incision

How does this address either of my points?

It addresses it as a human being discussing the meaning of the article as opposed to a pedant-bot dicing words to 'win'.

I find it weird that guides like this still suggest seperate root, home, boot and swap partitions.

The classic reason is preventing space / inode exhaustion of / by user accounts and preventing time of check, time of use vulns. Tough the latter have since been addressed in other ways [1]. There's also a certain amount of convenience and cleanliness to separating system and data that way.

1: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security#Preventing_lin...

Thanks for this.

Lots of great sequences from the 80s presented there along with on my of my all-time favorite openings - Ghost in the Shell [0].

I've always felt failing to put together a compelling opening is a missed opportunity, particularly for a series. It's a hook, a primer to put the audience in mind of the best eras and episodes every time.

0: http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/ghost-in-the-shell/

Wow, it has probably been 15 years since I read something from Raph Koster. So long that I had to think for a bit to recall why that name didn't quite feel right - until Designer Dragon popped into my head.

I can't disagree with a single thing said here.

I tend to think of WoW as the Buy-N-Large generation ship of gaming.

It created an entire word that was in some sense a paradise, but at the exclusion of all the awesome, frustrating, exciting, tedious richness that came before it.

The episode of This American Life referenced is well worth a listen if you've ever been curious about what trying to do good work inside a crushing bureaucracy sounds like.

1: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/t...

What are there, 1B Android users? I'm sure Google would like that to be 7B.

I'd wager the complaints of the sort of people who frequent lobste.rs or HN are not representative of the majority of current users and almost certainly not of the next 6B potential users.

Overall, it's everything Google said they would do with material [1].

It's fine to dislike these things, I don't necessarily like them myself, but claiming they're simply wrong or "for no reason" is somewhere between angry and lazy.

Just a glance at the new vs old keyboard or gmail shows a direction - moving / duplicating interactions toward the bottom right (logical as screens get bigger), breaking out punctuation into discrete keys (presumably logical given the way most people actually type).

The overall restyling is adding consistency between apps and particularly between mobile and the desktop.

Animations are really valuable anytime someone doesn't come to the table with a complete mental model of how something fits together already. Basically, they're not for you Mr. Programmer.

1: http://www.google.com/design/

"The new VLT results indicate that the rotation axes of the quasars tend to be parallel to the large-scale structures in which they find themselves. So, if the quasars are in a long filament then the spins of the central black holes will point along the filament."

Though I have no real idea what I'm talking about...

This feels intuitive to my mental picture of the universe.

The description of this large scale structure and the expansion of the universe has always put me in mind of watching the patterns form and reform from drips in a soapy sink or an elastic fabric being pulled apart.

In both cases, you end up with these big expanses bordered by dense stringy areas. That the motion of the stuff that snaps / shears / collapses or whatever into these strings and knots would be aligned seems perfectly logical.

As the article points out, Woz was Chief Scientist at Fusion-IO [1] as well. That company struggled [2] before being acquired by SanDisk for less than the IPO price.

It was a different story in 2011 when Woz went on CNBC and said that the company "has grown as fast as Apple so far" [3] pushing the stock to the highest point it would ever reach just a month before the share lock-up expiration [4].

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion-io

2: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/25/fusionio_flasher_fla...

3: http://m.cnbc.com/us_news/45074931

4: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/12/06/fusion-io-...

Yeah, those are layers in the image. That image [1] (727MB) is built on buildpack-deps [2] (695MB) which is itself built on the base jessie (154MB).

It would be pretty straightforward to adapt those Dockerfiles to create an image which includes only the dependencies for building node. It would end up looking a lot like 'node:slim' [3] (288MB).

Ideally, Docker will eventually have the functionality to more easily strip out transient requirements like build dependencies from the final images.

1: https://github.com/docker-library/node/blob/013858ac35afb9ca...

2: https://github.com/docker-library/buildpack-deps/blob/a201b1...

3: https://github.com/docker-library/node/blob/013858ac35afb9ca...

"They don't even do what they're advertised to do, ie give you a reliable way to reproduce a build, and they're inflexible for my idea of real-world work with Docker."

Not exactly, as the thread you link points out you can reference an image ID in FROM rather than the name:tag which has potential to change silently.

It's the equivalent of using a package manager against a repo you don't own without pinning - expect problems.

This can be mitigated by FROM'ing via ID or avoided entirely by running your registry where tags are reliable.

Admittedly, these things are not necessarily obvious, but I think it's a bit disingenuous to paint Dockerfiles as worthless or broken.

That said, ShutIt looks very cool and seems to address exactly some of my concerns / desires about working with Docker.

I just don't agree with framing it in opposition to and at the expense of what exists.

There's value in a container description that is fully self-contained, transferable and 'dumb' enough to be transparent.

"We don't need more complex provisioning tools. We have plenty of provisioning tools."

Absolutely.

Thankfully, the Docker team seems in agreement with this based statements about avoiding making Dockerfiles "too clever" and the response to various proposals.

As you point out, most of the "issues" here are really misconceptions.

I expect it's a tough balance for any new(er) project. Maximizing exposure and adoption, but avoiding negative perceptions from being applied in ways aren't optimal.

While I certainly question a system that allows a person to run up such a steep tab in the first place, this story smells.

"So what does it take to rack up $1200 of internet use? In my case, just 155 page views, mostly to my email."

Looking at SA per MB pricing [1] you'd need to pull down just shy of 1.2GB to be charged that much - 7.5MB per "page view". Personally, my Gmail and Outlook Inbox are a few hundred K each.

So maybe the author just doesn't know what he's talking about? according to his bio [2]...

"Today, I design and code Trend Hunter until 4am because I like it."

It would seem likely that statement is an exaggeration, the one about the number of page views is disingenuous or both.

Either way, the author loses credibility.

In any case, the author is apparently the globe trotting, baja racing, "rule breaking", former banker son of a VC [2] - he can surely afford to pay for - at best - failing to pay attention to the terms.

1: http://www.singaporeair.com/jsp/cms/en_UK/flying_with_us/inf...

2: http://www.trendhunter.com/Jeremy

Disappointing book and disappointing voting that saw both submissions of this post buried so quickly - this one was on the front page #30 when I got up for a stretch and buried among weekend posts at #147 when I got back.

I expect this sort of thing is hard for lots of people - those without kids - to empathize with. I doubt I spent much time thinking about such things prior to having a child.

Now though, it has become really clear to me how common stereotypes about gender, race and the like are among things aimed at children.

It's not that this one book is going to ruin someone or that any of the silliness it presents is so awful or dangerous.

It's that those ideas are pervasive, that even if you're filtering what you provide directly to your kids they're still indirectly affected by it - an ever present cloud of nudges and judgments about everything from choice of colors, toys, aspirations and even now how to use computer.

It's ridiculous and wasteful.

Pretty confusing.

My guess/hope...

This is aiming to be GMail + Google Now for the enterprise. Something that will parse your mail, schedule and contacts to generate suggestions or reminders and create an easily accessible "context" for each.

A workplace client that can generate 'cards', reminders and contextualize common bits of information (Think UPS tracking numbers in GMail - applied to support tickets, physical sites, projects, POs and budgets in an enterprise) with the creepy accuracy of Google Now would actually be interesting - yet another take on unified communications or a skin deep re-imagining of email would not.

I'm not sure how to interpret that quote.

In the context of Docker it's inconvenient, but entirely straightforward to create images that don't include those elements.

It's a matter of creating an unwieldy chain of build steps to avoid committing intermediate containers.

If/when something like this [1] gets merged things will be greatly simplified.

1: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/8021

"...but she was deeply unhappy with her life and the path (and expectations!) her parent put on her."

I find myself thinking about this an awful lot as I raise my first child.

I've never encountered anything on the level of a 12 year in college physics, but I did spend some time with kids who had clearly been reared with such things in mind to much the same effect.

In general I'd caution parents to recognize that children are people, not personal projects or possessions.

"A child learns to speak and recognize objects from much less data than contemporary machine learning/data mining/AI/whatever you call it needs."

You think?

When a kid starts talking at 1.5, 2, 3 years or whenever they're doing so after being exposed to many thousands of hours of input, much of it effectively guided.

Also, as far as I know, we don't have nearly enough understanding of the way the brain works to make a useful comparison between "records" fed to a model and all the analog input that goes into making a person.

I'm disappointed that this requires an invite, particularly so close after Container Engine which I was able to try out immediately while still watching Cloud Platform Live the other day.

Is this typical for new AWS offerings?

It makes me wonder if it's something that truly isn't ready for prime time, but is being rushed / forced by the mounting Docker hype and GKE announcement.

"HR is not your friend. HR is not there to protect you and your career."

Right.

Being a friend, advocate and protector is the role of a professional union.

Unfortunately, the labor in tech seems convinced that each is better off on his or her own despite being up against a cartel of behemoths [1].

1: http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...

"Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?"

A comment shouldn't be killed for expressing an unpopular opinion and I don't think this one was.

That comment is a perfect example of how not to state an opinion, unpopular or otherwise.

It states an opinion as absolute and demands proof otherwise while providing none of its own. This is recognized as awful, trollish behavior on any forum.

Further, the opinion stated is derisive and emotional. Finally, the it begs for downvotes repeatedly.

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be killed regardless of the view expressed.

"Apparently, the $5k minimum order was too small for them to care (at least that's what my side says)."

I find this to be pretty typical behavior when representing Government to vendors.

It doesn't impress me as being dismissive so much as indirect sales pressure.

A vendor knows that the typical Government agency can and does regularly piss away 10-100x that amount on systems that never see the light of day.

They're betting that if the initiative has any real support someone will find the funding to make it happen.

Problem is, this is probably worst possible tactic to take with someone in your position who is trying to enact change without substantial/any budget to command.

The people on your end are happy to walk away, they've already done it twice and they were surely just looking for a reason to do it a third time.

Word to salespeople working with Government:

When you're dealing with a lone "champion" inside some organization you should be thinking in terms of cheaply seeding for the future and having friendly eyes and ears inside - not booking a sale this quarter.

Also, as the OP points out, you're going to be dealing with entirely segregated procurement departments who are likely out of their comfort zone to be handling the task at all - not the sort you should be at all impatient, demanding or upselling with.

Now, to be fair I should point out that I think there are some valid reasons for vendors to avoid small deals.

The main thing is perception. The naysayers are going to attack any new installation the moment it hits the floor. If a minimal install isn't defensible against a hostile environment like that seeing it fail will kill any potential future business for the vendor.

A simple way to mitigate this is sign an agency up and leave them fully-featured and uncapped - no friction to grow the product internally. Then, this is important, resist the urge to demand a huge true-up once things have taken root, just ramp up gradually and understand that the social proof of your having your product fully-established in one such agency will open the door to sales elsewhere.

"I hope downvoting has nothing to do with a agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated)."

I agree.

Thing is, the "when to downvote" debate is ancient at this point and no closer to consensus.

These days, I'm given to thinking that any voting system should assume the behavior of least resistance, that it's thoughtless, reflexive and therefore only potentially valuable after being sanitized / aggregated / weighted.

"this irrational overemphasis on frugality i always see on hn just seems like a different form of elitism / pedantry to me. since most of us have money, it's just a covert way of signaling an extra level of self-control and discipline (which are usually required to make money, but since so many of us make money, we've got to find novel ways to signal that extra status)."

I get this sense as well and think the signaling theory is a solid one.

I'm thinking this is a part what frequently turns me off of topic specific forums - people have a tendency to want to sort and differentiate themselves. The higher the baseline - whether it's income or knowledge - the more pedantic the self-sorting.

Privacy questions aside.

What I'd really like to know is whether this thing will have some form of speaker recognition - identifying who is speaking, not just what is being said and further whether the learning functions will make that same distinction.

I have a family, including a small child. That's at least three people who would conceivably use this device.

Tech companies and Amazon in particular have been awful about these things. It took forever for Netflix to start accommodating multiple viewer households, the Kindle Fire shipped with no parental controls plus 1-click ordering and Android didn't add multiple user support until 4.2.

Echo needs all these things to be more than an experiment / gimmick.

(I notice this post fell directly to the middle of the page - not the typical behavior. Am I tripping some sort automatic moderation? Using the world 'gimmick' perhaps? Is this how posting 'height' works on popular / heavily commented stories? Just curious.)

"I can understand not being able to fit in to a homogenous culture, but this guy is just an asshole."

Clearly.

Problem is, in my experience...

1.) No one wants to get involved.

2.) It's easier to be accommodating of assholes when they're directing their behavior at someone who isn't "one of you" on some level or another.

3.) It's easier to be accommodating of an asshole who also happens to be a "great engineer", "would do anything for a friend" or has their childish nonsense rationalized as "lacking people skills".

I'd wager someone, likely many people in that situation knew exactly what was going on yet did nothing for one or more of the above reasons.

As a group we just need to recognize that those people among us, our friends and coworkers who are shitty to the loner on the team or rude to the cleaning lady, but wonderful to their peers - they're assholes and deserve to be held to account for it.

"I feel like there isn’t anyone who can identify with my story, so I don’t tell it."

I absolutely identify.

I've experienced a lot of this, but I'm a man as well as forthright and according to some - intimidating.

Thing is, I expect those things carry their own challenges - being rejected outright rather than given the opportunity to suck it up.

I know three people who work 100% remote, full-time for rates equivalent to 130-185k+ per year.

Interestingly, I'd always thought of remote workers as either high-end technical specialists working as-needed or cheap bodies being delegated to.

These folks all fall somewhere in the middle with the common factor being soft / niche skills - they work for sort of places that most people would run away from and work on things the most people haven't touched in years.

Two of them started out on-site, but were so valuable the company was happy to allow remote work in order to keep them on staff.

I think you're spot on.

"1) Yes, engineers and other in-demand workers have ready access to jobs. I remember when I was looking for a good engineering job out of Amazon, I was basically spammed nonstop by virtually every party on the planet."

Do you think that might say more about the social proof of working for Amazon than the market for engineers in general?

Certainly the job market for engineers is great, the market for good engineering jobs, not so much.

Having been successfully vetted by a big name certainly impresses me as a golden ticket to the good floor.

"2) But the opportunity cost for poor job selection is enormously high."

I could not agree more.

"Before if you had minor medical stuff insurance was there. But as soon as you got legitimately sick (e.g. cancer) they quite literally went back through every form you ever filled out looking for an error, typo, or omission in order to cut you."

This is pure truth in my experience [1].

Yes, all of it, but it's not just your forms - they'll scour phone calls too. Anything you've communicated can and will be used against you.

Problem is, it's the sort of thing that seems too unlikely or simply too far off until, out of blue, it hits you on the backside of a routine visit. More insidious is the way the scheme necessarily limits the number of people who survive to talk about it.

1: I spent years fighting this on behalf of a terminally-ill family member and I witnessed the lengths a company will go to in order to avoid making payouts first hand while working for an insurance company.

If your rates went up, but your previous coverage was never actually put to the test in a serious way you might want to consider the very real possibility that the old plan never would have paid out [1].

"Since insurance companies now won’t be allowed to collect premiums while you’re healthy only to yank coverage when you get sick, they have no choice but to pre-emptively cancel plans that wouldn’t be financially beneficial to actually pay out."

1: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/11/obam...