Apple's had a shockingly bad week of software problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/2/16727238/apple-macos-ios-software-problems-updates <comment><USER5> I'll admit, I used to be the first to update to their latest betas, now I'm terrified to even install the public releases.

They have to do better than this. Having a Twitter user report one of the biggest bugs this decade? That's really weak. Releasing an update that undoes that? Pure amateur hour by the guys we really trust with privacy. Separately, lately they've treated me ridiculously bad (and it's _never_ been like this) at the Apple Store on a failed logic board for my 7 Plus to no fault of my own (saying I was 41 days out of warranty, sorry), so I called Apple Care and they promptly took care of it for me, but should I really have had to jump through all those hoops? Really soured me.

I'm also on 3-month long thread with an iTunes Adviser (hi Grant) trying to convert some damn gift cards from iTunes to Apple Store. The easiest request ever. Now he's just no longer picking up his phone, voicemail, or responding to emails. Can't tell you the frustration involved in this (my dad had accidentally selected Apple iTunes instead of Apple Store when redeeming his Wells Fargo rewards)

Having said all that, I'm still support these guys - why, I don't know anymore. That'll be changing soon, for sure.

<comment><USER6> I'll air my recent horror story: my Mac Mini Server 6,2 (2012) has two SSDs I had welded together as a RAID-0 array. I updated from 10.12 Sierra to 10.13 High Sierra without a hitch. On 20 November I for reasons I know bitterly regret I decided to wipe my system and reload from backups... an exercise that usually takes six hours, max. I've run into issue after issue (High Sierra formatting the RAID array as APFS by default and then announcing that is not a bootable configuration, terrible RAID drivers littering my installer log with write errors and thus refusing to restore Time Machine backups onto the array once I reformatted it as JHFS+, and latterly some obscure kernel cache error that precludes booting)... long story short, twelve days after the fatal decision, my system is still not bootable.

And Apple Support is non-existent. Documentation about APFS and RAID is thin on the ground. Phone support told me in no uncertain terms that my Mini's number was not a Server so I could not access Enterprise Support, and of course the consumer level folks do not know anything about RAID (or even multi-drive systems). It's been a total shitstorm.

Never have I been so proximate to just dumping them and telling them to piss off, but I also know I won't, because I am too deeply invested in their integrated ecosystem (macOS, Mac Pro, MacBook, iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple Music...)... except I am starting to think it might make sense to tell them to piss off integrally and voting with my feet.

<comment><USER7> I was like you a number of years ago (iPhone, Macbook, iMac, etc) but decided it was time to switch rides. Google has a massive intensive to making switching from iOS to Android as easy as possible. But I do admit, it took some time to get used to Windows coming from a Mac, and bootcamp was not great for me on my macbook pro.

<comment><USER8> For someone who values their privacy at least a little bit, Google and Windows are no options.

Outside Pixel, updates on Android are an embarrassing shit show. I did a three year detour to Android, but never again. Update after update things were broken until and you had to wait 6 months to get an update that was supposedly fixing things.

As someone who considers privacy important, Linux and BSD are the only credible alternatives to the Mac. Unfortunately, a lot of software that I use nearly daily is missing, because the Linux ecosystem does not have a strong ISV ecosystem (Little Snitch, OmniGraffle, Things, DeckSet, LaunchBar, Alfred, Arq, 1Password, Tweetbot, Affinity Designer/Photos, etc.) and does not support some hardware well (Sonos, etc.).

<comment><USER9> the software you list shows a disinterest in considering alternatives. if you're already considering Linux or BSD, it behooves you to also consider open source alternatives to your applications, especially when at least some of the responsible companies are currently engaged in predatory business practices (1Password).

BitWarden is a fantastic FLOSS alternative to 1Password, Emacs' org-mode for Things is perhaps the finest of its kind and easy to get started with with a distro like Spacemacs, a plethora of Alfred alternatives, Marp for DeckSet, i could go on but at this point i just want to throw up my arms and shake you.

i've switched dozens who were sick of proprietary lock-in. it doesn't sound like you're sick enough.

<comment><USER8> I have a Linux desktop machine at home besides a Mac and regularly try open source alternatives. I also use org mode besides Things, and have a custom Emacs configuration with evil, ivy, magic, and whatnot.

However, the open source alternatives for the software I mentioned (and other software) are simply not good enough for me. The additional 'problem' is that open source software that I use, such as Emacs, Latex, compilers, etc. work fine on macOS.

(I used Linux and BSD full-time on the desktop from 1994-2008.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Let's recap the week of Apple software problems:

\- macOS High Sierra critical flaw with root admin access

\- macOS High Sierra update released, but breaks file sharing

\- iOS 11 crashing on some iPhones due to a date bug

\- macOS High Sierra fix not installing correctly on some systems

-iOS 11.2 released early to fix iPhone crash bug

Yeah I would say that is a pretty bad week

<comment><USER11> The transition to APFS also went flawlessly, above and beyond anyone's expectations.

<comment><USER12> Apparently, apple won't implement apfs for people on spinning rust so I can't get it on an iMac which made upgrading to high sierra easier. How did it go for people on macbooks?

<comment><USER13> You can convert those disks, they don't do it automatically though. Diskutility has a convert option.

<comment><USER14> That's a dumb idea, the file system is designed for flash memory, not spinning disks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I honestly am about ready to go back to a 2009-era MacBook Pro or Mac Pro tower, shove 10.9 on it and tell my clients that I've quit iOS as a platform. It's beyond not worth it at this point. I refuse to watch my computers and phones get shittier and shittier, and with the phones, a downgrade isn't even possible.

Apple, you have gone from one of my favourite companies in the world, to one of my most hated. I will never buy a new, non-upgradable, RAM-soldered-to-the- board, overpriced, underpowered, piece of shit computer from you again. And you can take my word on that.

</comment><comment><USER16> TLDR; Three problems have stemmed from the same bug. One patch had errors and required more fixing for a subset of users. The complaint seems to be that Apple moved too fast to fix this bug.

I dunno... You really need to fix something like this quickly and you might not have time for a really good QA round; so you rush it. Could they do better, sure.

<comment><USER17> If you don't do "really good QA", you end up causing more problems than you fix.

<comment><USER18> It's almost like it's a ...tradeoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the result of Apple trying to become a "fashionable products company" instead of a "premium products company".

Premium is about the whole package delivering high value - at a reasonably high cost, too. Fashion is almost 100% about aesthetics, at a much higher price. Not much value in relation to price except for branding and the exclusivity aspect (which is tied to the very high prices). But fashion often has little to do with the quality/price ratio of the product. See those ridiculous diamond-covered $50,000 phones with 3-year old specs and OS versions.

I believe Apple is also selling some ridiculous $17,000 smart watches now. The similarly priced Xeon-based Mac Pros almost enter this category, too.

It's about culture and priorities inside the company. The moment I saw them shift towards the "fashion" aspect, I knew things would start to go downhill for Apple in terms of quality as well as _value per product_.

If they don't check and rectify their priorities soon, they're going to have much bigger problems in the long term, maybe unfixable problems.

<comment><USER20> _This is the result of Apple trying to become a "fashionable products company" instead of a "premium products company"._

Absolutely. Like what does "Pro" mean in Apple-speak right now? A workhorse for serious professionals who earn their living with their tools, or the luxury version of the regular consumer version? There's a TV ad in the UK that says the Macbook Pro would be perfect for a first-year undergrad... That's not who I'd imagine a real "Pro" product was aimed at.

<comment><USER21> Apple should just make two laptops: Macbook and Macbook Pro.

Convert the current Macbook Air into a 13" Macbook that is more in line with the Air's price. The Pro should be a pro machine. Plenty of ports and no touch bar non sence, but keep the Touch ID sensor.

<comment><USER20> Crippling the Mac Mini to force people onto the Mac Pro "tower" then leaving that to rot was likewise insane. It's like Apple have forgot they only sell iPhones because iPhones are first-class citizens for all the content authored and apps developed on Macs... Take away the ecosystem and the fruits will eventually wither...

<comment><USER21> I agree. I would like to see a new Mini with good specs but Apple is uninterested in this machine, it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> APFS, although not buggy per se, also has its disadvantages:

'macOS High Sierra APFS Performance is Inferior to HFS on Apple's Fastest SSD: all cost, no benefit, at least not yet.'

[https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20171124_2015-macO...](https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20171124_2015-macOS- HighSierra-FileCopySpeed.html)

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't say _no_ benefit ... instant directory size information, instant copies are both pretty cool.

<comment><USER24> having a more reliable filesystem is a huge benefit!

it's amazing how stuff will bitrot on HFS+.

<comment><USER25> How does APFS prevent bitrot? I thought it doesn't do checksumming and error correction, and instead passes this task on to the SSD's memory controller.

<comment><USER8> It checksums metadata [1]: [http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2016/06/19/apfs- part5/](http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2016/06/19/apfs-part5/)

From the same article: _the engineers contend that Apple devices basically don't return bogus data. NAND uses extra data, e.g. 128 bytes per 4KB page, so that errors can be corrected and detected. (For reference, ZFS uses a fixed size 32 byte checksum for blocks ranging from 512 bytes to megabytes. That's small by comparison, but bear in mind that the SSD's ECC is required for the expected analog variances within the media.)_

<comment><USER24> wow, that's very disappointing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They also managed to get in another autocorrect bug on a common word:

[https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/27/ios-11-autocorrect- issu...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/27/ios-11-autocorrect-issue-it-to- i-t/)

<comment><USER27> Maybe they can even get around to fix the issue for more or less every non-US ASCII keyboard where they seem to think character that _look_ the same, are the same, or that they are often mistyped.

In Norwegian we have "a" and "å", they are on completely opposites ends of the keyboard and are not used interchangeably, but they always changes one to the other.

I've tried to contact support about it, even Google, as the problem persist on Android as well, but they never get back to me. So I'm assuming it's working as intentional. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER28> in general i feel like american software companies do the bare minimum to support other languages and don't think past that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always assumed there would be someone standing with Tim and Jony to complete the troika. I think it was Scott for a while, but I think they are sorely missing the truly brilliant charismatic visionary on the software side.

<comment><USER30> Who would that be?

<comment><USER31> They're missing therefore we don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You are put in charge of Apple. How do you fix this?

<comment><USER33> The trick seems to be convincing your best engineers to work on unsexy products that have long lifetimes.

Everybody would rather spearhead the new iPhone XI project, than spearhead the "add 10% to the battery life on 4-year old MacBooks" project.

You'd need an incentive program to offset fame/pride. For example, "150% pay for working on non-sexy projects" or "additional points for tangible improvements or bug fixes to legacy code".

<comment><USER34> > You'd need an incentive program

Also called "salary increases", "promotions" and "bonuses". Not just for the people who do the sexy new projects. Because let's face it - you're being rewarded far better in a corporation for releasing something new, than for fixing something old. And keeping something old working perfectly with no issue? Well, nobody hears about you, so probably you're not doing anything, you're lucky if you're not fired.

(I'm exaggerating, of course; but unfortunately, not much)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is anyone else here sick and tired of sensationalistic journalism? "Shockingly bad", "a nightmare"? It's just a fucking security bug, why can't you just report the news in a calm, responsible manner?

<comment><USER36> > It's just a fucking security bug

No. It's a security bug, plus a botched fix at a time when the quality of Apple software has been lower than ever (keep in mind this macOS also had the "Shows password as password hint" bug). Moreover, it's a sign that quality control and internal processes at Apple are seriously lacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is not only the bugs but look at Apple failing to get the Homepod to market for the holiday. Something is definitely off at Apple

</comment><comment><USER38> Is MacOS considered "B team" internally? Curious

<comment><USER36> Last time I checked, there was no dedicated MacOS team [0]:

> In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re- > organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a > dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team, and most of > the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the iPhone and > iPad more power.

[0]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how- apple...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple- alienated-mac-loyalists)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> One of the really frustrating things is that it's still unclear whether people's iOS and High Sierra installations work now.

I follow this stuff with a fair amount of interest and I'm still confused, god help the average consumer who just followed the nagging update prompts.

</comment><comment><USER40> Still on Sierra. The High Sierra installer has been downloaded without me knowing.. I receive an annoying weekly notification that try to make me install High Sierra. And now all these really concerning bugs too.. it makes it worse Apple..

<comment><USER41> Me too. On macOS I like to be one version behind. I still get security updates and I get a "frozen" OS that has been tested by the entire Mac userbase for a year. New features can wait, I choose stability.

<comment><USER25> It's great macOS High Sierra uses Metal because my MacBook Pro 2014 is now quiet when before the fan started spinning audibly in idle and annoyingly loud under mild load. On the flipside, WindowServer is unstable and causes freezes if the display resolution is scaled. It also causes freezes after some time when external monitors are plugged in/plugged out. Only a restart helps. If my 15" model weren't so noisy on Sierra, I'd change back to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've never upgraded Windows before the first Service Pack, and now Mac users are realizing that their claims that "Mac is different" were just cultish delusion. Don't rush OS upgrades!

<comment><USER43> Windows isn't perfect (as we all know) but at least rolling back to a previous version is a lot easier than how macOS does it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Better" QA, more testers, more developers, etc. won't catch these types of bugs if there isn't a test scenario which triggers the bug in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER45> Apple needs to stop releasing functionality in their major releases. Seriously, I need more boring iOS vX.x and macOS vX.x releases that focus on performance, space saving, and security features, not ones that redesign f'n everything. They literally don't need any more marketing or market share, just make existing customer happy or they'll start losing the grip they already have.

</comment><comment><USER46> I recently upgraded to High Sierra on my MacBook, and I had random reboot problems: [https://discussions.apple.com/message/32649321](https://discussions.apple.com/message/32649321)

Downgrading to Sierra fixed it... I still don't know what was causing the reboots.

</comment><comment><USER47> "The great thing about Apple is that their stuff 'just works'".

How much longer before this meme dies?

<comment><USER48> > How much longer before this meme dies?

It will die when the competition makes it better, and from what I've seen the competition seems to continue doing great at shooting themselves in the foot

Linux distros lack product vision, Windows looks like every click you make go through 5 backward compatibility layers and a core dating from the first Windows NT that was never refactored.

<comment><USER49> ChromeOS fits reasonably well in this category. Unfortunately it's still too limited to compete directly with Apple, but it's already pretty useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I keep seeing people post about that this would not have happened under Steve Jobs. I think that's unfair. I'm not a fan of Apple corporate, or Tim Cook, but I think in this new era they'll fix the issue, eventually, and all will be well. Under Jobs, countless people would have been fired and I think it would have taken considerably longer for them to admit there was a problem.

</comment><comment><USER51> Always wait for Service Pack 2!

</comment><comment><USER52> "When Jobs returned from his medical leave, Cook resumed his role as the person who kept the moving parts at Apple tightly meshed and remained unfazed by Jobs's tantrums.... 'I'm a good negotiator, but he's probably better than me because he's a cool customer,' Jobs later said. After adding a bit more praise, he quietly added a reservation, one that was serious but rarely spoken: 'But Tim's not a product person, per se.'" -Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

<comment><USER53> I'll give Apple one full more year and see where Mac goes. Their hardware products are truly incredible...minus Macbook /Pro. And I personally love Apple Music over Spotify but I know many disagree.

<comment><USER54> > Their hardware products are truly incredible

For example? All I see is outdated design and hardware. Only "incredible" hardware I can think of is the new chip in iphone x.

<comment><USER18> What "outdated design and hardware"?

The Macbook Pro is the best laptop out there as a power/battery life/build quality combo (having to spend for a "dongle" or new USB-C cables is not a technical concern for its technical capacity).

The iPhone X is top notch (pun intended) and has been praised in reviews all around the world. The AirPods have been described as mostly magical by their users (I'd add to that).

The Apple Watch is the best in its kind technologically, and has overtaken the #1 traditional watch maker in sales (and moves more units than competitive smart-watches). It's the only one that was deemed most accurate in its health measurements (heart, etc) from all smartwatches too in competitive tests.

The iPad continues to be the best tablet technology wise.

So?

<comment><USER54> > The Macbook Pro is the best laptop out there as a power/battery life/build > quality combo

Says who? I think Surface book/pro and Dell XPS have caught up and in some ways surpassed MBpro.

> The iPhone X is top notch

Don't disagree, but the hardware is nothing special. We have had this quality and refinement in Android flagships for a couple of years now. Apple has just caught up to the state of the art.

> The Apple Watch is the best in its kind technologically

Bullshit. Smart watches with better features, better hardware and better battery life have existed for a long while now. The iwatch is good, but not better than any other comparable watch out there, hardware-wise.

> The iPad continues to be the best tablet technology wise.

I think you're repeatedly conflating sales/revenue numbers with hardware and technological superiority. MBpro, iphone x, iwatch, ipad all are very well made and very high-tech products. They all have nice hardware. I am particularly impressed by the face mapping tech in iphone. But all of them are about at par with any high-end laptop, phone or tablet. In fact there are laptops with windows hello, which work very well for face login. The Galaxy phones pack in a lot of hardware features and have had a futuristic design which apple has just come around to copying. There is no clear hardware superiority in apple's products.

<comment><USER18> > _Says who? I think Surface book /pro and Dell XPS have caught up and in some > ways surpassed MBpro._

Reviewers, for one. Dell XPS is nowhere near the build quality of a MBPr, the Surface Pro is close but no cigar.

> _Don 't disagree, but the hardware is nothing special._

In what way? It's the fastest smartphone available, smoking the competition. The camera and image processing is one of the best, if not the best, on any smartphone. AR processing. Best in class sensors. Smoking fast graphics. Most custom designed by Apple. What else would it need? Magic unicorn engine, it doesn't have.

> _Bullshit. Smart watches with better features, better hardware and better > battery life have existed for a long while now._

Anything concrete -- some specific model, so that we can do a comparison for those "better features, hardware and battery life"?

> _But all of them are about at par with any high-end laptop, phone or > tablet._

"About at par" is the best one can say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've been with apple since 1995, but it seems to me that the fruit has been rotting from the inside out for some time now and it is starting to become very obvious. I hope they get their act together, because a real alternative that "just works" does not yet exist.

<comment><USER56> Apple has succumbed to the programming culture that is pervasive everywhere now -- "release early, release often." This isn't just an Apple problem, this is _everywhere_. We all use less stable software.

<comment><USER57> Release early/often is a mantra which fits free software development, one where there is often a second party between the software producer and the end user. This second party can be an integrator - Debian, Redhat, etc - or an IT department.

Release early/often is categorically unsuitable for proprietary, closed software development, especially for a company like Apple which directly targets end users and has made a name for producing stuff which 'just works'.

As such I don't think Apple actually follows release early/often, they just seem to think they can get by with less testing than they actually should. They also have a tendency to concentrate efforts on superficial 'improvements' while they lack the same drive to improve basic infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Tim Cook is a less technically inclined version of Steve Ballmer. He was brought in to milk every current iteration of an Apple product until there is nothing left. Quality be damned.

<comment><USER59> This is simply false. The following things have occurred under Cooks tenure:

      - Apple Watch
      - <USER2>
      - Apple Pencil
      - Apple Music
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>

Each of those represent entirely new product categories, have captured the majority of a pre-existing market, or have opened up entirely new use cases for previously existing products.

Apple has significant challenges in front of them, as evidenced by this week, and Cook shoulders the responsibility for that. But, he is not Ballmer, and Apple had major security bugs and issues under Steve.

I hope the "Cook is Ballmer" trope will quickly die.

<comment><USER20> _Each of those represent entirely new product categories_

Smartwatches are an Apple invention? Wireless headphones are an Apple invention?

I call shenanigans.

<comment><USER59> There is an 'or' between each descriptive clause.

Both Apple Watch and AirPods have essentially captured their entire market.

<comment><USER60> Bette to explain why is great target then market capture. Else you would need to move goal posts later. iPhone at one time captured it's market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Apple is tanking their good will with these. But more surprising Tim Cook is the target of rage from a lot of people, more so than Apple (from my social groups full of nontechies).

I guess that's the burden of following Steve Jobs. His personal brand was pretty synonymous with Apple and Quality.

IMO I think Tim Cook needs to go. He's a perfectly fine CEO for most companies but not Apple. Apple needs an opinionated CEO who is in touch with the average American(and the normal curve). Tim Cook says things like "If you only work for money, you will never be happy", which reveals how out of touch he is with most Americans.

</comment><comment><USER62> I've never participated in a class action before, but I would gladly participate if someone ever starts one. I honestly wonder why no one is doing a class action against Apple.

If some lawyer decides to stand up against Apple and start a class action suit for breaking so many people's phones through iOS 11 to the point of being unusable, I'm sure they will get a lot of supporters.

I really don't care for another iPhone and I don't like being forced to upgrade because my current iPhone which used to work perfectly fine and is not even an old phone is completely broken. All apps take more than ten seconds to boot up. And I know I'm not alone because I've seen other peoples phone in person.

There should be a crowdfunding platform for class actions like this.

<comment><USER63> forced to upgrade?

<comment><USER62> Is this a rhetorical question?

Yes I'm "forced to upgrade".

1\. They keep popping up those notifications and block my workflow until I give in and upgrade to the latest iOS version.

2\. My phone is virtually unusable right now. Like I said, all apps take about 10 seconds to "launch", during which all I see is a white screen. And in many cases it just crashes after the ten seconds. I have to reboot the app to even get it to launch after the ten seconds of loading. I think this counts as being "forced to upgrade" since I have no option to downgrade the OS and my phone is unusable.</comment></comment></comment>


PostgreSQL array field with Django - <AUTHOR> http://www.niwi.be/2012/10/07/postgresql-array-fields-with-django/

<comment><USER2> Could you tell me the specific advantages that this may have over say, json data in a text field ?

Is it faster to:

\- Convert an array into json and push it into a text field

\- Retrieve it the same way

Or use this ?

Also, are there any distinct full-text indexing advantages ? I know more MySQL than Postgres but am eager to learn about it since it looks way more powerful! :)

<comment><USER3> One advantage is filtering query results at the DB layer. For example, you could compare elements within an array, test a particular index of the array, or see if a value is present anywhere in the array. See <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/arrays.html>.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! On further thinking about my question I realized that anything at the DB layer (Postgres) will probably be faster than doing it in Python because it's written in C. (re: the json load and dump part of my question..)

<comment><USER4> I don't know if the default json library in python is written C or not (never had a problem where json decoding was even close to a bottleneck), but there are at least a couple of very high performance json libraries for python written in C, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SQLAlchemy has had a PG ARRAY type for a few years, and 0.8 now has full expression support including the ability to use regular Python array indexes and slices:

        select([mytable.c.data[5], mytable.c.data[2:7]])

as well as array literals in expressions:

        stmt = select([
                    array([1,2]) + array([3,4,5])
                ])

We'll soon be adding hstore (and JSON) to tip as well, right now hstore is available as a separate extension:

[https://bitbucket.org/audriusk/hstore/src/e0b4f7987ebe/examp...](https://bitbucket.org/audriusk/hstore/src/e0b4f7987ebe/example_orm.py#cl-48)

<comment><USER6> SQLAlchemy is an amazing library, and I wish I didn't need the Django Admin (our project is still depending on it for a bunch of... well, admin work) so I could just use SQLAlchemy everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm working on a similar thing for Spyne. It's not fully working (nor released) yet but tests are here: [https://github.com/arskom/spyne/blob/master/spyne/test/test_...](https://github.com/arskom/spyne/blob/master/spyne/test/test_sqlalchemy.py#L363)

Basically, complex objects can be stored as json and xml as well as using one- to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many table configurations. Native postgres arrays are also in the to-do list, but probably won't make it in time for 2.9.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is particularly useful to implement trees with materialized paths [1]. Since you can filter / order by those array fields, you can implement very efficient trees that do anything in one query, with all the benefits of relational algebra / DBMS. No need to resort to document stores to implement trees.

[1] [http://justcramer.com/2012/04/08/using-arrays-as- materialize...](http://justcramer.com/2012/04/08/using-arrays-as-materialized- paths-in-postgres/)</comment>


Share your code poetry - <AUTHOR> http://www.codetry.com

<comment><USER2> I think you meant <http://codetry.org/>

some of them are pretty cute

</comment><comment><USER3> That's right RYUUSEiiSTAR! its <http://codetry.org></comment>


Ask HN: I have an easily copyable killer idea with prototype.How to protect it? - <AUTHOR>

You will call me crazy but please bear with me. I have a killer bitcoin idea that can spread mass adoption and would be really valuable but is easily replicable. It could be really big but is so obvious that it can be implemented at home. Yet, no one is doing it yet. How do I go about protecting it?<p>I don't want to patent the idea because I am against patents. Should I open source it? Start as non-profit? I am located in India. <comment><USER2> If it's a good idea execute on it properly, brand it properly and make it the 'standard'.

Ideas are easy, it's the execution that is hard.

If you don't execute on it, eventually someone will 'discover' the same idea and do it. If you do execute on it and it's good/popular they will clone it.

Make yours the first/brand name version.

Brainstorm how to do it right then make it happen.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with CyberFonic.

What is the purpose of "protecting it"?

Isn't "protecting it" at cross purposes to making it go viral?

The best protection is first-mover advantage. Take more market share than any competitor can easily gain back, and do it quickly, preemptively. Attach your brand to it somehow; that way your brand becomes famous and the kudos will attach to you.

People worry a lot about protecting their precious ideas when they should be implementing them to see if it's what the market really wants. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good implementers are not.

Best of luck, I hope what you've got is transformative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I wonder if I should apply to YCombinator since I already have the prototype ready and can aim to get a few users in next 2 weeks and then submit?

<comment><USER4> Sure why not? The team at YCombinator are very good at getting ideas into commercial reality. If they agree that you have a great idea, then you'll get massive support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you can't stop people copying the idea then it is not a good business idea. A good business idea is one where at least one of the following hold:

1\. The idea is hard to replicate quickly.

2\. It can be patented or copyright and you have the resources to enforce these rights.

3\. The idea has first mover advantage allowing you capture and retain the market.

If you don't have one of these you have a good idea, but not one that will make any money. True good ideas are rare.

</comment><comment><USER6> Forget about protecting the idea. Protect the business built on it via execution.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only known protection is for the idea to fail big time! Then nobody will want to copy it.

If your idea is truly as simple and lucrative as you perceive, then no matter how much protection you apply somebody will get greedy and find ways around the most comprehensive protection measures, being illegal is never a consideration if there is big money to be made.

Even if you weren't against patents, I would advise against it unless you have a lot of money to secure international patent protection and then you will need even more money to sue the many infringers. Patents are really for the large corporates who don't even blink when paying their lawyers millions.

Open source is good, but are you prepared to invest the time and effort for little not financial reward? Of course, you could become famous, but that also needs luck to be on your side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since I am not affiliated to a big corp I guess 'power' dynamics skew against me more than 'financial' criteria.

I think if I can't make money, I should consider being famous.

It is something like you had invented a car shield wiper. You can't write a paper about it. I think I'll just make a blogpost and hope it gets some reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am in a similar situation, only that I already executed my idea and I am already being copied:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206629)

Hoping to get some opinions on how to go forward.

Regarding your question: It sounds like you only want to execute the idea for the money. I think: Either love the idea so much that you do it no matter what, or find some other idea that you can do for the love of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, actually the other way around. I love it so much that I am delusional that it will succeed and thus I think I should make money of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As said, first mover advance. In addition do the key-alliances in advance in the market or industry you want to deploy your product/technology and keep it simple and good enough to kill any competitor.

You could also try to become the standard referal in the community of hardcore users you want, such open source, early adopter geeks, mac fanboys or whoever you are targeting, but remember you can't be liked by everyone and copy/competition is a natural part of success.

<comment><AUTHOR> So basically chill and do my best. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How ever you bring something new, there will be definitely somebody out there to copy it or even bring out a better version of it. But, still if you want to make it a startup, you can. If you are not, then opensource it. PS : if you think its really disruptive, then i would suggest you to go ahead and bring out a startup !

</comment><comment><USER10> If it's a good idea, people will copy it. Nonetheless, you have one thing in your favor, and that's a head start. You develop it right the first time around, and leave little room for the competition to improve on the service. By the time the competition arrives on the scene, you already have a user base that's growing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankyou. Very useful. Should I apply to YCombinator?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Protecting a copy-able product comes down to brand, distribution and user experience.

Pick some businesses such as Coca Cola and look at why they are so successful with such a replaceable product.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is the idea?

</comment><comment><USER9> Prototype it and Open-Source it.. make it a big hit. :) make India proud in Opensource space :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am going to do that, I hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> if it's a killer idea why don't you just do it? Technically you can't patent "ideas"

And once it's done, there's no reason someone else won't execute it another way.</comment>


-ize or -ise? : Oxford Dictionaries Online - <AUTHOR> http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/izeise <comment><USER2> You may think this is a triviality, but it created a minor headache for me in my PhD research. I was working on video summarization and had searched for papers using variants of that term. Then, I found some important articles were missed in my paper collection. Turns out Google is not clever enough to standardize the two spellings into one.

<comment><USER3> I just checked, and Google gets it wrong even when you prepend a tilde! I.e., ~organise does not find organize. That really surprises me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is somewhat an OEDism; no other mainstream (British) English dictionaries state this as far as I can recall.

<comment><USER5> It might be unique to the OED, but they do have historical evidence to back up their case.

<comment><USER4> I understand etymology has to use history to present a case, but I don't know a single BrE speaking person that'd write a current text with -ize endings. The OED aren't prescribing current usage with their stance.

<comment><USER5> As a BrE speaker, I do use "ise", but "ize" is not unknown, especially in science (I believe that the British published journal Nature has it as their house style). Recently I think it has been declining as it has been identified as "the american version".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dictionaries are an artifact of an elitist society where only a small part was lettered. Language is a living thing, just like computer languages are. Oxford dictionary included internet terms like lol and imho, to reflect the current status in language used by a great part of the english speaking world.

The notion of an 'official' dictionary is rather strange. We use certain words, but we can only include them if an institute blesses these words. Having a dictionary is not a bad thing; it serves as a guide to know what language others may expect. The process of having an institute decide for us what's the set of words we ought to use is merely ridiculous. The alternative is this: generate a dictionary from all webpages utilizing the english language. We can do this every -say 5- years, which then will serve as a dictionary for the next 5 years.

The language speakers and writers should decide what the contents of the dictionary should be, not some elitist club of people calling themselves 'language experts'. We, the people are the language experts, not them.

<comment><USER5> The benefit of language experts and pedants has been to slow the rate of change in language. As a result we can read Shakespeare and other historical work in the original. It could be argued that this is itself an elitest point, especially about Shakespeare; however the ability to access the past without special training means that historical knowledge is not restricted to the elite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's funny that in other news they're getting flack for including LOL and OMG and their defence is that they're descriptive not prescriptive - and I think most brits would use *-ise indiscriminately.</comment>


Move Over, Madagascar: Luzon Has the Most Unique Mammals - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/philippines-island-unique-mammals-180959823/?no-ist <comment><USER2> Why is "number of unique species" an interesting metric? If island A had three species of deer and island B had one species of deer and one species of wolf, island A would win under this measure, though B might seem more diverse.

Additionally, defining a species is a really messy problem (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem)). A more objective measure, like fraction of shared genome, might make more sense in this context.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to see the absolute numbers of species for the other contenders. I don't feel that percentage of endemic species is a useful metric.</comment>


Get rid of `this` in your JavaScript code - <AUTHOR> http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/03/javascript-without-the-this.html

<comment><USER2> I read an article on Javascript, and suddenly I feel like I understand Lisp better. (No idea if Lisp actually works like this; I still don't actually understand it. Just, you know, feelings.)

In any case, I like this. I've struggled with javascript's weird `this` scope in the past. And this also avoids the `new` operator, which I also feel doesn't really belong in javascript.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aye, in AngularJS we often use

        var serviceInterface = {};

        // a bunch of code for the service/factory/provider

        return serviceInterface;

I personally think of services/factories/providers as "implementation details" which I group as "client-side services". "Services" in this phrase does not have the same meaning as "service" in Angularese, and this helps me think more clearly more often than not about how my code relates to my goal, so "serviceInterface" is really a shorthand for "clientsideServiceInterface".</comment>


The Update Framework (TUF) - <AUTHOR> https://theupdateframework.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's been around for a while, but it seems not many people know about it. Framework tend to reinvent some piece of the software update flow and re- introduce the same security bugs in the process.</comment>


A Walking City for the 21st Century - <AUTHOR> http://www.archdaily.com/443701/a-walking-city-for-the-21st-century/ <comment><USER2> Monolithic design taken to its natural conclusion.</comment>


Looking inside a vintage Soviet TTL logic integrated circuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2020/03/looking-inside-vintage-soviet-ttl-logic.html <comment><USER2> I love posts like these. For more of this stuff I recommend checking out ZeptoBars.

[https://zeptobars.com/en/](https://zeptobars.com/en/)

Lots of die shots and I'm always blown away by the beauty of some chips when designers fully know it is unlikely their art will see the light of day.

<comment><USER3> Very cool. Second die down is a pretty neat UWB transceiver that is build for real-time location services using multiple strategies (TDoA, ToF, etc). Looks like a little of that rf black magic on the right.

<comment><USER4> The blue highlighted circular structures I believe are rf inductors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Old Russian joke: "Soviet microchips are largest microchips in the world!"

<comment><USER6> "This year a semiconductor factory, next year a whole-conductor factory!"

<comment><USER7> -Are part-time band leaders semi-conductors?

<comment><USER8> The joke is more to the point than one may expect: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_and_conduction_bands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_and_conduction_bands)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As for foot note 3: I suspect that reasoning for mostly not using TTL inverter chips in eastern designs was limiting number of BOM entries and number of chip designs that have to be manufactured in large volumes. Another thing is that in many designs the author just used random NPN transistor (selected on the basis of availability, so seeing RF power transistors used for almost anything was not that uncommon) and resistor.

Edit: and to me, 134ЛА8 with it's connected inputs seems to be explicitly designed to be usable as either bus driver or invertor replacement. You would not want to use that in hand-optimized random combinatorial logic.

Edit2: on the other hand I would not be too surprised if there was IBM SLT module that implements half of or even whole 134ЛА8 :)

</comment><comment><USER10> The Smithsonian has a microchip collection! I had the good fortune to see the physical exhibit when it was at the Museum of American History.

[http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/](http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I had a general question that came to mind when looking at the "How a TTL NAND gate works" section and the accompanying schematic. Are the INs and OUT lines in chips like MOSFETs implemented via the metal layers of the integrated circuits?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. The chip's inputs and outputs are wired from the chip's pins to metal pads on the die. These signals then routed (mostly) through various metal layers to the transistors. For a MOSFET, the source and drain are in the silicon, while the gate is a polysilicon layer over top. The source, gate, and drain usually have contacts connecting them to the metal layer.

I wrote a post explaining how some of the MOSFETs in the Z-80 microprocessor are wired up. It might help you: [http://www.righto.com/2013/09/understanding-z-80-processor-o...](http://www.righto.com/2013/09/understanding-z-80-processor- one-gate.html)

<comment><USER11> Wow, this post is really amazing!Thanks! I had a couple of question about the following:

>"If input A is high, the first transistor will conduct and connect the yellow strip to ground (dotted line 1)"

How does A being high connect the yellow to ground exactly if it doesn't cross the yellow strip? I'm not understanding what the dotted line represent I guess.

>"On the left, the yellow metal line ties together parts of the gate. In the middle is the blue ground line, which is critical to the operation of the gate."

Is the yellow metal line much much shorter than all the other vertical lines then? The other vertical lines seem to be longer in the pic. Why does input line "A" not cross the yellow metal line but the other 3 do?

What is the actual function of the yellow vertical strip then?

<comment><USER12> (Note: this explanation only makes sense if you're looking at the diagram in the Z-80 article [1]).

> How does A being high connect the yellow to ground exactly if it doesn't > cross the yellow strip?

The transistor gates are the green lines. Line A (polysilicon) is colored both pink and green; it's green where it is a gate and pink where it's just a wire. A signal can only cross the green line (gate) if the transistor is on. So if A is on, the yellow dot is connected to ground (via transistor 1). If B is on, the yellow dot is connected to ground (transistor 2), and so on. The yellow dot is a connection between the silicon and the metal strip (yellow) on top.

The yellow metal strip ties together the three yellow dots, so it will be grounded if A or B or C is high.

But that's only part of the gate. The output (where the resistor is) will be connected to the yellow metal strip if transistor 4 (D) or transistor 5 (E) is on. So the final logic function ends up being rather complex. The point is that MOS gates let you build complex AND/OR functions just as easily as a simple gate.

> Is the yellow metal line much much shorter than all the other vertical lines > then?

Yes. The yellow metal strip is just internal wiring for the gate. The other vertical metal strips are long-distance routing from one part of the chip to another. For instance, the blue (ground) metal line goes all through the chip.

> Why does input line "A" not cross the yellow metal line but the other 3 do?

That's really just coincidence. A, B, and C are polysilicon wires, and they are separated from the metal layer by an insulating oxide layer. Think of the metal layer as an overpass above A, B, and C. On the other hand, if polysilicon crosses doped silicon (cyan), you end up with a transistor, so those crossings are very important. I indicate those crossings by changing the line color to green.

It's hard to keep track of what's happening in the different layers. I probably should have made the explanation a bit more detailed.

[1]: [http://www.righto.com/2013/09/understanding-z-80-processor-o...](http://www.righto.com/2013/09/understanding-z-80-processor- one-gate.html)

<comment><USER11> >"The transistor gates are the green lines. Line A (polysilicon) is colored both pink and green; it's green where it is a gate and pink where it's just a wire."

Thanks so much for this explanation. The input and output lines in schematic diagrams have always vexed me. The disconnect between how a transistor is often represented as a standalone 3D graphic such as you have above and how its actually implemented is silicon being the source of my confusion. Have you considered turning these z80 blog posts into a book? You have a great way of explaining things. Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers uncover why morning people should not work at night - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8283.html <comment><USER2> >The researchers did not find any important differences between the results of the ANT test the early birds and night owls completed in the morning

So the morning people are just as bad as a night person in the morning, and worse at night. Maybe they should revise the headline: Why you shouldn't hire morning people.

>Participants were required to stay awake for 18 hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and adhere to their normal routine.

That doesn't seem to fit the normal routine of either a night person or a morning person, nor really the opposite. A morning person would be up earlier and asleep later, while the opposite for a night person. Seems a better test would be to have night people stay awake from 0500 to 2300 and morning people stay awake from 1100 to 0500 or something like that and test under those conditions that oppose their natural schedule.

It gets worse:

>>During the week prior to the SWP, participants were required to adhere to their normal routine as much as possible; e.g. have a normal sleep duration (approximately 7.5–8.5 h per day) and maintain regular sleep schedule (e.g. approximate bed time of 11:30 pm ± 60 min, and waking up at approximately 7:30 am ± 60 min each night/morning).

So they forced night people to live on morning people's schedules, but not the other way around. (And yet the night people still performed better!) And the study was only done for one single day, which doesn't seem likely to have any bearing on how people actually perform over a sustained period of time (such as a regular job), but just how they might perform on an occasional holiday like New Year's Eve.

Combined with such a small sample size, this study doesn't really seem to indicate much of anything except that the researchers could potentially have done a better study.

<comment><USER3> Thing is, night people are forced to follow morning people schedule almost all life long (school, work, etc.). So they are used to wake up (too) early, and since they are night people, they can't sleep in the evening nevertheless. So the "awake from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m." is more or less the rhythm to which they are used (even if it exhausts them). The lazy bunch called morning people are not used to undergo this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article: "Twenty-six volunteers (13 male, 13 female) with an average age of 25 participated in the study"

That's a very small sample size, so I wouldn't put too much confidence in the results before more robust research is done.

<comment><USER5> 26 British, probably white, self-selected, prestigious university students.

<comment><USER6> The world's most studied population...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All this reminds me of good old times when I had no kids - we used to debate when to code better and how many hours of sleep someone needs (8 was the minimum apparently).

Then kids happen, and you are lucky to sleep 6 hours, everyone becomes a late night AND morning person at the same time, and write code any time of the day (and actually better, since you start valuing every minute).

</comment><comment><USER8> I really wish this wasn't so "pro-morning people." The framing should have been "Researchers uncover why late-night people should not work in the morning," since we're the ones being discriminated against by society.

<comment><USER9> I read this as being unfavorable to morning people: they perform about the same wrt accuracy on tasks in the morning, but worse later in the day.

Also, in the bay area at least the "discrimination" you mention is inverted. I rarely see co-workers in office before 9:30 or so, after I've been at work for over two hours, and I'm almost always the odd one out for things like meetings and organizational items (e.g. team lunches, farewell lunches etc.). "Discrimination" isn't the right word, though.

<comment><USER8> Maybe true for _some_ software engineers, but I know people here that have to be in the office by 6 AM for sales calls with the East Coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Night owls are likely just more accustomed to focusing at night, both with and without a full night's sleep prior. No doubt a morning person could become a night owl with an adjustment period.

<comment><USER8> That's not what the medical research suggests. You can "force" yourself to follow a different schedule, but your natural chronotype is biologically- determined, so you will never truly adapt.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a source for this? I'd love to read it!

<comment><USER12> This seems good: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/night- owl-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/night-owl- sleep_b_4276411.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr This "finding" of this study: if people take longer to accomplish the same task, they are more accurate in accomplishing the task.

Please spare us from more tiny sample studies.

<comment><USER14> A tiny sample size can be sufficient if the effect under study is strong.

Is your criticism based on looking at the paper and determining that this is not one of those cases?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What if I'm neither a morning or night person?

<comment><USER16> I think I may be both. Perhaps I just hate sleeping and would rather be awake and living all the time!</comment></comment>


Anyone use AOLServer recently? - <AUTHOR> http://aolserver.github.com/ <comment><USER2> I happen to know of tens of thousands of running instances, and I'm sure many HNers will interact with one today. Can't say more ;-)

Aolserver is reliable and efficient. Tcl is reasonably efficient for most purposes (which is to say, dog slow but who cares?) though we drop down to C++ in many cases where Tcl might not be fast enough.

Tcl is a powerful but strange language. The heavy dependence on strings in its implementation is problematic, to say the least. An object of a particular type may be converted to a string representation, deleted in its original form, and then resurrected from the string representation later. That's not exotic functionality; it's normal in ordinary usage of the language, and it would invalidate the use of Tcl's reference counting for resource management. Therefore, when you define a new type that manages a resource (a resource such as a "future" object returned from C++ land, when you're waiting for an asynchronous operation to complete) you have to be sure NOT to implement working object->string and string->object conversion methods on that type. You have to implement those methods to signal an error to ensure that the object is never stored as a string and then resurrected later.

That's all fine and dandy, but that means you can't store objects of that type in a list, because a Tcl list is a string built from the string representations of its members. In case you were wondering how an object might be converted to a string, deleted, and then resurrected later from its string form, that's exactly what happens when you add an object to a list, dereference the original instance, and then retrieve that item from the list. Truly weird.

<comment><USER3> Sounds odd, but of course, strings are all computers store anyway; your address space is a big string (with holes, perhaps) from 0x00000000 to 0xffffffff, and that's where everything is. (And yes, if you have a 48-bit or 64-bit address space, the string is longer.)

So what's strange is not the representation but how it's not hidden from the programmer.

<comment><USER4> One big string? My computer just stores one huge number :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We used it, along with OpenACS for the Virtualmin website for about a year in 2005. It was better than the Joomla site that we replaced it with, in terms of reliability, performance under load, and maintainability. But, we finally got it right when switching to Drupal a couple of years ago.

I had no complaints about AOLServer. It was fast, reliable, small, well- documented, and did everything we needed it to do. I like Apache better, of course, because Apache can do vastly more...so many more developers just leads to more code being written. But, I never lost any sleep because of AOLServer, which as an IT guy, is my gold standard for good software.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a number of clients using it, they are all happy with it in terms of performance and reliability.

However they tend to be deployments based on work done previously (the dreaded "legacy" code) and for which it doesn't make sense to spend more money to rewrite the site in another language.

For example, one client is still running code originally written in 2002-2003, they just updated the templates.

Another is using the OpenACS.org codebase and is actively developing custom solutions for clients, where the client doesn't care what the technology is underneath the solution.

I personally think the ticket-tracker in OpenACS, were it cleaned up a bit more, would make an excellent lightweight ticket tracker hosted service for many small dev teams.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just started a new job at [company you've most likely heard of if you live in a large U.S. city] and we use it here.

It's nuts. TCL's syntax is extremely simple, but overall appears to be really powerful.

Still trying to wrap my head around some of the more advanced things, but it apparently scales very well and has great community/group aspects built in.

The included ticket tracker makes for an unbelievable customer service platform, too.

<comment><USER8> Zipcar? I know they are actively hiring for OpenACS devs...

<comment><USER9> Zipcar had been trying to move off Tcl, but I don't know how seriously they were focused on that or what their status is. My impression is that had much more to do with trouble finding experienced devs than any issues with the technology stack, though.

<comment><USER10> I'm a big Tcl fan, and had a hand in the most recent version of Ousterhout's book, but it's a bit of a surprise that they picked Tcl, as it's honestly not that popular these days. Wonder who it was that made that decision.

If nothing else, sounds like round 26339132 of the Tcl marketing "fail": company complains about not finding people, while simultaneously hiding themselves from the community of the product they're using, and hiding the fact that they're using the technology in question.

<comment><USER7> Where are the OpenACS communities at?

One of the most frustrating things of the new job is only finding articles/posts/whatever from 10 years ago.

<comment><USER6> OpenACS.org and the IRC channel is all I know about...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Actually migrating the last openACS app over to Pyramid in the next week or so. Not from a failure point of OpenACS or AOLServer - both products have worked very well.

As far as performance, I found it to be somewhat akin to Apache + a moderate CMS. It scaled better than bare apache which at the time was a large consideration. Only one of the projects ever hit a point where scalability became a concern.

I think Philip Greenspun's thinking on CMS design and entrepreneurship had quite an impact on my thought processes.

OpenACS's code - not really a stellar example of well written code. Functional, but messy.

</comment><comment><USER12> $ curl -s <http://bit.ly/test> | grep AOLserver

AOLserver/4.5.1 on [http://127.0.0.1:7200
](http://127.0.0.1:7200
);

<comment><USER13> I wonder why they have that there when they're actually running nginx:

      689 ~ % curl -i bit.ly/test
      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved
      Server: nginx/0.7.67

Are they using AOLServer behind nginx? That seems bizarre.

<comment><USER6> Nothing bizarre about it, given that nginx can serve many thousands of slow- receiving web clients while AOLserver usually uses 1 thread per connection - so 20 slow clients can effectively stall 20 threads.

Thus the strategy is to use nginx to serve static content like .css .js .png .jpg .gif, plus grab the dynamic content from AOLserver and buffer it out to the order of magnitude slower clients (10Mbps client vs 100Mbps or 1Gbps link between nginx and AOLserver).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the explanation. I've never used AOLServer and was unaware of its limitations. Seems to have the same limitations/scaling problems as the two most popular Apache MPMs. :)

My main setup nowadays is HAPRoxy -> nginx load balancers -> Unicorns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Aolserver web server is one of the most readable C programs I've ever seen. Each function definition is preceded by documentation of its purpose and side effects. Unfortunately the modules tend not to be quite as clean. The development community is dwindling but exceedingly polite and helpful.

The one gripe I have is that the tuning parameters are not well documented (especially post 4.5.0). You have to study the source in order to dig out all the parameters you need to tweak in order to really make the server sing.

<comment><USER15> The Ns module API was also very clean. This is why we choose it to embed our libraries and expose an HTTP interface to our other internal applications. It's worked reliably for this purpose for years. Since all our development work is inside our module wrapper, we have no immediate plans to move away from AOLserver. It just works fine as a lean web server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That brings back memories. I did the ArsDigita "bootcamp" back in 2001. Fun times.

<comment><USER17> Sup AD bootcamp buddy. I think I did it sometime in 2000.

Really fun weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We use it to the tune of a few hundred million requests/day

<comment><USER19> Is that what you guys use on Bit.ly

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd no idea this existed - quite interesting to flick through the source. I wonder how it benchmarks compared to Apache or Lighttpd?

</comment><comment><USER21> It came up in a conversation around the office last week, but I haven't heard of a deployment in years.

</comment><comment><USER22> What's the current state of teacup? Working with the current web technologies, I'd miss the library support that Python/Perl/Ruby have, and building everything yourself and packaging that as a starkit is nice for desktop apps, but for servers…

<comment><USER23> teacup does everything I would expect a reasonably good package manager to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've used it continually since 2001, and I'm still using it now. The downside is that most companies have forked the OpenACS code internally (including universities using dotLRN) --- that code never made it to the outside world. If you needed an extension, it has always been the case that you had to write it yourself. Developers are indeed an often scarce good but that has worked well for those of us that are still around.

</comment><comment><USER25> Scholastic UKs website is predominantly a Rails frontend app (with the exception of many PHP minisites and one OpenACS site) all talking to an OpenACS / PG / iSeries backend. It truly is a monument to over 10+ years worth of web development. Though the main reason towards the Rails switch was the lack of TCL developers, though, strangely enough, good local Rails developers are equally as rare.

</comment><comment><USER6> Companies still doing AOLserver/OpenACS/dotLRN stuff:

<http://solutiongrove.com>

<http://acspropel.com>

OpenACS.org and dotLRN.org are the sites for the OpenACS and .LRN (education oriented) toolkits that run on top of AOLserver.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, I've used it a fair bit, always in conjunction with ACS or OpenACS. With the exception of supporting legacy TCL code, I can't think of a good reason to use it over Apache/Nginx with Ruby/Python nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've used it continually since 1996, and I'm still using it now.

</comment><comment><USER8> acts_as_openacs: <https://github.com/jadeforrest/OpenACS-on-Rails></comment>


Why Europe's largest ad targeting platform uses Hadoop - brown9-2 http://www.cloudera.com/blog/2010/03/why-europes-largest-ad-targeting-platform-uses-hadoop/

<comment><AUTHOR> Good application of Hadoop (processing 100 GB of log data a day, separate web interface for looking at results). As a research project, I have been using Hadoop for NLP. I'm also following with some interest projects to use Hadoop for very large RDF data sets. Anyway, the article is a great use case for Hadoop.</comment>


How Waze Onboards New Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.useronboard.com/how-waze-onboards-new-users/ <comment><USER2> Hi all! I'm the person who made this. If you have any thoughts, please share 'em here. I will be checking this all day, so don't be shy.

<comment><USER3> Nice one as always!

Just a heads up though, some of your slides don't work on Firefox (v42 on linux) but do work on Chrome. After trying a bit more it seems the whole thing seems to be dodgy on Firefox: slides don't change sometimes and some are just blue

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I have no idea why it freezes up in FF. If anyone here has any theories, I'd love to hear them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> @RKoutnik Thank you very much for posting this!</comment>


An $89 remanufactured Ubuntu workstation - <AUTHOR> http://symplepc.com/blogs/news/16853255-symple-introduces-the-89-planet-friendly-ubuntu-linux-web-workstation <comment><USER3> They're cheap enough that my first thought was to pick up a couple and figure out what I'd do with them later, but the disadvantage here is that they're older boxes, which means they're going to be energy hogs (for the performance point, at least).

That's what makes the eco pitch interesting - they're reducing e-waste, which is good, but energy efficiency on newer boxes (especially if you just need minimal performance) is worlds better than what these are offering. On the one hand, the recycling is great, but on the other hand, it's like putting a 1953 Chevy back on the road - sure, we didn't have to manufacture another one, but it still might not be the best thing for the environment.

<comment><USER4> This has been one of the most amazingly non-intuitive things for me over the years. That operating a computer that is older can be so much more inefficient than operating one that is newer, that it isn't worth it. Literally the best thing you can do is crush the chips and mine the result for gold, silver, and the few rare earths that are left over. That at least puts a finite limit on the energy consumed over it, and the value returned from it.

<comment><USER5> Not sending it to places like the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana is a benefit. I'm not sure how to weight each thing - the increased CO2 emmissions are bad; not poisoning poor people who do things like burn the PVC insulation off cables to get the copper is a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Certainly agree with that sentiment! We are getting to the point where it makes sense to have 'disassembly' robots, this paper ([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967066108...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967066108001056)) looked at that (it wasn't the focus per se but an example). I can clearly see that 'anti-factories' where raw materials are recovered and unrecoverable materials made inert will be a thing.

<comment><USER6> Still, the market isn't going to solve this on it's own. Other peoples children are going to be cheaper than robots for the foreseeable future. In fact, poisoning the local population could be considered a minor issue compared to contaminating the water tables. Sick people die, but a contaminated water table keeps killing people for generations.

I think strong local regulations, as well as an emphasis of recycling locally is the best short-term solution. It does expose the actual cost of recycling (safely) -- but also cuts energy to shipping, and can be used as a stimuli for a more re-cycle friendly value chain (eg: make sellers of electronics take the bill for recycling, and demand local, safe recycling) -- which in turn puts pressure on suppliers to deliver items that are cheaper to recycle safely.

<comment><USER4> We may have sufficient regulations that the market can push it over the top. After all if you can create a facility that converts ewaste into resalable raw materials you can both sell the service to municipalities who are required by law to dispose of their ewaste safely, and the raw materials to manufacturers as a recycled product. That combination might get you into an internal rate of return to make it worth while.

<comment><USER6> The real challenge is the globalization (and accompanying fragmentation of regulation) of electronics production. One might recycle heavy metals locally, but you'd have to get it back into the production pipe-line -- which generally means shipping it to China. And being able to compete on price with heavy metals from various more-or less horribly run mines around the world. One obvious alternative is to produce electronic components locally (again). But realistically, doing that cheaply enough (and well enough) is going to be a challenge.

In this sense I think Tesla is a very interesting company (even if I don't think much of the cars themselves, from an eco-perspective -- cars is a horrible means of transportation, even electric ones).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an outfit in Oakland which does this.[1] They're a computer recycling center which assembles working systems from the recycled ones. They currently offer minimum specs of at least 2GB of RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD-ROM and 17" monitor. They install Linux XUBUNTU 14.0.1. The machines are free to schools, non- profits, and low-income people.

There was a similar organization in Berkeley which installed Windows. They had a deal with Microsoft which allowed them to do this. But I think that ended with Windows XP.

[1] [http://www.ewastecollective.org](http://www.ewastecollective.org)

<comment><USER8> There's an organization in Minneapolis which does a similar thing. It's called Free Geek Twin Cities, and they recycle old PCs and put Ubuntu on them. It's about $40 for a computer, or one can earn one by volunteering for 24 hours. I used to volunteer there when I was less busy.

<comment><USER9> When I first moved to Portland I volunteered at Free Geek. But it was mostly because I didn't know anyone and it seemed like a good way to make like-minded people.

It worked.

<comment> semi-extrinsic You tried making people and it worked? Did you use the standard trick for making people, or is this more revolutionary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how anyone makes use of Ubuntu for even just 'web work' with just 2GB RAM. The browsers are becoming ever more bloated; I know I had swap issues on my non-SSD laptop before I upgraded from 4 to 8. Right now it uses 3.3 with 9 Chrome tabs open, an IM client, gedit and terminal.

It's unfortunate, of course, because 4GB of older DDR1/DDR2 memory would be much more tough to find/expensive than 2.

<comment><USER11> I regularly use a netbook with 1GB of RAM (Dell Mini 9). It's on #! (I know, I might need to look for an alternative), which uses Openbox, but I have no problems with web surfing as long as I max at about 5 tabs. I also don't use a lot of web apps. With HTML5 video, videos work well enough. I can even run Eclipse if nothing else is open without too many problems, although for development work on it I'm usually using RDP.

Edit: I'll add I use Firefox on it. I find on Windows and Linux that Chrome takes up quite a bit more RAM than the alternatives. I use IE11 on my Windows machine with 4GB which I am using now, because Chrome would eat away my memory with the same usage.

<comment><USER10> Well, _they_ don't use #!

<comment><USER11> I guess that's true, although in theory it would be quite easy to install a lighter WM and/or DE. I don't know why they picked Ubuntu default and Unity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am concerned with energy consumption of this device. Pentium 4 class computer consumes 40 watts while idle. ARM cpu would work just as fine (Ubuntu).

I think this devices should not be called green, unless they disclose power efficiency rating.

<comment><USER13> 40 watts while idle = 28.8 kwh a month so 13.5 cents per kwh = $3.88 / month to run. Rasberry Pi B+ uses 1.21 watts while idle so about 11 cents /month. So a Rasberry Pi will pay for itself in about 10 months.

<comment> mark-r Given that the Raspberry Pi costs half as much to start, even adding a case, you're ahead on day 1.

<comment><USER13> Throw in a used 19" LCD that uses 32w (<$30 on ebay) and you're still ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing price point.

Are the computer parts refurbished? Otherwise I wonder where do you get 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and other older components at good prices these days?

Usually, parts get cheaper as the become replaced by newer versions, but then become expensive again.

<comment><USER15> >Amazing price point.

Is it really? It seems in line with eBay/Craigslist prices for similar hardware, expect for the "remanufactured" part.

<comment><USER16> Try getting all those old parts to a facility, test them, assemble a consistent product, and get it out the door. Their efficiency in doing that is their value proposition.

<comment><USER15> Just to be clear, I didn't mean the price point of the parts if you bought them separately and assembled them yourself. (My bet is they'd cost you more that way, if only because of the shipping/gas expenses.) What I meant was the price you'd pay when buying a P4-era PC whole when it is sold as working by the previous owner or a small reseller.

I agree with you on the testing; if it's rigorous enough that will likely the biggest sale point.

<comment><USER17> I take the point, but suppose you were a school after 30 boxes to run in a computer drop in room in the café?

One quote from the company and a definite (back to base) guarantee would be more acceptable to accountant than lots of small transactions on ebay/local suppliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Focus on environment friendliness is laudable and required. But it seems this is similar to other vendors such as Dell for example.

recycling: [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment- rec...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment- recycling?c=us&l=en&s=corp&cs=uscorp1)

Packaging: [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment- pac...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment-packaging- and-shipping?c=us&l=en&s=corp&cs=uscorp1)

>>> Symple PC runs the open source Ubuntu Linux operating system and doesn't require you to give your data to a company you may or may not trust.

How is this possible? It has ethernet connection and so it is possible to connect to internet and thus same as any other interconnected device. How this machine will be more trustworthy than other PC's/phones?

>>> cost of $89

Following dell[1] at 500 GB hard disk is at $229. It can work safely for at least 2 years and if we go by advanced replacement warranty of in this case, symple comes to around $170. So price-wise it is not much different but configuration of 80 GB HDD is just too small.

[1] [http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3646-small- desktop/pd?oc=f...](http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3646-small- desktop/pd?oc=fddont7101h&model_id=inspiron-3646-small-desktop)

<comment><USER19> I believe the part about not sharing data is in comparison to Chrome OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Data control by large corporations and government agencies is a tangible concern. Our Symple PC represents another, environmentally intelligent and privacy-aware path. It is one of the most planet-friendly PCs in the world. The case is made from recycled ABS plastic, the parts are recycled..."

Hold on, hold on. They are directly marketing this solution to call centers, non-profits, etc., claiming it's "privacy-conscious" yet it utilizes recycled components which by their nature are from unknown sources. There is no chain of custody for recycled components. As such, do they have a lab which is verifying the firmware of any of those recycled components haven't been tampered with in a way which will result in a breach of privacy? If they do, that's cool but I'd think it would add significantly to the cost. This has been a major challenge in the re-use space for years as it's possible to tamper with firmware on motherboards, hard-drives, and network cards in a way which breaches privacy, independent of the operating system. I get the whole reuse thing, it's cool, but I'd be very cautious about making binding claims as to either the privacy or security of devices using recycled components which can be re-flashed.

<comment><USER21> No offense, but tampering with firmware on motherboards, hard drives, and network cards to breach privacy sounds more like NSA/EquationGroup/TAO, not parts recycling centers. Unless you're implying that we should be checking every component for NSA tampering, I'd need some solid statistics to back up the idea that firmware backdoors are suddenly commonplace from refurbished/recycled computer parts.

<comment><USER20> NSA/EquationGroup is just in the news right now. There have been growing concerns about UEFI for years as well as a lack of reporting. Note this from Dick Wilkins UEFI report:

"Examples come from Intel, Microsoft, Mitre, NIST, Linux distros and others. Some are public and some are available only under NDA via direct communications with the involved companies."

Is it likely to be seen in the wild often? Likely not, but that's not the point. If it's seen more than once, then you have a problem if you build an entire business selling "trusted platforms" based on recycled equipment. At that point, expect your claims to be busted. What happens the first time someone actually finds a confirmed trojan in a firmware component of a product they sell? It doesn't matter if it is legitimate or a plant, it will reverberate through the news cycle like Lenovo-Superfish and the damage will be done.

This isn't to say this business model is a bust. Just be very cautious about claiming it supports privacy. There are plenty of educational scenarios where hardware which has been compromised would be of no issue.

[http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/2014_UEFI_...](http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/2014_UEFI_Plugfest_06_Phoenix.pdf)

<comment><USER22> Any time I buy a used board I check the board carefully for any kind of modification or odd looking solder joints and re-flash the bios/uefi with the latest version.

Of course something could still be modified, but so could a board direct from amazon or newegg I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> At what point is it more planet-friendly to manufacture a new energy-efficient underpowered low-end PC, rather than repurpose an old power-hungry low-end PC?

<comment><USER24> It's a good but difficult question to answer if one wants to break into the details of it.

The process of manufacturing all of the components likely results externalities that are represented in the price. There is also the cost of how the disposed machine is processed.

You can also factor in the user behaviors. My grandmother probably is not going to leave her desktop powered on for longer than the 1 hour or so per day that she might use it. People here, myself included, are probably used to running their machines 24-7.

There's also the perspective that if this machine is going to a 10 year old kid, that it's a machine s/he can break and it won't be a big deal. This can be a significant advantage for a low income home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are android mini pcs with Android OSs, much larger selection of apps/games, for less than half that price. They can easily be found for ~$35 [http://www.laptopmag.com/android-sticks](http://www.laptopmag.com/android- sticks)

<comment><USER26> Saying Ubuntu has fewer "apps and games" than Android is both meaningless and false.

<comment><USER12> Some of those sticks run Ubuntu as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the photo it looks like they're using BTX motherboards (unless as the fine print states, the final version is different).

Also I hope that they're aware of which Intel chipsets contain PowerVR graphics and steer clear of selling any systems with those. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_process...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units#PowerVR_based)

<comment><USER28> For those of us who don't know: why would they need to steer clear of PowerVR graphics chips?

<comment><USER29>
        from disclaimers import IANAL

I'm not sure, but it could be something to do with: [http://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html](http://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html).

Basically, proprietary PowerVR graphics chip driver source was leaked. Anyone who has read the leaked code is considered "tainted" and is unable to contribute to the open-soruce, cleanroom implementation alternative PowerVR drivers.

It generally makes it difficult for ANYONE to develop open-source PowerVR drivers, as their lawyers could argue that they had seen the leaked source code and copied it (regardless of whether or not that fact is true).

<comment><USER30> holy hell an active livejournal link. that's amazing. i thought G.R.R.Martin was the only remaining user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have started switching our customer service staff to Chromeboxes (specifically, the Asus model below). However, we've found that 2 GB does not provide acceptable performance once you open more than half a dozen tabs. We've been upgrading all machines to 4 GB and have found that performance is significantly snappier than the low end Windows boxes we were using.

And, of course, we love not having to worry about upgrades, anti-virus, backups. etc. Even the Symple would require us to manually upgrade the Ubuntu OS eventually.

[http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS- Desktop/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS- Desktop/dp/B00IT1WJZQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1425322129&sr=1-1&keywords=chromebox)

</comment><comment><USER32> IMO the cutoff needs to be Core 2 Duo tech (even Celeron versions) or any AMD64 chip.

Pentium 4 Prescotts, which their spec implies could be used, are awful and inefficient chips. (Heck, I told people not to buy them when they were _new_!)

<comment><USER33> Agreed, the late P4's check the box when it comes to performance, but they are right at the worst point possible in terms of power consumption, the next gen (I would include CoreDuo, or P4 era A64) are vastly more appealing because of that.

I'm sure there are many of those CPUs involved in some of these PCs; why not offer a CD+ (or even 'no P4') guarantee for +$10 or so?

<comment><USER34> Or at least Cedar Mill/Presler, which is an easy drop-in replacement in most LGA775 motherboards. It is unfortunate that Conroe is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hopefully they're not selling the Athlon XP series. While they seem like perfectly-capable x86 CPUs at first glance, they're no longer compatible with software that requires SSE2, like Chrome and Flash.

</comment><comment><USER36> On the subject of power-efficiency... if you do not need high performance, the power-per-performance improvements in modern chips are not important, and you are missing out only on power-per-time thanks to huge leaps in idle power.

So, what if you put a classroom full of students on dumb terminals all connected to one or two of these? In other words, isn't it true that the more maximally utilized these old boxes are, the less their idle power deficiencies matter?

</comment><comment><USER37> All the specs say "or faster", "or more", etc. but I can't see a way to change the specs on purchase. Their common questions does have this question:

"Can I upgrade the hardware in it?"

with the answer being "Absolutely, hack away! We have had folks put solid state drives in, or take the drives out all together..."

So maybe they just mean it's capable of being upgraded but they don't do it for you at point of sale.

<comment><USER38> They're a remanufacturer, and probably work with a lot of off-lease computers and the like. The $89 price point suggests they're taking 7-8 year old dells and the like, testing them to make sure they work, and putting them in a snazzy new case. So, some machines may be loaded with new ram, some may have faster processors, etc. It's a bit of a lottery, but with a nicer warranty than the 90 days you get with most off-lease stuff.

<comment><USER37> Thanks, to you and jonrx both. I did not get that from my quick perusal of thier site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Funny we where doing something similar but giving it away for free to school kids in Trenton.

</comment><comment><USER40> While I like the direction they are taking, I am still kinda scratching my head at the use cases.

Seniors who need a basic websurfer with malware proctection?

[edit] I guess third-world users too, but like others have remarked, the power consumption is pretty brutal.

<comment><USER41> From the first paragraph of their blurb:

"Symple PC gives classroom labs, non-profits and call centers a..."

They are aiming it at cost-sensitive groups that need to buy a bunch of workstations.

<comment><USER42> Those people have all the incentives of scale to want low-power computers instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Love the concept. BTW I'm about to start a new linux-friendly hardware shop here in Italy (more geared towards laptops and desktop workstations - <USER2> suggestions?) - it's refreshing to see Symple did this!

</comment><comment><USER44> Add the fact they they have to be shipped to the long, long, list of the reasons this is a bad idea. I'm surprised so many people were fooled by the marketing materials.

</comment><comment><USER45> You can also pick up a Thinkpad T400 laptop on ebay for about that amount. (Has absolutely crap video hardware, but plenty good for web development and educational purposes.)

<comment><USER46> I have a couple T61s from Ebay that I got for my kids. I've been using one of them for some development work, and I've been surprised at how well they work for that purpose --- as in, I could easily use one for my day to day work. Put an old SSD in one, install Linux, and you have a _very_ nice machine.

<comment><USER45> I bought a Thinkpad x220 tablet off ebay as a "poor man's Cintiq" and put an old SSD in it. The thing is like a developer Swiss Army Knife. I can use the very nice keyboard for real programming work. I can use the Wacom stylus for pixel art and graphics. Makes me think that Apple is aiming at dominating the common-person's "workstation" form factor, while Lenovo is aiming more squarely at guys like us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 10/100 Ethernet... why not GbE port? i would love to have something like this in my homelab, but the Ethernet port (for me) is rather limited.

<comment><USER48> Because they aren't setting the spec sheet, they're selling refurb computers from it departments, and most of those were originally specced with 10/100

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't see a WiFi option. My first thought was to use this for our stand-up desks which may or may not be near a wired port.

<comment><USER50> Based on the photo, it seems it has plenty of USB's, you can probably just purchase a WiFi adapter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> very nice. would love to see an SSD option for slightly more, which would decrease the size, power & shipping weight and speed up the overall benchmark.

</comment><comment><USER12> And people pay $80 for this?

ARM device from China will be cheaper, smaller,more power efficient and will run Ubuntu just as fine.

> 2.8Ghz P4 or better CPU (pentium 4 is very very green)

> 80GB SATA HD (spin it yeah, Ubuntu comfortably fits to 5GB)

> VGA port ???

<comment><USER52> Plenty of TVs and monitors still have a VGA port, so that's not a surprise. Furthermore this is basically a PC from 10 years ago and not a top notch one (I'm looking to HD, CPU and network card - I had a laptop with 10/100/1000). It's interesting that you can still run a 2014 OS on that hardware. There is probably some value in using an Intel chip instead of an ARM one even if I bet that most Linux software runs on ARM too (all my Linux boxes are x86_64).

<comment><USER53> People never stop making excuses. VGA is dead.

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#videoVGA](http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#videoVGA)

<comment><USER54> End of life according to who? That's not how it works, one company doesn't just declare something EOL and everyone else stops using it out of obligation.

VGA will stop being used when it stops fitting most use cases out there, and not before. The connector standard is capable of 2048x1536 at 85hz, which, making an educated guess here, is probably a higher resolution than the monitor you're using right now. Most monitors and TV's sold nowadays are 1920x1080.

4K will probably be what finally kills it off (3840 x 2160), but I'd give that another 2-5 years before the hardware reaches enough market penetration for manufacturers to stop including the plug out of necessity.

<comment><USER55> VGA is terrible. The specs you just rattled off don't account for the innate fuzziness of the analog signal. I've reduced a lot of eyestrain from various people by confiscating their VGA cables and telling them they're forbidden from using 'the cable with the blue ends'.

Yes, VGA still has to be used for devices that only accept VGA (like a lot of projectors, very few of which can handle those specs), but apart from that, it should be avoided because the image quality is just that bad.

<comment><USER54> Those sound like bad cables to me. I'm typing this on a 1920x1080 display, connected via VGA, and next to that is an identical monitor connected over DVI.

The displays are identically sharp and colorful. Nobody would be able to tell you which is connected over which interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If had no fan, I'd buy one for my kids.

<comment><USER57> I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 2, a nicer case than I really needed, a 64GB sdhc card, and a good power supply for not more than one of these cost. Going with a smaller SD card and a less-nice case you'd easily save enough to cover a breakout breadboard for the GPIO and maybe a couple of sensors.

Judging from its performance I suspect the original Pi would have disappointed me and been nearly useless for anything I might wanted to do with it, but the Pi2's a nice little device. It's silent and it sips power. The support and software ecosystem around it is well worth a few extra bucks over similar devices (the first time it saves you even 30 minutes of hair-pulling frustration, which likely won't be long after you open the box, you'll be glad you went with a Pi)

<comment><USER56> That's what I did, too. I want to create a Pi 2 blade server and use it for local docker PaaS (for builds, running tests, etc.), but can't find a good case for that. The dog bone one takes too much space and is too generic.

<comment><USER57> You mean the stackable dog bone-shaped ones? They don't look that big to me, but maybe the pictures don't do them justice.

I'm not sure whether it'd be appropriate for what you want, but this is the case I bought:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ME5XUAG/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ME5XUAG/)

I'm happy with it, and I can't really imagine a case being any smaller and still protecting the Pi while providing access to its various ports (including the SD card). I'm not really into the see-through case thing, but I couldn't find an opaque case I liked better for the same amount of money or less.

<comment><USER56> I mean something like this [0], but more efficient as you need an outer enclosure only. Blade-server like would be idea (where the Pis are vertical) with some more efficient Ethernet cabling to connect them to a switch.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MYFAAPO/?tag=nikolay-20](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MYFAAPO/?tag=nikolay-20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The case is way too big for what it is...

</comment><comment><USER59> So is this targeted at the third world?

</comment><comment><USER60> I bought a mac mini in 2011 and swore to god I would never buy a huge case ever again for no reason whatsoever.

Sorry guys, make it smaller and I may bite.</comment>


State Flags Redesigned - <AUTHOR> http://accelerator.bresslergroup.com/2013/08/united-we-stand/

<comment><AUTHOR> When I first saw the new flags on another site, I thought they were horrible: Too bland, too corporate, too similar.

I still hate the new flags--but I thought the guy's analysis was interesting.</comment>


Runtime environment for consultants - <AUTHOR> http://dna.crisp.se/docs/index.html

<comment><USER2> I've been acting as a one-man consulting agency for a while, and I've had a desire to take on larger projects but don't want to hire employees. A co-op type of situation seems like what I'd want to build and open sourcing this will definitely help me and others like me. Thanks Crisp!</comment>


Tech Companies Are Addicting People but Should They Stop? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2017/05/tech-companies-addicting-people-stop.html <comment><USER2> There is little difference between debilitating your customers through alcohol, gambling, usury, and addictions of other forms. The customers are harmed and the company is benefited. Addiction is tautologically bad, or we wouldn't call it addiction, we'd call it a healthy habit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who cares? /s

"Cash Rules Everything Around Me"</comment>