Show HN: SAN – a Safe and Nice TOML/YAML Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://astrocorp.net/san <comment><AUTHOR> Hi author here.

We've created a new file format designed specifically for configuration: SAN (pronounce /seɪn/ like sane).

You can find a Go parser here: [https://github.com/phasersec/san- go](https://github.com/phasersec/san-go)

Vim syntax here: [https://github.com/z0mbie42/vim- san](https://github.com/z0mbie42/vim-san)

SAN was created because of a need to have a Simple And Neat configuration format (with comments, unlike JSON, easy to parse unlike YAML....).

The main killer features compared to YAML/TOML are the following:

* Comments as first class citizens which means programs can manipulate and modify files with comments without destroying them.

* Safe

* Human and parser friendly

* Easy to use, even without syntax coloration

It's an open format and any feedback is welcome.

<comment><USER2> Could you elaborate on the differences to HCL? It looks almost the same on first glance. Maybe minus functions and and nested blocks in HCL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HCL was one of the source of inspiration. We wanted to push it 1 step further by providing a clear and open specification which allows to create parsers for languages other than go.

So the main differences are the ecosystem: a CLI to auto format - think go fmt) and validate SAN files, parsers for languages others than Go

<comment><USER2> Are you aware of the HCL2 specification at [https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl2/blob/master/hcl/hclsyntax/...](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl2/blob/master/hcl/hclsyntax/spec.md)? It also provides a validator, even for custom schema definitions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, The problem is that we want a pure data configuration format. We think that very few application require a full turing complete language for their configuration.

Bazel have too it's own (turing complete ?) Programming configuration language

<comment><USER3> Bazel's language ([https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark](https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark)), also used in Buck and other tools, is technically not Turing-complete. In Bazel's BUILD files, there are additional restrictions (e.g. no function definition), making them relatively declarative and tool-friendly.

<comment><USER4> I literally just started prototyping this exact idea last week: a python interpreter without any imports/stdlib as a configuration language.

I'm a little bummed I was beat to it. I was going back and forth on allowing defining functions. Definitely no classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> +1 for non indentation based nesting

+1 for quoting all strings

+1 for comments

-1 for the pronunciation hehe :P

I don't like that map values don't need commas while arrays do, and also don't know how I feel about the equal sign instead of colon.

Great attempt overall. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack

I've opened an issue [https://github.com/astrocorp42/san/issues/12](https://github.com/astrocorp42/san/issues/12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, but the first thing I checked was if it allows list elements to have different types. And it doesn't.

That was one issue I had with TOML, because the allowed data schema is not JSON compatible. Switching from YAML or JSON to TOML or SAN is therefore often difficult and as such easier to just stay with the one that is currently used.

For new projects, it might be nice. But having to work around this limitation when you need it is also a bit annoying.

<comment><USER7> I think we need to start distinguishing between data formats and configuration formats. JSON is a data format. I loathe working with NodeJS because of the necessity of hand-editing JSON, and that just makes me want to bash my head against the wall.

In my side projects, generally I'll hand-write a parser with regular expressions because I haven't yet found one I actually like both looking at and editing. I can fix every single other problem except that one. With SAN, the issue is the bracket delimiters. I hate futzing with them, just let me use tabs. I want this:

      Monthly Recurring
      	Patreon: 8 | 9/17/2018 | 2mo - Acc: Capital One - Tags: arts
      	Workflowy: 4.99 | 9/17/2018 | 6mo - Acc: Amex - Tags: tools
      	RubyTapas: 15 | 9/17/2018 | 6mo - Acc: Amex - Tags: education
      	Verizon: 70.17 | 9/17/2018 | 6mo - Acc: Amex - Tags: utilities,tools

This is easy to look at, easy to edit with a text editor, and, once the parser's written, dead simple with Ruby POROs, easy to parse into queryable data structures.

I have yet to find any format that's intended to be human-editable that doesn't actually feel 'nice to the touch'. So I just make my own.

When hand-editing the format above, I generally don't type in a whole line at a time. I'll just add in the basics, and fill it out later, perhaps with machine processing. Tags in particular are easy to copy-paste in by hand and are generally the last part of the line.

<comment><USER8> Try Dixy :)

[https://github.com/kuyawa/dixy](https://github.com/kuyawa/dixy)

<comment><USER7> Someone else's hand-rolled parser isn't going to be _my_ hand-rolled parser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It does look very similar to a language I wrote: [https://github.com/Keats/scl](https://github.com/Keats/scl) although SCL supports files inclusions and environment variables out of the box.

I would definitely change the supposed pronunciation though, no one is going to pronunce san as sane.

</comment><comment><USER10> > SAN (pronounce /seɪn/, like sane)

No, absolutely not.

<comment><USER11> Why not?

<comment><USER12> As no same person would remember or bother to read it as "sane" and is a failed attempt to force people to read in some weird way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ainar-g This is indeed very sane. One thing I personally would change is making a trailing comma in multiline lists obligatory, like in Go.

I hope this gains traction, so that I could use it in my projects without people being upset about "some obscure configuration language".

<comment><USER13> > One thing I personally would change is making a trailing comma in multiline > lists obligatory

Can I ask you why?

<comment> ainar-g Sure. In Go, this was one of the details that cemented my love for the language. Imagine you have a multiline list, sorted alphabetically.

      strs = [
        "a",
        "b",
        "c"
      ]

If you don't have a trailing comma (looking at you, JSON), when you add a new item, you have to make changes on _two_ lines:

      strs = [
        "a",
        "b",
        "c", // Change 1.
        "d"  // Change 2.
      ]

On the other hand, when you have obligatory trailing comma on multiline lists, there is only one change:

      strs = [
        "a",
        "b",
        "c", // No change, since the comma was already there.
        "d", // Change 1.
      ]

<comment><AUTHOR> Very pragmatic, I love it!

I will explore this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll have a weird fondness for the special kind of bikesheding configuration languages invite.

To add my 2 cents. I really like what I saw in Skylark(Starlark?). It's fairly close to my dream setup: a simple Python interpreter with no libraries.

Pythons object notation looks 95% like JSON, it supports comments, solid multiline support, well known escaping rules, basic format strings when you need them.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am now going to propose the key-value-inline-notation: KVIN. If JSON is that kid in the early '90s who had a l33t 286, then KVIN is JSON's older, iRoc driving brother. KVIN has a 'stache that all the girls love. (It's a little thinner than Magnum P.I.s 'stache, right now.)

A KVIN file follows one simple pattern: it's a list of key-values or comments. Comments are any line that starts with any amount of whitespace and then a '#'. A key-value starts with a key, ends with a value, and has a '=' in the middle:

        key = value

A key is made up of any valid C-identifier or C-numeric expression. You can 'chain' keys together with '.'s:

        key ::= key [. axis] | axis
        axis ::= c-identifier | c-number

A value is any valid c-identifier, c-number, or "byte string". A byte string starts with a '"', ends with a '"'. If you want to include a '"' then you have to escape with a '\'. If you want to include a '\', then you '\' the '\'. All whitespace is included in a byte-string: even a '\n'!

Strangely, KVIN understands _relative_ paths. If a key starts with '.' then that means it's relative to the path just above it. Each '.' means 'go up one level from the last value':

        foo.bar = 0
           .baz = 2

Would be a JSON like this:

        { "foo" : { "bar" : 0, "baz" : 2 } }

KVIN has one final trick, besides the busted old turbo he's been trying to get in his iRoc: he knows how to autonumber a list:

        foo.10 = a
           .# = b
           .# = c
           .# = d

Which would be the JSON:

        { "foo" : [ ..., a, b, c, d ] }

With 'a' starting at index '10'. (The base index of arrays is 0.)

I've got code laying around, somewhere, that implements KVIN.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks great. I love the strictness and improvements over JSON and also the goal of preserving comments. The absence of specified a date type feels like a back compared to TOML though. Without this they end up as strings in all manner of formats.

<comment><USER16> An application should reject anything not in its expected format. I would not want to be boxed into the limits of the configuration format's date and time representations. For example, TOML accepts datetimes with fixed offset time zones, but not time zone designators with multiple offsets, like America/New_York.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for including a comparison page[0]!

I'm not sure I buy that it's a large improvement over TOML -- In practice I haven't found the homogeneous list requirement to be an issue, and I really appreciate toml's writing styles and the use of sections to clearly delineate.

I think TOML is still my favorite (especially in terms of readability) but SAN looks awesome

[0]: [https://astrocorp.net/san/san-vs/](https://astrocorp.net/san/san-vs/)

</comment><comment><USER18> SAM is similar to Mark Notation ([http://marknotation.org/](http://marknotation.org/)) that I created in many ways:

      - a clean syntax and data model
      - easy to parse and use
      - friendly to human
      - improving on JSON

SAM vs. Mark Notation

      - SAM is primarily for configuration data
      - Mark can be used for both configuration and mixed content (like HTML, XML)
      - SAM is pure data (no templating)
      - Mark is also designed for templating, e.g. Mark Template

<comment><USER18> Sorry, should be SAN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks a lot like HCL ([https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HCL was one of the source of inspiration. We wanted to push it 1 step further by providing a clear and open specification which allows to create parsers for languages other than go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> More sane than TOML, and far more sane than YAML.

Tabs would be more sane for indentation: one tab, one indentation level. Also, it would match gofmt, if that matters to you.

<comment><USER20> Here's the github issue for that. Looks like they are starting to come around to the idea: [https://github.com/astrocorp42/san/issues/3](https://github.com/astrocorp42/san/issues/3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have used YAML and JSON and I loathe them both for reasons that are probably well known to many. I have, however, not used TOML - so I would very much like to hear the viewpoint of someone who has. If you use TOML today, do you see SAN as valuable? Why exactly?

</comment><comment><USER22> What are the benefits over JSON5?

<comment><USER23> Personally, I'd be happy with just a standard way of adding comments to JSON

<comment><USER24> You may want to check out [json5]([https://json5.org](https://json5.org)) it supports comments (among other features like trailing commas)

<comment><USER23> My comment was actually prompted by looking at Json5 features and thinking that I'm not really bothered about any of those other features. I'd just like JSON to have comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why another serialization format? What are the advantages over TOML/YAML?

</comment><comment><USER26> Human friendly with curly braces? I don't buy it.

I would never unleash a curly braces syntax on a non-developer. And if it's a format for developers then there are already plenty of options.

<comment><USER27> Curly braces are not that unfriendly - people use parentheses in common text all the time, and curly braces are not that different. Perhaps the concept of a "block" or scope is a bit unfriendly but that's independent of syntax... and arguably, curly braces make that more explicit.

Meanwhile, with significant whitespace, non-developers have to learn to be aware that a syntactic element intended to mean nothing now suddenly means something, and that one type of whitespace means something different than another and that they can't be used together, which _is_ counter-intuitive.

<comment><USER26> I think semantic identation is very intuitive to non-developers. It's used in print everywhere.

I think there's a touch of Stockholm syndrome in your belief otherwise. You have been corrupted and are projecting "intuitive" on to the pure. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you are looking for a YAML alternative, [https://sdlang.org](https://sdlang.org) is also worth considering. It's a bit richer.

<comment><USER20> Richer usually means "more stuff I don't want to have to learn" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So it's basically JSON without commas and quoted keys?

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe it's just my preference, but I think a JSON/YAML replacement should focus on removing as much redundancy as possible. For example use

        title: SAN Example

instead of

        title = "SAN Example"

and use dictionaries by default, that is

        creator

          name:    Sylvain Kerkour

          website: https://kerkour.com

instead of

        creator = {

          name = "Sylvain Kerkour"

          website = "https://kerkour.com"

        }

or something like that more or less...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, the main concern with your solution is that it does not support auto format (think go fmt). While adding braces and not being indentation based allow auto format and large file to be read more easily

<comment><USER30> Well you can still use braces, but also allow a default behavior with no braces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 1\. SAN is an already used an abbreviation for something that has been in the tech world for a while, and well, would be hard to search for.

2\. No multi-line support?

What about JSON5?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Can I ask what? because I did my research but didn't found anything

2) [https://astrocorp.net/san/versions/v1.0.0/#string](https://astrocorp.net/san/versions/v1.0.0/#string)

<comment><USER31> 1) Storage Area Network.

2) Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In before someone asks "why not just use s-expressions?"

</comment><comment><USER32> This feels a lot like HashiCorp configuration language[0]. But more standards[1] are always welcome ;)

[0] [https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl) [1] [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)</comment>


First impressions of Rails as a Javascripter - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/first-impressions-of-rails-as-a-javascripter/swizec/5948

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of people get choice-locked and over value choice in general.

I'm not a rails dev but I have experienced the pain of choice with Node. When you know you need 5 libs that each do something but each of those 5 "things" have literally 30 choices then it's easy to get deadlocked by choice.

I'm not sure if it's just me but I always have this feeling of "did I pick the right one?" in the back of my head. It hurts my productivity because I feel like I'm wasting my time if I picked the wrong one.</comment>


We're ditching the office completely - open-source-ux https://open.buffer.com/no-office/ <comment><AUTHOR> I guess I'm the flip-side of this. I work for myself, self-employed, and my office is the best $360 I spend each month. I need separation of space. My 15 minute walk ("commute") adds to the separation of work from home.

The other thing is that there are two small children running around my house. I simply can't work there, or else I'd never get anything done. Our house isn't large enough to have a separate, dedicated office-space. I'd be constantly interrupted.

I like the concept of remote working, even in a shared environment, but if I were working at that company and I no longer had a free place to go do work, I'd be looking for another gig.

<comment><USER2> You have small children running around the house, so you'd never get anything done there because you'd be constantly interrupted.

I have childish coworkers running around the office, so I can barely get any work done there and I am constantly interrupted.

<comment><USER3> Work from home, son shoots you with nerf gun, work from office, brogrammer shoots you with nerf gun....

<comment><USER4> I've been in this exact situation. Fortunately I found another place to work in the same building that contained our office and I was super productive. I feel like the "no fun employee" but when you get shot 20 times a day from all the nerf Wars that break out I don't understand how anyone gets shit done. Ultimately they probably just don't (at least if it is as frequent as I ran into).

<comment><USER5> Wait, those seriously happen? I thought examples of that were just satire. I guess there are some upsides to working in finance. That would never happen there lol.

<comment><USER6> It used to happen in my office, but it was usually a friday evening thing, or in one of those awkward gaps after meetings, but before lunch, and everyone was distracted anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The answer is really simple, and has been well-known at least since the time of the book Peopleware and the studies it cited.

Provide a _real_ office environment for _every_ knowledge worker.

You know ... a door that shuts ... a window ... space to allow your gaze to adjust.

Things that are ... human.

It's really simple.

And before you say it costs too much, it doesn't. The problem is that you're in denial about how much your current offices with open floor plans are costing you. You merely _think_ the cost is equal to the rent. It's much greater than the rent, though, because of lowered productivity, lowered morale, increased superficiality of important inter-worker communication, incessant interruptions disrupting developer flow, more sick time, etc. etc.

If you didn't pretend like those aren't affecting you, and you actually counted their cost, you'd see that the extra cost in real estate for offices is well worth it even in short-term scenarios like 1-year where you're using your start-up runway to pay for it.

Even in San Francisco. Even in Manhattan.

<comment><USER8> I don't know but for me working in an open office is a positive experience, I feel joy talking to coworkers from time to time, sitting in a separate room is quite depressing and might drop the productivity for some people even further then time you lose chatting with coworkers

<comment><USER7> It's totally possible for people who are more extroverted to find an interactive setting more pleasant. You could round up all such folks and let them sit together, since they get energy from that.

But clearly for the people with more introverted working styles it won't work.

So let people pick. Want to sit in the communal workspace? OK, do so. Want your own office? OK done.

From time to time you'll need to intermix. Sometimes a social butterfly needs to tune out the distractions. Provide a place for it. Sometimes a hermit crab needs to sit with the team for 1/2 day and pair program. As Picard says, make it so.

This is not rocket science. The important part is that company management has to recognize that getting this right is one of the most important financial investments they will make. Instead of seeing space as a cost sink ... something to be standardized, minimized, and papered over with free lunch and dumbass "team building" shit, they need to recognize that of all the places to spend money, spending it on compensation for rewarding hard working employees is number one, and spending it on creating a humanity-affirming physical work environment is number 2. In visibly healthy companies, everything else hinges massively on those two things. Companies that have been so distorted away from humanity that they grind out success (generally for senior level people only) despite humanity-disaffirming workplaces ought to be seen as the frightening panopticons they are.

<comment><USER9> easier to opt-out of an open office via headphones than opt-in to a collaborative one by relocating your desk. i think this is the root of why open plans make sense.

<comment><USER7> Except that all of the studies suggest the headphones / earplugs option doesn't help very much. Most of the damage is done because of lack of _privacy_ and noise is a secondary (though still large) effect.

The headphone solution is also insensitive to people with extreme aversions to distracting sounds, such as sufferers of misophonia. In a lot of cases, if you are embedded in an open plan, there is no such thing as "opting out." It's a fixed decision mandated upon you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Which environment do you prefer, and why?_

I don't believe this question is interesting because I think we know that most HN readers will prefer remote working instead offices. It doesn't matter whether it's semi-private cubicles or noisy open floor plans. Offices suck. Commuting sucks too. Probably 95+% would prefer remote work if they could get it.

 _> Do you think we should have kept our office or closed it?_

The _more interesting question & answer_ is how the 100% remote strategy helps your business. Yes, you save $86k/yr in office rent. However, does the remote arrangement boost your employees' productivity so much that it helps Buffer beat other competitors (Hootsuite, Sprout, etc.)? Is the remote productivity enabling the ability of engineers to add features at a faster rate that you noticed subscriptions going way up? Etc.

That's the _business_ calculus that's more interesting to discuss. To be fair, it looks like author Courtney Seiter's background is writing/marketing and not business/engineering so it's understandable if she doesn't emphasize this angle. Also, the blog post is only 4 months old so they don't have a year's worth of financial performance to evaluate its effectiveness.

<comment><USER11> Well, even though the post is 4 months old, we've had remote employees from Beijing to SF for a while now. The economics of productivity is a super interesting question. And to share my thoughts on that, we have a company that basically never sleeps. At any given time there are a group of people working on stuff there. We have paid for tools that help us communicate in a manner where on a project, I can pick up where someone else left off. Whether we've beaten our competitors is a question I admit I Dont know the answer to. And I'm not sure if owning the entire space is something we want to do either. One of our bigger guiding principles is, do we have a solid product that people love using and are they happy with the support they get. On this front we know that the answer is yes. We always want to continue improving but we also are very happy with what we've created and done today :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to work from my bedroom, in my old home a few years ago. Initially, it felt like the best thing to do. But, as time passed, there were committment issues and potential distractions. Some of them included stuff like answering the door, unwanted guests (and friends) and because it was my bedroom, I just slept more often (no more tiresome 48 hour hackathons).

Then, as time passed, I realized, the distinction between your workplace and your leisure space is an important one. Later, I rented out a moderately expensive serviced office space by one of the local providers and it had served me well. Even the people around you can perceive this distinction and respect your boundaries if you work in an office-like atmosphere that can be perceived.

To be clear, it's not wrong to work from home. IF you have a separate room for your work and you treat it like an office room, it's actually the best way to go (convenience and savings). But if you were in a situation like me where you had to choose between the bedroom and a leased office space, go for the latter and it will definitely add an improvement to your quality of professional life.

<comment><USER13> I have a very nice custom-designed office at home with big monitors, keyboard tray, Aeron chair, etc. I used to use that as my workplace when I worked from home (which was most of the time when I wasn't traveling.) But, for whatever reason, I've found myself gravitating to just working on my laptop in various rooms in my house. The variety works for me. (I can work outside in the summer but usually don't because of glare, etc.)

In general, I think I needed the discipline of dressing as for the office and working in my dedicated office for a time but feel less need for the structure today.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Working from home will test your discipline, and I personally cannot work in pajamas and blur the lines between my personal life and my work (though it's convenient to have the option if needed).

Like you, I need to have some variety. Working from home can get extremely boring, and I never really thought that I needed a bunch of social interaction until I began working from home. I really enjoy doing it (been going strong for about 3 years now), but I can't just sit at my desk all day either. I like to get out, go to coffee shops, friends houses, co-working spaces, and even the office about 2-3 days a week.

I personally see working from home not as I'm literally working from home, but that I'm not tethered to my desk in the office. As long as I have an internet connection, I can work from anywhere. It's really nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's nice to read comments here as people are writing they like to work in the office. I also do like it. I am self-employed and in the longer run it is so boring to be alone at home when there is nobody to talk to. Funnily, when I was fulltime I dreamed to work from home.

<comment><USER16> Fellow self-employed here, currently sitting in the office of one of my clients (as I do 2-3 days per week) despite them being more than happy for me to work from home. The fact that it's a small office with 4 other people (and they're great people) and a 20 minute commute through the countryside probably helps a lot, but I much prefer this setup than sitting all alone in my small home office all day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't imagine anything lonelier.

<comment><USER18> I was beginning to think I was the only technology worker who likes being in the office!

I have the option of working from the office or from home, at least 2-3 days per week depending on what I have on. I much prefer working from the office. I enjoy hanging out and talking shit (and working) with my colleagues/friends, grabbing coffee, lunch somewhere nice, and when I leave at the end of the day I can flip from 'work mode' to 'home mode'.

<comment><USER19> _at the end of the day I can flip from 'work mode' to 'home mode'._

This is by far the most important decision criterion: the psychological cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why do we have offices to begin with? Because they provided value. Past tense. Sure they were always expensive, but without bringing people together physically, it was nearly impossible to accomplish anything. Humans have a difficulty, rooted in the fundamental structure of our brains, to hold both the benefits and the costs of a situation in mind at the same time. Once we determine that something provides greater benefit than cost, the costs just disappear. It's a pragmatic shortcut, but it falls flat when the underlying assumptions change.

The underlying assumptions have changed. The myriad costs associated with offices are no longer outweighed by the benefits they provide. That's partially due to the development of technology, and partially due to other changes, such as the adoption of productivity-poisoning 'open plan' offices. Our whole setup of how we work is based on manufacturing, and it hasn't been adapted to the very different work being done now. Even though technology has made individual workers so productive that the company can survive an open plan office and still not be able to provide most workers with enough to do to fill 40 hours a week, we still force them to have their butt in a chair for those 40 hours - more often more than that, the majority of which is done solely for appearances sake.

<comment><USER21> They still provide value, but in different ways. There are still things that can be accomplished far more effectively in an office than remotely. However, there are things that can also be achieved better remotely than in an office.

There are many factors at play here, and a mix of this must be made by each company to suit its industry and personnel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hi all, I'm currently with buffer in the bootcamp period. I've loved every moment of it. Agree with a lot of the sentiments here, especially the separation of personal and professional lives. Working with the buffer team has allowed me to pick where I work from each day. Some days it's a coffee shop, a lot of days it's a tiny co working space I've found. Sometimes that space gets a little noisy, so I move over to my friend's office. I've got about another 4 places that have open invitations for me to drop in and work from there. So overall, pretty awesome. Would love to answer any questions too :)

</comment><comment><USER22> A startup with little brand recognition posts a blog entry concerning a topic of general interest to a demographic whose attention it seeks. A predictable discussion emerges with the company as a backdrop. Everyone rejoices that the topic has been broached, because they have well-informed, unique opinions to offer on the subject. Brand recognition is achieved, and because of the photographs of smiling, laid-back young people contained in the blog entry, the impression on the target demographic is a positive one. Everyone forgets it happened, and the cycle repeats again next week.

<comment><USER23> Do you really think Buffer has little brand recognition? That's very surprising that anyone here would think that.

<comment><USER22> I don't know. I've never heard of it and I read HN daily. Maybe it's because startups don't interest me. Either way, I just think it's funny how these topics, which people clearly want to discuss regardless of what the Buffers of the world are doing, always have to be centered on a company's PR.

<comment><USER24> For what it's worth, you're not the only one. I read HN for technology oriented news and interesting articles and because I live in Silicon Valley part of the year. I've never worked for a startup and probably never will and I've never heard of Buffer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> OK, reading through all this, I'm wondering if there isn't a compromise approach needed. For myself, I go in each morning for a couple hours. If there are no meetings that require my physical presence, then I drive home, and work the rest of the day from there. Sometimes that means home at 10am, others closer to 3pm, and occasionally 6pm. But it means I am available to comingle when it makes sense, available to be run into for at least a couple hours a day, and almost always home before traffic gets bad. It also means I don't mind working past 5 most days as if I was in the office I wouldn't get home until then due to the traffic. Maybe this kind of half and half approach would be ideal for others?

<comment><USER26> This is my ideal as well and over time I've been somewhat able to implement in practice. I much prefer the lack of distractions etc, vs. the open office at work but I also must begrudgingly admit that there are many times (especially in the mornings for whatever reason) where I overhear things and address problems much more quickly as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That sqwiggle tool they use (described here [https://open.buffer.com/remote- working-means-tools-use/](https://open.buffer.com/remote-working-means-tools- use/)) sounds pretty creepy. A software taking a pic of my face every few seconds and broadcasting it is almost as annoying as having someone in your back all the time, I think.

<comment><USER28> absolutely. it's horrifying... the cheery PR around all of this is what I'm finding to be the most disturbing

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Having worked remotely for over 6 years and then having run my own company, I can easily say that there are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches - office and fully remote. It really depends on the industry and the team.

I have found that offices do tend to improve communication through instant access to people and feedback, whereas remote work sometimes requires incessant scheduling of meetings. Instant messaging and such can help, but it is not as immediate nor is it a replacement for face time. However, working remotely is a great feeling of freedom and control over your personal environment, which can lead to better _personal_ productivity, provided the person has enough discipline to ignore distractions (if the office is one's home).

It is also a personal preference. As a software engineer, I loved remote work because I could code in peace without distraction. However, some personalities could never stand this much solitude and prefer the hubbub of a traditional office, however distracting it could potentially be. I even knew people who worked remotely that would venture outside and chat at length with neighbors just to have that feeling of human contact that is sometimes lacking with full remote work.

That being said, with the industry I work in, my customers expect a traditional office. So, implementing a mix of remote and office time has worked best for us. There are some stipulations, however, for remote work we enforce - such as childcare must be taken care of by someone else (e.g. school, daycare, spouse, etc.) while working remotely and background noise is to be minimized so as to treat it as a true professional environment. Nothing is worse than when you're on a conference call with major clients and hear crying or barking in the background. And I say this as someone with children and pets myself.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems that they don't have a very good idea of where their employees are located exactly: [http://i.imgur.com/XCHQstM.png](http://i.imgur.com/XCHQstM.png)

</comment><comment><USER30> Remote is good for some people and bad for others. At big companies there will be enough of both groups that going one-sided in either direction will hurt some people, and ultimately hurt the company (COUGH YHOO). IMO the best solution is a flexible working environment that can support everybody, especially in large cities where the commute can be an absolute grind in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER31> Note: the article was posted about 4 months ago. (Oct 2015)

One apparent consequence of all-remote working for Buffer is that having all the employees meet in real life is _incredibly_ expensive and logistically complex: [https://open.buffer.com/remote-work- retreats/](https://open.buffer.com/remote-work-retreats/)

<comment><USER32> No way it's more expensive than paying rent for an office in a trendy city and commuting to said office.

<comment><USER31> That's not what I was implying. I noted the Buffer retreat since that's a hidden cost of remote work I haven't seen people discuss.

<comment><USER32> It's a completely optional cost, though, not a hidden cost. Plus it sounds like they allowed everyone to bring their partners and families, too. _And_ , most companies that have physical offices _also_ have corporate retreats or events, so it's not even really exclusive to companies that work remotely.

<comment><USER33> > most companies that have physical offices also have corporate retreats or > events

Citation needed. I'd never even heard of a corporate retreat before now.

<comment><USER34> Valve flies out the entire company with families on vacation once a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Our team is remote and we're 9 full-timers with a few contractors in the infosec space and it works incredibly well. I want to add that the main reason to work remotely isn't really about saving on office rental. We take that cash and put it back into our employees home work environment and tools like awesome hardware.

The biggest benefit for us is that our team is able to have a better work-life balance and keep a high level of productivity. e.g. One of our engineers used to have a 40 minute commute either way morning and evening. Now he works from home and can spend more time with his family instead of in his car.

It also lets us hire from all over the World. Our full-timers are all in the USA and we have people in Ohio, Florida, Maine, Washington and Tennessee. So it's a really diverse group but we're also very tight knit even though some of us have never met in person yet. Several in our team work in small towns so they enjoy a slower pace and more quiet time which (coming from a small town myself) I think lends itself to solving complex problems.

I'd agree that it's all or nothing with remote teams or you risk alienating half your workforce.

The best advice I can give any company going remote is to get Slack or an equivalent like IRC. It does a fine job of replacing the day to day contact you have with team members. Also twice weekly all-hands calls to sync up are great - we do voice not video and we go around the room and everyone updates us on what they're working on. In a way we have a greater sense of what everyone is doing than some brick and mortar companies I've worked for.

I think for software businesses remote working will be the way everyone works 20 years from now. It'll take a while for larger companies to make the shift because there is no very large company that does this yet but there will be and they'll prove the model and the imitators will follow.

It's also way better for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER36> Tried reading this on my phone, got three paragraphs in and then got slammed with a full screen advert for buffer.com. I mean, what's the point in advertising the site that you are already on?

I have no idea what the rest of the post was about but I'm pretty sure that I never want to deal with buffer.com again.

</comment><comment><USER37> _we noticed that office space was a not-insignificant element of our overall expenditures each month—more than we paid for health insurance, or advertising and marketing._

Office space cost them 2.1% of all of their monthly costs.

This is "not-insignificant"

Am I reading this right? If anything, they are under-paying for their office space.

<comment><USER24> I think they obviously were underpaying compared to their total number of employees, since they only had one office in San Francisco, and as far as I can tell they never had more than half of their employees living in SF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here's why: cost!

To be clear, I find it refreshing that they just come out and say it. It seems obvious to me that when you work remotely, you're paying for the office space, and any company that believes the savings in pushing the office-space expense onto the employee outweighs the benefit of holding offices will start moving in this direction. (Since this particular company pays for coworking space, they're not pushing the cost to employees. I'm speaking more generally)

Having worked remotely for a substantial portion of my career, I have found the best for me is a mix of working at home and working from the office. That's my personal feeling, but still I think there are more downsides to remote work than many would like to consider.

<comment><USER39> What are the downsides in your experience?

<comment><USER38> Mostly around communication. Slack and IMs and video chat are great and all, but you can move way more information and have it be received much more clearly in person. There also can be a feeling of isolation, depending on how teams are structured and how many employees at the company are remote.

Also, there is no "going to the bar after work for a couple beers", which for many is fine. But still humans require some measure of being physically near other humans, so you need to be much more proactive about socializing and seeing friends/family. If you aren't diligent about this you can become kind of a hermit. If you have young kids this is probably not a big deal, you'd be too busy anyway.

Plus, like I mentioned before, you're now on the hook for the office space. Working remotely can lead you to justify paying for more house or apartment than you otherwise would have, because "well I need an extra room for my office". The freedom it affords is quite nice, so many would probably be fine with the extra outlay. But you should be clear about what you're paying for, and why.

<comment><USER11> Hey there. Those are some awesome points you make and something we definitely try to be mindful about at buffer. Before I jump into them I'd love to note something about the parent post which talks about cost being the reason. While cost was definitely something looked at, I feel like the overall decision was much greater than that. It was a commitment to being a fully remote team. Like the post mentions, mixing remote and non remote might not be a great idea since communication can suddenly happen off the remote channels. And that's lost information. (That's just one reason :D ) It's perfectly natural for that to happen and ensuring we all truly embrace remote working was I believe the true deciding factor for this. Cost was mostly an awesome justification point to close the case.

So about the disadvantages :).

Having worked in multiple types of non remote places (closed plan, open noisy, open quiet), my feeling so far is that the information flow has never been inferior. It's been equal and in many cases better. A lot of this boils down to the hiring process that buffer has where over a 45 day trial period, we ensure people can handle this type of work style. A lot of the focus during this period is communication. Even the parts about isolation. We like to ensure that people have found their stride in this aspect and they know how to handle it. So far, I believe it's worked. When I have something immediate to ask, I jump on slack. When I have something I'd like a more asynchronous communication to happen around, we use discourse. Our team discovered that we are more productive by ditching the daily video call in favour of using a daily updated Dropbox paper. So that's how we've tackled this very valid concern and so far, it feels like it's working well.

About being diligent about not turning into a hermit, spot on! Many of the team members take breaks during the middle of the day to shift locations, do a run, or even pop into a fitness training/yoga session. It's encouraged and it works well.

About being on the hook for office space, if a co working location works for you (or sharing office space) buffer even offers to reimburse this (including additional net connectivity that you might need to get to ensure smooth communication as you move around).

So yea, all valid concerns and these are how we move around them. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. It's a lot of work for sure, but we do love it and we all jump in to make sure everyone has a good time. The company is extremely supportive and I think that's essential for remote working environments like this :)

Cheers!

<comment><USER40> Regarding coworking reimbursement, what are the bounds? It's possible that you could easily go over your prior office expense of 7k/mo.

The average WeWork space is 600-900 USD/month for a single-person office in NYC and SF. And there is a lot of turnover amongst coworking businesses that offer space for any cheaper. So, below 600/mo does not seem to be viable, at least in these two markets.

If you offer to reimburse all employees' coworking leases, at an average of 600-900/mo, then your total office expense would exceed your prior 7k/mo after about 10 employees.

Automattic, another distributed company, offers a stipend of 250/mo toward coworking rent. Basecamp (aka 37signals) offers 100/mo. In both cases, these are certainly better than nothing but are only a fraction of the market rate.

[https://remote.co/company/automattic/](https://remote.co/company/automattic/)

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/employee-benefits-at- basecamp-d2d...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/employee-benefits-at- basecamp-d2d46fd06c58#.a642k8k39)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I reading this right that 9 people are making an average of ~222K? _edit: ~290K_

<comment><USER42> [https://open.buffer.com/transparent- salaries/](https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/)

No. It is more than 9 people.

<comment><USER43>
        Dependents: For every person that depends on your income (kids, husbands, wives,
        significant others, grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.) we add an extra $3,000
        per year in salary.

That's not kosher. You're not even technically supposed to ask if your employee has kids or is married.

<comment><USER44> Whoa, I can't believe their lawyers approved that.

Also a good reason I would never work at Buffer (beyond their generally low pay). My pay shouldn't depend on who I support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Could some one explain why accounting/legal and payroll would be 5K per month for a company this size? It seems high to me.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wish world realizes this makes this happen.... I think for manufacturing work and so on it made sense build cities.. now if we make as much as work from home then the villages and towns will keep its face and continue have facilities and will grow. Cities wont be over crowded, less traffic etc.. i think there is value to coming to office and social network and so on but i also it is based habits so once majority works from home (with video etc..) then it will become norm... In countries like India we can easily tap top talent which is actually women(in the schools).

</comment><comment><USER47> I work for myself and finally got an office after 2 years. It's so much better than working from my home. Less distractions and I can completely separate home/work.

When I was working for someone, I hated working from an office because I had no freedom and the bosses/managers constantly watching me. It was stifling and I felt like I was in a prison.

It's funny how things change.

</comment><comment><USER48> I too like many others work from home and to complicate it I own my company... so I have very little separation of work and personal life.

But I love it. One of my favorite things is I can play my own damn music as loud as I want!

And yeah It may not be psychologically ideal but humans are pretty adaptable. You just have to develop new habits and behavior.

Some of the things I do to help the work/life balance:

* My wife calls me at 4:30-5:00pm everyday to tell me to wrap up my shit or else... this is pretty critical as I can easily get in the zone and the heads up expectations for some reason works.

* I try to walk every day on the days I don't lift weights

* I have a home gym. And despite what people think you don't need a lot of space. There are so many space saving products out there (like quickly collapsable pullup/dip bars, weighted vests etc).

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd love to remote work. But I've learned a lot working in the same office as some very talented developers and managers. I'm not sure I'd get that remotely.

</comment><comment><USER50> I like this concept a lot! I'm not sure whether I would give each employee money for coworking space, because I think that would make me feel like I need to choose and commit to a coworking space, since otherwise it would seem that I'm throwing away the money. It would also make it sound like it's compensating for not having an office, which I think is a net win for the people who are going to enjoy working at a company with a remote culture.

<comment><USER51> What about if the company gave each person, let's say, $100 or $150 credit each month towards 'remote work amenities', maybe it has to be approved or expensed, maybe it rolls over, but it's given a very loose definition for anything that could be related to making work easier for you.

So people who care about a separate office could put it towards a coworking space, while others might use it to eat out every day (to get themselves out of the house), and others might use it towards ergonomic chairs/keyboards/etc in the home, another uses it to clean their home once a month, another might use it for a gym membership, essentially whatever is important to the employee to make them feel more comfortable.

Especially expenses that an employee might not be willing to pay for themselves if it was just considered straight up extra income.

<comment><USER50> I like this idea! Also it would be good to pay for external monitors and keyboards. It would probably be best for them to be owned by the company to reduce costs, help with upgrades, and save tax. Maybe this would be a good use of leasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Not long after we tallied up every penny of what your money is used for when > you purchase a Buffer subscription, we noticed that office space was a not- > insignificant element of our overall expenditures each month—more than we > paid for health insurance, or advertising and marketing.

and here is the real point. We can save money.

I think remote options are a great idea. I also think that forcing workers to take their work outside the office is a lousy idea.

</comment><comment><USER53> I worked from home for a couple years. One thing that made it work was having a separate work computer with a separate desk. If I'm sitting in that chair at that desk, I'm at work. If you have family they need to know not to talk to you when you are at work.

</comment><comment><USER54> What do you do if you have a family? I have small kids. No way I could handle working from home.

<comment><USER55> You can create an space/room that family can't enter (at office hours), or if you want an easier route just work from a coffee shop near you.

<comment><USER56> Is it common in the US for coffee shops to have decent wifi? The wifi at Starbucks where I live sucks - you have to keep reconnecting every 30 minutes and even during the 30 minutes it's not very stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> the more startups adopt the open-office model, the more people want to work from anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER58> I work at a fortune 500. Most of the dev team I am on work in the same office, but there is zero benefit to going into the office as most customers and project members are remote. The grey cubicle shreds my sole anyway, I love working from home.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can guarantee that our productivity would drop significantly if everyone at my office started working remotely. Pretty sure this is a bad idea for most companies.

<comment><USER60> Yeah it varies case to case. Some companies are meant to work together. Some are meant to work out remotely. And some can work both ways. And Some can work jointly part from office and part from remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I find it funny that payment fees are double the office rent. And they decide to close the office.

There are no reason why payments over the Internet has to cost that much!

<comment><USER44> There is if you want to have customers.

Unless you're a niche business, you better accept credit cards.

<comment><USER61> It's not like credit companies are shipping gold nuggets across the states when you make an online payment. Money is just an abstract value that exist on a balance sheet.

There is no reason why we can't have fast, low fee, micro-transactions via the Internet.

<comment><USER62> Probably due to the cost of managing the operations including dealing with compliance, fraud, chargebacks, refunds, disputes and suchlike. Also this whole silly rewards points thing that many of the cards seem to do needs to be paid for somehow. And that's just the credit card company, not the processing company taking payment on the internet who will want their cut, and may do their own fraud/refund/dispute handling too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> $6k for legal, payroll and accounting? is this normal for a 6 people company? (I guess it depends on if you retain a legal team)

</comment><comment><USER64> Working in an office is not the real problem. The real problems are the lack of working hours flexibility and commute time.

</comment><comment><USER65> Good, why should we follow? Nahhhh

</comment><comment><USER66> I have often wondered what I would do about the Office Question if I started a company, since any company I might start is very likely to be distributed due to geography (mine and my network's both). Usually I end up with the idea that everyone would work from "home," and would be encouraged to use co-working (company-paid) if they wished; and I might maintain a minimal "HQ" assuming it was more than just me at that location; and I'd build in regular face-to-face team meetings into the business plan, say at least every quarter.

The only problem is, I'm not sure I'd want to work that way myself if I were an employee. I think I'd want an office: preferably one to myself.

I currently work from home, and have previously rented office spaces (both shared and not) at my own expense; and at various times I've worked in the HQ, branch offices, and various combinations of all these things, for a few different tech-related companies.

I would probably rent another dedicated office right now, but my rental apartment has a guest room so it seems decadent. But I'm still tempted, and check the listings every couple of weeks.

I would say that for me, working in software development and also doing "creative" work, having a separate space easily made up in peace of mind and _probably_ in productivity what it cost in money. (In a high-rent zone like San Francisco that probably wouldn't hold.) But I found a coworking space too annoying, and probably would not go back to that if I could avoid it.

I found the big advantages to a rented space were, in order:

1\. Freedom from distractions (usually; neighbors make noise too). 2\. Work- only nature of the space, i.e. you go there _only_ to work. 3\. Ability to set it up as I like (decoration, layout, etc.). 4\. Got my butt out of the house and out amongst the humans more often. 5\. Your feelings about Home don't get so mixed up with your feelings about Work. 6\. You can still opt to work from home when you really feel like it.

Disadvantages vs home office:

1\. "Shared resources" (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) might not live up to your normal standards of utility or hygiene. 2\. Neighbors pay rent too, and are thus unlikely to change their habits at your request. 3\. Expense (though this is very location-dependent). 4\. Commute, while probably a good thing overall, eats time. 5\. Your landlord, like most landlords, may suck.

None of this in any way contradicts the idea of going all-in on remote teams, but it does raise a question: if you're doing it for the competitive advantage of high productivity, might it be better to spend _more_ on offices that are _themselves_ distributed?

(FWIW: Married, no kids, and neither one of us works a 9-5 schedule.)

<comment><USER13> I'd just add that I've worked semi-remote for a good decade--in that I've nominally had an office but between travel and working remotely I've been in the office well under half the time. I don't really have any complaints. I live by myself and have a good office setup--though I mostly use my laptop in various rooms these days.

Having said that, and appreciating that both norms and technology infrastructure are much different than they were when I started in the industry, it's really difficult for me to imagine starting out of school as a remote employee. I think I would have found it enormously isolating and difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Why are people in their own cubicles video conferencing and chatting to others in the same office? Because its convenient and saves time, you on-site proponent hypocrites.

If cost isn't the significant factor to being remote then time and convenience sure is. I have two or three extra hours of productivity not driving into the office (no round trip), settling into a cubicle, chit chatting, picking where to go to lunch and of course avoiding tension headaches and sleepiness from sitting in traffic. I also have time to work out that I didn't before. I'm more balanced in my life. I'm 10 years and going strong remote as a programmer/consultant with tons of energy and free time to do what I want while being highly paid. My wife is at home with me along with my kids and the most driving we do is your typical errands. Cost for me is much lower as we only need one car and I can write off office space in my house.

I have a hypothesis about these studies showing that onsite is better aside from being the business culture propaganda it is: People are generally social creatures and find communication most effective in presence as it strengthens learning via increased dopamine response (reward system), however, the outliers in the bell curve don't need this type of stimulation, in fact it may make them less effective.

Several remote workers I've met over the years along with myself simply don't need that and find video, chat, docs and email more effective in communicating over in-person meetings on whiteboards. As a programmer, I care more about the idea being presented or discussed than the people themselves. I find I personally work much more effectively in my own space and I know the remote teams I've worked with find a similar experience. This is probably the outlier which is why these studies find it more effective to the contrary. It depends on the type of person and that type of person not needing social feedback in- person is more rare. I would say I receive less dopamine overall or find the in-person experience less pleasant because of all the extra overhead (time) needed just to start the day. I simply hate inefficiency and see having to go in as very annoying, it reduces the social benefit to being pointless in my case.

Don't get me wrong, I seem very far from a nerd in person and am very successful socially in general with men and women. I'm the type of guy that tells jokes and has the zinger comebacks always on the tip of my tongue, can get everyone laughing and can communicate very well. The thing is I don't even miss any of this as I can do this on video anyway daily. It is a choice for me to come to the office or not and I simply don't choose to 99% of the time.

I am even thinking the bell curve outliers are starting to move toward the center as older people die off and technology becomes more "real".

</comment><comment><USER68> Awesome. I really wish more companies did this.

</comment><comment><USER69> Um, I feel like this will have repercussions in terms of staff churn rate. Office spaces are one of the definers of culture, and culture is one of the main motivators for staff. I'm certain that remote working suits many people, but I doubt that it will allow a sense of 'loyalty' to arise in the worker.

<comment><USER7> I can't tell if this is satire or not. Office "cultures" that involve inane things like alcoholic drinks, free boutique meals, or dog-friendliness have absolutely nothing to do with getting work done. They are things you have to roll your eyes about and put up with. You can't openly explain how unproductive it is, or you'll be labeled as "not a good culture fit" even if you're great at your job and get along with everyone.

So instead, you have to let your frustrations silently brew under the surface, always wishing your company cared more about employees and gave them adequately quiet and private space to get work done, or gave everyone a raise instead of spending the money on video games, gourmet coffee, etc.

Many engineers, especially experienced ones, are fully aware that all of these fringe "culture benefits" are just utter bullshit, and that they exist to try to hoodwink younger engineers into accepting worthless equity, criminally insane working environments, and exasperating, oppressive work culture that doesn't really permit good work life balance.

They aren't fooled or enticed by them. They simply have to put up with them because it's what _everyone_ is doing. And they have to act like yes-men when people ask if you like the new foosball table or that killer company party. And HR thinks it's really working.

Your employees can't really afford recreation or adequate living space or decent meals based on what they are paid, so instead bring the recreation to work, bring the meals to work, and just have people stay at work all the time.

We're aware of this, and unfortunately until people start telling shitty companies 'no' and insisting on being treated better (or software unionizes) it's not going to improve, and everyone's going to continue having insane shitty working conditions, but paper over it with all smiles about how cool Whisky Thursday is or whatever other bullshit none of us actually care about at all.

<comment><USER70> _You_ don't appreciate office cultures involving alcohol or dog-friendliness, and _you_ roll your eyes and put up with them. Some people _do_ value those things, and they also value having coworkers who value those things, which isn't a surprise because most humans value community (though of course different humans have different ideas about what constitutes community). So when you flat-out lie to your coworkers about your feelings, you're undermining the social fabric, for your pecuniary gain (e.g. because you don't want to be correctly labelled a "bad culture fit", because you like the salary). That deceit is straight-up unethical.

It's also disrespectful to assume that your coworkers don't know what's actually valuable to them. Some people prefer an extra $5k in salary, some people prefer $4k of free meals. Or $6k of free meals that costs the company $3k because of scale. Or whatever. Some people are investing in their long- term growth by deeply immersing themselves in their careers (and perhaps working non-long-term-sustainable hours), and if the company provide some cheap bennies that make that easier to do, so much the better. Yes, the company profits, and no the employee isn't maximizing short-term earnings, but maybe it's still win-win.

If employees _really_ can't afford recreating or adequate living space, then of course that's a problem. I'm skeptical that's a real problem in software, though. And if that problem does exist, btw, then I think the best solution is those employees going and finding careers/lifestyles that fit better.

I want to add that I found this comment particularly startling because most of the comments I most agreed with on this page were also by you, p4wnc6.

<comment><USER71> > You don't appreciate office cultures involving alcohol or dog-friendliness, > and you roll your eyes and put up with them.

I think the OP is complaining about this "culture" being used as a weapon to trick, mislead, and bully people.

> So when you flat-out lie to your coworkers about your feelings, you're > undermining the social fabric, for your pecuniary gain

Any company that forces you to lie about your personal non-work related opinions in order to keep your job is incredibly toxic.

> It's also disrespectful to assume that your coworkers don't know what's > actually valuable to them.

The problem is non-monetary benefits are misleadingly marketed to prospective employees and are thus very hard to evaluate.

For example I've worked at companies that provide free dinner to employees. In reality if you took advantage of these "free" dinners you were expected to work late.

Likewise I've worked at a couple of places that advertise unlimited vacation days. At all of my previous jobs in tech I have had 4-5 weeks vacation per year. So naturally I'm assuming that unlimited is at least as good. In other words taking 5 weeks off over the year shouldn't be a problem at all. Bzzzzt! Wrong.

Likewise many companies say they offer great career progression and training and very few deliver.

It is false advertising. Plain and simple.

Actual free dinner is easily worth $5k/year to me. The ability to take extra vacation days here and there when I feel I need a break is easily worth $10k/year to me. A serious focus on career progression and a focus on training is worth another $10k/year to me.

Naive sheepmullet used to get tricked into giving up $15k in salary thinking he was going to get $25k in benefits (that only cost the company $5k) and everybody would win.

Jaded sheepmullet realises there is a huge asterisk next to most of these benefits and refuses to compromise on salary unless the benefits are written into his contract.

For example I'd love to take a lower salary for a job that offered serious training and skills development. Lets write into my contract that you will provide me 20 days off work for self-study + 100 hours of 1 on 1 mentoring by my manager + a conference budget + a 10% pay increase at the end of each year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Having a look at the company in question, and the products that they produce. I only got as far as the "Diversity Dashboard" to realize that this organization doesnt actually produce anything.

If you don't produce anything real, then you probably don't need any space to do it in.

Meanwhile, the ranks of the unemployed, the hungry, the homeless, and the disenfranchised continue to grow, as any useful capital that remains in circulation is eaten up by these parasitic sectors of the economy.

Im sure that the country has a bright future ahead, where everyone can make a meaningful contribution - such as serving hot dogs and coffee with a smile, or just helping everybody else establish an impressive social media profile.

The rest of the world will be so grateful that they will continue to purchase our debts, extend additional lines of credit, and provide all the manufactured products, food, and energy that we need (but can no longer produce)</comment>


TiDB Binlog is open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pingcap/tidb-binlog <comment><USER2> TiDB developer here, TiDB Binlog is the offical CDC tool for TiDB, it used to be a part of TiDB Enterprise Edition. The TiDB Binlog component is used to collect the transaction log of TiDB and synchronize it to the downstream in real time, such as TiDB/MySQL/Kafka. This component is similar in function to MySQL's master-slave replication. It collects the binlogs generated by each TiDB instance and sorts them by the time of transaction commit, and globally and orderly synchronizes the data downstream. With TiDB Binlog, data can be synchronized to other databases in real time, as well as TiDB incremental backup and recovery. As one of the core components of TiDB, TiDB Binlog has been running stable for a long time in the production environment of hundreds of users. We are very happy to be able to open source this and help more users.</comment>


No-reboot patching comes to Linux 4.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-reboot-patching-comes-to-linux-4-0/ <comment><USER2> More info here: [http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/634649/d31644d65227ead6/](http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/634649/d31644d65227ead6/)

TD;DR: There are still issues to work out, and working live patching might not be in for 4.0.

> "So, while it is still possible that the kernel will have an essentially > complete live-patching feature by the end of the year, it may happen rather > closer to the end of the year than the developers involved might have hoped > for."

</comment><comment><USER3> Live patching has its serious critics, and it is also not nearly finished "I think they are fundamentally misguided in both implementation and in design, which turns them into an (unwilling) extended arm of the security theater." [1]

[1] [http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/634649/f6a2aa1f39c538b7/](http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/634649/f6a2aa1f39c538b7/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link! Reading that, it looks pretty pessimistic actually. There seems to be nowhere near a clear path forward for how to actually do this.

One concern is that stack traces are "best-effort" and not guaranteed to work. Isn't there a way to force them to work, by disabling some stack-related optimizations (like no-omit-frame-pointer)? I imagine there would be a little slowdown, but maybe worth it for the ability to do quick stacktrace-based live patching?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bizarre to think that at the time nobody stopped Oracle from picking up Ksplice (they offered rebootless security patches for all the larger distros back in what, 2009?). I really loved their service because it meant I could keep my half million or so terminals in gnu screen open for months.

(Also, their blog was great - see eg this really scary proof-of-concept of what you can do when you know how to live-patch a kernel [https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/hosting_backdoors_in_...](https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/hosting_backdoors_in_hardware) )

<comment><USER6> Dare I ask how having half a million terminals open in screen is useful in any way?

<comment><USER5> Ok, not really half a million. Maybe 20 or so :) That's still a lot of state to lose for a kernel-upgrade reboot.

I guess it's a style of working. If you need to ask, that probably means you're not the kind of person who cares about the advanced tab-grouping features in firefox either, and you probably also never have so many different paper files open on your desk that you can't find space for your laptop? I'm not sure I can explain, and certainly not defend it - you might call it "organised chaos" :)

In any case, it's all state, and it doesn't all fit in your head. And a reboot wipes it out!

<comment><USER7> Do you know of any decent way to save the layout / history of each term window? Or more generally, the state of X desktop, to be able to reload later / have several "workspaces" set up for different sets of tasks?

<comment><USER8> There is also Tmux resurrect that you might take a look: [https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect](https://github.com/tmux- plugins/tmux-resurrect)

<comment><USER9> +1 for Tmux Resurrect. Pretty convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But the Kernel is not the only reason, a system has to be restarted. What about changed dynamic libraries? It can be a mess to fiddle out, which processes has to be restarted, so a reboot is normally the best solution for critical patches (eg. in the glibc).

<comment><USER11> I agree. Especially stuff like init, or non obvious non-trivial system services (and, of course, in the case of these distros, systemd).

<comment><USER12> Supposedly systemd has a "restart in place" option. But if it fails you are staring at a reboot anyways.

<comment><USER13> Hasn't failed for me so far.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps, but the fact that it _could_ fail means that you have to be prepared for a server outage when you attempt it anyway. In which case... the utility of 'rebootless patching' goes down a lot, because why not just reboot it?

<comment><USER15> Because there's less downtime in the vast majority of cases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _One reason to love Linux on your servers or in your data-center is that you so seldom needed to reboot it. True, critical patches require a reboot, but you could go months without rebooting._

Doesn't seem so lately. I haven't actually plotted it but seems like kernel security updates drop every few weeks these days.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if it might be an issue with recent kernels (in the sense of not being out for a while).

I recall running some form of "stable" red hat without rebooting for very long time years ago, while my ubuntu LTS from last year has a "System restart required" MOTD every other week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there any solution for processes using obsolete libraries? It's a pain to figure out how to restart all of them without rebooting.

lsof | grep lib | egrep '(DEL|deleted\\))'

<comment><USER19> If you are on Debian, you could try checkrestart

<comment><USER18> Ah, I'm on CentOS (RHEL), which seems to lack an equivalent.

EDIT: Note that the key feature is assistance in restarting! Which the debian gizmo does. Just detecting can be done by the lsof pipe I posted.

<comment><USER20> RHEL 7 has 'needs-restarting' FWIW

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does this mean on the VPS front? Will EC2, Rackspace, and Linode be able to patch Xen or KVM without rebooting all their clients now?

<comment><USER22> My understanding of all the kernel splicing technologies is that it will depend heavily on the nature of the patch.

<comment><USER23> I also feel the same.

If the patch consists of executables that are in use, then it has to give prompts to admins on the usage and to patch it later.

Another concern may be, system may start patching and meanwhile, user starts related applications and it may make whole system unstable and unusable.

I guess, before patching, users need to be stopped till patching is completed successfully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems like a bit of a smell. The desire for no-reboot patching stems from the fact that reboots are painful. But since hardware and software failure is an inevitable fact of life, it seems like it would be better to make reboots less painful, rather than try to make them less frequent.

This is the idea underlying crash-only software:

[http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/](http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Ironic while the kernel gains the ability to patch without rebooting as the same time, systemd makes it mandatory to reboot after each update.

<comment><USER26> Why does systemd make a reboot necessary?

<comment><USER27> It doesn't, GP has forgotten about `systemctl daemon-reexec` and `kill 1`.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems like it will be really useful for servers---I wonder how much it will matter for desktops though. Logging out and logging back in seems like a requirement for xorg, groups, etc. While it isn't a reboot, it still kills my windows and thus my workflow.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always wondered what something like CoreOS uses to "switch" kernels in a live system - is that also something like ksplice or a different technology?

<comment><USER30> I believe that CoreOS can use kexec to update the kernel. kexec basically looks the same as a reboot except instead of stopping fully, and going through the BIOS/bootloader again (which can take a long time on server-grade hardware), the old kernel 'execs' the new kernel and boots userspace back up.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember talking to a rep at Morgan Stanley that was explaining to me that you can perform patches on kdb as well so that you have zero downtime. Although, I believe that was implemented a bit differently where you have a compiled program and the patch that is read by an interpreter. I didn't get down to learning how it would eventually take the interpreted patches to be part of the compiled binary.

</comment><comment><USER32> For those interested, here's a very nice presentation on kGraft by Jiri Slaby (Suse): [https://kernel-recipes.org/fr/2014/patcher-le-noyau-en- temps...](https://kernel-recipes.org/fr/2014/patcher-le-noyau-en-temps-reel/)

Note: the page is in French, but both the presentation and the slides are in English.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article's title really ought to include a hyphen: "No reboot patching" reads very differently from "No-reboot patching". The former suggests that this feature ("reboot patching") did not make it into Linux 4.0, while the latter accurately suggests that the feature called "no-reboot patching" _is_ (edit: or may be) included in Linux 4.0.

<comment><USER34> Thanks, we updated the title.</comment></comment>


Anti-vaccination stronghold hit with worst chickenpox outbreak in decades - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/19/anti-vaccination-stronghold-hit-with-worst-chickenpox-outbreak-in-decades/ <comment><USER2> A little info for any carers of children with chickenpox. The scabs can allow skin bacteria to infect the child. This may present as a swelling around the scab. It can become life threatening as it can quickly progress to septicaemia (sepsis) in a matter of hours.

It's rare enough that Accident & Emergency may not recognise it as they'll only have a handful of cases in a year in a middle-sized city. There could be a delay in giving that huge cocktail of antibiotics that are going to be required.

The high-dendency unit is a scary place.

<comment><USER3> That has essentially nothing to do with chickenpox.

Suppose the kid skins his knee. The scabs can allow skin bacteria to infect the child. This may present as a swelling around the scab. It can become life threatening as it can quickly progress to septicaemia (sepsis) in a matter of hours.

Yep. Same with mosquito bites, paper cuts, and slivers. You could DIE!!!!! Well, you could. You really could.

<comment><USER2> Think about: (a) the number of wounds, (b) the age of the child and (c) that they are already ill. Also consider the very serious consequences (death). That increase in the hazard _and_ the potential for serious illness is what makes this a real risk.

In the UK we don't find it economic to vaccinate the whole population for chickenpox but if it's an option to pay for it then it would be sensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sad that people look at this and just say "silly anti-vaxxers". The proper response is "How can parents get with endangering the lives of their own and their neighbor's children?"

<comment><USER5> or even further, "what is making these parents make the choice to not vaccinate children?". Is it education? is it distrust of the system?

<comment><USER3> In this case, parents are educated by experience actually getting chickenpox. Although horrible complications are indeed possible, the risks are really being blown out of proportion. Chickenpox vaccination is more about pharmaceutical companies and missed school days.

There is also plenty of distrust. This is to be expected, given the well-known existence of lobbying by for-profit pharmaceutical companies that are legally protected from all liability. Specific complaints are that vaccines are manufactured using tissue cultures from aborted babies, that some of the diseases aren't even present in the USA (can vaccinate if they come back), that disease risks are overstated (given modern care and general health), that vaccine risks are understated (the window of time for a vaccine injury to be legally accepted is too narrow), and that pharmaceutical companies refuse to offer some of the vaccines in single-disease form.

For example, one of those combo vaccines (I think the MMR or DTAP) is a problem for somebody I know. A single component of the vaccine is made from tissue culture that originates from an aborted baby. The kids would be vaccinated for the other diseases if it were possible to get separate vaccinations in the USA. Japan has separate vaccinations available, but a trip to Japan is a major undertaking.

Some people are resistant to a hard sell. The supposed "education" to push for vaccination is always very one-sided. People can see it. The harder the push, the more suspicion is generated. It's sort of like the car dealer experience.

<comment><USER4> Good points and well laid out. I don't quite get the DVs.

One point I'd make, about the "tissue culture that originates from an aborted baby" vaccine. According to [1], the MMR vaccine:

"The viruses are cultured in aborted fetal tissue cells. The cells were obtained more than 50 years ago, as a result of elective abortions"

There are no new fetal tissues being "harvested" (I know that's not the proper term, forgive me) to make more vaccines. They are keeping cultures donated fifty years ago growing.

I can understand people not liking the hard-sell on vaccines, but what I can't wrap my head around is how much effort should have to go into the argument "give your kids these shots so a horrific number of children don't make it to 15". The CDC has a broad info page, but one point comes across crystal clear to me (even specifically about the MMR vaccine):

"An epidemic of rubella (German measles) in 1964-65 infected 12½ million Americans, killed 2,000 babies, and caused 11,000 miscarriages. Since 2012, 15 cases of rubella were reported to CDC." [2]

1: [https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-vaccines-contain- aborted-f...](https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-vaccines-contain-aborted- fetal-tissue-260337) 2: [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac- gen/whatifstop.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is pay-walled. Here is an alternative: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-46267038](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46267038)

</comment><comment><USER7> Love seeing all the hate here. Pretty sure all of us grew-up in the era where we contracted chicken-pox. We took an oatmeal bath, spent a few days at home, and all was well again.

<comment><USER8> My sister was sick enough from chicken pox that her doctor told her to take aspirin. She died about a week later from Reye's Syndrome. So no, we were all not well again.

<comment><USER3> Blame that death on the doctor being unaware of problems with aspirin. (many decades ago?) Chickenpox barely had anything to do with the death; many ordinary illnesses would give the same result.

<comment><USER2> A quick check of what Reye's Syndrome was would have told you that it is both associated with chickenpox and the first paper to make the link to aspirin was in 1989 (add time for that information to be fully understood and disseminated).

<comment><USER3> It's also associated with the flu and, generally, with upper respiratory tract infections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Theres a chickenpox vaccine? It's not part of the childhood vaccination program here in the UK.

<comment><USER10> Interesting - it's part of the routine childhood schedule in the US but not in the UK. From NHS: "Why isn't the chickenpox vaccination part of the routine childhood immunisation schedule?"

[https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox- vaccin...](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine- questions-answers/#why-isnt-the-chickenpox-vaccination-part-of-the-routine- childhood-immunisation-schedule)

<comment><USER11> Paraphrased: Herd immunity created by most people getting the chicken pox vaccine would make it less likely for people who did not get the vaccine to get chicken pox early in life, leaving them susceptible to contracting it later in life.

It sounds like those people should _also_ get vaccinated, rather than not requiring anyone to be vaccinated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> meanwhile in the UK we have actual chickenpox parties to try and spread the infection to as many children as possible while they are still young enough that it doesn't cause the complications it does when you reach adulthood...

[https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens- health/...](https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/why- are-children-in-the-uk-not-vaccinated-against-chickenpox/)

<comment><USER13> It was the same in the US until the vaccine came out. Seems these parents aren't only dumb enough the be anti-vaxxers, they're also dumb enough to not even do the things everyone did before the vaccine existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "We find that our parents are highly motivated to choose exactly what they > want for their children. We, as a school, do not discriminate based on a > child's medical history or medical condition."

Being French, this seems really mindless to me. If schools truly care about the children they are educating, they should require vaccination and explain to the parents why not vaccinating their kids is dangerous for them and the others. School is a place to learn and acquire knowledge, it shouldn't be complacent with anti-scientific belief.

</comment><comment><USER15> I couldn't find if the outbreak is also affecting people who were previously vaccinated. This would give details on how effective vaccination really was, i.e., if vaccination alone was sufficient to prevent some people from getting infected and how many of the unvaccinated was infected.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that's the point of the article. For efficacy you'd need a properly controlled trial comparing vaccinations, _not_ deliberatly failing to vaccinate and thus endangering children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's no way we can reach these idiotic parents or help their unfortunate kids.

For those of us with sense, how can we find out if we happen to be in one of those "strongholds" and make sure our school district doesn't go that way? Are exemption% publicly listed?

I may not be able to stop someone endangering their kids and others nearby, but if I can stop it happening near me (or move away in worst case), I want to know.

</comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see natural selection working as intended.

<comment><USER18> eh, it's usually not the anti vaxers, but their children, who suffer. so it's not some cosmic justice, just a sad case of parental neglect

<comment><USER19> Well, if you offspring don't make it until the age they can reproduce, it's still natural selection...</comment></comment></comment>


I'd rather live in a one-button world - <AUTHOR> http://john-sheehan.com/post/16934101203/id-rather-live-in-a-one-button-world <comment><USER2> I'm with Jeff Atwood on this one. I've never used a WP7 phone, but it sounds like they just kinda screwed up software part of the back button implementation. That doesn't make it a bad idea, just poorly executed.

From the Android side, I love having a back button. There are a few apps here and there that don't behave quite as they should with it (embarrassingly, the GMail app is one of them), but overall I much prefer having it. Whenever I'm using an iOS device I just feel like I have a very weak amount of control over navigation.</comment>


Samsung crams 30TB of SSD into a single 2.5-inch drive - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/samsung-crams-30tb-of-ssd-into-a-single-2-5-inch-drive/ <comment><USER2> So why have hard drives stalled out for the last 3 years? An 850 evo is still the "premier" 2.5" drive and still goes on sale for the same lows it did years ago - the best deals are around $240/TB. The new nvme drives are a markup from there. 3TB has had low prices of $50-70 for over four years now but 4+TB never creeps lower. About $20 a TB is the best mechanical storage you can get since like 2014.

When are we going to see a $100 6TB drive? 8TB? It seems like density has just stopped on both fronts for practical purchases. 10 years ago a terabyte cost $200 - 2 years later it was $100, and 2 years after that $50. But now, the 8+TB drives just stay at that $200 price point. SSDs fell off a cliff in price from 2011 to 2015 and then just completely stopped.

Its not a good feeling when it seems Moore's Law has come to a screeching halt across and kinds of components. RAM is 3x more expensive today than 2 years ago. CPUs might see 5% improvement year over year. There hasnt been a substantial new GPU series in almost 3 years.

Go back and tell someone in 2006 that in 2016 the PC you build will he just as good as the one in 2018 while bring cheaper and they'd think its impossible progress could grind to such a halt do fast after 40 years of lockstep improvement.

<comment><USER3> I think it's maybe three things.

1\. The industry is retooling from HDD To SDD, but they apparently can't keep up with demand for SSD's. So the prices are artificially high.

2\. Demand for faster, denser, and lower power SSD's are coming from the cloud providers. So rather than incremental price decreases over time, we're seeing the prices are staying the same, and we're getting incremental technology improvements. The V-Nand technology is the hot new thing, enabling 2TB of storage on a single chip.

3\. There's no more serious innovation on the HDD's since SSD's will likely eclipse HDD's in 2021.[1]

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds- in-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds-in-pcs- global-shipments-2012-2017/)

<comment><USER4> Can we really use SSD for long term storage?

<comment><USER5> Long term storage (archive) of sequential data is still being done on tapes in many circumstances. Tapes are more reliable than hard drives, cheaper, and have a faster write speed.

Sony announced their highest density tape at 201Gbit/in^2 last year.[0]

You can use SSD for long-term storage assuming the data is stored on redundant drives and drive health is checked. It's really only cost effective if you need the data frequently or if you are only archiving a small (1pb or less) amount of data.

[0] [https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/inde...](https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/index.html)

<comment><USER6> Just to clarify: you're saying that 1pb - 1 petabyte - 1000 TB - is small?

<comment><USER7> We're very close to being able to fit 1PB of flash in a 1U server. So yes, 1PB is a small-scale archival project. Current generation tape libraries start around 1PB and scale up from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Performance figures given in the article are about same as those for Samsung 960 Pro NVMe [1]. Would have expected this to have an opportunity for higher speeds by splitting the write/read to multiple chips.

40GB of DDR is pretty interesting. Add there a battery or suitable capacitor and you could use that as a reliable write cache. With SSDs I guess you could design it so that the capacitor would have enough power for flushing the data from the cache to the flash chips even if external power is lost.

[1] [http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/co...](http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960/)

<comment><USER9> Jesus, I remember being blown away by 16MB of HDD storage years ago. I am older than dirt! Now it's 30TB, and solid state... no flying cars, but the future has definitely come through in some regards.

Edit: These responses have filled me with a really pleasant nostalgia. It's a pleasure to have such a simple, yet profound shared experience; the "We'll never fill _that_ up!..." club. Drinks are on me.

<comment><USER10> I remember my father installing a 250 MB "hardcard" into our computer at home, and marveling at how we'd NEVER fill it up.

<comment><USER11> It's an interesting thing, because it's naive in a very particular way, but it's also more true than most people would guess.

And that's photography.

A single photograph requires a bunch of megabytes to store properly. Videos require tens of thousands of frames.

If you were working with text, it would still be easy to fit everything you needed in 250MB.

<comment><USER12> There were no consumer digital cameras when 250MB drives were common. The closest, Sony Mavicas, were still writing to analog media. Kodak was still using bulky briefcase storage units with their own hard drives. Not something the everyday "naive" computer user of the era would be investing in.

<comment><USER13> The Casio QV-10a was released in 1995 - that was a consumer digital camera. Although I wouldn't even call 250MB "common" then based on historical prices and my memories.

<comment><USER12> In '95 consumer grade computers were shipping with between 512MB and 1GB. 250 MB was common in the early 90's before the first wave of consumer digital cameras.

<comment><USER13> > In '95 consumer grade computers were shipping with between 512MB and 1GB.

Do you have a source for that? I bought a consumer grade computer in 1995 and it only had 120MB of disk space. And the historical prices suggest that 250MB was beyond consumer prices until ~1995.

[http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte](http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per- gigabyte) suggests 250MB would have been >$500 until 1994. Which is nowhere near "consumer" price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Given that their price for their other enterprise disks seems to be about $800/TB, tacking on a premium for the new tech and such, I'd guess the price will be close to $30K.

But man, if I had an extra $120K to blow, I'd totally build a 90TB NAS out of these.

<comment><USER15> Is there any particular reason why you'd need SSD speeds in your NAS? im assuming this would be for home use.

If you say just for fun, then that's a valid reason :-)

<comment><USER16> With gigbit internet I realized the HDD write speed is my limiting factor. It's taking siginificantly longer to extract my compressed files than it takes to download it.

Adding an ssd as a staging drive for downloads and using it for transcoding has given me a good boost.

<comment><USER17> I just bought the Thunderbolt 3 Drobo, and realize it's completely pointless without SSDs. It advertises 40 Gbit speeds when using an active Thunderbolt 3 cable, but only gets about 200 MB/s with normal drives. I could probably get close to that with the USB drobo.

<comment><USER18> Yes. But you're totally future-proof now. And you can speed it up a ton if you throw in a single fast SSD as the cache disk.

Then in 4-8 years, when the price/performance works for you, you can throw in all SSDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> With same density, it should be possible to pack a Petabyte into 3.5" drives. Wonder why Intel went with a new "Ruler" physical format for its Petabyte drive instead of 3.5" format.

<comment><USER20> Like everything silicon, I'd bet heat dissipation. As you make things more dense and thicker like that you end up needing more space just to get rid of the heat. Intel's ruler gives a better surface area to volume ratio to get rid of the heat. The 3.5" form factor (and even the 5.25") makes a lot more sense for rotating platters since those scale linearly with vertical space (or at least close to it) because they're not dissipating heat off the platters like you need to with ICs.

<comment><USER7> Yep, heat dissipation is one of the big factors. The other is that 2.5" SSDs mean you can only easily use the front 6" of your server for hot-swappable storage. The Intel Ruler/EDSFF Long form factors let you devote much more of the total server volume to storage that's still accessible from the front of the machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Being able to set it up as 10TB with 3x the life would be even better, because it makes other write-intensive applications feasible with an SSD, with the firmware handling the wear accounting in the background.

ETA: Specifically, having the option to do so, and having it happen transparently in firmware.

<comment><USER22> The market doesn't want products advertised this way. Setting up a 30TB SSD as a 10TB with 3X the endurance is an easily solvable issue in host software. But selling a 30TB as a 10TB, while demanding 3X the price of a 10TB despite the high endurance is a gargantuan challenge

<comment><USER23> I dunno, we on the Enterprise side have always ponied up for the longer- lasting and far more expensive SLC based drives.

<comment><USER24> I know two datacenters in switzerland that instead go "the cheap way". For them, if a drive lasts 4 years instead of 8, it doesn't really matter, as in 4 years, drives will de better and consume less.

Your redundancy must be top notch though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Must brew cofee and cook toast too:-)

How many kilowatts?

<comment><USER26> The 16TB unit says 12W when active. Probably not much over 20W under use for this one at most. That would put it in the range of a 15k scsi hdd.</comment></comment>


Event Discovery Still Sucks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/eventzio-blog/event-discovery-still-sucks-55c60423daab

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats true. Hopefully EventzIO will solve this problem. All Technology / Startups / Business Conferences in our pocket :)</comment>