Uber rolling out on-demand ice cream trucks this Friday - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/2012/07/11/omgubericecream/

<comment><USER2> This is what great customer engagement looks like. Win on all fronts, but do Vancouver next k?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll wait to see what the feedback is, but my first thought, at least for nyc, is that why would anyone want to use this? Unless the truck is a couple of blocks away, it'll take a while for the truck to get to the user requested location. In NYC, there is a drug store every other block. So it'll take 5 minutes for anyone who wants an ice cream to go to one and buy one, instead of waiting for a truck. And how much is uber going to make on selling ice cream (I imagine that if something like this is successful, they'll expand to other products too..)

<comment><USER4> Because not everyone is a crab-apple who doesn't enjoy fun and novelty.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure the fun and novelty wears off quickly....for the user as well as the ice cream truck.

<comment><USER5> Indeed - for the crab apples as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previously: Mariachi bands, motorcades, roses - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3915826>

</comment><comment><USER7> They might be able to clean up by becoming an outsource dispatch service for air conditioner repair in the southern US. Timely response is critical for both repair contractors and their customers.</comment>


Legal, political maneuvering let Snowden flee - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/legal-political-maneuvering-let-snowden-flee/2013/06/23/5643e0b6-dc36-11e2-bd83-e99e43c336ed_story.html

<comment><USER2> It is deeply shameful that the article can't even spare a sentence to describe what the documents are and their relevance to the public interest, instead generically describing them as "documents about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs". Instead, we see a simplified fugitive-manhunt story, with a smattering of speculative fear-mongering about China and Russia.

The unsubtlety of the smear campaign against Snowden is exceeded only by its seeming effectiveness so far. Here's hoping a new document drops soon to force a shift in the conversation.

<comment><USER3> We're in week 3 of Snowden and the NSA. Even USA Today has it as the top front page story. After a certain point, it's ok to not expound the details every single time and focus the story on just what's new.

[http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=USAT&...](http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=USAT&ref_pge=lst)

<comment><USER4> As predicted, the topic is now the Snowden manhunt, rather than the spying. Snowden needs to release more details to keep the fires burning.

<comment><USER5> Was the same with Dorner and the LAPD.

(not to compare Dorner and Snowden, only about focusing on the man hunt and person instead of the broader issue)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _a senior [Obama] administration official... warned in unusually direct language that "if Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law."_

Indeed.

 _The rule of law requires the government to exercise its power in accordance with well-established and clearly written rules, regulations, and legal principles. A distinction is sometimes drawn between power, will, and force, on the one hand, and law, on the other. When a government official acts pursuant to an express provision of a written law, he acts within the rule of law. But when a government official acts without the imprimatur of any law, he or she does so by the sheer force of personal will and power. [1]_

It seems that the US government wants other nations on board, in its battle _against_ the rule of law, and its authority to create secret laws, secret courts, and so on.

[1] [http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Rule+of+law](http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Rule+of+law)

<comment><USER7> Maybe we need something better than the constitution. How can we defend a constitution from the president, both parties and the judges of the supreme court?

It's not enough if a few people own weapons. The army is orders of magnitude more powerful. We need some new sort of system. It's been more than 200 years. We should go back to the drawing board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a United States citizen that usually roots for my country. In this case our government is so obviously wrong that it is not surprising to me in the least that other countries are not bending to our will. The Whitehouse petition to pardon Snowden surpassed 100,000 signatures in no time. Why is our government not realizing that this is a big issue and they need to stop what they're doing?

<comment><USER6> For Snowden's sake I hope he's able to escape to asylum.

But for our sake, I also hope that he's caught.

If Snowden gets away, the public will forget about this whole issue pretty quickly (remember, we've known or strongly suspected this whole thing for quite some time). But if he's prosecuted, he becomes the martyr to spark dissidence and protest.

If the government lets the story end, they'll probably win. If the story is continued for additional chapters, _then_ we have some chance to make the pendulum start to swing back the other way.

<comment><USER7> You can't kill an idea.

Assange showed how it can be done. Now we see other people whistle blowing. It will go on forever. They can't scare the totality of a population who believes it's righteous to make the disclosures.</comment></comment></comment>


Nexus One Review - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5443835/nexus-one-review

<comment><USER2> If you're thinking of getting this phone, it's brilliant. Granted I'm biased since I already purchased one, but I don't think you'll be disappointed. Best android phone on the market right now (possibly best phone overall).</comment>


JQuery 1.6 and .attr() - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/jquery-16-and-attr/

<comment><USER2> I think they did the right thing, but I dont really like what John says about not changing the API for the major release 2.0.

With their knowledge, user base and fame they have the oportunity to redefine jQuery v2 completely with the things learned from v1 and everybody would learn it and use it.

Dont let fear to change crush the will to improve and move on. On a major release, one has todo what it has to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree that 2.0 would be a great time to really innovate. I understand breaking sites with a point upgrade could be met with a lot of resistance. What they have built though is probably good enough that they could soon afford to branch off with something new for 2.0 and those that don't want to rebuild their code to take advantage could happily stay on the 1.x branch.

<comment><USER3> That sure worked magnificently for Python and PHP.

The problem with branching off like that is that now you're suddenly faced with a fragmented community. The worst thing of which being that everything is written for the "old" branch. Then nobody wants to use the new branch because there are less batteries included.

When nobody wants to use the new version, no new batteries get added.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right with Python, I think with PHP though it was pain that was needed if the language was going to be around long term.

<comment><USER4> PHP's growing pains are more akin to a bonsai kitten than a pre-teen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The selectedIndex example really nailed down why .prop() exists, at least for me.</comment>


Concise and Consistent Naming (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cqse.eu/publications/2005-concise-and-consistent-naming-talk.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the full article: [http://itestra.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/06_itestra_con...](http://itestra.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/06_itestra_concise_and_consistent_naming.pdf)</comment>


The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2603.asp <comment><USER2> Most of these are pretty good points. I've worked for a bunch of startups before I did my own and I've seen many of these errors 'in real life', as well as committed a few of them myself.

A couple of notes on the article: To build a flash game in with a team of 5 people in 6 months in a high wage environment as a 'starting goal' is not how it is done. To try to compete with the giants of the world from that kind of background is not going to work, a serious game has the budget of a movie, and about as many contributors.

Most flash games are written in Asia these days, the larger operators in this arena have their own partnerships in China and India, they crank out titles at a much lower cost than you could ever do from 'the west'. Incidentally, once the initial kinks are worked out it turns out that the quality is as good or better compared to what is produced locally, which is a trend I would expect to continue. They heavily 'pipeline' their operation too, with new titles on the drawing board while others are in various stages of development.

The 'Buy that engine' part is spot on, too often startups die because of a fascination with technology and the NIH syndrome. If you can buy it ready made, it costs you a fair bit of money, true. But contrast that to keeping your team afloat for your most optimistic guess on how much it will take you to develop that thing in house. Not all 'costs' are good to avoid, and when you can trade-off time-to-market for a piece of software that you don't even have on the drawing board yet then I would say 'BUY', every time.

Of course your coders won't be happy they don't get to implement that sexy lighting model they've been dreaming about but that's just too bad.

Good enough is another one of those items that is so hard to get right. One advantage that web developers have here is that they can roll out new versions at a moments notice. There are times when my websites go through 4 or 5 minor changes per day. That would be much harder in a 'download' environment such as a major game title. But by setting clear goals up front you know when you've reached that RC grade milestone.

Leadership is a tough one, too much and people will feel micro managed, too little and the place will turn into a zoo. I was probably guilty of the latter more than the former in most aspects, but some of my employees might see it the other way :)

One thing is for sure, you can't please everybody and those that don't play nice will have to find a place elsewhere. Most (but definitely not all) startups go through a period of shake-out before the final configuration is reached.

There is a bit of a taste of 'sour grapes' in this article, I'd say chalk it up to experience and do it again. Don't sit there being 'unemployed for 4 months', you could be 4 months in to showing how it's done 'your way' and with all the experience that you've got now at least you'll get it more right than you did the first time. Failing a couple of times is an excellent school.

It took me 10 years to get it even remotely right, there were months when I really wasn't sure what was going to pay the rent - forget about the food - but eventually it did pay off.

Oh, and for the record, I worked for a game studio in the gray past, it went bust in a spectacular way, with the CEO in jail for fraud and a bunch of other juicy details.</comment>


I made a test page to see the new Google Maps style - <AUTHOR> http://istartedsomething.com/newGmap.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the Google Maps JavaScript API which now has the option to enable the new visual style. [https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/basics#VisualRefresh)

Of course it has a daily rate limit of 25,000 free requests so if it goes down that would be why.</comment>


August Hacker Sprint - <AUTHOR> http://pitchpigeon.com/blog/announcing-august-hacker-sprint-.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, Pitchpigeon founder here.

Just an FYI, you _don 't have to buy_ a pitchpigeon credit to participate. Hackers can just participate informally by committing to launch something by the end of the month, and keeping people updated via the hashtag #hackersprint - the point of this sprint is to get motivated into finishing your product, by seeing the momentum of others!

Lets see if some interesting projects come out of it!</comment>


Moving for good - <AUTHOR> https://sivers.org/mfg <comment><USER2> There are jarring contrasts that go too far. You very well could wind up socially scorned and unwelcome in many places. So you've moved away from everyone you know and the people near you inherently don't welcome you. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Do your homework - visit a place on extended vacation first. Do yourself the favor of being open to vast differences as well. I've met people who just discard where I live is the way it is as out of date or backwards, etc, instead of dignifying the culture and history that proceeded them. We're talking people who grew up one state away.

<comment><USER3> > You very well could wind up socially scorned and unwelcome in many places.

This is not true. Maybe you could argue a few places are like this, but not many. For the most part, from personal experience, especially if you are a Westener, you will be welcome throughout the world.

<comment><USER2> Hence the suggestion to vacation before making a move...

<comment><USER3> What I'm saying is that in my opinion, this worry you have is overblown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may be reasonable advice for extreme extroverts, but many humans value stability and predictability over new experience, particularly when forming families.

The majority of lifestyle-oriented media is produced with an extrovert bias and we tend to define happiness in extrovert terms, but for those of us inclined towards introversion much of this advice would make us miserable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant! I've lived and worked in five countries, and I can recognise the impact this had on my personal and professional life.

</comment><comment><USER6> My issue is that I'm curious with my professional life. So traveling and dealing with the hassles of that took time away from my professional life.

</comment><comment><USER7> (Disclosure: this comment is more critical than I really mean it to be, but it's late and I'm too lazy to edit it into a more docile tone. I thought the article was interesting but simply wanted to raise the counterargument)

I've seen both sides of this, and this article paints with a broad brush without really considering any of the benefits of living in one place for an extended period of time. It's fine as far as opinions go, but if you're looking for life advice, I'd suggest taking it with a grain of salt.

My parents' families both moved around when they were kids, and so my family moved around when I was a kid. I married a farm girl who hasn't ever lived more than 5 miles from home, and we built a "forever home" on her family's land. Since being here, I've realized that the kind of urban living that is completely disconnected from any particular location comes at a cost. Namely, there are things which you can ONLY learn when you've _stayed in one place for an extended period of time_. Derek's article almost alludes to this...

        Form deep friendships with locals. Ask lots of
        questions. Ask them to explain things, and show you how
        it's done. When they state a fact, ask how they know.
        When they state an opinion, ask for examples.

I'm not sure how one could "Form deep friendships" without staying in one place for a significant period of time. Maybe we just disagree on what makes for a "deep friendship", but it almost certainly wouldn't happen if you keep moving on a regular basis.

        At first, their values and methods will feel wrong.
        You'll feel the urge to tell them how it could be
        better. (Meaning: more like what you know.) But try to
        understand a perspective where they are right, and you
        are wrong. Eventually you'll realize that your beliefs
        were not correct — they were just the quaint local
        culture of where you grew up. You are a product of your
        environment.

The uncharitable reading of this statement indicates the author is a moral relativist, which is a wrongheaded and pointless belief to hold. Is the author really arguing for respecting the beliefs of a "local culture" which disapproves of interracial marriage, for instance?

Unfortunately, the more charitable reading is that he's not talking about "beliefs" so much as "cultural norms". That is, why do the Latin American countries take a siesta during the day? Or why do European countries drink so much tea? Or why does an Indian woman's sari reveal more skin than a traditional western woman's blouse? I say this reading is unfortunate because though it may be more correct, it's a much less interesting statement.

Of course cultural differences exist. Such differences must be fascinating for cultural anthropologists. And they are even interesting to curious tourists. But where did the "locals" get their cultural norms from? Was it from moving around every few years to a new place? Or was it from staying in one place, and having their ideas shaped by the land around them and their ancestral heritage?

The "fish don't know they're in water" metaphor is apt. Similarly, _relocated_ fish may detect a difference in the water, but are unlikely to notice that even in their new environment, the "local" fish still eat plankton, and swim by moving their fins, and lay eggs to reproduce, just like the fish did in their old environment.

My overall point is this: don't dismiss your own culture as being somehow less significant simply because you didn't choose to be born into it.

</comment><comment><USER8> This advice is good only for certain kinds of people. It's not for me.</comment>


Bats and Viruses - <AUTHOR> https://www.bats.org.uk/about-bats/bats-and-disease/bats-and-viruses <comment><AUTHOR> _Bats have some distinctive life-history traits which may be relevant to understanding why they are reservoirs of these viruses, including the fact that they form the largest known mammalian aggregations. The fact that in general they don't succumb to viral disease suggests adaptations of the immune system. One of the most interesting recent suggestions is that daily flight, which elevates metabolism and body temperature analogous to a fever, provides a selective force for coexistence with viral parasites._</comment>


Particle simulation : Metrodome collapsing under weight of snow - <AUTHOR> http://benfry.com/writing/archives/747 <comment><USER2> Uhh, it took me a while to understand this post, but... that ain't a simulation.</comment>


AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen 'Matisse' Coming Mid 2019: Eight Core Zen 2 with PCIe 4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13829/amd-ryzen-3rd-generation-zen-2-pcie-4-eight-core <comment><USER2> Wow, performance competitive with i9-9900K at nearly half the power draw would be huge if it turns out to be true. Can't wait for benchmarks.

What an architecture Zen is.

<comment><USER3> 130W on AMD vs 180W Intel. Nearly 75%.

Also, I'm worried that they're at "engineering sample, glad it didn't crash" stage. Optimistically this will hit shelves at Q3, and at this point we may see sunny-cove-based 10nm (Whole chip, not only the "chiplet") cpu from the blue team.

I think AMD's success will come down to pricing...

<comment><USER4> You are comparing power for the entire system. I think they subtracted 55W of idle power consumption from both to get only the cpu, then compare: 75/125 = 0.6.

<comment><USER5> But isn't part of idle consumption due to the cpu?

<comment><USER6> Not very much. For example i9 uses under 13 watts at idle [1].

[1] [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel- core-i9-7900x-sky...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel- core-i9-7900x-skylake-x,5092-10.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, according to Anandtech, there might be space for something else on the package:

[https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13829/cpu44.jpg](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13829/cpu44.jpg)

Maybe a second Zen2 die?

<comment><USER8> There were some rumors before this announcement that AMD would announce SKUs with 1 CPU die (6-8 cores activated) + 1 GPU die or with 2 CPU dies (8-16 cores activated). But AMD didn't announce any SKUs - seems they're a bit behind on schedule.

<comment><USER9> Also, if they reveal too much prospective buyers might be incentivized to delay their purchase. As stupid as that might sound, it is a thing.

<comment><USER10> It even has a name: Osborne effect

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I'm salivating for is an AMD 6c/12t mobile chip. With this power draw on desktop, chop the thermals and boost clock a bit and you have something truelly frightening on the battery life & burstable performance scale.

<comment> ben-schaaf Considering last generation's APUs used the same "chiplets" as the desktop processors, I'd wager the next generation of APUs will have a single 8c16t zen2 die.

<comment><USER11> Ooh.. A 3500G, 6c with Vega 15 (or whatever) would be nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> AMD seems to be making a push for the server market at the moment too. It looks like a good time for it as Intel struggles to get production on 10nm while AMD is already at 7nm for some of their range. But Intel has an incumbency advantage. I'm no expert on the server market though. Could someone with a bit more knowledge chime in with a how big a threat this really is?

<comment><USER13> I don't see how this "incumbency advantage" would help Intel, exactly. The server market is highly competitive. If AMD puts out superior product at an attractive price, nobody is going to say "but we've used Intel for a decade, how can we suddenly switch to AMD?!".

<comment><USER14> >nobody is going to say "but we've used Intel for a decade, how can we suddenly switch to AMD?!".

Maybe not those exact words, but people will say "We are adding a server to our VMWare ESXi cluster, so if want it to be compatible with our existing hardware we better stick with Intel."

VMWare's high availability feature (a highly desired feature for any data center) won't work across different CPU architectures, so unless you are replacing your entire stack and not just adding server(s) then you have to stick with the architecture you already have in place.

<comment><USER15> These aren't "different CPU architectures". They would all be x86-64 so unless VMware uses some specific Intel feature it shouldn't be a problem.

<comment><USER14> I have been a Sys Admin for 7 years. It is a problem, vmotion won't work going from AMD to Intel or vice versa (at least not in any official way). In fact it is highly suggested when building ESXi stacks that you get the exact same model CPU for each server.

[https://communities.vmware.com/thread/305792](https://communities.vmware.com/thread/305792) [https://www.v-front.de/2013/04/how-to-vmotion-from-intel- to-...](https://www.v-front.de/2013/04/how-to-vmotion-from-intel-to-amd- and.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> Cinebench is an idealized situation for AMD

I wouldn't say it's especially suited for it, but AMD generally does well because of the large amount of cores/threads.

On the other hand, something like 7Zip, AMD has had a huge advantage compared to Intel, even going back to the Bulldozer days. What is it about that code that runs so well on AMD?

<comment><USER17> Compute (rather than I/O) heavy and highly multithreaded stuff skews towards AMD. Most applications benefit more from Intel's caching and single-core turbo boost features than they do from AMD's more discrete style of multithreading and weaker single-core mode tech.

<comment><USER18> > Compute (rather than I/O) heavy and highly multithreaded stuff skews towards > AMD.

This. It's worth noting that newer, legacy-free programming languages make it a lot more feasible to parallelize compute-heavy parts of the code, and to deal with the "Memory wall" (i.e. the rise of memory-bandwidth as a bottleneck especially in high-CPU-frequency, high-core-count systems) by working with efficient, low-level representations of data. This will help not just AMD, but also newer entrants in this market segment such as ARM vendors.

<comment><USER19> Do the rooflines of these chips show that pattern? Intel has a big vector unit with some seriously useful instructions in it, pushing the arithmetic speed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Identical Performance to the Core i9-9900K, At Just Over Half The Power" This looks like trouble for Intel!

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but that's comparing a mid 2019 chip to a chip you can buy today. Intel will probably make some announcement about their chip that's faster than this one right about the time this hits the shelves. It's the neverending rat race for chipmakers.

<comment><USER22> I'm not so sure about that.

The Intel playbook has, for the last 8 years, been either "same architecture, same clock speed, less power draw" (remember, Sandy Bridge [2011] and Broadwell [2014] perform within 10% of each other given the same clock speed- a consequence of chasing thin-and-light laptops and tablets) or "same architecture, higher clock speed, more power draw" after Zen hit store shelves. Instructions per clock haven't changed significantly in many years; Intel has just slowly gotten better at hitting higher clocks because smaller transistors pull less power.

Overclockers have known for years that 5GHz is about the maximum that Intel's architectures can do under standard conditions (i.e. not liquid nitrogen), and the bottleneck there has primarily been due to heat generation and not processor instability.

It hasn't escaped Intel that these kinds of clocks were easily possible- they had special CPUs sold at those maximum speeds for high-frequency trading applications (not sold to the general public), and that fact was being kept in reserve as a strategic advantage against potential competition.

But that advantage has already been used up (not that AMD has one at the moment either; Zen and Zen+ have practically zero overclocking headroom on their fastest examples). Intel will need a new architecture to compete, and that's still likely at least a year down the road- and unlike the last time this happened (the Pentium 4 was supposed to reach 5GHz, but capped out at 3.8 for heat and power draw reasons) they don't have another architecture waiting in the wings to save them.

<comment><USER23> > the Pentium 4 was supposed to reach 5GHz

Somewhat minor nit but it was actually supposed to reach 10GHz: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6](https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6)

"Realistically speaking, we should be able to see NetBurst based processors reach somewhere between 8 – 10GHz in the next five years before the architecture is replaced yet again. Reaching 2GHz isn't much of a milestone, however reaching 8 – 10GHz begins to make things much more exciting than they are today. Obviously this 8 – 10GHz clock range would be based on Intel's 0.07-micron process that is forecasted to debut in 2005. These processors will run at less than 1 volt, 0.85v being the current estimate."

And overclockers did actually push that chip all the way to 8GHz with extreme measures.

Core 2 then hit the reset button and clock speeds dropped substantially (from 3.8ghz to 3.0ghz) in exchange for huge boosts to IPC. Intel didn't exceed the P4's 3.8GHz clocks until nearly 10 years later with the 4.0ghz i7-4790k (AMD was actually the first to 4 ghz with the AMD FX-4170)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Also, natively wider SIMD (256 vs 128 bit), though still no AVX512 IIRC. I'm waiting on third gen Threadrippers in particular. Now that will be one heck of a chip for a quad GPU deep learning workstation.

<comment><USER25> Intel does avx512 at 30+% slower clockspeeds. AMD should be able to do an avx512 at full clockspeeds in double the cycles.

For equivalent architectures, you'd expect Intel to be faster at workloads that are only avx512. They'd be slower at mixed workloads (the avx unit slows down, but so do all the other ALUs executing in parallel along with the SMT thread).

Most importantly, 512 is 256 more sets of hardware which is a big addition to core size and power usage for what is a very fringe workload. Saving that while getting better performance in common workloads seems like a great tradeoff.

<comment><USER24> I'm aware. But it's not just about clock speed per se. AVX512 has some _very_ specialized instructions that are specifically designed to speed up matrix- matrix and matrix-vector multiply. Even at a significantly slower clock those instructions improve things by a lot if you do linear algebra. Most of linalg is done on GPUs nowadays, but not all of it.

<comment><USER26> As a consequence, TR/Ryzen is very slow in "classical" ML in Python (I can tell), because MKL/AVX2 seems to be way slower. This could be fixed with Zen 2; AVX512 then will be likely at 2/3 of Intel's performance without slowing down the rest of the system during computations.

<comment><USER24> I agree with this assessment. Frankly, GPUs are so much faster for dense linalg than even the highest end Intel (or AMD) chips that anything that can be done on GPUs should be done there. But that requires one to know how to work with them, if the primitives don't already exist, and most people are oblivious to the finer points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > This suggests that AMD's new processors with the same amount of cores are > offering performance parity in select benchmarks to Intel's highest > performing mainstream processor, while consuming a lot less power. Almost > half as much power. > >How has AMD done this? IPC or Frequency?

Am I missing something? Wouldn't this be expected given that this new AMD processor is running on 7nm while Intel hasn't really launched in 10nm processors yet. AMD is a process generation ahead...

<comment><USER28> The processes are measured differently, so 7nm isn't physically 3nm smaller than 10nm in this case.

I believe they said in one of the articles that more details on how they achieved the power saving will be forthcoming nearer the launch date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Question from a curious sysadmin: How are these AMD GPUs for machine learning and math related stuff?

I have only heard of Nvidia CUDA in this context. Does anybody do ML work on AMD GPUs?

Does the popular libraries like PyTorch, TensorFlow etc support both CUDA and AMD's equivalent?

<comment><USER30> > _Question from a curious sysadmin: How are these AMD GPUs for machine > learning and math related stuff?_

They're just fine, though I think a tuned implementation on either tends to show NVIDIA ahead.

> _I have only heard of Nvidia CUDA in this context. Does anybody do ML work > on AMD GPUs?_

NVIDIA is still king here, but if AMD continues to develop their Radeon Instinct stuff, it could be competitive for some applications; it then becomes a question of whether or not there will be enough people who know something other than CUDA (which is not currently supported on AMD GPUs, though work is under way to make a compatible runtime).

<comment><USER31> HIP (part of the ROCm stack) is Fairlane similar to CUDA. They also have goodies like tensorflow-rocm, available through pip or a docker container.

That stack is also open source. And writing in it is supposed to keep you compatible with NVidea.

Wanting to support them -- and hoping they become more competitive in ML -- are why I bought Vega GPUs.

Although, I haven't found much time to actually try and get any of my software running on a GPU, let alone optimized. As a huge fan of avx512, I would like to try -- maybe I can get even better performance on a graphics card.

But with AMD, the lack of support for the uninitiated is apparent. Not much in the way of existing software and resources like online tutorials. I'd like guides on how to optimize kernels, organizing wavefronts and discussing memory movement. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

Especially painful in Julia, where almost half a year after 1.0, the only supported way to use GPUs on any library is with CUDANative. "Cross platform" GPUArrays.jl's open cl backend still hasn't been updated. Means all my coding will be done in HIP. Which is fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Meanwhile ... their Radeon VII is still on PCIe 3

I'd rather they release a better chipset with at least 2 PCIe 3s than come up with these fast I/O paths not even commercially usable today. Such agony.

<comment><USER33> Really? The mi60 uses the exact same chip as the Radeon VII, and it supports pcie4. They will gimp the Radeon VII in some places so they don't completely kill mi60 sales, so dropping pcie4 makes sense in isolation but is completely whack in the bigger picture. Doesn't the right hand talk to the left hand at AMD? Hopefully there's time to reverse this crazy decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone know why the IO-die is so large? Does it contain L3 cache or something?

<comment><USER35> The Zeppelin (Ryzen 1xxx) die is 212 mm2 and its CCXs are 88 mm2 leaving 124 mm2 for the uncore. Now we see that the Matisse (Ryzen 3xxx) IO die is 122 mm2 — virtually the same size on the same process for the same functionality. (I don't see how L4 cache would fit in there BTW.)

As to why it's so large, I guess connecting cores, memory, and PCIe at extremely high speed just requires a lot of transistors. Intel's uncore seems to be far smaller; I'm not sure how or why.

<comment><USER36> The Ryzen chips offer more PCIe lanes and ECC memory support. These chips also use the Infinity Fabric high-speed interconnect, which is not needed by Intel's single-chip designs. The two CCX units in Zeppelin also need to talk to each other, so probably all this complexity just adds up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was looking to buy a 9700k and wasn't considering amd for probably 8 years.

Even with Nvidia and Amd, amd came out and than I bought a 1060.

I might just wait this time for amd.

<comment><USER38> A Geforce GTX 1060 GPU?

<comment><USER39> That does seem rather weak given the cpu, I would expect at least a 1070. But then again price were inflated at least by a third for a good while...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Whats the cache-coherency throughput of AMD vs Intel?

Isn't this a major, major issue with >=8 cores ?!

EDIT: yes, of course, lots of server code has very low memory contention.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm hoping to get a steak on the 2xxx lines. These 3xxx chips if they bench well should be awesome. Can't wait to see reviews.

</comment><comment><USER42> I assume PCIe 4.0 will support the next-generation of Thunderbolt?

<comment><USER43> I'm not sure what you mean. It should be straightforward to connect a thunderbolt bridge to any version of PCIe.

If you specifically mean "without going over 4 lanes", then that's probably true.

<comment><USER42> Currently devices have Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40 Gbps), I'm wondering if PCIe 4.0 will increase that. I assume it would be called Thunderbolt 4, and I assume it will be faster.

<comment><USER43> Increase it how? That's like asking if faster ethernet is going to increase thunderbolt speed. No, it's a totally different way of sending data over wires.

A theoretical Thunderbolt 4 that's twice as fast could easily be fed with a PCIe 3 connection. It could even be fed with a PCIe 2 connection!

<comment><USER42> Huh, thanks.

I had always thought Thunderbolt was essentially "external PCIe".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is going to _own_ cloud. Costs are linear with power.

<comment><USER28> Even the previous generations of Epyc are surprisingly cheap compared to Intel - Azure has a L8s_v2 8 core with 64 GB RAM and decent storage for under £100/month, which is less than half the price of anything else. Obviously, core speed may not suit every application, but it's pretty eye-opening!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'll never buy AMD again, I had nothing but problems with Raven Ridge on Linux:

[https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683)

<comment><USER46> Yeah. I'm concerned about similar issues too.

<comment><USER45> No need to be concerned, it's working fine with Arch Linux (Linux 4.20, mesa 18.3).

It's still a problem with Ubuntu 18.04.1 (kernel 4.15), but Ubuntu 18.04.2 will hopefully be more stable with kernel 4.18.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not released AMD CPU performs a bit worse than already released Intel CPU. They are still behind. But it's very intriguing. If they managed to push 5+ GHz, it would be awesome CPU.

<comment><USER48> You mean slightly better. The AMD CPU outperformed the 9900k. Wit the same core count. Which means AMD was likely turboing to 5GHz during the demo.

<comment><USER49> The article body shows the AMD chip slightly behind the i9. The chart just after it shows two different figures - "pre-brief" it's behind, "on stage" it's ahead. Not a huge margin in any case.

<comment><USER50> Power consumption was significantly better. I'd say they're still ahead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What makes Paris look like Paris? - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/whatMakesParis/

<comment><USER2> Hmmm, yup, that's definately a hard problem. I live in Paris (9 years!), and I still couldn't get a 100% score (91% if anyone is interested)

In terms of architectural style, Paris has got to be one of the most unified cities in the world, and even so there is a wide range of architecture possible, ranging from the classical Haussmanian apartment buildings, to Le Corbusier inspired art-deco. Whilst some of those styles are unique to Paris (the Haussmanian apartments in particular), many are fairly standard the world over, which means that unless you can see the street signs / parking metres / hous numbers / street lamps etc that are all uniquely parisian, you aren't going to be able to tell where a photo was taken. Still, it will be interesting to see if their software manages to pick up on things that I don't: maybe the width of sidewalks, or the hight of the first floor of an apartment building, or somthing along those lines can be used to distinguish cities, but I don't pay enough attention to see it.

<comment><USER3> 91% is pretty respectable for that test at the bottom, among a few clearly distinguishable photos, I got some generic photos of windows and parks, how can I tell if they're in Paris or not?? Edit: the 3rd picture shows pitch black for me.

I got 63%, I despaired at the end but I wouldn't have gone above 70% in any case (only went twice to Paris).

Edit2: they're not random? For example, for the 16th, 17th, 18th or 20th pictures, I can't make out if they're in Paris or not.

<comment><USER2> 16 yes - street lamp is classic Paris. 17 too dark to be sure, I'd guess no 18 yes, architectural style plus street house numbers / street lamp 20 hard to be sure, I'd probably say no, because the balcony railing is unusual for Paris

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Born and lived in Paris 23 years. Score 90% on the test.

Paris is a mish mash of styles that was pushed into the heavily predefined "Haussman" style which too many idiotic Parisians try to preserve. There are specific cues you can look for: building numbers, park meters, road signs, street lights, trees, post boxes, metro entrances, intersection styles, colors, window styles, roof styles, cars, doorways, construction, trash cans, lighting, street lamps, even the style of graffitis depending on the era.

I'm actually surprised I managed to get such a high score, but I think this test is skewed by having a default answer. I feel like a great majority of the photos presented are from Paris, too. And that seems like poor methodology since you can discover a certain coherence from the quantity.

I've been living outside of Paris for the last 3 years and the more I see images of it, the more I realize why foreigners think it's so special. It's just so different from anything else out there.

That said, I see almost as much conformity and repetition in Paris as I do in the cloned strip malls of suburban America.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was a city that got more of "A pattern language" right and that is why people feel good there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The test is questionable. I've never been to Paris, haven't seen many pictures of it, except for Eiffel tower. I only looked at text found on the pictures (i.e. "Public transportation of Barcelona" ;) and some other clues. With this simple logic reasoning, I got 81%. If you compare this with guys living in Paris who report 90% here, it does not make much sense.

<comment><USER7> Yeah they should have removed the texts, but as a long time parisian I can recognise Paris with only a gutter or a window frame, it would have made the test more meaningfull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating. I wonder if this can be applied to sounds as well ? What makes it more interesting with sound is we can "time travel" so to speak, and sample across hundreds of years of music where as with imagery, you're just stuck with what Google streetview can show right now..

<comment><USER9> Work on music (not necessary sounds) is carried out by the Music Genome Project (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project>). It's the engine behind Pandora. There's an incomplete list of attributes used in this classification here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Music_Genome_Project_at...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Music_Genome_Project_attributes).

They still use manpower to classify all those tracks which makes it very hard to scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi,

I'm French and lived in Paris since 12 years (and 13 years in the suburb before that) and made... 95% percent! (well I think it helps to read French). Anyway it's interesting, even for a French. So thanks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gonna try the test next, but I think I answered this very question a while ago ( <http://blog.rizzif.com/2012/07/10/parisian-profile/> ). Intriguing topic though!

</comment><comment> saint-loup As far as I can tell, lots of the pictures from Paris look like they have been shot in the 5th, 4th districts and around (Quartier latin, Marais, Notre-Dame, etc.).

EDIT: Just finished the test. 86%.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is the second picture at the top Paris? I'm would have said no, but I really can't be sure now.

<comment><USER2> Yes it is Paris. You can tell be the street sign to the left on the fence.</comment></comment>


Hacking the IRS with gold coins - <AUTHOR> http://www.lvrj.com/news/46074037.html#blogcomments?submitted=y <comment> patrickg-zill Here is the conundrum that the IRS is in..

The US Government has placed a face value on the coins, a 1-ounce gold coin is marked 50 US Dollars. The intrinsic value of that coin today is right around $1000.

IF they argue that intrinsic value should be the determining factor, then what is the intrinsic value of a paper $20 bill (really about 5 cents of paper and ink)?

IF the IRS states that face value of the $20 bill is established by the US Government, then the face value of the $50 gold coin must also be taken at its face value - after all, the face value of the coin was established by the same government that established the paper bill's value.

I hope I have explained this right... the IRS cannot argue intrinsic value vs. face value without falling into a ditch. I think this is what the defense is counting on.

<comment><USER2> I don't see any conundrum. I don't know what the actual IRS rules are, but common sense tells me that if I am paid with some commodity (dollar bills, silver coins, buckets of crude), then my income for tax purposes is the _market_ value of that commodity. A $20 bill has a market value of $20. A one- ounce gold coin marked "$50" has a market value of about $1000. If aliens shower us with free gold, and the price of gold drops to $40 an once, then we can start caring about the face value of the one-ounce gold coin.

<comment><USER3> The problem is the nebulousness of "market value." What if someone finds out that one of their payroll bills has a highly sought-after printing error that makes it worth 100X the face value? Then, what if it's subsequently discovered that it's not a real example of the printing error, but that the error was faked? How are you going to determine market value? Most of the time a regulation or a contract will name some widely-used index. Unfortunately, the most widely used index for legal tender is "multiplicative identity."

<comment><USER4> There is no intrinsic value. There is no unchanging market value. There is only the market value now, and the market value it used to have, and for that matter the definition of "market" isn't terribly obvious either, though the only ones that matter are "people I can actually sell the thing to" and "the average of the market for some purpose or other".

This is the way it is. Complaining about it doesn't change anything. Market value may be nebulous, but it's the least nebulous meaningful definition of "value" there is for commerce.

(This is why I can't even be a "goldbug". The idea that gold has intrinsic value is patently absurd, because there is no such thing as "intrinsic value". And once you are reduced to arguing that "Well, _historically_ it's been a good investment" it is simply one commodity amoungst many and the argument is over, because now gold isn't special.)

<comment><USER3> I never commented in support of "intrinsic value." Specifically, the "market value" of legal tender is arguably problematic. There are well established instruments that can be used to determine the market values of things like cars and electricity and the metals in coins. However, "legal tender" status has a clear precedent for confounding this. A penny is a penny, and an employer who pays with older coins whose copper and nickel content is worth more than their face value wouldn't be liable for additional tax.

<comment><USER4> 'I never commented in support of "intrinsic value."'

I know, it was part of a larger point. You did seem to imply the existence of some sort of "real market value", though, which would somehow transcend transient fluctuations, but those transient fluctuations are all that exist. Even money doesn't have a real market value; a dollar is only worth what people will give you for it.

My point is that the nebulousness can be fixed by anything I said; my point is that the nebulousness is irreducible, and all attempts to make it less nebulous, no matter how necessary they may be for things like tax law, will inevitably be a leaky abstraction to the underlying chaos. So, complaining that a particular abstraction is leaky isn't very useful, they _all_ will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you pay someone a nominal $2500 in $50-denominated gold coins, and that someone sells the coins on the open market for $50,000, haven't they just incurred taxable income?

<comment><USER6> Clearly the IRS prefers the interpretation that your 'nominal' payment was actually $50K (or included a $47.5K gift) -- so tax is owed even if the recipient sits on the coins.

If in fact someone immediately sold the coins and reported the nominal payment plus the short-term 'investment gain', it might push the matter below the level of IRS concern. My understanding is that when the net tax effect is about the same from alternate accountings, the IRS is unlikely to quibble about the particulars (but IANAL or tax accountant).

<comment><USER5> I understand the competing preferences here, but even in this guy's best-case scenario, he hasn't avoided income tax; he's just shifted it from payroll tax (which is FICA eligible) to capital gains.

You can do a similar thing as an independent contractor just by forming an S-Corp and claiming your income as profit sharing instead of salary. And of course the outcome is similar: you enjoy a nominal benefit for awhile, and then you get audited and taken to court.

I don't think the IRS is shaking in their boots over this.

<comment><USER6> Right -- the only significant gain is if the coins are held longer (for long- term gains treatment of the phony appreciation) or sold in an unreported transaction (which itself compounds the illegality).

And my point was: while any combination of stunts leading to less taxes paid is of interest to the IRS, if you instead engage in bizarro accounting but the end result is you wind up paying about the same amount of taxes, just via different line-item -- no "net tax effect" -- they may as a practical matter ignore you. They care about the money, not the principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Impressive. It puts into perspective the ceremonious folly of making the gold and silver coins legal tender.

<comment><USER8> Really? My takeaway was the difficulty of trying to uphold otherwise-worthless paper as legal tender.

<comment><USER9> And gold has some intrinsic value?

Gold is worth what the person who buys it from you says it is worth.

Paper is worth what the person who buys it from you says it is worth.

As "money", both are valueless in and of themselves, and merely stand in for things of actual value (goods and services).

These are the fundamentals. Forget them at your peril.

<comment><USER10> This is true, but gold at least has a several-thousand-year history of use as a currency, and as a stable source of value.

The US dollar that we use today has a history going back to exactly 1971 and the end of Bretton Woods.

I think people get a little too worked up over the evils of "fiat currencies," but they do have a point that from a historical perspective they are basically an experiment. It's entirely possible that people may look back from a few centuries hence and look at floating national currencies (which are essentially backed only by the backing government's power to tax a particular economy) and think "what a really terrible idea." The very power that a fiat currency gives a government over its money supply might turn out to be more temptation than even the most honest government can withstand in the long run. We don't know, because there just hasn't been enough time to tell.

There's two orders of magnitude difference between the amount of time gold has been in use and the amount of time the current un-pegged dollar has been around. While it's true they're both given value by what other people will trade for them, it's a bit disingenuous to say they're the same.

<comment><USER9> I invite you to read my reply to ghshephard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is this a hack? He failed. It would be a great article if he won, but it looks like he rather transparently ignored the rules on the IRS website, and got busted.

"Hacking the War on Drugs: I put weed in my sock drawer, which worked until my roommate called the cops on me as a prank."

<comment><USER3> According to the article, the IRS only has instructions dealing with collectible coins that are _out_ of circulation. The coins he used were still in circulation.

<comment><USER11> Uh, yeah, but if all he did was place a low value on the coins, then his business is going to have artificially high profits, so the net result is that he goes to court over paying corporate income taxes instead of payroll taxes plus paying his people enough for their Federal taxes.

For example, if he earns $60, and his expense is paying someone $50, either:

a) He pays them $50, they pay taxes on that $50, and he pays taxes on the $10, or

b) He does his coin trick, they pay taxes on, say, $5, and he pays taxes on $55 (because he gives the coins a low value).

If all he's doing is buying something at one price, writing down its value, and giving it away, then anyone can do this. Try it with shares of a privately-held company, or golf club memberships, or anything that doesn't freely trade.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but legal tender _does_ freely trade. So, what if you decided to pay your workers in cash? You contract a company to handle this for you, and hauling all those bills is a huge pain in the butt, so they charge you $X over the value of the bills that get handed out to your workers. What if you had each stack of bills individually wrapped in a satin ribbon, resulting in an even higher service fee? Aren't you doing the same thing?

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. In the case you mentioned, there's an extra cost, but neither the business nor the employees are paying it. In the case I'm talking about, all he ended up doing was making the choice to pay corporate taxes instead of paying approximately the same amount in higher wages.

It's like breaking into a store in order to steal something, and then leaving behind enough money to pay for it. Pointlessly flouting the law.

<comment><USER12> What's you seem to be missing (I think) is that you do not pay taxes on buying a coin for $950 even if it's only worth (face value) is $50.

<comment><USER11> That's not the transaction for which you would be taxed. But if you're paying your workers something that you claim is worth $50, for which you spent $950, that $900 difference is money that would be an expense if you paid them normally. Instead, it's profit, and you owe $300 in taxes on it -- even though you have the negative cash flow from your $950 coin.

That's what's missing from the story. Either we're reading it wrong, or what he committed was a conventional tax fraud with a gold-bug spin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how he accounted for the cost of the gold coins? Did he attempt to write it off as a business expense?</comment>


Intel Acquires Basis Watch - <AUTHOR> http://wearableworldnews.com/2014/03/03/intel-acquires-basis-100m/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me Intel's continued fascination with being a consumer company? From constant B2C advertising to their TV and wearable endeavors, they seem to be fixated on being something they're not. Is it corporate vanity? Is there a strategic motivation? If so, have any of their consumer endeavors ever actually borne fruit? I guess it's reminiscent of Microsoft, who don't seem to understand that Windows was not successful because consumers liked it, but because businesses bought it.

<comment><USER3> I think Intel's "strategic motivation" is simple. The US stock market demands ever increasing revenues and earnings from a company. In order to achieve that, often companies do something that the great Peter Lynch called "diworsification" [0]:

       The term was coined by legendary investor Peter Lynch in his book, "One Up Wall Street," where he suggested that a business that diversifies too widely, risks destroying their original business, because management time, energy and resources are diverted from the original investment.

Without continuing earnings and revenue growth, a company is "dead" to much of Wall Street.

I just posted another comment as to what IMO Intel should be doing instead. They should "stick to the knitting". E.g. they could try to become a world class foundry. They've got the fabs, they've got thousands of great engineers. I guess that's just not as sexy as a watch that also measures your perspiration.

[0] [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/diworsification.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/diworsification.asp)

<comment><USER2> It's a shame that the one time event of going public dooms a company for perpetuity to being subject to the unreasonable demands of shareholders, so often ironically resulting in the downfall of the very value that was supposed to rise as a result of said demands.

<comment><USER4> The alternative to diworsification would be share buybacks. That's a way to increase your EPS without having to grow your earnings numbers.

Intel's diversification probably has more to do with internalization of the mantra "if you're not growing, you're dying" than pressure from Wall Street.

<comment><USER3> I'm in favor of diversification but not diworsification. E.g. when Apple already makes an iPod and an iPhone then it's smart diversification to make an iPad. That gets you growth without needing to resort to share buybacks.

Apple's smart growth is much better than the flailing growth that many companies attempt. E.g. Google has search so Microsoft does Bing. Apple has the iPod so Microsoft does the Zune.

New products are OK if they are clearly better than what is already out there, but in Microsoft's case they weren't. Contrast with the iPhone. It was IMO clearly better than what was already out there, if for no other reason than Apple refused to be the wireless carriers' bitch.

But now even Apple is doing share buybacks, because they're running out of smart diversification ideas. An iWatch wouldn't be big enough to provide meaningful growth. I'm sure they'll eventually do it, but the law of large numbers is no longer on Apple's side.

The example I gave of me wanting Intel to become a world class foundry is IMO smart diversification. TSM's market cap is about $93 billion. So, clearly, there's room for competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Intel's been in the watch business before [0]. It didn't end well then, it probably won't end well now. Hey, at least they didn't spend $19 billion for a texting app.

[0] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshb/320868833/?rb=1](http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshb/320868833/?rb=1)

<comment><USER5> FB didn't spend $19B for a texting app. They spent $19B for a huge userbase in parts of the world where FB doesn't have much market share. (And one with considerable network effects leading to significant switching costs.)

I expect there to be some kind of onboarding of the WhatsApp customer base onto FB as smartphones get adopted in those parts of the world.

<comment><USER3> I know it was more than a texting app. Since this story was about Intel not Facebook I probably shouldn't have thrown that line in. But here's why I did:

I'm sure there are all kinds of arguments, explanations, justifications, rationalizations (call it what you will) for FB's purchase of WhatsApp. But my gut feel is that it's not worth paying 1000x TTM revenues for it. Admittedly a large part of the price was in stock not cash.

Same with Intel's purchase. My gut feel is they shouldn't be buying a watch company. Intel has an _abysmal_ track record with acquisitions. I think it's a sign that they're desperately flailing around. I'd rather see them try to become a world class foundry. They certainly have the technology and expertise, and it's much closer to the CEO's background. I.e. "stick to the knitting".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My husband has one and wrote some Nagios checks which download the data over the web. He's basically put himself on Nagios. We just gotta pay attention to the "heart rate is CRITICAL" alerts now :P

[http://tomsalmon.eu/2013/12/data-download-and-nagios- plugin-...](http://tomsalmon.eu/2013/12/data-download-and-nagios-plugin-for- mybasis/)

<comment><USER7> Are you a bot or something? You posted the exact same comment 4 times.

<comment><USER6> Nope, just copy & pasted the same comment to promote it, in all the places it's relevant.

<comment><USER8> The bots are getting better and better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does the Basis rank against the other smart watches out there ? I see it's priced higher, $199, where others come in at $100 - $150. The one difference I see is that it can do heart rate monitoring, and a lot of the competition can't (yet).

It's nice to see that they have an API to export your data too.

<comment><USER10> It also measures your perspiration.

They focused on gamification and achievements you can unlock ("slept full 8 hours" etc). However it lacks any wireless connectivity, so you need to plug to your computer to download data every day.

I thought it's the most interesting of all smart devices, but I was looking for next gen which hopefully would be wireless and smaller.

<comment><USER6> > However it lacks any wireless connectivity, so you need to plug to your > computer to download data every day.

Recent ones sync automatically over bluetooth with an smartphone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still haven't forgiven them the Project Offset death: [http://kotaku.com/5577979/intels-project-offset-game- cancell...](http://kotaku.com/5577979/intels-project-offset-game-cancelled)

</comment><comment><USER12> Intel - where startups go to die.

</comment><comment><USER13> Intel is clearly looking at wearable and embedded spaces. This seems like a lot to pay for something that doesn't have the install base of Fitbit, or Fuel.

I can't imagine basis had any tech that Intel couldn't replicate, and this seems like too much for talent acquisition.

Not what I would drop $100M on if I was Intel.

<comment><USER14> Word is Intel has one rule, and only one rule:

 _Keep the fab full_

The rest of the company exists to feed the fab. So it doesn't surprise me, the lengths they are going in an effort to get Intel silicon into more devices (and more types of devices), especially after they missed the smartphone wave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like my Basis smartwarch - I've only not worn it about 5 days in the last 6 months (since it arrived). I hope they keep the web software running for years to come, the thing is very cloud dependant!

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this will make an API less or more likely. #1 complaint with the watch. Simple stuff like wifi weight scale and runkeeper cardio integration would be pretty nice!

Otherwise congrats to the company!

<comment><USER6> There's no offical API, but you can figure out the HTTP calls to make. My husband wrote some Nagios checks for himself. We just gotta pay attention to the "heart rate is CRITICAL" alerts now :P

[http://tomsalmon.eu/2013/12/data-download-and-nagios- plugin-...](http://tomsalmon.eu/2013/12/data-download-and-nagios-plugin-for- mybasis/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I predict wearables, specifically smartwatches, are the next huge consumer category. The tipping point to mainstream will occur when the fashion of the watches catches up with the technology.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats Basis!

</comment><comment><USER18> Damn't, that was my favorite watch on the market. Hopefully they support export of data :(

</comment><comment><USER19> Wearable computing. Cutting edge technology. Wait a minute...

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_%26_Watch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_%26_Watch)

<comment><USER20> Did you mean

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelsonic_Industries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelsonic_Industries)

?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a 220v to 110v converter around genevillier/paris france? - <AUTHOR> Landed in france couplenof days ago, and cant plug my laptop. I tried la fnac but dont sell converter... Any frenchman help?? Lol <comment><USER2> Are you certain you need 110V? It's all but certain your power supply can take anything from around 100-250V, 50 or 60Hz - its input range is likely to be printed somewhere on the supply. If so, all you'll need is a travel adaptor, which should be easy to find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks a lot. Your are right just need the converter</comment></comment>


4D Toys: visualizing in the fourth dimension - <AUTHOR> http://4dtoys.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks like fun, going to try this out over the weekend.

This is the same person who made this game (that also looks like good fun): [http://miegakure.com/](http://miegakure.com/) that I remember reading about some years ago but never got a chance to play with.</comment>


Show HN: Our lightning-fast take on Meetup 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.magical.app <comment><AUTHOR> We're building gathr, a lightning-fast way to organize meetups. You can get location and time recommendation, add it to everyone's calendars, and invite everyone in less than 5 seconds.

We began building gathr because we wanted to make group events as fast and easy to organize as possible. And this is our solution!

</comment><comment><USER2> There's no way to try it out and signing up didn't work for me.</comment>


Malaysia to send up to 100 tonnes of plastic waste back to Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-send-up-to-100-tonnes-of-plastic-waste-back-to-australia <comment><USER2> Recycling has become such a lazy way of dealing with a bit more convenience. Single use plastics and plastic packaging should be banned or at least be taxed accordingly for subsequent processing.

<comment><USER3> > Recycling has become such a lazy way of dealing with a bit more convenience.

It's not necessarily that simple. With glass bottle reuse vs. plastic recycling, for example, it's not necessarily clear which ends up being most efficient. The glass containers can be reused, but not that many times on average, and it takes sufficiently more energy to produce one vs. the energy required to recycle a plastic bottle.

> Single use plastics and plastic packaging should be banned or at least be > taxed accordingly for subsequent processing.

I'd go further and say we ought to tax all packaging based on the cost of cleanup, be that reuse, recycling, or other measures.

As an example of a measure that works reasonably well (but where I think the rates still ought to rise further to reflect the environmental costs in full) is bottle return schemes like the one in Norway that starts by adding a tax to drinks containers, and then adds in an incentive to recycle by deducting from the tax based on the proportion of containers recycled via approved schemes.

It doesn't go far enough in encouraging _less_ packaging, and that specific scheme only covers drinks containers, but the overall principle of taxing based on an assumption that the packaging will not be treated properly and that we need to penalize that, and then reducing the tax bill if you can prove otherwise, is good.

<comment><USER4> Same with re-usable bags. I read somewhere that you need to use it 37 times to make the switch from single-use plastic bags worth it. Either way, I prefer reusable bags.

<comment><USER5> I live in the Netherlands, the government here passed a law in 2016 that prohibits shops from giving out free plastic bags (the are required to charge a minimal of 25 cents for a bag).

In my opinion it works tremendously well. It took about a month for people to get used to the idea, but now you see most people bring their own reusable bags. As far as I can tell the amount of waste plastic bags on the street has reduced significantly since them.

An interesting observation was that the shopkeepers had more issues with this law than the consumers. For the first couple of months many had some lame sign saying something like 'we are very sorry that our stupid government forced us to charge you for this bag'. Some even offered 25 cents discount on their product if you took a bag with your purchase. Luckily it is now generally accepted by both the merchants and the consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Outsourcing recycling to developing nations seems like such an ethical minefield. It's a promising sign that Malaysia and the Philippines are putting their foot down and rejecting anything which isn't suitable or has been contaminated.

If the companies responsible feel the pushback it may help to close the feedback loop somewhat between western consumers and the consequences of their consumption.

</comment><comment><USER7> Remember watching a documentary about UK's landfills.The older ones,that are no longer in use, are often not even mapped property,so even the government struggles to pin point where all the stuff was dumped half a century ago.What was even more interesting is how much slower things degrade as opposed to the official guidelines. Decommissioned landfills are often covered with a layer of soil,which essentially deprives it from oxygen and slows down the process.They dug up some newspapers that were 30 or more years old and still fully legible.

</comment><comment><USER8> Discussed earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20030065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20030065)</comment>


What's (real) the cost of a Gigabyte in the Cloud? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/whats-the-cost-of-a-gb-in-the-cloud/ <comment><USER2> The wholesale costs of transferring a gigabyte of data are (worst case, buying 2Gbps or more of transit) about 1-2 cents.

This is the very most that any vendor pays, and they probably pay far far less than that.

For storage costs, you could take the storage capacity of a 2TB drive, triple the cost to account for servers, RAID and other overhead, then come up with a per-GB charge per year (drives aren't replaced every year, but then there are power/cooling and other costs).

So a 2TB drive is say $200, triple that is $600, say 1800GB formatted divided by $600 = 33 cents per GB per year.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wondering if we'll see prices drop now that ZFS for linux is more mature.

It's pretty much the ideal FS for this sort of application and the only thing that's been holding it back has been its tie to Solaris.

<comment><USER4> I'm tired of this ZFS hype. ZFS for linux is absolutely not mature. First, you can't distribute binaries. Second, the version is currently 0.5.x, which is alpha; and I can tell you after trying to compile it proved largely enough that it is, indeed, alpha quality. Third, it misses a quite useful feature, the posix interface, i. e. the ability to mount the filesystem. Slight limitation isn't it?

Then I can mention a couple of other small problems. ZFS isn't at all cluster- aware. In fact, it radically sucks as a cluster filesystem. I know quite an important storage platform who sent back 2PB of Sun storage because you know, aggregating 2PB by stacking iSCSI volumes and using RAID-Z simply cannot work and doesn't scale, though that's precisely what Sun tried to sell them. That pretty much assures that ZFS isn't really a perfect fit for the cloud, you know. At least not for the people actually running it.

<comment><USER3> interesting.

Why doesn't it scale?

<comment><USER4> Because it's implemented as a one-system filesystem, there is no cluster capabilities built-in at the moment. The problem is that building the sort of huge fiesystems the cloud demands means clustering, generally. Of course you can go buy a DataDirect S2A 9900 and you'll have a nice 1PB fs in a rack, however the problem will be there again when you'll need to extend further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't Nasuni bundle files together? Given that for a 1 KB file the majority of the time to fetch it will be latency, if small files were bundled into 10 KB chunks (for example) then the transaction cost would go down by an order of magnitude without affecting UX, surely? It seems unlikely that someone would hit a large number of separate 10 KB chunks for 1 KB each time without a significant number of cache hits.

</comment><comment><USER6> Shouldn't we start talking in terms of gigabyte hours (GbH)? Cloud storage needs can fluctuate over time in most applications.</comment>


Holding an Auction to Sell Rhino Horn in South Africa - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/wildlife-watch-rhino-horn-south-africa-auction/ <comment><USER2> This is a fairly objective article but it would be nice if they offered some evidence that legal trade makes illegal trade less feasible (if there is any). When you see pictures of poor rhino on a horn farm your gut feel is to be disgusted by that farmer. However, the simple laws of supply and demand may put the baddies out of business. Very controversial but at least worth a good think instead of a knee-jerk reaction.

</comment><comment><USER3> One solution that I have always been supriesed hasn't been considered is cosmetically destroying the horns of living rhinos while preserving their function for the animal. By that I mean either chemically dying the horn some unnatural color or carving/Branding "contraband" or something similar into the outside. I would think that if you can alter the horn enough that it becomes completely unappealing to the secondary market the poaching would stop.

<comment><USER4> Because aside from the logistics of constantly dying the ever-growing horn of living wild animals, the market is in e.g. rhyno horn powder, so nobody cares what they look like: [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/why- doe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/why-does-a-rhino- horn-cost-300-000-because-vietnam-thinks-it-cures-cancer-and- hangovers/275881/)

<comment><USER5> Which only begs the question - how come the black market isn't absolutely saturated with fake rhino horn powder? If it's just keratin, you could make tons of it with little effort and sell it as rhino horn, no? People make fakes of items with much much much less smaller profit margins, yet rhino horn trade is not completely destroyed by fake product?

<comment><USER6> Of course the market IS saturated by fake product....

But when you convince a large mass of people that there is value in your "fake" Rhino Horn, that drives demand for the real thing.

This is why PETA is against even fake ivory keys for your piano. Because it keeps perpetuating that ivory is valuable and desirable.

<comment><USER2> And the fact that the South African government requires that these farmed horns are dna tagged just gave them a way to identify the real thing. How ironic. Unless this whole thing is designed to trace out the black market distribution network..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A long but very interesting read on the gang of Irish travelers (gypsies) behind a lot of the trade in Europe: [https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wd7mvy/rathkeale- rovers-i...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wd7mvy/rathkeale-rovers-irish- traveller-gang-rhino-horn-chinese-artefact-theft)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is possibly the best thing to happen to wild rhino populations. I don't see how this is any different to farming cows, chicken, pigs or any other animal.

There will always be demand for rhino horn, so it makes sense to satisfy that demand in a way that does less damage to the wild population.

</comment><comment><USER9> > tranquilize & dehorn them

why don't anti-poachers use that approach? thought rhinos have to die before extracting their horns...

<comment><USER10> And how will a hornless rhino protect itself against predators?

<comment><USER2> Healthy adult rhinos have no predators (except humans). They are massive. They use their horns to defend their young and their territories.

<comment><USER11> You'd think so, but here's a video of for example a hippo vs a rhino without (much of) a horn: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW- GX7o7hBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW-GX7o7hBc)

Also when a pride of lions get hungry enough they'll go after anything, at which point having a horn makes all the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good thing that we will be able to list every single motherfucker who buy those now it will be legal and tracked.

<comment><USER5> If it's fully legal to sell and buy and comes from farmed rhinos who are not harmed during production, why would you call the buyers "motherfuckers"?

<comment><USER13> It is fully legal to do many things that are ethically awful.

<comment><USER5> Sure, buying meat from cows and pigs which are kept in horrendous conditions is "ethically awful" but I don't call meat eaters(that includes myself) motherfuckers. As far as I can see the only problem with rhino horn is that people kill wild animals to get it - once rhino is farmed, there's no difference between that and farming cows in my mind. In fact it's much better since rhino farmers don't kill rhinos to get the horn.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Widespread fraud in the generic drug industry - <AUTHOR> https://peterattiamd.com/katherineeban/ <comment><USER2> This is the cause of drug shortages here in the EU. It has gotten so bad that the Dutch government are supporting moving the production of generics into the EU.

That makes a lot of sense to me, it seems to be a smart strategic move to have drug production under your control. Just like it's smart to be self-sufficient in the production of food.

<comment><USER3> Yup, we're getting done of our generics from Slovenian Krka Group and locally made in Poland too. Some more expensive things mostly from Merck. A few but common from separate Polish manufacturers - sadly a few bigger ones were bought up by Valeant or Teva with concomitant price increase.

They're pretty good, compared to random trash from India or China. They cannot match the volume, not even close, to be more than regional EU players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would pay to see the book summarized in a "just the facts" format. Everything I can find is in a turgid storytelling format. For example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/books/review/bottle-of- li...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/books/review/bottle-of-lies- katherine-eban.html)

The book itself is written in this same tedious style (first 56 pages available as a preview):

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Bottle_of_Lies.html?id=...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Bottle_of_Lies.html?id=mGVzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover)

<comment><USER5> I agree, even the audiobook was a chore to get through at 1.5x speed. However, it's not on GetAbstract yet: [http://getabstract.com](http://getabstract.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the second cautionary piece about generic drugs I've read in the past two days. The first was from last week's Economist [1] and made a different point. It argued that generic drugs are such a viciously competitive market that the surviving manufacturers are those that cut the most corners. Corners cut range from outright fraud (as mentioned in this topic) to manufacture that is both highly consolidated and prone to just-rare-enough breakdowns that — because more reliable competitors have been priced out of the generics market — lead to sudden drastic shortages and the attendant problems for consumers.

Zooming out a bit, it looks like a specific example of a wider trend of supply chains that are long and efficient until their fragility becomes clear thanks to a well-timed and well-placed break.

I wonder what other specific products have a dysfunctional market like this?

[1] [https://www.economist.com/international/2019/09/14/a-dire- sc...](https://www.economist.com/international/2019/09/14/a-dire-scarcity-of- drugs-is-worsening-in-part-because-they-are-so-cheap)

</comment><comment><USER7> Well this is fascinating but the notes run out and I don't have three hours to listen to a podcast. Does anyone subscribe to this site that can share the notes?

<comment><USER8> It would be better to read the book she wrote, "Bottle of Lies". I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER9> I imagine that is longer than the 3-hour podcast

<comment><USER10> Correct! Audible clocked in at 14 hrs and 26 mins

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Semi-related: Even though it's been 123 years since Cornflakes were patented, generic breakfast cereal just isn't the same. Some of them are downright revolting (e.g. mini-wheat knockoffs) even though they're made in the USA. Many don't even use the same ingredients. I guess their target market is people who don't care about quality? At all?

<comment><USER12> Processed foods are far more complex and involve far more technology than you might imagine. The production process used by the original manufacturer is effectively a black box, so cloning a breakfast cereal involves a major reverse-engineering effort. The thoroughness of that effort is bounded by the need to undercut the original manufacturer on price, which may also affect the quality of ingredients.

<comment><USER13> > The production process used by the original manufacturer is effectively a > black box

Don't they patent that, too? Isn't that what the parent commentor is referring to when saying "it's been 123 years since Cornflakes were patented"—that the original manufacturer's exact factory design should be in the public domain by now?

<comment><USER11> Every reply misunderstood at least one of my points? Like there are even videos on YouTube that document every step of the Cornflakes production process... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMNtV8jBqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMNtV8jBqw)

The generics must cut corners (not grinding as fine? not baking as long?) that surely reduce costs by only a few pennies per box, but at the cost of greatly reduced sales overall. Maybe it has something to do with everyone knowing that the generics are bad as a class, so there's no point in any particular white- label manufacturer achieving any quality better than the bare minimum? Maybe there's a little-known breakfast cereal commodity market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember being in the first wave of people where doctors noticed how generics were not working as well as the brand name drugs in a big way. Back when there was basically nothing in the news ever about generics not being as good as regular drugs and instead people were talking about how smart it was to buy generic. Generics are used to justify cutting insurance payments for the actual brand name medication.

Years later after an investigation a decent chunk of generics actually went off the market because they were crap. This is a field that has faced unreasonably low levels of scrutiny historically. So it's no shock to see stories like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> More in the same vein from the always excellent Derek Lowe: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/07/25/go...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/07/25/got- it-all-ready-for-you-mr-fda-inspector)

<comment><USER16> Anyone interested in this topic should read everything he's ever written. The comments from anonymous insiders reminds me of HN.</comment></comment>


What's best?  low-fat diet?  low-carb diet?  vegetarian diet?  the answer.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print <comment><USER2> By reading the opening, the closing, and skimming the rest, you will see that it has a fair bit of useful and accurate content, just very spread out.

And just as the article points out, it gave away its whole article with the words "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

</comment><comment><USER3> Pollan's latest book, _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ , is worth reading. [http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History- Meal...](http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History- Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3946590-2838560?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191881143&sr=8-1)

The overall organization is little forced at times, but the research for each section is really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hunger is not arbitrary. The nervous system tells you what to eat. If you stay with substances that were around during humanity's long evolutionary period, you'll do fine: Meat, vegetables, fruits. If you spend more than 10 minutes worrying over it, you've already lost.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you spend _less_ than 10 minutes worrying about your diet, you'll end up eating twinkies and mcdonalds most of the time. it's not trivial to find good produce and vegetables in america. also, one of the article's main points is that meat is not good for you in large quantities, but it's ok in relatively small quantities (much smaller than what the typical American consumes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was this a different link earlier? I read this article a while ago (and liked it a lot). But the link I read from this post earlier today was about the coolness of the Atkins diet and was not nearly as good. Whappen?

</comment><comment><USER6> The Hacker's Diet is an interesting approach to weight loss.

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a very long article with very little content.

<comment><USER8> And even less to do with hacking...

<comment><USER9> i disagree. the interesting points aren't about food -- for example, it's a case study in how a lot of smart people, over a long period of time, can fool themselves -- in fact, the movements to improve software engineering have the same kind of faddishness as nutritionism.

another interesting point was how being "scientific", and looking at individual factors in isolation (e.g. vitamins) missed the forest for the trees, and did more harm than good.

another takeaway was the extent to which "studies" are pushed around/mediated by big political interests, e.g. the meat lobby and the marketing muscle (the suns, microsofts, and Extreme Programming vendors of the food world) that have a big interest in keeping the status quo.

<comment><USER10> In general, it is not a good idea to start a response with "I disagree". Makes you sound as if you are looking for a fight, when in fact you may have some legit points.

<comment><USER11> I disagree.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Detrail: a dead-simple command line utility to fix trailing whitespace - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LINKIWI/detrail <comment><USER2> Zero dependencies... Except nodejs, which on Debian has about 60 dependencies from memory.

 _this_ is the problem I have with the nodejs community.

I first learnt to write code using php. I still use php but that doesn't mean I don't also use shell scripts, lua, JavaScript, hell sometimes even Java.

Just because you _can_ do something in nodejs, doesn't mean you _should_

</comment><comment><USER3> sed 's/\s*$//g'

<comment><USER4> Funnily, that doesn't work as expected on OS X due to a rather old version of sed installed by default that doesn't support \s. Try the following instead:

      sed 's/[[:blank:]]*$//g'

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Delete all trailing whitespace in vim:

      :%s/\s\+$//

</comment><comment><USER6> I use the following two lines to highlight extra white spaces and clean them with a leader shortcut on vim.

        highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red
        noremap <Leader>c :%s/\s\+$//g<CR></comment>


All Your MySQL DataBase Are Belong To Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.novainfosecportal.com/2012/06/11/all-your-mysql-database-are-belong-to-us/ <comment><USER2> > Here are all the details we've gleamed so far,

:twitch:

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gleam>

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/glean></comment>


Reverse Engineering the Subway Android App - <AUTHOR> http://randywestergren.com/reverse-engineering-the-subway-android-app/

<comment><USER2> The security measures are not there to secure you from seeing the requests, they are there to stop people using the app getting hacked with man in the middle attacks, no? I think they know they need to also make sure their API is secure as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand what you mean, but an attacker wouldn't be able to decrypt during a MiTM attack since SSL is being used -- regardless of cert pinning. An effect of pinning is losing the ability to perform a self MiTM to decrypt traffic; this post simply demonstrates bypassing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > but I'm not quite sure of the reasoning behind the root checking process

I'm surprised the author didn't pick up on the class/package names: a quick Googling of "Paydiant" shows that this is likely all a result of a third-party loyalty/payment integration they've used: [http://www.paydiant.com/](http://www.paydiant.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was pretty sure of the 3rd party integration, but still am not sure why they're checking if the user's device is rooted. I suppose for payment processing, they consider it a security risk?

<comment><USER4> In the reddit thread the article links to it mentions people spoofing gps to fake checking in at places to get loyalty points. So even if Subway doesn't have something like that it might be that the 3rd party does and they are trying to prevent people from faking checkins?

<comment><USER5> That doesn't require root though, just enable fake locations in dev settings and use an app for it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would proguard be able to prevent (or at least make much more difficult) this kind of reverse engineering?

</comment><comment><USER7> what is a good dalvic decompiler at the moment? are you using smali/baksmali for re-compilation?

</comment><comment><USER8> The endpoints look a lot nicer than what the UK app uses (which is just some Java enterprise thing)</comment>


Aptana.org Hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://aptana.org <comment><USER2> Wow, Aptana. That's a blast from the past. I'd forgotten I used to use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used Aptana for web dev before VSCode, it was nice but still very eclipse-y.

</comment><comment><USER4> Was it really hacked? Aptana.com still leads to the good old IDE that I used to use a very long time ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> aptana.org has an image saying it was hacked. not aptana.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It now responds with a 404 by GitHub Pages: Site not found

</comment><comment><USER6> seems they stopped communicating on twitter a while back. and they haven't pushed any code or closed any issues since July last year.

<comment><USER5> The domain name has been updated on 2018-12-02 so probably it has not been abandoned yet. The website is on a shared hosting (18.104.22.168), I tested other domains on the same IP but they don't reply either.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most advanced online courses (A/B, SM-2, Pricing)? - <AUTHOR> What is the most advanced online course platform for learning?
- None seem to use A/B testing with users?
- None seem to use SM-2 learning for reviewing? https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/english/ol/sm2
- AI which learns how you learn and modifies teaching style?
- Few seem to assign you a mentor (which could be an old student).
A few seem innovative:
- Duolingo on their pricing
- Lingq on their mixture of reading, and audio learning
- MOOCs on their use of student mentor - correction groups
- udemy in that anyone can become a teacher
What is the most advanced course you have taken? Is anyone pushing the boundaries on teaching tech? <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a list of people's favorite courses...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566638)</comment>


Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing - <AUTHOR> https://mikemcquaid.com/2018/03/19/open-source-maintainers-owe-you-nothing/ <comment><USER2> This attitude is forcing to 'fork it' approach, which is causing a lot of duplicated effort in practise, instead if you feeling like 'not worth to maintain (can be by any reason, personal, lack of time, burnout), stepping down as maintainer and giving flag to someone else to carry is much more productive. But usually we witness, burned-out maintainers still sticking to their projects.

<comment> Digital-Citizen I don't think I understand that response. If a project is forked that could very well be someone deciding to base their work on another's work without regard to the parent code editor's attitude. I could make my own GNU Emacs fork, for instance, just because I wanted to. I don't have to wait for someone to "step down as maintainer" nor do I have to wait for a project to appear to be unmaintained. I can compete against GNU Emacs by building my variant on the same code. Anyone can choose from the published forks and there is no need for the one maintainer per project approach your comment suggests (nor does one maintainer per project exist).

I don't share that objection to forks; I don't find forks to be a problem. One can't do anything to change in the free software world, nor would I want it to change because changing that would mean losing the software freedom I value.

<comment><USER2> You should consider the scenarios with multiple contributors and single maintainer, where the maintainer is bottle neck.

I am not against the forks, but we also have examples like openwrt/lede split.

My perspective on this is only against splitting contributor base because of maintainer mismanagement.

Edit: in your emacs example, it is much more beneficial your changes (and a lot of others) pushed back to main project vs multiple emacs forks with minor improvements.

<comment><USER3> This is not directly relevant to the thread, which is about maintainer burnout.

I've used lemacs (Lucid emacs) and xemacs, and now I use Aquamacs.

As I recall, Lucid forked emacs because they, a commercial company with an emacs-based IDE, wanted to push changes faster than the FSF, a small non- profit dependent on volunteer labor, could accept them.

This turned into xemacs. My feeling was that xemacs was much better then emacs-for-x.

I think Aquamacs has better Mac integration than stock GNU emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brian Fox had a canned email response to whiners: "Please return Bash for a full refund."

<comment><USER5> Yeah which is bullshit. He may not have been paid to make Bash but you can definitely make the argument that there is an ethical responsibility not to foist shit software on the world.

I mean you can't totally avoid Bash today, and that has a cost to society (because it's so shit) which he at least has _some_ responsibility for.

Of course if he doesn't want to work on it and fix things that is fine. But I don't think he is responsibility-free.

Look at it another way - if I build a dangerous bridge over a river, and someone dies crossing it can I say "well you were free to walk around the river"? Of course I _can_ , but that ignores the fact that I made the bridge available to other people, expecting them to use it and importantly it put other people off making a safe bridge. I am in some way responsible even though I only provided something for free that nobody had to use.

<comment><USER6> I like this part of the Ubuntu code of conduct:

> Step down considerately

> When somebody leaves or disengages from the project, we ask that they do so > in a way that minimises disruption to the project. They should tell people > they are leaving and take the proper steps to ensure that others can pick up > where they left off.

I don't think a maintainer owes anybody free labour, but I do think a good maintainer will hand over the keys to someone else when the needs of the community require it.

<comment><USER7> I agree, but it's also worth noting that it's often quite hard to find someone prepared to take over maintainership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would put it this way:

For maintainers: if you don't want people to act like you promised them anything, don't put up a fancy website showing how wonderful it is and what its best features are.

Instead, do what you can to _discourage_ people from using your software. Tell people how crappy it is, that you could abandon it at any time, and so on.

Making it version 0.15 alpha might not be enough to counteract a marketing message that makes it sound like the greatest thing since mobile phones.

<comment><USER9> I have a website showing all the nice features, but I make users compile it themselves, and it only works on linux. Seems to stop pretty much everyone.

<comment><USER10> Would certainly stop me, unless you included a snippet of the exact commands required to compile it.

<comment><USER11> ./configure

make

make install

( I have no obligation to tell you to which project these commands apply to)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _In practise, however, when there are issues, maintainers often work quickly > to resolve them and apologise in the same way as a company does. This is one > of the biggest causes of burnout._

Nonsense. This is what FOSS maintainers crave: someone cares about their project and has a real problem: _call to action!_

It's the _cure_ for burnout.

> _For maintainers: if you're not enjoying most of your work on a project, > don't do it anymore._

If your regular day job is software developer, and you're not even enjoying your side project, then you're basically burned out from development, which is a bigger problem.

If the FOSS project is in fact a piece of crap that you hate (because, say, you're now 10X the developer compared to when you made important (mis-)decisions in that project that are difficult to undo now), then ... just stop. What's the big deal.

</comment><comment><USER13> > In short, any open source software you use can delete all your production > data and you can't sue anyone because...

This is the killer one.

<comment><USER14> That is pretty much industry standard in any EULA. Same with companies not owing you anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> .

<comment><USER16> How do you 'automatically merge' a comment where a user voices a popular concern? What about a merge request that needs to be rebased? What about a merge request that requires deep knowledge of the project to understand if it would break something critical, or introduce security flaws?

A nation state could submit a merge request to the Linux kernel that is a blatant backdoor and override maintainers by just shear numbers of 'supporters'? This is a very bad, no, terrible idea.

Code merges should not be an open democracy with no opportunity for oversight.</comment></comment>