Ask YC: Best Linux distribution for PPC? Looking for something lightweight. - <AUTHOR>

Looking to run rails dev environment: browser, ruby, and various rails dependencies.
Can anyone recommend a solid Linux distribution that runs nicely with Power PC Macs? What desktop environment?
Right now I'm thinking Debian with as few of packages as possible. <comment><USER2> Yeah, Debian.

</comment><comment><USER3> Debian "Lenny" with Gnome works nicely on my PowerBook.

</comment><comment><USER4> xubuntu runs very well on a PowerBook Ti 3.5 from 2002.</comment>


Judging User Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.woothemes.com/2011/02/judging-user-happiness/

<comment><USER2> So the answer was, 'You can't tell when they are happy, only when they are unhappy.'? -sigh-</comment>


Mediachain: A Distributed Metadata Protocol built on IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain <comment><USER2> Hey HN, I'm Denis, one of the creators of Mediachain. Very excited to be on the front page twice! Happy to answer any questions!

For more context on the repo, here is our latest developer update, and feel free to check out the other posts!

[https://blog.mediachain.io/mediachain-developer-update- x-c0b...](https://blog.mediachain.io/mediachain-developer-update- x-c0b8cc7fc12c)

We also have a public Slack and invite anyone interested to participate: [http://slack.mediachain.io](http://slack.mediachain.io)

This Co.Design article does a great job of explaining how Mediachain helps creators: [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060426/could-blockchains- solve-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060426/could-blockchains-solve-the- webs-image-attribution-problem)

Here is our official fundraising announcement with more details: [https://blog.mediachain.io/mediachain-labs-funded-by- union-s...](https://blog.mediachain.io/mediachain-labs-funded-by-union-square- ventures-andreessen-horowitz-to-build-a-universal-open-337ee690f61b)

</comment><comment><USER3> This probably shouldn't be on the front page at the same time as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11822797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11822797).

A technical discussion based on [https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain/blob/master/rfc/med...](https://github.com/mediachain/mediachain/blob/master/rfc/mediachain- rfc-2.md) might make sense after some time has gone by.

<comment><USER2> Thanks dang, should we try resubmitting the RFC then?

<comment><USER3> Sure, but you should wait a few days to let things settle.</comment></comment></comment>


Emojineering Part 2: Implementing Hashtag Emoji - <AUTHOR> http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/118304328152/emojineering-part-2-implementing-hashtag-emoji

<comment><USER2> > Objective-C...Certain printable characters aren't allowed to be specified > with a hex sequence

!who's bright idea was this?</comment>


Show HN: I launched this new website. Apparel in need of professional feedback - <AUTHOR> https://thomastrabjerg.com/ <comment><USER2> One tiny bit: the "search" button underneath the products should just open a search bar and not link to another site. It should work exactly they way the search on the upper right does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you bristleworm i ended up completely removing the search link underneath the products.

i will later add a search bar instead of the link there was before :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Logo is not related. Domain name is hard to remember. Homepage needs info about your business/idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply. at the moment i'm working on more brand identification on my home page :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> i need feedback on everything from website build/setup to pricing and clothing.

Any feedback is appreciated. long or short :)</comment>


Palantir helps authorities track illegal immigrants - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/22/peter-thiels-startup-helps-authorities-track-illegal-immigrant/ <comment><USER2> Thiel calls himself a libertarian, but his involvement with Palantir demonstrates that he is just as much a big-government statist as the people he criticizes.

<comment><USER3> Libertarian doesn't equal open borders, as that's a broad political spectrum.

Hell, even some anarcho-capitalists (like the late Murray Rothbard and Hans- Hermann Hoppe) are against open borders.

<comment><USER4> I think the point is like Musk, these people hardly refuse government subsidizes. You might argue they provide a service, they are not getting a handout, but it's still paid by the same taxes they want to get rid off at first place.

<comment><USER5> Libertarians are not universally against taxation or Government involvement at large, it's a pretty wide umbrella.

Musk can also be seen as a libertarian but he does advocate for social programmes like UBI which have to be provided through taxation.

Most libertarians I know are not universally against taxation, they are against double taxation and would prefer to tax corporation and consumption at higher rates rather than individual labor.

Libertarianism is primarily about the role of the government within the life of an individual and about maximizing the agency an individual holds over their own life; It doesn't mean that an ideal libertarian society would have no taxes; If anything most libertarians would rather pay higher local taxes to offset lower national taxation because they have more agency in determining on what and how their money is being spent on.

Libertarians don't want anarchy, they are fully aware that roads, schools, police, firefighters, EMT's the military and for most of them even hospitals and much more have to be publically funded, and the only way to do it is through taxation.

<comment><USER6> I wish your version of libertarian was more outspoken.

<comment><USER5> It's not my version; and I find more often than not is that people hear what they want to hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Palantir is hardly a startup

<comment><USER8> Seriously... I dont know why I bothered clicking the title thinking it was a new company. Just the same datamining company that helps government agencies helping a government agency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"They are not all accounted for, the lost Seeing Stones. We do not know who else may be watching!"

</comment><comment><USER10> This startup helps hackers track Peter Thiel's immoral startups.

<comment><USER11> Wait I'm confused. Are you literally upset by this? Why is enforcing the law and following policies so everybody can make a successful transition to become a US citizen a bad thing? If your illegal, and most likely your not going to pay your fair share for the entitlements and services you and others use then I have zero respect for you.

<comment><USER12> People tend to ignore the negative consequences of causes they support. We all want to live in the best possible world, and it's hard to accept that any policy we choose will have serious negative consequences. We know for a fact that failing to enforce immigration laws will lead to tens of thousands of murders and kidnappings every year. And yet enforcing them will lead to a lot of misery for those who are deported. There's no convenient solution where everyone wins. It's hard to accept the reality of the situation, and so we often choose to see only one side.

<comment><USER12> There was a response to this which quoted some statistics, including the argument that overall crime had decreased in the USA while the illegal immigration population had increased. I wanted to respond, but it seems to be gone.

This trend is true, but this is the kind of statistical manipulation that happens when emotions come into play about these kinds of sensitive issues. Comparing trends in overall crime with the growth of a minority population is misleading, as it's a minor contributor to total crime, even if it is disproportionate, especially in violent crimes. Some arguments even switch briefly to talking about legal immigrants, which is a completely different population. Also, this is an international issue.

There's plenty of interesting information in the USA. I like this article because it shows some of the errors on both sides.

[http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/12/04/problems-w...](http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/12/04/problems- with-gao-illegal-alien-crime-stats/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe it's time for somebody to start a company aimed at helping illegal immigrants avoid the government?

<comment><USER14> Yes, it's called "people smuggling" or "coyotes".

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

<comment><USER13> I actually was thinking more about "avoiding the government" for immigrants who are already here, and over the long term, than the actual border crossing bit. But that was an interesting read nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.</comment></comment></comment>


Switzerland's "NSA" Comes Online in Two Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://neflabs.com/blog/swiss-nsa-march/ <comment><USER2> "Switzerland has long been known for keeping the secrets of foreign governments and individuals, including financial transactions and more recently, digital transactions."

I never understand this false attitude. The Swiss have cooperated with other Western governments for years. They have always had a very strong signals intelligence capability. Also a huge amount of human intelligence operations run in Switzerland, so the locals are well placed to watch and trade that information to other partners. The Crypto AG spying being just one example [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html)</comment>


CEOs: How do you know if you're doing your job? - <AUTHOR>

"How do you know when you're doing the job only you can do?" There's not really a manual for CEO; every one is different, and every company has different needs. So, how do you know when you're doing it wrong? How do you know when you're doing it right? <comment><USER2> Great question. Not everyone walks into a position equipped with the experience they need. Some are born with it while others will attempt to be someone they are just not destined or psychologically equipped to be.

Really depends on what stage of the game you are in. As a sole employee / CEO revenue / leads are going to be the guiding factor. You'll be able to "feel" the growth more than anything.

Once you start getting more employees, seeing them working together is usually a good indication you are working well. Does growth just seem to come naturally? Do you find it natural to be firm, but fair?

As a self-made CEO for going on 6 years now, I find that my internal dialogue is the best indicator for how things are going. If you don't have a mentor, get one. If you can't find one, at least find someone who is a CEO that you can bounce things off of from time to time that will give you honest feedback. And remember, feedback aren't orders they are suggestions. Not all feedback I've been given over the years (even with the best intentions) have worked out. Learn from your mistakes and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have to ask, then you are not a competent CEO.

Once upon a time a CEO was a person with years if not decades of experience acquired by working their way up a career ladder. By working in different roles, possibly in different companies and most importantly working with and for more experienced people they acquired a comprehensive skill-set.

These days many people bestow upon themselves the title of CEO, print business cards and expect to impress people. Sorry, you can only fool some of the people some of the time.

<comment><USER2> Everyone has to start somewhere. Some people fall backwards into an amazing idea and don't have the resources to hire a CEO and would like to learn.

>Once upon a time a CEO was a person with years if not decades of experience...

Yes, that was before the internet. Now we have all sorts of companies, startups, etc with all levels of people / competencies including Mom's with shopify sites selling crocheted ear warmers that wake up one day and find themselves in the position of CEO.

If you have to ask, you are way farther along than most CEO's who are afraid to look bad.

<comment><USER3> You are suggesting that we give the Mom you are referring to the same title as to Tim Cook, Satya Nadella or Larry Ellison just to mention a few names. Looking at it from another perspective it is like calling a household cat a "lion".

Reading stuff on the internet is no substitute for the experience of running a company, being responsible for revenue, staff and answering to shareholders.

People running small business, like the Mom you mentioned, are more accurately described as "business owners". Just like we don't call a cat a lion.

<comment><USER2> but we do sometimes call lions cats.

this is 2015 and CEO's are not just men who sit in boardrooms who smoke cigars.

just like there are Chefs at my local diner, and there are Chefs in NYC's greatest restaurants. CEO's can be many different types of people, for different companies.

yes there are business owners, they are normally called founders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really loved "The hard thing about hard things" by Ben Horowitz -- he directly addresses this issue, and his writing style is light years more engaging than your typical management literature.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an early stage founder, if everyone else can do there job well I'm doing my job.

Of course I'm much more a jack of all trades at this point than a full blown CEO.</comment>


Ask HN: Ways to anonymously share employee feedback to startup executives - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to introduce in the startup I work for, a way to anonymously share feedback e.g. team morale, how happy employees are, etc to upper management in a continuous basis. Have you seen such methods introduced before? Do you think this could lead to positive changes in the company culture? <comment><USER2> Check out [https://www.officevibe.com/](https://www.officevibe.com/), which has self-service signup and a free plan. It's a reasonable starting point and may well solve the problem.

Two other options are [https://www.cultureamp.com/](https://www.cultureamp.com/) and [https://www.tinypulse.com/](https://www.tinypulse.com/). Sadly, neither one has Web-visible pricing or self-service signup.</comment>


A Lightweight PHP API Framework Great for CRUD Applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ggedde/spry <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All, I have been using my own code for awhile as a backend for my SPA projects and finally got around to opening it up to the public.It includes a CLI for fast prototyping and scaffolding.</comment>


Coinstarter: Kickstart Your ICO - <AUTHOR> http://www.coinstarter.com <comment><USER2> > Behind CoinStarter is a team of Entrepreneurs, Economists, Philantropists > and Software Engineers working together with the belief of creating > something better.

> We believe that combining AI with our talents overseeing every stage of the > process, we can create the next generation of blockchain technology, that > simplifies the blockchain and makes it viable for mass adoption by the > public. It's like a drag and drop tool to power your blockchain.

Can't tell if this is an actual service trying to take advantage of the cryptocoin-craze or a joke.</comment>


Ask HN: How are online code runner/playgrounds made? - mitch-snipline For example, https://play.crystal-lang.org/#/cr, https://play.rust-lang.org/, or https://executeprogram.com<p>I'm thinking there are two options. Either having some kind of <Language> to JS interpreter that runs the code in the browser, or, running the code in some kind of container on a server and returning the response to the client. In which case, how are the servers secured against potentially dangerous input? <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/integer32llc/rust- playground](https://github.com/integer32llc/rust-playground) is the code for play.rust-lang.org

</comment><comment><USER2> I think many of them (esp. Hacker Rank) start up a container to run your program. Presumably these are configured to prevent access to the network, external files, etc.

The AWS Lambda console has a code editor/runner that looks a lot like what Hacker Rank has, but you are running on the real Lambda system which has some characteristics of VMs and containers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Golang uses a restricted remote container.

Curlang uses WebAssembly to be local to the browser. I see this becoming a trend.</comment>


Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443991704577579652958963584.html?mod=e2tw <comment><USER3> Curiosity should totally become the first extraterrestrial Street View car on mars.google.com!

<comment><USER4> Have a look in Google Earth. It has street view from generations of rovers ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain how/why a $2.6 billion piece of equipment appears to have cameras that can't match a $100 digital camera? I know it takes a long time for data to travel from there to here, but I am sure a lot of people wouldn't mind waiting for 1080p, full-color video footage of the red planet. Instead, we get these 1-megapixel, black-and-white shots that need to be stitched together to create a half decent panorama image. Sorry, there is probably a good technical reason for this, but I am just ignorant of it and I would appreciate an explanation.

<comment><USER6> It's so plebian to complain about the image quality, especially when we haven't seen any full images from the rover's main camera yet.

<comment><USER5> It may even be "plebeian" to ask questions about the technical features of a data collection instrument named "Curiosity". I should have been an aristocrat instead of an engineer ; I could marvel at everything wrapped in the bliss of my ignorance.

And for the record, I think it is amazing and wonderful to receive these images. I am so thankful for that. But, for a data collection instrument that cost $2.6 billion to build, I cannot conceal my very personal feeling that an opportunity was missed.

<comment><USER7> The $2.6 billion price tag is not just for the rover, it includes R&D for the rover itself, employee salaries, Sky Crane & parachute R&D as well as the rocket to launch it, which cost over $100 million.

Also included in the budget is funding needed for all of the science teams to do what they do over the next few years while the rover does experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this piece of metal traveled 350 million miles through space and then landed on Mars.

<comment><USER9> Me too. I mean, look at this. The place looks like a desert on Earth, and yet its millions of miles away in space, on another planet. There's a certain feeling I experience when I look at those photos, like there is a vast, cold void inside of my chest. I felt something similar when I touched a meteorite for the first time. That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in space for many many years, and now here I am holding it.

<comment><USER10> _That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in space for many many years_

Don't sell yourself short, you yourself were floating around in space for about ten billion years. Or at least, your constituent atoms were. :)

"We, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts & feelings of the cosmos, we've begun - at last - to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion, billion, billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps - throughout the cosmos." ~ Carl Sagan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well it doesn't look like path planning is going to be an issue for the first couple of Km :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> Very cool! Does anyone else think the interactivity adds nothing and just makes looking at a big image more difficult?

<comment><USER13> Yes, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is it all black-and-white? Is it because color cameras are too heavy/expensive to take or because color photography is for some reason impossible under those conditions?

<comment><USER14> All camera sensors are actually black and white. To obtain color information, the sensors have a color filter. This filter is optional/interchangeable in this camera. To obtain a color photo, you take three shots with three different filters (R,G,B). This way you can also get UV, IR pictures - <USER2> more.

<comment><USER15> To clarify that a bit more: consumer camera's use a Bayer filter, which is an alternating R/G/G/B filter over your pixel array. So, with a consumer camera you take just one picture, and then software assembles that into a color picture.

For space missions you would definitely prefer a camera with interchangeable filters, because then you can also have filters for other spectrum ranges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am surprised by how many good sized pebbles are on the top surfaces of curiosity. I guess I expect dust, but those are pretty big. Kicked up during the landing?

<comment><USER17> I had assumed that they were blown there by the wind. I'm sure it's just as likely they settled after being kicked up during the landing.

[EDIT] From the nasa website [1]:

 _Today's Sol 3 morning and afternoon passes by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft provided a plethora of new data, including more high-resolution black-and-white 360-degree and deck panorama images from her Navigation Camera, or Navcam,_ which revealed some small pebbles deposited on the deck during landing, _which should pose no problems for mission operations. Curiosity also returned 130 low-resolution thumbnail images from the color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, providing scientists and engineers with their first color panorama glimpse of Gale Crater._

[1] [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1301)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Descent of the Phoenix <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080530.html>

Curiosity Drops In [http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9...](http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9022-1.jpg)

from: <http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php>

A Wheel on Mars <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120807.html>

landing site: [http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site...](http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site_annotated.jpg)

Curiosity Before Mars: Seven Minutes of Terror (video 5:08) <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120731.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> Here are some more pictures (including color) <http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mars>

I wonder what the sky of mars looks like. Can we see earth?

<comment><USER15> > Can we see earth?

At night, as a pretty bright star, I'd guess. That would be an awesome picture, especially if they expose it long enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There it is then, going around and taking pictures. A bit lonely out there though, I must say.

Space programs are always, by nature, unbelievable stunts. There are so many things that can go wrong and then they don't, and you end up landing a tonne of sensitive equipment safely on another planet and there it is then, sending vacation pictures to Earth.

If they can do that, what could we do or what could I do that I don't?

</comment><comment><USER21> Also I think choice of the low-res camera is related to it being better shielded against the space radiation [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350448710...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135044871000380X)

Its still somehow unbelievable that I'm actually seeing photos from another planet almost realtime.

</comment><comment><USER22> Intellectually stimulating, but after the first few pictures... well, there's nothing to see there, just sand and rocks. The most visually interesting thing on this panorama image is the rover itself, so I don't mind the relatively low quality. Now I'm waiting for some non-visual data. Curiosity has a lot of sensors besides the cameras.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Cosmos magazines Mars issue on the iPad has a Mars panorama which utilizes gyroscope.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy3r8k8hX-8>

Sadly its not the panorama Curiosity took but the one from the previous Mars rover.

Sill its pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain what represents the marking on Curiosity next to NASA logo (middle part, white circle). It is present all over the robot.

<comment><USER25> I think it indicates moving parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any thoughts on why the top area has been blacked out from view? Protecting devices? limitations of the equipment?

<comment><USER27> I suspect they haven't taken those photos yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know what the circular symbols (similar to the BMW logo) all over the rover mean?

<comment><USER29> They look like calibration targets to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why is it all just barren desert? :D

Too bad it's not enough for a complete 360 panoramic :(

</comment><comment><USER31> Full screen is tight. After a few minutes of looking around at the landscape, I find my self more interested in cool 360 view _of_ curiosity not _from_.

</comment><comment><USER32> amazing...

</comment><comment><USER33> A quick take on the project.

Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, we will need millions of dollars and lots of time to rebuild the project, as well as to figure out what went wrong and to try again. However, if we do succeed in installing the project as we hope, we expect will be able to run for ten years without updates. If you do need an update or if an error is encountered or the hardware deteriorates (such as because of a memory error, hard-drive crash, etc.), then parts of the application never work again. Also, as a reminder, the user will have to wait many hours after submitting input before receiving acknowledgement from the system, and many days to receive even partial results."

Customer: "Thank you for your report. It sounds great. I have one suggestion. Lets make sure that when ask the system for an image, we use the .BMP format to increase the file size. This way, we can please the media with numbers about how much raw data we have obtained."

Software Architect: "This will take additional time and millions of dollars and not be much of a benefit."

Customer: "Ok, fine let's skip that."

<comment><USER34> What's the relevance of this? Since they're bandwith limited, using a more inefficient compression scheme wouldn't gain them any extra transmitted bytes, only less actual data.

<comment><USER33> My point was that delaying an expensive and years-long software project that's already prone to failure, just to replace a perfectly adequate feature with another whose only benefit is to impress the media, would probably be considered stupid. In my example, it would be to receive images as BMP files just to be able to brag to the media how much data was received. (Maybe I shouldn't have used images in my example software project since it confused people, but I blame Hacker News for going offline before I could make improvements.)</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Amazon WorkLink - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-worklink-secure-one-click-mobile-access-to-internal-websites-and-applications/ <comment><USER2> How does it link work? Is it linked list?</comment>


Firefox: The Next Mobile Platform - <AUTHOR> https://ekjeacheblog.com/firefox-the-next-mobile-platform/ <comment><USER3> I use Firefox OS as main phone (ZTE Open C) since October, came with version 1.3.

The biggest disappointment is lack of applications. So you can't get notifications for Facebook messages, etc. But that's ok, given that the phone is in a very early stage and Facebook haven't built a proper app for it yet.

There are some bugs which might be slightly annoying at first, but it's ok once you get used to it. The most frustrating one is the text prediction when using the keyboard, because it doesn't learn automatically and I am messaging in 2 languages... But I guess that can be counted as an edge case. The navigation (GPS) works surprisingly well though! Overall, it's worth giving a try especially given it's price.

I am quite excited about it's future. The code is easy to read and should be relatively easy to add new features / modifications yourself. So even if it won't become popular in mainstream (and it's really hard to win user share in the current market), it can be an interesting platform for hacking.

I wrote a bit more about it at [http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/10/19/a-month- of-using-firef...](http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/10/19/a-month-of-using- firefox-os-as-the-main-phone/)

<comment><USER4> > it doesn't learn automatically and I am messaging in 2 languages

I have the same on Cyanogenmod with the AOSP keyboard (Android's default). It doesn't do next word prediction nor does it seem to learn when I pick a suggestion (it doesn't prioritize it next time), and I'm constantly switching between Dutch and English.

There are plenty of keyboard apps that do this better (even the stock Samsung one was great at this) but the keyboard is a core component that I want to be able to trust. I'm putting up with the annoyances and going for open source here. Not saying that this is the way to go for everyone, but it's not just Firefox OS which has this.

> The navigation (GPS) works surprisingly well though!

Navigation is not synonymous with GPS. Which works well, determining your location or routing to places? If the latter, I'm curious: which map source does it use, Google Maps?

<comment><USER3> > nor does it seem to learn when I pick a suggestion

The most frustrating part about FirefoxOS is that if I choose not to autocorrect the word, it doesn't remember that and tries to do the same the next time I am typing it. Yes, I could add all the words manually... But that would take a long long time.

> Navigation is not synonymous with GPS.

Valid point :) both, it's fast to determine the current location when data is enabled, and routing is good too. It's using Here Maps [https://www.here.com/](https://www.here.com/) I live in Vilnius (Lithuania) so there are not many (almost none) tall buildings, that probably helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Unlike major mobile operating systems, which were designed based on Linux codes, Mozilla created their Firefox Os (project name: Boot to Gecko) on an HTML platform, more precisely HTML 5."

afaik Firefox OS is also built upon a Linux kernel, so it's a bit misleading ...

<comment><USER6> It is. And in my (limited) experience, version fragmentation is already a bad problem… There's little to no apps, and half of those few need a newer OS version than is available for my half-year old Fire E.

<comment><USER7> Yikes. How do they plan to get users ? For all the talk about Android's fragmentation, it has been conceived so that the sdk is as back-compatible as possible (and Play Services and the compatibility libraries only improve that).

<comment><USER6> > How do they plan to get users ?

Cheap phones for users who don't particularly care, I assume.

> and Play Services and the compatibility libraries only improve that

I haven't yet looked at the developer side of FFOS, but guessing from the store entries of all the apps I cannot install, it doesn't have an equivalent to those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't read this article without turning on Javascript.

>Oops! It appears that you have disabled your Javascript. In order for you to see this page as it is meant to appear, we ask that you please re-enable your Javascript!

<comment><USER9> It's text. Why do you need javascript to show text? Why do people do this?

<comment><USER10> Because they're stupid and progressive enhancement is a pipe dream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is so badly written.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a real shame, but I don't think Mozilla is going to be able to make this work - they just don't have the leverage with hardware that the big three - MS, Apple, Google - have. While the technical avenue they're going down is interesting and has merit, I don't think that'll resonate with people in the market for a phone. They have a lot of work to do - starting from cold - <USER2> to get something that kinda sorta works as well as what's already out there - I just don't think they'll get enough people to switch. Worse if you look at their flagship product - desktop is a metoo! that's haemorraging users and the mobile version is a non-entity. I use and love both, it's a desperate shame - I just cannot for the life of me see Mozilla making headway with this OS.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am looking forward to commercially successful apps on Firefox OS.

Three months ago I asked HN if anyone had one but got not answers ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8798922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8798922)).

<comment><USER14> I think the smart move for Mozilla would be a unified build process that exported FFos apps to iPhone and Android. If it were positioned as the best "write-once" hybrid web framework, FFos would gain a much larger app ecosystem as a by-product.

<comment><USER15> This happened a while ago, but hasn't seemed to catch on: [https://github.com/mozilla/apk-factory- service](https://github.com/mozilla/apk-factory-service)

<comment><USER16> The issue is you need to have a pre-installed Firefox on the device. Too bad, such dependency can't be set in the manifests so it won't pull automatically from App Store or Google Play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't help but feel Firefox OS is going to be like Linux desktop. Too late to market and without a giant bankroll require to pay their way in.

"this is the year of Firefox OS" will be the new "the is the year if the Linux desktop"

<comment><USER18> I think there's a key difference: there is a niche of Linux desktop users. They'll probably never be very big (not in the foreseeable future, at least), but they're there and since they tend to be power users they're sort of self- supporting.

In contrast, I don't see Firefox OS carving out a similar niche, though I'd really like it to. It doesn't really do anything the others don't do (and it's missing a lot of what they can do), the devices are uniformly pretty terrible, and the strategy seems simply to be to compete for the low end. Unfortunately, the low end is being targeted by pretty much everyone but Apple, so they've got plenty of competition and no real value proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone really think Android phones won't be competitive at the FirefoxOS price point? The Moto E is already under $100 unsubsidized, and that's a well- known brand name. Generic imports are even cheaper, and prices will continue to fall.

<comment><USER20> It's not impossible, but Android phones need to do more - they run not just a web stack but also the Android Java stack - and they have not optimized for the low end, as much so far.

<comment><USER21> While Android runs on a lot of high-end hardware, it was originally targeted at devices that are under-powered compared to the cheapest smartphone chipsets now available.

Android also uses implementation approaches like a component lifecycle, the Zygote, and limited per-process heap size that reduce runtime memory use at the Java runtime layer.

The people who designed the Android runtime had also designed the Danger system, which used Java and ran in as little as 32MB of RAM.

While it is possible for an app developer to make an inefficient Android app, it is very likely that core phone functionality, like dialers, messaging apps, PIM apps, etc. are a lot more efficient implemented as Android apps than as Web apps.

<comment><USER20> Well, first of all Android has changed a lot since those early days. The competition has focused on higher-end devices to challenge the iPhone, not the low-end.

Second, it might be true that a single app could be more efficient as a native Android app than a web app. But regardless of whether it is (and I'm not sure it is - we would need to measure), the issue I mentioned is that Android phones have to support both native apps and their entire graphics stack etc., and the web platform and its entire graphics stack etc. Both because users can run both Android apps and a web browser, and because Android apps can embed a web view, so the combination happens even in a single app.

That fundamentally adds overhead. Of course, in theory massive amounts of work could remove it (you could unify both stacks on a single graphics codebase, and to some extent that is true on Android), but that might introduce compromises as well, and no one wants to compromise the high end which competes against Apple.

The bottom line is that Android doesn't ship super-low-end phones. That might not only be due to technical issues like these, of course.

<comment><USER21> [http://www.android.com/one/india/](http://www.android.com/one/india/)

<comment><USER20> Those are still much more expensive than the lowest-end. I think they cost around $100 last I heard, and a currency conversion on the amazon link there gives $104, which seems to confirm they haven't gotten cheaper.

<comment><USER21> If you sort this site by price [http://www.snapdeal.com/products/mobiles- mobile-phones/filte...](http://www.snapdeal.com/products/mobiles-mobile- phones/filters/Form_s~Touch#phtl|) you find the cheapest smartphones are about 1500rs. That's about $25 (according to Google). Most of them run Android. Though, once Windows Phone 10 comes out, I'd be interested to see if that's a better UX at the ultra-cheap end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, Android is currently the OS of choice at the low end, wherever you draw the line on acceptable UX. And the latest and greatest Android is available for about 4800rs, or about $77, running on a quad-core SoC.

As for how that's done, it's because Android can aggressively "swap" (really serialize and reconstitute)background components out of memory, and it can do the same to whole processes. You can actually watch your Android app instance switch PIDs, as it comes back from having had all the components, and the underlying runtime instance, killed. Now, there are some fat slovenly apps out there that might not be happy with life in a very limited machine, but I bet those 1500rs phones push the minimum specs pretty damn hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> off-topic: flame phone are reasonably specced and priced. we just dont know anything about when we could "just" order an unlocked flame or a similar phone.

mid-range specced and priced phone would sell, i think, as second phone, phone for relatives and like.

</comment><comment><USER23> For the sake of my future self I hope the answer is __no __. However bad the current platforms are (and I 'm certainly not a huge fan of apples policy w.r.t. implementing own languages), you _can_ think about writing your own application without writing in Javascript and using e.g. kivy. I don't mind Javascript capturing mindshare, since it's choice to use it, I don't like the situation where it's not a choice, it's ENFORCED upon me, like on the web. With all the talk about open platforms and freedom, mozilla is sticking to it's guns with "everyone should use javascript, all the time". For one I would like to keep my freedom to use other things, thanks mozilla :-)

<comment><USER24> List of languages that compile to JavaScript [1]

[1] [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of- langu...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages- that-compile-to-JS)

<comment><USER23> This is ridiculous. I want a _real_ language, like Python or Ruby, not something that is ESSENTIALLY JavaScript with an altered syntax and few goodies.

<comment><USER25> > I want a real language, like Python or Ruby

First, by what criteria is JavaScript not "a _real_ language" whereas Ruby and Python are " _real_ " languages?

Second, in any case, among the languages on that list that compile to JavaScript are both Ruby and Python, which I think meets any reasonable definition of a "a _real_ language, like Python or Ruby".

<comment><USER23> JavaScript is a real language. I should make it more explicit - I want a real language that's sufficiently different than JS. Any of the list is not. If you look closely, none of the languages is __actually __python or ruby (or anything else that 's sufficiently different), just JS with altered syntax. Getting all the semantic differences is REALLY hard and once you do it it's slow (e.g. untranslated pypy slow, ~60x slowdown), so you can't use it. My problem is not with JS per se it's with the absolute lack of choice.

<comment><USER26> What about ClojureScript? From what I gather it's quite fast and it couldn't be more different from javascript.

Or even C via asm.js?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup -- Wedding Registry Direct - <AUTHOR> http://weddingregistrydirect.com/

<comment><USER2> \- "Bringing wedding vendors together with bridal guests" thats too dark on the heading image

\- I really don't like the stock background image on this page - <http://is.gd/7bID>

\- Is the business type page a joke? There at least needs to be an "other" option

\- The tour should be a video, rather than a manual slide show

\- Your privacy policy doesn't exists, that removes all credibility of your site.

\- can you make the fonts of your menus a bit larger by default?

\- I'd put your "contact us" option at the top, ideally top right.

\- can you make your title tag show me where I am? thats nice usability.

\- alt tags on links

I like this site, its nice and clear, with obviously quite a lot of 37 signals ala design. Not a bad thing.

The pages feel a little too noisy, try removing the stock image background. Also be wary of lighter than black colours on darker than white backgrounds.

I love the "Access New Revenue Today" - lovely and clear and really grabs me.

<comment><AUTHOR> \- "Bringing wedding vendors together with bridal guests" I didn't want it to distract attention... did I go too far?

\- I really don't like the stock background image on this page - What if I made it more white and blended so that it was in the background more?

\- Is the business type page a joke? There at least needs to be an "other" option -- I have done a lot of research in the market and I can't think of any other business types that would benefit from this product... but maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge

\- Your privacy policy doesn't exists, that removes all credibility of your site. -- Going to add that promptly, thanks

Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

<comment><USER2> (on point #3) you may be right, I just it was just a bit weird not to offer an "other" just in case ... sods law if you don't there'll be a ton of mystery companies :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> tell us about it

where'd you get the idea, why?

how do you hope to make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got married and my wife and I thought one day: "wouldn't it be awesome if we could register for products from our own vendors?". That way our guests at our wedding could buy us extra flowers or a photograph book instead of just a blender.

This got us thinking, and now we have decided to go into business together starting a site that lets people do just that.

Vendors will pay a flat fee per couple or an unlimited quarterly use fee in order to sign up their bridal couples and allow them to do online registry.</comment></comment>


No Laptop Ban on Board Flights from Europe--for Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/us-says-no-laptop-ban-board-flights-europe-now <comment><USER2> > ...could still be implemented for Europe if the threat level worsens.

I see the electronics ban on flights from the Middle East as a sort of A-B testing of security theatre. If it had provoked a sufficient outcry it would have been rolled back or at least contained, but since the response has been pretty much a collective shrug we can look forward to a much broader roll-out backed by what's now a pretty good precedent.

One more step down a slippery, slippery slope.</comment>


Former Apple Engineers Build a $700 Digital Door Lock - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/these-former-apple-engineers-built-a-700-digital-house-lock <comment><AUTHOR> How do all of these keyless digital door locks get power? Do you get locked out of your house when they run out of juice?

<comment><USER2> They have batteries. The Otto apparently has a main battery and backup battery although I don't understand the benefit of such an arrangement. Some smart locks can be operated manually when they run out of power.

I once read about an electronic safe that generated power from the user turning the knob; a clever solution.

<comment><USER3> The US government uses self powering locks where the user turning the dial provides the power for operation.

See [http://www.kaba-mas.com/kaba- brand/products/906098/x-10.html](http://www.kaba-mas.com/kaba- brand/products/906098/x-10.html) for an example of one.</comment></comment></comment>


Virginia Woolf? Snob! Richard Wright? Sexist! Dostoyevsky? Anti-Semite - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/books/review/edith-wharton-house-of-mirth-anti-semitism.html <comment><USER2> "It's as if we imagine an old book to be a time machine that brings the writer to us. We buy a book and take it home, and the writer appears before us, asking to be admitted into our company. If we find that the writer's views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.

As the student had put it, I don't want anyone like that in my house.

I think we'd all be better readers if we realized that it isn't the writer who's the time traveler. It's the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we're not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we're journeying into the novelist's world and taking a look around."</comment>


The Global Implications of "Re-Education" Technologies in Northwest China - <AUTHOR> https://cgpolicy.org/articles/the-global-implications-of-re-education-technologies-in-northwest-china/ <comment><USER2> This is as Orwellian as it gets. Can't even imagine how nightmarish it must feel to live like that, being surveilled with face recognition software and spied on by neighbors and police 24/7\. China has really surpassed any realistic dystopia I could have imagined.</comment>


http://(Type any keyword here).jpg.to - <AUTHOR> http://jpg.to <comment><USER2> I teach EFL, and this would be fantastically useful in class for matching up vocab with pictures on the fly.

The only issue is: I need a much larger rez image to put up on the big projector. Since this is doing Google Image Search... any chance for a:

<http://keyword.jpg.to/large>

<http://keyword.jpg.to/medium>

[plus]

<http://keyword.jpg.to/photo>

<http://keyword.jpg.to/clipart>

[plus]

<http://keyword.jpg.to/red>

<http://keyword.jpg.to/green>

<http://keyword.jpg.to/white>

<comment><USER3> Quizlet.com is good for this and will autosearch Flickr for a picture matching each word when you create flashcards.

<comment><USER2> Quizlet is awesome, but the use-case for this new tool could be:

a) mentioning new vocab off-the-cuff (or in response to a question) in class and immediately showing a picture of it

b) students trying to remember a word and me showing them pictures of words they are guessing until they see the right thing

c) Us making up sample sentences on-the-fly and using a background picture as an impromptu slide: "Darth Vader is hungry. He _could_ make a sandwich. He _may_ toast some broad. He _might_ eat it later": <http://darth.vader.bread.jpg.to/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started with <http://hello.jpg.to/> and was delighted by the results, thinking that the web app translated my phrase into a variety of languages and then made a stylish motif. Eagerly, I typed in <http://goodbye.jpg.to/> to see, again, what looked like a totally custom image based on random text that I put in. I have to admit, I found this to be <http://totallyawesome.jpg.to/> at this point, pressing F5 and hoping for other stylized generations.

After not seeing any, I decided to just try my name ... and found a football player.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cute. Needs a method to return the URL as a 301 redirect so it could be used as a placeholder image. This could be in the image filename.

For example: <http://kittens.jpg.to/301.jpg>

Another feature could be to return a random result for that image search.

For example: <http://ass.jpg.to/random.jpg>

<comment><USER6> The random functionality in conjunction with an ability to specify crop size would make this my defacto placeholder site.

Being able to choose what I want for my placeholder would be extremely useful.

<http://food.jpg.to/random300x500.jpg>

<comment><USER7> If you like kittens, placekitten does that:

<http://placekitten.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is the first image result on google image search. The previous comments on different keywords verified this. To amaze yourself, try "sex" and "male"

behind-the-scene technical aspect are not difficult to realize (either google image API, which is deprecated, or parse the result of [http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=h...](http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=978&q=apple&oq=apple) and get the first image url after a predefined string anchor, say ), but the idea to simplify input and output is brilliant.

To deal with not-so-good image search result: since google image search is presenting the result in a thumbnail group, it might be worthwhile to look into their ranking scheme for the result. It might be that the first one (on the top left) is not the most relevant result. It won't shock me if google ranked the relevance of result from center to peripheral. In the end that's how we look at a pile of images--we tend to start from the middle. Try a few examples, from the ones I tried the middle row middle column image is much more relevant than the top left result.

just my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice observation!

<comment><USER8> I take that since your website didn't state any call limit, you must be using the second method (parsing google image result page).

Give user option to get more photo (in ways like: /1, /2) as the index of result page. Or even randomize the result (provide an option to random deliver the result, so same call doesn't result in the same image) might serve the user good. lots of ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your ideas. In fact it's using the image search api and I think I would have implemented social voting to replace search before the limit runs out (if any).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> jpg.to does not seem to be a complete metric space. The Cauchy sequence of Pi does seem to converge to Pi. <http://jpg.to/> <http://3.jpg.to/> <http://3.1.jpg.to/> <http://3.14.jpg.to/> <http://3.141.jpg.to/> <http://3.1415.jpg.to/> <http://3.14159.jpg.to/> <http://3.141592.jpg.to/> <http://3.14159265.jpg.to/> <http://3.141592653.jpg.to/> <http://3.1415926535.jpg.to/> The number of references to pi seems to decrease as the precision increases.

<comment><USER10> Seems to me that the precision is greatest at <http://3.14.jpg.to/>, which has 1 reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://zuckerberg.jpg.to/>

<http://winkelvoss.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the "I'm feeling lucky" of google images eh?

<http://gigawatt.jpg.to/>

<comment><USER13> Author says it is powered by google images. Which is ironic:

<http://bing.jpg.to/> (what you'd expect)

<http://google.jpg.to/> (not what you'd expect)

<comment><USER14> with google.jpg.to I was taken to <http://www.google.com/intl/en_com/images/srpr/logo3w.png> , pretty much what I was expecting.

<comment><USER15> That's what you get now, but that wasn't the case earlier. The author says he patched it for that keyword ("google").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is nice. It will be more fun if you show a different image on each reload.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea!

<comment><USER17> No, please don't change it that way! The best use case for this is sharing images quickly. If I can't trust that my <http://homer%20simpson.jpg.to/> is going to be the same one loaded by my friend, then I won't share it with my friend. This could be pretty handy in it's current state.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will keep <http://keyword.jpg.to/> a fixed image while making keyword.jpg.to/random or /r whatever to rotate image randomly. No worry :)

<comment><USER18> Doing /r would be eminently more handy, ftr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's awesome :)

And it's not even limited to jpg, cf. <http://drumroll.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool.

Top result in Google Images? Looks like it anyway.

Thanks for giving me something to pay with while waiting on the slowest server in the world at work :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good guess and you are right. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note that you can put in spaces by using dots or %2b

<http://large.gorilla.eating.a.taco.jpg.to/>

<http://baby%2belephant.jpg.to/>

<comment><AUTHOR> UTF8 characters are supported too! e.g. <http://ハッカー.jpg.to> (ハッカー means hacker in japanese, I found it from google translate)

<comment><USER22> Note that that particular word is a katakana phonetic import from English; in romaji that reads "hakkaa". So while that works as an example of multilingual character support, it may not be the best example for a foreign word per se. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm going to be "that" guy this time and tell you that the IMG-element is a single tag, and should be used without a "" at the end :)

Other than that, I'm liking this and looking forward to the extra parameters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reminding and I have corrected the tag immediately:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> <http://pookie.jpg.to/> Bahahaha

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd rather prefer it to directly stream the image, not an  to somewhere else. This version is not useful for anybody.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good observation. But if you embed it on webpage (in which refer header is sent) it would turn into real image file, which means it WORKS when you include it in forum, blogs, etc. :)

<comment><USER26> Refer header is not a good way to distinguish between embedded images and images accessed directly by user. AFAIK that header will have the same value both when you load an embedded image and when you click on a direct link to the image.

I did a little bit of research about it few years ago; the summary can be seen here:

[http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/2009/09/14/eksperyment- podsum...](http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/2009/09/14/eksperyment- podsumowanie/) (pl_PL)

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftemporal.pr0.pl%2Fdevblog%2F2009%2F09%2F14%2Feksperyment- podsumowanie%2F&act=url) (en_US)

Basically, I was able to distinguish between embedded and directly accessed images by analyzing the content of Accept header. It wasn't perfect (it didn't work for Opera), but I think it could be good enough to do something useful with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the info. I have been looking for a way to distinguish them long time ago.

<comment><USER26> You're welcome; I hope you'll find it useful :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As 'cute' as this is please find a different API to use or at least find a way to attribute where you are _stealing_ the images from and ensure that the owners of the images are happy with you using the images.

Just because an image is on the internet does not mean you can reproduce it. I ran a couple of words I knew return copyrighted images and sure enough they come up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. I planned to introduce a page for every image to attribute the source in the near future. And I would delete them upon the owner's request. (just like youtube video)

<comment><USER28> I'm sorry but this is not good enough. You should try to do better than "what Youtube does".

Delete upon owner request (a la DMCA) is a legal maneuver. You should be able to parse out if an image is licensed as Creative Commons or public domain and show only those pictures. Else assume all rights reserved.

Not to pick on your project but it's time that people try to do better than take the easiest path of show all images (without attribution) because it was the most convenient thing to do.

(If you are going to do the delete on owner request thing, at least consider providing an immediate link to delete without 1) have to mail a paper request in, 2) having to sign in or 3) some other onerous route to delete)

<comment><USER29> Do you have a realistic way to go about this? Especially in what is more than likely a 50 line project.

I really disagree with the approach of blowing apart a fun project and insisting bloat like a text parsing engine be added to make you happy.

<http://keyword.jpg.to/source> or <http://keyword.jpg.to/s> would do just fine IMO.

<comment><USER28> Fun does not mean you should ignore copyright.

Copyright info is readily available in EXIF or other metadata.

It's also trivial to add a link at the bottom saying remove image. No confirmation/signup needed. Viola, instant delete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> <http://crazy.jpg.to/> doesn't work for some reason.

<comment><USER31> Probably because it's a gif file.

<comment><USER32> Because the image comes back with a 403 Forbidden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not working for me? I keep getting this: Sorry, image not found. Please try other keywords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which keyword did you type? Try using shorter words like <http://stevejobs.jpg.to>

<comment><USER33> The suggested links. <http://apple.jpg.to> doesn't work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please try <http://orange.jpg.to> or other keywords to see if it works.

<comment><USER33> It finally worked. Absolutely wasn't before, but not sure what changed.

Awesome! THanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <http://ycombinator.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought this was pretty cool and so shared the link with my friend, who asked me - 'so whats the point?'. And then I was like <http://notsure.jpg.to>

<comment><AUTHOR> I am also thinking about the possibilities of the service. Do you have any idea? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a little bookmarklet for you. Select some text in a page then run it. It will open a new window {selected text}.jpg.to.

       javascript:(function(){var A='';if(window.getSelection) A=window.getSelection().toString();else if(document.getSelection) A=document.getSelection().toString();else if(document.selection) A=document.selection.createRange().text;A=A.replace(/\s+/,'-');if(A===''||!/^[a-z0-9_\-]+$/i.test(A))A='try-again';window.open('http://'+encodeURIComponent(A.toLowerCase())+'.jpg.to');}());

not tested at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your work. Just added it to my browser :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very cool stuff. Interesting progression:

<http://1.jpg.to/>

<http://11.jpg.to/>

<http://111.jpg.to/>

<http://1111.jpg.to/>

<http://11111.jpg.to/>

<http://111111.jpg.to/> (I was hoping to get something related to November/11/2011 here).

</comment><comment><USER38> I like this a lot. Placehold.it features would be nice, too. so like, if I wanted just a picture of Bruce Willis: <http://bruce_wilis.jpg.to/>

But then if I needed a 500x500 picture of Bruce Willis, because who doesn't, I could go to <http://bruce_wilis.jpg.to/500x500>

Fun little app. Nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice suggestion! Seems like many people would like modifiers behind the url. That's what I want to implement soon.

<comment><USER38> Cool. It'd definitely spice up placeholder images when designing a website...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> <http://meme.jpg.to/(I> don't have any idea what this meme is.) Also, I want to see the source code. I think it uses the I'm Feeling Lucky page of Google Image API, but I'm a noob, so it would be nice if I could have an idea of how you made that site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, the idea is to take the subdomain of the url as keyword and search it through Google's image search api and return the 1st result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> <http://toonces.jpg.to/> works as expected.

<comment><USER41> Toonces the driving cat! Good SNL days..

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I like the idea, and it works. Here's two constructive concerns:

1\. Can you make this faster to type than a browser extension that searches from the address bar (or in Chrome's case, omnibox)?

2\. How do you account for false positives, like a picture that doesn't match the word?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. keyword.jpg.to is the most intuitive and easy to type domain I can think of at the moment. If you got a better idea please tell me :) 2\. I planned to allow image upload and voting to select the best image that match the word. I believe this method can give better result in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Very simple and very amusing. Or maybe I'm just easily entertained. It got my gravatar picture when I entered my full name, which was cool.

hn.jpg.to, on the other hand, is probably not related to hacker news :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am planning to add functions to let users upload and vote for the keywords.jpg.to urls so more relevant results will show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is also very handy that I plan to use: <http://www.sencha.com/learn/how- to-use-src-sencha-io/>

</comment><comment><USER45> Some favorites: <http://failwhale.jpg.to/> <http://octocat.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER46> Winning: <http://chattanooga.jpg.to/> It works pretty well, although there are some oddball results.

</comment><comment><USER47> Unbelievably, you probably want to turn off SafeSearch before letting kids explore the site...

<http://vagina.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER48> <http://100.jpg.to>

Nice.

<comment><USER49> Yes, and: <http://300.jpg.to/> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Imsy (www.imsy.com) offers this same feature in a slightly different way. It lets you send the image as an attachment in iMessage

</comment><comment><USER51> This is a cute service but doesn't handle images that are 404 :( Perhaps it should test for 500 status before displaying?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to make the service more reliable. Thanks for your opinion :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is this using Google Image Search? Isn't it against the terms of use to access it from an interface other than Googles?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's from google's public image search api :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fun! It would be nice if the source of the image was given, so credit can be given to the author, if possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion! I think I would include the sources on voting page when it is made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wrote my first and last name (no spaces) and it showed a picture of my cat. I was thoroughly pleased :)

</comment><comment><USER55> Duqu author caught red handed. <http://duqu.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER56> getting an error on <http://facebook.jpg.to/>

<comment><USER15> not anymore. he probably pathced this one too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> <http://fat-cats.jpg.to/>

<http://y-combinator.jpg.to/>

<http://hacker-news.jpg.to/>

<http://anal.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER58> <http://sun.jpg.to>

</comment><comment><USER59> Cool idea. I immediately tried "boobs" and was not disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I see changes coming in as I try more things. Good job folkster!

</comment><comment><USER60> anybody tried "hahahah" or "lala"? ... those were the first two I tried and it gave a totally wrong impression of what the service is all about :D

</comment><comment><USER61> I think <http://ethan.jpg.to/> is my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER62> Huh. <http://to.jpg.jpg.to/>

</comment><comment><USER63> <http://pornography.jpg.to/>

WTF!?

<comment><USER64> <http://dumbsluts.jpg.to/> goes to sarah palin

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> <http://man.jpg.to/> lol

</comment><comment><USER66> I typed my name "dani" and it turns out I'm a hot chic! I knew it!

<comment><USER67> Dani is also shorthand for Daniela.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Very, very nice. :)

</comment><comment><USER58> sun

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> e.g. apple.jpg.to

</comment><comment><USER69> hot.jpg.to

</comment><comment><USER70> Is there any way to flag a photo? I just made a search for a dog type and found an inappropriate photo unfortunately...

<comment><AUTHOR> I will implement upload, voting and flagging features soon, thanks for your suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> looks like a catchall apache url rewrite rule with some rewriting voodoo to corresponding google image hits, pretty lame imho

also the dns is not setup corectly to handle spaces in domains mentioned here

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems whitespace is not allowed in subdomain. I need to research further to confirm it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> ha..i like it. it just searches the internet for images with that search term.</comment>


Using nghttp2 to work around Nginx HTTP/2 bugs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.crashed.org/fixing-nginx-bugs-with-nghttp2/ <comment><USER2> > Specifically, the "stable" version of nginx can't do HTTP/2 POST on any > current browser without nginx dropping and resetting the connection.

I hit this bug a while back. StackOverflow responders said I was crazy. I went to trac.nginx.org and while preparing a bug report, I saw that it had already been reported just a day prior. Felt good knowing I was not crazy, and there was a bug in nginx.

<comment><USER3> Do you have this SO post?

<comment><USER4> I second this. A quick Google search didn't reveal the SO post, so now I'm more curious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Specifically, the "stable" version of nginx_

Is there any reason not to use mainline? This is what nginx recommend, it's not a -dev at all. I haven't been bitten yet anyway.

[http://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html](http://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html)

<comment><USER6> Exactly, nginx stable is more like a LTS branch. See [https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-6-1-7-released/](https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-6-1-7-released/) which also mentions "Note that stable does not mean more reliable or more bug- free. In fact, the mainline is generally regarded as more reliable because we port all bug fixes to it, and not just critical fixes as for the stable branch. [..] We recommend that in general you deploy the NGINX mainline branch at all times."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read that Cloudflare open sourced their nginx http/2+spdy implementation for nginx [https://blog.cloudflare.com/open-sourcing-our-nginx- http-2-s...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/open-sourcing-our-nginx-http-2-spdy- code/) I would rather give Cloudflare's modified nginx a shot than not using nginx at all. [https://github.com/cloudflare/sslconfig/pull/36](https://github.com/cloudflare/sslconfig/pull/36)

</comment><comment><USER8> For those of you that absolutely need strong HTTP/2 support, I highly recommend checking out H2O[0]. It has much less features than NGINX, but is very lightweight and has good performance with low resource footprint.

[0]: [https://h2o.examp1e.net/](https://h2o.examp1e.net/)

<comment><USER9> [https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/) ! With Let's Encrypt built-in.

<comment><USER7> interesting project. Never heard of it before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> nghttpx could be used to support server push (see [https://nghttp2.org/documentation/nghttpx.1.html#server- push](https://nghttp2.org/documentation/nghttpx.1.html#server-push)), which nginx does not currently support (see [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33537199/does-the- nginx-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33537199/does-the-nginx- http-2-module-support-server-push)) — neat!

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait, so the advice to fix my end-all-be-all HTTP proxy application is to run another proxy in front of it?

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not just turn off http2 support in config until stable has good support?

<comment><USER13> Exactly what I was wondeirng. Can one really speak of a _need_ for HTTP2 rather than a yearning desire, at most?

<comment><USER14> Yes, anybody who runs a large site and gets far better performance out of it for the majority by now of clients who support it.

<comment><USER13> I'm replying to your post, specifically, but the other comments seem to be making the same point: HTTP2 confers a performance advantage.

So I repeat my question: is this speed advantage _stricto-sensu_ necessary? Why can't one "just" spin up a few more EC2 instances until this is fixed?

Is there a case in which HTTP2 is necessary, and HTTP1 just won't cut it? I think that's the sense of the original question, and I think it's a valid question when talking about hacking one's way around bugs that are going to get fixed anyway.

I'm open to being wrong about this, but I'm surprised at the resistance to this question.

<comment><USER15> The perf advantage is in user loading times. HTTP1 won't cut it, and no amount of hardware on the server will, either.

Just adding "SPDY" to nginx on some customer sites was enough to reduce load times by double digit %. (10-30 IIRC)

I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it's still supported this year right?

<comment><USER14> > _I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it 's still supported this > year right?_

No, Nginx dropped it (they only offer HTTP2 since 1.9.5) and Chrome dropped it from the client too this year IIRC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind - <AUTHOR> http://dsernst.com/2015/01/06/meditation-is-garbage-collection-for-your-mind/ <comment><USER2> I don't really meditate, but one thing I've found helpful is to make it a point to not purposefully distract myself from mindful thought.

The truth is that we all have plenty of time for mindful thinking, even if we don't actually set aside time to sit with eyes closed in a "meditation" state. Think about how much time is spent just sitting on a train, or in line doing nothing. The instant impulse most of the time in these types of situations is to pull out your phone and distract yourself from thinking by looking at a web article, or playing a game.

I found that by reducing this habit in my life (not completely eliminated or else I wouldn't be commenting here) I had much more time for mindful thinking in my normal day to day life.

Another way to get started is to go on a long walk without headphones. Maybe even leave your phone at home. A year or so ago I was working through some shit and found it extremely helpful to take long walks on a trail that I loved with no electronics at all. That time spent free from distractions allowed me to develop introspection that was extremely useful and therapeutic.

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt that this is useful to you, but the phrase "mindful thinking" makes me wonder what exactly you mean.

"Mindfulness" as used in insight/mindfulness meditation / vipassana and similar schools of mediation does not refers to thinking about something.

Rather it refers to _detached but focused observation_ (though you may observe your thoughts). The point is to instead of "following a train of thought", to get off it and watch it closely from the sideline, and let each train disappear into the distance.

What your use of "mindful thinking" sounds like to me (and I might be wrong and you may be thinking of exactly what mindfulness meditation tends to refer to), is focused attention on a train of thought. That's important too, but very, very different.

From the sounds of it you are certainly practising your concentration and willpower, and that is certainly valuable in itself, and if whatever you're doing works for you of course you should keep doing it.

But I'd like to suggst an experiment: Try to "detach" from your train of thought sometime, even if just a minute here and a minute there (a minute can be frustrating enough...). E.g. when out walking, try to purposefully clear your mind and fix your attention on just the path. Try to be present and quietly observe every detail without trying to verbalize any thoughts. Thoughts will pop up and distract you anyway. Just gently nudge them away, or observe them but try not to "follow it up" and just let it dissipate. When you lose focus, and notice (whether 5 seconds later or 10 minutes), just gently nudge your attention back.

The "game" is to note when you lose concentration and try to gradually lengthen the time span where you are just present, detached from your thought stream and just observing. As I've heard someone say: it's when you notice you lost concentration you're learning.

<comment><USER4> It's one way of thinking of what learning is. Some learning just is experience. Simplifying the experience, using the mind, can sometimes make the learning more complex than it needs be.

Choosing to make the distinction between the thought stream, the external world, and the observant self is one way to think. It is already on a layer of abstract conceptualization that is more complicated than it need be.

I just like letting go of the idea of what everyone else says learning, experiencing, and thinking is, and just let everything flow. That's when I feel most comfortable. When I let go of 'a way I think I should be' and I know instead 'I have always been the way I should be. It feels like a conscious jerk in thought when you remember to stop guiding yourself, and you just know you are already there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a note - meditation _can_ have negative side effects: [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the- dark-k...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight- of-the-souls/372766/)

This article, which has been submitted to HN before, investigates several severe reactions to meditation and the nonexistent research in, or even interest in researching, its downsides.

Having a negative reaction to meditation is not surprising, if you think about it. Deep introspection can lead to crippling mental states, depending on what you do or do not find. You may expect to find meaning and find none, or you may find something haunting from your past or within your psyche. Either can be a disaster for your personal well-being. I find it somewhat vapid to discuss meditation as simply an efficiency lifehack.

From the article:

> For Britton, this widespread assumption—that meditation exists only for > stress reduction and labor productivity, "because that's what Americans > value"—narrows the scope of the scientific lens. When the time comes to > develop hypotheses around the effects of meditation, the only acceptable—and > fundable—research questions are the ones that promise to deliver the answers > we want to hear.

> ..."But," she cautions, "what about when meditation plays a role in creating > an experience that then leads to a breakup, a psychotic break, or an > inability to focus at work?"

<comment><USER2> I would argue that if introspection has such harmful side effects for a person that means the person's mental state was already in an artificial and damaged state.

I think in most cases it is better to begin that introspection process and endure some temporary pain in order to work through the root issue rather than trying to put it off by avoiding it.

In other words, avoiding introspection won't solve the problem.

<comment><USER6> Which is why it is recommended that, beyond a certain point of initial expertise, you seek a "master" in whatever branch of practice you're comfortable with.

It's actually pretty thoroughly documented in all the Buddhist commentaries that people can have a very shitty time with meditation.

<comment><USER7> Deep in essentially anyone's subconscious there's a lot of garbage. Sometimes meditation kicks it up a bit. If done properly, it's a clean-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From my experience it is even more than this. I meditate 2 hours a day and it has had a profound, yet subtle, influence on my daily practical life. Things are just much better. It appears to me that when you make things better on the inside, there is a direct influence on the outside.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious what portion of your personal time those two hours takes?

For example, I sleep 8 hours, work 8 hours, commute 1.5 hours, and take an hour for lunch.

Not counting other meals and chores, that leaves me with 5.5 discretionary hours a day.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it isn't as difficult to manage as it may appear - I just wake up a bit earlier for an hour first thing in the morning, and then stop doing things a little earlier in the evening for the 2nd hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No it's not. It's strength training for your ability to direct your attention. Sleep is the garbage collection.

<comment><USER11> To each their own, for me it's neither garbage collection nor sleep. It's having an organized todo list that's been prioritized.

<comment><USER10> IMNSHO, it's 'whatever you want it to be'. It causes specific measurable changes to brain function and anatomy.

<comment><USER12> > It causes specific measurable changes to brain function and anatomy.

So does learning The Knowledge.

<comment><USER10> So what? Different parts of the brain, different functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meditation is one of those things that people aren't allowed to not like. If you say you don't like it or it's not for you, you get overwhelmed and drowned out by the echo chamber.

<comment><USER14> It makes me really wonder about the "hacker" community that such obvious bunk keeps showing up here. Hackers are skeptical.

<comment><USER14> To the best of my understanding, meditation is a mental activity. You sit still and... do what, exactly? Think of nothing? How does one think of nothing? Is meditation another word for daydreaming? How can we be sure that any two people are "meditating" in the same way, since it's an unobservable mental state? And are proponents of meditation simply saying that sitting still, being calm, and focusing one's attention (or _not_ focusing one's attention? which is it?) has benefits over running around like a chicken with its head cut off? Doesn't that fall into the "no shit, Sherlock" realm of common sense?

Any "science" on meditation faces the same problems that "psychology" faced ~100 years ago, when practitioners simply described their mental states. It was only when psychology embraced empiricism and left self-descriptions of mental state behind that it was able to advance as a science.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, like you say, there are many different techniques. The type I'm describing in the OP is Vipassana[1], which is a systematic scan of physical sensations, part by part throughout the body. Not 'thinking of nothing', nor 'daydreaming'. Of course, some other people _do_ use those sorts of techniques, so confusion abounds.

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

<comment><USER14> Like an MRI scan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is so true! And GC is a brilliant metaphor.

Typing this quickly since I'm on a deadline at work, but for those interested in getting started, I set up a quarterly "Meditation Challenge" online group to track progress and keep people motivated by having a group of people and a goal. Myself and people in /r/meditation run it, so it's not a corporate anything, just a public service.

You an add your email and it will notify you when the next challenge starts:

[http://meditationchallenge.co](http://meditationchallenge.co)

<comment><USER16> Neat! I've been trying to get myself to meditate more often. Any ETA on when the next challenge will start?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the metaphor is OK, but in my own experience I think it misses the mark a little bit. From what I have learned, you need to GC because you generate too much garbage; one of the ways that meditation helps is that you simply generate less garbage (less scattered, less thoughts) thus you don't need to GC/sleep/whatever that much.

And why do you generate less garbage? It's because you become better focused (concentration) on whatever you do (which by the way brings mindfullness as a side-effect, not on purpose). With proper concentration, you also become aware of the "dirt" (word that was used in the article from the atlatnic) and will tend to avoid this dirt. This is important, because if you want to get better at something, you must be able to recognize what's wrong. The problem with having these insights is that if you don't have a teacher to help you, you will get stuck at best or regress at worse.

Also there are alot of different meditation techniques, and although they are similar, the devil is in the details. I'm sure this definition is not appliable to every type of meditation, and that's OK.

<comment><AUTHOR> What sort of meditation are you experienced with? Just curious :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have tried meditation a few select times and over two sessions in the same year, I had the same experience. I found that I was in some sort of odd state, neither asleep nor awake. I did not have any recollection of my body. But my thoughts were strikingly aware of reality. I felt an overwhelming connectedness to essentially everything. I googled for the sensation and the closest match I could find was an Hindu word: turiya. I have no experience with this domain and have felt actually quite lost since I have never encountered anyone who had a similar frame of reference. It was quite overwhelming and has not happened but those two times. I do not indulge in any narcotics or mind altering drugs. Very unusual experience.

<comment><USER7> If you're still experiencing "thoughts" as entities beyond your full control, if the "feeling" portion of the mind still fluctuates, if you're not free to direct your ENTIRE attention in a single direction and hold it there for a long time - then that's not turiya.

You've experienced an expansion of awareness. It's pretty cool when it happens. You should "encourage" it and practice it more.

Turiya is far beyond the reach of basically everyone in their normal state. It takes very long and very difficult preparation to get anywhere near it. If it's easy to get there, you're basically an avatar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this what sleep is for?

<comment><USER5> Literally speaking? [Yes.][0]

> "In a series of new studies on mice, her team discovered exactly that: When > the mouse brain is sleeping or under anesthesia, it's busy cleaning out the > waste that accumulated while it was awake."

The NIH [also wrote about this in optimistic tones][1], if you're not a fan of mainstream science reporting.

[0]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/goodnight-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/goodnight- sleep-clean.html?_r=0)

[1]: [http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear...](http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use malloc and brk :-/

<comment><USER21> This is the only context in which it's cool to like gc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use meditation to deepen good thought "rivers". The way I see my mind is... something happens and triggers a thought which goes down the deepest "river". For example, I hear some bad news at work; my mind processes this trigger and goes down the deepest "river" leading me to a feeling of anxiety.

<comment><USER23> Free association of this nature can lead to both amazing creativity and innovation as well as awful paranoia, anxiety, and fear. The mind sure is fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like the analogy as a hook and lead in but a bit disappointed to find the actual content a bit lacking, but perhaps that's the point?

Would be helpful to include a brief summary of the three different practises of Vipassana or insight medidation as a whole just to provide an introduction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah sorry tabrischen! The idea was Hack Reactor tasked us with presenting a topic of our choosing, but we were only given 5 minutes to do so.

So I'll try to go into more details for you!

The Vipassana tradition I've been taught in includes three techniques:

* Concentration meditation, called Anapana, where you observe your breath. Just watching the rhythm in and out. Trying not to miss a single breath. It helps to focus on just a very small region, like the triangle from your nostrils to your lips.

* Insight meditation, called Vipassana, where you observe the physical sensations in each part of your body, in a systematic way, from top to bottom and bottom to top. This is pretty tricky, especially at first, and believe it or not took me over 80 hours of practice before it really "clicked". If you're trying to teach yourself, I'd recommend the ebook Meditation In Plain English, linked in the post.

* Loving-Kindness meditation, called Metta, where you generate good thoughts and compassion towards yourself and others. This one is even trickier to explain! Wish I could do it justice. But it's super powerful, and especially nice way to finish after practicing the other two techniques, which can leave you feeling a tad 'raw'. There are lots of different recommended ways of practicing Metta, but I'd recommend searching for "Metta meditation" for videos and other descriptions.

Hope this helps! Thanks for the question and I'm happy to do my best with any more.

<comment><USER24> This is very helpful, thanks !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would rather use reference counting...</comment>


What happens when, Kubernetes edition - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jamiehannaford/what-happens-when-k8s/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> I'd be really interested to see one of these trace all the way through a typical micro service application.

I.E. Exactly where does my initial http request go, how does the front-end make it out, how does the front-end reach the back-end, how does that data make it out

How are the DNS names being resolved, that sort of stuff.

I've been using Kubernetes (or openshift) for a while and I still don't fully understand all of the mechanics related to serving client requests end to end

<comment><USER3> I wonder what would be necessary to get this in Jaeger

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This couldn't come at a better time for me. Being able to step through the "magic" of Kubernetes is very instructional. thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a great way explain kubernetes. I'm a veteran user and I'm finding it delightful to read. Consider selling an e-book :)

<comment><AUTHOR> For me this article was a base for understanding other articles about k8s. I agree with you that the author should create an e-book from this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems to be missing any mention of how this whole process is resilient to killing the apiserver or kubelet at any point in the process (it is resilient to that, right...?).

<comment><USER7> The API server is stateless and should be loadbalanced. The kubelet should be set to restart on failure and is not resilient. It keeps trying to connect to your API server and update its status if it can't it will keep retrying. The controller manager will remove the node after X minutes of no response.

<comment><USER7> I should mention that the kubelet is plenty resilient for what it does. If at some point kubelet can connect again it will rejoin the cluster.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't Make Squirrel Burgers - <AUTHOR> http://leewaterman.com/dont-make-squirrel-burgers/?fbclid=IwAR0k5iEMCsS9y7fZmZH2asIOiWoorPc8hDfpRMCOLdF4voh6vKYem2gx3yY <comment><USER2> Ehh, I hate this metaphor. Squirrel is delicious, and many areas around the world are in the midst of invasive species overpopulation. Emphatically, make squirrel burgers! (Might avoid city animals, and add some extra fat however, squirrel is very lean.) /yeehaw

Why not rat? Seems more analogous in quite a few ways...</comment>


MySQL::Replication - peer-to-peer based, multi-master replication for MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://lists.mysql.com/replication/2114

<comment><USER2> I like Slide 251: 'solve it at the application layer' :)

I'm part of a team responsible for cloud-based video editing software. We use multi-master replication (perhaps also known as optimistic replication) with our own tools throughout, but it does require careful design - keep as much data as immutable as possible, every piece of data that might be updated by different machines at the same time should have its own row, GUIDs on each row.

Each machine can generate its own local IDs, which look a lot like a timestamp with some unique stuff on the end. Each row gets a GUID and a 'version' ID column, and we only update relayed database updates if the incoming version is newer. This is largely last-timestamp-wins for the case of conflicts (rare because of design decisions), but there is some Lamport timestamp behaviour in there too for updating a existing row.

The main downside is still that all machines need to handle every write, but with batching up incoming processing into larger transactions, we've had no problems with quite a number of database updates on a dozen commodity machines. Obviously filtering into different shards would be an easy solution.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other people are doing with multi-master replication.

<comment><USER3> At TransLoc we use a multi-master setup. At its heart it's two nodes replicating from each other. Our data is divided into several databases. Each database "belongs" to only one master at a time. For example if we have nodes A and B, and databases w, x, y and z, we would have A be responsible for writes to w and x, while B would be responsible for y and z.

If B fails, we have a monitoring system in place to tell A that it is responsible for w, x, y and z at once. The monitor sets read-write permissions for databases y and z on A (through user permissions), and then notifies all of our application servers that things have shifted. The applications for their part include a piece of common code that monitors for changes in the cluster and allows the application code to cope with these changes. For web requests, if failover happened in the middle of a transaction, the request fails. For long running processes, the process will have to go to the top of the event loop and request a new database connection, etc.

So far it's worked fairly well. We are able to achieve high availability with it, since our master nodes are in two different data centers. There are definitely issues with this approach in general, but it works for our work load.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're kind of in an active-passive multi-master setup which is find for now but as replication queries increase between the two nodes, you might start to see load issues. You're going to have to drop in a third machine and a decision is going to have to be made on how to replicate your data.

<comment><USER3> Yes. The other big problem with this setup is that a single node must be able to handle all queries if the other node fails. Fortunately, we are nowhere near saturating the capacity of our nodes under normal operation (we are only doing about 1,200 queries/second). We are also able to offload read-only queries to slaves that are replicating off of the masters, which should help with the read capacity, which is our biggest demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couple years ago I was looking at building highly available database (MySQL in particular), and looked into the multi-master setup. While sounds good on paper, its benefits don't warrant the high development and operation cost.

\- The tables need to be changed and the application layer needs to be changed to support it, which is a big hassle and very fragile. It's easy to introduce update conflict. It's a nightmare when dealing with group of updates in a transaction. You can't really roll back a transaction at the replicated nodes.

\- Whenever a node fails, the replication ring is broken and updates pile up at the previous node, while subsequent nodes' data become stale. It requires immediate human attention to fix it, which defeats the purpose of a HA cluster.

\- Related to above. It's very difficult to add a new master node without stopping the cluster. The "catchup" process is very manual and fragile.

\- Data in different node becomes stale under high replication load. Clients reading different masters would get stale data. They are supposed to be masters and got stale data?!

\- Multi-master doesn't help write scalability as all; all nodes need to handle all writes. MySQL's single thread update in replication doesn't help. For read scalability, master-slave is better.

I abandoned the design after a while and chose a different approach. I ended up using a disk-based replication, like DRDB. A two-machine cluster forms the master cluster, one active and one standby. Writes are replicated to both machines at disk level synchronously. When the active node fails, the standby becomes active within seconds automatically with the complete data on disk.

The beauty of this approach is the simple design and setup. The data are always in sync, no stale data. Failover is immediate and automatic. The failed node can automatically catch up when back online. The database application doesn't need any change and all the SQL semantics are preserved. The cluster has one IP so the clients don't need special connection logic. They just need to retry when connection fails.

For disaster recovery, I built another two-machine cluster in another datacenter acting as the slave, which did async replication from the master cluster. When the two-machine master cluster completely failed (as in the datacenter got burnt down), the slave cluster can become master via a manual process within 30 minutes. The 30 minutes SLA is for someone got paged, look at the situation and decide to fail over. There are too many uncertainties across datacenters to fail over automatically.

Added bonus, slaves can still hang off the master cluster for read scalability. And it works with any disk-based databases, not just MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm always in favour of technology which solves the replication issues in mysql. It's been one of the most painful parts of managing databases for myself.

I would like to throw in the tungsten replicator into this discussion <http://code.google.com/p/tungsten-replicator/>. I have been researching it for the past few weeks as a replacement to mysql's built in replication hoping to solve a lot of the current pitfalls especially in 5.0.x. There is a very thorough guide here [http://tungsten.sourceforge.net/docs/Tungsten-Replicator- Gui...](http://tungsten.sourceforge.net/docs/Tungsten-Replicator- Guide/Tungsten-Replicator-Guide.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't remember specifically, but I think we evaluated Tungsten Replicator and at the time it didn't do multi-master replication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much about replication but what happens when a master dies just after the database is updated. Will the changes not be replicated? If the user see that the second master does have the latest changes and he repeat his latest actions, what will happen when the first master goes back online? Will the data be duplicated or merged?

<comment><USER2> It depends on your use case - either you accept there is a write hole that the update wont appear until that host comes back online and other hosts can relay the change, or you add application-level checking to not return to the user in the first instance until the change hits at least another host.

In your scenario, yes. The two changes would be a conflict, but hopefully (if the user makes the same change) your conflict-resolution code would realise it is the same and merge them correctly. I fear I don't know how MySQL::Replication handles this, but it has to be application-level logic, so I assume it will allow you to override a default of, say, last-modification- wins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "what happens with collisions? when two databases update the same record It's a race condition solution? solve it at the application layer "

I suspect this is a deal breaker for many. It certainly is for me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok. It's now on GitHub if anyone is interesting in following:

<https://github.com/alfie/MySQL--Replication>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused: doesn't the use of a single local relay to which all clients connect create a single, non-redundant point of failure?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing stopping you from having standby relays, active relays etc. You are free to create a topology of your choosing with minimal restrictions.</comment></comment>