Night Shift Mode in macOS Sierra 10.12.4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/24/night-shift-mode-in-macos-sierra-10-12-4/ <comment><USER2> Is there any evidence for Night Shift/f.lux having impact on sleep? Last time I attempted a review I found plenty of explanations but no evidence.

A PNAS article about the use of e-Readers is often cited [0]. However, this compares a light emitting device to a book, and it's not clear how applicable it is to Night Shift vs. not Night Shift.

There is some research about the affects of light at different wavelengths on the human sleep cycle but I'm wary about using that as evidence for the efficacy of something like f.lux or Night Shift without specific studies done on their use in practice.

[0] [http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1232.full.html](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1232.full.html)

<comment><USER3> I think for something as simple as Night Shift, "try it yourself and see" is a valid approach. Even if it's a placebo effect, it's still an effect!

Anecdotally, Flux + Night Shift dramatically improved my longstanding insomnia. But that's just my anecdotal experience

<comment><USER2> If it helps people to improve their hygiene, by placebo effect or otherwise, then that's a good thing.

However, I ask because I did try it for several months, and did not notice any effect other than the minor irritation of having to keep turning it off when I wanted to watch a film in the evening (and the constant malfunctioning of f.lux – although hopefully those issues would not be present in Night Shift).

I'm not sure I would be able to detect an improvement even if there is one though - there's too many confounding factors. So I'd like to see some evidence so I can make an informed decision.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I would be curious to see some real studies on that as well, I suspect that having a bright screen in your face is the problematic part, and that color temperature only make a very marginal difference, if any at all.

But honestly, I use it because I like it, not for any positive effects it may have on my sleep. It just makes it more pleasant to look at screens after nightfall. Also, seeing the screen change is a very pleasant "hey, stop looking at Twitter/HN and go to bed!" reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First iOS 9.3, then Android 7.0, upcoming Windows Insider builds, and finally macOS Sierra 10.12.4. I hope the GNOME/Unity/Cinammon developers start implementing this too. f.lux works as expected, but it starts to get warmer around an hour before my iPhone does. Small issue, I know, but it does get annoying over time.

<comment><USER6> For Linux I suggest redshift [1]. It has been packaged for a long time and works great.

[1] [http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)

<comment><USER7> Note that redshift currently does not work under GNOME3 when Gnome is running as a Wayland compositor. There is a feature request[1] for integrating this functionality into GNOME 3 (and even a nice mockup[2]).

[1] [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741224](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741224)

[2] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome- mo...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome- mockups/master/system-settings/displays/displays-v3.png)

<comment><USER8> There's a Gnome Shell extension that people report works on Fedora 25 with Wayland: [https://github.com/benzea/gnome-shell-extension- redshift](https://github.com/benzea/gnome-shell-extension-redshift)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My biggest disappointment with the new Macbook Pro is that it didn't include tunable color temperature for the keyboard. For an iPad, just changing the screen works because that's all it is. When your keyboard is a separate glowing thing, having your screen at 2200K and keys at 6500K looks awful. I used to turn the backlit keys off while running f.lux, but you're stuck with a touch bar at minimum now.

Oh well.

EDIT: Obviously the touch bar is full color and could be shifted like the screen. But because Apple's stance is that it's part of the keyboard, and the keyboard can't shift, I don't think they will. Curious if anyone's tested it though.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want you house lights to do the same thing, get some Philips Hue bulbs and this app I wrote: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/circadian-hue-for- philips-hu...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/circadian-hue-for-philips- hue/id1165687051?mt=12&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)

My old office didn't get much external light, so I wrote this app to give me a sense of time of day. Now I have a better office I still use it.

<comment><USER11> Nice. Would it be easy to port to iOS as well? I reckon that you'd mostly just need to implement the user interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flux has been such a great tool. I love that Apple is copying that functionality and I hope the Flux team understands that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

<comment><USER13> Well, given that the Flux team has refused for years to allow us to configure the times and for how long it activates itself, I welcome Apple bringing this to the mac.

<comment><USER14> I can't understand why this is. Surely it was harder to implement the sunrise sync than a simple time dropdown?

This is the one reason I want to get away from Flux.

Does anyone know what their supposed motivation was for not letting us set the start and end time?

<comment><USER13> I read the other day a bullshity response in their forums like that their objective was to understand human behaviour not just set timers or something like that.

Edit:

\- "Our goal is to further the understanding of human biology, not just turn things orange on a timer. It's a longer term undertaking and a much more difficult one."

[https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset- sunrus...](https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunruse- schedule-default-is-not-ok-for-me/84)

<comment><USER15> Lol. That's indescribably smug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad they added this. I was disappointed that it wasn't in the Sierra announcement. Guess they just needed a bit more time.

I will be glad to finally be able to dump Flux. It's mind-bogglingly insane, but Flux still doesn't allow you to set a custom start and end time. I certainly don't need my screen going orange a full six hours before I go to bed. So I'll be getting away from it onto this official one the day it's available.

I've tweeted them about it a few times, but they don't reply, and it's not open source, so I can't fix it myself.

Plus, Flux is incompatible with fullscreen YouTube on the Macbook Pro, which is a really big problem too.

<comment><USER16> The newest version finally does, sort of. It supports setting a "bedtime" color (and a custom time) independent of the "sunset" color, so you can have eg. 5500K in daytime, ~3500K in the evening (matching normal interior lighting), and ~2000K when it's actually bedtime. Or just set the same color for the first two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone produced a screen that isn't backlit in recent years? I see there's a 13" e-ink display ([https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s- first-e...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-first-e-ink- monitor-13-3#/) ) but I don't know if it needs to be e-ink or simply not backlit. I worked last night to candle light and it was lovely; would like to be able to do the same on computer.

Perhaps it's worth finding an old monitor to kill the backlight on to try this out.

<comment><USER18> You needn't bother. Having repaired a considerable number of displays with dead backlight inverters, I can say from experience that you won't be able to see anything.

(Light has to pass through an LCD in order to produce a perceptible image. Watch displays, pre-backlight Palm devices, non-backlit e-ink displays, and the like do this by reflecting back light that arrives through the screen. Computer displays all but universally do it with a backlight; without one, and without a reflective layer behind the LC layer, you see a blank black rectangle no matter what the crystal layer is doing.)

<comment><USER19> If they're gonna kill the backlight anyways, I doubt it'd be much effort to put something reflective where the backlight was.

<comment><USER18> You'd be surprised. Getting good light reflection without also producing an image of the surroundings to conflict with the display is harder than it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've used f.lux but the problem I find is that if I'm unwinding in the evening watching some youtube / netflix on my laptop the colour shift is quite annoying.

By contrast, on my iphone I tend to not need accurate colour representation so the recently introduced Night Shift Mode is hardly noticed.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to see some form of universal dark mode or reverse mode on Macs and ios. Something that reverses backgrounds so I'm reading white text on black background. There are various workarounds, but it would be nice to not have to use them.

<comment><USER20> I've installed a firefox plugin that does this - just a few css rules for background color, text colour, etc. It totally ruins all the designy aspects of the web, but it makes reading a lot less tiring for my eyes.

<comment><USER22> If you're referring to "Dark Background and Light Text" by Mikhail Khvoinitsky, I can vouch for it. It also works surprisingly well on mobile:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/dark- backgrou...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/dark-background- light-text/)

<comment><USER20> Yes - that's the one. I've set it for the traditional dark background and green text (as I have for terminal, sublime, etc.). Does wonders for the eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is hardly a scientific review, but I definitely feel like I've started sleeping better since I started using Night Shift on my phone and f.lux on my MacBook. I seem to fall asleep faster and I don't toss or turn as much.

</comment><comment><USER24> So glad to hear this. I've had so many problems with flux during the past year.

<comment><USER25> Yeah - display colour is an OS-level concern. This feature belongs in the OS itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's tough to get excited about macOS. F.lux is 7 years old. I am running Yosemite and I have to keep my own installer for new machines & restoration.

I like nightshift, don't get me wrong, but I've never met someone who based their software ecosystem on a vendor provided way to change the color temp...

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice feature. And at this point i have dilemma, i stopped os x updates after Apple decided to remove remaining battery time. I like f.lux idea, but sometimes have some problems with it, so i would like to test Night Shift. Hope remaining time will return with future update

<comment><USER28> Do you have any reasons other than having a somewhat decent idea of how much time you have left? Battery power doesn't work on a time basis as power expenditure isn't consistent.

<comment><USER29> >Battery power doesn't work on a time basis as power expenditure isn't consistent

It can be quite consistent if you do very simple things (CPU-wise). SSH-ing into servers and working on them all day is pretty consistent in battery life on my MBP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Glad to see this is built in now, very useful on iOS and iOS apps

</comment><comment><USER31> RIP Flux.

</comment><comment><USER32> First they killed Flash, now it's Flux's turn.

<comment><USER33> Flash was so bad that it killed itself. Flux was so good that Apple implemented it. 2 different stories. You could compare this with Alfred though...

<comment><USER34> Is Alfred really killed? I am still a heavy user, many improvements compare to Spotlight for me.

<comment><USER35> It sure is not killed by Spotlight, I use many features in Alfred that are not available in Spotlight. Launching applications and doing simple tasks like calculations are possible with Spotlight. Snippets in Alfred work better than the OSX 'text' feature. Alfred with the Powerpack is really great.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Proof claimed for deep connection between primes: abc conjecture proven? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/proof-claimed-for-deep-connection-between-primes-1.11378

<comment><USER2> A quote: "Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers ..."

Imagine being in Mochizuki's position. Imagine being someone whose mathematical results are so complex that no one on earth is qualified to referee your work except you.

Now imagine where we go from here -- someone will endeavor to understand the 500 pages of proofs, and if they succeed, there will be two people who understand the result. That's barely an improvement.

Immediately after its publication, someone said that Einstein's theory of general relativity was so complex than only a handful of people understood it. That was an exaggeration, but this time, such a claim seems correct -- at the moment there's only one person who understands Mochizuki's work.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abc_conjecture></comment>


Ask HN: What were the best science fiction books that you read in 2019? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I read all of The Expanse. Fun series that takes place after we've colonized the solar system with infighting between Earth, Mars, and those who live out past the belt, when suddenly an alien artifact shows up.

Influx (a large secret govt. sect suppressing technology breakthroughs and keeping it for themselves) and Kill Decision (autonomous killing drones) by Daniel Suarez were fun. I liked Deamon (a murder mystery of sorts where the murderer is already dead and automated scripts and whatnot carry out the deeds) and Freedom (part 2) better however.

Beyond what I've read this year in Sci-Fi, I would recommend the Hyperion saga (my vote for best sci-fi ever), The Martian, Ready Player One, Snapshot (a short by Brandon Sanderson, my favorite author by a wide margin), and, heck, while we are at it, the whole of the Enderverse, though I preferred Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind the most).

It has been said that the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is spaceships vs trees. If you are looking for fun fantasy, I suggest just about anything from Brandon Sanderson. He has his Cosmere universe composed of many book series, the best of which are the Stormlight Archives.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The Black God's Drums" by P. Djeli Clark was a great novella.

[https://www.amazon.com/Black-Gods-Drums-Dj%C3%A8l%C3%AD- Clar...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Gods-Drums-Dj%C3%A8l%C3%AD- Clark/dp/1250294711)

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed 'We are legion'. [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse- Book-ebook...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book- ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> A Memory Called Empire was interesting as concept, maybe not a top plot.

Started Ada Palmer's series as audiobooks, did eventually get hooked. Rich in plot.

</comment><comment><USER6> I re-read _Salt_ by Adam Roberts and I enjoyed it a lot. The conflict feels real and understandable, and I liked the ideas.</comment>


Why I use Fastmail.com - <AUTHOR> http://lemery.io/review-fastmail

<comment><USER2> Yes, I use FastMail, too. Who would use Gmail, when you can pay a pittance and keep strangers the F out of your business? I pay for the performance and ease, too. The privacy comes in the bargain. +1.

</comment><comment><USER3> Avatar support with contacts should be coming along with CardDAV pretty soon. I'm working on speeding up the backend for that right now.

(paragraph formatting isn't my department)

Thanks for the nice article :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up! CardDAV was a big deal for me. Thanks for implementing it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I chosed Zoho mail over Fastmail, but not sure if this was good idea. Webmail is so 90s, and spam control is too agressive at Zoho. Will try today new Fastmail webmail.

<comment><USER5> Zoho has been a PITA for last couple days. ActiveSync push email is broken and support is parroting the same line over and over in the forums that the operations should be normal. It's also a half assed ActiveSync without Outlook support and they don't have CalDAV and CardDAV as an alternative either. I guess you get what you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious - i know the purpose of the blog post was not to get people to use your referral link, but have you seen anyone sign up after reading your post?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had 3000 views of this post, out of those I've received 2 confirmed referrals, totaling ~$9 in payouts.

Obviously, not much, but I'm still impressed I got _any_ referrals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm looking to move off of Gmail and this looks like an awesome value. Going to try the trial but I might grab the $20 before it ends

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a way to migrate a grandfathered apps email to this but still use the account to access Google services like the Play store?

<comment><USER9> Just switch your MX records.

<comment><USER8> But won't google get mixed up that I no longer use my gmail?.. I guess not hey?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Registrant Name: Admin Domain Registrant Organization: Outblaze Limited Registrant Street: Unit 411-415, Cyberport 1 Registrant Street: 100 Cyberport Road Registrant City: Hong Kong Registrant State/Province: Registrant Postal Code: NA Registrant Country: Hong Kong Registrant Phone: +852.25341222 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER11> +1 for "I'm their customer, not the advertisers". I am moving away from gmail myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are there any neat things I can do with the web site functionality? Or is it static HTML only?

<comment><AUTHOR> Static. Nice for simple blogs. Even has the ability to target a folder of images and create a simple slideshow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because my needs are modest, I went with the $20 per year account and I am quite happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish they had a package offering between 1GB and 15GB.

<comment><USER14> Same. I wish there were a plan that allowed use of a custom domain but had less space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> +1 from another happy paying Fastmail customer :)

</comment><comment><USER16> yeah fastmail rocks. I can confirm this.

<comment><USER17> Big fan of Fastmail and have been a customer for ten years now, with no complaints. An example of the cool team behind it, too: I once hacked up a Perl script that would access my Fastmail addressbook over their LDAP interface. It was giving me trouble, and when I submitted a help ticket the guy who answered me actually fixed the Perl on my behalf. (Not linking to the code anymore since it's out of date, but I remember thinking, that is some awesome customer service). Other pluses: limited file storage you can access over webdav, a good history of communication with the customer including interesting blog posts, family accounts that allow you to share contacts and messages, and standards-client IMAP that means you don't need a special app to read their mail; any IMAP client will do. This article got the big picture right (you're the customer, not the target, etc.) but could have been more detailed in what's provided when you are a customer.

By the way, I know they're rolling out carddav and caldav systems for calendar and contacts, but in the meantime, the perfect partner for Fastmail in my opinion has been Fruux, which offers caldav/carddav contacts and calendar that syncs across any device, with similar customer service. I'm happy to pay for both because it means I'm not tied to any particular company, even if they back the hardware (Google/Android, Apple/iOS). Independence is worth the money, in my opinion and experience.</comment></comment>


Man charged with threatening to kill Ajit Pai's family over Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/29/ajit-pai-family-death-threat-man-charged-688040 <comment><USER2> Hopefully the authorities stop ignoring threats to non-government related people too.</comment>


Show HN: Developers who like this repository also like... - <AUTHOR> http://www.yasiv.com/github/#/costars?q=jquery%2Fjquery

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought GitHub is really missing this feature, so as a hobby project I built this.

The source code is here: [https://github.com/anvaka/gazer/](https://github.com/anvaka/gazer/)

Looking for your feedback :)!

<comment><USER2> I was actively looking for this type of feature. Is this what I think it is? finding repositories that have a shared overlap of people who starred them? e.g. "people who starred X also starred Y" kind of recommendation? If so, well done

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, this is it :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will I be able to talk to a human if I move from Google to Apple? - <AUTHOR> I've been a "Google" guy since I started using the Internet. Gmail, Android, Drive and Google Photos. I even have a G Suite account (the legacy, free one).
However, I'm frustrated with some problems that I have had and specifically the fact that it was absolutely impossible to reach anyone. Also, I have read some horror stories about losing data and other problems.
So, my question is: if I migrate from Google to Apple (phone, photos...), which I don't know exactly what's the best way to do it and it will be painful, will I be able to talk to a human from Apple support? Assuming I would buy an iPhone and even pay for an iCloud subscription.
"Apple guys" from HN, if you have a problem with iCloud, for instance, can you easily talk to a human? What's your experience? <comment><USER2> You will be able to go to a Genius bar and get your support. If that's what you are after, the answer should be yes. But I would advise against it. You will move from one gated garden to another. You are right, breaking out from Google is very hard and painful, but I would argue breaking out of Apple might be even harder.

A while ago I started having the same worry about Google and started to cut them out. I began with email and moved to FastMail with my own domain, then I moved my drive and Photos (currently on DropBox) and then all other things (Apps/contacts/calendars)

Admittedly, it's more expensive, but each component is now separate and if something goes wrong I don't risk losing everything in one go.

<comment><USER3> I'm on Fastmail with my own domain(s), my photos and files are mostly local, with a backup on iCloud and on OneDrive and I'm using an iPhone and an iPad. I also have an iCloud subscription.

Why would an Apple device stop anyone from doing what you just outlined?

<comment><USER2> Nothing, but that's not what OP asked for. He seems to be wanting to move everything to Apple, not OneDrive, not Fastmail etc... my comment was about moving out of being all-in with Apple. Google's takeout service is okish, but I am not aware of similar services on Apple and there is a even stronger tie between services and devices with Apple, which makes it also more expensive to want to move away from it.

<comment><USER4> Aside from the absolute need to make sure you sign out of iMessage on your iPhone before you get rid of the device (so your friends still using iMessage will still be able to reach you using SMS), what is it about the Apple ecosystem that would lock you in that wouldn't be solved by using the iOS version of Google Drive to back up the iPhone before you sell it?

<comment><USER2> It's not the actual selling of the device the problem, it's the way you are locked in the walled garden. Let's say, you don't like the next iPhone. You want something different. Well, tough shit, you will need to find a new way to store all your photos and files since you won't be able to use those either on any other device. Same goes for anything else you might have in your iCloud.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't use other services or anything, all I'm saying is that if you put all your eggs in one basket, it becomes hard(not impossible, usually, just harder) to then move them away.

<comment><USER4> Again, using the iOS version of Google drive to back up the iPhone would back up all the photos, videos, contacts, and calendars.

All the user would need to do is sign into their new Android device with the same Google account they used to backup the iPhone.

Copying user files from iCloud Drive to Google drive (or any other cloud storage option) is likewise extremely simple.

I'm not aware of any lock in that isn't related to apps that aren't available on both platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a problem with buying an iOS app after switching to a new computer, the credit card was put on hold, and I called Apple support. Super friendly, they waited patiently until I reentered all information to make sure it worked before ending the call.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have used Apple phone support several times a year for the last few years. It works very well. They always get to me promptly, even at busy times such as a Monday during the business day. I don't know whether you can get it without purchasing their Apple care plan.

I'm no longer buying Apple laptops and I will miss that support option.

</comment><comment><USER7> FYI: a lot of people used Blackberries much longer than you would expect because they got Tier 2 (expert, near-shore) support by default.

I never got a scripted answer to my questions.

And I also recommend and use the Apple stores for support.

So the OP is asking a really pertinent question.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've found Apple support to be fine in person (used to be able to just walk in, now you need an appointment), great by phone, and super convenient via chat.

</comment><comment><USER4> You have a choice of free support in person, if you happen to live near an Apple Store, or free support over the phone.

</comment><comment><USER9> In case you don't know, if you are a premium Google customer paying for a service, you can talk to someone. I've had a couple of times where I needed support and was able to speak with a person. I don't know if those options exist for free tier customers.

<comment><USER10> This is misleading. The support only exists to solve anything to do with accounting or payments.

Google banned a couple of startups in our accelerator because they had interns with integrated sign-in and Google bans all related accounts with absolute impunity.

The customer service said they can only help with billing and also note that you can't even access the settings page to get your pin or phone number.

If your register again, Google will process your payment and ban you immediately after that due to related accounts. This is in their terms and conditions.

With chrome auto sign in , it's becoming easier for them to find related accounts.

<comment><USER9> > Google banned a couple of startups in our accelerator because they had > interns with integrated sign-in and Google bans all related accounts with > absolute impunity.

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure I understand.

<comment><USER10> If your account is related in any way to a banned account, your account would be terminated immediately and there is no way to salvage anything in your account. People lose their entire life's worth of data overnight and there is no way to dispute it. I hope to interview these people and write a blog post

Also note, the ban and suspension of your account including everything related to you is for your entire life!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This doesn't answer your question but..

It looks like google offers phone support if you pay for Google One.

[https://one.google.com/support](https://one.google.com/support)

Have you tried it out?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've used both Apple Support over the phone for set up/software issues and Apple Genius Bar for hardware issues. Nothing but good things to say about them. In general, a very pleasant experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can always walk into the Apple Store where they have the Genius bar.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can just call them and they will probably help you but if you have a difficult question you might get nowhere. If you have just bought a new iPhone it comes with support though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Apple support is way better than Google. Genius Bar is always helpful</comment>


Pauseless GC for OpenJDK [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5U8zYgAuWI

<comment><USER2> It seems that the title of this submission does not actually reflect its content very well.

Title of submission: "Pauseless GC for OpenJDK"

Within the first minute of the presentation: "Shanendoah _is not_ pauseless" (0:45, emphasis mine).

The presenter then continues, "It could be pauseless. We have plans to make it pauseless, but for now the first step is just doing concurrent evacuation."

Perhaps a more apropriate submission headline would be "Potentially pauseless GC for OpenJDK" or something along those lines?

</comment><comment><USER3> For what it is worth, GCs are a major headache generally for system level code. The expense in terms of system behavior are far higher than the implied CPU time due to the scheduling issues. This has always been the challenge of GC-centric environments.

I think there are two big challenges for garbage collected environments with respect to core server systems level code. First, an acceptable pause needs to be reliably sub-millisecond or it breaks the userspace schedulers in a lot of high-performance server code. In the video presentation, they had a difficult time guaranteeing 10 milliseconds. They are working on it but this is a problem. Second, most high-performance server engines eliminate almost everything that looks like context-switching, mostly because it is very expensive on modern hardware. The idea that there may be hundreds or even thousands of threads running on real servers does not comport with the reality of a lot of server environments where context switching is severely restricted for good reason. The idea that it makes sense to have a lot of background processes cleaning up the memory allocation contradicts many well-conceived software architectures. These days, _everything_ is explicitly scheduled and bounded if server performance matters.

<comment><USER4> >In the video presentation, they had a difficult time guaranteeing 10 milliseconds.

In fairness, the estimate was 10 milliseconds for 100 GB heaps. Not everything (especially, I'd guess, programs that benefit from pauseless GC) deals with that much memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am glad someone is giving Azul competition here. Their products are ridiculously expensive. I hope Oracle also takes notice, great throughput is great, but sometimes latency bounds are also important.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm I the only one who is a bit uneasy with forwarding pointers? In terms of memory use this is like disabling compressed oops and in terms of performance this is like going back to Java 1.1 with an object table.

<comment><USER7> It is rather "odd".

Personally, deal with the low-hanging fruit first. For example: there are plenty of cases where an optimizing compiler could statically (read: at compile time) compute the lifespan of an object and thus bypass the GC entirely. (Or, for another example for a related issue: recognize that a threadsafe object can only be accessed by one thread and as such can be optimized in ways that break update order.) And yet most compilers don't see to do this sort of optimization, or do so in an extremely limited fashion.

In other words: deal with the slowness of garbage collection _after_ you've reduced the amount of garbage to be collected.

<comment><USER8> This does happen partially with escape analysis within a function. Objects/primitives could be allocated on the stack instead. I totally agree that this should be an area that could be explored more in depth.

<comment><USER7> Not just stack allocation. Pool allocation also, especially when one has many threads. And inserting destructor calls directly into code, etc, etc. There are a lot of optimizations here.

Take Java. One of the concepts of Java was that you didn't need to worry about the stack / heap distinction - the JVM handles where to put things. But in practice, all this ends up doing is making (almost) everything ends up on the heap. And then people wonder why it's slower and more memory-hungry.

(Also: I wish compilers would be smarter about function boundaries. Have functions be source-level constructs, that get turned into a single global control flow graph, which the compiler then inspects to determine where function boundaries "make sense". With manual overrides of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always wondered why there isn't an open source clone of Azul's Zing JVM. The patent issues can be sidestepped by developing in software-patent-free jurisdictions.

<comment><USER10> Actually, Azul attempted to get others interested in their technology with a "Managed Runtime Initiative" (see e.g. [http://lwn.net/Articles/392307/](http://lwn.net/Articles/392307/)) and released a lot of code, under the GPL as I remember.

Per [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mechanical- sympathy/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mechanical- sympathy/UnsLM6whXcw) the Linux kernel types had no interest in incorporating it (it requires some things like bulk page table changes with only one clearing of the TBL at the end).

<comment><USER11> No offense to Azul, but that looks sort of like them just trying to get their kernel patches into the main linux kernel for ease of deployment.

Having a pluggable scheduler and memory management module might be nice for other pauseless GCs too, but not sure how that relates to any patents Azul may hold in this area, for instance: [https://www.google.com/patents/US8452938?dq=ininventor:%22Gi...](https://www.google.com/patents/US8452938?dq=ininventor:%22Gil+Tene%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xaofVJCVOMO7ogTogYGwDQ&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How to try it out: [http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Shenandoah](http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Shenandoah)

<comment><USER6> -XX:-UseCompressedOops :-(</comment></comment>


Popular misconceptions about the Golden Ratio (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_06_04.html

<comment><USER2> For the artists and people who do use the GR, myself included, I use it out of convenience when any arbitrary decision will do. It's just an easy way to count exponentially.

For instance, I recently wanted to compute a moving average of recent events. I chose to use Fibonacci (i.e., last 3 days, last 5 days, last 8 etc), but my choice had nothing to do with any belief on my part that it has any deep significance. I just wanted a moving average and wanted decreased granularity as events got further out. I use powers of 2 as well. For instance on server retries after a failed request.

I suspect if the GR is used a lot in art it's done for motivations similar to mine: when we're presented with deciding on something arbitrary we can easily limit our choices and simplify decisions by using an established counting method.

Do you think Shakespeare's poems (iambic pentameter) would be any less beautiful if he decided to go for 12 syllables instead? Would we not like music as much if it were written in 6/4 instead of 4/4? There are limitless choices so we fall back on established conventions simply because any choice will do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even the nautilus shell, which this article says follows the golden ratio, doesn't. Proof: m_for_monkey's link: <http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm>

</comment><comment><USER4> A rough idea of why the Fibonaccis and the golden ratio are related: in making a golden rectangle, you take an existing rectangle, attach a compass across its long end, and use that compass to construct a square. You add the square to the golden rectangle to get... another golden rectangle. If you wanted to repeat this, there is also a "flipping" of the rectangle by 90 degrees. Mathematically, the process takes a rectangle (a, b) (where b > a) and produces a rectangle (b, b + a). But that's just the Fibonacci recursion relation, so starting from (0, 1) or (1, 1) you'll generate all the Fibonacci rectangles as you 'goldenize' them further and further.

An actual proof: Since φ and 1 − φ are the solutions to the quadratic x² = x + 1, they also solve xⁿ = xⁿ⁻¹ + xⁿ⁻² and thereby form a basis for all solutions of the Fibonacci recurrence relation: in other words, you can solve the system of equations {A + B = F₀ ; A φ + B (1 − φ) = F₁} for parameters A and B, and then the recurrence relation guarantees A φⁿ + B (1 − φ)ⁿ = Fₙ for all remaining Fibonaccis. (For F₀ = 0, F₁ = 1 this gives A = -B = 1/sqrt(5).) Since |1 − φ| < 1, this decays geometrically to 0 and the dominant term is simply Fₙ ≈ A φⁿ.

The article thankfully does explain that the golden ratio is the most irrational number: because a continued fraction expansion gives the best rational approximations, large numbers in the continued fraction expansion make for extra-good rational approximations, and the golden ratio has the smallest numbers possible -- they're all 1. What it doesn't quite explain is that if you're growing a spiral by spitting out dots and you turn by an angle 2π · α each time you spit out a new dot, those spirals often seem to "line up" in lines given by the denominators of the best rational approximations. So if you have a rational number like α = 22/7, you would literally see just 7 straight spokes coming out of the center; if you use α = π you will see a region where there seem to be seven spirals due to the fact that 22/7 is a disproportionately good approximation to π, off not by ~ 1/14 but rather by ~1/790. Anyway this is the more concrete reason why, if you take a sunflower and count the spirals, you always seem to "magically" get Fibonacci numbers; they're denominators in the best rational approximations.

You may wish to experiment with a spreadsheet to see all of this dynamically for yourself, a-la <http://tmp.drostie.org/sunflower.png> .

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe the author got it backwards. I don't think most artists follow the Golden Ratio (at least not consciously, or since this appeared in literature), as much as this ratio has a tendency to creep up over and over on people's works.

I have a theory about this, and it has relation to ocular dominance [1]. People who photograph or shoot firearms might know about this: our brains tend to favor one of our eyes (just like left/right hand dominance), so we have a kind of overlap where the image we see is not 50/50 between each eye. That might point to a mental bias to find slightly unbalanced compositions (that approach the GR) more pleasant than completely balanced ones.

The last sentence - that we find unbalanced compositions actually more balanced - is empirical, not just speculation from my part. Any artist knows that intuitively too.

I don't know if there are papers about that, if you know please comment!

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance>

</comment><comment><USER6> Another good writing on this topic is the Fibonacci Flim-Flam:

<http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> Of interest to hackers! This hacker at least.

More articles like this please. :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like one idea I heard, which is that the pentagram is a symbol of freemasonry because originally it was used by actual stone masons to provide a golden mean for cathedral construction.

But without extremely good evidence, this is nothing but a nice thought, though it does give a fairly practical reason for it gaining the status of an occult symbol, which it didn't seem to have so much before the period of massive cathedral construction.</comment>


Ngrok: Secure tunnels to localhost - <AUTHOR> https://ngrok.com/ <comment><USER2> A lot of people seem to be a bit confused about the point of ngrok, why it's useful, how much it costs, etc. Let me try and help out. :)

For me, the killer feature for ngrok is testing/developing webhooks. You install ngrok in your dev environment, start it up, then point the stripe/slack/whatever webhook your working on at the generated URL.

ngrok will 1) proxy that request through to your dev environment 2) log the request 3) log the response 4) let you replay previous requests. It could not be more helpful for developing webhook handlers, and has literally saved me _hours_ of work in the last couple of months alone.

Finally, the free tier is all you need for that; it gives you a unique ngrok subdomain which changes every time you start the tunnel and some (generous) usage caps, both of which are fine for this usage.

People pointing out the potential security issues are correct, but that's an argument to be careful and think about what you're doing. Besides, what's your proposed alternative? Because most of the obvious ones have equally troubling issues.

<comment><USER3> > Besides, what's your proposed alternative?

Setup a proper development environment that mirrors the production environment?

<comment> nevi-me If you don't have a static IP that's internet-accessible, and that which you can arbitrarily point your domain to, how would you go about doing this?

Some, if not most, services won't allow you to redirect cold to an IP address, they want some domain of sorts. There are alternatives, but I think "setup a proper dev environment" alone misses the point of what ngrok does.

The 'easiest' alternative I've tried before was to VPN into my Linux box to get a static internal IP, use a spare domain for the webhook then internally redirect the webhook traffic to my local machine. In the end I'm achieving what ngrok is doing (and none of it involves setting up a proper dev environment, cos I would already have one anyways), but I'd like to hear of better alternatives :)

<comment><USER4> i tend to fire up reverse port forwarding with ssh + special subdomain + ask nginx to proxy to the reverse-forwarded port on that special subdomain to resolve this, obviously you'd still need a static and public ip somewhere, but any ssh-accessible host will now do.

it's a bit of setup, but works quite well once set. does _not_ provide the features ngrok does of replay, etc, but at least it's 100% your own infrastructure.

edit: to clarify: no reason why it should be a special subdomain, i just use beta.mywebsite.com, just something that belongs to you and is globally dns resolvable, could be mytestdomain.com for your use. you can skip nginx if you don't mind binding to port 80 directly (i.e: no webserver already exists on that machine)

<comment><USER5> I do exactly this. I also have it set up with let's encrypt so that the Webhooks are encrypted.

Locally, I also mirror the LE keys and add a hosts file entry for the test domain to localhost.

This means I can test locally with proper ssl certs.

<comment><USER4> +1 original reason i did it was so i can have the LE cert to test a slack bot i was developing (they require webhooks have SSL to do that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Makes me sad to see all the negativeness towards this service, which clearly works and serves a need some people have.

Yes, there are alternatives, but I hate when people jump to dismiss service like this, without fully considering what issues the proposed alternatives have. Obviously it is ok to mention the alternative options, but that can be made in constructive way.

Let's celebrate the fact that somebody has built and released something and even seems to have a business model to support it. Instead of complaining about 5-20 bucks per month, try to figure out how you could channel some of your corporate multimillion IT budget to this fellow hacker. Wouldn't it be great if building and running this kind of small solutions would be actually a viable way of making living?

</comment><comment><USER7> Literally the most terrifying service for any security-minded operations- focused person. Wonderful tool, interesting and useful in a dizzying array of aspects - but dear lord, I've had some real horrific moments when users told me that they installed it to allow access to their (private) repos for testing.

<comment><USER8> If your users have to resort to this they are not getting the appropriate support they need.

If your users are productive, chances are so is the company that pays both your salaries. If your users have to fight their infrastructure people to get their jobs done, you company will fail to effectively compete against those companies that don't.

It astounds me that so few security people understand what their purpose is: Your purpose is to assist the company you work for to keep on existing, and even make a profit. If you disempower those that are most effective in helping the company do what it does you're effectively destroying your own livelihood, and everyone else that is dependent on it.

<comment><USER9> Uh, no. The purpose of a security team is to prevent data from being exfiltrated from the company's control. Passwords, PII, HIPPA/other- compliance-controlled stuff, source code, etc. are all at risk of being stolen at all times, which means that security is a game of constant vigilance. And since everybody has at least a bit of this data under their control, this means that everybody is involved with security. (At least two of my past employers have had the motto, "Everybody is on the security team.")

Productivity means nothing in the face of data exfiltration. You only have to fail once at guarding a password in order to be completely compromised. If we seem tightly wound, it's because we have fully internalized and grok the stakes of our efforts and the entailment of failure.

"Our infrastructure sucked, so I used an insecure tool to leak our credentials to third parties, because I couldn't be productive otherwise!" is not really a valid excuse in this light, since there's no amount of productivity which offsets data exfiltration.

<comment><USER10> You're both right.

If the dev team needs something like ngrok, the security team has failed to provide proper tools.

If the dev team goes ahead and uses ngrok without consulting the security team, the dev team has likely committed an awful security breach.

The dev team and the security team need to think of each other as being on the same team, and talk to each every day about what they want and need.

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure a lot of people using this don't even have a "security team." They likely have corporate IT that takes 2 weeks to add a DNS entry. Something complex like mapping a public IP to a dev server would take an act of $DEITY.

<comment><USER12> so register a new domain and set it up in route53? is there some corporate law that says you can't?

just don't use your company's name in the domain name, make it something obscure.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I personally don't have this problem. I have all my externally accessible dev servers on AWS. However, others are not so lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hiya there folks - I'm the creator of ngrok, happy to answer any questions

<comment><USER14> How does this compare to [https://localtunnel.github.io/www/](https://localtunnel.github.io/www/) ?

<comment><USER15> I stopped used ngrok because after opening the tunneled URL a few times it started saying "too many HTTP requests" on a Wordpress project. It is common for those to have many images/scripts/styles so throttling by number of requests makes ngrok unusable, now a happy localtunnel user.

<comment><USER16> ngrok has connection limits, but not request limits. Perhaps your server wasn't using keep-alive connections? It's mentioned in the pricing FAQ (scroll down a bit from this link):

[https://ngrok.com/product#pricing](https://ngrok.com/product#pricing)

<comment><USER15> Yeah my bad, it probably says "connections limit", I don't have time to figure out my way around it; other devs may do thought. I just want to fire it up and start working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Happy paying ngrok user here.

Love it for developing anything using webhooks and also hybrid mobile apps (I have my app pull the JS from the Dev box I'm working on via ngrok without having to rebuild the app or deploy the code anywhere).

It significantly speeds up my workflow!

<comment><USER18> I'm surprised that ngrok is something new for HN community.

Anyway, happy customer here! Recommending this product whenever I go:) It has became an essential part of my workflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice tool, but without committing for annual billing (which I don't intend to do, not for the first year of usage) it's $10 a month. My internet connection, my mobile plan, my Photoshop & Lightroom subscription, a huge collection of music (Spotify), 3K~5K movies and TV shows (Netflix), etc., all cost approximately the same. I mean, sure, $120 a year is pocket change for somebody using Ngrok professionally, but that's still super disproportional, compared to, say, monster of a piece of software like Photoshop. I'd probably subscribe for $2, but otherwise, IMO, frp [0] on a $3 VPS [1] is better value, with the extra benefit of being FOSS and having zero limits.

[0] [https://github.com/fatedier/frp](https://github.com/fatedier/frp)

[1] [https://www.scaleway.com/pricing](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing)

<comment><USER20> You can use ngrok without paying, you just get weird domains like n56897as.ngrok.com (this is off the top of my head, idk how close I got to a real one). This works fine most of the time.

<comment><USER21> Custom subdomains are available for non-paying users too. You just need to create a free account.

<comment><USER22> That isn't true for ngrok2. Ngrok 1 allowed for this but has been sunset.

<comment><USER23> It's absolutely possible. Admittedly I'm still running 2.1.18, but I just tested it there and it still works.

[https://ngrok.com/docs#subdomain](https://ngrok.com/docs#subdomain)

edit: Just in case, I updated to 2.2.4 (newest) and it's still possible to use custom subdomains.

<comment><USER24> This doesn't work. I just checked.

Tunnel session failed: Only paid plans may bind custom subdomains. Failed to bind the custom subdomain 'blahblahblah' for the account xxx

<comment><USER23> Strange. Did you have the account back when it was still possible? They may have grandfathered the older accounts in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> PSA: if you want to provide remote access to a local service, but don't want the potentially-terrifying security implications, use Tor Authenticated Onion Services (AKA "HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient" [0]).

On a machine on the LAN, install Tor and set up an authenticated onion service, and point it to the desired endpoint. In order to access the service, clients need a manually-loaded encryption key (and Tor, of course). Without this key, nobody will be able even to _discover_ your endpoint, let alone actually connect to it.

[0]: [https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/rend- spec.txt](https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/rend-spec.txt)

<comment><USER26> How does that work for webhook testing? They are just going to POST to a url you give them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I prefer the implementation of [http://localhost.run](http://localhost.run)

To me it seems a lot cleaner, simply use SSH rather than download any app

<comment><USER28> Is this free? I can't find any pricing info

<comment><USER29> According to the website "localhost.run is completely free to use!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A fantastic open-source javascript alternative is localtunnel ([https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel](https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel)). I've used this more often than ngrok after ngrok became a paid service.

<comment><USER31> yeah im in the same boat.

<comment><USER32> ngrok is open source as well: [https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok](https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok) I've used localtunnel before but due to some misbehavior on windows (which i can't remember anymore), switched to ngrok.

<comment><USER33> Unless you setup your own ngrok server, you cannot use ngrok1, and ngrok2 is not open source

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Their 1.x is open source: [https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok](https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok)

This is a similar open source alternative: [https://github.com/fatedier/frp](https://github.com/fatedier/frp)

Both written in Go.

</comment><comment><USER35> I see some people arguing that "you should use a dev/staging environment with a public IP" instead of having ngrok tunneling traffic directly to your local dev box.

When you're editing HTML/CSS, you don't have to run a deploy script before checking how your markup renders. Ngrok gives people writing web services the same convenience when dealing with requests from a 3rd party on the Net.

It is the equivalent of saving your HTML/CSS source files and instantly seeing the changes when you reload your browser.

I just wrote a little proof-of-concept Alexa app that crawls HumbleBundle ('Bundled Goods', very much beta quality at the moment) and ngrok was invaluable for developing it quickly.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ngrok is the coolest tool I use on a pretty consistent basis. Developing webhooks locally is usually what I use it for, and the web interface replay capability is amazing. The creator gave a great talk on why he built it and how it progressed over the years: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_xNOVY96Ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_xNOVY96Ng)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've used ngrok for a while now, and I love it. I used it just last night to test out some webrtc stuff I was doing. Was able to get friends from around the world on video chat served from localhost within seconds.

It's also super handy when building webhooks, you can use the unique URL to test out apis without having to deploy anything. I can't rave about it enough.

</comment><comment><USER38> A lot of negativity but I found this tool super useful when developing for Alexa and test out my scripts. Keep it going guys!

</comment><comment><USER39> The title of this submission makes it sound like a selling-fridges-to-eskimos scam product - you need to read quite a bit to find out what's it actually about and that it solves (or simplifies) an actual use-case.

I think a better comparision is with DynDNS services: It sets up a public host connected to your own machine - but unlike DynDNS, the host doesn't point to your machine's IP directly. Instead, requests are routed through a proxy/tunnel, so your machine can be kept behind a firewall and is _only_ available through the public host.

(I figure, the proxy allows for some more neat tricks, such as restricting ports/urls/etc or holding requests open while your machine changes IPs.)

</comment><comment><USER40> For a part-time programmer Mechanical Engineer, it is such a gratifying task to use ngrok. I first came across it a couple of years back. Great Project, great development, open sourced and well written in go. [https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok/tree/master/src/ngr...](https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok/tree/master/src/ngrok)

It takes two seconds to deploy an application in the evening from my kitchen table, check it also on my mobile and the next day access it from work also and show it to co-workers.

Call it "usability" for Engineers!

</comment><comment><USER41> I've been on the free tier for a while and have been meaning to upgrade to show support for such a great service. Seeing this post this morning reminded me. Upgraded for the year!

</comment><comment><USER42> Ngrok is one of the most valuable development tools in my toolbox.

<comment><USER4> did a spit-take when i accidentally read "deployment"

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's possible to roll your own ngrok clone via SSH tunnels, a publicly- available server somewhere, and autossh. This is basically ssh-tunnel-as-a- service.

<comment><USER44> or vpn which has better performance due to udp

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Never used it, what's the difference between ngrok and using DMZ with port- forwarding? are they the same thing? What's the technical advantage other than it is easy to use? I can port-forwarding easily on my router to expose whatever port to the public, why do I need ngrok?

With a DDNS + Port-forwarding you can easily have what Ngrok provides? or am I missing something?

<comment><USER46> For me ngrok spares me all the talk with infra team to have the public port exposed and the setup of a test server just to for a mere 10 or 20 calls I need to receive from some new service I am checking.

I use it to prototype webhook entry points, and only need to receive a few call to have a quick confirmation I receive what I expected from the docs.

Once I have enough info I can start building a more solid project and jump through all the hoops to have it on a real server with a subdomain and a public facing interface and all the security needed etc. I'd just hate to go through the whole process first, only to discover the service is unusable for my purpose, or the data I receive doesn't make any sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> 3 important questions:

1) My university blocks LogMeInHamachi which is the main tool i've tried to get around hosting behind a NAT. Will this likely be blocked too, or is it not possible to tell without trying

2) Is there any costs associated with this. Do i ever need to pay

3) Does the person connecting to my server also require a special client or does this appear to them as any standard connection would.

<comment><USER48> > 2) Is there any costs associated with this. Do i ever need to pay

See [https://ngrok.com/product#pricing](https://ngrok.com/product#pricing).

<comment><USER49> Did the free option go away?

(On my phone now so I can't try it out.)

<comment><USER50> Below the paid options:

      Free Plan
      For quick demos and other simple tunneling needs.
      * HTTP/TCP tunnels on random URLs/ports
      * 1 online ngrok process
      * 4 tunnels per ngrok process
      * 40 connections / minute

<comment><USER49> Ah, thanks! I didn't scroll down on my phone all the way since the plans were just getting more expensive. It's obvious now that I'm on a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vhost- I really like ngrok. I use it a lot. I just really dislike how the TCP tunnels work. With HTTP you get a unique subdomain which makes it harder for people to just scan and connect. With TCP, it's always 0.tcp.ngrok.io, so you can just scan that domain and connect to anything that's open.

<comment><USER51> I'not currently using it (so I did not test this) but seems like you have the option of custom TCP as I can see here [https://ngrok.com/product#pricing](https://ngrok.com/product#pricing) for Pro account.

<comment><USER52> I use the -subdomain argument for this available in the Pro version and it works perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I used to use Ngrok, then I discovered ultrahook which gives me a persistent endpoint, for free.

<comment><USER54> Do you know how they're able to offer it for free?

<comment><USER55> I created UltraHook.. it only replaces ngrok for the simple "receiving webhooks on localhost" use case.

The infrastructure is sponsored by Enchant.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Love ngrok. The ngrok npm package makes it easy to put into a local dev startup, too.

</comment><comment><USER57> I have been using this for quite a while and it's really useful. Even though I have VPSs available, where I could make a SSH tunnel, this is simply way more convenient, so I end up using ngrok a lot for development

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm a happy paid user. If I had one request, it is for a different pricing and better management for groups of users.

People like me would like to buy 5-10 licenses and manage them centrally.

Define shared endpoints and individual endpoints,etc

</comment><comment><USER59> long time ngrok user here. used several times to show my prototypes to the others. It's simpler than deploying on heroku (or anywhere actually), and is without restrictions ofc because you use your own hw.

</comment><comment><USER60> Use a hidden service! I manage many intranet servers over tor. You have no problems with nat or firewalls and it is free!

Ok it is slower, but for many things like ssh it's great...

</comment><comment><USER61> I've been using this for web server testing since 2012. It's probably the paid tool that's given me the most bang for my buck in terms of hours saved

</comment><comment><USER62> I love this product page so much! Great illustrations, a wonderful balance of levity and clarity about ngrok's purpose.

</comment><comment><USER63> Cool. Where's the ARM64 linux build? That's more important than the legacy 32-bit ARM builds (i.e. ARM servers)

</comment><comment><USER64> How much is the paid service? You could roll your own for around $15/month using an Amazon EC2 T2 micro instance.

<comment><USER65> Or one of the sub-$5 VPS places. Some even have $1 deal from time to time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Awesome! OT but can anyone suggest some free tools using which I can make similar diagrams. They look pretty cool :)

</comment><comment><USER67> docker run -ti -e 'PROXY_TO_ADDR=[http://www.example.com/'](http://www.example.com/') jonthepirate/ngrok:latest

^ that expression will expose a local docker powered web server, assuming www.example.com is the local dns name on your docker network. Enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER68> Ngrok is just awesome! A huge shout out to the developers!

</comment><comment><USER69> Yet another needless cost of not switching to IPv6 already ...

<comment><USER70> Even with IPv6 you might still have a firewall that you don't control.

<comment><USER69> Even with IPv6, you might get issued a work laptop that has software installed to randomly delete some of your files.

Well, yeah, of course, incompetent or malicious company IT can prevent you from being a productive developer and you may then feel the need to work around that, that is largely orthogonal to whether the world is using IPv6 or not.</comment></comment></comment>


The Best Super Bowl Ad - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/07/cramer-super-bowl <comment><USER2> Doubtful that this thought occurred to very many people watching the post- game. I was just thinking about how all those players were kissing the same spot on the trophy, and how gross that was getting.

<comment><USER3> While I agree that most people probably wouldn't notice. I was personally floored by how many iPhones were pulled out in that small window of time.</comment></comment>


VideoEgg: From zero to 25 million videos per day - <AUTHOR> http://email@example.com/articles/indiv/2007/001291.html <comment><USER2> VideoEgg's deal-making reminds me of the early days of VA Linux and Redhat. At that time, I thought customers would like VA being a single source of hardware and software, avoiding any finger-pointing between vendors when problems arose. I thought for that reason they would do better than Redhat. I was wrong. Redhat's deal-making put them way ahead, until VA finally had to change the business model.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to find reputable legal advice for web startup? - <AUTHOR>

Where does one find reputable IP lawyers for small business websites? Specifically, on issues of potential trademark infringement in meta-titles and landing pages? <comment><USER2> Though I don't have any personal experience dealing with this in the real world, I do have an answer for those with access to an academic institution. Usually, the big research universities (in the U.S. that I know of) have a technology transfer department and they can be very resourceful. Of course, this depends highly on your university...

And if your university has a business school, they might be helpful too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see this answered. Unfortunately, it'd need a different answer for every country (I'm in Germany).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I needed to clarify this would be for the U.S. Thanks.</comment>


Conan O'Brien: "Apple Gets Cocky About iPad 2" (parody video) - <AUTHOR> http://video.teamcoco.com/video/conan.jsp?oid=245467&eref=sharethisUrl

<comment><USER2> It would make a lot more sense if people have a look at some of the 'design' videos that apple puts up for its products.

Conan's take on it is quite nicely done.

<comment><USER3> Here's the link: <http://www.apple.com/ipad/#video>

<comment><USER4> Why do I need a plugin to watch this movie?

<comment><USER5> Because you don't have a mac. Same happens to me when I try watching videos that are on Windows specific players.

<comment><USER3> I can watch it just fine on Ubuntu :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A sign that the Apple fatigue is about to set in for consumers?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. Remember the iPhone parodies from 3 years ago ("it's a shaver, it's a cheese grater", "introducing iRack", etc)? None of those managed to hurt Apple's brand or the sales of Apple products. In fact they probably had the opposite effect - they made people, who would otherwise not have known of the existence of an Apple phone, aware of the iPhone.</comment></comment>


Show HN: WrapAPI Proxy, a Zero-Install Charles Proxy Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://wrapapi.com/proxy <comment><USER2> Looks pretty neat, but does this support sites with HTTPS or certificate pinning? A simple proxy is easy, but that's been the annoying part in the past

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely for HTTPS in general -- we have detailed instructions for each of 6 different platforms/browsers (e.g., Android, Chrome, Firefox, Windows/Mac desktop). However, the certificate pinning is actually really tough to get around for apps in Android and iOS these days, so those your mileage may vary there

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I click "Enable your WrapAPI proxy" button I get this message:

>You are not allowed to use this feature yet

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, our bad here! Certain accounts had the feature flag turned off randomly -- we should have fixed this, and you can use it now</comment></comment>


Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.co.za/google-backs-out-free-wifi-google-station-partnership-with-think-wifi-in-south-africa-2020-2 <comment><USER3> I still remember when Google promised to bring free wifi to all of the poor neighborhoods in Chicago. Amid a big frenzy of local media and politician hoopla it said was going to put access points on every streetlight.

Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. So it just walked away.

<comment><USER4> > Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power > to run the access points.

Uh? Duh! What did they expect? A switch in every street light? (Which also would need to be controlled in some way ...)

<comment> _-___________-_ In my experience a fully-centralised switch is actually quite uncommon.

In many locations they use light sensors, and if you live above a street oriented the right way you can see quite a cool effect of the lights going off sequentially down the street as the light goes below the threshold.

In other locations that I'm familiar with, they use a ripple relay, where a particular signal is transmitted over the power lines (a "ripple") in a way that doesn't affect unaware equipment, but signals the target equipment (relays on the supply to the streetlights) to switch. Similar technology is used to provide day/night rates where one circuit is only energised during off-peak hours.

I don't see any reason the ripple relay couldn't be bypassed to provide a second always-on feed for the Wi-Fi gear, but it might be that the ripple relays are not at every lamp post but instead at the substations or roadside cabinets, in which case there would indeed be some cost to run the extra circuits.

<comment><USER5> > In my experience a fully-centralised switch is actually quite uncommon.

Just to offer a counter-point, in my experience it's often that they are managed in big groups, and individual control is uncommon.

Quite often at the right time you'll see big swathes of lights turning off, sections of neighbourhoods, as far as you can see down a reasonably straight road, etc.

From what I understand, it's usually just a timeswitch in the circuit breaker box at the side of the road.

<comment> _-___________-_ Hard to say; it could be time control or ripple control of relays at substations, which would explain neighbourhoods turning on/off at the same time. It's still not fully centralised, and the more "decentralised" (I cringe when I write that word these days) it gets, the cheaper it gets to provide an always-on supply to the lamp post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect they're withdrawing due to infrastructure issues. We also have frequent power cuts (in my area it's up to 4 hours a day with no electricity) and loads of cable theft. Some of the cell towers even get shut down because people steal the hardware, the batteries that keep them operational. Heck, we've even had cases of people stealing fibre cables, because they thought they were worth more than copper.

*I am a South African living in South Africa.

<comment><USER7> Eish, that's still going on? I'm half South African and grew up in SA but left in 2007, mainly because of the crime, but also the Telkom monopoly and rolling blackouts ("load shedding") were not so conducive to starting an internet business.

It's kinda amazing to me that any techies stay there. Cape Town is beautiful yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated to).

<comment><USER6> It's worse than ever. I am having a lot of trouble keeping to my deadlines for work and have to work around all the blackouts which frustratingly disrupts my life and thousands of other businesses. Just a couple more years until my degree is done, then I am GTFO of here.

<comment><USER8> Can't you get a UPS? Or do they last too long to make that an option?

<comment><USER9> Load shedding lasts for hours. Generators are a big business, but they are expensive to buy and run. Keeping a good battery in your laptop is great, but the power to the wired internet infrastructure, the cell towers, etc are also cut. You could drive to the office, but the traffic lights have no power either.

So it is nightmare.

The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start. They must find an empowerment partner (which means some black people, but they have no money so you have to give them their controlling 51% share) that happens to be a friend of the ANC (not a documented requirement, but I did mention corruption). So they will siphon funds out of the company, but if you have the right ones, you can win big government contracts such with the bailout money they keep getting.

The place is a banana republic - Live there, enjoy you cheap labour, great food, amazing geography, the wildlife, your personal security guards and inexpensive servants, but don't reside there and keep everything in another currency.

<comment><USER10> > The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google > probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start.

There's no evidence that Google ran into empowerment (BBBEE) roadblocks here. And that assertion about 49% ownership is quite incorrect. BBBEE doesn't actually work like that (1). A lot of factors go into scoring a company's empowerment rating.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad- Based_Black_Economic_Emp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad- Based_Black_Economic_Empowerment)

<comment><USER9> 'Companies in South Africa that deal with the government or parastatals must be empowered as required by the Preferential Procurement Act.'

$3M USD / year turnover is a low bar these days and must apply all seven pillars of BBBEE to calculate their score as per the Generic Scorecard. \- Black Ownership - 25 points \- Black Management control - 15 points \- Black Skills development – 20 points \- Black Enterprise & Supplier development – 40 points \- Black Socio-economic (SED) development 5 pts

So yeah, I need 51% Black ownership to get full points and again for management control points.

This is so racist my brain is bleeding, but it could be republished as a book on how to make a corrupt government.

From the Wikipedia article, "A general criticism can be made that wealthy and politically connected black individuals have been the real beneficiaries of BEE and not those still living in poverty. In fact, unemployment and inequality have both increased since the introduction of BBBEE policies.

In 2018 a surfacing argument is that BBBEE should be changed from a race-based policy to a policy that favours poverty regardless of skin colour. Apartheid was criticised exactly because of race-based legislation that favoured a minority based on skin colour and BBBEE once again has introduced race-based policies diverting South Africa's problems from endemic poverty to race. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised none of the comments mention widespread increases in 4G coverage and decreased cellular broadband costs as a factor in shutting down the program worldwide.

At least here in Myanmar free WiFi is no longer needed at cafes and the like as most people now have access to affordable cellular broadband at 4G speeds. I know it's a similar situation in India where Google was operating the program.

</comment><comment><USER12> A huge pity. Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, and Philippi are poor, underserviced areas. It's unlikely they benefit from the fiber to the home that the rest of Cape Town has (nor could many of their residents afford it).

What they do have are cellphones and a free wireless service would likely benefit many.

I can't see any commercial value from continuing the service in these areas: Exactly why a wealthy tech company /should/ be considering this service. It's quite possible the new operators will retreat to the formerly white (and rich) suburbs and center of Cape Town.

* I'm a South Africa ex-pat living in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't really know why Google, a company, is doing what should be done by the government with no clear benefit to the bottom line. This is not to say they shouldn't do this, but if you look at it that way, it shouldn't be surprising at all.

If they really wanted to help they probably should have teamed up with the government to ensure that there is government buy in to the program.

<comment><USER14> I think Google is an insecure advertising company. It's as if Phillip Morris International was trying to develop solar panels and vegan food products to make everyone forget that most of their revenue comes from tobacco.

<comment><USER15> > Phillip Morris International

You mean Altria. They changed their name, for some strange reason.

<comment><USER16> Funny how it is almost like Altruism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lesson: never bet your business on a Google product other than ads.

<comment> toper-centage Considering how easily you can get banned from Google ads, you should also prepare for that scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to be a part of the Google Station project (product?) being shut down world-wide [1].

TBH, while I'm all for projects that provide public uplift, it's clear that Google was never doing this completely out of the goodness of their hearts. Moreover, providing things for free here needs to be balanced with building services that provide a path out of the endemic unemployment that crushes so many people and communities.

[1] [https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google- pullin...](https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pulling-out- of-free-wi-fi-project-in-south-africa.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.

<comment><USER20> I think they way they see it is they are a company of scale. Scale is what they are good at (if anything). So they shutdown lots of small successes to try and focus on the huge wins.. things like youtube, gmail, google docs, etc. things millions of people use.

<comment><USER21> This is a reasonable perspective on their actions, but it then it still belies a huge glaring problem in Google fundamentally lacking the ability to understand which projects have the potential for scale at the desired level. It seems a standard part of a typical SV pitch deck to address the potential market and growth opportunities. Sure, they're wildly optimistic most times, but VC knows this and can price it in. But it almost seems like Google doesn't have the internal filtering mechanism necessary to perform this same function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is how it works:

1\. Googler wants a promo. They know they need to "launch" to get promo. They can't get a promo if they just improve or maintain something that already exists.

2\. Googler gets together with other googlers and puts together something they could launch. Nobody cares if it makes any sense.

3\. The thing launches. Googler gets their promo. It is now pointless to spend any effort on maintaining something that you can't "launch" again. Googler moves on.

4\. Project dies and gets shut down after a while because no sane person would touch maintenance work with a 10 foot pole.

9 out of 10 projects at Google go through this lifecycle, pretty much verbatim. This is why you have three different Google-provided messsengers on Android, and why stuff launches with great fanfare and then quickly runs out of steam. You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards.

<comment><USER23> Well if Google tried rewarding maintenance work, would people who do hard maintenance work and reduce tech debt actually be rewarded? Instead I think the result would be people gaming the new system and doing nothing while claiming to solve hard maintenance problems. Managers, as usual, would reward the wrong people. At least with the current system, google gets something kinda measurable.

<comment><USER22> Managers are only very tangentially involved with "rewarding" employees at Google. They do not promote them: it's the responsibility of the employee to apply for a promo, though manager has to support. And promotion decision is not made by the manager either: it's made by a committee that has never even seen the employee and knows nothing about their work other than what they choose to put in their "promotion packet", as well as peer feedback. IOW your manager can torpedo your promo chances, but they can't unilaterally "promote" or "reward" you per se, aside from some fractional bump in the yearly perf score.

So employees have to support the assertions they make in the promo packet with evidence. I suppose you could support the assertion that you've done great maintenance work on something that's valuable to the company, and show off the metrics, PRs (or "CL"s in Google terminology), monetary impact, and things of that nature. But Google culturally doesn't really give a shit about this kind of thing, even if it's otherwise impactful. A few people manage to do well maintaining code at scale, but by and large my advice to Nooglers would be to stay as far away as they can from anything that's not contributing to a launch in some _easily quantifiable and attributable_ way. Or even if it does contribute to a launch, stay away from things they personally can't take credit for. Otherwise you'll end up working on something that someone else "started", and that someone will take credit when it's done.

<comment><USER23> In other places without committees most of the same rules still apply. Instead of the committee, the employee needs to justify the promo to the manager+skip(s) and external assessors from other teams often need to also approve promos.

I find a lot of the most impactful work isn't easily measured by metrics or monetary impact. These metrics are always deceptive and if you are doing honest maintenance you may encounter many additional issues that make you look like a troublemaker. The people who get promoted often cause disasters and then fix the disaster while recording metrics. Putting in hard work to make stuff run as expected looks like doing nothing to people unfamiliar with the low level technical details.

<comment><USER22> Arguably Google's system is fairer, because the committee doesn't know you, so their decision has to rely on the facts in the packet (and their cursory validation of such facts against other evidence). IOW, you don't get a promo just because you brownnose your boss or skip, or butter up some bosses that you know will be present when the decision is made - they aren't on the committee, and they aren't the ones making the decision.

Even though this system is objectively fairer, it _feels_ shitty nevertheless, I suppose because it's much harder to game through the mechanisms outlined above. You have to game it in other, much more labor-intensive ways, such as "work with" people who are a level or two above you (of which there are very few in remote offices, so you better be in Mountain View for that), sit in important meetings, "show leadership", virtue signal, etc. In fact if you do all of these things really well, you could skip the actual productive work by switching to the management track. If you're not super good at this, you have to do them in addition to your day job, and your promo prospects become tenuous at best beyond level 5.

Regarding metrics, there's a universal law at Google: you can't improve what you don't measure. This is part of the reason why Google sucks at UX for example, and rocks pretty hard at ads and search. The former is not measurable. The latter is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "ditches" definitely not the word that should describe this (this is towards the article and not the HN submitter since it's the article's title); it could lead those who don't click to think it's another project Google has shut down.

> "We are transferring our Station operations in South Africa to Think WiFi > who will now carry out the project independently," a spokesperson told > Business Insider SA.

> "We'll work with Think Wifi on a plan to transition the service to them, and > continue to support them until the end of 2020. We remain committed to > looking for ways to make the internet more accessible to users around the > world."

<comment><USER25> If I hand my child over to someone else to raise forever, I'm ditching them. :p

<comment><USER26> bad analogy. There's no parent/child relationship between this service and google. As long as the service is continued, there's no issue as to who is owning and operating it.

Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped.

<comment><USER27> Products often die when transferred to another organisation. They never say that they will die in the announcement.

See [https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

It's entirely reasonable for people to assume this is basically Google shutting down the free WiFi service but with extra steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's being shuttered in India as well [1].

[1] [https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to- close...](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close- station-which-provides-free-public-wifi-in-railway- stations/article30841811.ece)

</comment><comment><USER29> SA doesn't have the resources to offer the poor free Wi-Fi so they will miss out. And there is also the ongoing problem of cable theft so maybe google won't chance it here.

<comment><USER30> What do you mean? Redirect the billions lost to state capture each year and free wifi to a few townships would be nothing.

<comment><USER31> And do what with it ????.

Folks just want's the basics ... a job to feed their family and decent education for their kids to escape the cycle of poverty.

I don't see how free Wifi is going to help with this one.

<comment><USER32> You don't see a connection between Internet access and a decent education?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are all doing satellite based internet service(or atleast trying to push in that direction.

I wonder why project loon/whatever google calls it's think tanks now discarded that as an idea? seems like a thing purpose built for the google brand - <USER2> idea, requires massive funding, literally no government can prevent you from beaming internet at it's citizens without a satellite killer(which they can't deploy without intl negative attention)

1\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via- satellites...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites- is-the-next-big-thing-in-the-space-race.html)

<comment><USER34> Huge idea requiring massive Capex seems more like an amazon thing (AWS, fulfillment centers, etc) than a google thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Google gets just a little bit shittier, every day. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER36> What does recomplex mean?

<comment><USER37> typo, should be complex

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just can't think of any reason why, if I were building any sort of business (tech or otherwise) I would incorporate google services (apart form google search ads, perhaps) into any aspect of it that I would deem "essential" or even "important". Even Drive & the associated sheets/docs/etc I look at with an eye towards "be ready to mass download the lot of it on short notice"

As an example, about two years ago they were building something that looked poised to compete with MS Power BI and Tableau. Not mature enough at that point, but promising. I poked around and saw potential for what it could offer if I pushed it forward in my work place, but I quickly realized it was a very risky career prospect: It might not work quite so well and sure, that's fine, we'd be trying it out on that possible basis. But it might work just fine, and we migrate some clunky "enterprise" reporting over, decommission some old iron, and then... ::Poof::! Google's system is gone, end-of-lifed with a 90 day notice and then I'm left holding the bag because Google is not a reliable partner for anything outside a narrow core of the selections.

<comment><USER38> There's a big difference between a paid (Google) service and a free one.

Google doesn't generally shutdown paid B2B services, but it certainly does have a record of instability on free consumer services (like this wifi thing).

<comment><USER21> Well, they may not exactly sjut it down in th same abrupt way if it's paid, but if you look at their recent changes to the costs if using their maps API, they're certainly willing to rewrite the terms of use for paid tiers that result in apps that were paying nominal fees to suddenly being charged onerous, crippling costs order of magnitude more expensive that require shutting down the service built on Google's tech.

So, no, paid services are not free from the fear of Google's drastic and suddenly project cuts or (as near as cuts) massiveness overhauls.

<comment><USER38> The pricing changes to Maps were 2 years ago, that's hardly a pattern.

Microsoft also ends support for products every year, often with replacements, but there's still migration costs: [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4470235/products-en...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4470235/products-ending-support-in-2020)

Apple also deprecates core APIs, not always with a replacement: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/53285999](https://stackoverflow.com/a/53285999)

Google does turn down lots of (smaller) free consumer services, but the meme that their behavior around consumer products should translate into not trusting them for B2B is not backed up in their behavior or historical data around support. They behave similarly to all the other major companies.

For example the App Engine Datastore has existed for 12 years and still works, despite the availability of Firebase RTDB, FireStore, Cloud Spanner, Cloud BigTable, etc.

<comment><USER21> The one example is not a pattern, but I'm not familiar with all such moves by Google to know if there are others, but I freely admit there may not be. It is, however, an existence proof to show the possibility, which is enough to engender skepticism when choosing them as a vendor.

In my experience Apple is more considerate in such matters. They tend to API end of life with more lead time, barring some issue that has to be changed more abruptly either due to abuse, security, or bugs, which is not unreasonable. But even they don't approach the level of support guaranteed for traditional Enterpris software though, and Microsoft mostly fits that category. Sure they end support, but it's telegraphed years in advance. In large scale enterprise systems like ERP, a 10 year roadmap of product support and 3 year roadmap of features is pretty much standard. Albeit the products themselves are hardly best of breed, but there is a lot to be said for guaranteed stability of infrastructure, capabilities, and support, especially when you can bolt on your own custom needs (of course at additional expenses though.) Enterprise has these benefits, but you pay an extraordinarily high premium for that.

Also, special agreements with them (provided you're willing to pay even more) are often available to continue support even beyond the EOL of those Enterprise offerings. (My workplace had to do so for a major system for 3 years (it was a 40 year old system) due to delays in upgrades to the newer offering.

Sure it's unfair to expect Google to keep money losing products, but I think if they ate the cost to keep these sorts of things going a little longer for more graceful exits, they'd engender more consumer confidence and gain more in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> slightly misleading as they are handing it over to someone else to run, not completely stopping it

</comment><comment><USER40> We need a catchy verb for when Google abandons yet another service... De- google?

"South Africa's free Wifi service 'de-googled' as Google abandons yet another product"

<comment><USER41> Microsoft had a brilliant one.

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

Time to bring it back I say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> i always think that Google and Microsoft are the worst when it comes to projects. They make good concept projects, but their problem is that they don't do full commitment. Much like Google Duo or Google Allo. Their problem was, while it's good to have those apps, they never made commitments into pushing them for consumers to like or even recognize. instead, they kept their hangout when they could either migrate fully, or just migrate the core from the new app.

Microsoft did that with many projects too but their problem was different. That's why i believe the last good time google did something good was from when they announced their very first pixel.

At least Microsoft is doing great job currently with their open source approach.</comment>


Suggest to HN: user profiles / links to homepages - <AUTHOR>

A few times recently I've found a HN commenter who seems particularly intelligent or insightful, and have clicked on their profile name, hoping to get  a link to their home page.  (Yes, yes, a smarter person would only do this once - I forgot each time that I'd done it before).<p>It  would be nice if we could add a URL, a twitter handle, and/or one paragraph of text to our user profiles.  That seems to be the norm these days at most sites. <comment><USER2> You can fill in the "about" section in the profile with text can't you?

Most users put their web site URLs in there.</comment>


Rails 2.0  - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/734-rails-20 <comment><USER2> This was already on the top of the front page for like two days.</comment>


Hackers Can Break into an iPhone Just by Sending a Text - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/imessage-interactionless-hacks-google-project-zero/ <comment><USER2> Original source at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20639999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20639999)</comment>


Artificial intelligence: The machines with alien minds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131217-weve-created-alien-intelligence <comment><USER2>
      > We're sorry but this site is not accessible
      > from the UK ...

_< sigh>_</comment>


Fair warning: Pandoland is not that kind of conference - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2015/02/27/fair-warning-pandoland-is-not-that-kind-of-conference/

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in the South, and I know it is very conservative. I am not surprised by her story at all, especially this part:

"I am from Tennessee and love that I have a very real business reason to spend more time there and shine a spotlight on some of the creativity that lives outside the coasts. And yet, it's been made abundantly clear to me over the last year or so that a small, but influential group of men in the city do not want me or Pando there. One story that makes the point: As last year's event was drawing to a close, one male attendee, apparently a Nashville local, stopped Pando reporter James Robinson to share his thoughts on the conference. Specifically, he wanted to share his opinion of me, or as he called me "That Pando lady." "I can't believe you let her leave the house," said the man. James was left speechless. Some were bold enough to tell me to my face that my personality made them uncomfortable: I was told I "have a mouth on me." I was even warned to "watch myself." And, best of all, I was told that my occasional use of profanity on-stage is unbecoming for a mother (never mind that most everyone on stage at Southland swore except Al Gore and Christy Turlington, and we raised hundreds of dollars for charity through a swear jar.) The male attendees were expected to curse, but when I do it it's just plain unladylike. Won't somebody think of my children!</comment>