Amazon Ring went from a smart doorbell company to a surveillance network - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company <comment><USER2> Slightly offtopic, but it's getting harder and harder to get a surveillance equipment that's not connected to "the cloud" all I want is to be in full control of my own data.

I would install Ring if it was closed loop system. Same thing with other technologies to make a smart home. Why so many people (especially the ones that understand technology) seem to be ok with this? This attitude causes that there are less and less options for privacy conscious people.

<comment><USER3> A popular DIY setup: Hikvision cameras & Blue Iris software

Hikvision cameras have the benefit of not being wireless and using Power over Ethernet for people who don't mind running some cable. I think that has a lot of value over a bunch of cameras killing your wifi. Off the shelf cheap routers do poor with a ton of wifi cameras it seems.

Blue Iris can send you mobile alerts without a subscription. All videos are stored locally & it's very configurable.

You could upload alert photos/videos to a cloud provider for cheap off-site hosting if you choose. That way if the bad people destroy your PC you still have video unless they take out your internet. One could setup limited backup internet with a mobile company for this case &/or for when your internet goes out in general. This of course applies equally to Nest/Ring etc.

\---

Honestly I'm surprised Ring/Nest/etc still charge for storing video footage. At this point I would have figured they would have found one of countless ways to monopolize off the video footage. Most average people seem to be fine with their data being sold if it provides them some value.

I' also wondering when the first services will start to pop up that provide a marketplace for video footage.

<comment><USER4> Hikvision is based in China and partially owned by the Chinese state. Not sure if that would be my first choice for surveillance gear.

<comment><USER5> It depends heavily on what your threats are and what you are trying to control/prevent. For myself and for most Americans (making a big assumption here I know), the Chinese State is not a serious threat to be concerned about. This due to the fact that they are across an ocean and have close to zero effective physical force projection capability in the US. A greater concern should be domestic criminals (I.E. burglars) or the domestic government because both of those potential threat actors have the capability of using information from a home security system to cause one harm in some way.

<comment><USER6> They are fundamentally tied into the US economy and are known to effectively share data and behaviour across industries. If you were plausibly competing with a Chinese company and working from home, the question on where the HikVision information goes is a curiousity.

<comment><USER7> How much does it matter where the hardware was made if it is using local storage? If you are worried about this sort of thing, there is no reason you need to provide routing for the devices outside of your local network (e.g. VLAN). Unlike any hardware relying on cloud services.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I have to agree with this. If you're savvy enough to setup your own close-looped surveillance system then you're savvy enough to check if the camera is pinging home to a China-based server. And if it is then just block all WAN connections from that IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting how the article accuses Ring and Amazon of selling via fear, but that's also exactly what the article itself is selling.

I live in Albuquerque. We have Ring cameras, and I feel so much safer when I leave town. We caught someone rifling through our pickup truck a few weeks ago and were able to correlate it with other reports in the area so that if/when these thieves are caught, they'll go away for longer.

Why did I decide to buy these cameras? We were subject to a massive burglary a couple of years ago in which we lost $30k worth of valuables.

There are always downsides to every security-related thing, but I highly appreciate the ability to better police my own property, and I bet a bunch of other people feel the same.

<comment><USER10> I think the point a lot of other people make, is that you can simply use another camera network that doesn't sell your data, centralize it, and share with 3rd parties without your knowledge or [knowledgable] consent.

I have a camera system that is similar, I set it up myself, and I could do exactly what you suggested. All without also telling amazon my neighbor goes to-and-from their house 6 times a day (because my door camera faces them). Or that my daughter comes home from school at 3pm.

<comment><USER11> Exactly this: People who respond with the benefits of having a security camera are arguing a false dichotomy.

IP security cameras are inexpensive and readily available, and support things like remote access fine. (And I say this from first hand experience)

When you narrow the counterargument to the actual differential features of ring-like solutions-- that they automatically store video offsite mitigating by default the fringe risk that a thief takes the recorder--, the argument in favor of handing this video feed to state and corporate surveillance apparatus alike is much less interesting.

It would be trivial for ring to encrypt the video with a password only known to the device and your remote client never to the server... and would avoid a lot of trouble dealing with requests for video and potential civil ligation for leaks. The primary reason these products don't is because surveilling the user _is_ the business proposition.

Aside: I have lots of security cameras, I like security cameras. Yet at the same time people radically overestimate their usefulness in stopping crime: The positioning and lighting have to be nearly perfect to get a shot that you can identify a stranger with and it's easy for people to conceal their faces against an unmonitored camera. Even if you do get a clear face shot the police often can do nothing useful with it. With the low prices today I think cameras can well worth their price, ... but where they create mass surveillance risks, the case is far less clear.

<comment><USER12> > Yet at the same time people radically overestimate their usefulness in > stopping crime: The positioning and lighting have to be nearly perfect to > get a shot that you can identify a stranger with and it's easy for people to > conceal their faces against an unmonitored camera. Even if you do get a > clear face shot the police often can do nothing useful with it. With the low > prices today I think cameras can well worth their price, ... but where they > create mass surveillance risks, the case is far less clear.

If you already know who you're looking for they can be quite useful. They can be quite effective when they're used to help document violations of an order of protection or restraining order, where even a profile shot at an odd angle is sufficient.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. I've found cameras super useful in debugging issues with wild animals and contractors, figuring out where something outside went or how it got broken, etc.

Anyone interested in cameras should check out the forum at [https://ipcamtalk.com/](https://ipcamtalk.com/)

One of the reoccurring points there though is actual experience with the low utility of cameras-- especially if they're not very carefully positioned and prolific-- at identifying strangers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All IoT devices are corporate botnets, I still don't understand why people install them in their homes. Alexa/Google assistants provide very little value for the user and give companies a microphone into your private life.

<comment><USER14> I suspect your misunderstanding comes from your mistaken belief that these devices provide very little value for their users.

<comment><USER15> I get that these devices do some useful things, but I can't really think of anything they do that can't also be done with a cell phone and a laptop and without letting contractors listen to you having sex.

<comment><USER16> Once you already own a cellphone, the marginal privacy loss by getting a smart speaker is very small.

<comment><USER15> Only if you think your cell phone is always listening, and in some cases it might be. My phone doesn't use any kind of smart assistant and unlike a smart speaker preventing your phone from listening 24/7 doesn't make the device useless

<comment><USER17> If you trust Google/Amazon/Apple etc, smart speakers only record when they hear the hot word. What's the difference between that and Google/Apple saying they don't record at all if you turn the assistant off? Either way they could just be lying about how the device works.

<comment><USER15> If the companies are lying and bugging us no matter what 24/7 we're screwed either way, but even if google/amazon are being 100% honest their contractors are still listening to people with smart speakers having sex. If you turn off your phone's smart assistants and they are telling the truth nothing happens.

disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.

[https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/07/10/google- contractors-...](https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/07/10/google-contractors- are-secretly-listening-to-your-assistant-recordings/)

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-siri-listening- re...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-siri-listening-recording- contractors/)

<comment><USER14> > disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording > you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.

In fact, you do. Amazon Echos have a physical button that disables the microphone. Apple HomePod has a setting to disable the "Hey Siri" feature. I haven't tested this, but I presume that both continue functioning perfectly fine as Bluetooth/AirPlay speakers.

<comment><USER15> I didn't know that they had an option to disable the mic at all. I'm glad that they do, but I'd question anyone who bought one just to use as a speaker. If you aren't going to use the mic, you're better off buying a regular speaker with better quality. Disabling the smart assistant on the phone still leaves you with a highly functional device.

<comment><USER18> The Apple HomePod is a pretty great speaker whether you have the mic on or not.

<comment><USER15> I've heard it's okay, but not as good as google home max which is again impressive for a smart speaker but still can't compare to other wireless speakers. At a certain level though speaker reviews get to be a bit too much for me to take seriously. The farther they get into audiophile territory the more skeptical I tend to become. Probably because I've been pretty happy with shitty speakers at much lower price points, but I figure if you're going to drop that kind of money on a wireless speaker it'd better sound incredible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's staggering how little the average person on the street cares about these issues. My friend is a software dev and when I asked him why he got a Ring knowing full well how intrusive the system could be, he shrugged and said "Well, can't be worse than my Alexa"

<comment><USER20> People don't care as much about a camera outside the house. They'd rather catch package thieves and car break-ins

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing they just haven't thought about how much a camera on their door tells others about them. How often they come and go, what they wear, who they are with, how often they order food, the age/race/sex of every person living there, etc. It's a massive look at their lives just as much as a camera in their living room would be.

<comment><USER21> > How often they come and go, what they wear, who they are with, how often > they order food, the age/race/sex of every person living there, etc. It's a > massive look at their lives just as much as a camera in their living room > would be.

What's the downside of that? Is it worse than using a phone with lots of Google software on it?

<comment><USER15> What's the downside to having a amazon camera in your bathroom or bedroom recording what you do? If you don't care at all about your privacy it doesn't matter. If you are concerned with the massive surveillance and data collection amazon and google does it would make sense to try and limit the amount of data you hand over to them.

The idea that simply owning a cell phone invalidates any effort or incentive to try to keep the personal details of your life from any company ever is deeply flawed.

We all make trade-offs and must decide for ourselves what amount of data we're comfortable handing over to companies who profit from surveillance capitalism. Personally, I can install a camera without giving amazon data about me. I can't get a cell phone that doesn't leak information to google or apple (although I can try to limit what I use my cell phone for and what data those devices leak)

<comment><USER21> I get that it means a loss of privacy but I'm asking what the downside of that is. Amazon and Google know lots about me and it doesn't feel like it's obviously bad. If I had a magic wand and could erase my data from those companies today how would my life be better tomorrow?

<comment><USER22> It's not about tomorrow. It's about in X years when violent government oppression on some group or other starts up again.

It's not making the assumption that your government is never going to be rounding people up for brainwashing/torture/gassing/etc ever again.

When that happens, all the data these surveillance companies have is going to make the future gestapo downright gleeful.

<comment><USER21> And that gets back to the phone being the absolute goldmine and doorbells and voice assistants barely move the needle.

<comment><USER22> Well sure, phones are a greater evil than doorbell cameras. I'm not disputing that. It's not like you're only allowed to dislike one type of device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a Ring and live on the edge of a seriously bad urban district. Many people in the bad 'hoods have Rings also, so I get notifications as part of the surveillance network.

The network is both a fascinating source of local news and -- more to the point -- a surprisingly-valuable tool for people who live in places that the police ignore (or don't have the resources to protect).

Once the 'guy who steals Amazon packages' has his face on camera in the act of stealing a package, and someone on every block in a 2 mile radius knows it, it makes his life on the street that much less fun. The community can police itself with tools like this.

</comment><comment><USER24> I see a lot of comments here saying that users are buying Rings because they like them, so clearly there must be a need for them. However, in the US, crime rates have nationally been on a downward trend for decades now. Meanwhile, around 60% of people think crime rates are _increasing_ [0].

This is why I'm uneasy with the idea that we should allow revealed preferences to make decisions about the level of ambient privacy we have in US society. There's clearly something pushing people to buy these things, and it isn't a higher crime rate.

[0] [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts- about...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime- in-the-u-s/)

<comment><USER25> Maybe crime is decreasing but the streets still barely feel safe to walk at night depending on where you are. The homeless problem seems to be getting worse though I'm not sure the statistics back it. The difference between walking around at night in Japan, China, and even Europe compared to the US is night and day honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm a pretty paranoid guy about Big Brother and the surveillance state and what-not. That being said, I got a Ring to try it out. I got it at a huge discount and figured, if I don't like it, I'll sell it. I actually love this thing now - by far the best feature to me is how I keep on top of neighborhood happenings. I live in a nice part of down but, like many "nice parts", it's right around the corner from a not-so-nice part of town.

Package stealing, particularly this time of year, is rampant, and the first time I installed the app I was able to see all of these local reports near me and watch footage of people stealing packages. This is a HUGE deterrent as soon as word gets out that certain houses are "bugged".

I think about it from this perspective and immediately think of the "giving up liberty for safety" quote, but I refuse to have any speakers _inside_ of my home. The camera is pointing out towards the street, in broad daylight, in public. I like knowing when my dog walker shows up, when packages arrive, and of course when someone down the block sees a random guy trying to break into cars parked on the street.

Overall, I'm conflicted over it, but I'm reminded several times a day (when the thing goes off) that it's a _huge_ convenience to me, particularly as we have expensive packages delivered multiple times per week. As long as I own the data and police don't have default access to it, I'm cool.

<comment><USER27> Do you own the data? Do the police have access to it? What about Amazon or their partners?

Starting a post with a sentence about how you're a paranoid guy and dislike Big Brother and what-not, and then pivoting to spend multiple paragraphs on how you live in a nice neighborhood and don't mind providing data and surveillance on those around you feels more than a little disingenuous.

Despite (because of?) being an Amazon employee, though one who works nowhere near the Ring, I'd never buy a Ring - and I don't exactly think I'm the most "paranoid guy" about "the surveillance state and whatnot".

Isn't the whole point of the article that the corporate-cop partnerships which are budding here seem distinctly dystopian? Why post all of these positive aspects which -- ostensibly -- exist in competitors (Arlo, maybe?) without the shady downside?

<comment><USER28> Currently, the police do not have access to it. There is a centralized system they can use that simplifies the process for the police to request footage from a homeowners, but that's all it is, a request.

That said, since it is data in the hands of a third party, if the police really wanted that footage, they could issue a search warrant on Ring, and compel them to turn it over, just like they could compel you to turn over your footage with a subpoena or search warrant.

> Ring will only provide video content in response to a valid search warrant > or with the verified consent of the account owner.

>[https://support.ring.com/hc/en- us/articles/360001318523-Law-...](https://support.ring.com/hc/en- us/articles/360001318523-Law-Enforcement-Legal-Process-Guidelines)

<comment><USER27> I know this is their stated, current stance, but given their sort of bizarre ball of incentives to integrate with the cop process as much as possible in order to drive revenue, I imagine that barrier - to the extent that it actually exists today - will degrade over time, if allowed to. You can't take your data back; in this case, you can't take your family's or neighbors' data back, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The only clear moral breach I can find in this article is the questionable assertions of Ring cameras reducing crime. This is definitely wrong if Ring does not have any evidence of the truth of these claims and they should stop doing that.

Everything else, to me, can be boiled down to the fact that the author is uncomfortable with the tradeoffs people are making between privacy and security. The author engages with this point only in passing, at the very end of the piece: "But for ordinary people, like those in Northwest Baltimore, the reason for trusting Ring is simple: they are scared. Pastor Moore said that he understands concerns that people have about Ring's use of data. However, he said his community didn't share these concerns."

<comment><USER30> Yea. I can't figure out why the "Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal" is supposed to be so terrifying. It lets police see which addresses have Ring cameras running so the police can request footage directly from a nearby resident when there's been a crime in the neighborhood. I can't tell if I'm supposed to be afraid because this leaks the bit of info that the resident own cameras, or because police might get the footage "without a warrant" by, horror of horrors, asking the resident for it:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is- coaching...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching- cops-on-how-to-obtain-surveillance-footage-without-a-warrant)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It comes down to data ownership. If my recordings of outside my home are "mine", then police can't get it without a warrant. Amazon certainly shouldn't be able to access anything without my full consent.

In that case, I don't see any reason it's different than a closed loop system.

<comment><USER32> Precisely. Most of the controversy about Ring is the risk that the data is being accessed without user consent by parties hostile to the user's best interests, not that the device collects the data at all.

In general, people bought the device _to_ collect this data (for their own use).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's fortunate that people are too lazy to either change the batteries or plug in these devices.

When I was driving for GrubHub last year in LA, I'd say about 1 in 10 Ring doorbells actually worked.

Surveillance sucks.

</comment><comment><USER34> I didn't see anyone mention Wyzecam here. [https://wyze.com/](https://wyze.com/) Their models start at $20, the smartphone app is very well done, and you can configure it to record events under various conditions quite easily. Can anyone comment on Wyzecam's data security policy? AFAIK there's no cloud feature that lets it interact with other Wyzecams, and I like that.

<comment><USER35> Wyze definitely has some cloud integrations. There's a notification and remote viewing system and it will send recordings to the cloud.

There's also a feature that allows people to choose to share recordings publicly. To most users these things are _features_ , not _bugs_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have a Ring doorbell which works great, but I put in a fake street address when registering it for this reason. So far as I've seen, it loses none of its utility from that. The only user-visible feature based on the address is the "neighborhood crime alerts" feature which I don't want since I live in a dense enough city that petty crime "near" me isn't really a concern.

</comment><comment><USER37> I waded through those articles - and whilst I don't like the idea of 'cameras' everywhere, didn't actually spot the alluded to smoking gun that was going to blow the whole conspiracy open.

Obviously aspects like "black people getting reported as suspicious" is unwelcome, but this isn't a problem with Ring/cameras. I presume the people clicking the suspicious button are the same people traditionally calling in 'tips' whenever they spot somebody with a tan. (Or if you're in the middle of Baltimore it's black residents reporting black people being suspicious). But - I've no real idea/evidence, so I'll leave that.

What did appear to be deliberately misconstrued, was the police being directed to reach out on social media to their residents, to improve residents opting in to share their footage.

If "the government" asks me to provide a video-feed, my hackles would go up. If your local cop says "I'm trying to reduce crime near you and your footage would help me" \- well.. am I going to tell them I'm not going to help?

<comment><USER38> The answer depends a lot on what your personal view of the police is and vice versa.

Of broader interest: the neighbor agreed to "help" and your family's movements are henceforth subject to surveillance without consent.

<comment><USER37> Agreed.

Wouldn't want the camera in my home, or pointed at me whilst I work - but I'm OK with "me walking by"

Basically, I've accepted the neighbour is already allowed to see me as I walk by - this is just improving the efficiency of surveillance, not changing it. I wouldn't have objected if they'd decided they wanted to start an old-school "twitching curtains" neighbourhood watch scheme - I might not have joined, but I wouldn't be feeling violates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Many don't realize that we really only have two options for protecting yourself and your family:

1) A weapon, like a gun 2) a camera

Sure, we have the police, but by the time they arrive, it's usually after the fact and not easy to actually catch the person that did it.

Many countries, like Australia and England, have terrible gun rights, but essentially have turned into a surveillance state in its place, with the number cameras. It puts the fear into thieves because they know they will most likely be caught.

If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt or killed and crimes going unsolved.

I have ring cameras inside and outside my house. A group of 3 people broke into my house while I was on vacation. They saw the camera inside, and ran out of the window they broke through.

Nothing was taken, but if I didn't have the cameras, something would have been taken. On top of everything, this all happened about 5 minutes before my brother-in-law came back home for the night.

Cameras have also shown us all sorts of crime we would never have known: package thieves, trespassing, and just a better general awareness we never had before.

<comment><USER40> > If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt > or killed and crimes going unsolved.

Please cite some evidence that doorbell cameras have a causal impact on crime rates. Or guns for that matter. I doubt there's anything compelling. There's probably a small marginal effect, but there are bigger levers we can turn. The way to actually help people not get hurt is to make it so that fewer people want to do crime. (Which, BTW, we've been doing a pretty bang up job of the last thirty to forty years! Good news!)

<comment><USER41> Anecdote here:

There were increasing reports of burglaries in my neighborhood and one night my home was broken into while we were there sleeping. I installed a Ring camera the next weekend and was awakened to the world of my little cul-de-sac on an average night. There were generally multiple cars coming in, looping around, and leaving in the early-a.m. hours. But it lights up bright and immediately whenever someone comes back there, and in a matter of about two weeks, this dwindled down to absolutely no traffic. Now if I see an entry at 2:00am in my log, it's almost certainly an opossum video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I actually don't see a problem with this. There would definitely be a need for products that facilitate police response. Now hopefully there are also products that have all the tech and also respect your data, however connecting to local law enforcement is at least very useful for businesses. They often need to monitor sidewalk activity and such, and even indoors businesses have no problem being transparent to law enforcement. Obviously if you want to monitor your baby don't buy this, or any third party cloud solution for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER43> Are there any other products as convenient as Ring/Blink?

<comment><USER44> Eufy. Battery powered wifi camera, with encrypted storage on an SD card in your home.

<comment><USER45> Eufy also offers a wired doorbell with local storage. It was also on sale for $99 over Thanksgiving weekend so I got one to try it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wasn't Ring always a surveillance network, just one that changed who has access to the surveillance data?

A "smart doorbell" with a camera is a surveillance device.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Went from?" No. Has always been.

<comment><USER47> Yep, always been their goal. Get them on every door in a neighborhood so you can have eyes everywhere and crowdsource constant surveillance.

Listen to older podcast episodes on Twist: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puP_D3k7vVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puP_D3k7vVI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Anything that is prefixed with 'smart' generally already is a surveillance network

</comment><comment><USER49> Amazon is giving deals to local governments to roll out Ring doorbells, but part of the deal is that they can't imply that what Ring does is "surveillance"

Kudos on the title for that reason alone.

</comment><comment><USER50> You simply can not find a camera without clouding service attached these days.

As long as this camera is networked, it can call-home via wireless or wired network, even though you disabled its cloud service.

</comment><comment><USER51> My wife says we'd never ever let any hardware from Amazon inside the house. Now that's outside too.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ring is made by Amazon? I had no idea, and I have one.

Should I be embarrassed?

<comment><USER53> not at all, amazon acquired them. its a little different from the start, similar path to Nest and Dropcam for google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I assume that's what most IoT devices ultimately are.

<comment><USER32> IoT is susceptible to the same "cloud / personal" tradeoff as most computing these days.

You can roll your own home server and home network, but then you're responsible for maintaining and upgrading (and, most importantly, _securing_ ) it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> err it was always supposed to be for surveillance. people wanna know whos walking by their house and stealing their amazon packages. Everyone acts like this is new but that is the entire point of ring.

</comment><comment><USER56> Maybe blockchain can help with this: [https://www.iotex.io/securehardware](https://www.iotex.io/securehardware)

<comment><USER57> A blockchain would help about as much as changing the endianness or translating it to Cantonese, which is to say it has literally no bearing on the problem whatsoever.

<comment><USER58> this is great in that you could apply it to like 75% of blockchain projects I read about and it would work just as well.

Still a cool data structure though</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recurring Payment and Merchant account providers in Asia. - <AUTHOR>

I found wealth of information on US / Canada / UK based providers based on following link & additional links posted under it on this topic.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303
In your experience which are the best recurring payment solution and merchant account providers in Asia?
What would you think are the key criteria to choose a recurring billing solutions provider? (with most Asian currencies)
FYI, I have also posted the question under StackOverflow to pick the brains of the developer community, to understand based on implementation experiences.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5388589/recurring-payment-processing-and-merchant-account-solutions-primarily-asia
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I think AliPay is the strongest player in this market. [http://market.alipay.com/ospay/aboutAlipay/alibabaGroupCompe...](http://market.alipay.com/ospay/aboutAlipay/alibabaGroupCompetitiveEdge.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had the same problem looking for recurring payment providers and payment gateways in Latin America. I think it's much easier to open a subsidiary company in the US remotely than to process them outside the US/UK/Canada.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.2checkout.com/></comment>


Most fuel efficient car (285mpg) is not a hybrid - <AUTHOR> http://gas2.org/2008/03/12/the-worlds-most-fuel-efficient-car-285-mpg-not-a-hybrid/

<comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car#Producti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car#Production_and_price)

Volkswagen approved a limited production by 2010. However, production has been delayed until 2013. The initial price is still unknown.

</comment><comment><USER3> But it still uses an internal combustion engine, which have a horrible energy efficiency. I wonder how such a bad technology has lasted for so long?

<comment><USER4> Energy density of the fuel. An electric version of this should be significantly heavier (and I think bulkier) due to the batteries, quite possibly having regenerative breaking wouldn't be enough to get back the losses from the extra weight.</comment></comment>


Pilots: FAA Didn't Wait Too Long to Ground Boeings 737-8 Max - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/pilots-faa-didnt-wait-too-long-to-ground-boeings-737-8-max-plane <comment><USER2> What's this? More debate and argumentation that the Feds didn't wait excessively long before grounding the 737 Max 8? There is no way to prove such a thing. May as well play the lottery and hope not to win the jackpot, though some of the balls are weighted...

</comment><comment><USER3> But the ADSB data was available right away, even while the plane was flying. It's available to everyone on sites like FlightRadar. Why does the FAA keep saying they had to wait to get it?</comment>


Facebook co-founder renounces US citizenship, escaping tax burden - <AUTHOR> http://thedc.com/KSUkTO

<comment><USER2> I have helped plenty of people get rid of their U.S. citizenship.

This person is doing it for an obvious economic reason. When he terminated his U.S. citizenship, there was a "pretend" sale of his assets. Let's say he expatriated when his Facebook stock was worth $2.5B. He pays capital gain tax on the profit on his investment (probably 99.8% capital gain here, right?).

Then the stock goes IPO and his Facebook stock is worth $4B.

That extra $1.5B (from $2.5B when he terminated citizenship up to current market value) will never get taxed in the USA.

I have had conversations a number of times with founders who consider this strategy. (These are smaller exits -- $10M - $50M). They don't pull the trigger. The cost/benefit of giving up citizenship isn't worth it.

The two primary drivers (in my experience) for citizenship renunciation are the horrific tax enforcement policies currently rolling through the IRS. Go back to the start of this -- UBS and "secret bank accounts" and that launched Captain Ahab (the tax version, at least) off in search of Moby Dick (aka "tax cheats"). In the process, Captain Ahab has skewered thousands and thousands of goldfish.

The goldfish have noticed this. And are quietly slipping away.

The second reason people cite is the estate tax and its effect on family-owned businesses. This is especially true for dual citizens. Many families in the Middle East, for instance, deliberately had their children born in the USA to acquire US citizenship. Those children inherit the family business, then die. The U.S. estate tax imposed on a Saudi family-owned company will destroy the Saudi business.

U.S. international tax laws are batshit crazy. Unless of course your tax policy is to discourage U.S. enterprise abroad, discourage U.S. citizens from living and working abroad, and cause ridiculous legal and accounting fees to keep yourself clean with the government.</comment>


Chrome Passes IE8 As Most Popular Browser For The First Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/9516/products/chrome-passes-ie8-as-most-popular-browser-for-the-first-time

<comment><USER2> Interesting how IE usage falls and Chrome's rises on weekends...</comment>


Harvard's Foreign Farmland Investment Mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/harvard-s-foreign-farmland-investment-mess <comment><USER2> That's what you get for accepting rich kids from corrupt families of the most corrupt countries. Donated farm land from Russia, Ukraine & Brazil? Murky titles and legal fights? I'd be shocked if this was not donated by some corrupt government official.

"Students, alumni, and environmentalists are targeting U.S. university endowments, saying their investing practices are often out of synch with schools' professed values."

The endowments are obtained mostly by Harvard alumni, this means that the schools professed values ARE exactly in sync with its endowments.

</comment><comment><USER3> These endowments are problematic in general. If they have a need to invest in such obviously problematic areas, they have too much money.

<comment><USER4> And since they are a Veblen good, they can't lower their tuition since that would lower their demand/value in turn.</comment></comment>


A man died yesterday. He had a huge impact on our lives. Fred Shuttlesworth. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Shuttlesworth

<comment><USER2> I don't normally say things like this, but seriously, how is this hacker news? It seems more like a peevish reddit-style reaction to the Jobs articles.

<comment><USER3> Because you upvoted 30+ pages about the same news, thats what the comments are for, we get it damnit.

<comment><USER4> The HN reaction should involve posts like Amex's 0day. Look- I enjoyed reading this too. But you come to HN instead of Reddit for a reason

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read this on reddit, I wasn't even aware of his research, what he found. I found it to be also truly inspiring:

"A great man has passed.

Alas, Ralph Steinman is dead. He died three days before he got the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2011. He dropped out of no college, he did not make a billion dollar company. He did not make billions of dollars, nor even hundreds of millions, though after his death his estate would receive slightly more than a million dollars of the prize money. Yet, he had touched millions, possibly hundreds of millions of lives and will likely touch billions of men women and children in future generations by discoverying one of the secrets of how immunity against viruses or bacteria are translated into an immune response by adaptation of immune cells. How allergy or autoimmune diseases develop, and how immune cells transmit signales to one another. It is possible that it was the fruits of his research that might have extended the life, after pancreatic cancer several years ago, of another giant who died recently. It is also certain that his work has resulted into billions of dollars worth of pharmaceutical industry, and will produce many billions of dollars worth of pharmaceutical industry, and will produce many billions in the future, Such is the reach of a humble life in fundamental science."

</comment><comment><USER6> Reading about Rev. Shuttleworth, I am saddened that this is the first I've heard of him. Everything I ever was taught about the civil rights movement revolved around MLK and Rosa Parks, and highlighting certain political leaders (amusingly most of whom were white). Logically it makes sense that there were people like this man on the ground, showing great determination and courage, organizing and rallying supporters -- but since everything was presented to me in a general way about ideas and vague vignettes of types of resistance and demonstration, I never really thought about the other people. [1]

This really makes me hope that I can stand up to things I know are wrong in the same way -- Rev. Shuttleworth's story is an inspiration.

[1] I can't help but wonder if we don't avoid specifics of the civil rights movement in curriculums to avoid showing others how to incite change when the powers that be seem to not want it.

<comment><USER7> The Children by David Halberstam: [http://www.amazon.com/Children-David- Halberstam/dp/044900439...](http://www.amazon.com/Children-David- Halberstam/dp/0449004392/) I can't recommend it enough. One of the best books I've read in the past five years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As many times as I've flown out of the Shuttlesworth Airport (in Birmingham) I never knew who it was named for. Thanks for sharing, Colin.

</comment><comment><USER9> He lived to 89 too, which is why he got put in the general obit category, rather than some other people who died before their time.

Just read the NY Times obits every day. You'll be amazed at all the accomplished people you've never heard about.

</comment><comment><USER10> Thank you very much for posting this. I was fortunate enough to meet him when I was a kid. Great man.

</comment><comment><USER11> Taylor Branch's excellent trilogy on the Civil Rights movement:

<http://taylorbranch.com/king-era-trilogy/>

</comment><comment><USER12> This guy was a legend! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER14> A very revealing article comparing Shuttlesworth and Condoleezza Rice: [http://www.blackcommentator.com/160/160_condi_civil_rights_d...](http://www.blackcommentator.com/160/160_condi_civil_rights_disdain.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> On a slightly different note, I don't remember top 5 posts on HN all about deaths! I wonder why so many people upvote so many stories related to same subject (i.e. Steve Jobs' death)?</comment>


Videre: the secretive group on a mission to film human-rights abuses - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/09/features/videre

<comment><USER2> Very cool idea. Respect for the guys doing it.

<comment><USER3> agree on that...imagine if the US domestic spying budget was dedicated to detection human rights abuses!</comment></comment>


Intel Launches Next Gen Itanium Monster Processor - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Previews-RecordBreaking-32nm-Itanium-Poulson-Processor/ <comment><USER3> 1) The article says "thread level parallelism" when they mean "instruction level parallelism"

2) There is way more ILP available at run-time than compile time, and what ILP is available in both is much more tractable at run-time. An out-of-order CPU is constantly filling a buffer with instructions (or microcode), and hardware is determining the dependencies dynamically to issue them to the ALU. This is a much more tractable problem than trying to guess the control flow at compile time. A large enough prefetch buffer can overcome a really dumb compiler.

3) Requiring software to be aware of details of your hardware implementation is a really tempting idea, but it has been historically much worse than the opposite. Consider a modern x86 that is nothing like an 80386, but runs the same software, often at higher IPCs than an original 386. Now compare to MIPS which has its delay-slot for branches which often just gets filled with a NOP. Furthermore on modern MIPS cores, which have longer pipelines and branch- prediction, that slot is more-or-less useless!

4) Assuming IA64 doesn't die out, by the time compiler writers figure out how to make code that runs fast on an Itanium of today, Intel will be performing hardware gymnastics to make that code run fast on the hardware of tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> Regarding point 2: Last time I checked (IIRC 2006-ish), there seemed to be common resentiment among scientists working in the area of programming language implementation that there is just too little ILP for successful wide- spread VLIW adoption (modulo some special use cases.)

AFAI(K|R), Hennesy and Patterson's cannonical text (CA-AQA [1]) reflects this: going from 3rd to 4th edition, we find a new chapter "Limits on ILP", VLIW/EPIC elements have been moved from the main contents to the CD-ROM, too (which probably is not a good indicator, though: the 3rd edition was just too heavy to carry it around a lot ;)

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative- App...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative- Approach-4th/dp/0123704901)

<comment><USER5> There _is_ plenty of ILP for VLIW in many real-world cases -- but the most common case is that where all the instructions in the VLIW are identical. This of course reduces to SIMD, which makes the VLIW unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The IDC prediction chart is a thing of beauty. I'd love to have a webpage just for seeing data like this (predictions vs reality). Must be one of the best charts I've seen in a while.

<comment><USER7> So, is THIS Itanium going to sell? Intel sure has a boatload of patience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When the Itanium first launched, we got some machines from Intel so we could port our software. After excitedly unpacking one machine, we plugged it into the office power outlet and flipped the switch. Suddenly all the lights on our floor went out. Turns out you were supposed to only feed it from a data- center-strength power grid.

<comment><USER6> The nice thing though is once it was installed, you save money because you can turn off the heat in your building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't realize Intel still made this stuff.

<comment><USER10> You can thank ongoing long-term enterprise and government contracts for that, to the tune of over a billion a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What current OS options exist for Itanium processors? I would count HP-UX and Linux and, of course, NetBSD. Microsoft already stated 2008 R2 will be the last OS they make for ia64.

That said, looks like an impressive processor.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the main customer/application/market for Itanic, er, Itanium?

<comment><USER13> Not sure if it is the main market, but you can still run OpenVMS on HP Itanium servers:

<http://h71000.www7.hp.com/index.html?jumpid=/go/openvms>

<comment><USER14> Yep, HP customers is the main market for Itanium nowadays, running HP-UX or OpenVMS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The monster is back.

>Itanium relies on the compiler to optimize code at run-time

Thats sums it up for me :)

But seriously - in case when compiler is able to do parallelization, NVidia GPU seems to be a better - cheaper, more accessible and performant - target.

<comment><USER16> Not all parallelism is the same. In this article, parallelism usually means instruction level parallelism (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_level_parallelism>).GPUs are fantastic at data parallelism (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_parallelism>). Being able to exploit one says nothing about the other.

Itanium differs from other processor architectures is how it handles instruction level parallelism. The processor in the computer in front of you probably uses out-of-order execution (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of- order_execution>) to exploit ILP. This happens on the fly, as a program executes. Itanium depends on the compiler to determine where ILP is.

<comment><USER15> >Being able to exploit one says nothing about the other.

data parallelism is a partial case of instruction level parallelism - <USER2> instances of the same instruction run for different pieces of data. A very frequent case in high performance computing or enterprise data crunching tasks supposedly targeted by the Itanic

<comment><USER16> What you described is not what we mean by the term "instruction level parallelism." Yes, it is parallelism that involves instructions, but it is not ILP. Instruction level parallelism (ILP), data level parallelism (DLP) and task (sometimes thread) level parallelism (TLP) are all orthogonal. I can have data level parallelism that is _not_ at the instruction level.

<comment><USER15> so, according to you, the data level parallelism at the instruction level i described isn't a case of instruction level parallelism?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction-level_parallelism>

and returning to the original specific context of Itanium vs. GPU :

[http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter35...](http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter35.html)

Take your stub at what can be classified as what :)

<comment><USER16> _> so, according to you, the data level parallelism at the instruction level i described isn't a case of instruction level parallelism?_

Correct. The GPU article on NVIDIA's website uses ILP incorrectly. They are describing SIMD operations - single instruction, multiple data - which is data parallelism at the instruction level. This is inherently different than ILP, which is when you extract parallelism from a sequential stream of instructions by executing them out-of-order. Of course, it's possible to exploit ILP on a stream of SIMD instructions.

<comment><USER15> >The GPU article on NVIDIA's website uses ILP incorrectly.

That depends on the implementation. Lets say there is a program

f3=OP1(f1)

f4=OP1(f2)

OP2(f3)

OP2(f4)

Some possible ILP forms:

OP1(f1)OP1(f2)

OP2(f3)OP2(f4)

or

OP1(f1)

OP1(f2)OP2(f3)

OP2(f4)

A DLP form:

OP1(f1, f2)

OP2(f3, f4)

or may be their DLP implemented as

OP1(f1)OP1(f2)

OP2(f3)OP2(f4)

and if it is the case i don't see why they can't call it an ILP.

<comment><USER16> The concepts are _orthogonal_. Which means you can apply both at the same time. If you have a stream of SIMD instructions - which is data parallelism - and you can determine that you can execute some of them in parallel, then you are able to extract instruction level parallelism out of a stream of data parallel instructions.

ILP means something very specific. This is a discussion of semantics, but semantics are important so that we can communicate easily. If I stick a Hershey's bar in the oven, it is literally hot chocolate, but it is not what we normally mean when we say "hot chocolate." You are talking about parallelism at the instruction level. I'm trying to explain that that is note what people mean when they say "instruction level parallelism."

<comment><USER15> >You are talking about parallelism at the instruction level. I'm trying to explain that that is note what people mean when they say "instruction level parallelism."

ok, just point which of the 2 ILP executions i mentioned above isn't really ILP, and which of the 2 DLP executions isn't really a DLP.

<comment><USER16> I'm going to have to make assumptions on your semantics. I assume that OP(x) means that instruction OP uses data element x. Further, I assume that instructions on the same line are executed in parallel and before instructions on the next line.

 _OP1(f1)OP1(f2)

OP2(f3)OP2(f4)_

Instruction level parallelism because OP1(f1) executes in parallel with OP1(f2) and OP2(f3) executes in parallel with OP2(f4).

 _OP1(f1)

OP1(f2)OP2(f3)

OP2(f4)_

Instruction level parallelism because OP1(f2) executes in parallel with OP2(f3). (But, the schedule isn't as good as the first one.)

 _OP1(f1, f2)

OP2(f3, f4)_

Data level parallelism because OP1 is applied to both f1 and f2. While this has the same _result_ as the first example, a processor would achieve both in different ways. In the first example, the processor would have to fetch two instructions. It just so happens that both of those instructions are OP1. Then it would have to schedule both of those instructions, and it was luckily able to schedule them both at the same time.

The third example is different. In this case, the processor would fetch _one_ instruction, but execute it on both f1 and f2 at the same time. That's why it's called SIMD: single instruction, multiple data. One instruction executes, but it modifies multiple data elements. In the first case, you had to fetch and execute an instruction for each data element.

Why bother distinguishing between them? Because this may also be possible:

OP1(f1, f2)OP2(f3, f4)

That is both data level parallelism _and_ instruction level parallelism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's a massive transistor budget.

You could fit ~440 MIPS R10k processors on that thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Last sentence of the article has the phrase "sufficiently intelligent compilers". :) Intentional in-joke? Wikipedia's definition: "Sufficiently Smart Compiler, any of a family of theoretically possible compilers able to perform sophisticated but unrealistic code optimizations"

> Given sufficiently intelligent compilers, Itanium could begin to make > economic sense in fields that couldn't previously justify the high cost of > optimizing for the chip.

<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22sufficiently+smart+compiler%22>

<comment><USER19> I would probably read it differently depending on the background of the person who wrote it (mostly based on how aware I'd expect the writer to be of the problems involved). I've seen people with a basic understanding of compilers stumble over it and not know why others in the room chuckled. In this particular case, I don't know enough about the author to say, but EPIC/VLIW architectures are kind of known for making things difficult for the compiler (meaning the joke would be very appropriate here).

<comment><USER17> The entire bet for EPIC was that a sufficiently smart compiler would mean you could free up die space for processing transistors by ditching branch detection, prefetch logic, speculative execution, caches etc.

As you point out, the SSC has yet to appear. Just look at that layout: it's _dominated_ by cache.

<comment><USER16> I think even in the ideal SSC case, you'd still want as much cache as you can get. Even if the compiler can insert perfect prefetching instructions, the prefetched data has to go _somewhere_. And the more somewhere you have, the more aggressively you can prefetch.

I think the main benefit would be much simpler instruction pipelines, which would include the points you mentioned (branch prediction, prefetch) but also all of the logic needed to keep track of dependencies in an out-of-order processor.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. I studied the Itanium design philosophy back in 2000 and this is exactly what they were aiming to do: drop all the complex logic devoted to keeping the pipelines full and all the units busy.

True about data, though I vaguely recall EPIC had advantages there too because without needing to do branch prediction, you didn't need to speculatively fetch multiple memory addresses; meaning the same D-cache went further.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vintage and Obsolete Products (Apple Support) - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 <comment><AUTHOR> In decades of working with used Apple devices, I don't recall seeing this article until today.

Turkey is alongside the state of California as places where I guess Apple has been forced to support products for longer.

Surprisingly present (and under "Mac Desktops"):

        - Apple II (not "Apple ][")
        - Apple III (not "Apple ///")

Surprisingly absent:

        - Apple //e, //c, //gs
        - Mac XL, Lisa, and Lisa 2

The cost to Apple of this confused documentation will be negligible, I expect.</comment>


Developer uses Google Cloud to calculate 31T digits of pi - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/14/developer-uses-google-cloud-to-calculate-31-trillion-digits-of-pi-a-world-record/ <comment><USER2> Is this anything more than a vanity exercise and waste of electricity? We're not going to learn anything. It's already been proven that pi is irrational. There's no value in more than a few digits; we went to the moon on 3.14 and could traverse the known universe on a couple dozen digits.

The first few times someone computed a large number of digits of pi, it was mildly interesting. This has no value whatsoever to anyone.</comment>


Sex is a biological variable – in the brain too - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01141-6 <comment><USER2> I agree that denying all sex differences in the human brain is just bad science. There is a long history of "men and women are biologically different therefore women can't ____." "Men and women are biologically different therefore women shouldn't ___." "Men and women biologically different, therefore women don't want ____." "Men and women are biologically different, therefore women prefer."

When biological differences are exaggerated to justify limiting a population of people, it doesn't surprise me that one response is to just flat out deny biology, when it is exaggerated and weaponized to justify limiting others (see historical arguments on why women shouldn't participate in running marathons, why women wouldn't make good medical doctors, how women have inferior/emotional reasoning, why women shouldn't be allowed into combat roles, why women don't like physics).

I think the question is, how do we as a society acknowledge these differences without being mentally lazy and applying "averages" to individual people? Until very recently women were denied combat roles because of biological arguments about the "average woman". Society used a "biology" argument to deny ALL women the opportunity, even to the ones who excel in these roles. Individual women demonstrated their biological abilities to excel in combat roles and were STILL denied the opportunity because of the "women on average...." and "men and women are biologically different...." arguments. Their very real abilities were "averaged out" and their opportunities to make the most of themselves were denied.

Of course men and women are different. The question is, when will we as a society be able to acknowledge those differences without unnecessarily screwing people over? People will stop denying biological truths when it isn't weaponized against them.

<comment><USER3> These sex differences always conspire to keep women out of important social and economic roles. Such a coincidence!

<comment><USER4> That's not true. Teaching is a very important social role and it's very much dominated by women.

Of course there's the most important social role of all: parenting. Stay at home dads do not receive the support and admiration mothers do.

<comment><USER2> There is more to life than money, but the United States is a capitalist country, where nebulous concepts like "value" are measured in dollars. Teaching is an important role, but it is not valued. If it were valued in our economy, it would be backed by more dollars. So where does that leave women who work in these roles that are simultaneously "important" but not "valued"?

It's like when politicians say, "being a mother is the most important and difficult job", but then no one actually backs and elects women whose primary identity is being a mother. Isn't it strange that we don't want people with supposedly "the most difficult and important job" to represent us? It's because we as a society don't actually value it, we just pretend to. That leaves women economically poor and underrepresented in political decision- making.

Being economically and politically poor doesn't translate into happiness for women.

<comment><USER4> Every politician, ceo, leader... had a mother. Most of them were raised and shaped by that mother who helped them grow into the person they are today (good or bad). Being a mother _is_ powerful because you shape the trajectory and tactics of all of your offspring, some of whom will go on to influence society at large.

<comment><USER2> The whole point is for the mother herself to directly influence society at large. Not wait around for 30-40 years to see if maybe her offspring agrees with some of the things that she cares about and maybe or maybe not implements it.

Fathers also influence and shape the trajectory of their offspring, and we don't have the notion that fathers should be preoccupied with "fathering" and wait around and see if their offspring influence society at large.

<comment><USER4> I think that's really short term thinking. The world doesn't need more workers (especially with automation coming), it needs better parents. Very few people will have an impact beyond their generation through work. All parents will though.

Just today there was an article on HN about the lack of jobs for STEM graduates:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19657087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19657087)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that there's a need to restate this obvious point is a signal of the absurd times we live in.

<comment><USER6> There's no room for "obvious points to restate" in science. Only hypotheses that can be tested through experimentation.

<comment><USER5> Obvious, as in: obvious hypothesis confirmed by overwhelming experiment evidence.</comment></comment></comment>


RePalm – Hardware Emulation of PalmOS - <AUTHOR> http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm <comment><USER2> Cool to see my project-in-progress here. Happy to answer questions.

there's still a lot to do until I'm ready to produce hardware, but a lot already works. The plan is to update the article as I go along, and eventually open source everything once I'm convinced it works at least well enough to be used.

<comment><USER3> Really enjoyed reading it thank you. I miss my Palm Pilots. I love the UI, both functionally and the aesthetics.

<comment><USER2> I'll have hardware you can build for $20 that will run PalmOS soon. Stand by.

<comment><USER3> I can't wait, thank you!!!

Is it likely that there would ever be alternative inputs than Graffiti? While I loved Graffiti at the time, a ios/android virtual keyboard with a decent capacitive touch screen would be nicer today.

<comment><USER2> Palmos always supported other virtual keyboards. Sony had decuma for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There were already some reimplementations of PalmOS on top of other operating systems.

e.g. PalmOS's own "Simulator" was a reimplentation of PalmOS on Windows. It would contain a x86 ROM that would "thunk out" for some ROM libraries (including the DAL) into separate .dlls that would do the equivalent Windows calls. I always though that if I ever wanted to start my own PalmOS clone I would start by looking at those.

Garnet VM by ACCESS was exactly the same thing except for Linux and Gtk+, and compiled for ARM. Namely, an original PalmOS ROM blob with some libraries implemented as external .so that would perform Gtk+ and Cairo (!!) calls.

Most probably, this was actually developed as part of the entire "PalmOS on top of Linux" project that PalmSource actually still had when they were bought by ACCESS.

StyleTap was a 3rd party commercial reimplementation. You can see it still has some drawing glitches and differences versus an actual PalmOS. It is available for both Windows (CE) and Linux (Android).

So I think Linux does make for an excellent host operating system, after all.

<comment><USER2> All of those modified the os at much higher levels. RePalm runs UNMODIFIED OS, with only DAL.prc replaced. Literally: use the T|T3 rom and you get a tungsten t3. Use a Sony TH55 rom, and clie organizer runs as on a real TH55

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This work has great hack value. It's good to see people doing things like that.

Also, the Palm devices were great little machines, with some interesting technical tradeoffs for developers to push the very modest limits of the early hardware, which made sense. I did an app for an early one, and also put the API docs in more usable formats. I looked at the later Palm hardware again recently, when I was deciding where to go for Linux handheld hardware after Replicant, before I decided on PostmarketOS devices. [https://www.neilvandyke.org/t-map/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/t-map/) [https://www.neilvandyke.org/padr/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/padr/) [https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/)

<comment><USER6> _Palm devices were great little machines, with some interesting technical tradeoffs for developers to push the very modest limits of the early hardware_

I had a US Robotics Palm Pilot III. I did two exceptional things with it:

1\. Wrote the content for my second web site (sold for six figures) on the roof of my apartment building after work using a Palm Pilot with the foldable keyboard.

2\. Used the sync cradle to connect to the RS-232 port of an early GPS (around 1999-2000, I think) ripped out of a friend's Honda minivan. There was a program for the Palm that could take B&W bitmap images of maps, then scroll the map in sync with the incoming NMEA data. The hard part was that you had to tell the program the coordinates of the northwest and southeast edges of the bitmap so that it could scroll the correct amount.

\- The maps couldn't be too big because of the memory limitation of the Palm.

\- This was before Google maps. I think the only online map service was Terraserver, and you couldn't download images, so I took screenshots of the city overview, converted them to B&W and used those.

\- You could only have one map. No stitching.

\- No zooming.

Also, it took _forever_ to lock into the GPS signal, though I think this was a problem with early GPS receivers and not a Palm issue.

<comment><USER7> > 1\. Wrote the content for my second web site (sold for six figures) on the > roof of my apartment building after work using a Palm Pilot with the > foldable keyboard.

Tell more!

> forever to lock into the GPS signal

The semi-modern GPS would do estimates of where the satellites moved while "off". Today, wifi and cellular base stations help seed the location precision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are so many tools for late 80s/early 90s cars/car-mods that _ONLY_ work on PalmOS devices.

This will be a godsend to that community if it works.

<comment><USER9> Can you please elaborate, any examples or explanations you can link?

<comment><USER8> The Rtek ECU upgrade for RX7s. PLink for old Miatas. MMCD Datalogger for early 90s Mitsubishis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazing hack project .... and reading thru you see took only 2 weeks to write CoretexEmu. Amazing. Seriously reading this stuff impresses the socks off me and Im in awe of someone who can manage their time for writing enterprise products like VMware, flying planes(author has 2), and hacking at this depth. Kudos unlimited!!

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

The secret is three-prong: I absolutely love doing this (despite this project having no practical purpose), I have a FAANG job, and I have no family of my own.

<comment><USER11> What does FAANG have to do with it?

<comment><USER2> Question was as to how I have the time. FAANG job means that I don't work 80 hour weeks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was really convinced Palm was going to do something cool when I got my Tapwave Zodiac which had an 8M ATI video card in it, which allowed some decent 3d mobile games to run. I was way wrong, unfortunately. I till love that device though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow!! I've been snooping around your webpage looking for updates every now and then and here it is. I am actually am starting a custom CPU project for which I might want to write an emulator and _this_ will help me a LOT. Thanks for starting on this and sharing your progress. Appreciate it. Anybody reading this, Dmitrys c codebase is a must read for anyone even remotely associated with systems programming.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if he can get PalmJoint running again? "Beam me up!"

[https://twitter.com/xardox/status/997939444660523009](https://twitter.com/xardox/status/997939444660523009)

[https://donhopkins.com/home/PalmJoint.prc](https://donhopkins.com/home/PalmJoint.prc)

[https://donhopkins.com/home/PalmJoint/Src/PalmJointMain.cpp](https://donhopkins.com/home/PalmJoint/Src/PalmJointMain.cpp)

<comment><USER15> Whatever a PalmJoint is, you appear to be the only person in Google who has mentioned it.

<comment><USER16> That's more because Google's search quality for old and obscure things is abysmal (and has been going downhill for a while.)

(Incidentally, there's already an item on the front page currently discussing this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19762907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19762907) )

<comment><USER14> Also because I just beamed it around to people at CodeCon, but couldn't ever manage to land that distribution deal with Sony to ship it on every Clié, alas.

My Pet Rock Remote Control for the PocketPC never got off the ground, either. ;(

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh yay I can get Vindigo running on a device again

<comment><USER18> Fancy seeing you here Dave. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have recently picked up a Handspring Visor from a Value Village for $5.

It has been indespensible beyond words.

When I go to pick up my iPhone to take a note, I end up seeing my notifications, scroll through Instagram for 5 minutes, until I get up and make myself a coffee and forget not only to write the note but what the original idea even was.

With my palm, I just pick up and write. These things are golden.

<comment><USER20> ... that sounds like a neat idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know why Cobalt never made it?</comment>


The Clipboard privacy scandle - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/01/verified-the-clipboard-data-privacy-scandal/

<comment><USER2> Instapaper's response sounds sarcastic to me:

 _While "Add URL" feature was implemented to help users of Instapaper, we now understand that it was wrong to simplify the lives of the users._

I think they should have, at least, added an "in this manner" to the end of that sentence. Just sounds like they were saying "we tried to help you and you cried about it" instead of a sincere apology.</comment>


How Boeing's Dreamliner was Grounded - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/how-boeing-s-dreamliner-was-grounded.html

<comment><USER2> A really interesting and well written read. Whilst the author admits to being a little sentimental about the company, he appears to have had a long term relationship with Boeing. Thanks for posting.</comment>


Implementing Ishido, a game from the 90s, using the Racket graphical facilities - <AUTHOR> https://alex-hhh.github.io/2020/06/ishido.html <comment><USER2> It seems like you could play this game using a Qwirkle set. The rules are very similar, but Qwirkle looks at the entire run a tile is involved in, not just the 4 immediately adjacent pieces. And the board is unbounded in Qwirkle. (Other minor differences, too)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great post. Pasteboards and snips are so powerful.</comment>


The Top 50 Developer Tools of 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://stackshare.io/posts/top-developer-tools-2016?utm_content=stackshare_awards&utm_campaign=eoy_2016 <comment><USER2> There should be an "any top whatever list"-law: Reading any top list creates less value than reading anything of a single item of that top list in the same amount of time.

Or something more eloquent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't...wait...hold on. How is PHP that high on the list?!

<comment><USER4> Facebook?</comment></comment>


Is there a Japanese plan to evacuate 40 million people? - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/is-there-a-japanese-plan-to-evacuate-40-million-people

<comment><USER2> I only had to read the first sentence to know anything that followed it is lies.

>a new report circulating in the Kremlin yesterday prepared by the Foreign Ministry

This sentence and variations of it are the signature of Sorcha Faal aka David Booth, one of the biggest hoax promoters on the internet.

These reports are not real, and trying to find any evidence of them is always fruitless.

Even the conspiracy crowd is sick of this person.

<http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread304918/pg1>

There is very literally nothing to see here.</comment>


"... so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak" is not acceptable' - <AUTHOR> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1126136 <comment><USER2> It gets better later in the thread:

 _Yinghai, we have had this discussion before, and dammit, you need to understand the difference between "understanding the problem" and "put in random values until it works on one machine"._

 _"There was absolutely _zero_ analysis done. You do not actually understand WHY the numbers matter. You just look at two random numbers, and one works, the other does not. That's not "analyzing". That's just "random number games"._

</comment><comment><USER3> I always get a kick out of how Linus talks to people. It's so direct and he never coats his arguments to make them easier to swallow. You could learn a lot about not bullshitting from that guy.

<comment><USER4> It's strange isn't it? When people do the same in places like this community (and other communities) they're immedietly downvoted or dismissed, unless they're someone held in similar esteem to Linus.

<comment><USER5> It's not strange at all. Linus has earned his credibility. Some people in this community have too (pg, joshu, patio11, it's a long list). But people are downvoted when they act like they've earned credibility when they haven't.

<comment><USER4> It seems you've missed my point. I don't doubt everyone you've listed has earned their credibility. What I'm trying to ask is "Why do you need to have earned credibility before you can be brutally honest with people?"

<comment><USER6> It's not really about credibility, it's about status. Bad behavior -- and being this rude is bad behavior -- is much more tolerated in high status individuals, in every type of community. Just like (extreme example) how senators and Goldman Sachs CEOs can walk away with a slap on the wrist and a little bad press, where you or I would go straight to jail.

If it were just about the value of the information conveyed, people would do their own research when a person is "brutally honest" with them, and decide whether or not that information itself is credible.

The confusion lies in the fact that in a community like HN, that worships logic (and also success), those things that make you "credible" are what make you a high-status individual. That means even the statements those high status people make which are NOT credible themselves will be accepted, or only gently rebuffed. (Which is a big reason why you don't see much criticism of pg here, or when you do, it's very respectful, vs other authors, even when he writes something ridiculous.)

<comment><USER7> >" _(Which is a big reason why you don't see much criticism of pg here, or when you do, it's very respectful, vs other authors, even when he writes something ridiculous.)_ "

If you think someone is being ridiculous why don't _you_ say something.

<comment><USER8> People don't do it because it is counter productive. Respected people have their supporters. Unless you first bury your argument in adequately respectful terms it will get downvoted. Regardless of content.

You cannot say "The Linus rant about C++ is just wrong". You need to first blather on about why Linus is a great guy but has his limited perspective and from that perspective he is correct. However there is a world outside of that perspective where he is wrong.

If I posted the Linus rant on C++ I'd just be called an idiot. Nobody would worry about my perspective because, to my knowledge, I don't have any supporters to appease.

It is just politics. It affects tech communities as much as anywhere else. People get invested in their side. If you challenge their side then you must be sneaky about it.

<comment><USER7> >You cannot say "The Linus rant about C++ is just wrong". You need to first blather on about why Linus is a great guy but has his limited perspective and from that perspective he is correct.

You may think that you have to appease people.

If you posted "The Linus rant about C++ is just wrong" then I would down vote you. Why is it wrong, why is it a rant, what's wrong about it - that's what gets my vote.

I thought we were building a Brave New World here away from political double- speaking and ass-licking and endless regurgitation of memes. Please don't give in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help being reminded of this hacker koan:

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

<comment><USER10> This, in turn, reminds me of a long-shot theory about how the universe works that I sometimes ponder.

I can't think of how many times someone has come to me with a computer problem, or I've gone to a vendor/support chat with a problem that hasn't worked dozens or hundreds of times. Then suddenly, with the guru there, whether it is me or someone else, suddenly the problem evaporates.

I've found myself wondering if this wasn't some illusion, but an actual artifact of the nature of the universe. Think about it: if noob's problems everywhere were actually the universe not letting their shit work, there would be _no one_ to ever notice it; because when the expert comes in and fixes it, it is magic to the noob anyway, and the expert is 100% used to mundanes not having their stuff work for any given reason.

<comment><USER11> What about the case of a person who, when they show up, magically breaks all technology. I had a friend like that, "I didn't touch it I swear!"

<comment><USER12> Reading over jwz's travails with computers of various kinds, he seems to have an amazing amount of it for someone who used to be a professional programmer.

I propose we name it the Zawinski Effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I mistaken in thinking that in this case, it might also be a cultural/communication problem?

When Yinghai answers:

      We did do the analyzing, and only difference seems to be:
      good one is using 0x80000000
      and bad one is using 0xa0000000.

he clearly didn't understand what Linus meant by "think and analyze".

I don't know the Chinese culture well enough (assuming Yinghai is from China), but I am under the impression that they would emphasize more on results (fix the problem) than on processes (understand why the fix works, in order to be sure we are not breaking something else).

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER14> "I don't know the Chinese culture well enough (assuming Yinghai is from China), but I am under the impression that they would emphasize more on results (fix the problem) than on processes (understand why the fix works, in order to be sure we are not breaking something else)."

The greatest living mathematician has Chinese origins: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao>

If someone 'thinks and analyzes problems' then he does.

I don't like categorization by nation because I am Hungarian and I am afraid a lot of people in the U.S. who don't know me yet thinks something entirely different of my problem solving style than reality.

<comment><USER15> When I think "Hungarian problem solving" the first association that comes up is John Von Neumann.

What assumptions do you normally encounter?

<comment><USER14> I think there is a generic implicit assumption that programmers in less rich countries are lower quality. Of course it is rarely said explicitly but it can be seen from some signs: salaries are so much lower here that I cannot see any other reason why not more development work comes here. When companies do offshoring they bring here only the boring job which does not need much creativity, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once again, a great Linus Torvalds statement! I especially like the last paragraph, which has so much truth in it, and can be applied to small as well as large software projects:

 _Don't just make random changes. There really are only two acceptable models of development: "think and analyze" or "years and years of testing on thousands of machines". Those two really do work._

<comment><USER17> To be fair, the second case really is just a matter of fossilized random changes.

<comment><USER18> That is correct, but is based on a philosophy that the longer something has been in use, the less chance it has to demonstrate behavior that has not been previously observed — he even explains that in more detail in further posts where he discusses his desire to not cause regressions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Programming by coincidence"

[http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic- programmer/extracts/coinci...](http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic- programmer/extracts/coincidence)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think Linus forgets that at one point he too was inexperienced and liable to make these hit-and-hope fixes. I agree with his point in general, but the dickish manner in which it's delivered isn't particularly helpful ("Why don't we write code that just works?")

<comment><USER21> Why so sensitive? Seriously, when someone criticises your work, do you listen to what they say or do you just listen to their tone of voice?

If all you do is listen to the tone, then YOUR WORK WILL SUFFER. Because if someone comes up to you and says, "you dick! What the fuck were you thinking putting that double dereference there?? There's no way it could ever work!"

If you stop listening after, "you dick! What the fuck were you thinking..." then you will miss out on learning something that you should know. The person is angry BECAUSE you have been stupid. Yes, that sucks, and perhaps they should learn to control their temper. But you can't do that for them. What you CAN do is be less stupid next time!

<comment><USER20> I listen to what they say. I just lose respect for the person if they act like a bit of an idiot while delivering it. This is not helpful if the person is meant to be in a supervisory\managerial role.

<comment><USER20> Confusing downvote, I honestly can't see what could be disagreeable or controversial about this comment (particularly given it's inflammatory parent comment) but never mind!

<comment><USER21> You got an upvote from me.

But, you seriously think my comment is inflammatory? You don't think that learning to deal with people is an essential part of the job??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was all set to defend the "jiggle randomly" school of development with something along the lines of "sounds like someone who has never had an external deadline to worry about" but then I got really sad, and didn't.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, that approach worked fine for the evolution of complex life-forms.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but the "we have billions of years to get this right" model generally doesn't apply to software dev. ;)

<comment><USER23> Unless you're coding Duke Nukem Forever. ;)

<comment><USER25> That would require they get it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another aspect of this thread that I find very refreshing is the fact that the previous implementation may have used magic numbers doesn't reduce anyones desire to actually understand what is going on going forward.

The realization that a magic number was already being used could have caused one of two outcomes:

a) justification for replacing one magic number with another

b) realization that more research needed to be done to understand exactly what was going on in the first place

I appreciate seeing (b) as the option chosen. We should all strive to be this diligent.

</comment><comment><USER26> Programming by coincidence as the PragProg says (someone has already posted the link).It's extremely common here in most Indian companies, especially with freshers.

<comment><USER27> Also known as shotgun debugging, where you randomly poke at the relevant portion of the source code in the hope that the bug will magically vanish. I think the habit is formed early on, when most of the mistakes are things like syntax errors or off-by-one problems, where certain types of random tweaking actually can be somewhat effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, there goes my development methodology.

</comment><comment><USER29> I call this "poke it with a stick" debugging. Let's poke the code like this and see if it works now. This approach is so wrong yet so common it's infuriating.

</comment><comment> enjoy-your-stay Linus seems to be (correctly) railing against what is classic cargo cult behaviour.

Making changes until someting seems to "work".

</comment><comment><USER30> That patch reminds me about a _nouveau_ bug[1] I had a couple of weeks ago. According to one of the developers behind nouveau it was caused by a new memory mapping/allocation scheme that broke things on systems with more than 4 GBs of RAM. Some device memory (registers etc) was mapped above 4 GBs and some of them don't like this. So he built a new kernel which reverted the change and the problem was "miraculously" fixed.

[1] <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=689825>

</comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of some of my last work experiences...</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of agreements in your organization? - <AUTHOR> Scenario: early stage start up. A few founders with equal ownership. We need to make decisions and have them in an easy to reference place.
Also while making the decisions it's good to have a record of all concerns/comments/discussions.
Once a decision is made and recorded (I guess as a policy), it should be obvious if anybody alters the content.
What kind of solution do you use for such communication? <comment><USER2> For tracking contracts early on, for SaaS services you subscribe to and for legal contracts/documents use Excel (or similar spreadsheet) so people know what is there. You don't need an expensive fancy document management system to get started.

For tracking your other decisions. You have two different types of decisions that are critical to track IMO.

1: board/corporate decisions which need to be captured in meeting minutes and communicated out.

2: day too day decisions, for which a Word document that summarizes the key decisions or a wiki etc all work. I used to use a word document that linked to external documents for the supporting details on the decision. Today I like Quip for that type of thing, it is easier to deal with than a wiki and you can embed spreadsheets, graphs and all kinds of stuff in it, and linking to other docs is really simple. It is more or less a simple document management system at a fair price IMO. Quip just needs some structure put around how you use it and then it is awesome. Even policies and procedures are easy to track and manage in Quip.

</comment><comment><USER3> DON'T just record decisions. Record WHY you made them, so that if the ASSUMPTIONS change in the future, you will be able to connect back to the REASONING behind why you made the decision in the first place. And you'll be able to change decisions with less tendency for argument or ego battles.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to HN! Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) One thing they ask is not to use uppercase for emphasis; it comes across basically as online yelling, and makes it harder to hear your substantive points.

Instead, put asterisks around the text you want to emphasize, and it will get italicized. [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like an internal wiki would do what you need.</comment>


How Deutsche Bank Enabled a Dirty Offshore Bank to Move Dark Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomwarren/how-deutsche-processed-millions-for-a-dirty-bank <comment><USER2> > The German giant was kept in the dark about the true owners of suspicious > FBME accounts whose transactions it was authorizing – despite requirements > for correspondent banks to perform additional checks when signs of money > laundering arise.

Yeah. Sure.

> Deutsche showered FBME with "Processing Excellence" awards for at least four > straight years before the bank was named as a "primary money laundering > concern" by the US government.

Yep. Clearly there was a lot of money to be made.

> Deutsche has faced questions over why it lent Trump more than $600 million > at a time when other Wall Street banks had frozen him out. The bank was > reportedly subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is apparently > investigating the US president's finances alongside his campaign's contacts > with Russia.

Hmm...</comment>


Show HN: Find an Expert on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://hnprofile.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Highly recommend reading the "how it works" section:

[https://hnprofile.com/learn-more](https://hnprofile.com/learn-more)

That section has a few examples and details. I'll add further details below.

The system ONLY looks at comments sent to it. It, kind of looks like:

        { Author, Comment }

From there, everything else is derived. Nothing else, no profiles, no voting, nothing. That's it.

The system identifies:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Relevant content
      - Promoter score (an improved net promoter score)
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - Related Topics
      - etc.</comment>


Gravity-Powered Solar Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://www.notechmagazine.com/2015/09/gravity-powered-solar-tracker.html <comment><USER2> Anything that moves will one day break. I hesitate to move away from the reliability of a static panel. Adjusting the drip rate in this scheme would also be constant battle of weather, temperature and season. You'd never get it perfect.

Compared to a simple solar setup it may be more efficient, but compared to more complex, yet still static, combinations of a panels and a reflectors I don't think the improvements are worth the extra complexity of moving parts. I'm thinking of rigs like this: [http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/Reflectors/Reflecto...](http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/Reflectors/ReflectorBenefitVertCollector.htm)

<comment><USER3> Yes, tracking has got to be super-simple. Flowers do it; maybe one day we'll use them somehow. Flower power.

But the efficiency difference is dramatic, especially for monocrystalline. I got full power in the middle of winter near sunet (4pm) by tilting the panel almost vertically.

Consider the effect of solar ray incidence on Earth: it's why the tropics are hot and the poles are cold. It's the difference between summer and winter.

<comment><USER4> > _Yes, tracking has got to be super-simple. Flowers do it; maybe one day we > 'll use them somehow. Flower power._

Flowers are not simple. They're insanely complex devices built entirely by and from nanomachines. We're barely beginning to understand what's going on. For instance, we found solar tracking to be a set of clever photochemical reactions that respond to particular wavelengths and disrupt the natural growth of the plant in such a way that it follows the sun. Mind you, that we know about those reactions does not mean that we actually understand them in perfect detail.

Nature only _looks_ simple. In fact, the levels of its complexity are so great that for the most of mankind's history we didn't even suspect what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is called a clepsydra (water clock) tracker.

A group at New Mexico Tech added water pumps to the technology to take out the need for manual refilling.

What people tend to forget about trackers are they cost money and have to be massive to hold their angles in the wind.

They are also less space-efficient users of land than fixed mounts, which is why standard PV's never tend to use them. It also costs less per watt to buy a second panel and fixed mount than spend the extra on any kind of tracking mount.

<comment><USER6> As you said, the price of panels relative to the price of trackers is such that trackers don't make economic or engineering (complexity) sense.

I think we we potentially getting there with energy storage as well for off grid installations. Rather than trickle charge a storage system that can supply short bursts of massive power (think running a welder off of solar), purchase more generating capacity and feed it directly into the inverters and use storage for the minimal case. Excess can be shunted into a opportunistic load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah, before I read the article, from the image I thought maybe it was bottles on both sides, and using the sun to evaporate the water in the lower bottle until it reaches the higher bottle, causing it to tip. Thought that was pretty clever! But probably not accurate. Would be beautiful to design a closed system that works well like that however.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actually there is a simple mechanical gear that can translate constant speed rotation into a perfect two axis sun tracker. If you'd combine this with the contraption from the article you'd get a gravity-powered two axis tracker.

</comment><comment><USER9> A human has to refill the bottles.

<comment><USER10> Another mechanical approach that is relatively cheap and doesn't require refilling bottles is to use a closed system of a hydraulic cylinder and two exposed freon tanks, one facing east and one facing west: [http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-tracker- zmaz77ndzgo...](http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-tracker- zmaz77ndzgoe.aspx)

These mechanical approaches are generally awesome because they hold up well in bad weather.

If you wanted to go all out I don't see why you couldn't combine the gravity system and the freon system and track on 2 axes! (Anybody got a clever idea how to make one system or the other neatly handle the axis corresponding to the height of the sun?)

<comment><USER11> What about an array of photodiodes like this:

      o o o
      o X o
      o o o

This is in an enclosed box with a hole over the center. Here, "o" represents a photodiode and "X" represents the center of the hole. When the solar panel is pointed directly at the sun, the sun is at position X and no photodiode is lit up. As the sun changes position, eventually it will light up one of the photodiodes. That completes a circuit which uses power from the panel to drive a motor, which is attached to a worm gear and rotates the panel towards the sun. Eventually the sun will be pointed at the X position again which breaks the circuit and stops the rotation. Each diode completes a circuit, driving one or both motors (in the case of the corner diodes) rotating them appropriately.

It'd be interesting as well to have some sort of mechanism which, when the panel receives power, keeps it locked in place. When the panel has no power for a period of time (ie: after sunset) the mechanism disengages and the panel falls back to its default position pointing towards sunrise.

<comment><USER12> Finding vertical & finding north is not a problem, you can get that trivially in a tiny MEMS IMU if you don't want to do it manually, and from there determine the optimal path for solar tracking without added variables, supposing you have the timezone set by the distributor (or use a GPS for that at a few dollars a chip).

The cost is in the rotating frame and the motors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Print HTML with Paged.js - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagedmedia.org/pagedjs-sneak-peeks/ <comment><USER2> 1\. This initiative is vital to contemporary book design which suffers from a total monopole owned by Adobe.

2\. Book designers and digital UI designers are two distinct jobs which need to overlap to go further: designing books with code, include in print design what we learnt from the Web, transmit typographic culture to the digital designers eye, etc.

Long life Paged.js!

(until browsers finally support W3C specs for paged print, CSS-Regions and others)</comment>


"Ugh, why don't fat people just eat less?" and other inane comments - <AUTHOR> http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/ugh-why-dont-fat-people-just-eat-less/ Thought you guys might like this. It's become popular (especially online) to think that cutting spending or eating is simply about willpower, when it's really more complex than that and involves motivation, social psychology, and many other outside factors. I've included links to several pieces of research. <comment><USER2> What a whiny article. If you're fat it's because you're eating too much and/or exercising too little.

Pointing to studies and "decades of research" to deflect blame doesn't change the facts: you got yourself into your predicament (by consuming too many calories), and only you can get yourself out (by adopting a sustainable, healthy diet).</comment>