Kubernetes 1.11 includes In-Cluster Service Load Balancing and CoreDNS - <AUTHOR> https://kubernetes.io/blog/2018/06/27/kubernetes-1.11-release-announcement/ <comment><USER2> Is K8S ever suitable for small business? K8S is only supported on expensive hosts (AWS, GCE, Azure), is it possible to spin it up on hetzner/ovh or another provider that is cheaper than AWS, possibly even on my own hardware? How hard it would be to make the simplest reliable prod environment on bare metal with K8S?

I'm at the moment running 1 (tech) man SaaS with minimum profits, here are my goals (1,2,3 are essential):

1\. Be cheap - It's a side project, I don't need to sacrifice money for speed as I enjoy what I'm doing.

2\. Automatic failover (This should cover majority of downtime imho)

3\. Backups

4\. Automatic scalability (CPU over 95% for last 2 minutes or smth like that? add new containers pls)

5\. Load balancing (using erlang so this can be handled on application level if nodes can see eachother)

6\. If gitlab autodevops can work out of the box that would be fantastic

Unrelated to above: \- How are K8S backups handled? I spoke with a friend (K8S fanboy) and he said you have several containers spawned of the DB and they are all interconnected. If one of them fails another one has the data. This seems stupid to me, what if the whole zone fails and all DB containers are shut off? \- Same friend asked me: "What restarts your services if they fail?". "init.d". "And what if the machine fails?" Well I gotta restart it manually. "You see, you should use K8S orchestrator". "What restarts K8S orchestrator if it fails?" <Silence> ^ I have a feeling big part of community is like that, "super cool feature of K8s you should use it" but there is no connection to the rest of the context.

Ps. conversation was in another language so I'm not sure I used the right terms eg. "K8S orchestrator"

<comment> Birch-san I recommend Rancher for the small business that wants to roll their own Kubernetes for free. Rancher 2 is a bit underdocumented right now, but we had great success with Rancher 1.

Your bare metal hosts can be provisioned as Rancher hosts, which are dumb slaves managed by a Rancher server.

From the Rancher server, you can trivially express "I want this Docker container deployed across n Rancher hosts" or "I want 1 instance of this docker container across all Rancher hosts with the tag "has public IP".

You can group your Rancher hosts into Sandbox and Prod Rancher environments. You can easily install Rancher's load balancer service on them, or mount network storage, or register secrets upon them (like private Docker registry keys).

It also gives you health checks, host monitoring, and zero downtime redeploys. Super easy to use from the UI or CLI. Easy to install, too.

<comment><USER3> I currently use kubeadm for our small business cluster. 1 master and 2 nodes. We haven't put a ton into it but it seems to be running pretty well so far. Have done an upgrade from 1.7 to 1.9 without much/any downtime. Is there much more of a learning curve with Rancher?

<comment> Birch-san Rancher 1 is extremely easy to learn. Generally you do everything from the UI (I only use the CLI to view combined logs). High-availability is easy too; they provide a load-balancer (haproxy) with good UI integration.

Rancher 2 has a nicer UI and is more tightly related to Kubernetes. But there are moreorless zero docs, so be careful.

With either version: it's trivial to grab the master and node Docker images, and deploy them to your local machine to have a play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always liked how K8S release notes come with a series of blog posts doing a deep dive into each feature. But when I think back on it, because they come out after the release announcement I end up forgetting about them until the next release.

I wonder if releasing the posts in the period leading up to the release would be better, or if that would just lead to artificial delays on the actual release.

</comment><comment><USER5> Tangentially related but hopefully someone one HN can help me out.

I want to try using Kubernetes with my current project. I've built it using Docker and docker-compose. My compose file currently has four services (web, db, dbadmin, and reverse proxy). I am using a flask app for the web container, postgres for db, pgadmin for the dbadmin, and traefik for the reverse proxy.

I am currently running the above stack on a single host using `docker-compose up`. I like how docker-compose creates a network for me where I can access other containers by their container name.

For my own education, I would like to try deploying this with Kubernetes. Specifically I am interested in learning how to spin up multiple web containers that all talk to the same postgres container.

Can someone let me know if I am thinking about Kubernetes correctly, and if so some good resources for me to learn how to deploy by stack with it?

<comment><USER6> Try maybe first [https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose](https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose) ?

<comment><USER5> Interesting, thanks for the pointer I will check that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Asked this on the other posting of this but, does anyone know when Kubernetes will stabilise their IPv6 support? Anyone using / planning to use this in production?

</comment><comment><USER8> Does the "IPVS-based in-cluster service load balancing" replace the Kube-proxy iptables load-balancing then?

<comment><USER9> It's an alternative, selectable by changing the proxy-mode flag on kube-proxy. If the iptables implementation is working for you, I wouldn't necessarily jump to it—though note that iptables has a big performance hit when you start getting to hundreds to thousands of overlay IPs and you'll notice it if you manage a mid-to-large sized cluster. Certainly worth playing with (throw it on for a node or two for now), or worth the default for a new cluster, but like with any recently stable option, if it ain't broke …

<comment><USER10> Likely a dumb question (apologies in advance): can that in any way replace the need to spinning a native LoadBallancer on AWS?

<comment><USER11> I don't think this a dumb question, ELBs on AWS are stupid expensive for what they do.

<comment><USER12> I agree it's a reasonable question. And ELBs can be expensive at small scales. They can handle a huge amount of traffic with an exceptional level of reliability, but at small scales there are probably much better options available.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Voldemort is polling better than many Republican presidential candidates - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/09/the-shark-from-jaws-is-polling-better-than-all-of-the-2016-candidates/ <comment><USER2> > To put some context behind these numbers, I ran a few Google Consumer Survey > questions on famous movie villains.

Google Opinion Rewards actually sent me one of these questions on Friday. I'm afraid I didn't have an opinion on the Terminator, having never seen the films, but I still got 17¢ for answering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that they decided to include Obama with a list of 2016 presidential candidates.</comment>


A Marriott employee hit 'Like.' Then China got mad. - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit-like-then-china-got-mad-1520094910 <comment><USER2> > never thought a $14-an-hour job running social-media accounts for Marriott > International Inc. would require him to know global politics

Oh, well. Bet they can get a Ph.D. in international affairs for 12.

It's tough out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know what are the job requirements/qualifications for running social- media accounts for companies like Marriott?

<comment><USER4> From a Marriott job listing for Social Media Manager;

2-year degree from an accredited university in public relations, communications, marketing, journalism or a related professional area; 4 years' experience in Marketing Communications and Social Media.

OR

4-year Bachelor's degree in public relations, communications, marketing, journalism or a related professional area; 2 years' experience in Digital Marketing Communications and Social Media.</comment></comment>


In Memory of Joe Polchinski, the Brane Master - <AUTHOR> https://profmattstrassler.com/2018/02/05/a-brilliant-light-disappears-over-the-horizon-in-memory-of-joe-polchinski/ <comment><USER2> Oh no.... I didn't know he got brain cancer. Some of the best and most entertaining physics lectures I've found on Youtube were by him.

.</comment>


The Billion-Dollar Telescope Race - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/the-billion_dollar-telescope-race

<comment><USER2> One of the reasons that there wasn't much in the way of development of larger telescopes in the late 1970s and 1980s was the development of the CCD. Prior to the CCD, astronomers used photographic plates to take their images, and photographic plates have horrendous efficiencies. A typical photographic plate will only register a few percent of the incident photons. A CCD, however, has an efficiency very close to 100% (except at really low wavelengths). Almost immediately after its invention, new instruments with CCDs were built to be put on existing telescopes. [1] Because the efficiency was a factor of ~30 larger, it was as though you had quintupled the diameter of your telescope. There wasn't much of a reason, then, to invest in huge new telescopes when you could effectively have a huge new telescope just by building a CCD detector.

Also, as a graduate student at Ohio State I would be remiss if I neglected to mention that the Large Binocular Telescope was originally planned to be built at the same time as Keck. It was originally conceived to be larger and with OSU providing a large fraction of the funding. OSU's president, Gordon Gee, cut funding for the project in the early 90's, however, which threw the project into disarray. Most of the faculty in the Ohio State astronomy department resigned in protest which is why Ohio State has had a department with relatively young faculty. Due to problems funding the project and technical difficulties (putting two very large mirrors on a common mount turned out to be harder than anticipated), the telescope had to be scaled back and it only saw first light in 2005.

[1] As an aside, astronomy has been one of the major drivers of improvements in CCD technology. CCDs in consumer devices are generally used in photon-rich environments and the users can tolerate a lot of noise in their images. Astronomers, however, demand very low noise and use their CCDs in photon-poor environments, and the production of these kinds of devices has required major improvements in CCD technology.

<comment> brave-new I have a 130mm (5") Newtonian Reflector telescope, do you have an advice on a good CCD detector to use with it?

<comment><USER3> If you have a DSLR you can get pretty good results with that. You will absolutely have to learn how to use a stacking program for great images as qwerta said. If you could afford it you would want a super chilled (80K is common due to LN2 cooling) detector for low noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can check out the following SVG to see a comparison of telescope sizes:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Compariso...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg)

</comment><comment><USER5> Several years ago I backpacking in the Atacama desert in Chile. That's where a lot of telescopes are built because it's so dry. I stopped in one city and I tried to find an observatory through my hostel that took visitors but had no luck. Guess whatever tour was available wasn't popular enough. Has anyone had any luck in Chile?

<comment><USER6> ESO offers guided tours of their Paranal and La Silla observatories.

[http://www.eso.org/public/about- eso/visitors/](http://www.eso.org/public/about-eso/visitors/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's pretty impressive. Given the size and importance of the mirrors, I wondered how they actually clean them. Came across this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkV8RRRu7gE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkV8RRRu7gE)

</comment><comment><USER8> Will any of these new scopes be able to image exoplanets?

</comment><comment><USER9> The GMT telescope has mirrors 8.4 meters across with a fault tolerance of 19 nanometers. If you were to scale that mirror up to the size of Earth, the biggest imperfection would be just 2.8 centimetres high. That is _amazing_.

<comment><USER10> For another perspective on that size, it's a mirror between 4 and 5 times your height, to a fault tolerance of less than 200 hydrogen atoms (or about 60 SiO2 molecules., if I have my calculations right)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does the mirror have to be round?

Can you make an extremely long, but not very tall mirror? Seems like that would be easier to build.

<comment><USER12> Why would that be easier to build?

Edit: I'm asking because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be.

<comment><USER11> Less weight to support per ground area, the mirror would not sag as much.

<comment><USER12> Do you mean building a 5 meter wide oblong mirror instead of a 5 meter wide circle? That might be easier but wold be a far inferior telescope. The amount of light collected goes as the area of the mirror. If you're suggesting keeping the same area but being more oblong, then I don't see any advantages.

<comment><USER11> I did mean the same area. The advantage is that since it is longer it has a larger footprint.

Meaning more support, which to me seems easier to build (mechanically, don't know if the optics themself will be more complicated - that was my question).

<comment><USER12> I think a big challenge would be that it would be much harder to grind the mirror. Round mirrors have the advantage of being somewhat close to a parabola, so you can spin them and use gravity and then just refine from there. The optics also get more complicated.

One key thing that I think would help you here is that the hard parts of building a telescope are the mirror and the instruments, not the mechanical telescope to support it. Supporting a ten meter wide mirror is not too hard compared to making a near-perfectly ground mirror that is ten meters wide or building top shelf instruments to collect and study the light. It's not cheap or anything, but it's not really what's holding back telescopes. You can see this in the new generation of 20-30 meter scale telescopes with multi-mirror designs. The GMT uses several 8 meter mirrors because we can't really make useful mirrors larger than about 10 meters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disappointed the article didn't discuss the pros/cons of earth-based telescopes versus space based. Why build earth based telescopes when you have the atmosphere in the way?

<comment><USER6> It's way cheaper to build ground-based telescopes than it is to build space- based ones (and you can easily upgrade it too). Thanks to advances in adaptive optics you can now get most of the properties of space-based telescopes with ground-based ones (even existing ones).

One major limit here is what the atmosphere absorbs.. so for X-Ray, Far-IR, etc. you will still need space-missions.. that's where the focus is now set mostly at ESA/NASA/etc..</comment></comment>


We're In The Middle Of A Terrible Blubble - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/were-in-the-middle-of-a-terrible-blubble/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Build software that provides value for your customers and their customers so that everyone gets paid and makes money. Repeat for years.

2\. Stay busy and keep learning, but since you know that none of these things really matter, you can ignore all Hacker News posts about them:

      - the bubble
      - the best language to do <x>
      - how to blog about <y>
      - how to tweet about <z>
      - your Facebook prescence
      - why technology <a> is dead
      - how to make Hacker News better
      - how much to pay for a domain name you must have
      - how to "socialize" your app
      - how social apps are changing the world
      - how we are losing our civil liberties
      - what makes Apple so cool (they are, but who cares)
      - what makes Microsoft so lame (they are, but who cares)
      - how to interview (just be yourself)
      - who's hanging out with who (who cares)
      - how to build software without programming
      - how to network (just get out there)
      - how to get rich (do the right things and let that take care of itself)

<comment><USER3>
      - what matters and what doesn't (who cares)

Seriously, and for argument's sake, the "do whatever provides value" mantra is too simplistic and provides no value to entrepreneurs or engineers (or hybrid types) whatsoever. Let alone that it doesn't contradict to any of the "lame" stuff you listed. For example, understanding how Facebook works both at the social level and technically may help you in building something that provides value to 600,000,000 Facebook users.

Finally, listing "how we are losing our civil liberties" somewhere between "who's hanging out with who" and "how much to pay for a domain name" is the best way to bury the remains of our civil liberties.

<comment><USER4> _Finally, listing "how we are losing our civil liberties" somewhere between "who's hanging out with who" and "how much to pay for a domain name" is the best way to bury the remains of our civil liberties._

Thank you for raising this issue. "Who's hanging out with whom" is in the category that's both unimportant and very hard for an individual to change. The loss of civil liberties is a matter where it's very hard for a person to effect change, but it's an extremely important issue. I don't think it's very useful to spend 4 hours per day on the Politics section of Reddit, but to call politics "unimportant" just because it's impossible for an individual (in most cases) to make changes is short-sighted and wrong.

<comment> bjelkeman-again

       The loss of civil liberties is a matter
       where it's very hard for a person to effect change

I disagree.

In short I think good work in software and internet communications tools, like Tor, can actually have a profound effect on shaping government policy. (Tor is one of the darling s/w projects of the Swedish government.)

Slightly longer: I thought it was essentially impossible to influence government policy four or five years ago. I was interested in environmental issues and thought I would have to become a politician to be able to change things (heavens forbid). Then I fell into an opportunity where we started an open source software foundation to build online project, transparency, donation, visualisation tools for development aid.

Fast forward four years and we are working closely with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Get invited to publicly review the work of the Swedish counterpart and sit in on bilateral talks between the USA and the Dutch on aid transparency. I see public policy change before my eyes. Of course, this is not only because something which we did, but we are at the right time and place with the right effort. However, I do know that our work changes the way policy is being shaped.

If you are curious to read more check out a couple of my blog posts:

[http://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/law-is-hard- code-i...](http://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/law-is-hard-code-is- harder-why-new-internet-and-software-architecture-will-define-the-future-of- society/)

[http://wearefuturegov.com/2010/11/19/guest-post-where- open-d...](http://wearefuturegov.com/2010/11/19/guest-post-where-open-data- leads-us/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is actually quite a remarkable piece:

1\. It gently mocks the investors who proclaim "bubble" as a way to bitch and moan over being caught in a price squeeze.

2\. It lampoons the alarmist press accounts of the same "bubble" as a sort of guilt-ridden desire to atone for having so idiotically missed the real bubble of 2000.

3\. It deprecates its own author in two splendid ways (swimming in the bubble froth of holding a worthless vp biz dev position while on the ascendancy and swimming in booze in the aftermath as the illusory fortune took wing and flew away).

4\. It offers some sharp and pithy contrasts between what is in fact happening today (some over-excitement in select tech areas) and what happened in 2000 (spend, spend, spend and to hell with fundamentals), all of which in fact draws a sharp contrast between what was indisputably a bubble back then with what is (likely) not really one today.

5\. And it does all the above with tongue heavily in cheek, right down to the very title ("blubble").

You can love or hate Mr. Arrington, and he is undoubtedly one who provokes strong reactions from others, but his work is anything but routine and, at times, it even soars.

</comment><comment><USER6> Name a company in this "bubble" that has wasted $100 Million dollars like Boo.com or pets.com or $50 Million like flooz without producing even 1% of that in revenue.

If not, then there is _no bubble_. Facebook makes in the ballpark, if not close to, two billion dollars in revenue a year. Hell, even Groupon would be a better buy today than, say, hotmail was, and Groupon got offered 2x the price to be acquired and turned it down. The only thing even _remotely_ close to the bubble of old would be Twitter, and they have 200 million users. Name one service during the dot-com era with anything approaching that number. During dot-com bubble, AOL had the most that I can recall, and their peak was something like 26 million or so.

Repeat, there is no bubble.

<comment><USER7> "The only thing even remotely close to the bubble of old would be Twitter, and they have 200 million users. Name one service during the dot-com era with anything approaching that number."

The raw numbers may have changed (there are more people on the internet now) but the strategy is the same. In the late 90's it was all about eyeballs, actual profit be damned. Nowadays it's all about "social". Twitter, Facebook et al are going down the same road: many ephemeral eyeballs with no discernible path to the kind of profitability tech sector investors expect. They are at best media plays, and over the past 10 years we've seen how unkind the market has been to the likes of AOL and Yahoo.

Groupon may be the standout company of this era (who knows?) but people who boast of Groupon's numbers don't seem to understand that most of the revenue goes into the retailer's pocket. It's an as yet unproven proposition that there's substantial money to be made in dipping into the razor-thin profit margins of struggling local businesses.

We won't know who wasted $100 million+ until it's all over -- that's the thing about bubbles. The oversized VC funds and oversized valuations are relatively recent phenomena and it will likely be at least 18-24 months until the well goes dry. But when you see billion-plus dollar VC funds and a dozen me-too venture backed companies in the mobile photo-sharing space alone, well, it doesn't take an expert to see the froth in the water. Personally, I wasn't alarmed until about six months ago.

Why should any of us care? Because after the party's over the tech sector is in for a rather bad hangover. The jobs and the capital will disappear seemingly overnight. As entertaining as it can be to watch things go boom, I'd much prefer sustainable growth.

<comment><USER8> "most of the revenue goes into the retailer's pocket"

I thought the standard model at Groupon was 50% to Groupon (who carries no inventory, or service costs) and 50% to the retailer (who carries all the costs of the product sold to the customer).

Outside of advertising and sales, Groupon is close to 100% margin (they carry a bit of the per-coupon merchandising and servicing cost)- the retailer carries all the cost of the product that the customer actually buys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Anyone can be a biz dev executive because it's not a real job. It's kind of like sales but you usually don't have any kind of quota. You just work on 'deals.' "

Haha. Love this comment. Mostly true - I know, because I work in biz dev and have worked with a few of the biggest companies in the Valley. Looking forward to eventually having an actual job, but have to admit it's a good gig for now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh man, that burn rate thing is true. Back in '98 or so, when I was living in Bloomington, Indiana, I interviewed with a guy who was forming the "first dot- com in Indiana" (despite the fact that my own vivtek.com dates to 1997, and I'm pretty sure efax.com was based in Fort Wayne). I think it was some kind of real estate site; he was a local ISP.

During the interview, he took a phone call to scream at AT&T about connectivity issues. When it came to money, I named what I thought was a fair market price and he sat there, stunned, and blurted, "You make that much with that site"?

Well. I made that much with consulting work, and so that was kind of the clue for me that this wasn't going to work out. About two weeks later, after not having heard anything from him, I told him as much and asked him to destroy the code samples I'd sent him. He responded that the disrespectful manner in which I'd treated the officers of the company had already led them to decide not to hire me.

But you know? He sure did get his venture capital, apparently in rather large amounts; I heard figures around a million. He moved offices from the building they already had in Bloomington, up to Indianapolis, and later I heard that he'd been advised that their "burn rate" was not high enough. They weren't spending enough money. So they started flying by private jet instead of regular flights, for instance.

Madness.

Yes, he crashed and burned. I don't know what became of him, but when the economy went south a couple of years later and I qualified for EIC, I knew exactly why.

That isn't happening now. Everything I read about startups includes "how to manage your business". People understand business processes, mostly. There is a concept of spending money only if it's actually necessary, not to increase an artificial burn rate metric to impress capitalists that should damn well know better.

My intuition tells me that this isn't a bubble - it's just what we should have done the first time around.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most of the recent VC funded Internet companies that have gone public have never been profitable in their life (which sometimes stretches a decade of existence). For e.g. -

DemandMedia Makemytrip Zillow Envivio

According to a recent WSJ artcile[1], 11 of the 30 tech companies going IPO this year have been in red and 19 reported some profit last quarter.

That is definitely a sign of bubble if we take a cue from the 99-2000 bubble.

[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/19/a-look-at- the...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/19/a-look-at-the-venture- backed-ipo-pipeline/)

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact that it's not like the one from '99 doesn't mean that there's no bubble. One of the reasons bubbles happen is because after each one we are looking for that one but a different one occurs.

</comment><comment><USER13> A better term is "growth phase". This growth phase, like the late '90s, creates new jobs, new technology, and new industries. All of those things are important for a healthy economy. Eventually, some of these new companies will get bought out or go out of business. So what? Everybody is better economically because the founders and investors at least made the effort.

A big factor in the dot-com bubble was a belief in the so-called "new economy", where people, because of the Y2K scare or whatever else, believed that companies didn't need good financials ( <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neweconomy.asp> ). I don't think anybody has any illusion during this growth phase that solid financials aren't important.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting reasoning. A bubble occurs when an economic sector experiences growth that cannot be explained by the fundamentals (supply and demand). Overvaluation is implicit in bubbles. Keep that in mind while reading the following sentence from the article:

"No, the biggest problem [in 2000] was that no one had any idea how to value [tech] companies."

So, the problem with the 2000 bubble was that there was a bubble. However, it's different now because Wall Street knows to look at user-bases and page views, and the companies don't hire as many sales people as they did in 2000. That doesn't seem like a serious analysis of an important topic by an expert.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was re-reading pg's essay and it convinced me to move to the Valley (today's Florence), but now I hear that there could be a bubble and I could be too late. Any advice? (Currently living in Beijing, which is said by some to be China's Silicon Valley, but hey, I don't smell any sign of real innovation here.)

<comment><USER16> If you are doing something important and useful well, where you are and what is going on around you doesn't matter much.

I imagine if you start turning over some rocks in Beijing you will find some interesting innovations. You live in a country with like a zillion people. Somebody over there has to be doing something with social that blows crap like facebook away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This really is the best writing on the current tech economy I've read all year.

Yes, there a growing financial problem in the tech community. No, it it not like the bubble of the late 90's and it's silly to call it such a thing.

I thought Michael conveyed the message about as clear as possible without taking this thing too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER18> Meh... who cares?

Bubble, recession, natural disaster, war, whatever... there is never a "perfect" time to start a business.

If you have a good idea and a repeatable model with an output that costs less to produce then to sell... start the business right now.

Forget about mysterious bubbles that other people are telling you about, get off of your couch and do it. Now.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why does any if this matter, bubble or not? The tech community has spent an inordinate amount of time discussing it. What I see is a lot of companies building businesses the right way -- customers first. If the funding dies down, which it will one way or the other, these companies who have put customers first and will be able to survive. As for the knock-offs and clones, well, if they go away will anyone care?

</comment><comment><USER20> That explains the old "we sell below cost and make up for it in volume" saw.

Always thought it was a joke, not good advice in light on a crazy situation.

</comment><comment><USER21> When I read stuff like this, I feel quite unsure about the truth %:

 _Everyone lost money on every transaction and nobody cared. Because your stock price was tied to revenue, and when you ran out of money raising another hundred million dollars was nothing more than a fancy powerpoint presentation and a month's work._

</comment><comment><USER22> To have a bubble, we need a lot of large and irrational public investments at extreme valuations regardless of profit. At this moment we have extreme valuations and large investments, but "a lot" and "public" are notably absent; we have a relatively small number (a dozen or so) companies with extreme valuations. So it's not a bubble.

That being said, we are still not very far from one, since the only thing preventing the current situation of becoming a bubble is the fact that the biggest players are not on the public market, which is largely limiting availability of their stocks, which are regardless oozing out through secondary markets. So as soon as Facebook or a few smaller tech companies go public, or if the SEC laxes the rules for investing private companies (as discussed previously: <http://berislav.lopac.net/post/4489527749/opening-the- valve>), the bubble will start to inflate.

<comment><USER23> > To have a bubble

Did you read the article? Did you read the headline? Go, reread the headline. Realize that blubble is _not_ a typo. Now, go read the article. =)

<comment><USER22> Your point being? I was commenting generally on the idea of the bubble, not the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Michael's main points are that

1.) Less money invested now than 2001.

2.) Low burnrate.

Therefore it's not a bubble.

1.) Sure, there is less money invested now. However, the market cap (and possible return for the investors) is also smaller. Remember that at the height of dot com in 1999, nasdaq had a market cap of 6.6 trillion. The bubble crash wiped out $5 trillion in the market value of the technology companies. The current market cap for nasdaq is $3.1 trillion, and if adjusted for inflation, is 2.3 trillion. (using government inflation data. if you were to use realistic inflation data, it would probably be way less than that) So we have less money invested, sure. But it's because there is less return possible.

2.) Low burnrate has nothing to do with overvaluation of companies. If a company's potential exit is realistically X, and investors miscalculated and invested an amount that valuates the company at 5X, and the ceo choose to burn that investment over 16 months instead of 5, the investor is still gonna lose the 4X over time.

And because the US economy is alot worse than 2001, (check government debt level, unemployment rate, labor participation rate, average personal savings rate, average retirement savings size, food/gas inflation) when the hangover comes, the tech industry is gonna have a massive headache. Lots of layoffs, startups shuttering, investors losing 90% of their investment, etc.

So the question you have to ask, and only ask is, will the company ever realistically achieve that valuation, regardless of burnrate, regardless of past performance, in the current and future macroeconomic conditions. For companies like Facebook at $70 billion, Twitter at $11 billion, Groupon at $6 billion, etc.

<comment><USER25> _2.) Low burnrate._

Not quite, he's talking about a particular mentality in that the goal was to blow as much money as possible and get enough revenue to IPO, at which point early investors cash out, profiting off public investment in something worthless.

 _2.) Low burnrate has nothing to do with overvaluation of companies._

But overvaluation of individual companies does not mean there is a bubble, either. It just means a company is overvalued. In the case of startups, "a Bull Market for private investors" is a lot more accurate than "Bubble" but a lot less sensational and scary because bulls don't pop they just turn into bears.

 _So the question you have to ask, and only ask is, will the company ever realistically achieve that valuation, regardless of burnrate, regardless of past performance, in the current and future macroeconomic conditions._

As an individual investor, yes. But generally speaking the reason it's worth asking whether there is a bubble (and not just whether a particular company is overvalued) is because oversight and regulation can be effective at preventing the sort of stock market abuse that led to the two recent crashes. Overvaluation in general, though, is simply one of the risks of investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Heck, even I'm concerned when I see companies like SecondMarket holding public auctions for Facebook stock, driving the price ever higher..."

Ah, nice a cleverly rephrased 'blame the speculators' argument, ignoring the fact that all stocks are speculative in nature. Also, the Pets.com reference felt lazy.

I'm really noticing a pattern with TC articles and a feedback loop on HN, they basically just milk a subject until the comments die down and then once the comments begin to show a new popular consensus they're quick to hop on that. Reminds me a lot of Fox News. He barely even covers the topic his headline implies the article is about--whether we are, or aren't, in a bubble currently.

The article is mostly about himself. Funny when a journalists favorite subject is himself.

<comment><USER27> I think you're being a bit unfair here. He did reference himself quite a bit, but it was relevant -- he was talking from experience about the last bubble. There's a lot of talk about a bubble and he made some good points about how if we are in a bubble, it's not the same bubble as last time.

Just because Arrington wrote it doesn't mean that it is wrong.

<comment><USER26> If it weren't such an ongoing pattern I'd agree with you, but MA inserts himself into the subject of every topic he covers. He's the Glen Beck of tech bloggers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree. We're not in a "bubble". We're in a half-decent spell after a lost decade.

1998: The internet is going to generate a lot of value. Everyone sees this, but no one knows which ventures will succeed and which will fail. People who really don't know what they're doing get involved and it gets frothy. The '90s had people who didn't understand business trying to start and run them, and people who didn't know a thing about technology trying to get in the game.

2011: Recovery, making up for lost time. There's a decent amount of enthusiasm, but it's only "hot" in the same way that a 70-degree day in March is "hot" compared to what came before it.

When intellectual lightweights who only know how to draw 2-by-2 matrices start getting into technology, then run-- and by "run" I mean pull out your money, but stay in tech if you're smart, because even in the doldrums when no one is getting rich this is still the best industry to work in. We're not seeing any of that yet, though. Mark Zuckerberg may be a mediocre coder by HN standards, but he's not an intellectual lightweight at all. No bubble yet.

<comment><USER28> > Mark Zuckerberg may be a mediocre coder by HN standards,

Don't mean to pick on this one comment, but he is certainly not a "mediocre coder by HN standards". There may be a few people at Facebook who are better at raw engineering, but in terms of the full stack (energy, focus, originality, ability) Zuckerberg is one of the best.

Reading about Haskell != building Facebook.

<comment><USER4> This is a good point, and being a great businessman is different from being a great engineer, and Zuckerberg is clearly the former (at least, and with the talent to be the latter). If you're a great businessman, you'll hire people who are, technically speaking, better than you are. If you're the best person at your company, that's a sign that you're doing something wrong.

Zuckerberg also never had time to become a great programmer, since Facebook took off when he was 21-22. So he may have been, at that point, a "mediocre" coder by 35-year-old standards, but he was excellent compared to his age. If his coding skills haven't improved, that's because he was doing something else.

He also seems to be improving himself, which is rare for business executives. Often when people have that kind of success at a young age, they remain young and arrogant forever. He doesn't seem to have done that, and my opinion of him has definitely improved in recent years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd use 'upswing'

<comment><USER29> ...instead of 'bubble'

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Patterns of the share market...

Step 1: create fear through speculation

Step 2: investors get cold feet from step 1

Step 3: the tech sector suffers again

</comment><comment><USER31> The title may as well have read, "I'm desperate for readership"

<comment><USER32> Why so? Explaining why would be more interesting than baseless snark. The OP seems to me like a very good analysis of a topic on a lot of people's minds lately.

<comment><USER31> Because, clever wordplay aside, "There is/isn't a bubble in technology" articles generally attract readers despite the fact they rarely contain substance. There was nothing in that article I didn't already know / have banged over my head by every other fluffy tech blog that exists today.</comment></comment></comment>


The lifestyle business bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1686-the-lifestyle-business-bullshit <comment><USER2> It's a lot easier when you have a strong brand (corporate and personal). It's not so easy when you don't. Granted, they had no brand when they started (which was in a different climate than the climate facing startups today), but I think they've forgotten what it's like to be brandless, moneyless, etc.

If they want to prove their constant mantra of "anyone can do it!," then they should try this: Start a new company with a new company name, use aliases for their own names, live on ramen noodles for eight months (or many more), and see if they can repeat their success. If they can do it, then I'll be the first to sing their praises.

They've created exactly one successful company (a huge achievement to be sure). However, that doesn't qualify them to spread general wisdom about how anyone can do the same.

I'm not saying that their ideas for creating products people love are bad or wrong. They're actually quite good (and perhaps even intuitive to anyone who sits down and really thinks about it instead of just wanting to read about it). But one can't extrapolate broad patterns from a single macro datapoint.

Of course anyone is free to say whatever they want and I'm not suggesting that they or anyone else should stop expressing their opinions -- opinions are what make the Internet great. :-)

<comment><USER3> _They've created exactly one successful company (a huge achievement to be sure). However, that doesn't qualify them to spread general wisdom about how anyone can do the same._

So... who is qualified?

Steve Jobs, maybe. But even Steve can't meet your crazy criterion: He's not dumb enough to have run NeXT and Pixar under an alias. He used his own name. Because he had invested a lot of time in that name and it remains one of his biggest assets. And because it's probably _impossible_ for Steve Jobs to run away from his name. And because, even if he changed his name and got plastic surgery, everyone would _know_ it was a Steve Jobs company. I'm told that working for Steve Jobs is a really unmistakable experience. His style sticks out from a mile away.

Business isn't a science. All you _get_ is anecdotes. You have to do what everyone else in Silicon Valley does: look at what Fairchild or Hewlett- Packard or Apple or Google did, and try to generalize. You might accidentally overgeneralize. Try to survive anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gah, it's honestly the people who RUN lifestyle businesses who make it such a dirty word. It's not, and you should stop being defensive about it.

People's dreams vary. Some people want to change the world in a big way and gain satisfaction from herculean effort against incredible odds. Other people aspire to a comfortable living and a life that has lots of room for non-work activities. There's no shame in either.

<comment><USER5> Another bullshit dichotomy. We want to change the world in a big way. We certainly face hard odds (building a multi-million dollar business is very hard regardless of how you go about it). We just want to do all of that and do other things at the same time. So far that has been going pretty well.

<comment><USER6> I honestly don't think 37Signals is changing the world in a big way. You're not inventing the transistor, you're making one of many online to-do lists and chats. I'm not saying the products aren't nice, they are. But they aren't gamechanging in any way.

You're great at marketing though.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure Rails was game changing.

<comment><USER8> Maybe in the way it's encouraged other web frameworks to adopt MVC, but that's not a huge deal. MVC has been around for a long time anyhow.

<comment><USER9> It didn't change the _whole_ world _just a little bit_ (which is what most people mean by "change the world"); it changed _one tiny segment_ of the world—webapp programming— _a lot_. I think that's even more laudable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...still have time for taking flying lessons, learning to play the guitar, nurture your garden, go hiking, enjoy cooking, socialize with people outside your tech circle."

One doesn't have to run a 37-signals style business ("do less", no external investment, charge customers immediately) to do this. One doesn't even have to limit themselves to a traditional 35-45 hour work week to do so. This is entirely possible while being a "workaholic", if you aren't wasting your time. I'd say that those who _do_ spend all waking hours on technology (and I used to be one of those) generally do so out of preference, anxiety or combination of those two.

Note: I am also not implying there's anything with either running a 37-signals style business _or_ spending all waking hours working. Depending on what your goals and preference are, all these are legitimate choices.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think a lifestyle business isn't necessarily defined by the amount of hours you work but rather how much you earn. If your business earns X and you are content earning X because it supports your 'lifestyle', then you have a lifestyle business.

I don't think a lifestyle business is negative nor am implying that 37Signals is a lifestyle business. Just think you have it mixed up is all...

</comment><comment><USER12> 37signals is crossing the line from confident into arrogant hubris. It's understandable. The incentives in the eyeball/clicks world is to be inflammatory. Doesn't mean we should be paying attention.

</comment><comment><USER13> From wikipedia: "Lifestyle Businesses are businesses that are set up and run by their founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; Lifestyle Businesses typically have limited scalability and potential for growth because such growth would destroy the very lifestyle for which their owner-managers set them up."

And from 37signals blog: "We haven't found the natural size for 37signals yet, but I can tell you that it's not a thousand people. It's highly unlike to be a hundred. Right now it's 10 and it's been in that vicinity for quite some time."

You can't really complain you get the 'lifestyle business' tag... As far as I see, it's pretty much the definition of one.

<comment><USER5> You are equating growth with head count, which is a common fallacy, but still a fallacy. Our measure of growth and success is profit and growth in profit. For the past many years now, we've had spectacular yearly growth and we've yet managed to avoid destroying the lifestyle we're enjoying.

Preferably we wouldn't hire another person for the next 10 years, but still dramatically increase our profits. To me, there's no growth in just adding to the head count without increasing profits. That's just deadweight.

<comment><USER13> Without a head count growth though, you're just supporting a lifestyle. Surely. That's great, and it depends on your priorities.

But as far as I see it, that's the definition of a lifestyle business - sacrificing growth of the business (In terms of head count), for 'lifestyle'. With a very small team, that profit seems quite risky to me.

(I would also say plentyoffish is a lifestyle business at the moment from what I know about it). From what I've read, there's a very small team, not growing in head count, making a lot of money.

>> To me, there's no growth in just adding to the head count without increasing profits. That's just deadweight.

I think it's a good thing to employ more people, if it's going to work in the long term. Sacrificing 'lifestyle' now, to build a big company.

You can either take the profit, or you can reinvest it in people for the long term, and build something big.

>> "Our measure of growth and success is profit and growth in profit."

Which is more risky? 1 person earning $10m a year, or 10 people earning $1m each a year within the same company?

<comment><USER5> I'm on board with the term "lifestyle business" if we make it imply "very profitable business that continues to grow revenues without adding additional cost". I would think that's the nirvana description of any business, though.

"Which is more risky? 1 person earning $10m a year, or 10 people earning $1m each a year within the same company?", that simply doesn't compute. If all those 10 guys are making their $1 million each from selling web ads where as the 1 guy is making his $10 million selling subscription software, I know who I'd want to place my money with right now.

<comment><USER13> I'd place mine firmly with the web ads ;)

I agree @ keep costs low, but I still think the definition of a lifestyle business is one that isn't growing in terms of the _business_.

If you liken it to a house rental. You could have the best house in the world, and be able to rent it out for $5m a year. That'd give you a great lifestyle, but even if you can manage to rent it out for $6m the next year, that's not _business_ growth. _business_ growth would be renting out 2 properties, 3, etc etc. Reinvesting the profit into the business in order to provide sustainable long term growth.

>> "I would think that's the nirvana description of any business, though."

So I'd disagree with this. Not every business wants profits over future growth.

<comment><USER14> I know you're not just trolling, because you contribute many insightful comments on HN, but I just don't see why you are so focused on headcount as the measure of business growth.

The low marginal cost of additional customers in a subscription software business makes your argument an apples-to-oranges comparison. You might need to hire additional staff to manage and maintain a growing portfolio of rental properties, but with subscription software you only have to improve your CRM tools and development processes to maintain a growing customer base with near- constant headcount. If better CRM tools happens to be what you are selling anyway, there's a pretty obvious multiplier for growing profits with very low headcount growth.

<comment><USER13> >> "but I just don't see why you are so focused on headcount as the measure of business growth."

Because that's the commonly held definition of "Not a lifestyle business" :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't disagree with DHH but I bet if you totaled the hours spent blogging, redesigning FedEx for fun, giving talks at conferences, fixing Rails bugs, etc. the 37signals crew works about as much as anyone else. I want to know who is calling them a lifestyle business. Did that even happen?

<comment><USER5> As much as what? And what are you willing to bet :)?

We certainly don't have a 4-hour work week, but we sure don't keep a 60-hour one either. Yes, there are exceptional weeks here and there were there's a brief spike, but those are just that, exceptions.

On average, we all take time to spend lots of it away from a computer. I think having a healthy hobby and social life outside of computers will only make you a better business person, not to mention a more well-rounded human.

Your 20'ies and 30'ies are your most capable for physical activity. In my mind, you'd do well to spend a fair amount of that potential.

Of course, you're free to do whatever the hell you please. Just don't make excuses like "I have to, that's the only way to be successful". Oh, and stop calling people who do pursue that balance "lifestyle businesses" unless you literally mean that the have both a life, style, and a business ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These guys really, really – I mean REALLY – like to talk about themselves. We get it, you're cool. Now please help port some more gems for Ruby 1.9.

<comment><USER17> Judging by how frequently they make the front page, people on HN really, really like to talk about them as well.

Their perspective is intriguing, even if it isn't generalizable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have 8 months of video advertising in Japan. Ideas on what to display? - <AUTHOR> Hi All,
As part of a development contract I did here in Japan, I am the proud owner of some video advertising in Nagoya station (digital signage). The problem is, I don't have anything in particular I want to show.
It's a great opportunity to have some fun / interesting advertising, and I'd like to extend my fortune to the HN community.
Anyone have any interesting ideas / videos that you'd like to show to 600k people a day in Nagoya station?
The details: * One, 15 second spot * horizontal, 16x9, full HD * can have sound * Plays every 2 minutes * advertising will run for 8 months * Can change out the video fairly often (up to once a day) * Audience is 99% Japanese, but English is fine
Would love to hear your ideas.
-- Keith <comment><USER2> I would say do something that either a) becomes an integral part of people's day. Something they look forward to seeing every day. Who knows. That could be as simple as inspirational quotes to some gimmick that people will love. Or b) something cryptic. A puzzle like someone else mentioned. One that that's a lot of people involved and creates a lot of buzz. I am not sure what your resources are like but perhaps you could offer a prize at the end. That will have the added benefit of creating some buzz for your company if you so choose to brand yourself with this. Have some fun with this. You could always sell the space but if you're intent on avoiding that then I commend you and wish I was in your position because you could definitely do something awesome with this opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd sell it. You could probably get a couple hundred per day, more if you really pushed it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Display a different computer error every day.

Bonus points for the most archaic programs' error screens.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. I like that a lot actually. Maybe have it go from desktop to error message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are (roughly) 192 countries in the world.

It's a bit of an effort, but you could find an interesting fact[1] about each one, overlay on a creative commons photos from that country (or the national flag; or a map), and share the rest of the world with daily commuters. You'll even have a few days left at the end - maybe add a similar concept for each Japanese Prefecture.

[1] Or some statistics. Or even some simple phrases ("Good morning"; "have a nice day") in the local language.

</comment><comment><USER6> Either

(a) Teach a new english word each day.

(b) advertise yourself/services

(c) Read a storey

8 months = ~243 days = ~1 hour of reading you could do, maybe a public domain short story

</comment><comment><USER7> \- Create a set of puzzles

\- Use each ad spot to advertise a website link

\- Each website has a puzzle

\- You need to solve each puzzle to get the the final answer

\- The winner is the first person to fill in their details, and maybe upload a photo or video

\- The last advertising spot shows that video/photo

</comment><comment><USER8> Some self promotion might be in order. I like the idea of a "word of the day" sort of blurb, but of course with your face and website.

Otherwise, a sub-lease (so to speak) could be nice as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about some wonderful cryptic set of puzzles, where you provide website links that have new puzzles they have to solve before they can continue the puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Write an app that sells 100x100 pixel blocks or animated GIFs?</comment>


UK courts have not been forthcoming with access to website blocking orders - <AUTHOR> https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/org-asks-court-for-web-blocking-documents <comment><USER2> If we want to effectively fight _censorship_ , we should stop using the language of those who falsely claim this is not censorship, and the courts that abuse their power to violate the people's rights.

It's not the _sites_ that are being blocked, it's the _people_.

The sites are still there, fully connected to the internet, and there are dozens of ways to access them.

It's the _people_ who's digital movements are being restricted, in a way that is virtually analogous to the restrictions totalitarian regimes impose on the freedoms of their citizens to access information and leave the country.

We are becoming the virtual prisoners of a regime not formed by politburos or generals, but judges with a total and complete disregard for the very foundation of the legal system they are supposed to serve.

Because let it be abundantly clear: as a citizen of a free and democratic country, I have every right to visit the Pirate Bay, read their blog or browse the thousands of torrents they have to offer. Nothing about this is illegal, in fact, my right to do this is supposed to be protected. It is part of the very foundation of our society that these rights are protected. Blood has been spilled to protect them, and these courts are spitting on the graves of those who have laid down their lives for our freedom.

There cannot be a functioning democracy if the courts can restrict the freedoms of millions without while the government looks the other way.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the insight into the people versus sites blocking. This never occurred to me and is possibly the strongest way of promoting opposition to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> BT use cleanfeed. Imagine there's a problem with Cleanfeed, and BT need to "turn it off and on again" \- they are not allowed to do so without the written permission of the studios, or without a Judge telling them that it's okay to do so.

([http://www.bailii.org/cgi- bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...](http://www.bailii.org/cgi- bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2011/2714.html&query=Newzbin&method=boolean))

16 & 18.

> _BT also requests the inclusion in the order of the following provision: "In > the event that [BT] forms the reasonable view that for operational reasons > relating either to the stability of its system or the functioning of the > Cleanfeed system in respect of the IWF watch list it needs to shut down > either Cleanfeed itself or the addition to the Cleanfeed system of IP > addresses pursuant to [this order] on a temporary basis, [BT] shall not be > in breach of this order by such shutting down provided that it applies to > the Court as soon as is reasonably practicable but at any rate within 72 > hours of such shutting down with an explanation as to why such action was > necessary and the duration thereof."_

> _Instead, I will provide that BT will not be in breach of the order if it > temporarily suspends the operation of either Cleanfeed or the addition of IP > addresses or URLs with the written consent of the Studios or their agents. > If such consent is not forthcoming, BT will have permission to apply to the > court on notice. In cases of urgency, an application may be made on short > (and informal) notice. For the avoidance of doubt, in cases of real urgency, > BT will be entitled to apply to the court without seeking the Studios ' > consent first._

<comment><USER5> Wow. Public rights completely inferior to Studios' rights.

<comment><USER4> I was amazed.

BT's request (essentially, "in emergency we'll shut down Cleanfeed for maintenance, and ask for permission from the court within 72 hours of doing so") seems very reasonable, but is not allowed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what happens when the website or IP blocking orders go wrong [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23699681](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23699681)

It would be interesting to see a media company that loses revenue due to wrongly being included in a list of blocked sites taking legal action against the entity that blocked them. I suspect the daily ad-revenues of a website like radiotimes.co.uk are sufficiently large to make it worth them pushing for a settlement, whilst effectively blocking a genuine streaming website has essentially zero impact on the Premier League's revenues. Making misdirected blocking expensive is probably the most effective way of undermining censorship efforts.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_United_Kingdom)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you live in the UK or have any personal or professional interest in the UK internet, I'd encourage you to make a regular donation to the Open Rights Group. They do fantastic work and the money goes a long way.

</comment><comment><USER9> it would be interesting to know who is being blocked. is it really all copyright issues? i'd feel much happier if it was the really nasty stuff you know - child porn, snuff videos or whatever that were being blocked - you know things that actually damage society not just the pockets of the disgustingly rich who need to grow up and adapt their business models so that they work instead of litigating to try and keep their unjustifiable income... :/

<comment><USER10> Could you get a uk VPN and brute domain names looking for ISP holding pages?

<comment><USER11> How would you suggest we get a list of every domain name currently registered? And how would you suggest we identify blocked domains as opposed to redirected, offline, or similar? And how do you recommend we pay for the billions of comput' hour such a task would take?

So in other words: It isn't feasible.

<comment><USER10> Don't be so negative. You can get the master .com domain list from Verizon as a download. Identify blocked domains by the holding page and header info. I'm guessing they do something like the guys here with a big page saying seized.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pogue loves his Chumby - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/14/technology/ptpogue15.php

<comment><AUTHOR> There's something squirrel-y about liking a device that shows very short TV clips that are degraded by compression on a tiny screen.</comment>


Prototype 1.7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.prototypejs.org/2010/11/22/prototype-1-7

<comment><USER2> Anyone still using Prototype for new projects? I have a few legacy rails apps (over 3 yrs old) that use it, but like most people I've have moved on to jQuery.

<comment><USER3> I used to favour Prototype.js over jQuery for more complex JS apps and leave jQuery for smaller tweaks.

Nowadays I'd definitely consider something on top of jQuery instead, such as backbone.js (<http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone>), eyeballs.js (<https://github.com/paulca/eyeballs.js>) or sammy.js( <http://code.quirkey.com/sammy>).

<comment><USER2> Agreed, underscore and backbone.js are amazing. JQuery is awesome at dom manipulation, backbone is great at structuring reusable js components, and underscore provides the prototype like helpers for manipulating collections (underscore.strings is also an essential library).

These 3 tools have me loving js development to the same degree when I first started using prototype (before the project stagnated and died).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I loved about Prototype (apart from changing my opinion about Javascript) was that it sort of extended the language itself, and made more possible with less. But now, I feel coffeescript is a better way to go. What I hated about Prototype was performance. And jQuery is way better there.

This seems to be like Firefox v/s Webkit. Prototype 2.0 is going to fix a lot of things (by not extending the DOM), but that approach is in many ways closer to jQuery.

<comment><USER5> One thing that we're trying to maintain with CoffeeScript is that the generated code is just as performant as you would have written in raw JS -- i.e. loops are just loops. It would be lovely if that sort of performance were possible in a JavaScript library that supplied "each", but sadly, it's not.

<comment><USER4> The verbosity problem in JS cannot be solved with libraries, although methods like "each" made life a lot easier.

Seeing CoffeeScript is the first time I've felt I can write a full app in Javascript. You and your team have produced something truly significant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the "What's next" section:

 _The next bugfix version (18.104.22.168) will feature a rewrite of the DOM code to be easier to read and faster at the same time._

That sounds like a lot of impact for a bugfix release.

<comment><USER3> It does sound like a lot of impact. As long as there's no developer impact and the API remains stable, however, I'm a-okay with the devs pushing something like that into a bugfix release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate that they approach minified versions with, "Do it yourself." 22.214.171.124 is what 1.7 was suppose to be and there is no ETA at all. The future of Prototype is so much brighter in FuseJS[1] once it is out of beta.

1\. <http://fusejs.com></comment>


Domain hacks - right or wrong way to go? - <AUTHOR>

We're brainstorming ideas for one of those cool, two-syllable, Web 2.0, kinda l33t speak domain names for our project, after deciding that maybe that as the .com for our current name is pretty unattainable we should have a brand re-think.<p>Is this just asking for trouble further down the line? Anyone have experience of issues with using domain hacks? <comment><USER2> I used to use 'camarades.com' as our main 'entrance', it worked well but it always led to spelling errors. After switching to 'ww.com' source-unknown traffic (type-ins) went up quite a bit.

Domains are transferred in many ways between people, and it is when it is _NOT_ a link that they click that your name matters most.

Facebook is a nice example, it is absolutely impossible to miss-spell it for just about anybody. Two very simple, extremely common words.

That might be the way to look in when you're trying to find a new domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were thinking something more down the del.icio.us route

<comment><USER3> I think (based on some experience) that if you go that route you are going to end up with a name that is very uncommunicatable and you will lose a significant portion of your visitors (and by lose I mean you will never even get them in the first place).

A business name is all about branding, you can use almost any pronounceable or semi-pronounceable (again, assuming you do not try to get overly creative) word as your domain name. Would you ever think "auctions" if someone said ebay to you? Did you think "voip" the first time you heard skype? Did you think "connect to old friends" when you first heard "facebook"?

Pick a unique .com name, build a brand around it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We came to the same conclusion, shame about the rigid dominance of .com though</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linked Lists Are Still Hard - <AUTHOR> https://brennan.io/2017/04/21/linked-lists-are-still-hard/ <comment><USER2> Ah, Hacker News comments, you are so predictable.

Naturally, this article inspires multiple comments declaring that the way the kernel allocates or arranges memory is so _obviously_ stupid and wrong, and that they know the right way of doing it.

I love the _certainty_ of Hacker News posters! So confident in their own abilities and opinions. Never a moment of concern, introspection or doubt. What a world to live in!

Also, has someone thought of writing a 'it should be re-implemented in Rust' comment auto-generator? Or is that already running here?

<comment><USER3> You might like [http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/)

It's a nice antidote to Hacker News, on days when Hacker News is too... Hacker Newsy :^)

<comment><USER4> I don't think my eyes are ever going to recover after reading[1] the n-gate.com about page. :O

\---

[1] 'reading' being a highly optimistic term.

<comment><USER3> Really? I find it easier to read than most modern "well designed" websites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real problem is that developer (who is a graduate student) doesn't understand how to do use the kernel structure. You can't just have "your own linked list". In order to do what you are doing, you have to add a list_head structure to the struct sock structure just for that linked list, and that struct list_head has to be initialized when the struct sock is initialized, and list_del() is called when the struct sock is released --- oh, and you need to handle locking properly to avoid races between adding a struct sock to the list and removing it. Or you can use RCU, but you do need to avoid races one way or another.

It's not hard, but you do need to understand the idiom. Why isn't there safety mechanisms? Because the kernel is optimized for speed, and instead of adding run-time checks which can be expensive, there are various debugging tools, including slab poisoning and KASAN to find such issues.

<comment><USER6> Another possibility: the developer understands these things, but wrote a blog post with an explanation that omits some details in order to appeal to a broader audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am hardly a kernel programmer, but it seems the real issue here is still that the release_sock() call isn't actually doing what he assumed.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this is the real problem. To be clear though (the article skimmed over lots of details to remain generally accessible), I was not discussing the release_sock() function which releases a lock on a socket [1]. Instead, my code registers a set of function pointers in a struct [2]. While release_sock() does have documentation, the function pointer of the same name does not, and the only examples I have are other files of code within the MPTCP protocol implementation. The callback is related to the function, to be sure, and so I should have connected the dots, but this is how we learn.

While I was making a baseless assumption, I like to believe that it was baseless because there was not enough available information, and not because I was ignoring obvious sources of information :P

[1]: [http://lxr.free- electrons.com/ident?v=4.1;i=release_sock](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/ident?v=4.1;i=release_sock) [2]: [https://github.com/multipath- tcp/mptcp/blob/e77e2ca0b5339af2...](https://github.com/multipath- tcp/mptcp/blob/e77e2ca0b5339af20b67d6c8d81169470900e6da/include/net/mptcp.h#L230)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would one ever prefer a linked list over a dynamic array? I know about the asymptotic performance, but if you take actual memory performance into account (locality, cache, pointers are slow, etc), it seems dynamic arrays should be simpler and perform better.

<comment><USER9> > Why would one ever prefer a linked list over a dynamic array?

(Singly) linked lists are trivial to implement in an immutable way (the article talks about the difficulty of _doubly-linked_ lists, implemented in a _mutable_ way).

It's trivial to have linked lists share a tail; this makes datastructures like cactus stacks really easy.

Linked lists are amenable to reasoning by induction (e.g. in Coq, Agda, Idris, etc.).

Linked lists are amenable to lazy algorithms (e.g. iterators/generators).

Linked lists can be heavily optimised, e.g. using stream fusion.

That's off the top of my head. Note that in many cases it might be preferable to use linked lists in the source, but have them compiled to some other representation like arrays (or, in the case of fusion, a single tight loop).

<comment><USER10> * Also, lists are a reasonable way of managing unrelated types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There seems to be a lot of jumping to conclusions and knee-jerk reactions in this thread. As a C developer, and having worked on Linux drivers, the description here is quite strange; memory is always freed by the same "layer" that allocated it. The implementation of release_sock ([http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/net/core/sock.c#L2536](http://lxr.free- electrons.com/source/net/core/sock.c#L2536)) appears to have a callback, and appears to not free memory, so it doesn't look like we have the full story here. What is clear is that the author misunderstood the "right way" to use the API in some way, and the lack of good documentation for a lot of kernel APIs is a big problem.

Perhaps Rust could have prevented the bug? I don't know. I haven't looked into Rust a great deal, but the impression I get from what I've read is that it severely limits expressiveness (read: the ways in which you can define APIs) unless you encapsulate things in blocks annotated "unsafe", at which point you lose any checking the Rust does. Would it even be possible to port the sockets code to Rust without fundamentally changing the APIs and data structures? To the Rust people: it comes off pretty badly when you throw around claims like "C effectively is unsafe everywhere" because "unsafe" in English doesn't mean what it means in Rust nomenclature; calling something "unsafe" implies it has bugs or security holes. It is perfectly possible to write bug-free secure C code, and also perfectly possible to write buggy or insecure Rust code. What I think you mean is: C code is roughly equivalent to what you'd find in a Rust block annotated "unsafe", and thus cannot perform some of the compile-time checks that Rust can. Calling it something else like "lowlevel", "expressive", or "tricky" would be better.

<comment><USER6> > so it doesn't look like we have the full story here

I omitted so many details writing this -- otherwise the main story would have dragged on way too long. My comment here [1] gives some context.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14184148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14184148)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "I guess the moral of this story is that tools are excellent, and you should probably use them."

This is, in my opinion, a rather generous interpretation of events. What I see when reading this is a system (the Linux kernel and surrounding infrastructure like the C language) that is very poorly designed.

For example, resource allocation is a fundamental issue and a constant source of problems. We've known this as a field for a very long time. Why are fundamental things like resource allocation at least not standardised in the kernel? Better would be to enforce safe resource usage by static checking. Rust is an example of what can be done here, but much more is possible. (I'm not trying to suggest the kernel should be rewritten in Rust. I'm just using it as an example that resource usage [in particular, memory allocation in Rust] can be done in a way that prevents errors.)

Burning huge amounts of human effort is a popular approach to software development but I really hope we can do better in the next few decades. The worst thing about the current situation is the programmer blames themself ("This one kept me up until 3AM. In hindsight, every bug looks simple, and when I figured it out, I was embarassed that it took me so long") rather than wondering why this problem is even possible in the first place.

<comment><USER13> One issue with Rust (which I know you weren't actually suggesting for use in the kernel) is that it's difficult to implement recursive mutable data structures in a way that makes the borrow checker happy. Recursive mutable data structures are pretty common in the kernel, I should think.

<comment><USER14> I thought the idea with rust was that it was low-level enough that such problems could be expressed with zero overhead in an unsafe block, and then given a safe interface for users further up the chain?

There's nothing wrong with scary-potentially-misused-unsafe stuff as long as you can isolate it and therefore less likely misuse it unsafely...

C effectively is unsafe everywhere, and other languages that are safe are non- zero-overhead, or so far up the stack that they cannot be used in kernel/system level stuff.

Is that right?

<comment><USER15> Yes, your parent is saying that it would be nice if Rust's safe subset could understand this, so you wouldn't need to resort to unsafe. You can absolutely do this stuff with unsafe, it's just, well, unsafe.

<comment><USER14> How could a safe system actually do it? Without some kind of run time garbage collector? Doesn't this kind of problem really require run time (either manual or automatic) care of memory by definition?

<comment><USER16> You can do it inefficiently and kinda manually in rust via weak pointers.

Otherwise GC is basically the only way in rust. You can have tightly-scoped GC in rust that doesn't affect the runtime of everything else, though. No good such GCs exist right now.

There are some type system tricks in hypothetical type systems you can do to make it possible to deal with these without runtime tracking. You can use the type system to ensure Detach traits get implemented, where Detach is for breaking cycles in a pass before destruction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "It turns out that MPTCP sockets are allocated using a slab cache. I found this out early on, but forgot about it nearly as soon as I found out."

The real problem isn't linked lists. It's that the author learned how something worked (the spec), forgot about that, and then essentially coded against the wrong spec. The title might have instead been: "I forgot something and broke a kernel." Much more accurate given people who know they're dealing with slab allocators, linked lists, etc usually use them correctly. They can also sleep a bit better instead of being up until 3am debugging.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are numerous, tested macro libraries to prevent reinventing common data- structure/algorithm bugs.

Here's one: [https://github.com/troydhanson/uthash](https://github.com/troydhanson/uthash)

</comment><comment><USER19> see the resume of the author. good boy.

</comment><comment><USER20> A linked list is almost certainly not what you want either. They're so deeply cache-unfriendly that their appearance in kernel code should be viewed as suspect.

<comment> UK-AL I was under the impression, that linked lists are quite common in the Linux kernel.

<comment><USER21> They indeed are.</comment></comment></comment>


Colorado woman must unencrypt hard drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/colo-woman-must-turn-over-computer-hard-drive-after-appellate-court-refuses-to-get-involved/2012/02/22/gIQA7K6jSR_story.html

<comment><USER2> I misread that as "colocated woman".

(Edit: This comment made sense before the title was edited.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, my apologies. After I read your comment I no longer read the "Colo." as an abbreviation for a state; now it instantly meant "colocated." :(

My thanks to whomever fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that raises so many interesting questions / loopholes / stupid scenarios.

1\. What if I encrypt the drive twice? Sure, I'll decrypt the first layer, then they can have the "contents" of that.

2\. What are the legal implications if I've "encrypted" something written down? i.e. replaced every letter with the next letter in the alphabet. Do I have to decrypt that?

3\. What are the legal implications if I've written things down in another language, known only to me - can I be forced to translate it? I would think a nice defense here is to say they can have the disk, it's just in another language, which is their problem.

4\. Further to point 3. what if I have the info on a drive with a File System that only I can read/write? Do I have to give them the tools to read the file system?

5\. Similar to point 4, I write my own custom binary file format that only I know how to read/write - again, do I have to describe the file format?

This is about to get crazy.

<comment><USER4> As a response to #1, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't hold up. Unless they specifically state that she will "Run the XXX Algorithm on the drive" It's probably legally sound that she has to fully decrypt all the data.

#2 probably holds similarly. The remaining ones are just getting more ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is simply a terrible title for this article.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Federal prosecutors argue that not allowing the government access to encrypted computers would make it impossible to prosecute crimes such as terrorism, child exploitation and drug trafficking"

good old 'think of the children'

<comment><USER7> That line just bugs me on so many levels. Why can't they prosecute those cases without having the data on someone's laptop? What can someone have on a laptop that can be so important that without it it becomes impossible to convince a jury?

Honestly, I think if the prosecution is unable to move forward without that data, then they had no hope in the first place.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. In cases of fraud, logs, emails, and spreadsheets could all be used to guarantee a case— especially if it's the online variety.

From my understanding, you're basically asking for the prosecution to prosecute a murder case but not allow them to use the murder weapon— with the person's prints on it— as evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless the US specifically has laws about not revealing passwords, all this couple have to do is claim they forgot it.

Even if that failed, the most the judge can add to their charge is contempt of court...

This is clearly a fishing expedition (unlike, allegedly, the cited border child pornography case) by government agencies AND the justice system trying to set a precedent for searches without existing hard evidence of a crime.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would refuse to decrypt the drive, even though it would be contempt, but everyone has to decide for themselves what battles are worth fighting.

<comment><USER3> I wonder what the penalty for contempt is?

let's say it's a high-profile murder case, and they need the info on the drive to make it stick. Without the drive, there is no case. If the defendant gives over the key, they get 25-life, what's the penalty for contempt?

<comment><USER11> In Colorado, it looks like the maximum sentence for contempt is 6 months. In Wyoming (my state), the max is 90 days or a $500 fine. I would choose contempt.

<comment><USER12> Every 6 months (or 90 days) the judge hauls you in to court and orders you to give up your password until one of you breaks.

<comment><USER10> I know there was a guy who spent years in jail on a contempt charge related to his divorce (the ex-wife claimed he has lots of money hidden about). I'll see if I can find a link for it.

EDIT: Here it is: <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09192/983301-454.stm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How is this different than being forced to unlock something like a filing cabinet or empty your pockets, or open the storage locker as part of a police investigation?

this is investigating a specific crime. It's not like being forced to decrypt when the police are fishing for a reason to bust you. (or NYC's stop-and-frisk emptying of your pockets which I firmly oppose)

<comment><USER4> Should we all be storing our hard drives in a lockable vault, such that we can get the legal protection that physically sealing it would do?

<comment><USER13> No. My point is that search warrants should cover decrypting your digital data in exactly the same way that they allow the police to search your home, your office, your storage locker, your safe, etc.

<comment><USER14> Why not treat cryptography as a novelty?

A nice outcome is that it avoids all the issues surrounding guessing whether the key to the random bits even exists, and what form it takes, and whether there is more than one key, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have many encrypted files that I do not know the password to. The passwords are in an encrypted keychain that I do know the password to. If I delete the keychain, there is no way that I will be able to decrypt those files.

What would happen if the courts ordered me to decrypt a file where I no longer have access to the password?

</comment><comment><USER16> For all anyone can prove, its random data. What are they going to do next time I safely erase a file? Throw me in jail for contempt because I can't magically turn the random data into incriminating evidence?

<comment><USER4> The decrypted data could be random, but afaik, encrypted data does have patterns that are evident of encrypted data.

<comment><USER17> Usually this is only in the form of a header on the block device. Dm-crypt on linux has a mode called 'plain'. This uses the sector number and passphrase/keyfile to generate a unique encryption key for each sector. This means there is no meta-data, and corruption of any physical sectors map directly to the unencrypted block device. In this case, it does look just like random data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Steganography FTW, here. "Here you go, I've decrypted my hard drive. Now, somewhere in my gigs of cat photos and music lie the documents you're looking for. Have fun."

</comment><comment><USER19> This is far from over. There is still the matter of "I forgot". (No, the judge might not like that, but on the other hand, if she did actually forget...)

</comment><comment><USER20> Future solution: Create a killswitch password that completely erases specific directories when used.

<comment><USER4> This would hardly solve the problem. By the time they would have you decrypt, they would have made a disk image of the drive in question. When you enter the killswitch, they could simply restore, and request that you try again, not to mention that that is then suddenly better evidence against you.

The best solution seems that it may be nested encrypted partitions. ala, the trucrypt solution: <http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume>

<comment><USER20> Or Deniable Encryption: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What encryption software is this woman using?

</comment><comment><USER22> If it were possible to prove that I didn't remember the password to my encrypted drive, would I be violating some law that I could get into trouble for?

<comment><USER23> It would be akin to say "this safe? I lost the keys.", wouldn't it? I don't know what's the standard way of dealing with that either though.

<comment><USER14> Depending on what was inside of it, they would just have someone open it.</comment></comment></comment>


Source-Level Decentralized Autonomous Organization (SDAO) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ellcrys/source-level-decentralized-autonomous-organization-sdao-36496722efd5 <comment><USER2> How is the anonymity problem solved if we have to use GitHub and AWS?</comment>


AWS Lambda Container Image Converter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-container-image-converter/ <comment><USER2> neat - question: does this mean if I create a custom docker image (i.e. using FFMPEG for video processing), I can run my lambda using this environment?

<comment><USER3> Secret sauce: [https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-container-image- conver...](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-container-image- converter/blob/master/img2lambda/extract/repack_image.go)</comment></comment>


Hidden Traps in Regular Expressions - <AUTHOR> https://www.tutorialdocs.com/article/regex-trap.html <comment><USER2> TLDR: Poorly written regexp causes performance problems:

/^([hH][tT]{2}[pP]://|[hH][tT]{2}[pP][sS]://)(([A-Za-z0-9-~]+).)+([A-Za-z0-9-~\\\\\\\/])+$/

instead of /(https?:.../i

I'm sure there exists proper java libraries to parse an URL.

</comment><comment><USER3> java.net.URL please.</comment>