should all be censored or blacklisted by communications providers.

If the president sent out content similar to his tweets through a Trump 2020 campaign app on the apple store and android store, should Apple / google remove the app from the store? Should they build in a filter in chrome and Safari to block access to the trump 2020 campaign website?

Where does this logically end?

<comment><USER11> You want to censor 40% of the country? How can that be logical

<comment><USER12> My point is that the people asking Zuck to censor are asking to censor 40% of the country.

Personally since I disagree with the 40% I do see it as the "real problem" but I don't think facebook censoring them is the solution. It might be possible to censor away InfoWars or whatever but I don't think you can censor away the POTUS and 40% of the country...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are multiple reports that all over the country in rural areas people read fake facebook posts and mobilized arms in a bid to protect their area from "antifa". Zuckerberg did not want to get into the vetting business because incidents like this will then fall squarely on them. Now he doesn't have to care and can just count the dollars from all kinds of clicks.

<comment><USER12> [https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-takes-down-washington- protest...](https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-takes-down-washington- protest-230300318.html)

> Off Twitter, viral text messages of screenshots of doctored tweets have > circulated throughout the country. Some of the false text messages claim > that extremist groups are plotting to move into residential areas this week.

> Bot researchers call this kind of disinformation distribution "hidden viral" > text messages, which go undetected on mainstream platforms like Facebook and > Twitter and can spread like wildfire without moderation.

Should SMS/MMS messages also be censored by the phone companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

<comment><USER15> No.

Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is flawless, but because we have to do _something_ to triage the myriad firehoses of information that exist in today's world, and peer review is the best we've been able to come up with so far.

Handing over the arbitration of truth to unaccountable private corporations is, like peer review, far from optimal. But we have to do _something_ or those who are out to deliberately deceive to advance their political agendas will win. It is always easier to destroy than to create, and it is easier to promulgate a well-crafted lie than the truth. Those are the facts on the ground that we as a society have to grapple with. It's a hard problem and none of the solutions that have been proposed are optimal. But that's no excuse not to try to do _something_. If we don't, society will descend into chaos and authoritarianism. Fact checking by social media platforms is far from optimal, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to advance democracy than survival of the fittest con man.

<comment><USER16> You did not really show that "doing something" is better than inaction (see politician's fallacy). For example for a long time reddit was very hands-off at the global level and left moderation to the indiviual subreddits and in my opinion that worked fine for most. Sure, there were some very disagreeable ones, but you still had to deliberately enter them to see their content.

Division of labor does not necessarily mean total centralization.

<comment><USER15> I didn't say it did. All I'm saying is that advocating for it does not necessarily mean that you hate democracy.

<comment><USER16> The issue being discussed is not any form of moderation though but centralized regulation of speech (i.e. censorship).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if people will change their views on Facebook censorship if Zuckerberg and Facebook drift to the right?

People have changed their politics as they have gotten older, before.

All of a sudden, if Zuckerberg comes out wearing a MAGA hat, will people be so excited about him being the "arbiter of truth" or will they suddenly be talking about "free speech"?

<comment><USER8> I bet that if Facebook and others start fact-checking comments about the dangers of nuclear power or GMOs then people will revise their perspective very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So commentators who are saying that Facebook should not be responsible for the veracity of posts made by powerful politicians or rich advertisers on Facebook, can you please explain how users of Facebook should differentiate between truth, falsehoods or purposeful twisting of facts? Genuine question.

<comment><USER19> That's the current law. Because Facebook doesn't post those peoples information. They are a host, not a publisher.

If they start editing and fact checking then that's their content and they'd be legally responsible for that. Which you would want because if Zuck was far right you'd want to sue him for his fact check errors.

They should also not prevent third party fact checkers from posting on their platform. I'd also love to see them allow for third party plugins of fact checkers which allow people to directly post snopes or something on a comment with the click of a button.

This would serve to keep Facebook as close to pure content host as possible, and still offer fact checking solutions.

The fact that there is even bias in fact checking tools shows how twisted this can be. Many fact checkers argue over semantics but still it's incredible that we think there is one view of the facts out there. It would be easier to have a falsehood finder than a fact checker. I digress. Anyway, I like the idea of third party plugs which directly push to these services.

I'd even be ok with facebook/twitter creating a special area for this and ratings for fact checks etc. But they still need it to be user driven content or they're at risk of being liable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's also ask if they will do it to other big authoritarian countries on the east side

</comment><comment><USER21> Even if I were to condone censorship, I do think that in any case announcements by the government are special. Trump's form may be off, it might not look official, but absent other more formal press releases etc., this is as official as it gets. And such announcements do need to reach the citizens of the affected nation/state/area, because they do directly influence people's lives, health, the society and the state. Any company censoring those better be damn sure that that censorship won't have any adverse effects on anyone...

On the other hand, if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible. This is not Facebook's or any company's task.

<comment><USER22> " if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible."

Are there really though? Perhaps there are said to be, but can you give me an example of this supposed system working?

<comment><USER12> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election)

An unbroken history of being held every 4 years even in the midst of a civil war and WW2.

<comment><USER22> This is... A terrible example. Do you know what gerrymandering and the electoral college is?

<comment><USER12> Do _you_ know what gerrymandering is? It has almost no effect at all on the presidential election. Only two small states, Nebraska and Maine, allocate their electoral votes based on congressional district winners.

The electoral college doesn't stop voters removing an unpopular POTUS. See Jimmy Carter, 1980, and George HW Bush in 1992.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also fact checkers Are human and can have biases and can make errors. There is a lot of misinformation out there that seem like facts right now.

</comment><comment><USER23> We already have plenty of curated news outlets. It's entirely possible we will simply end up with another one.

<comment><USER7> And that would be fine, new outlets will spring up and maybe Facebook will lose it's market dominance and strangle hold over many people's online interactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 2016: Facebook rigged an election. They are awful.

2020: Facebook won't rig an election. They are awful.

<comment><USER25> Moving the public square to the corporate world's data gathering arm was a terrible idea.

<comment><USER26> Free speech of corporate-owned property is not new. In London, there's a huge amount of public spaces that are privately owned, but companies can't control their speech. Facebook may be similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a user, factual content is a feature.

</comment><comment><USER29> "We must demand that he perform that role in the best possible way, minimizing the toxic speech posted by his customers."

No, we don't. I disagree. An ueber capitalist is not better in judging what is good or bad then a random bum. Perhaps he is even worse in doing so. You don't become billionaire by being such a nice and good guy.</comment>


How I built Flirpy without any programming knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://simflos.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi thanks for the question. Overseas was emphasized cause developers in other countries tend to be cheaper in cost. I found that developers in U.S average around $40-$60/hr while developers overseas can range from $10-$20/hr. This is based purely on my experience on oDesk.com. Hope that answers your question!

</comment><comment><USER2> Why is 'overseas' emphasized?</comment>


Amb in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://mihai.bazon.net/blog/amb-in-javascript

<comment><USER2> Great post but it's the language and syntax hoop-jumping that is required in JavaScript to do paradigm experimentation (or _playing_ as Feynman would call it) that's pushed me to take the time to explore other languages.

Here's the Fish/Zebra/Einstein puzzle in my Clojure logic programming library based on miniKanren, this program is solved on my machine in _2 milliseconds_ \- even though this version involves unification and logic variables. It also reads better IMO and should look familiar to the Prologist:

      (defn-e first-o [l o]
        ([[?a . ?d] ?a]))

      (defn-e member-o [x l]
        ([_ [x . ?tail]])
        ([_ [?head . ?tail]]
           (member-o x ?tail)))

      (defn-e on-right-o [x y l]
        ([_ _ [x y . ?r]])
        ([_ _ [_ . ?r]] (on-right-o x y ?r)))

      (defn next-to-o [x y l]
        (cond-e
         ((on-right-o x y l))
         ((on-right-o y x l))))

      (defn zebra-o [hs]
        (macro/symbol-macrolet [_ (lvar)]
         (all
          (== [_ _ [_ _ 'milk _ _] _ _] hs)
          (first-o hs ['norwegian _ _ _ _])
          (next-to-o ['norwegian _ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _ 'blue] hs)
          (on-right-o [_ _ _ _ 'ivory] [_ _ _ _ 'green] hs)
          (member-o ['englishman _ _ _ 'red] hs)
          (member-o [_ 'kools _ _ 'yellow] hs)
          (member-o ['spaniard _ _ 'dog _] hs)
          (member-o [_ _ 'coffee _ 'green] hs)
          (member-o ['ukrainian _ 'tea _ _] hs)
          (member-o [_ 'lucky-strikes 'oj _ _] hs)
          (member-o ['japanese 'parliaments _ _ _] hs)
          (member-o [_ 'oldgolds _ 'snails _] hs)
          (next-to-o [_ _ _ 'horse _] [_ 'kools _ _ _] hs)
          (next-to-o [_ _ _ 'fox _] [_ 'chesterfields _ _ _] hs))))

      (run 1 [q] (zebra-o q))

<comment><USER3> That's why it's so much more fun in javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is a nice paper on how to prune the execution tree when using _amb_ : _Non-deterministic lisp with dependency-directed backtracking_ ; <http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/1987/AAAI87-011.pdf>

I've not played much with _amb_ or Prolog, but it would be cool to try out some alternative strategies for exhausting the search tree, perhaps simulated annealing or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the sort of language feature that looks very neat at first, but there are simpler ways to solve the same problems. If you want to search a space by trying all possibilities ("generate and test"), the most straightforward way is a nested for loop with an if statement.

The advantage of using nested for loops is that it's pretty clear that there's a performance problem and most programmers will have a good idea what to do about it. (Perhaps change the order of the loops, do checks in the outer loops to avoid running the inner loops, and so on. For larger problems, figure out how to parallelize.)

Of course, a for loop isn't very modular, so something like Python's generator expressions might be more suitable for building pipelines. In Java, this can be done with iterators and some good iterator utility methods, such as those in Guava.

</comment><comment><USER6> Haven't seen this operator before; reminds me of angelic programming. (see eg. <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1706339>)

This also seems like a very natural application of monads.</comment>


The Most Popular Color on the Internet Is… - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/09/popular-color-internet <comment><USER2> Blue. saved you a click.</comment>


Show HN: Photile – create photo collages from your Instagram photos - <AUTHOR> https://photile.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Photile is a small JS/GO app that I've built to learn ReactJS and Golang.

It can be used to create a perfect cover image for your Facebook, Twitter or any other social profile. You can use it to create featured images for your blog articles or even print it out and put it on your wall.

It can also be used to create "end of year" or "best of Instagram" collages.

<comment><USER2> Neat! I'm not sure the HN crowd is your target audience though. I encourage you to showcase your app on Reddit (/r/reactjs, /r/sideproject) and ProductHunt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestions. I did plan to showcase it on ProductHunt and this was just a first stop :-) I did not consider those subreddits so I'll give them a try.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Great online communities? - <AUTHOR> It would be nice to have some thing like HN and maybe not so USA-centric. <comment><USER2> It's a great question. I also would love to unearth an intelligent community where discourse isn't limited to growth hacking, jQuery plugins, and startup pivoting. HN is the closet I get, but people here tend not to take intellectual risks and experiment with creating new thought paradigms.

Don't get me wrong, there are some tremendously bright people here who I learn a lot from. but the Reddit-esque social dynamics (ie, karma, hivemind,) tend to put safety pads on anything remotely radical or risky discussed here. Quora can actually have some pretty interesting content, but, again, there's similar reputation management going on that prevents discourse from elevating to being somewhat interesting and important.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.metafilter.com/](http://www.metafilter.com/)

Also, the social dynamics here are not fixed. They can and do change over time. It is possible to participate with an eye towards fostering change of a sort you would like to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/) \- for data scientists

[https://www.designernews.co/](https://www.designernews.co/) \- for designers

[http://www.webdesignernews.com/](http://www.webdesignernews.com/) \- for web designers

[https://growthhackers.com/welcome](https://growthhackers.com/welcome) \- growthhackers

Then of course there's a sleuth of subreddits.... similar to HN would be

[https://www.reddit.com/r/startup](https://www.reddit.com/r/startup)

If you are looking for something different, there is a tool that lets you create online communities like HN or Reddit, so you can create your own.

[http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)

Quite a few communities on it are

[http://www.chitchats.co/](http://www.chitchats.co/) \- community to share interesting Slack chatrooms

[http://tools.robingood.com/](http://tools.robingood.com/) \- curated list of tech tools

<comment><USER5> I wonder why datatau went with the Hacker News format. It's pretty awful</comment></comment>


When Will iOS 4 Hit the iPad? - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2010/07/25/when-will-ios-4-hit-the-ipad/

<comment><USER2> My guess would be, at the September press event when they announce the new iPod touches (Camera + High Res Screen?)</comment>


Recovering speech from vibrations in simple objects - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXOucXB4a8

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131785)</comment>


Ask HN: Why does StackOverflow close so many useful topics? - <AUTHOR>

I can't actually log into my SO account at the moment because MyOpenID is giving problems so thought I would ask the question here as I respect the opinion of HN'ers.
Often when searching for information on something technology related I get linked to SO and almost always the information on SO is great. I have also found that a lot of these topics have been closed. For example there is a SO topic on HN front page right now about Language to use for Safety Critical Software. This has been very popular on both HN and SO and yet the topic is already closed on SO.
I find this rather frustrating as it seems that almost any question about "what is best?" or "how would you do this?" is closed, irrespective of how relevant the question is and how good the answers are.
It seems that in their zeal to prevent religious wars the moderators are closing very interesting, relevant and well reasoned topics.
This behaviour does not make a lot of sense to me and is starting to detract, in my opinion, from the usefulness and relevance of Stackoverflow. Just where is one supposed to go to get these types of questions answered from domain experts? <comment><USER2> It's _extremely_ frustrating. I used to look forward to finding a Stack Overflow link in my google search results. Now, I can pretty much predict that the topic will be closed based on how interesting the title looks.

I've actually been collecting all the annoyingly closed discussions I've run across in everyday internet browsing:

<https://pinboard.in/u:zpinter/t:closed/t:stackoverflow>

On the bright side, StackOverflow content is available via data dumps and an API. Combined with the fact that they use OpenID logins, I've been tempted to setup a domain that matches stack exchange urls and automatically pulls in content for closed topics to continue the discussion.

Something like:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed- up...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up-eclipse)

to

[http://stackoverflow.whyyouclosethis.com/questions/316265/tr...](http://stackoverflow.whyyouclosethis.com/questions/316265/tricks- to-speed-up-eclipse)

However, it really seems crazy that StackOverflow itself can't find a way to incorporate these types of questions into their ecosystem. There's clearly a demand. Whether or not they want it to be the core focus, they've got a community that's interested in these discussions. They really should find a way (even if it means moving them to an off-topic section) to allow it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Serverfault has the same problems. I barely go back there anymore, I just lost interest (despite being in the top 100). The questions are usually not that interesting, but I do enjoy helping the new sysadmins that don't know where to begin. Although I need to be quick about it (those questions are usually closed first).

Example: [http://serverfault.com/questions/9766/what-a-beginner- should...](http://serverfault.com/questions/9766/what-a-beginner-should-know- learn-for-sysadmin-job)

</comment><comment><USER4> There is a relatively new (a month old) FAQ section named What Stack Overflow is Not[1]. I believe lots of new and old questions are being closed and deleted based on this list.

For your example, a "what is best..." question would be closed under "Stack Overflow is not a Recommendation Engine".

[1]: <http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/128548/151459>

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to believe that it's because some of the questions are not objective.

However, after seeing some very good discussions closed, I really just think that the admins get off on it. It's even worse at programmers.stackexchange.com

It's a bad policy, and it leads to a lot of frustration by a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some of the forums seem worse than others. I give you "Programmers" (<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/>) as an example of one forum that closes questions way too often.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious - why not ask this over at StackOverflow?

Besides, they have a FAQ specifically for your question: <http://stackoverflow.com/faq#close>

<comment><AUTHOR> AS I said in my post - I could not log into SO, due to problems with OpenID. Will try again later and post this question there.</comment></comment>


Google Bluring Ads Into Search Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.orlandoseo.com/googles-quest-to-blur-the-lines-between-paid-and-organic

<comment><AUTHOR> It is way harder to see the difference on a LCD screen but I can not see it clearly on any screen.</comment>


Shocking truth about Google vs Oracle lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.techyourchance.com/shocking-truth-about-oracle-vs-google-android-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> It would be nice if the author got to the point sooner. And even that point is not immediately clear to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Low Code tools like Webflow, what's my role in the future? - <AUTHOR> I'm not a software developer, I like to code, but I prefer relative simple websites with HTML, CSS, JS and a CMS. Developing complex applications is not my thing and I see no future for me there.
When I see things like clutch.io or webflow.com I ask myself if it is still worth to master the basic 3 (HTML/CSS/JS).
I think even larger projects can be done well soon in tools like webflow, squarespace, wix and all the others.
What do you think has the most future for me and other frontend developers which are not very skilled in the very technical part of coding? What should I learn to have a secure future without having to go deep into software development?
I like coding, so design is not a full time option for me.
What's your take on this?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> If you don't like design, and you want to work as a professional in the software industry, then you really need to go deeper. Even if you happen to have a job right now doing "light" coding tasks with bits of JS, you'll be the first to go with the software industry goes off the rails.

I've seen this happen already after the dotcom crash. In fact, it happened to me. I was doing more or less what you are doing now, and once times got tough, I found it very hard to find decent work. I left the profession for a while (although I continued to do a bit of coding as part of my job), but when I came back I buckled down and learned to be an actual software developer, learning everything from low-level programming, to data structures and algorithms, to architecture. It was gradual, but I knew were I was going.

I happen to work in frontend dev now, but building actual web applications (and feel just as comfortable building applications on the desktop, or Android, both of which I've also done professionally). Now when the shit hits the fan, I'm fairly sure to keep my job, or find another one if needed.

Also, as you allude to the kind of skill you're talking about will be increasingly vulnerable to automation. But not just the "low-code" things. Also the HTML, CSS, and light JS things. And things that are "low-code" now will be virtually "nocode" in the future, capable of being done by any random office worker.

If you want to be a coder, then master coding. Or else go into design and master design. Either way, set your sites on mastering something, don't just play around the edges. It's a process, and a hard one at times, but I'm convinced that anyone can do it. If you're already enjoying working with HTML, CSS, and bits of JS, then you'll likely do just fine teaching yourself to be a full-fledged professional developer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started programming on a low code tool. We went pretty far - games like Knytt Stories, Spelunky, Five Nights at Freddy's are built on low code tools.

The downside is that it's often harder to communicate with the software. Drag and drop is _much_ slower than typing. These tools often have bugs and bad design. You end up building long winded hacks around them. Like we'd end up building our own physics engine, collision detection, and so on. Knytt Stories has a level split into many different screens, rather than continuous scrolling, because of some limitations. You eventually get the Ionic/Cordova effect - you can build things fast, but have to hack a lot to get what you really want. The more layers there are, the more work you need to debug every layer.

I've bought tools like Bootstrap Studio and eventually just gave up and went to HTML. They work as training wheels, but if you're here to race, you won't want them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe there will always be place for coding, even for HTML/CSS.

The more common problems that are recognised as "patterns" are going to be handled by the specialised tools (such as Webflow which you mentioned), but there is always going to be the next level of complexity which has not been tamed yet.

This is how I see the innovation cycle: New tech that makes X easier comes out. People use it and do things they couldn't do before - but then the patterns emerge, people often do Y but since this tech is general it takes a lot of work to achieve it. Then the new product comes which makes Y easier.

HTML and CSS (especially advanced preprocessors such as Sass /Less) will always be more expressive than some visual tool, and some things will be really hard/clumsy without them. Of course, the question is in what volume will such "harder" problems be there in the future.

What to learn? HTML/CSS/JS are still very much used, but more and more within the different frameworks/tools. So maybe it wouldn't be bad to learn e.g. React. Just focusing solely on the HTML or CSS itself, I am not sure how beneficial is it to have e.g. 80% mastery vs 99% mastery. What kind of projects would require and adequately appreciate such knowledge?

Btw, I am working on an open-source low-code solution - as opposed to Webflow and others, we still very much rely on the code, just try to abstract away the common patterns and let developer focus on the unique product logic.

In our vision of the future the coding is going to stay, it will just become more and more integrated within the tools which will take away the "setup" complexity. So more and more people will be able participate in the development, even coding, while having the "safety net" of the underlying tool.

This is our repo, would be happy to get your feedback! [https://github.com/wasp-lang/wasp](https://github.com/wasp-lang/wasp)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am working on a no-code platform [1] currently that along with other tools in the market will continue to allow more and more non-programmers to build tools.

BUT... I still believe there is plenty of runway for great front-end developers. Especially those that have an eye for design.

Keep learning and growing. There will be a place for you in the future!

[1] Webase - [https://www.webase.com](https://www.webase.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Like it or not, HTML/CSS/JS is the universal computing platform of our day. I did a survey of cross-platform GUI toolkits I could use on PC, Mac, maybe Android, and found that none of them beat Electron or a single-page app.

If you are on a larger team you can be a language lawyer specialist in HTML and CSS, a handy person to have in a web dev shop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul!

What do mean by language lawyer specialist? Actually, HTML, CSS and some JS is what i like doing. So you don't think, that these low level positions like HTML/CSS coder will be soon be replaced by a tool?

<comment><USER6> Language lawyer means you know a computer language in such detail you can always get the right answer. Fixing existing

As another poster said, graphic design skills help too. For instance, coming up with good color schemes, maybe being able to draw, understanding how to use CSS properties to perfect character and line spacing to make it look right, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Looking for a Technical Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a MarTech product specifically for content marketers. The idea is to make content marketing 'better'. Cannot reveal the actual product idea for obvious reasons but happy to answer your questions.
My strength lies in product management, marketing, and sales. I have a first-hand experience in dealing with MarTech consumers.
Searching for someone who is passionate about building products that scale. <comment><USER2> You should be able to describe 'what' aspect it improves without giving away the secret sauce.

Less effort? Is it cheaper? A quirk to capitalize while it exists?

Can you name a few companies that might be considered competitors?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. The product aims to tackle friction encountered in the content creation process from ideation to distribution and analysis thereafter. It attempts to introduce 'campaign thinking' in the process. This level of thinking will speed up the creation process and introduce clarity in the content marketing team.

There isn't any solution that directly deals in this space which makes the content creation process very distributed and time-consuming. In that respect, Google Doc will be considered as a competitor.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'm generally buzzword adverse and hadn't heard MarTech or realize just how big and crowded the space is until I saw this graphic.

[https://martechtoday.com/downloads/marketing_technology_land...](https://martechtoday.com/downloads/marketing_technology_landscape_2017_big.jpg) (38MB)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. MarTech or marketing technology space is quite vast. Marketing, as a function, is dynamic and composed of various aspects. Marketers are not usually tech aware so they employ products that decrease their dependency on other functions, especially engineering.

If you study that graphic more you'll find a lot of solutions pitching the idea of 'no IT help required'. Trust me, that's huge relief for marketers. Another indication of a crowded space is demand. Demand for convenience.

Differentiation becomes really challenging in such a crowded space, I agree. From a product perspective, consistency in expanding the capabilities of your product can help set a long term relationship with the market. From the marketing perspective, positioning of the product should evolve in a manner that agrees with what's trending in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> how does one get in touch with you?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com When you email, do mention why you would like to collaborate.</comment></comment>


Who's Really to Blame for Robot-Human Crashes? Are We Really Such Awful Drivers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/12/whos-really-blame-robot-human-crashes-really-awful-drivers/ <comment><USER2> > The mean mileage for cars driven by humans before encountering an accident > is 500,000 miles, compare that with 42,017 miles for self-driving cars.

Self driving cars do not drive like humans and are harder to predict, causing accidents.</comment>


Apple Settles Patent Lawsuit - Are patents a good thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139889-c,legalissues/article.html I've always seen patents (in software) as a means for larger companies to squash any kind of competition from small startups. What is the experience by people on here? Do you check for existing patents first or do you just 'go for it' ? <comment><USER2> The problem is that the patent system is a) broken and b) _very_ abused.

It's at the point where companies will go out and patent everything they possibly can, in order to _protect themselves_. Then, when company A decides to sue company B for patent infringement, company B simply finds a patent of theirs that company A is infringing, and they counter-sue then call it even.

It's utterly ridiculous, but it's common and considered normal these days. For example, the Qualcomm / Broadcom patent lawsuits. Cisco does the same thing.</comment>


Beaker Notebook v1.3 released, includes PySpark and SparkR support etc. - <AUTHOR> http://BeakerNotebook.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Among many improvements, Beaker v1.3 has: Access to Spark clusters with PySpark and SparkR. Support for new languages Clojure and Kdb. A new editor for markdown and section headings that allows inline math, vim keybindings, and handles special characters. Improved indentation and editing, including tab as a synonym for autocomplete. A new UI for data frames that includes formatting of each column. Allow users to generate files from code cells and access the results with HTML. Too many performance and bug fixes to count.

</comment><comment><USER2> How does this compare to IPython/Jupyter? It seems to be building on top of it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Beaker allows you to run multiple languages in the same notebook and communicate between them (you can set a variable in one language and read it in another and it just works, magically). It is JavaScript-centric and can be scripted and extended in JS. Has some nice modern UI features like interactive dataframe display, one click sharing, expandable sections. In particular, the R support is quite good compared to IPython3.

Yes, it is compatible with the IPython backend, so if you already have that installed, you can access it. Also you can import ipynb files. Compatibility is pretty good but not everything works, eg widgets do not.</comment></comment>


Introducing: The Desk Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcdowall.info/john/blog/2011/04/introducing-the-desk-book/

<comment><USER2> This is oddly familiar. Hmm...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Kramer#Coffee_Table_Book_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Kramer#Coffee_Table_Book_about_Coffee_Tables)

<comment><USER3> LOL!

Exactly what came to my mind, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also: <http://www.deskography.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this - seems dormant now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One suggestion: lose the 'the'. Just: 'Deskbook.' It's cleaner.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the 'the. That, and deskbook.com is owned by some pirate and I wanted a .com TLD :)</comment></comment>


Form Over Function: Teaching Beginners How to Construct Programs (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.deinprogramm.de/sperber/papers/form-over-function.pdf <comment><USER2> I remember many years ago my father, who is very technical but not a programmer, writing a Lunar Lander-type game. He started off writing every message that the program should print. It was along these lines:

        10 LET m1$ = "The space craft has landed"
        20 LET m2$ = "Descent rate is too high!"

(It was in some BASIC, probably ZX BASIC or GW-BASIC).

After writing a lot of these lines, he got stuck on how to make the computer print the messages at the right time. He had no idea how to continue. He'd mocked the game out on paper so knew what it should look like, but had no idea there is an internal world of state in a real program.

Thinking back to it now, it's rather like how people who aren't programmers mistake the user interface for the whole program. If you show them the mocked- up GUI, they'll think the program must be finished.

The follow up to this story is that with a bit of my help and many, many weeks of work he actually finished the game, although it retained this odd "message database" at the beginning of the code.

<comment><USER3> And if the UI doesn't (yet) look good, they think your development is crap. A problem I've run into.

I wanted to get the guts working right. Then, I could make it look "pretty". Non-programmers are just looking for the pretty.

Same problem that results in a lot of divorces, I guess... ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have a collection of best practice articles like this? And is there any ongoing measurement of the effectiveness of various approaches?

</comment><comment><USER5> They're using Scheme. Wow that takes me back. But I have to say, it certainly forces you to focus on two things:

1\. Form and flow 2\. Functional paradigms

I retain these lessons even today, no matter what language or paradigm I use. Reading this paper, I realized that when I mentor, I do the same thing they did. Teaching function is giving a man a fish; teaching form is teaching him to fish. If the student or mentee can think around the problem, they can find any solution, vs the one they were instructed to find.</comment>


Introducing TaskRouter - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/02/introducing-the-taskrouter-api.html?utm_content=bufferf4552&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> The scroll-driven animation on the TaskRouter product page is incredibly obnoxious. Put it in a video or something, please.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I thought my scroll functionality was broken for a second there. Didn't realize it was working it's way through annoying animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone can tell folks who are not into call centers like me why this TaskRouter is so special? Thanks

<comment><USER5> Rob from Twilio here. Very fair question - a lot of these concepts are foreign for folks that haven't worked in the call center space before.

I think Al Cook on our product marketing team described it most aptly as referring to Task Router as "ripping the still-beating heart out of a high volume call center and sitting it on a table for a developer to plug in his/her app."

Task Router is a set of primitives that takes the state that must be managed to accept work from multiple channels and delivering it to resources that can complete them. You can define the core logic to accept tasks from any channel, assign it to the appropriate workflow based on its attributes, and connect it to a resource ready and able to complete it. These flows are defined by you, all without re-implementing the state management common to this problem domain.

Does that help?

<comment><USER6> You are doing yourself a disservice by talking about "primitives" and "call state" without naming the actual, industry-standard mechanism you have built.

This is an ACD. In the cloud. Using common terminology gives other developers a reference point in which to do more research and draw their own conclusions about the technology. Even a reference and link to Wikipedia would be good -- the ACD page is lucid [1], and I understood exactly what an ACD does after reading that. I don't get the same sense about TaskRouter from the blog post.

You have a decent explanation of an ACD mechanism, but now telecom- inexperienced developers have to try and internalize your meaning without the benefit of knowing the precise jargon, and potentially missing out on the decades of experience others have had in this field.

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

<comment><USER7> From the WikiPedia page: "Routing incoming calls is the task of the ACD system".

TaskRouter isn't an ACD in that sense.. or no solely an ACD system anyway. It is an API driven way to distribute user defined tasks. It can serve as an ACD, such as routing calls to an available agent.. or.. SMS.. or chat.. or "tickets" or whatever you define as a Task and a Worker using.. primitives. No dependence on calls.

To your point.. maybe using the ACD would help some people understand it at first glance.

<comment><USER6> Sure, that's what the Wikipedia article says (since calls are what ACDs were originally designed for), but commercial ACDs have been multi-channel for a long time, doing all the things you mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My first job was building something like this into sugarcrm circa 2005. It was more of a generic workflow tool and is a great way to automate business process. Not not sure how enjoyable it was for people to come into work, check their taskboard, and find 20 identical tasks on their list of things to do that day though.

It certainly exposes bottlenecks if they weren't obvious already.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, basically an ACD?

<comment><USER5> I think more specifically the core state that drives an ACD abstracted into primitives any developer can manipulate.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER9> Most ACD platforms provide work flow routing APIs so that third party applications can route tasks to the connected agents. Doesn't mean this is any less than an ACD with API's on it. Also task routing has become ubiquitous with the omni-channel multi-channel routing and CRM routing you see across all contact center vendor platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will it be possible to plug in 3rd party platforms? For example, can I plug in a task to POST to the API of another platform with some data about the call?

Hmm, a marketplace for these 3rd party integrations to advertise compatibility would be pretty neat as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Twilio going up the food chain - edging closer to getting in competition with its customers.

<comment><USER5> A fair concern. I think Task Router is less going up the food chain and more going up the stack - we're trying to provide more abstraction for the state common to all these problems as a pure platform.

My hope is all our customers can leverage these primitives to invest more development time in their applications rather than solve the same mundane problems over and over again. I think that's the promise of a continually improving platform rather than an elbow move.

[edit: typo]

<comment><USER12> I would agree with the characterization that it's moving up the stack... but it does seem to (without saying it explicitly -- not clear whether that's conscious or not) start to overlap heavily with an existing space [1]. How would you differentiate it from BPM / workflow tools (one open-source example being Activiti [2], but there are many in the market)?

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

[2] - [http://activiti.org/](http://activiti.org/)</comment></comment></comment>