Kyoto taxi drivers reduce robberies by 50 percent by doing nothing - <AUTHOR> http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/01/02/kyoto-taxi-drivers-reduce-convenience-store-robberies-50-percent-by-doing-absolutely-nothing/ <comment><USER2> While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities":

> "A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in > itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city > neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:

> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and > what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other > as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.

> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might > call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street > equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and > strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or > blank sides on it and leave it blind.

> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to > add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people > in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. > Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. > Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain > themselves, off and on, by watching street activity."

I love it. Simple, elegant.

Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!

<comment><USER3> Jane Jacobs' work is famous, but yet still under-appreciated, and her ideas IMO under-implemented.

For the most part we're still stuck with half-assed bastardized versions of Le Corbusier's shitty ideas about the Radiant City, even though we've already seen terrible results from it across the board.

One thing that disappoints me is that American cities are experiencing a huge resurgence in urbanism, but yet most of this comes in the form of isolated towers attached to parking garages, not any structures that would encourage street life or "eyes on the street" to any substantial degree. Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.

<comment><USER4> > Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout > the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.

Are there cities in particular that you're thinking of? This is decidedly not the case where I live (in fact, the most common complaint I've heard is that it's getting too crowded, especially downtown). On a more theoretical level (given that I don't have _recent_ experience living anywhere else), I don't even see how the influx of residents implied by these new apts wouldn't increase street activity to at least some significant degree.

<comment><USER5> Take a look at Streeterville/Lakeshore East in Chicago (lakefront downtown) and Tobacco Row in Richmond (riverfront warehouse district). High rises and lofts, with amenities in skylobbies or at the bottom, and ample parking in garages. Despite beautiful parks adjacent, the sidewalks around these areas are always empty, and there is very little street-facing retail.

The converted lofts in Fulton River District (warehouse district in chicago, same price point) seem to be increasing foot traffic though, despite it being an area where you need a car to get anywhere. Parking in this neighborhood is on the street. Still very undeveloped commercially though, aside from "restaurant row"

<comment><USER6> >> "Despite beautiful parks adjacent..."

A big chunk of Jacobs' work is concerned with why parks are a necessary but insufficient condition for vibrant cities, especially in the book mentioned in the GP (Death and Life of Great American Cities). IMHO it's eye-opening and pleasantly brief (particularly by the ponderous standards of city-planning literature).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I live in Kyoto and was surprised to learn that there were even 18 convenience store robberies in the year before the program started. It's really safe here so I wonder what percentage of those armed robberies included assault on the clerk. Anyway, this is a good idea. And the Kyoto taxi drivers are amazing too. They aren't your standard "just arrive in the country and don't know where anything is" taxi drivers that are found in many cities. These guys usually own their own taxi and take great pride in knowing where and how to get to anywhere in Kyoto quickly and safely. If you are in Kyoto and take a taxi, you'll never have to worry about being taken the long way so they can get extra money. So good on them for working with the police in this situation.

<comment><USER8> Having lived in Japan, what surprised me was the implication that convenience stores have parking lots. Really? Don't think I ever saw one.

<comment><USER9> lol You're right. I've only seen them in front of large supermarkets.

Edit: n/m. I guess it's common once you get out of the busy part of Kyoto, but near main streets.

[http://tinyurl.com/l558zcy](http://tinyurl.com/l558zcy)

[http://tinyurl.com/lgmf5l2](http://tinyurl.com/lgmf5l2)

[http://tinyurl.com/l3vfnds](http://tinyurl.com/l3vfnds)

they're all over the place. lol

<comment><USER10> Note: HN will elide links that are excessively long, so next time you can just paste the Google Maps links directly. Plus a lot of people don't like clicking on blind links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like alternative solutions like this to bad behaviour. My favourite instance of this is story of hooded teenagers outside stores intimidating passers by and general unwanted loitering in car parks etc. The solution was to loudly play music that the miscreants would really hate, like Engelbert Humperdinck, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton etc. They moved on pretty quickly because they couldnt stand listening to it.

<comment><USER2> Ha! That is amazing. I would love to read a book or blog just full of examples like these.

Another couple I can think of: (more common examples)-

* reducing baggage waiting time by increasing the walking time to the baggage carousels.

* Reducing "the phone rings too many times before customer support answers" complaints by lengthening the time per ring.

* Using mirrors next to elevators so people distract themselves and feel less bothered by the wait.

<comment><USER12> Animating progress bars to decrease perceived wait times.

[http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars2/Progress...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars2/ProgressBarsHarrison.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Oh yes! the next android progress bars [1] are a perfect example of this. I actually kinda like watching them.

— [1] [http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/progress- activi...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/progress- activity.html#progress-activity-types-of-indicators)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't even imagine living in a state where a city with 1.4 million people having 4 robberies in participating stores.

That's crazy.

Of course I live in Michigan.

I've been thinking about crime a bunch after listening to the Serial podcast and thinking about The Wire. Crime is expensive. Trial, police, incarceration are all resource intensive. It would be amazing to have those resources available for city residents to do something else, like have a cleaner town, better schools, safer roads.

<comment> semi-extrinsic In the US there are, sadly, big financial interests in keeping the prison population high (the prison industry complex). Couple with what seems to be a very high reluctance towards giving someone who is mentally ill treatment instead of prison, and no real public mental health care, and you get what you get.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's just that; I think that in America, there's this huge belief system that focuses on individuals, self-reliance, etc - and the flip side of that is a the belief that if you commit a crime, well, you've made your bed, and that bed is in a prison cell, and you'll be sleeping there for a really long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I worked in fast food in high school, we had a standing policy that all police officers got the 50% off employee discount. Generally, having a couple cruisers in the parking lot deterred trouble.

<comment><USER17> I don't think this is legal or considered acceptable today, at least in most US states. A police discount for the purpose of affecting favorable treatment (even if that treatment is merely for continued presence) is kind of like a bribe. Many police departments just don't allow these kinds of discounts as a matter of policy.

<comment><USER18> Apparently it's either legal or at least accepted in Whataburger country (Texas). Stores there offer free meals to anyone in uniform--police, firefighter, EMS, security guard, military, nurse, etc--eating in the restaurant.

<comment><USER17> If everyone got a 50% discount, there would obviously be no problem. If the criteria was unrelated to any ulterior motives (you just have to be uniform), then that seems fine. It is only when providing a discount to a government employee with the expectation of a special benefit that would not be conveyed otherwise...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Notably, using a similar tactic, the 'Gävle goat' survived this Christmas from arsonists because the town set up a taxi rank around the wooden structure:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/christmas-201...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/christmas-2014-the- giant-goat-who-has-survived-against-all-the-odds-9948703.html)

<comment><USER20> That's the tactic employed, yes, but that doesn't mean that's why it survived. I'm certain a dedicated goat burner would gladly lob a Molotov cocktail and leg it away from the scene.

We'll have to wait and see what happens next year; a sample size of 1 is not useful. :)

<comment><USER15> I think drones are cheap enough these days that you could probably put a slow- burning fuse on one, and dive-bomb the Goat from a safe distance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The increase in robberies at non-participating stores is a bit concerning. This might deter in a similar manner to The Club, which did a good job of preventing _your_ car from being stolen but didn't drop the overall crime rate.

<comment><USER22> And possibly worse, I wonder if robberies of other places than convenience stores increased. The interesting number is whether overall crime decreased or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The data set is far too small to draw serious conclusions from yet.... especially the 'increase' in stores that weren't participating (although a 50% drop 'feels' like it should be significant...).

Still, hopefully the effect is real and less people suffer as result. :)

<comment><USER24> When the sample size is that small, it's possible that there were just one or two dudes doing most of the robberies. If they decided to move, call it quits, or went to jail, that could be an alternative explanation to the drop. I think you'd have to implement the experiment over a region to make it accurate if N is so low.

<comment><USER13> The problem is: This experiment was implemented over a region with 1.4 million people in it. Doing any larger sample size wouldn't be helpful here.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I don't know if its fixable, just that the conclusion drawn is on shaky foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This only works in a country where guns are rare.

Another common crime-prevention device in Japan is orange dye balls. Convenience store clerks have some handy to throw at robbers. This marks them for later pickup by cops.

It probably wouldn't help much in the US.

<comment><USER13> Hmm, in Germany a lot of products in most stores is tagged with a special capsule, if the product is stolen, as soon as it leaves the store, the capsule explodes and releases a 100ml of extremely bright red ink, which stains and can't be gotten off anymore (literally, it will stay on your skin for a month or so). Also this marks the article as stolen, so no one will buy the red- stained product from anyone.

<comment><USER26> What happens if the cashier forgets to disable the capsule?

With alarm tags, sometimes the cashier forgets to disable the tag. It's no big deal - the alarm beeps at the door, you go back to the cashier and the tag is disabled. With an exploding ink capsule, you'd have ink everywhere instead of just a harmless beep. On your clothes, on other products you bought, on the store floor...

<comment><USER27> Well, exactly what you would think happens. A perfectly good product gets ruined. Cashiers are trained to pay attention, and I imagine if they forget then they have to pay for the destroyed item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Some of the headlines are hilarious. This one detailing a convenience store robbery in particular: [http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/05/06/saitama-man- robs-7-ele...](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/05/06/saitama-man- robs-7-eleven-with-knives-steals-3-onigiri/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Given Japan's murder rate - roughly 400 to 500 per year in a nation of 127 million - I have to wonder what would happen if you just refused to comply with a robber. What are the odds they'd proceed to attack, much less try to kill you. I suppose the clerk might risk a beating.

<comment><USER30> They used knives for those robberies, not guns. That's enough to reduce the risk of being killed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why there are so many idiotic headlines?)

It should be "Kyoto taxi drivers reduce robberies _of grocery stores, not themselves_ by 50 percent by _sitting and_ doing nothing _in their cars on a vacant parking lots in front of grocery stores_.

</comment><comment><USER32> 18 + 7 incidents (participating and nonparticipating, respectively) before the program - for an entire small region of the country. I wonder if the price of implementing the program compares to what should be a minuscule insurance policy.

</comment><comment><USER33> Viewing the size of the dataset this really does not mean anything. It's like training a statistical model on 10 data points and proudly saying that you have 95% accuracy at predicting something when actually you don't.

</comment><comment><USER34> This idea leaves me feeling a bit uneasy; aren't the robberies still taking place, just at different locations?

There's also the missing question: what happens if all the stores start offering parking to the taxi drivers?

<comment><USER35> >This idea leaves me feeling a bit uneasy; aren't the robberies still taking place, just at different locations?

This is covered in the article. There is some shift to other stores, but the total number of robberies across all stores was roughly halved.

<comment><USER36> I think that moottothemax is implying more that the crime is going elsewhere, perhaps there has been an increase in homes being burgled for example. The article doesn't cover that, the desperate/criminal are still desperate/criminals. Maybe there was an increase in cars getting broken into?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I didn't think Japan was an anti-crime mecca but it is surprising to read about high robbery rates there.

Well I guess a dozen robberies among a million people is a fraction of anywhere in the USA.

I am more curious WHY people are robbing convenience stores in Japan than the ways it is being combated because it means there are turning elsewhere to solve whatever money problem they seem to have.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a perfect opportunity to plug this book, on the reverse problem:

"Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish Customer's Trustworthiness"

[http://www.amazon.com/Streetwise-Establish-Customers- Trustwo...](http://www.amazon.com/Streetwise-Establish-Customers- Trustworthiness-Foundation/dp/0871543095/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I have always wondered why nearly every time I enter a convenience store in Japan sure enough there are 2-5 people standing there reading magazines for seemingly a really long time. I always wondered why don't they just buy it and at read it at home?

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm just going to leave this here:

> Police are clearly happy with the results and the shops are also pleased > with not have _knives_ waved in their faces

Emphasis mine.

<comment><USER41> If you're trying to make a point you should actually make it.

<comment><USER42> Knives are unAmerican. You're supposed to have an assault rifle when robbing a store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A bit off topic but is it conventional to have side mirrors on the hood like the taxi in the image does? Better view?

<comment><USER44> From what I recall, most cars in Japan have door side mirrors, but taxis typically have fender mirrors for better blind spot coverage. I think I have seen a few cars with both door and fender side mirrors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> 50% really isn't a lot if you're talking about 18 total incidents, but this still is a pretty cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER46> Cities should do that to prevent Graffiti (better than surveillance cams).

</comment><comment><USER47> "It appears to be a win-win-win situation for all involved"

Well... win-win-win-lose for the robbers.

</comment><comment><USER48> > It appears to be a win-win-win situation for all involved

Will no one think of the criminals?

</comment><comment><USER49> "... a win-win-win situation..."

I don't think the thieves would see it that way.

<comment><USER50> Maybe they stay out of prison?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I read this and thought - Oh, so the cabbie is supposed to go limp when a robbery occurs; what a uniquely Japanese style solution. But it's not that at all. Gypped again.

<comment><USER52> Please don't use "gypped", it's a slur.

<comment><USER53> Downvoters - this is correct. Thw word refers to the Romani people (aka Gypsies)

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/30/242429836/why...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/30/242429836/why- being-gypped-hurts-the-roma-more-than-it-hurts-you)

"The noun "gyp" was described at the time as "current in polite circles," and "derived from the popular experience with thieving Gypsies."

"I encounter a lot of people who tell me that they never knew the word 'gypped' had anything to do with gypsies, or that it's offensive — especially when the word is heard not read," says University of Texas at Austin professor Ian Hancock, who was born in Britain to Romani parents. "My response to them is, That's okay. You didn't know but now you do. So stop using it. It may mean nothing to you, but when we hear it, it still hurts.""

<comment><USER41> Interesting definition of polite.

<comment><USER53> "Polite society" or "polite circles" just means the upper class.

It was 1914, polite society was all about colonialism and "scientific racism." I actually read a excerpt of a textbook from that time period. The excerpt was "the races of man," crazy stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The White House's Alpha Geeks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/the-white-house-s-alpha-geek-20b338738929

<comment><USER2> Amazing, the front page of HN has become completely politicized.

The snowden petition gets buried, the NY times misleading BS title stays and now this fluff piece of propaganda gets on front page.

HN is just another tool of propaganda for the white house.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, the tech efforts at the WH are about as non-partisan as anything I've seen. (I've talked to the USDS people; I think it's awesome; I'm far from a Democratic voter).

There are 10% of things people disagree on. There are a lot of things ~everyone agrees on. The political thing is to tie up everything waiting for the 10%. The tech solution is to do the 90% and defer the 10%.

<comment><USER4> This. I've worked on a project with USDS people on it, and their only objective was making shit work better. There was not the slightest hint of politics in anything they did.

<comment><USER5> I was considering a job with the USDS. Seriously reconsidering after the latest Edward Snowden pardon response.

I want to make government and society better; I don't want to be a tool used to enable further entrenchment of incumbent policies. I voted for Obama twice; disgusted doesn't really suffice for how I feel about how him, Kerry, et el are handling current tech policy.

Does the Bernie Sanders campaign have any volunteer technology team positions open?

<comment><USER3> I'd probably argue seat at the table is a prerequisite for any change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We need to move beyond hardware & form factors.

This is not something that any of these people are willing to step up and tell the public.

Some have moved beyond hardware & form factors.</comment>


Stuff that lasts vs disposable junk - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by the "Year of living smaller" thread...
The other day I was reading this article about stuff that lasts vs disposable junk (my paraphrase): http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4273660.html
Which got me thinking: what would it take to make a computer that is useful 25 years from now? Would it even be possible, or would such a machine become obsolete way before that?
Maybe some type of machine with a reduced capability set. A text editing-only, or a teach kids to read-only appliance (a souped-up Leapfrog perhaps).
But then, after some years, you would have the problem of communicating with the external world. Owners of some "vintage" music samplers have that problem: the instrument may sound and play fine, but if they want to load new samples they need to use Zip drives or SCSI.
Opinions? <comment><USER2> Most modern electronics have been using lead-free solder for the past few years (to allow them to be sold in Europe and California). From my experience in manufacturing, I'd say that the long-term reliability of lead-free solders is still rather poor. I don't have much confidence that electronic devices made after about 2005 will last 25 years. Maybe in a few years time, the reliability of lead-free soldering will return to the levels of lead based solders just before RoHS came out. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive)

When circuit boards heat up and cool down, they expand and contract. Ideally, a designer tries to match the coefficients (as much as is practical) so that all the components expand and contract at similar rates. Because they don't, the solder joints get stressed, and over time can become brittle and fracture. Then, they'll be intermittant connections that, depending on where they are located, may or may not cause intermittant operation, or a computer that shuts off/reboots when it is hot. A motherboard has on the order of 10^5 solder joints.

Because of the speed of changing products, and the ease of doing so, and the very thin margins for distribution, there is no money left in the system to make repairing computers affordable or profitable. It has been cheaper for more than the last decade to discard computers than to repair them. And to change that would mean severely restricting models of computers and the parts that go in them.

I used to work in the automotive industry, and keeping parts on the shelf to repair 10-15 year old products was rather common.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disposable doesn't necessarily equal junk. In some situations it may be better to design things not to last. Perhaps not even to be physical-- to be a service. If you want a computer that's useful 25 years from now, your best bet is probably to sign up for AWS.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still have the first computer I bought: an Apple ][+. I haven't booted it up in over fifteen years. If it still works it could be useful for some things, but without a TCP/IP stack, it can never connect to the Internet or even a LAN which severely limits its usefulness to me. Even if hardware lasts 25 years, who can say what the needs of the user will be in that time and whether the hardware will support the software needed to support those needs?

For simpler tools, such as knives, hammers and wrenches, I always buy top quality and have many hand tools that are more than a quarter century old and in perfect working condition. Some of the hand tools I have were my grandfather's first, then my father's before coming to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on what you mean by "computer". A lot of the older calculators still work. I think many portable TRS-80's still work?

VIC-20, C64... the display is the weakest point. The above devices use VFDs or 7-segment LCDs.

RS-232-level 7&8-bit ASCII serial communications are probably the lingua franca of computers and will continue to be, so if your devices can send text across the serial port you should be able to find devices far into the future to communicate with your old computer.

</comment><comment><USER6> the 25-year-old computers that are still actively being used nowadays are the ruggedized ones that aren't affected by things like radiation and the more extreme temperatures.

the disposability of the modern computer tends to be a byproduct of how fast the industry and technology moves.

</comment><comment><USER7> Surely there will be a distro of Linux or FreeBSD distributed 25 years from now that can be run on the hardware of today. So you'll still be able to browse Wikipedia, though perhaps not in full 4D VR. Obsolete is relative.</comment>


Artist using science to illustrate power of DNA sequencing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23410521

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the relevant part of the artists webpage: [http://deweyhagborg.com/projects.html](http://deweyhagborg.com/projects.html)</comment>


The future of flooding and how it may affect waterside cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.marshalls.co.uk/commercial/blog/the-future-of-flooding-and-how-it-may-affect-water <comment><USER2> London's barrier has a limited use cycle though - another decade or two depending on how you measure it. So even that is a stopgap Measure

It's also being used far more than planned (2-3x)

Countering climate change scale geo effects is hard</comment>


Volkswagen just re-released everyone's favourite hippy-van…but now it's electric - <AUTHOR> http://www.theplaidzebra.com/volkswagen-just-re-released-everyones-favourite-hippy-vanbut-now-its-electric/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: "Rumours have begun to circulate about the re-emergence of the iconic VW hippy-van.."

"Dr. Heinz-Jakob Neusser spilled the beans at the recent New York Auto Show that Volkswagen is in fact working on producing an electric version of the classic camper bus."

"Unfortunately the new electric model of the hippy-classic is still a concept car, and releasing it to the masses depends largely on manufacturing cost. "</comment>


Le Web calls to ban Techcrunch from attending the next event - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/13/le-webs-response-to-techcrunch-censorship/

<comment><USER2> Though I can (usually, ok, sometimes) appreciate Techcrunch's position as an opinionated startup news outlet, this kind of stuff reads like a juvenile pissing contest.

Teenagers apparently indulge in this kind of behavior on MySpace, but I'm not exposed to it because I don't go there. If I somehow find the need to read the tech equivalent, I'll know where to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope he is invited again, because I can see how this is really getting us into the spirit of showing what great successes we can have here in Europe. Complaining about lack of coverage is pretty silly though, US sites naturally prefer to talk more about US startups.

</comment><comment><USER4> The comments here, are rather golden.

"Mike, you sir are an ass".</comment>


Moving t.co to HTTPS only for new links - <AUTHOR> https://twittercommunity.com/t/moving-t-co-to-https-only-for-new-links/52380 <comment><USER2> I was wondering about this today, and tried to investigate only to find this very link. I'd always wondered why HSTS wasn't enabled yet, and it seems twitter wanted to have Referrer Policy Support above 90% of their userbase.

The only holdout seems to be Internet Explorer, of which only Edge 12 seems to have Partial Support.[0]

[0]: [http://caniuse.com/#feat=referrer- policy](http://caniuse.com/#feat=referrer-policy)</comment>


40-60% of Yahoo's users have an empty cache experience - <AUTHOR> http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/01/04/performance-research-part-2/

<comment><USER2> We noticed this after finding an error in our apache config such that some of our assets were set to be cached longer than we really wanted (30 days), much to our chagrin. It turned out that even though you tell the browser to keep something for a very long time, it most likely won't stay there.

Our general assumption was that it is due to the default cache size of browsers being tiny in comparison to the amount of data that users now consume, coupled with every webpage you visit putting stuff into the cache (rightly so).

I believe the default cache of firefox is still set at 50mb which seems very small.

<comment><USER3> The default size for Firefox 3.0.12 on Ubuntu is indeed 50mb.

A fresh reload of CNN.com: 649 KB A fresh reload of YouTube.com: 113 KB A fresh reload of CDW.com: 331 KB

That's still a lot of sites in a 50MB cache. though I imagine a single youtube video would go a long way towards filling it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quoting the comments section:

        The best possible way to achieve cacheability of an object is to perform
        a server-side re-write of all linked content (images, scripts etc) and
        re-write the links to refer to a file name based off the MD5 hash of the
        file content.

        So, your link:
        http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/ww/beta/y3.gif
        is re-written:
        http://us.i1.yimg.com/never-expire/A31D5F12.gif
        Where A31D5F12 is the MD5 hash.

Does somebody use this convention? It seems logical but I haven't seen it wildly used.

<comment><USER5> Does this mess up what the new 'semantic web markup' movement is pushing? ... (I.e. google's image search uses the image name as a signal to what the image might be, albeit a small signal)

<comment><USER6> It shouldn't, you can just have something like static.example.com/picture-of- cat-playing-piano-0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef.jpg

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So does this constitute an indirect measurement of the size of the cache-savvy porn-consuming population?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps browsers could have a white list that the user could modify and have a select view sites avoid losing the cache even when clearing the cache from a menu option...

 __I think it might constitute :)

<comment><USER8> Firefox:

Tools->Start Private Browsing.

Comes handy when you're giving someone your laptop to surf and you don't want them polluting your history (it distracts me when firefox auto-completes something I don't recognize)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is down - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.com

<comment><USER2> Officially down: (officially as in the sites checking this stuff say so!)

[http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/facebook.com.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/facebook.com.html)

[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why but the one system status page I can find is not isolated from the rest of fb: [https://developers.facebook.com/status/](https://developers.facebook.com/status/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems to be a 500 error - I'm sure it will be up any minute, no reason to panic :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Should have used AngularJS am I rite</comment>


The Great Works of Software - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/705b87339971

<comment> good-citizen this was recommend to me via a medium email as the #1 top story to read all week! So I read it. It was good. Definitely worthy of hacker news front page.</comment>


A Chrome extension that allows users to easily navigate to saved urls - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kritts/redirect/ <comment><USER2> I've been looking for an extension like this for months. Thank you!

<comment><USER3> Just started using it. I'm a fan as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea. Where can I find the source code?

<comment><USER4> My bad! Found the link to the source code.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: passive income? - <AUTHOR>

I'd really like to hear how any hackers have developed a stream of passive income.  Things like ads on your blog, open source libraries/apps (donations?), maybe even a side project that users pay for.<p>I'm getting ready to release a self-hosted web application for free (open source!) and was hoping I could pull off some passive income from either ads or donations (I'd be happy if it'd pay my VPS bills). <comment><USER2> if you have the project hosted on sourceforge you could ask for donations. also you could charge a fee for installing setup of your open source app. so sell that as a support package. lots of companies would rather pay for a license and get support even for open source.

google ad used to pay well but now I don't think it would be worth it.

<comment><USER3> nerds/geeks/hackers don't click on ads.

<comment><USER2> unless its about nerds/geeks/hackers :)</comment></comment></comment>


Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/ <comment><USER2> I've never had much interest in chemistry, but after reading this article, I found myself digging through the archives. And then I found myself thinking, "Chlorine Trifluoride is scary stuff! He says that's because it's a damned impressive oxidizing agent. What exactly does it mean to be an 'oxidizing agent' anyways? Hmm..." I'm now sorely tempted to spend the remainder of my day sifting through chemistry stuff online.

This is exactly the kind of writing that the scientific community needs. This is outreach and recruitment at its finest, and we could use a lot more of it. People ask, "How do we get kids interested in science?" Prof. Lowe's blog isn't the entire answer, but it's a hell of a good start.

Correction: As noted below, _Dr._ Lowe is not a professor. My error, but everything else still stands.

<comment><USER3> Mmmm, he's a corporate pharmaceutical researcher with a PhD and not an academic, so while you can call him "Dr." he's not a "Prof."

<comment><USER4> Speaking of things the scientific community needs: less academic snobbery.

<comment><USER5> That's not snobbery, it's simple (but understandable) inaccuracy. Most people don't know that "Prof" is a job title, "Dr" is a qualification (specifically a degree). You can be either without the other - I know a Prof without a doctorate.

It's akin to confusing a linguist with a polyglot, a top-level accountant with a research mathematician, or someone who writes HTML with someone who programs in Python. They are simply different. Not getting it right is either a mistake, or a demonstration of lack of knowledge of the difference.

EDIT: Added the first parenthetical clause.

<comment><USER2> For the record, it was a simple mistake. I read the article, glanced at his bio on the left, saw that he led with his academic credentials, and incorrectly inferred a teaching position.

I'd like to say 'Thank You' to the HN community for brutally enforcing both clarity and accuracy. You guys are the best proofreaders _ever_.

<comment><USER5> I hope you don't feel too bruised, and my apologies if I contributed to it. I tried to make it clear that it is, as I said, a common and understandable mistake.

<comment><USER2> Not at all, the thanks are sincere. There's enough sloppy thinking out there, I'd rather not add to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flourine is nasty stuff, period.

I'll be reading through the archives of this blog, for the same reasons that I tracked down a PDF copy of the late John Clark's book 'Ignition', which is a history of rocket fuel. Note that an actual copy of the book itself is a collectors' item and sells for around $400; believe you me, if I could pick one of these up out of the bargain bin at Walgreens, I would.

Here's his description of the lovely Chlorine Triflouride:

"It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes."

<comment><USER7> You got all that from the Wiki page? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was a time when there were chemistry sets for sale as gifts to kids ... Mostly rather mild stuff - pretty colors, bad smells, melted plastic.

This is hard core chemistry lab. Choice bit on a particularly explosive paper:

 _If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic._

P.S. the URL posted is not for the exact piece which is currently at the top; that's [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_won...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php)

P.P.S. don't miss out on the comments - some are as amusing as the post, and there's even a call for a web business at #46 ...

</comment><comment><USER9> Chemists in general are a crazy lot.

I once worked in a lab where my job was to dispose of chemicals and clean out beakers and glassware (a dishwasher). Sometimes we needed to use concentrated sulfuric acid to clean out the particularly nasty stuff when regular detergent wouldn't cut it.

One drop of this stuff will make your skin peel off and fall into the sink; one splash could blind you.

I was always donned in a lab coat, thick gloves, safety glasses, etc. but my professor used just his bare hands, rotating the glassware so that the liquid would touch all surfaces. Meanwhile, I would watch in awe and wonder. Awe, because he was cocky enough to do this knowing the risks, and wonder, that he was still alive in once piece.

<comment><USER7> Well, [organic] chemists are "famous" for low average life span.

I heard claims that the life expectancy was much better these days, but the person making the claim had an obvious interest in selling people on doing more courses in the subject. (And the subject is fun; if it had been possible for me, I would have done more org chem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, there's a reason why the founder crew working here at Timetric are all ex- _theoretical_ chemists...

...ish, anyway. I'm a mineralogist by training, which exposes you to a different set of scary stuff. X-rays, neutron beams, bandsaws, and in my own oh-God-close-escape moment, cryogenic gases - a mishap during a calorimetry experiment leading to a canister of liquid N2 gushing out through a broken pressure hose.

All kids' play compared to this stuff, though; neutrons will kill you dead but there are so many safety interconnects and film-badge radiation detectors that you'd have to actually _want_ to get hurt. Organic chemists are hardcore.

</comment><comment><USER11> My wife, a chemistry Ph.D. turned stay-at-home-mom, _loves_ the "Things I Won't Work With" series. It brings back fond memories of all the bench-top fires she was responsible for as a grad student.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite line from his blog is "[Perchloric acid] is a liquid with a boiling point of around 80 C, and I'd like to shake the hand of whoever determined that property, assuming he has one left."

[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/30/things_i_won...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/30/things_i_wont_work_with_frisky_perchlorates.php)

</comment><comment><USER13> A quick google search reveals that this stuff reacts with _xenon_. Nasty, indeed.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm so thankful chemical warfare did not become widely practiced. There are some truly horrible substances out there.

<comment><USER6> Many of which are available on the dollar menu at Taco Bell.

<comment><USER15> So that's what "mustard gas" is.

<comment><USER16> No, it reacts and becomes "mustard gas" about 8 hours later...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Chlorine trifluoride [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php) is still my favorite.

That stuff will _burn_ cement and rocks! And I do mean burn, and not dissolve or anything else.

</comment><comment><USER18> Good stuff. For those who haven't seen them, the Periodic Table of Videos ([http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos#p/u/17/pPdevJTGAY...](http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos#p/u/17/pPdevJTGAYY)) are entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER19> "satan's kimchi"

<comment><USER20> It is funny that you mention that since I commonly refer to kimchi itself as "Satan's salad". I've never read a chemistry article that was this entertaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens...and 433 kcal_

433 kilocalaries from 5 molecules? Am I reading that right?

<comment><USER22> It gives 433 kcal/ _mol_ , i. e. 433 kilocalories from 5 * 6.02E23 molecules. It is approximately 68g FOOF and 132g HS. (about 2oz and 5oz respectively)

<comment><USER23> Is that a lot? The same amount of fat can be burned for more energy?

<comment><USER24> Yes, but what's important is the rate. Power is the measure of calories per hour (or joules per second). Fat (and food in general) is extremely energy dense, but that energy can only be released relatively slowly.

This is the same reason why TNT is used for demolition while gasoline is used for engines. Gasoline delivers 15 times the energy of an equal weight of TNT, but TNT's energy release is much more rapid (it can also do so without air, the other big reason for blowing things up with TNT).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tangentially related: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F00f>

</comment><comment><USER25> That was a very entertaining read. That blog is going on my reading list for sure.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow what great science writing. He made it sound incredibly cool, and normal at the same time. Like somebody talking about car racing.

Now I want to go and look up all this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ha ha! Nice!

I was a chemistry geek in high school, with a penchant for highly exothermic reactions if you know what I mean. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hilarious article. I'm always a bit disappointed by how little overlap there is between the chemistry and hacker communities though. cf. comments like this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149075>

</comment><comment><USER29> Quick question. How in the heck can you make a high explosive at 700C that has a nasty tendency to react with stuff and explode at -180C? Wouldn't it explode before you've actually made it?

<comment><USER17> Keep it away from anything it might react with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how it reacts with Fluoride Divanadium, also known as FDiV.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if this Dioxygen Difluoride + Hydrogen Sulfide reaction could be harnessed as an ultra-dense fuel source for an internal combustion engine.

<comment><USER32> \- First the fuel source would need to be kept at -160C or so, which is difficult, and would be decidedly impressive upon failure. \- Second, one of the reaction products is HF gas. If this doesn't mean anything to you, note that HF gas was the -first- substance covered in the "Things I won't work with" category. "And that soaks into tissue very readily, with the acid part doing its damage along the way, and the fluoride merrily poisoning enzymes and wreaking havoc."

<comment><USER31> Sounds like a win-win</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best VoIP service to replace cell carrier? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to drop my cell service provider and exclusively use a VoIP app or service instead. Some considerations:<p>* Cheap<p>* Can port my current number.<p>* Prefer not running my own server for this<p>* Can receive calls through phone (or app) if connected to wifi.<p>Constant conmectivity is not important, only that I receive vmail & texts when I connect. I dont really care much about vmail. I plan to get a calyx router when I can afford it which will provide wifi continuously. I have os x and an iphone. <comment><USER2> 1) Grasshopper

2) Google Voice (although you can't port your number I don't think)

3) Vonage

All of these have an app you can install on your phone and as long as you had a WiFi you could use the app. Grasshopper doesn't have a desktop app that I am aware of though which locks you to using an Android/iPhone device for calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, going to look into grass hopper. You can port a number to Google voice for $20. I don't support much of what Google is doing and am trying to limit my reliance on it-- however it would be a pretty good solution. Skype does not allow porting in, but it does integrate with callkit so it will use the new iOS native call screen instead of banners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use DialPad for work and it has great functionality. Comes out to about $25/month USD.</comment>


What I think what we need to do to keep FreeBSD relevant (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.leidinger.net/blog/2019/01/27/strategic-thinking-or-what-i-think-what-we-need-to-do-to-keep-freebsd-relevant/ <comment><USER2> Quick summary:

\- Port several container and virtualization systems (OpenStack, OpenNebula, oVirt, CloudStack, Kubernetes, Docker, Podman, …) to FreeBSD.

\- Improve linuxolator, and run Linux tests on linuxolator as part of FreeBSD CI.

\- Make kerberos work.

\- Port more SDN software to FreeBSD and improve the documentation for it.

\- Add interfaces to hardware sensors (fans, voltage, temperature, etc.)

\- Add an implementation of Multipath TCP.

\- Make SecureBoot work.

\- Support writing kernel modules in C++ or Rust.

\- Improve end-user HOWTO docs on how to use specific 3rd party software (mail server, web server, display server, etc.) with FreeBSD.

\- Review existing docs and remove outdated information.

\- Add a "cloud" section to end-user docs.

\- Use doxygen or a similar system to generate additional developer docs from source code.

\- Polish and improve DTrace.

\- Make default options for ports packages consistent.

\- Create "meta-ports" for specific use-cases (webserver, database, etc.)

\- Revise default settings to target improved performance on modern machines.

\- Add fuzzers and Clang sanitizers to FreeBSD CI.

\- Make the CI system more visible.

[I'm not the author, just a guy reading the post. Add a comment if I missed anything important]

<comment><USER3> > Improve linuxolator, and run Linux tests on linuxolator as part of FreeBSD > CI.

This is the worst thing they could actually do because people will just run the Linux versions and there would be even less demand for anyone to bother with a FreeBSD version.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily. It can also actually increase adoption because it fixes friction: there might always be a few tools or docker containers or whatnot which are not ported to BSD, and this provides an answer to that.

Microsoft has the "embrace, extend, extinguish" mantra for a similar reason.

<comment><USER3> > Not necessarily. It can also actually increase adoption because it fixes > friction: there might always be a few tools or docker containers or whatnot > which are not ported to BSD, and this provides an answer to that.

It tells developers that users will put up with the compatibility layer. Also setting up these compatibility layers has its own set of complications e.g. random things not working, sub-optimal performance etc.

The only people that have pulled it off has been Microsoft with WSL and there has been problems with that. I for a laugh setup basically a Xubuntu desktop and I had lots of odd errors being reported in the console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me like a list of things the Linux community is working on; and I think that's a bit of the problem with FreeBSD. For a long time, it was known as the "high-reliability / high-performance server OS". But Linux has mostly taken that crown now, for quite a few years. Where does that leave FreeBSD? I wouldn't be able to define FreeBSD's identity at the moment; but granted I'm more a OpenBSD user.

It's easier to define OpenBSD, beyond the obvious stuff (security). It's a system that does not really want to deviate too much from old-school Unix, and a community that firmly rejects any fad or fashion and embraces simple, and indeed sometimes simplistic solutions. That doesn't make it the best system for everything, but at least we know where it stands: the best old-school Unix OS. It's almost as if it lives in a parallel universe where time has stopped in 1990, and the OpenBSD developers are asymptotically converging to the perfect Unix system of that era. I'm not saying that as a criticism at all.

And NetBSD and Dragonfly BSD are also, more or less explicitly, research operating systems where individual developers can come and try stuff.

FreeBSD is still a very impressive project but I think they can do better than being just-like-Linux-but-five-years-later.

<comment><USER6> 1988\. OpenBSD does not have the waitid() library function.

<comment><USER7> I think this is the first time I've heard of waitid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As long as FreeBSD has sustainable interest among cooperate usage it should be fine, but I am not sure if the number of FreeBSD client / cooperate user are growing or shrinking.

WhatsApp moved away from FreeBSD to Linux. And last time there were a few Netflix employees mentioned FreeBSD were used on Open Appliance for historical reason, not technical. So I would not be surprised if someday they move to linux as well. ( Once it offer similar performance )

Mellanox loves FreeBSD, but I am not sure if the same could be said for their new owner Nvidia.

OpenBSD and NetBSD are both an easy sell, one focus on Security and the other on Embedded. I am not sure how to sell FreeBSD, and it needs focus and direction. May be aiming for Network Appliance which is what the majority of its cooperate customer are using it for, where it could offer greater value.

<comment><USER9> Netflix employee here: FreeBSD generally scales well for our workload, and where it doesn't, we can improve it and upstream the fixes without a lot of friction.

Right now, we're serving 200Gb/s of kTLS encrypted video on a single box (see talk at [https://youtu.be/8NSzkYSX5nY](https://youtu.be/8NSzkYSX5nY)), and looking at 400Gb/s. I have not heard of others doing this on Linux, and its sexy enough that I assume anybody doing this on Linux would make a splash about it.

In fact, as far as I know, some other big CDN providers that use Linux are just now moving to 100GbE, where as we've been serving at 100Gb/s in production for almost 4 years now on FreeBSD.

<comment><USER10> Would you recommend a few specific server parts that help you achieve those numbers (in addition to FreeBSD). I am curious about constructing a 100GbE network in my neighbourhood.

<comment><USER9> We use Mellanox ConnectX-4 NICs (cx5 and cx6 would be fine too), as well as Chelsio T6 in mostly Supermicro boards, making sure to have a full Gen3 x16 (or Gen4 x8).

The Mellanox (and Chelsio) NICs are helpful for us because they support RSS assisted TCP LRO. If you're doing just plain packet forwarding, that would not matter.

<comment><USER11> Well, the RSS does, but LRO does not.

<comment><USER9> RSS assisted LRO is a FreeBSD feature where LRO holds batches of hundreds or thousands of packets, then sorts packets by arrival time and LRO hash result. That puts packets from the same connection adjacent to each other, and lets LRO combine them. Delivering packets in batches of hundreds requires some work from the driver (and requires the driver use a new LRO API).

At least on our (Netflix) workload with tens of thousands of active connections, RSS assisted LRO increases our aggregation rate from almost nothing to about 2:1, and saves about 10% CPU.

Its been on my TODO list to add RSS-assisted LRO support to iflib, which would give the intel and broadcom 100g drivers access to it, along with assorted Intel and other 1g, 10g, and 40g devices. But it still hasn't happened yet.

<comment><USER12> I think he was saying that RSS would still matter for plain packet forwarding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Another item we should have a look at is to provide means to write kernel > code in different languages. Not in the base system, but at least in ports. > If someone wants to write a kernel module in C++ or Rust, why not?

Having the development of OS modules in a safe language like Rust as one of the strategic goals, would likely attract some eyeballs and dev hands. Long term it would result in a more stable and safe system and possibly lead to increase in the market share.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a veteran of Windows and Linux, but I've never used a *BSD (unless you tenuously count MacOS).

Why or when would I want to use BSD over Linux? Is it more performant? Does it use less resources? What real differences are there?

I've tried to find out myself, but it mostly seems to come down to philosophical reasoning and personal preference.

<comment><USER15> It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is performant, PF is a well designed firewall, the base system is very well integrated, the ports tree is very extensive, only Debian offers more packages I think. PostgresSQL also used to run a bit better on FreeBSD. Nowadays thanks to pkg installing and upgrading packages is easy. I have 11.3R instalations that were incrementaly upgraded from 8.0R. It fells like the OS is designed by greybeards that don't care too much about the latest and greatest hype, hence this article.

<comment><USER14> > It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple, > it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is > performant, PF is a well designed firewall

I don't mean to offend, but TBH there isn't anything terribly compelling there. I don't care either way for SysV/systemD, but distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you. CentOS et al are rock solid and work well under load, and have performant networking layers. FirewallD and UFW are also good firewall systems.

<comment><USER6> > _distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you_

As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all. The BSDs _never used_ the AT&T System 5 mechanism, nor its van Smoorenburg clone. It's _you_ the Linux user that it matters to, and even then not nearly as much as you are implying it might matter to someone else. It pretty much hasn't mattered greatly to anyone _apart from Linux, and before it Minix, users_ for 30 years.

There is a fallacy in discussions of systemd, which was called out by the Uselessd Guy years ago. It is the fallacy that only systemd and van Smoorenburg init/rc exist. This is not the case. It wasn't the case for Ubuntu and Fedora. It is _especially_ not so when a BSD is the topic. The BSDs have a quite different family heritage in this area.

But then, AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think. The init/rc that Miquel van Smoorenburg cloned had actually already been superseded years before Linux was even invented. It wasn't used in the BSD side of the universe at all. But it was only a major mechanism in the AT&T side of the universe for just over half a decade, in the 1980s.

The BSD side of the universe could turn around and observe that they were right all along; were it not for the fact that the other side of the universe largely thought better of the mechanism _as well_ , coming up with the SAF in 1988 and the likes of the SRC in 1991. (-: Of course, the BSD world wasn't just standing still all of those years, moreover, and had things like /etc/rc.local.d/ and Mewburn rc.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.d...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html)

* [https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/](https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/)

<comment><USER14> I have to say, I'm very confused by this, and I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.

> As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all

I can only assume "xem" is some kind of "BSD thing"?

> It's you the Linux user that it matters to... AT&T Unix itself actually has > a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous > "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think...

I did actually say I didn't care much either way, in part because I really didn't want to derail this thread into a sysv/systemd flamewar - I only wanted to know why I might use BSD over Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> FreeBSD could get a boost by switching to building with a C++ compiler, beginning to modernize their ancient codebase (red-black trees, really?), and inviting people with modern ideas to implement them.

The exokernel people know how to write good kernel-grade C++. Much of the code just needs to go; kernels can't keep up with the I/O needs of user-space programs, and need to learn to get out of the way. Linux has its io_uring thing which is vastly overcomplicated. FreeBSD could lead the way with universal kernel bypass, with only authentication, resource allocation, and permissions handled in ring zero.

Much more likely, though, is that somebody new will need to start from scratch.

<comment><USER17> What's wrong with red-black trees? :) Since you mention C++: you do realize that std::map will typically be implemented with one?

<comment><USER18> You want more fanout to use the entire cache line or even the entire virtual memory page. RB trees assume access to any address in memory has equal cost, which is extremely incorrect.

<comment><USER19> The red-black tree implementation typically used in *BSD development, <sys/tree.h>, is an intrusive data structure; tree nodes are embedded within the object you must dereference for key comparison. There's no need to optimize fanout because you've entirely removed that extra indirection.

As a general purpose data structure implementation for systems development, <sys/tree.h> is quite nice. However, for any particular task you can always optimize the data structure, or choose an entirely different data structure, to better fit the problem. Which is perhaps why the Linux kernel has so many different tree and hash implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes. That list is pretty good. LXC or Docker Integrated with jail and bhyve would be awesome. Even just finishing BBR would be awesome.

ZFS is totally awesome. Iscsi can't yet do dual path and dual controller magic well I believe which is a bit of a shame.

<comment><USER21> Various people have said they want to work on Docker for FreeBSD over the years but nothing has come of it. There was a port years ago but it was just before a major change (containerd split) so it didnt get merged. It is not an enormous amount of work, but it is non trivial.

<comment><USER22> I've been running Docker containers in freebsd using a bhyve debian VM. seems to work pretty well. That's the same way you can run docker in windows and mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> God damn, I wish I read more articles like that one. That guy is objective and not a fanboy even with him working on FreeBSD.

We need more such critical thinking and insight. Kudos to him.

<comment><USER23> Came to say the same thing, clear writing and a great voice. Definitely something to emulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good article, but FreeBSD top-managers don't want(or can) to change anything.

So, where FreeBSD can be used nowadays: 1) Desktop/Mobile - no, drivers/sensors problem. 2) Network/Web service in SOHO? Linux is much way better. 3) Network/Web in medium/large company? May be, for special network services. Well-tuned FreeBSD can beat well-tuned Linux easily, but requires skilled staff.

There is a very little chance for FreeBSD to come up Linux and be useful for the masses.

P.S. Worked with FreeBSD since 1996 as default OS, in 2008 switched to Linux(RH/Debian/Ubuntu).

<comment><USER25> > Well-tuned FreeBSD can beat well-tuned Linux easily, but requires skilled > staff.

This doesn't seem obvious to me, there are a lot of tech companies with skilled staff that choose Linux and also deeply care about performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In that list, nothing strikes me as a killer feature that I would leave either Linux or Windows for. I've actually gone from Windows (about 10 years) -> Ubuntu (6 years) -> Clear Linux (a few months if that) -> Windows 10 in the last week or so because I realized that I value convenience and performance over whatever else is on offer from Linux, even though there are a few good tools I immediately missed from Linux (grep firstly, but at some point I'm going to setup WSL anyway). There's nothing compelling enough to even bring me back to Linux any time soon, why would I bother with FreeBSD?

I develop software, and just want to get things done and the OS to stay out of my way. Windows 10 LTSC does that amazingly well. Sorry if I sound like a shill, I'm really not, I just grew tired of fighting silly little fights to get Ubuntu/x-distro to do what I want.

<comment><USER27> What workloads offer better performance in windows 10 than linux?

<comment><USER26> The term 'workload' is itself slightly loaded as it implies something constant like a server maintaining performance over a given period. I did mention my use-case is developing software, so I'm not exactly pushing this to its limits, however programs seem to work a lot faster which I know sounds anecdotal. I found a benchmark which did influence the switch back to Win10.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=icelake-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=icelake- clear-windows&num=6)

>if simply counting the number of first-place finishes, Windows 10 performed the best with coming in front 50% of the time to Clear Linux at 36% and Ubuntu 19.10 at 13%.

<comment><USER27> To me, my optimised compilation of liquorix on f2fs beats windows on my laptop outright. I lose bandwidth but gain lower latency. Even moving around windows explorer and searching by name is embarrassingly sluggish on my windows 10 install. Can't afford ms telemetry service and windows "defender" taking up half my resources whenever they please, either.

<comment><USER26> It's trivial to remove telemetry these days.

<comment><USER26> I seem to be getting a lot of downvotes for that comment for some reason, not sure why but there are several programs that can disable telemetry, this is probably the best-known one.

[https://wpd.app/](https://wpd.app/)

<comment><USER28> Removing telemetry completely isn't supported by MS

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> FreeBSD can hold its own well against Linux. You can now use it as a fully functional desktop OS, no worries (GhostBSD for the uninitiated). Best part is the ports tree, works better and easier than the AUR.

Take your pick: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=FreeBSD](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=FreeBSD)

tl;dr optimised freeBSD performs as well as and even faster than Clear Linux on lots of benchmarks - easily faster than most distros then.

<comment><USER9> I would love to just be able to have a stable package base where nothing changed for years except security updates, and have special repos for things that needed to change (like firefox or chrome). Eg, like what Ubuntu does with their distro and PPAs.

I personally hate the concept of a rolling distro, which is what the ports tree really is. Except for the things _I_ care about, I don't want random stuff changing out from under me.

Some ports upgrade 15 years ago failing led me to rage-install Linux and run Linux on my desktop for 10 years because I just didn't have the time to deal with upgrade failures and X not working. Thankfully, now that we have ZFS boot environments (making rolling back easier), I'm back running FreeBSD. But just 2 days ago, I was left with a non-function system when a pkg upgrade renamed "startkde" to startplasma-x11 or something, and it took me nearly an hour to work out that it wasn't the nvidia driver crapping out, it was just that my 'exec startkde' in my .xsession was failing.

(Yes, I'm aware of the quarterlies, but that's about 8x too much change for me).

<comment><USER15> Always go back and read the UPGRADING document if you encounter something like this in the future. It will save you a lot of time.

You should use Ubuntu LTS if a major release every 6 months is too much for you.

<comment><USER9> That's my entire point. With FreeBSD ports, we have a rolling release. When I ran Ubuntu, I did run LTS. I could not care less about having the latest KDE. I'd actually be about 100x happier with the KDE from 10 years ago

<comment><USER29> Why not use this?

[1] [http://trinitydesktop.org/](http://trinitydesktop.org/)

<comment><USER9> Nice, KDE before it jumped the shark. Sadly, there is no FreeBSD port or pkg for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I, personally, and my businesses, have a tremendous amount of time and money invested in FreeBSD as a platform.

JohnCompanies[1] was started on FreeBSD, rsync.net runs FreeBSD exclusively, and Oh By[2] runs on FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is an operating system by, and for, the FreeBSD developers.

You may choose to deploy, and invest in, FreeBSD for your own purposes (as I have) but you need to understand what the development process is and how FreeBSD is "released" if you want to make meaningful investments _of actual money_ into adopting it.

In short: the official position of FreeBSD is that -RELEASE is the only production release of FreeBSD and, technically, -STABLE and -CURRENT are not production ready. _Yet at the same time_ all investment and development of FreeBSD by the actual developers is done with -CURRENT.

The result is your legal, contractual, fiduciary, and even moral obligations to the customers you serve _demands that you run only -RELEASE_. And yet, any issues you have with -RELEASE will be difficult to resolve because the entire community is already 1-2 major versions ahead of you in their development, their workspaces, and even their personal machines. You will be met with incredulity when you insist that you need to run only production code and your "current" problems with the "current" -RELEASE will not be addressed.

This makes it very difficult (although not impossible) to make any kind of long-term investments in FreeBSD.

Pointing to the big name firms that run FreeBSD, like Netflix, is a bit disingenuous as only they have the resources to, essentially, run their own forks of FreeBSD (which they do).

I have written about this in detail, twice:

First, in 2012[3] and then later in 2014[4]. The 2014 posting is probably more succinct and relevant here, but if you really want a deep dive in the culture and tendencies of FreeBSD development, read the 2012 thread.

[1] JohnCompanies, started in fall of 2001, was possibly the first "VPS" provider as we now think of it, although we called them "Server Instances" and did not coin the term "Virtual Private Server".

[2] [https://0x.co](https://0x.co)

[3] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-Jan...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2012-January/037294.html)

[4] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2014-Jun...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- hackers/2014-June/045319.html)

<comment><USER31> Developers pick their own priorities as most are donating their time. Those that are not are following the wishes of their employers. People make an effort to ensure that bug fixes are MFC'd back to supported releases and for security fixes we have a stronger policy. Otherwise it should be no surprise that we focus on future releases. The release process has a certain organizational cost for validation and running them too frequently burns out project volunteers.

Many companies who use linux also effectively maintain their own forks that are gradually updated and tested. This is not a unique problem to FreeBSD. We unfortunately don't have a redhat equivalent although there are now several companies offering paid FreeBSD support if you need that for your enterprise.

I think you also got quite a lot of very reasonable replies in your thread on hackers. You need to realize that your fundamental request is for people who are giving up their free time to do something interesting to change their plans so that you can run your enterprise while providing no help or financial incentive.

When there are reasonable proposals it may catch someone's eye and prompt action. I can't even really tell what your proposal is besides changing release frequency. What are _you_ willing to do to support that?

<comment><USER30> "You need to realize that your fundamental request is for people who are giving up their free time to do something interesting to change their plans so that you can run your enterprise while providing no help or financial incentive."

...

"I can't even really tell what your proposal is besides changing release frequency. What are _you_ willing to do to support that?"

...

I offered $50k to run 9.x up to 9.15:

"... I can contribute USD $10k per year that this course was followed, or $50k over five years. We can contribute some hardware, hosting and bandwidth as well."[1]

As I said in this old, old thread:

"I'm not a FreeBSD developer and I have little use for either CURRENT or STABLE. I'm saying that I need a major release to have an _effective_ lifetime longer than two years."

... and in anticipation of your 2020 response, I direct you to the FreeBSD handbook, which explicitly states:

"This is still a development branch, however, and this means that at any given time, the sources for FreeBSD-STABLE may or may not be suitable for any particular purpose. It is simply another engineering development track, NOT A RESOURCE FOR END-USERS."[2]

FWIW, we have also offered _and paid_ several FreeBSD development bounties since 2005.[3][4]

[1] [https://0x.co/TCZM6C](https://0x.co/TCZM6C)

[2] [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current- stable.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current-stable.html)

[3] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- announce/2007-Ap...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- announce/2007-April/001127.html)

[4] [https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/01/64bit- freebsd-...](https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/01/64bit-freebsd- quotas.html)

<comment><USER31> You do understand that releases made from -STABLE are considered release quality, not development branches?

<comment><USER30> Not according to current FreeBSD documentation ... see link above.

<comment><USER31> You have confused the branch with the release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Heh I just had a chance to mention this in another thread but I think the biggest thing holding the BSDs back is they repackage all the solver.

Who said 1 distro, 1 kernel?! I fully believe NixOS/Nixpkgs should be able to support non-linux kernels, _and the philosophies of their communities_. We are always trying to bake in future assumptions, this is a great opportunity to do that.

Coalition without compromise. Truely.

<comment><USER32> If someone is interested, please do reach out. I'm really serious about seeing this happen. We got cross compilation done distro wide, now we need more things to drive us forward.

<comment><USER10> Do I get you correctly? You are looking for Nix[OS] being able to work with FreeBSD?

<comment><USER32> Yes. Nix runs on FreeBSD so first step is cross compile pure stdenv with BSD libc. Next step is native builds and kernel. Final step is make NixOS work with multiple init systems. Shouldn't be too bad!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's a good TODO, and it's worth pointing out that those things are being gradually put into place. Great example is the Continuous Integration, [https://ci.freebsd.org/](https://ci.freebsd.org/). (Shameless plug: it actually runs Linux Test Project Linux binaries too!)

</comment><comment><USER34> First thing I would do is to merge the bsd distros and have an installer that could pick configurations like hardened or not. Add a cool name.

No reason so few folks should be pulling in different directions.

</comment><comment><USER35> io_uring

<comment><USER36> Will be interesting to see how kqueue systems respond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I noticed that Alexander had to grind his axe on his rejected bikeshed project.Re:Sensors.

PHK is one of the developers who have made FreeBSD great. The more you grind your axe the more you get discounted.

<comment><USER38> > I noticed that Alexander had to grind his axe on his rejected bikeshed > project.Re:Sensors.

"Bikeshed" project? Who exactly is bikeshedding when functionality is lacking on FreeBSD 10+ years later because we don't like the configuration mechanism chosen for the previous work?

> PHK is one of the developers who have made FreeBSD great.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been dubious moments like this, or that they don't cause harm.

> The more you grind your axe the more you get discounted.

Menacing responses to criticism are not exactly indicative of good culture.</comment></comment>


Carapace - wrap a shell around any node.js process - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejitsu/haibu-carapace

<comment><USER2> I wrote this project with the help of some awesome folks. Ask me anything.</comment>


Show HN: Monitoring a Website: OhDear - <AUTHOR> https://ohdear.app/ <comment><USER2> I signed up for this today and am quite enjoying it. There are a couple of nitpicks, but overall it seems like a very simple and elegant solution to this particular problem.

I'll definitely be subscribing.</comment>


Middle class, the housing crisis is coming for you next - <AUTHOR> https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/11/18661364/home-tuition-middle-class-housing-crisis <comment><USER2> This is why housing affordability should be tied to income, rather than willingness to go into debt. As with education, once the banks can get a guarantee that they will be bailed out in case of trouble (explicit with education, implicit with housing) the race to the bottom commences. Prices go to the moon, everyone ends up in debt slavery

There is a reason the church was so hard on usury. I hope it rediscovers the issue: it is the most pressing social justice issue of our time, cutting across all non-elite identity classes.

<comment><USER3> I would like to know more about this. What would it look like if housing prices were tied to income?

<comment><USER2> There are many ways to do it, but one method would be to limit loans to some multiple (say 3x) of someones trailing income (say 3 years). This could be scaled into over time to smooth out price adjustments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Housing has been captured by people seeking a return on capital. There needs to be a recognition that housing prices rising faster than inflation and wages is overall bad thing.

That owning a home is sometimes the only way for middle and lower classes to build wealth (and even then, only in a handful of markets) is an indictment of a economy that's not robust and not working for the majority of people.

However, there are too many people making too much money off of housing that I would expect things to change soon.

<comment><USER5> Aren't your first two paragraphs a contradiction ? if housing prices don't rise above inflation how do middle and lower class households build wealth?

Historically, per Schiller, housing has tracked inflation in the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> High rents and debts are a massive drain on the economy. Less disposable income means less to spend on consumer goods and services, which hits real businesses hard, and leads to fewer jobs. The fictitious growth in the FIRE sector is not going to mask the growing death spiral in the rest of the economy forever.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a surplus of houses around Chicago. Go there instead of complain that CA rents are too high. If you hate snow so much that you'll pay $500,000 to avoid it, YOU have a problem.

<comment><USER8> chicago is also significantly better positioned for climate change than california, at least SoCal

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just the obvious result of everyone wanting to cluster around a city center, and slowly expanding outward. With the new advances in technology we have today, we should start innovating new models of work for those who do not need to be in physical proximity (i.e mass remote work for those whose jobs lend to that). Most people who live close to the city (say a radius of 20-30 miles) do so only out of work obligations.

<comment><USER10> It's telling that even the companies developing these technologies try to pack people as closely together as physically possible. Either there's no substitute for physical proximity, or we've failed to discover it despite the massive financial incentives.

<comment><USER11> I'm going to say it's completely opposite. I worked for a video chat company and the company was dramatically more productive on the whole when we had a substantial remote contingent. We were forced to use our product on the regular and understood our use case. When the company moved to consolidate, productivity suffered.

Why consolidate, then? Mostly for the advantage of the people whose jobs were social. I don't think it was malicious, but I also don't think it was what was best for the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _City planning documents have also consistently focused on the need for housing options for teachers, firefighters..._

I've got an idea. Both of these jobs are considered essential for a functioning society and are paid by taxpayers. Why not just pay them more? There is no reason that teachers and other public sector professionals should be "low income workers".</comment>


PiCloud has joined Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://blog.picloud.com/2013/11/17/picloud-has-joined-dropbox/ <comment><USER2> As a very happy user of PiCloud, I'm sad to see it go. It is a shame they had such A-list VC's (Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Greylock Partners), who don't have an interest in just a good solid business. They only wanted a huge, home run.

I've been looking around for a good replacement, and there is a gap. PiCloud really had three components. The first was an ability to run code with arbitrary dependencies with no more than a second start up time. PiCloud called them environments. This is really the same problem Docker is addressing. Both were using LXC and AUFS to solve the problem. Unfortunately, Docker-as-a-service is very early days. People like orchardup.com are getting there, but so far only have hourly pricing. There is enginedock.com which has per minute pricing, but is it super early on. I'm in a "Docker gap", where these services are really not at the same level that PiCloud was.

The second was the nice Python API, RESTful interface, and the command line interface for triggering off jobs, querying when the finish, and getting the results. That part will presumably be open sourced, but it is really all tied in to the hosting portion.

Then the third level is to have a bunch of machine you can load balance across, to allow per second pricing on AWS. They had such lovely high memory, high CPU machines to run on. The split up some of the biggest EC2 cluster instances, and you could run each process on your 1/8 share. The nearest current replacement is iron.io's IronWorker. However, they only have 320MB per job, which doesn't work for my application. Also Heroku workers are billed per second, but they only have up to 1GB of memory. I'm hoping that this (new?) entity Multyvac can serve that role successfully. Hopefully, they'll tell us more detail on this soon.

Anyway, best of luck to the PiCloud team. You were great. Especially Aaron who did much of the tech support. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Hey Craig, speaking on behalf of the docker project: we are busy filling the "docker gap" you speak about. There are currently _many_ businesses aspiring to offer infrastructure to docker users. What we're doing is giving them a way to integrate directly into docker itself, so you can "docker run" straight to the provider of your choice, either from the docker command-line or remote API. All with minimal risk of lock-in.

You might also be happy to learn that some of the talent behind Picloud is now part of the Docker team itself :)

<comment><USER2> Hi Solomon,

There are tons of companies that are working on Docker based solutions to my problems. In six months, or a year, there will be plenty of great ways for me to use Docker. The only problem is that PiCloud shuts down on February 25, so I'm in a bit of a hurry. Today, I'm in a gap, and there isn't a great replacement. Specifically I'd need:

* Per second pricing (per minute would be Ok). This makes parallelism "free"

* Large instances with big memory and CPU

* Ideally on AWS (My data is on s3, and it would be good to avoid bandwidth charges).

Nothing seems to fill these requirements yet. Any of you Docker startups out there want to help me out? Any pointers would be great if I'm missing something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh man, two things: first, I wonder what DropBox will do with PiCloud, and second, I feel like a dodged a bullet. I kinda hate saying that, since it always turns up on these threads, but it's just true.

I had been working seriously on converting a financial application to run on PiCloud. It's mid-November. In the hundred days until they cease operations, I would have had to deal with 10-K filings for my clients _and_ scramble to get the hell out of there, just in time for Q1. What an absolute mess that would have been.

No other time would have been much better, and I know there's an API compatible replacement in the works, but I've been there, and I'm sure something would have freaked out.

Whatever happened to having some kind of reasonable transition period where the buyer continues to support all of its clients? PiCloud, your product was really neat. DropBox, I really wish you wouldn't just hit it and quit it.

<comment><USER2> I think it is pretty clear from the wording it is an aqi-hire by DropBox. They are just getting a talented team.

I am very close to launching Predictobot.com, which uses PiCloud for all of its computation. I spent last week moving to Heroku after DotCloud's pivot, and now I'll need to replace PiCloud. The web sure is a stable place.

<comment><USER5> _" The web sure is a stable place."_

This is an interesting variation on this round's "boomlet". So in the previous dot.com boom there were lots of companies who didn't have revenue so they appeared, until the cash ran out and then fell back to earth. Now we can start a company with much less money, but they go poof in an aquihire when things go squishy.

So was it a pricing issue? or a customer acquisition issue? How is it that so many of these companies get into this squeeze? Is it a chicken -/\- egg thing where you can't price it to be self sustaining until you get critical mass? Or is it that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are just sucking all the oxygen out of this space?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At PlotWatt, we've been using the picloud's pickler for a while in our own implementation of the picloud job queue. We don't have all of the bells and whistles that their service did, but running our own queue made it easier to control the details like the number of machines, environment and network configuration, though we tried them out first before their environments feature was set up, so they might have solved most of those problems by now.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in seeing even a bare-bones python function queue based on picloud's pickler, get in touch and maybe we can open source what we have and build it out a little more. Its not open source right now just because its tied into some of our other libraries, but if there is interest, we could probably split it all up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry to see these guys go, they were a great company to have in the Python space (though they did branch out to other languages, I think).

When we started PythonAnywhere they were right up there on the list of potential competitors, though as it turned out our early adopters steered us more in the direction of hosting and lightweight computation (ping an API periodically and do stuff with the results) rather than heavy-duty computing.

The big problem with VC backing is that they really want $1bn exits. For them, Heroku's $200MM exit to Salesforce was almost a failure. I guess they couldn't see PiCloud going that way, so they chose not to invest again. Better to put the cash into a more likely-looking moonshot.

IMO this is a pity, because there are a bunch of smaller-than-$1bn but still solid companies that are getting starved of funding. The business-to-developer space is particularly prone to that kind of issue; it's less of a winner- takes-all market, so the big wins that VCs want are rarer than they are in other markets.

</comment><comment><USER8> So sad to see PiCloud go. They made parallel computation so easy to implement. Their service was really well-built.

<comment><USER9> Yeah - unfortunately there aren't a ton of companies in this space, which is rough. I've started using Domino ([http://www.dominoup.com](http://www.dominoup.com)) and it's pretty similar - probably the closest thing out there right now to PiCloud that I've seen. Worth checking out for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's PiCloud and what's Multyvac, and what does all this mean?

</comment><comment><USER11> Just checked out www.multyvac.com, which has webvan, boo.com, etoys and lehman brothers listed as customers. What's the joke? Not sure I get it.

<comment><USER2> I guess just that they are there to pick up the pieces from PiCloud, like someone should have done for those other failures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love the Isaac Asimov reference in "Multyvac"

I use Picloud for my CS PhD research, I hope to be able to continue with Multyvac or the open-source version.</comment>


Space Roasters - <AUTHOR> https://roasters.space/ <comment><USER2> My bullshit meter is through the roof. They talk about going to space, roasting there, how they'll do it, but they don't say why. They say:

> To demonstrate the power of space technology and revolutionize the coffee > roasting process

How does it revolutionize coffee roasting ? It's still a heat-based roaster. Nothing revolutionary.

Also IMO it won't taste good. They cool the beans, but how will they get rid of the gas? Right after you roast, the beans must be aerated so they lose their gas. The gas appears while the beans are roasted and it's why every roaster has a chimney. It's why coffee bags have air valves.

It all looks like a stupid cash grab.

edit: both founders seem to have no work experience related to coffee...

<comment><USER3> Neither founder has said anything about this venture on Twitter either. I'm guessing (hoping) it's either satire that slightly misses the mark, or a misguided portfolio page for a web designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That that website took a long time to load. I hope that in itself was a subtle element of the satire.

</comment><comment><USER5> What critics don't get that there's a huge market for what I call "dinner party toys"; something a bit ridiculous but inherently curious that you can whip out amongst your peers in an attempt to make an impression and gain some social capital.

This is particularly important if you're affluent and everyone you know is similarly so which doesn't allow you to just flaunt your luxury with any effect.

They're not selling coffee you can enjoy but a story you can tell and experience you can share. Interestingly that experience doesn't event have to be good (that it's stupid is equally a selling point).

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't tell if it's satire

<comment><USER7> I really hope so. This hurts to read through haha, we've all seen some of this in projects/startups before

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> looked for the "Buy Roastcoins" button but couldn't find it

</comment><comment><USER9> this seems utterly pointless...

what does this get you that tumbling the means doesn't? the beans will still need to be mixed to prevent scorching, and it's not like coffee beans are fragile things...

<comment><USER8> beans in space make the lightest roasts

<comment><USER9> got a source for that? or was that a low gravity joke? haha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We live on a planet where ecological damage may cause coffee to be extinct by the end of this century and we are wasting resources sending coffee beans into space.

</comment><comment><USER11> The page shows nothing until a 27MB full screen video downloads and starts playing. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fake website for a class project and / or art?

<comment><USER2> The instagram and features in a german magazine make me think otherwise. Everyday a dumb startup is born.</comment></comment>


History of the browser user-agent string - <AUTHOR> http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ <comment><USER2> a plea to developers out there: _please_ respect the user-agent string contents even when you know it's a mobile device by other means.

if a user has gone to the trouble to manually set user agent, it's no accident -- it's an attempt to avoid the buggy crap that so many sites "customize" for mobile.

e.g. Stubhub, TV Guide, TicketExchange, ...

And, _no_ , I won't let you track my location, so stop asking.</comment>


Cipherli.st – Strong Ciphers for Apache, Nginx and Lighttpd - <AUTHOR> https://cipherli.st/ <comment><USER2> What do you think about it?</comment>


What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/what-happens-when-the-surveillance-state-becomes-an-affordable-gadget <comment><USER2> This story is about Stingray devices or IMSI catchers. I started noticing I was unable to get 3G/4G on my phone and my coworkers seemed to know my business. At first I thought my phone was hacked. I got a new phone and was careful to not let it out of my sight yet still noticed the oddness.

I ended up downloading apps that tell you the Cell Tower ID you are attached to. Signal finding software to help find good places for signals. I quickly noticed at work and home the Tower ID was along the lines of 000000. I showed someone I was suspicious of and it all went away. Basically they were trying to make me think I was crazy and anyone I know. With pictures and proof I started turning the tables and got my life back.

The point is this story is not just theory. If you might be in this situation the apps name is Network Signal Info.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually can't wait.

As soon as I can, I'm going to wear a body camera at all times and record all footage. Why? Privacy doesn't matter anymore and in this day and age, it becomes one word against another.

People are so eager to jump to social media to destroy a person's life and livelihood, it will almost become a necessary form of social insurance.</comment>


What Does This Google Bug Mean? - <AUTHOR> http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020776.html

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.google.com/search?q=lufthansa+wikipedia>

It's still visible.</comment>


Secrets to being smarter: 30 podcasts for techies - <AUTHOR> https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/career/smarter-secrets-podcasts <comment><USER2> I'm saving this for later, however, have you[JermeyMorgan] personally listened/followed those podcasts ? If so, what did you think of them ?</comment>


Ask HN: When do startups stop hacking and start engineering? After Series A? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Sometimes never.</comment>


Seriously, Elon Musk? Are You Kidding Me with This Tunnel? What Is This? - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2018/12/elon-musks-los-angeles-tunnel-has-so-little-promise-its-a-miracle-he-built-it-at-all.html <comment> village-idiot Given that Elon Musk and Tesla are tied to each other at the hip, he cannot possibly admit the following:

America's obsession with the car is a mistake that will need to be corrected in this century.

I am not saying "ban all the cars". Cars are extremely useful tools. But America has been running on the implicit idea that everyone must own a car, and that all transport must be handled in a personally owned vehicle. This is both unsustainable ecologically, economically, and infrastructurally (I know that's not a word).

Creating a "mass transit" system to drag personal cars around at 155mph to "solve" congestion is just a laughable half step that's clearly worse than doing nothing at all.

<comment><USER2> Why is a private company responsible for the failings of government?

<comment><USER3> I have no idea how you read GP in a way that implied that Musk is responsible for the transportation issues in the US.

They were just criticizing the idea that Musk has found a good, future-proof solution.

<comment><USER2> Compared to doing nothing at all it's seems like an improvement over the status quo.

Very easy to criticise, but the simplicity of a road into the ground vs numerous subway stations/surrounding infrastructure is an order of magnitude different in terms of cost and time.

<comment><USER4> And yet a subway system can transport several orders of magnitude more people in the same space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried posting the very critical The Concourse article about this ([https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/visionary-brain-genius- elo...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/visionary-brain-genius-elon-musk- has-invented-the-world-1831210269)) and it kept saying it was already posted even though there's no result for it. Does HN blacklist certain sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes. Yes they do. Anything related to Gawker (which Deadspin is: see [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadspin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadspin)) has long been _persona non grata_ around here.</comment></comment>


Believe It or Not - A critique of the new atheism - <AUTHOR> http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/believe-it-or-not

<comment><USER2> Is this dude seriously trying to use reason and logic to defend belief?

<comment><USER3> not really. he's using name calling and appeals to authority.

this is him: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bentley_Hart>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm trying to wrap my head around how backward this guy's reasoning is. He wants the "new atheists" to provide him with a compelling logical argument that his god does not exist. It seems like an oddly backward supposition of where the burden of proof lies in this argument.

<comment><USER5> He comes across as some kind of emperor who cannot see why the peasants are revolting, completely blind to the misguided nature of their own argument.

Also, atheism == disco.</comment></comment>


Why Highly Intelligent People Fail At The Most Important Things In Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-smart-people-fail-2012-6

<comment><USER2> The inferences he makes about political and religious beliefs as a consequence of evolutionary psychology is pretty cool.

Gets a bit weird around here though: "Intelligent people are more likely to be nocturnal because humans are designed to wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when the sun goes down. They are more likely to be homosexual, because humans are evolutionarily designed to reproduce heterosexually. They are more likely to enjoy instrumental music because music in its evolutionary origin was vocal, and they are more likely to consume alcohol, cigarettes and drugs because all of these substances are evolutionarily novel."</comment>