Coronavirus Death Toll Rises to 805, Passing SARS - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-08/coronavirus-death-toll-rises-to-805-passing-sars-virus-update <comment><USER2> I have serious doubt on the death count.

According to the numbers I got from [https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm](https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm) now:

Death rate in Hubei province is 780/27100 = 2.88%

Death rate in all the other provinces combined is 32/10127 = 0.32%

So the death rate in Hubei is 9 times of other provinces. Is this really possible? ZheJiang province has 1075 confirmed cases now, but still 0 death count. Seriously? Hong Kong only has 26 confirmed cases, but already has 1 death count.

For SARS, China has a 6.6%, much lower than other countries. For example, Hong Kong has a death rate of 17%. (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome) )

Do international researchers use China's officially reported count in their modeling?

<comment><USER3> China has had a long history of local government, or local organizations hiding bad news from the central government. I'm not sure things have changed.

<comment><USER4> Maybe its cultural. Until all the old people with the old baggage die the population's behaviour doesn't change. I'm in singapore and last night i went to a few supermarkets. Toilet paper, instant noodles, bread, thermometers..are some of the things that are sold out. Singapore has 40 cases and people are reacting like its the zombie apocalypse despite the government saying there will be no "lock down" and supplies will be sufficient.. As many here have pointed out. Singapore is a police state. This is where contact tracing is going to work if ever. And singapore was the first country to deny entry to travellers from china, despite the economy's dependency on china. I mean. Why toilet paper? It comes from Indonesia right?

<comment><USER4> There's adverts on tv every couple of hours and posters everywhere telling people not to wear face masks if they're not feeling unwell. Government and employers are handing out face masks. Yet theyre all sold out everywhere.

Government has to slow down if not stop that kind of over reaction. Or worse. Sinophobia?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People are modeling the disease and thinking it will peak in a few weeks. I wonder how accurate such a model is if you have no idea how many people actually have the disease but have not been counted. The number of clusters of people with the virus are expanding (like the ski chalet in France). Could they create new expansions we aren't able to know yet?

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like the course of disease progression could be unpredictable, with patients who intially seemed to not have too harsh a case of the disease taking sudden turns for the worse after days or even a week of mild symptoms. 10% of patients having abnormal initial symptoms would also make control of the disease a lot harder if 10% of people escape your screens.

Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/coronavirus- patien...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/coronavirus- patients.html)

<comment><USER7> Honestly, given the precedent—China lied to the WHO about SARS ([https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/china.sars](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/china.sars) )—I am baffled the WHO isn't sending a commission to monitor deaths at hospitals or how many bodies they burn at crematoriums.

There are unverified anonymous reports that 2 crematoriums alone are burning 2-4x more deaths than officially reported in the whole country, and a lab technician at a hospital guesstimating 200-400 deaths daily at his hospital.

Unless you have a commission with feet on the ground, you can't verify or trust what China is reporting.

<comment><USER8> >a lab technician at a hospital guesstimating 200-400 deaths daily at his hospital.

I believe you mean this:

[https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/242834342](https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/242834342)

Discussion:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/f0miwj/a_hospital_wo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/f0miwj/a_hospital_worker_from_wuhan_is_posting/)

I would take it with a grain of salt but I agree that we should have little trust into the official reports from China, their track record is pretty bad and the government control over all news and discussions end up generating wild theories that basically can't be entirely proven or disproven.

The death of Li Wenliang, the whistle-blower doctor and subsequent censoring of online discussions about the way he was treated by the authorities are also not helping:

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3049634/li-...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3049634/li- wenliang-chinese-academics-call-justice-coronavirus-whistle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm still wondering if the Mobile World Congress will get canceled because of this. 5 companies pulled out already. Gsma minimizes the impact and consequences, but think about this: what if one single person is found positive? How would they manage the quarantine of the tens of thousand of attendees? If you were Barcelona's mayor what would you do? Prioritize public safety and risking the bankruptcy of the event organizers, or let everything happen risking a health crisis? Hard decisions...

<comment><USER10> In my view there's little upside to attending MWC this year for most large companies. They can publicize their new products just about as well by sending devices to reviewers and making cool videos, so there's very limited upside. And the downside is immense.

Travel does a number on the immune system. Plus, if they're anything like me, people who travel to MWC for work will tend to get short-changed on sleep.

That said, I don't think it really hurts the industry as a whole if MWC is cancelled, in the long term. But it may hurt MWC.

<comment><USER9> Last year at MWC I slept 8 full hours. Over 5 days. It's the forced networking after running around all day that really gets you... I hardly remember a year that I didn't get back with a cold, a hurt back, a sore throat and so on. Why do we still do this to ourselves? I will absolutely cheer the first company that organizes the first streaming only event. Just get the products in the hand of reviewers a day or two before... What we don't consider though is that mwc is also basically a place where salespersons and clients sit down to sign contracts. Not sure what it means for them if it gets canceled

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Official death toll. Part of me, and a growing number of people online, bet it's in the thousands, and it's being swept under the rug.

<comment><USER12> Or you are simply fantasizing about it being true.

<comment><USER13> It's not a fantasy, but it's also not entirely malicious here.

I can't find a source off the top of my head but the way China issues death reports is substantially different than how doctors do it in the West. In China if you die of heart failure while having nCoV-2019, your death certificate reports heart failure instead of the coronavirus. In the West, it would list both reasons as the cause of death.

It is theorized that many doctors are listing the cause of death as pneumonia and not coronavirus because of this. It is similarly possible that some people die faster than they are able to be tested (the current test takes about 9 hours to complete).

Regardless, it would be foolish to believe this as the golden "actual" number, even ignoring the CCP's (and frankly, other countries') vested interest in fudging these numbers. It would be unlikely that it counts deaths from before the medical community recognized this virus, deaths that have occurred before test results have been returned, and deaths that have occurred outside of the healthcare system (i.e. in quarantined apartments, households, remote villages, or secretive military bases).

<comment><USER14> _I can 't find a source off the top of my head but the way China issues death reports is substantially different than how doctors do it in the West. In China if you die of heart failure while having nCoV-2019, your death certificate reports heart failure instead of the coronavirus. In the West, it would list both reasons as the cause of death._

This is one source of that being standard procedure for the flu, from an individual which has been reporting about China in his YouTube channel for years, having lived there:

" _... but I asked my wife, because she's a Chinese doctor, I asked her, why is it that China only reports [say] 43 or 53 deaths a year from flu, but in the rest of the world we see these massive numbers, like in America 50K-80K a year? And well, she explained to me very simply: when somebody goes to the hospital in China with a complication, let's say heart disease, or pneumonia, or you know, any other ailment, and then contracts the flu which then exacerbates that ailment and eventually leads to death, on the death certificate they'll write down the cause of death as: heart disease, or pneumonia, or whatever that preexisting condition was, not as death from the flu. However in countries like America, if somebody goes and they have a preexisting condition but they die due to complications brought on by the flu, on their death certificate would be written «death due to complications brought on due to influenza», and so it's marked down as a death caused by flu._ " [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=4m12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=4m12s)

BTW, that's the same video I mentioned in another discussion three days ago: "China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22254414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22254414)

<comment><USER13> This has also led to the in-joke, "it's impossible to die of the flu in China."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just curious, how does it compare to H1N1 currently? Think it will be more or less contained?

<comment><USER16> short answer is we have to wait for "28 days later", the long answer is... complicated, please take this with a grain of salt

the first tide of WARS(nCoV) "Contagion" have either become ill(hospitalized and quarantined) or dead, so now we're waiting to see if the number of cases outside of China still climbs as a local transmission epidemic

If this tide continues, international country like eg Singapore can super- spread this into global pandemic like H1N1 unless we close off borders and ban all flights/shippings economics/travels...

How viable is such containment actually remains to be seen, lets pray for the best

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> New cases seem to be going down [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus- cases/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/)

<comment><USER18> There is some speculation that that is because they are at their limit for how many tests they can do per day.

<comment><USER19> It would be flat in that case.

<comment><USER20> That's assuming supply of testing kits is constant.

<comment><USER19> Which is a different constraint to the one in the message I was replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://archive.md/7Ca9m](https://archive.md/7Ca9m)

</comment><comment><USER22> What's the R0 value?

<comment><USER16> somewhere between 2.2~(3 | 4 ?), one thing though, unlike SARS, WARS(nCoV) is already contagious during incubation period(14 days) and even before any symptoms cough/fever shows up, this SUPER complicates any measure to quarantine it

<comment><USER10> Just a heads-up, the WHO discourages geographic labels for diseases. Those labels may be totally orthogonal to the disease itself (as is the case with Spanish Flu), they punish localities for outbreak of (or association with) disease, and the fear of stigma could impact local officials' decisions about reporting outbreaks and seeking help from disease experts.

[https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/naming- new-d...](https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/naming-new- diseases/en/)

<comment><USER23> I'll stop calling this WARS when they stop saying MERS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not to downplay the impact of the Coronavirus or it's victims, but here is a bit of context:

In roughly the same timeframe in the US, influenza and pneumonia has killed roughly 10,000 people, and has a mortality rate of 7.1%. The epidemic level starts at 7.2%

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm)

[https://abcnews.go.com/Health/1300-people-died-flu- year/stor...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/1300-people-died-flu- year/story?id=67754182)

<comment><USER25> Influenza isn't killing healthy people. It mostly kills old or new horns.

<comment><USER24> So is the Coronavirus.

<comment><USER26> no. for this one, no reported infections in children 15yo or younger.

<comment><USER27> It absolutely has infected children, as young as 36 hours old. There hasn't, however, been any reports of children dying.

<comment><USER26> technically you are probably correct though I was more replying to the parent's statement that it kills newborns

>The outbreak was first reported on December 31, but no children younger than 15 years old had been diagnosed as of January 22. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine said at the time that "children might be less likely to become infected or, if infected, may show milder symptoms" than adults.

>Since then, doctors have recorded a few one-off cases among children: a 9-month-old girl in Beijing, a child in Germany whose father was diagnosed with the virus first, and a child in Shenzhen, China, who was infected but displayed no symptoms.

>On Wednesday, Chinese authorities confirmed that an infant in Wuhan, China, had tested positive for the virus 30 hours after being born; the baby's mother is a coronavirus patient.

[https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-are-puzzled-over-why- so...](https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-are-puzzled-over-why-so-few- children-have-caught-coronavirus-so-far)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From what I have seen, the daily death toll is doubling every 5 days or so.

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus- death-...](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/)

I don't know how long that can continue but at that rate it won't be more than a couple of months before thousands are dying per day...

Edit: since it takes 2 to 3 weeks to die from it, we really should be comparing the deaths now to the cases two weeks ago, which gives a much much higher mortality rate than is currently reported — maybe as high as 20%

Based on how fast it spread, I definitely expect there to be ~300 people dying per day by next week, so you're taking a SARS equivalent every 2 or 3 days.

<comment><USER28> > Based on how fast it spread, I definitely expect there to be ~300 people > dying per day by next week, so you're taking a SARS equivalent every 2 or 3 > days.

To put that into perspective: About 700 people die in traffic accidents in China every single day.

So that'd be a point where it would (slowly) become a factor in mortality rates if it wasn't checked within 2020.

<comment><USER29> Wikipedia says about a few hundred thousand people globally die in a typical flu season that barely gets a mention in the news. That's perhaps the more topical comparison?

Oh, and that doesn't include the people who die of the common cold--which is caused by a variety of viruses, the only common thing about them being our immune system's similar reaction. Rhinovirus are the most common, but also coronavirus.

<comment><USER30> _Wikipedia says about a few hundred thousand people globally die in a typical flu season that barely gets a mention in the news. That 's perhaps the more topical comparison? _

Significantly more people catch a flu virus than this coronavirus. So far this flu season the CDC is reporting a CFR of about 0.5% in the US (19 million cases, 10,000 deaths). If the Wuhan coronavirus were equally fatal that would equate to roughly 190 deaths worldwide so far. If the flu were as lethal as the conservative estimates for the Wuhan coronavirus we'd have on the order of 400,000 deaths in the United States alone. That's why people are talking about this coronavirus and largely blasé about the flu.

Additionally the flu _typically_ only kills older or immunocompromised folks. When the flu starts killing healthy adults like H1N1 did in 2009 that tends to get a lot more attention.

<comment><USER31> > That's why people are talking about this coronavirus and largely blasé about > the flu

I disagree. People are talking about coronavirus because the media is talking about it, because it makes great headlines out of context.

In January 2018, influenza and pneumonia in the USA had a CFR of 10.8%. That's horrific, but didn't earn media attention. Over 500,000 people die globally from influenza-related respiratory problems _every year_.

Break out of the 24/7 news cycle.

<comment><USER30> _Over 500,000 people die globally from influenza-related respiratory problems every year._

And how many people need to be infected to achieve that result? More people than the Wuhan coronavirus would need. Try an order of magnitude more. That's why the flu typically doesn't make the news and this coronavirus does.

I don't know where you are, but in California the 2017-18 flu season was indeed heavily covered.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


After 36 years as a paid product, the Micro-Cap Circuit Simulator is now free - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm <comment><USER2> The website says that the company was closed.

Does anyone have an insight on why Spectrum Software is now closed?

P.S. The man behind the company, Andy Thompson, seems to be an excessively humble person. He left a lot of details in the mist. However, all these details are priceless to us mere humans. Memoirs? A blog? 39 years in business is not a small feat.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps his humility is the most important lesson to learn, esp. in the dominant culture of tech today.

<comment><USER4> And maybe the true payments were the friends he made along the way...

There needs to be a name for this kind of dead end aphorism thinking.

<comment><USER5> Cliche? Cheese?

"The true payments," haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very exciting! Especially the SPICE model library. Microcap's libraries have lots of SPICE models that I haven't seen anywhere else. Being able to grab them will be awesome, even if I wind up using them with LTSPICE.

<comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with microcap, but I am familiar with LTSpice. If they're both free SPICE GUIs, surely microcap must be better than LTSpice. I can't imagine any interface worse than LTSpice.

<comment><USER8> More than just GUIs, rather SPICE compatible simulators. LTSpice has macro models for most LT parts, that would not be compatible with MC. Likewise MC probably has models that are not compatible with LTSpice.

Now I wish LTSpice would take MC GUI and features, and implement it with their simulator. They should have bought it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really hope someone mirrors this on github or something, because there is no guarantee that a website for a closed company will be around for any length of time.

I lost some important records because yahoo shut down it's group archive last year (and banned the archive team from saving stuff wtf), and it's been on my mind lately.

<comment><USER10> We (ArchiveTeam) are still trying to archive portions of Yahoo Groups (our methods have changed a bit since Yahoo turned off the web archive in December, but the data isn't deleted until Jan 31).

What's the name of the group?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 40 years isn't bad for a small software shop. I hope Mr. Thompson is satisfied with how things turned out.

Anyone here use the software?

<comment><USER8> I used this in 1991 as an EE undergrad. I initially used it on my 8086, 4.77 MHz XT. It took several minutes to simulate a simple common emitter amp. I don't remember if I had an 8087 FPU.

I then bought a 486DX, 50 MHz and the same simulation was finished before the mouse button lifted.

Fun times. Microcap was really cool at the time as it was the only GUI based SPICE, and the student version was under $50.

Nowadays I use LTSpice specifically since LT makes good switching regulators, and only develops those models for LTSpice. Otherwise I use Microwave Office.

MC still looks much more polished than LTSpice, at least the GUI. Schematic entry in LTSpice is still abysmal.

<comment><USER12> Yes also LTspice has some horrible clunk and bugs in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does this compare to modern circuit simulators?

[https://www.tinkercad.com/](https://www.tinkercad.com/) (Web)

[http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/](http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/) (Windows)

<comment><USER8> It doesn't. Those are not professional level simulators.

MC is a modern simulator, and professional level. I assume the guy is retiring. You are not going to be simulating large ICs, but it's still plenty good for other stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's so pretty much seemingly unique proprietary software. A while ago I found this awesome logic minimizer called "logic Friday". [1] I don't think there's a free or open source version of a tool like this.

I have an idea that the "espresso" algorithm could be used to minimize not only electronic circuits but general boolean expressions for any programming language... I think it would do for a useful refactoring tool.

1: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontrak.com/screenshots.html)

<comment><USER15> I like Helmut Neemann's _Digital_ : [https://github.com/hneemann/Digital](https://github.com/hneemann/Digital)

It simulates logic, supports automated testing, simulates and analyses combinatorial and sequential logic, comes with a large library of components (generic stuff, specific 7400 logic, displays and memories, etc), it can output VHDL or Verilog, and it can export JEDEC files for GALs.

<comment><USER14> Looks great, I'll give it a try! Looks like it implements a different minimization algorithm [1].

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algorithm)

<comment><USER16> Quine McCluskey is equivalent to using Karnaugh maps. Both are basic digital logic minimization workflows, and are taught in any course covering digital logic or CS-focused discrete math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have never heard of this, is it appropriate to ask if anyone could describe it in one sentence?

<comment><USER18> It's software for simulating circuits.

<comment><USER17> At the moment I use Linux (Didn't see any Linux ports?) with ngSpice, I haven't found ngSpice that useful though

<comment><USER19> Micro-Cap is Windows-only software (it runs on Linux via Wine though) and perhaps more accessible than your current (which probably is "make circuits somewhere, generate netlist, simulate with ngspice, analyze somewhere else") workflow as it has an integrated schematic editor. The most powerful Linux alternative to Micro-Cap et al is probably KiCad.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I will stick to KiCad and ngspice (when I need it) I am a hobbyist and dont have complicated needs. Not a fan of Wine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Free as in beer._ It will have been ever better if it had been released as free software.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this good for analog stuff, at least as effective as LTSpice?

I've been using the latter on a Mac for simulating vacuum tube (UK: valve) circuits with some success and a very large amount of frustration. I would love something a little less actively user-hostile...

<comment><USER21> What makes LTSpice seem so "actively user-hostile" to you?

(Founder of [https://www.circuitlab.com/](https://www.circuitlab.com/) (YC W13), an analog circuit simulator that many universities have now started using.)

<comment><USER20> I didn't grow up with it, so coming at it from a perspective of someone who's gotten used to modern software, it's remarkably hard to learn.

The interface is weird. Placement of components isn't so bad but when you want to do stuff like move them or rotate, you fall into this strange mode system that's unlike any other software I've ever used.

Including models is done by writing arcane text commands on the diagram. And also by setting parameters in a hidden window on the component diagram itself.

Models != visual components.

Sometimes I have to set the model designator for a component in the UI twice before it'll "take". That's hostile!

Finickity pin alignment on custom/3rd party components sometimes leads to open circuits when they look closed.

The parameter/settings windows are cryptic.

The wire drawing tool is really nice though.

It's obviously better than writing a setlist in TextEdit but I've found the learning curve very steep, with all the underlying complexity of Spice exposed. The fairly prehistoric interface paradigm that means that any muscle memory and expectations from using any other graphical software just don't help. In fact, they hurt.

I tried your thing when I was looking for circuit design software. I liked it. It didn't have any vacuum tube models at the time (not that I blame you, it's niche) and so I couldn't use it for what I needed.

<comment><USER21> Those all make sense. Thanks!

<comment><USER20> Happy to help. I'll keep an eye on Circuitlab too - thanks for the reminder of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Open source possible?

<comment><USER23> ngspice

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any chance of it becoming FOSS?

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, used this extensively in my undergrad. Always used the free version. I remember occasionally running into the "too many nodes" error. Thanks to the creator for releasing the full version for free. I'm sure many EE undergrads will be grateful.

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems to be working with Wine under GNU/Linux.

I'll try it better when I get home.

</comment><comment><USER27> free as in free beer

</comment><comment><USER28> I pinched the title from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077) since it's more informative. If this is inaccurate, please let us know. (Submitted title was "Micro-Cap User Downloads – Now Free".)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd love to try it out, but I'm not downloading an executable from an `http` URL.

Edit: I hope the downvotes are because it supports `https` (just not by default, thanks to progman32 for correcting me) and not because you think that not wanting to download an executable over an open connection is an unreasonable thing.

<comment><USER30> How is downloading a executable over https safer? It mitigates man-in-the- middle attacks that could modify the compressed artefact on the fly, but that's possibly the least likely attack on a download imaginable. It's _far_ more likely that an attacker would try to replace the file on the server (that way they can also change and documentation around the file, like the reported MD5/SHA hash you might use to check the file is correct). Why would you happily download that over https?

If you're security conscious enough to not download random executables over http then you really should be aware that it's 99% as dangerous to download them over _any_ link.

<comment><USER31> On most networks, anyone else on the same subnet as your IP can hijack your connection using ARP spoofing and send you whatever they want if you're connecting over Http instead of HTTPS. That's usually a lot easier to pull off than compromising the server and replacing the content there.

<comment><USER32> Something to think about for anyone still putting Google and Amazon devices on the same WiFi network as their phone and other PCs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33675734 <comment><USER2> I did research in the field from 2008 to 2013. The claims are always the same: faster than flash, denser than dram, lower power than both.

Here's how to spot BS: first, the density claims are immaterial until they prove yield at a technology node same as dram's today. There are multiple billions investment between 180nm and high yield (and low mask count) 2xnm, no matter how cool is the new memory technology.

Second, speed claims must be explicitly about latency: flash bandwidth is as large as you want it, latency is ~100us (read). Even so, the moment anybody claims that latency is faster than Dram, you know they're feeding the hype and lying to you: dram latency does not depend on the memory technology, rather it depends on the array size. So an 8Gb chip of any memory technology that is fast enough, is likely to be just as fast as dram.

Third: power consumption. Dram's active power is as low as it gets, the memory cell in particular stores information with really little energy. The array interconnect and circuitry consume most energy and a different memory technology won't change that.

<comment><USER3> Actually you should be taking the claims very seriously. This has been an area Micron has been researching for decades. They've had a patent on the memory cell for about 11 years now (US6777705). Phase change memory has for a very long time been one of those just over the horizon technologies, but Micron has perfected it well enough to compete with NAND and partnered with Intel to bring it to market.

This isn't something that appeared out of nowhere. Take a look at this presentation:

[https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/presentati...](https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/presentation/gatwood_current_emerging_memory_landscape_fms2011_final.pdf)

Page 20 starts the section on "3-D Cross-Point Memory". They even have a 64Mb demonstrator on page 23, fabbed sometime before the 2011 Flash Memory Summit.

Additional info on 64Mb demonstrator: [http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=4672...](http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=467247)

Additionally, in early 2014, they stopped selling PCM modules, stating that "Micron's previous two generations of PCM process technologies are not available for new designs or technology evaluation, as the company is focused on developing a follow-on process to achieve lower cost per bit, lower power and higher performance."

Job description details mentioning PCM, chalcogenides, and "cross point technology":

[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12292797?trk=job_view_si...](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12292797?trk=job_view_similar_jobs)

And as far as process, as early as 2013 (2013 fall analyst conference handouts), Micron had PCM on a 45nm process and was listing 2xnm as next node. If they've gotten together with Intel and announced this, they have already reached 2xnm and/or beyond or are certain in their capability to do so.

Because of the way flash memory is organized into pages and blocks, latency is _very_ workload specific. Can you point out where anyone claimed it was better than DRAM latency?, the BBC article says "DRAM chips are still faster than 3D Xpoint, but the difference is much smaller than when compared with flash".

And power consumption. This is PCM. Power consumption by the array when not being read/written is zero.

<comment><USER3> Forward looking article from June with tons of analysis [http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron- the...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3253655-intel-and-micron-the-purple- swan)

<comment><USER4> No, apparently it's not PCM.

>While they did not specifically state it, it looks to be phase change memory ( _edit_ at the Q&A Intel stated this is not Phase Change).

Source: [http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and- Micron-...](http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron- announce-3D-XPoint-Technology-1000x-Faster-NAND)

<comment><USER5> The video presentation mentioned "resistive". I'm not a memory nerd. Does that fact from their disclosure help at all narrow what this type of memory can be best categorized as?

[https://intel-micron-webcast.intel.com/webcast](https://intel-micron- webcast.intel.com/webcast)

<comment><USER3> There is an entire family of memory elements who's resistance is modified in order to store data. RRAM/ReRAM, CBRAM, PCM, MRAM, as well as many others.

<comment><USER6> I suppose "resistive" in this context relates to the method used to read the memory, not so much how this change of resistance is implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest thing that just came to my mind is for durable storage. I think I can some problem at work radically differently and much simpler if I had this available in 10s of GB.

How? Because its bit addressable and persistent. Together this makes it much simpler to implement some durable storage . We don't need the log structure good for NAND block erase issue. We don't need to worry about the flush cost compared to HDD (and this ones even faster than NAND). It would be simple to batch write the data to a slower storage if the Xpoint memory fills up.

You can design databases that keep the hot data in memory and merge the result with older disk storage and this would allow a lot of batching for efficient processing and storage. But given its a database/transaction you need durability and that makes thing that much complicated. There are still lots of problem to solve when you cross the limit of a single machine but the single machine limit can get a lot larger for a lot of problems.

<comment><USER8> They're claiming three orders of magnitude faster than NAND and three orders of magnitude more durable than NAND, which means you'll still need wear leveling to get it to last for several years, but you apparently won't have the complexity of erase blocks being much larger than writable page size.

I do wonder how much it would be slowed down by the kinds of sophisticated error correction SSDs are now relying on.

<comment><USER9> "Bit-addressable". I don't think this suffers from the same issues that NAND does with successive writes. The other articles I'm seeing after a quick search also suggest a three order of magnitude increase in write endurance.

<comment><USER8> Yes, if you read what I wrote I mentioned the three orders of magnitude increase in write endurance as compared with NAND. But when paired with the three orders of magnitude increase in performance, that means it takes the same number of hours to burn it out. And a NAND device without wear leveling can be burned out in less than a day of heavy use.

Bit addressability has absolutely nothing to do with endurance. NOR flash is bit addressable but suffers from the same endurance limitations as NAND, because they're fundamentally the same kind of memory cell, just connected differently.

<comment><USER10> The thing about bit addressability is not completely true. If you can address memory only in pages, you can have quite a large write amplification, depending on the access pattern. A single byte written may count as $PAGESIZE "written data".

<comment><USER8> A lack of bit addressability means that hammering one bit would burn out a whole word/page, but it doesn't affect how many cycles it takes to reach that burn-out point, unless you've got wear leveling.

In practice, if you burn out any one bit, you need to retire a chunk of the array at least as large as a cache line. And it's not likely that you'll actually be able to directly hammer a single bit, because the endurance is still low enough to require ECC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what do we do with it?

We have two models of storage - volatile working storage, and things that simulate disk drives. It's not clear what to do with persistent randomly addressable storage at DRAM speed. Having to go through an OS and a file system to access a few bytes kills the performance advantage of such devices. Making the device look like RAM makes it too easy to mess up. We need something in between, probably with processor support to allow controlled access without going through the OS for each access.

The great thing about RAM being volatile is that you can reboot and clean up your mess. With persistent storage, things can go gradually downhill.

<comment><USER12> Use the MMU to keep the fast non-volatile RAM out of both application and kernel memory, put a traditional RAM disk file system on the fast non-volatile RAM, and let mmap truly map blocks of files into address spaces, instead of demand-paging it in.

That probably is not the best one can do, but it is simple, and may be fairly easy to get 'right' if you put the code handling the file system part into a secondary kernel address space. That keeps the part that can mess up the file system's metadata small.

<comment><USER13> DAX, which is already in new kernels, provides something like this.

[https://lwn.net/Articles/610174/](https://lwn.net/Articles/610174/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Always the same thing.

>1000X faster, 1000X cheaper!

Then "No, you can't buy one right now, but you will be able to do it "soon". And, no it won't actually be 1000X faster neither 1000X cheaper because blah blah blah..."

<comment><USER15> They explicitly mention that they are going to release it next year. Not exactly when next year but it's clear enough of a statement that it will be a public failure, if they don't come out with it.

I think that's sufficient to not put it into the vaporware category.

<comment><USER14> Over the years I have come to realize that unless I can buy something in the nearest BestBuy/Amazon, it is vapor. And also, until then, I would know how much cheaper and better performant it actually is.

<comment><USER16> It's an official press release from Intel and Micron and the release says that they've begun production, not that they just got it working in a lab.

Performance questions are more valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope someone will give a push behind MRAM which seems like a more interesting option imo.

 _MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the "universal memory", able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_random- access...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_random- access_memory#Overall)

<comment><USER18> I'd like to see a source for the "similar density to DRAM" my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint, and scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer.

All that being said, there are people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be.

Also note that you can buy MRAM parts right now, which are replacements for battery-backed SRAM, and are more radiation resistant than SRAM. Densities are fairly low though.

<comment><USER19> > my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint

Where does that come from? From everything I've read is that its structure is fairly analogous to DRAM, "simply" replacing the capacitor with the magnetic tunnel junction, which has its component layers stacked vertically, thus not really taking up any extra space.

> scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin- > torque transfer.

yeah, that's the main gist I'm getting too from following the news.

> people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, > which 3d-xpoint appears to be.

At least the xpoint incarnation still seems to be slower than DRAM according to that article, while MRAM is being offered as SRAM/battery-backed DRAM drop- in replacement.

<comment><USER18> >> my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint

> Where does that come from? From everything I've read is that its structure > is fairly analogous to DRAM, "simply" replacing the capacitor with the > magnetic tunnel junction, which has its component layers stacked vertically, > thus not really taking up any extra space.

I did some searching; older references show an 8-12F2 size, for e.g. the Everspin parts. Grandis claims a 6F2 size which is indeed comparable to DRAM.

>> people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be.

> At least the xpoint incarnation still seems to be slower than DRAM according > to that article, while MRAM is being offered as SRAM/battery-backed DRAM > drop-in replacement.

Right, the product they are claiming they will manufacture next year is slower than DRAM and less dense than flash. (Frustratingly I couldn't find a reference for if they are talking about latency or throughput when they say "slower"; it makes a big difference for which applications will be hurt by the performance mismatch).

However, there doesn't appear (yet) to be a fundamental reason why resistive ram must always be slower than DRAM, nor a fundamental reason why they couldn't do MLC tricks with it, so you can't say all RRAM will be slower than DRAM and less dense than NAND.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like this news item is made up from recent Intel's press release [1] and quite a bit of hand-waving. Take, for example, a claim that 'it would radically increase the number of people that could be supported for the same price'. We already have E7 series Xeons that support up to 1.5TB of RAM [2] (is it per socket? there can be up to 8 sockets per server) At that point, surely we would be constrained by processing and I/O, not RAM.

[1] [http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015/07/28/intel- and-micron-produce-breakthrough-memory-technology)

[2] [http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E7-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E7-8890-v3-45M-Cache-2_50-GHz)

</comment><comment><USER21> A guess: this uses memristors(i.e. rram).

crossbar is a startup in the field, their site gives plenty of details about the tech.

[http://www.crossbar-inc.com/](http://www.crossbar-inc.com/)

<comment><USER3> No, this is not memristors (unless you consider PCM to be a memristor) and it has no relation to crossbar-inc.com. This is phase change memory.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amicron.com+%22cross-p...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amicron.com+%22cross- point%22+memory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So this is essentially persistent DRAM?

<comment> nick-parker The article mentions:

>By contrast, 3D XPoint works by changing the properties of the material that makes up its memory cells to either having a high resistance to electricity to represent a one or a low resistance to represent a zero.

Which sounds a lot like memristors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor) to me. If it's memristor memory, the main advantages are that it's cheap, uses hugely less power than flash, takes up less space, and has far lower latencies.

We're probably a long ways from replacing DRAM with memristors because it's still much higher latency, but if this stuff scales up well you could do something like put the whole page file on it and get even faster loads than current top of the line SSDs.

<comment><USER23> The press release seems to be intentionally silent on the actual memory cell technology. Another possible tech the cell might be based upon is some variant of Nano-RAM.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-RAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano- RAM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "At that point in time, there was an 8:1 price/GB differential between the 512 GB SSDs and the 500 GB HDDs. On the smaller drives, the ratio was 4:1." [1]

If anything I'm hoping the introduction of a competing new technology will make higher capacity SSDs cheaper.

1: [http://www.zetta.net/blog/ssds-replace- hdds/](http://www.zetta.net/blog/ssds-replace-hdds/)

</comment><comment><USER25> This article is so thin on details.

"3D XPoint works by changing the properties of the material that makes up its memory cells to either having a high resistance to electricity to represent a one or a low resistance to represent a zero."

How does it do that?

<comment><USER26> The BBC isn't EE Times and they're never going to be. Also, Intel is going out of their way to avoid providing many details, so in this case it isn't the press who's dumbing it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dear Micron, brace for a mother of all patent lawsuits from HP.

<comment><USER28> > Dear Micron, brace for a mother of all patent lawsuits from HP.

Ignore this person. They don't know what they are talking about.

This is phase-change memory. It's been on everyone's radar for the last decade. HP is pushing their titanium oxide memristors. That's a completely different technology.

<comment><USER4> No, apparently it's not PCM.

>While they did not specifically state it, it looks to be phase change memory (edit at the Q&A Intel stated this is not Phase Change).

Source: [http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and- Micron-...](http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Breaking-Intel-and-Micron- announce-3D-XPoint-Technology-1000x-Faster-NAND)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I assume there are some other disadvantages besides just a high price compared to either DRAM or SSD storage. What are they?

<comment><USER15> It appears to be slower than DRAM, so it's not going to be a sufficient replacement. I also see no indication of how much storage it actually offers. The range between RAM and SSDs isn't that large and I think it's going to be a huge difference whether they can offer 16GB, 32GB or even 64GB at an affordable price.

For a lot of users 16GB might not be worthwhile, 64GB might actually allow some people to not use a SSD at all, so it I think they will have to provide 32GB of storage. That seems obvious enough that the fact it's not stated in the article seems somewhat concerning.

<comment><USER8> They're promising the first chip to be 128Gb, which is where MLC flash is right now. But their die size looks a lot larger than MLC.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. At 128GB it's definitely practical to put your system partition and applications on it. If you rely heavily on cloud services that would be more than sufficient for most people and even if it isn't you could add an SSD for music and videos.

If they release it next year and it turns out well, I can certainly see Apple pulling such a move for the MacBook (Air).

<comment><USER8> 128Gb, not 128GB. You still need quite a few chips to build a usefully large drive.

<comment><USER10> 128Gb is only a small factor below state-of-the-art flash chips, if at all. I think 3d NAND drives it up to 384 Gbit/die. Don't know about the die size though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Samsung had similar claims about v-nand/3D-nand, which they released on their 850 Pro series

<comment><USER31> Did they claim it was magnitudes faster and 1000x more durable than NAND? I think not, since it is still the same concept...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Was the c64 better than the Amiga for hobbyist programmers? - <AUTHOR>

Programming the Amiga was much more complex and it didn't help that its multitasking did not have process protection.<p>So the Amiga was a step backwards for hobbyist programmers? <comment><USER2> It certainly added a whole lot more cost and complexity. 64 was pretty inexpensive and very open and well known software and circuit wise. If you just wanted to do single task work - the 64 was ready with a flip of the power switch.

Then again it depended on what hobby things you were going into; hi-res graphics, music, and especially video. that's where the Amiga had a definite advantages.

I would say disk storage Amiga was at a disadvantage (at least until the 600), hard to get basic HDD controllers, floppies sometimes were problematic (this is back in the day where every system had their own proprietary disk format)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Amiga was a huge leap forward once ARexx became popular. It was an easy to use scripting language that allowed you to receive events and instruct the OS and applications to run commands and functions. After the release of AmigaOS 2 it became a standard feature of applications to support ARexx. It allowed you to extract a lot more functionality from your applications and was approachable for hobbyists that weren't ready to become systems programmers.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> The Amiga came with AmigaBasic, up until AmigaOS 2.x, , which was way more advanced than the C64 basic. There were also other commercially available basics (AMOS for example.)

The Amiga had commercial C compilers (Lattice/SAS and Aztec), as well as freely available ones like DICE (not sure of license.) This was certainly better for "advanced" programmers (I taught myself C on an Amiga when I was 14.)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's been quite a time since I recall anyone discussing commodore vs. amiga.

As far as the C64 goes, it was left in the dust by the Atari ST. I used the 64 and the later 128 right up until I got my ST. The programming tools (compilers, etc.) available for the ST were words better than the 64/128's toolsets.

I used the Amiga for only a month. Housefire :-(</comment>


Saudi Arabia Has Four to Seven Nuclear Bombs, Deliverable by Missile or Aircraft - <AUTHOR> https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/918 <comment><USER2> On Feb 20th, 2016, it was reported that Secretary of State Kerry warned the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan of non proliferation treaty consequences if the kingdom acquired such weapons. This news report may be related to that.</comment>


Challenges for the Next Wave of Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=3801#comments

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the insight about the relative costs of labor and energy spurring the Industrial Revolution made it worth throwing in the pot here ...</comment>


Feedback on my iPhone App: Underwear - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
If you've got iTunes, use the following link: http://bit.ly/6KC48g
Use the codes I'll post below to try out the app. This is a little app I made to fulfill my artistic side - it's just underwear!
Yes, it's not standard fare for this site, but I'd still like someone to try it out and just randomly give me their opinion, so I have an idea what people think when they use my software.
Codes to get it free: 3E7AARJXW47W HJHFMY94JFM3 X6JPXHXRTHNR YX44P4N4A3TP MT3EHNATJR94 TLKJKJTTAJM9 JRK3H4HL9LT4 PP4LNXWFHYWP N7KJYWWLRKXW R9R434MJK6Y9 PN6R3LTEYEJP <comment><USER2> Downloaded App Using Code: N7KJYWWLRKXW

A couple bits on the interface.

When the app starts I begin at the "Yves Saint Laurent" underwear with the fish on it. If you swipe from right to left, it advances to the next picture. If you swipe from left to right, it "bounces" indicating no previous picture.

Pressing the right button at the bottom of the screen produces the same image as swiping right to left. But pressing the left button loads the last image in the gallery, which can't be done by swiping.

It would be cool if swiping and button pushing worked the same. Putting the images in a "loop" would make it easier to get to an image that appears at either end.

Also, it seems as if the only way to view the images in the app is to swipe/push through them. It would be nice to have a screen that tiles the images like Apple's Camera Roll. Then I could just zoom in on the ones I found interesting.

Just my $.02

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. How important would you rate the not scrolling through problem? Important, or it can wait?

<comment><USER2> I would say it can wait. The "bounce" behavior is pretty well understood on the platform. The other way to do it, if you feel that the order of the pictures represents some kind of progression, is to disable the "Left" button on the first picture and the "Right" button on the last picture.

A few other things I have noticed:

\- The app doesn't tell me how many pictures there are and/or which picture I am on. That would help in knowing how far into the pictures you are, and give me a way to easily find a picture again.

\- The app always starts at that first picture. It would be nice if it restarted where I left it. If I wanted to show a particular picture to someone, I've got to start the app and then swipe my way through.

\- If you start swiping very quickly to try to motor through the pictures, it looks like the phone can't keep up and you end up with a black background for a bit.

\- The "Random" has some kind of a bug that I've only been able to produce once where, when pressing it rapidly, I got the spinner to come up and never go away.

\- "Random" generally results in the spinner getting shown, and then the screen simply displaying the new image. However, if the image is an image to the immediate left or right of the current image it does a swipe style animation to display it. It should probably be consistent and just pop the image on screen.

\- A way to get to the beginning or the end might also be useful. Perhaps a double tap on the screen can alternate bouncing you between the first and last picture. You could use the double tap to bounce between the first and last picture for now, and in the future change use it to display a tiled "Camera Roll" style view.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, thanks a lot, I'll implement those in the update!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People will pay for surprise - <AUTHOR> http://www.instigatorblog.com/people-will-pay-for-surprise/2009/11/03/ <comment><USER2> Disappointing review.

From the article:

 _Andy Nulman is Mr. Surprise. Go read his blog on surprise. But come back, ok? Better yet, stick around here for awhile, but bookmark his blog link in a separate browser window or tab for later enjoyment._

This article starts off with the above desperate-sounding request, which reminds me of a 1996 web site ("Please resize your browser to be <\--- this wide --->"). It then goes on to make an assertion ("People will pay for surprise"), and then offers four "laws" of surprise which aren't really explained--what does it mean to say "Balls Beat Brains"?

Mr. Nulman may have written a great book, but this review really does him a disservice.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is true: <http://www.surpriseindustries.com/> is doing very well.</comment>


Startup aims to bring Call of Duty-like tech to live paintball games - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/30/startup-aims-to-bring-call-of-duty-like-tech-to-live-paintball-games/

<comment><USER2> Why we don't see startups from 57 year old folks featured in Venturebeat?

Trust me when I say that isn't snark. In the US and elsewhere we have a large diaspora of people who held a certain kind of job for a long time, which has since been made redundant by either the economics of the business their employer was in, or the skill set they used was replaced by automation. These people nearly always have high school degrees, many have college degrees. And we hear stories about how they have sent their resume out hundreds or thousands of times without a response.

How can we motivate them to throw out the idea that they are going to find their old job at a new place, and replace it with they can create value by using their experience to solve new problems? We need folks like Venturebeat finding those people who have re-invented themselves, and made a startup in their 'grey' years to inspire these people.

We have stories of people who have been out of work since 2009, that is 5 years now this March. You can get an entirely new undergraduate degree in 5 years, especially if you skip the 'general ed' requirements. How do we motivate these people to engage?

<comment><USER3> Being 57 and starting a company isn't news worthy. There are plenty of successful, ages entrepreneurs. For example, from the tech crunches unicorn article:

"""

The average age on our list of founders at founding is 34. Yes, the founders of Facebook were on average 20 when it was founded; but the founders of LinkedIn, the second-most valuable company on our list, were 36 on average; and the founders of Workday, the third-most valuable, were 52 years old on average.

"""

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn- club...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/)

If you are asking why, people who has spent the last 10 years of their life on a job that is not obsolete aren't starting startups, its probably because starting a company requires a certain amount of skill and risk that they probably don't have. This 17 year old kid, might have been hacking with computers since he was 13 - which is 5 years of exposure, on his parents dime. I can't say that others have that luxury.

<comment><USER2> I disagree that it isn't newsworthy. I feel that it is important to communicate to people that creating a new business is something anyone can do, and while some require "connections" many don't.

I've watched over the years what sometimes _seems_ like a concerted effort to convince people that their votes don't count and they can't get elected to office if they aren't rich or connected. Neither of these things are true but as the 'meme' takes hold people start believing it. They go passive in the face of terrible representatives.

I would hate for the same sort of effect to occur in the startup world, where people were 'trained' to believe that it was impossible for the common person to create a new business, and even trying to do so makes you look stupid for trying to do something so clearly impossible.

One way to counter this effect is to highlight people who start businesses who might be related to by someone who is reading/watching/listening to the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It could be just a strange coincidence but I used to own a paintball company called Gangstar Paintball. I met with JT Sports (at the time owned by Jarden Group) in Bentonville, Arkansas about selling my company to them as well as a project I was working on at the time.

It used a series of technologies in the loader to track a user, their rate of fire, the guns fps and track its location.

I have a Non-disclosure agreement with them around this technology that would be up for expiring August 2014 (it was signed August 2009 and was a 5 year agreement).

Granted this implementation varies from mine, it sounds all too familiar. I was using a series of directional antennas to triangulate the players location on a field, instead of GPS because GPS's resolution is roughly 10m.

It is safe to say 2 things: 1) This implementation will never work as they are selling it. 2) There is an eerie connection to my conversation with JT Sports and this (the paintball world is very small).

Perhaps it begs resurrecting -- if this industry can get some $$ from VC and crowd funding, my biggest problem starting up (capital) might not be an issue anymore.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps they could use iBeacons for triangulation. I haven't built anything with them yet, but from looking at the API, it seems reasonably easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now here's a killer app for a ruggedized Google Glass built into some protective eyewear; radar HUD and comms. It could come with some gloves that detect when you're signalling to communicate with 'squad', 'team' and 'all' with your non-trigger hand, along with signs for pre-determined messages for silent comms without visual contact.

</comment><comment><USER7> > With Overwatch, players will be able to attach their iPhones to their > paintball or airsoft guns and then track the real-time movement of other > players on the battlefield

Seems like it could be an expensive game of paintball if you're putting your phone at risk of getting annihilated. Are they planning on making their own components eventually or are they set on the "app" status of it?

Pretty cool idea though.

<comment><USER8> We are currently in version 2 of our rail mount prototype and will be selling both rail mounts and personal armband mounts as part of the Overwatch product line. In response to your concern about device safety, our hardware mounts will support the use of highly-protective cases like Otterboxes, Lifeproof cases, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's great to see pre-college students pursuing technology and entrepreneurship. I didn't even view it as a desirable or viable career path until I started college. I would've appreciated a chance to get started in it at an earlier age.

</comment><comment><USER10> That sounds like an absolute blast. I want to play with my son immediately.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea, I think it would be a ton of fun. The concern with paint balls may be warranted but with their case it would take an amazing shot to cause phone damage. I think the airsoft angle is the real killer. When I was younger, I always wanted a videogame style play for outdoor play. This could be it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really clever idea, but $50,000 to bring this to market is way too unrealistic. He's going to need a lot more.

Could see this being a huge hit, though. Paintball 2.0.

<comment><USER8> The app and hardware are nearing completion, but we wanted to allow those interested enough in the product to get their hands on it before anyone else. All contributors will receive the perks they have requested even if we do not meet our 50k campaign goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the actual venturebeat article this post is referencing - [http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/30/startup-aims-to-bring- call...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/30/startup-aims-to-bring-call-of-duty- like-tech-to-live-paintball-games/)</comment>


Assembla now offers free private Git and SVN Repository Hosting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/April-14-Repo-Blitz-Free-unlimited-SVN-and-GIT-and-much-more.aspx

<comment><USER2> I could have sworn their accounts used to be free and then they took away the free accounts in 2008. [http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7019/N...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7019/New- subscription-plans-Clarification-and-even-better-pricing.aspx)

I remember because we were using assembla for some stuff and then moved away when they started charging. I guess that move didn't work too well for them.

<comment><USER3> This is a good reason not to use assembla ever again. The same thing happened to me.

<comment><USER4> I "complained" on their blog and got a fair response from their team. Here's what they said: [http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/April-14-Repo- Blitz-Free-unlimited-SVN-and-GIT-and-much-more.aspx#comment39418)

To summarize: they didn't have a sustainable business plan and when the costs got too bit they canceled free service. They say now that they're better prepared.

Maybe they're worth giving another try?

<comment><USER5> This is why on Indefero I offer only a limited space free account (still with your own domain). The percentage of people using for free such large offers is too high. This is because you are dealing with people who know how to integrate with different services (googlegroups, wikispace, sourceforge, etc.) and can get a really nice setup for free.

From a business point of view, I definitely prefer to have less visibility but a higher percentage of paid customers. This allows me to create a product which is of high quality on the long term because I have money to do so. And in fact, discussing with my customers, they prefer it that way.

Note that the free offer of Assembla is not free, you get direct advertising when accessing your space.

But if we do small maths and we consider that Assembla has the incredible 5% conversion rate from free to paid. This means that on average they will have for 100 users:

95 x 1GB of "free data" 5 x $49 x 2.5GB of paid data

I take the 50% usage as on the long run it what my personal stats gives me.

So about 100GB of data for $245 per month. As you need a triple backup to be robust. It means 300GB of data to maintain for $245 per month.

It is possible, but the margin will be razor thin if you want to provide quality. It is a bold move, I am eager to see how it develops.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, you offer an open-source version (which is great by the way), so it's not really a huge deal if the free version isn't that great.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the nice comment! You are right, but this is not because of marketing grounds, this is because I would personally never use a software as as a service for my code/projects where I cannot move out of it without losing my data _and_ workflow.

This is another subject, but for a critical part of my business, I want to always have full control over my data and workflow. By allowing people even with the free account to have their own domain and a full backup compatible with the open source (GPL) version, my customers can migrate out without even having their users noticing the change. This is my idea of freedom for SaaS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fairly worrying:

"When you go to create a space, if you do not have your own plan, you will see a field with the prompt "If another subscriber will pay for this space please, provide his email or login". Enter the information for the subscriber. We will assign the new space to the subscriber, and that person will get a note with the option to decline."

So if I don't check my mail someone could bill me for their spaces because I didn't give my disapproval. Um, I'm pretty sure I have to explicitly agree to pay for a service, not disagree to not pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> All the hippies are using GitHub (me included), but with free private hosting, I'm going to try Assembla out.

Good move, Assembla.

<comment><USER9> I run Assembla, but I will say that Github is a good service, and they do a better job with code sharing and individual repositories. Assembla is more oriented toward managing teams. This is not a move to go against Github. We still offer Github as a repository tool. You can use Assembla ticketing / collaboration / team management tools, and link them to code commits on github.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the kind words. GitHub does have an organization/teams feature currently in beta and should be released publicly within a month or two.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, given that GitHub is several years old and has a huge user base there must be something right for GitHub to have not needed a teams feature up until now. Was this a feature that users were asking for or a feature that when watching users they would very much benefit to have?

<comment><USER10> We just turned two and folks have been asking for team support since before we launched. We've never been in the habit of building features we merely think people want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For 6 usd/month, unlimited git and svn, trac and webdav and automatic backups, I'm a happy RepositoryHosting (<http://repositoryhosting.com/>) user.

<comment><USER13> Came here to say this, we also use repository hosting and love them. Can't beat the price.

Have also used Unfuddle when working with other shops. Its nice too, and has some Basecamp-esque features if you want something beyond trac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfuddle has been doing this for a while.

<comment><USER15> Unfuddle's free accounts only allow 1 project and 2 users. Which is a bummer, because I really liked Unfuddle's interface, but I'm not gonna commit to a monthly service until we actually have revenue. :-(

<comment><USER16> Unfuddle does a lot of things really well. $9/mo or $24/mo isn't going to break the bank.

<comment><USER15> They definitely do, and once I _have_ > 9-24 dollars a month in cash flow I very well will consider paying for their service. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd really love to move to Assembla but the packages are a bit strange, starts 40 users and 1 repo? I carn't see many projects having 40 users and only one project at a time, I did ask if I could sacrifice some users for repo's, we work with smaller teams so 10 repo's and 10 users but they declined.

The pay as you go is great until you realise you have to pay for each member of the team and each project, so if I work on two 'spaces' I'm classed as two separate users... it soon gets expensive

</comment><comment><USER18> Assembla is great. The only reason that I stopped using them is because they stopped offering free services. Glad to see that it is back

</comment><comment><USER19> Sorry, but after what they did when they closed the free private accounts some time ago, I ain't going to touch it again.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just signed up to try it. Comprehensive but simple UI. EXCEPT, in free mode it LITERS the interface trying to get you to upgrade. I don't use much of the social features of github for private projects so it still might work and I'll just never log into the website... really annoying ads though.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a business hacker, this reminds me that when your costs are cheap enough, a free version that your customers can use properly is the best possible advertising. Like the shareware version of Doom.

As a code hacker, I've just setup a git repository with them. They have superb help - cut-and-paste to set up your ssh key, start a git repository and push it to them. Great for learning git.

</comment><comment><USER22> is there any good non-commandline way of using git on windows osx and linux ?

SmartGit comes to mind, but what are you guys using ?

<comment><USER23> The only case I generally need a GUI tool is for diff and merge. Meld handles it very well for me on Linux and git supports it by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like justinchen said they already offered free SVN and GIT hosting. Then one day they sent out newsletter saying that they're not providing free hosting anymore and that all repositories will be made public. I had to move all my projects to another repository and promised myself never to go back. I don't trust them, sorry!

<comment><USER9> We did offer free services for about 3 years. Then we had to reduce the free services because of rising hosting costs. No repositories were made public. We maintained private service for everyone for four months, and then restricted usage to read-only, for the people that didn't subscribe. So, no repositories were made public, people got three years plus another four months of free service, and the average charge for people that did subscribe was about $12 per month. If you can't afford that, you don't have a serious projects.

In this round, we have made substantial changes to the business model. Only the repository is free, so we can sell our premium ticketing, collaboration, and management tools. And, we have hosting affiliates that pay us for leads. Plus, the underlying service is profitable and supports the level of admin quality that is required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I might have to downgrade my Github account and move my private repositories over to Assembla.

</comment><comment><USER25> i just got a free repository at assembla. they try to sell you a server at rackspace. if they can make some money doing that, more power to them. it's not presented in an obtrusive way. maybe that's how they will pay for free

</comment><comment><USER26> This is great. So far I have resisted moving all of our repositories from self-hosted SVN to Github only because it's not free, and I don't see enough benefit to pay for it.

However, we could definitely use Assembla

</comment><comment><USER27> I have a couple of open projects on Assembla. I've been very happy with their service and up time. I find Git to be an overkill for the kind of things I need, so SVN is just what I need.

</comment><comment><USER28> Goodbye to Github. Goodbye to the private Git repo on my VPS!</comment>


The Coronavirus Is Airborne - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/239-experts-with-one-big-claim-the-coronavirus-is-airborne.html <comment><USER2> The W.H.O.'s prevarication on this point has been hugely harmful and a gift to anti-mask disinfo peddlers.

Just look at Hong Kong. A hugely congested city with no lockdowns but a 97 percent mask compliance rate and the pandemic is completely under control. What is the W.H.O.'s explanation for this at this point?

<comment><USER3> Look at Norway, barely any lockdown, no mask wearing, and pandemic is pretty much gone - curve smashed, instead of flattened. In the middle of Norway's lockdown IKEA was packed with no occupancy limits, malls were open, public transport was running and airplanes were operating.

Look at South Africa where masks are mandatory and DEATS PER DAY (actual curve that matters) keep going up.

Look at USA where in spite of the media fear mongering the DEATHS PER DAY keep going down.

<comment><USER4> "Deaths per day keep going down" at the moment, it always lags and infections are now trending sharply up thanks to Trump idiocy

<comment><USER3> Well if it indefinitely lags then I guess we don't have a problem. Death deferred indefinitely is death avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a copy of the letter or a link to it? I'd like to see the data supporting the claim.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title is bullshit, please fix it.</comment>


Namecheap customer support proves "Magical" - <AUTHOR> http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2012/04/19/magical-customer-support/

<comment><USER2> A cute story.

Now imagine you're handling customer support and have a serious situation, somebody's web is down, a server in 3rd rack has crashed and it's urgent, as always is. You have another urgent request to do a partial restore of some backup...

... and this guys show's up with his "go watch this youtube or I'll take my money elsewhere" speech.

Please, Mr Customer, take your money to whereever you want and go.

If I were a boss of anyone who responded like that (short and professional), I would never hold it against him. I'm not saying the guy (girl?) did anything wrong, and it turned out great, but the request was ridiculous.</comment>


Ask HN: Making the switch from physics to industry? - <AUTHOR> I am a theoretical physicist considering moving to industry, and I'm looking for advice regarding my options. Got my ph.d at a good foreign institute, and currently am in the middle of a 3-year postdoc at a top US university. I also have over 15 years of programming experience from before my academic career started, including being an early employee at a successful startup.
I am considering moving back to industry in the US (bay area preferrable). As far as I can tell the most relevant options are quantitative finance and data science. I am leaning toward finance because I've always found it fascinating, but truthfully I know little about either.
Any advice from people who have made a similar switch, or are working in these fields will be greatly appreciated! Some specific questions: Are there other options I should consider? What's your experience been like making the switch? Should I contact recruiters or try to find a job on my own? And more specifically: How likely is it to land a quantitative finance job in the bay area given my background + serious preparation? <comment><USER2> Don't, just don't.

I moved from algorithmic optimisation and old fashioned stats and computer science into data science, I was mostly shoehorned into it back when it wasn't hot.

The money is ok, but the problems you solve tend to be extremely inane and unfulfilling, mostly having to do with clicks, products, and how to divert people's attention to generate revenue. Sometimes I really feel I am just contributing to the evil of the world.

There is an emerging market for data science into energy, one of the few industries where you can do some good. I have been trying to move into it but seems DS is extremely tied to web and finance...

I would stay in physics if I was you, it is an intrinsically beautiful science along with mathematics.

Disclaimer: I will leave the field soon and dedicate myself to bug farming, among other projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend you go for data science rather than finance.

For one you'll have less to learn to catch up (ML = prob theory + modelling skills). Also "data science" is a much broader skill that is in demand in many industries, while to apply your modelling skills to finance requires that you join one of the dirty banks, dirty hedge funds, or other dirty system construct.

This is a good book to have on the shelf: [https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/MLbook/](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/MLbook/)

also on topic [http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data- sci.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! As a followup question, looking at glassdoor it seems that data science salaries are lower on average than programming salaries (at least in the bay area). Is this actually the case? Is it also true for someone going into data science with a physics background?

I'm asking because if a background in science is necessary for doing data science then I would expect salaries to be higher than for programming roles. This is simply because I'm guessing there are fewer scientists than programmers around. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER4> It's easier to make money hiring a programmer than hiring a data scientist. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please do consider medical physics. We have a former string theorist in our team who does great Monte Carlo simulations of medical linacs. I myself have an experimental physics background and use my knowledge in product development in the radiation oncology field in Palo Alto. APS has a local link service in which you can meetup with local physicists in Bay Area and talk to them about industrial positions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please consider Visual Effects. There's always a need for "brainiacs" to bring the latest, fastest, smartest way to render/simulate/store the visual effects in the latest Pixar/SuperHero movie. It might just be a short contract for a few months or a year. Don't be afraid if you don't have much art/design experience, there are other specialists for that. And in all reality the day to day work of lighters, animators, etc is more matching the design specs of the director.

But maybe that's not your thing, just putting it out there as some of the biggest and oldest vfx studios are in the SF Bay, namely Pixar, ILM, Dreamworks, Tippett, and well honestly little young studios might be interested too.

www.creativeheads.net Is a clearing house for all kinda of vfx and games jobs.

<comment><USER7> One caveat here: the pay at VFX shops tends to be lower than the industry in general.

<comment><USER6> AND the work can be more sporadic AND be migratory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recommend the Insight Data Science Fellowship. [http://insightdatascience.com/](http://insightdatascience.com/) You can read Ethan Rosenthal's blog about the transition from physics to industry. [http://blog.ethanrosenthal.com/](http://blog.ethanrosenthal.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I recommend you go for data science as Ivan.</comment>


On LulzSec, Censorship & CloudFlare - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/58611873

<comment><USER2> _There are tens of thousands of websites currently using CloudFlare's network. Some of them contain information I find troubling. Such is the nature of a free and open network and, as an organization that aims to make the whole Internet faster and safer, such inherently will be our ongoing struggle. While we will respect the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate, we do not believe it is our decision to determine what content may and may not be published. That is a slippery slope down which we will not tread._

Thank you Sir, thank you.</comment>


Impedance Matching Expectations Between RISC-V and the Open Hardware Community - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXwy65d_tu8 <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was a great talk by Bunnie Huang on the difficulties in making hardware designs more open.</comment>


20 Years of PHP - <AUTHOR> https://line.do/ww/php-evolution/8oq/vertical

<comment><USER2> Might as well add this. Sometime in 2010: /r/lolphp launched. Collecting php gotchas for 5 years and counting.

Seriously. Following /r/lolphp is a must for anyone unfortunate enough to have to work in this horrible language.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you buy into types? - <AUTHOR> Based on my own personal experience I can't say I'm sold on the idea that typed languages or even optionally typed languages lead to any metric of measurably better code yet I continue to see people types. What are you thoughts. <comment><USER2> If you ever had to do a large refactoring project, I would predict that you either:

1\. Had great typing 2\. Had very comprehensive automated (unit) testing 3\. Had a very difficult time

If you are tremendously diligent in writing tests for everything, the additional benefit of typing (in language where it's optional) is lower. The biggest advantage that typing offers in those scenarios is that there's a large amount of tests that you no longer need to write.

Ultimately with static typing and testing you test for the contract of your code and static typing is much faster.

If you are just thinking of adding typescript to an existing javascript application, this benefit will not be immediately obvious. Using typescript will over time change how you write code, and when you get to that point it will be better, I guarantee it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a discussion that has gone on forever in the industry without a conclusion.

Certainly a strongly typed language can give better performance. As a Pythoner the thing I like the best about optional types is better completion in the IDE.

I think we've "agreed to disagree" on this issue so there are "scripting languages" with less explict typing and "systems programming languages" with more explicit typing. In fact, one view of the optimal environment for applications work is to combine a scripting and a systems language; say Python and C or Clojure and Java.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is true that there is at best very little evidence that code gets better. (Some studies found very, very small positive effects, others found none, some went the other way).

However, the documentation effect is well-supported, and also something I find to be true anecdotally: if you have a library or code-base that you need to figure out, the types really help.

On the other hand, it is unclear whether very large software systems such as the web would be possible as statically typed systems.

<comment><USER3> "The web" is an interesting one.

I think web browsers are overwhelming implemented in systems languages, but people often write other clients in scripting languages. Javascript is the dominant client-side scripting language but many people like Typescript, GWT, Dart and things like that.

You certainly can write dynamic web sites in a systems language, but almost always people use a scripting language like Perl, PHP, Python, Cold Fusion, etc. Java may be the exception that "proves the rule" but Java tends to have escape hatches for compile-time binding such as Spring.

<comment><USER4> You can certainly write specific sites using whatever you want. However, the web as a whole is and has to be dynamically typed.</comment></comment></comment>


This is how much I want to intern at Google. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mygoogleinternship.com/

<comment><USER2> Honestly this is cringeworthy, but that's just me being honest. I wish you the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, any suggestions or feedback as to how I could improve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> another typo, $33,000 should be $333,000. also, you may want to find a value for _unique_ visitors to Times Square every day. The first thing I thought about while reading was how many of those 10^6 people are commuters who would walk past the ad every day for 3 months. Not trying to nitpick, but I think looking into that could really show attention to detail.

it looks nice otherwise, definitely above the normal effort put into an intern application. best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow,

Thanks a lot, appreciate the feedback. You're right, I just did the respective edits. I really hope Google is able to see how much this means to me. Again, thanks and have a great one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your resume page looks googly, but I sure hope the HR process nowadays isn't all about gimmicks. All I can suggest is don't stress out and blow the coding interview (happened to me).

Umm why are the analytics set to strikingly.com?

<comment><USER5> He worked there according to his resume. Not an answer, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your phrase, "utter arbitration" doesn't make sense - that word is about settling disputes. You could say "This number comes from my intuition (and is a little arbitrary), I assume..."

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, just made the edits. Thanks a lot for the feedback. Have a great one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The site doesn't fail gracefully with JavaScript disabled. Also, with JavaScript disabled, you'll see "© 2012 Your Name" in the footer.

Interesting idea though. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> You might want to consider tweaking the font for the text on your images. It can be hard to read on some of the images. Maybe have the font be outlined with s thin black line or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, good catch, I'll work on this right away. Thank you!

<comment><USER9> I agree, blurry images and little content between images makes it hard to read, you need to space this out more I guess

Also in the costs, renting a space to put a booth does not seem to be included?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. I love when prospective interns put this much time and care into something they really want. Best of luck man!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

Thanks a bunch man, I hope Google can see how much this means to me. Best to you too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One typo I noticed - "Time Square" should be "Times Square"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Used to process HR here, reviewed thousands of approved applicants, none of them have anything close to something like this. This is good, but you're trying too hard.

You have three months there to enjoy some food, possibly get to organize powerpoints and do some research. This shows you want to do something big but is tied to nothing concrete. Just fantasy, thinking of getting to a $1.4MM budget that takes 6 months to gain ROI.

This also isn't very Googley. This idea of bombarding Times Square, setup hardware in the middle of a busy street, and beaming things to billboards.

Try a different approach, change your scope.

You have 3 months, 480 to 500 hours give or take. You have perhaps 4 other interns on your team, now it's 2000 hours. You can only get a tiny fraction of Google's leverage but nothing crazy like constant travel, big budgets, or endless cpu power, you don't even get the full Google brand but rather a secondary, Google Maps, and maybe even tertiary branding, Google Maps Yellowman.

What do you do to gain usage? Loyalty? Awareness? How do you create feedback loops and get valuable information to the dev team? How do you identify and partner with other brands?

</comment><comment><USER13> Google has a marketing division? What for?? every person already uses their site everyday.

Why would they advertise at times square when everyone in the world is already eye balling their website everyday?

Also marketing is only needed for things people dont really need or want. A good product sells itself by word of mouth.</comment>


Show HN: Revised UK Invoice and Vat Making Tax Digital Compliant iPhone App - <AUTHOR> https://testflight.apple.com/join/ybEZ9EAA <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All Making Tax Digital is the UK governments push to get eveery business to deal with their tax affairs digitally. Initially, this means VAT registered businesses who can no longer file their VAT manually, nor can they rely on HMRC website. Ideally, they show have software that they maintain accounts on, which files directly to HMRC.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax- digita...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax- digital/overview-of-making-tax-digital)</comment>