Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/world/norway-fm-radio-switch-off-digital-1.3923612 <comment><USER2> Over 60% against ... but "more channels". OK solely money driven then.

I have somewhere around 12 FM radios, ranging in price from £10 to £lots and 40 years old or newer. They all still work and often give LW and SW too.

In the UK at least DAB is mp2 and an excuse to put out thousands of channels at horrible bit rates. Like down to 64k streams. OK for a noisy car, terrble for at home or headphones.

They all work and put out sound in sync (nb except the new denon micro system that for some reason must be using digital stage in processing fm meaning the sound comes .5s later). I _often_ leave the radio on in several rooms when moving around, so this is especially annoying.

They degrade in poor signal "nicer" than DAB and remain listenable longer. FM has infinitely better coverage across the country.

For the battery powered ones they're _at least_ an order or two of magnitude better battery life. DAB is horrific for portables.

<comment><USER3> I also believe this is primarily driven by money, but also a section of Norwegian society seems to believe that anything new and shiny simply _must be bought_ and right away.

In a country in which environmental concerns are marketed as paramount by the government and media there are some obvious dichotomies emerging.

For one, the electric car market markets itself as green and while they are running on renewable energy, the costs and sources of power for building them are reportedly a lot less environmentally friendly. But ok, a solution to fossil fuels had to be found and that's it. For two, the mobile carriers in Norway are heavily promoting phone contracts in which every year you send in your phone and get the latest model phone in exchange. This has to be one of the least environmentally friendly ideas of this century. Every 12 months you exchange a phone that contains plastics and metals and is shipped from another continent just to have the latest piece of bling. Yet no-one seems to care. Another examples is that the speed limit on the motorways was raised a couple of years ago from 100 kph max to 110. So we're all burning too much fuel but now we're being told it's ok to burn more and faster. It doesn't add up. I am meant to care about the environment or not? Or does the environment only count when people can profit from it?

The radio swap over is the same. It looks to a conspiracy theorist like an attempt to shame people in "old" cars into replacing them with a "see, I'm not poor!" model. There have been reports in the news here over the years about there being so many old cars on the roads and that it is a problem (it is presented as a safety and environmental problem by the govt. and media). The reason I think there are so many older cars is because new cars cost _a lot_ mostly because tax on a new car is so high, and this leads to owners actually following service intervals and keeping cars in good condition. Finding a car with a near complete service history in Norway is common. Maybe there would be less old cars if the govt. wasn't taxing them so high. An electric car is still out my price range, even with the (now vulgar) tax breaks given to Tesla owners.

<comment><USER4> > For one, the electric car market markets itself as green and while they are > running on renewable energy, the costs and sources of power for building > them are reportedly a lot less environmentally friendly.

This is the kind of made up on spot arguments you hear from ICE vehicle owners. Until they switch to EV :)

"Manufacturing a mid-sized EV with an 84-mile range results in about 15 percent more emissions than manufacturing an equivalent gasoline vehicle."

[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric- vehicles/life-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric- vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions#.WG9fXZ7NRkp)

15pct is not anywhere enough to offset the lifetime footprint of a fossils- driven vehicle, especially in case of Norway where effectively all electricity is hydro.

<comment><USER3> Sort of just what I said. I did state "reportedly" and not provide any sources. I don't think I was being unfair to the EV market. However, buying a new car and junking the old one has to be less energy efficient than owning an old car and trying to use it less while utilizing public transport. Public transport is something I could have mentioned in my original post as it is not prioritized enough here in Norway and car culture is. If the govt were serious, really serious about the environment then public transport would be much better than it is currently.

Edit: I just remembered another reason why I think EV is about money and not only about the environment: diesel engines could easily(ish) be adapted to run on renewable plant based fuel[1], but no govt is interested in promoting this. In fact they do the opposite, they tax the end user quite highly for pouring vegetable oil into cars even though a diesel engine run on veg oil is emissions free. The conversions wouldn't be very much more than when leaded fuel was phased out and we all put new heads on our petrol engines (in the Land Rover community at least we did this). New diesel motors could be manufactured to specs able to cope with plant based fuel (especially with a bit of engineering enterprise). If some one can give a good answer as to why this has never been a viable option except for hobbyists I would be interested to read it.

edit 2: without govt. or trade backing this company doing said conversions folded 3 years ago. But what a future we might have seen. [http://www.dieselveg.com/](http://www.dieselveg.com/)

1\. [http://www.reedx.net/landrover/mods/vegoil/p2.php](http://www.reedx.net/landrover/mods/vegoil/p2.php)

<comment><USER5> > ...even though a diesel engine run on veg oil is emissions free.

This just isn't true. Local emissions of bio-diesel are comparable to petro- diesel.

When you factor in that C02 is absorbed during manufacture, biodiesel is estimated to have 45%-65% lower net emissions than petro-diesel, but that ignores the fact that you just repurposed viable farmland (or in some cases rainforest) and changed its C02 profile, potentially reducing or erasing any net benefit.

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

Another challenge is what to do with all the waste glycerol (100kg per ton of biodiesel), since prices crashed a few years back

<comment><USER6> >Another challenge is what to do with all the waste glycerol (100kg per ton of biodiesel), since prices crashed a few years back

Vape it obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OK, so you switch off a completely fine technology with billions invested, rendering useless multi-millions of fine working radios. For what? I think this will be the death blow to radio. People will not go DAB if not absolutely needed, they will essentially try to go "internet" directly and thereby eliminating classic "radio". Maybe you'll use the DAB in your car sometimes, but I can't imagine it will happen that you replace every FM radio in your house (alarm clock, kitchen radio, TV, legacy hifi-systems, etc...) with DAB now. In those cases, you'll switch so a full online solution like one of the gazillions internet radio stations. FM is dead with DAB. My prediction: "Radio" will something you'll probably find in cars - but almost nowhere else. The user base will be crippled totally, rendering "classic" radio into something unprofitable, as revenue from ads will go down. But as I am a digital child, I also look forward: being a podcaster now in the right countries could be unexpectedly monetarily interesting.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't we be better using this spectrum for even more data to stream anything, including DAB?

<comment><USER9> FM is amazingly cheap, and green. You can reach millions of listeners with high quality sound. In many cases, you can reach tens of millions for exactly the same cost. Until you need another mast, the extra cost per user is $0.

Smartphone chips already include FM so there's no extra cost to reaching mobile users, with no extra bandwidth consumption. (Not FM's fault if some smartphone makers don't use the FM capabilities and make users consume expensive and limited cellular spectrum instead.)

The drawbacks with FM are (1) the limited number of stations and (2) users can't choose their own music. That's why there's a market for different services.

However, there's still a market for live radio: it's free and has billions of listeners. It's also a very efficient way of handling phone-ins and live commentaries on sports events, among other things.

<comment><USER10> Broadcast is fine and will always have a place, but there's no reason to use analog any more. It's too inefficient from a spectrum perspective.

<comment><USER9> Well, there is a very good reason to use analogue: it's already in place and working, and there are hundreds of millions (maybe billions) of analogue radios.

The problem is that attempts to introduce digital systems have generally not been successful.

If radio didn't exist, you'd obviously start digital services. But it does exist, and it's deeply entrenched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.

<comment><USER12> What is a fjord?

<comment><USER13> It's a steep-sided inlet. They're award winning you know. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord)

<comment><USER14> Lovely crinkly edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On one hand, spectrum is a precious resource and no one would ever forfeit it without a mandate. OTOH don't you just love the simplicity of the FM radio? I can say that I've never found one that doesn't work.

Sometimes I don't want to troubleshoot, I just want to listen to the radio on my way to work. ;)

> 'We are simply not ready for this yet'

Well, Norway, maybe if you were a big exporter or even importer of automobiles, your legislation would light a fire under some major manufacturers. But you're just not big enough of a consumer.

<comment><USER16> Yet FM still can't beat AM for simplicity:

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

<comment><USER17> It's even easier to demodulate at high power :D

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82s5Q3GIO9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82s5Q3GIO9I)

<comment><USER18> I have no idea how this works.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snibt3CNqBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snibt3CNqBA)

Effectively AM recreates a sound wave using the EM spectrum in the most direct way possible.

When the clamp is held just right, an arc forms between it and the mast that recreates the AM signal with enough energy to vibrate the nearby air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article didn't talk about why? It's not as if the FM bandwidth is particularly valuable, being quite a low frequency. Unlike digital tv, there doesn't seem to be a particularly pressing reason to do this; if broadcasters are happy to keep broadcasting on FM, why stop them?

<comment><USER21> It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Because of all the fjords and valleys, you need many weak transmitters to avoid reflections. Also, because it's FM, they can't overlap in frequency.

With DAB, two time-delayed signals (either reflections or multiple towers transmitting the same data-fountain) will enhance the signal. This means that you can have fewer towers.

<comment><USER22> > It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run.

Won't the free market decide if it's too expensive to run? Or is even radio _run by the state_ in Norway? Otherwise, why prohibit private companies from licensing & broadcasting FM radio? I mean the free market would decide stop to broadcasting when it's not profitable for them anymore.

Or is everything state-run in Norway? When I read "one member of the ruling coalition was scathing" and "MP from the Progress Party", I'm thinking, the state (and these MPs) shouldn't even be involved and thinking about this, and should leave it to the free market.

<comment><USER23> > Or is even radio run by the state in Norway?

As a Scandinavian, that is kinda fun to read. Of course Radio is state run. I still get surprised when I hear commercials on the privately owned stations. Private radio stations pretty much became a thing after I grew up and stopped listening to Radio.

When I was a kid, there were maybe one commercial station and they didn't air in my city. Commercial TV-station were still mostly broadcasting from England, due to the former state monopoly.

To many Scandinavians this is the most natural thing in the world.

<comment><USER24> This makes a lot more sense. The article came off as a ban on FM. It's actually only that the state will no longer put money into FM radio and infrastructure.

<comment><USER25> _> The article came off as a ban on FM._

Interesting cultural difference; I would never have it interpreted it like that. I did wonder whether the commercial stations would _also_ leave FM. A large country like Norway is likely to have only state broadcasting in its more remote areas, but additionally commercial broadcasters in the more populated regions.

<comment><USER26> As far as I can tell the commercial stations are leading the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead).

The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose it, now that they know it is too late to do something about it...

<comment><USER28> I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a _lot_ of bandwidth.

Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it.

But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support? There are none. You have to have apps. Do you think your car will still get software updates for those in 10 years?

I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars. Hell, I'm a geek but even I actually prefer radio when driving.

<comment><USER29> > For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth.

Yes, but that's a problem for the telco's to solve, if they want to continue selling mobile internet. So they have strong incentives to solve it.

> One is emergency broadcasts

How is having to buy an expensive device to listen to emergency broadcasts a benefit? One of the reasons DAB was scrapped in Sweden was this. Everyone and their grandmother has a bunch of FM radios already, no purchases necessary, it's deployed, it works. Shutting down FM means less people will be able to listen to emergency broadcasts. That's bad, not a benefit.

Besides, most modern smartphones have emergency broadcast functionality that's accessible to local authorities. And everyone and their grandmother already has a smartphone.

> the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades.

DAB or DAB+ ? The poor bleeding edgers who bought a DAB radio got pretty pissed when they had to throw it out and buy a DAB+ radio instead. All five of them. Not a good track record exactly. Meanwhile, FM has been going strong for almost 100 years now.

> But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you > support?

There's two: iOS CarPlay and Android Auto. Works great. Everyone already has a smartphone, and can then use whatever streaming app or service they want.

> I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars

The only thing being overestimated is the general public's eagerness to run out and buy a DAB+ car radio. It's pretty much at zero.

Look, broadcast radio is going away just like broadcast television. It's a dying medium. And to force a change while it's dying will only hasten its demise.

<comment><USER30> Emergency broadcasts should run on AM radio if we're worried about reliability. AM is brain dead simple to demodulate to the point you can do it accidentally with the right length of wire really.

Kill FM, reserve AM for an emergency band.

<comment><USER27> In Norways case I wonder if AM does not work due to the hilly terrain or something. Don't think there are any stations, I never listened to AM at least and just barely heard about it.

<comment><USER26> There aren't any as far as I can tell. I think it would have pretty horrible performance with lots of multipath distortion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What do we do with more channels that we can't listen? If you really need a little bit of bandwidth around 100 MHz for other use, you could cut the spectrum from FM radio and still keep it running.

The place where I usually listen to radio is the car. Car radios don't have DAB receivers. They all have FM receivers. And these days most cars have radio units that are integrated to the car electronics, steering wheel controls etc - so it's not that easy to just get a new radio that fits the hole.

If I get rid of FM radio, I will not replace it with DAB. I'll listen to some streaming service over IP.

<comment><USER32> The whole car radio situation hasn't be handled correctly by politicians, at least not here in Denmark. When regular service began, in 2002 in the case of Denmark, politicians should have parsed regulation that required all new cars to be delivered with DAB radio within a certain time frame.

You can get a DAB/DAB+ radio in your new car, but you'll have to pay extra. At this point is should simply be the default, otherwise a migration will never be well received.

<comment><USER33> I agree. Here in germany it was also planned to shutdown FM in favor for DAB already for 2010. It was then canceled and postponed due to the fact that nobody has a DAB receiver.

But of course nobody wants to get a DAB receiver as long as they cost 200€ extra, and therefore FM is still the standard in cars. As cars have a super long lifetime that means every car that is now sold with FM works against a FM->DAB switch in 10 years. So even the new plans like "we switch FM off in 2025 if the majority has a DAB radio then" won't work. There should now (or even multiple years ago) have some regulations that car manufacturers have to offer DAB for the same price as FM to get more traction. In the meantime building DAB receivers is often even not more expensive than FM if both are build on top of a software defined radio. However car manufacturers still sell DAB extra for maximising profit.

<comment><USER31> BTW, technical requirements for cars are EU-wide. Country specific requirements for "a car sold here must have a DAB radio" are an illegal obstacle for free movement of goods, or a state subsidy to domestic industry.

So, DAB radio won't be in all cars unless DAB radio is an EU wide requirement. Not happening overnight.

Requiring things like winter tyres is OK because they can be installed separately. I'd be happy to insist that all cars in EU must have block heaters and cabin electric outlets, it would surely reduce prices here a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sweden narrowly avoided this, there was a very strong drive, but in the end the responsibie minister halted it. One of the few pieces of happy news in later years.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is a real shame that the US went with the proprietary HD Radio scheme. The devices are so expensive and there hardly are any available. Just now I couldn't even find anything less than $100. What a scam. I feel sorry for all the radio stations that wasted money on this. Would DAB be able to gain ground in the US?

<comment><USER36> Be careful what you wish for, DAB is pretty horrible too.

<comment><USER37> In what respect? I have DAB at home and in the car in the UK and find it reliable and decent quality.

<comment><USER9> DAB sound quality can be as good as you like, but as implemented, it's generally very low. (Stations use low bit-rates to reduce costs.) On average, in fact, DAB sound quality is much lower than FM, _assuming_ you're in a good signal area and/or have a decent FM aerial.

You also need a lot more expensive masts to provide DAB coverage. In many places where you get poor FM reception, you get "bubbling mud" or no DAB reception at all.

<comment><USER38> You must be from the UK. The "bubbling mud" is a property of the old DAB which also uses MP2 for the audio (an 80s technology codec).

Here in Germany it's all DAB+ which has better error correction with a more robust signal (and no bubbling). Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I've already mentioned that.

See some of my other comments, including: "Some countries have stations at 48kbps. The UK is leading the drive to lower sound quality with DAB+ stations on the SDL multiplex at 32kbps."

 _> Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio._

Lucky you. Most UK stations are on 80kbps with MP2, and we have music stations broadcasting at 64kbps in mono. The BBC often manages 112-128kbps but only ONE station does better than that: BBC classical music station Radio 3 is at 160-192kbps. No DAB+ station broadcasts at more than 32kbps.

In other words, there isn't a single UK radio station that reaches FM quality. None of them sounds way better.

If you want to feel my pain, see [http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html](http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html)

Look at London 3, which I get at home, and weep....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There's a huge marketing / awareness campaign going on right now in Norway to get people to upgrade their FM radios.

I wonder if the radio stations will realize too late that they're throwing away their one advantage (ubiquity) and maybe the option some people will choose when the car radio stops working is to not listen to radio at all.

<comment><USER27> Many will definitely just switch their habit to Spotify instead, will be interesting to see the numbers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I visited my hometown over the holidays, and the first thing I did after getting into the rental car was tune into the local Alt Rock FM station. The playlists (and most of the DJs) haven't change in the 10 years since high school. I kinda loved it.

<comment><USER41> My local alt-rock station has also turned itself into a golden oldies station without changing anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope AM doesn't end up going the same way too. It would be sad if it wasn't possible to throw a radio together using a few discrete components.

<comment><USER38> In Germany AM is already completely dead, the last station shut down about a year ago.

</comment></comment><comment> semi-extrinsic It is a complete and utter travesty perpetrated by politicians who were convinced by snake oil/electronics salesmen of the (highly dubious) superiority of DAB, and now have too much skin in the game to turn back.

Personally, I've been working lately on building an ESP8266/VS1053 based webradio into my nice old wooden 1960s radio. I'm using the variable plate capacitor for the AM tuner as input for channel selection, so for all the world it will look like a still-working FM tuner. Total BOM cost will be <$30.

<comment><USER43> Exactly. It nearly happened in neighboring Sweden, but luckily the plans were cancelled.

I mean just imagine that the plans to scrap FM and go digital were made _before_ mobile broadband, podcasts and streaming music.

Before they would have sworn billions, every person and every car would already be streaming internet audio anyway.

That's what will happen in norway.

</comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong If you're going to take FM radio and slice into a bunch of digital channels, it'd be interesting to make one or two citizens' bands. I know CB is kind of a mess but I like the idea that the music radio in your car could receive and perhaps even transmit on the local band.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well congrats to the hams in this country. They're going to get a huge bandwidth that others would be envious enough.

They could also explain to people that just switching modes isn't going to make reception better. If you're having propagation issues then you'd be much better off working on getting repeaters setup on high mountains.

<comment><USER44> Won't the spectrum be used/sold for other purposes? Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use.

<comment><USER28> > Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use.

I think the main motivation to shut down FM is that now that DAB is built-out sufficiently (or so they say), running both at the same time is expensive. FM transmitters are supposedly quite power hungry and expensive to operate.

It will take at least a decade or two to free up the FM band for other uses anyway. Norway will probably wait and use it in a way that aligns with the rest of the world, rather than finding its own local use for the spectrum.

<comment><USER45> >It will take at least a decade or two to free up the FM band for other uses anyway. Norway will probably wait and use it in a way that aligns with the rest of the world, rather than finding its own local use for the spectrum.

And that's the difference between an entrepreneurial, capitalist minded society and a socialist minded one.

<comment><USER9> It's not clear that there are any good alternative uses for the FM spectrum.

The UK plan is to move the national stations to DAB and use the old FM bandwidth for community and local radio.

My personal expectation is that the FM spectrum will be taken over by pirate stations.

<comment><USER46> It will be immediately used with for long-distance Wireless Internet.

Testing has already started.

<comment><USER9> OK, where are they testing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> DAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.

<comment><USER48> The worst thing about DAB for me is that any signal interruption causes complete lack of sound, and then my car takes at least 5 seconds to tune back in. It's extremely infuriating - I much prefer FM radio which gets noisy, but at least you can continue listening, even when driving through poor signal area.

<comment><USER46> Only with cheap radios.

Any advanced receiver will be constantly hunting for the best backup channel so the change over is undetectable.

<comment><USER48> I have a top of the line, 2016 Mercedes-AMG - you'd think that would have the best DAB receiver you can have,no? I mean, obviously it doesn't because it does this, but as a consumer I have no control over the type of DAB receiver in my car. So saying that oh it's fine, because only cheap receivers do that does not help - especially since FM behaves consistently, no matter how expensive receiver you are using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I wonder how smooth the switch will be (the article says cars are a big problem due to the price). I'd imagine quite a few people won't upgrade their car radio and you'd think...so what radio is way to retro let's just stream stuff and listen to mp3s/ogg.

I don't know if owning a radio is legally required in Norway but if it isn't I can see the radio ownership going down. Once again you may ask so what?

The biggest issue (for me) is that radio plays an essential part in crisis management. Imagine a long term power outage or some other crisis. With radios it's mostly a matter of keeping stations running and making sure the population knows that a battery powered (or crank powered) radio such as a car radio will work during a power outage. That's one of the few reliable ways of mass-communicating important information during power outages.

<comment><USER27> It would be cheaper to develop a system for mass-SMS in a crisis and publicize it than to keep FM/DAB running, and I bet the delivery rate of the crisis message would be an order of magnitude higher.

<comment><USER50> Not if the crisis involves mains power outage - cell towers don't generally have backup power so mobile phones will be useless.

Edit: Adding generators/batteries to a significant fraction of cell towers is (probably) impractical due to them being bulky, expensive, and attractive to thieves.

<comment><USER51> This is not correct in the case of Norway, at least - I believe (mind, believe, I do not know for sure) that telcos are mandated by law to have emergency power supplies available; whenever we have a massive power outage, cell service stays up for hours, if not days afterwards.

Them being bulky is a major deterrent to theft, as a lot of our cellphone infrastructure is way out in the boonies and not really accessible unless you REALLY want to get to it...

<comment><USER52> It isn't the Telcos I think about in this situation.

It is my own phone batter. Or my spouse's - he has a dying phone with a dying battery, which doesn't always like to hold a charge. I'll be good for a while, sure, but once I'm dead... I'm dead. If something would happen late at night, after I've fiddled with my phone all day, I might start out with _very_ little power. Early in the day, and I could make it last most the weekend.

<comment><USER51> Ah, that figures. Mea culpa. In that case, a $20 power bank should provide at least a couple of full charges - but if you're anything like me, you'll forget to top it up at regular intervals and will find that its capacity is greatly reduced when you need it... :-/ (I cheat; I have a small diesel generator for use during outages - we're typically without utility power a couple of days every winter.

<comment><USER53> Still, any solution based around a smartphone is going to be subpar, compared to the dirt-cheap FM receiver that can run for weeks or months on a couple of ubiquitous AA batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The NPR One radio app costs me an extra $20 dollars a month due to high data usage. And NPR gets none of that cash. If my phone had user facing FM tuning I could probably contribute directly to content creators.

I wonder if shutting down FM and replacing it with much more expensive mobile data is a conspiracy by cellular carriers?

<comment><USER55> Are you sure your phone doesn't have an FM radio?

A lot of phones have it built-in (just need to have headphones plugged in for the antenna), but don't advertise it much.

<comment><USER54> But without a custom rom it isn't exposed. This is part of the conspiracy by my mobile carrier to make me buy their hella expensive data plan.

<comment><USER56> The radio in mine is (in an HTC One A9). I almost never have headphones with me though, so it's not usually of any practical use to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sure, why keep something that's cheap and easily accessible operational when you can have something that's easier to monetise, track, and whatnot...

<comment><USER58> How is DAB easier to track?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is all about lobbying politicians. Very hard to understand why they want to set aside separate bandwidth for different sorts of media, when Internet access would provide all we needed.

We have digital radio, digital television broadcast, separate emergency frequencies and so goes the list.

What about gathering around standard that work and are already in place? What about making cell phone and Internet connectivity more robust?

But no. Let's throw billions in taxes down the drain. For instance: The emergency network fails when there's a storm. Then we're back to RHF!

From the inhabitant perspective, this is all a power party. A few people with high positions get to make big decisions and pat each other's back. I'm sure the CEOs of the businesses getting the contracts are good at patting backs too.

Good thing we already pay so much taxes we don't even notice the difference.

Except for the bumpy roads and understaffed elderly homes.

<comment><USER37> Errr - are you really suggesting that we really move all broadcast media to TCP/IP? You're going to give free streaming plans to everyone in the country?

Or does it perhaps make sense to use dedicated broadcast technology for free- to-air broadcasts?

<comment><USER46> The disadvantage of radio broadcasting is that it ties up valuable spectrum, has only one direction, and only allows a limited number of channels.

The advantage of streaming internet is that it allows unlimited channels, while only using bandwidth for one channel at a time for each user.

Depending on the number of channels you wish to provide, and the number of users in each area, there is a point where Internet streaming is way ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I like that the UK will switch over once usage reaches 50% -- abandoning a huge number of listeners! They should abandon it when it becomes vestigial -- say more than L5K/listener/year or something like that.

Clearly money or techno-determinism is at play.

<comment><USER61> I believe they said they will look again at the issue once usage exceeds 50%. Which would probably mean a decision to switch including a multiyear runway.

<comment><USER9> Yes. Unfortunately the numbers are based on cheating the public. The 50% isn't 50% of people using DAB, it's 50% of listening to digital sources in total, _including_ DAB.

This could allow them to switch off FM even if more people listen to FM than DAB radio, depending on the growth of other forms of digital listening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I know I am properly a outlier but how many people on HN actually listens to radio over FM/DAB/Other non IP systems?

I dont remember when I last listened to radio. Even in the car the entertainment is one or more of the following from the connected phone:

\- Streaming or locally stored music \- Podcasts (which may include shows produced by radio stations). \- Audiobooks.

At home its the same, either played directly on the playback device (sonos) or from the phone.

I really dont see the allure of flow radio, I hate listening to something I have no control over and if there are commercials its even worse.

For my sake they could shutdown all radio broadcasts and use the bandwidth for mobile broadband. (Ok, maybe keep a single station running for emergency broadcasts).

<comment><USER63> You're gonna get self-selecting responses to this, but I listen to FM a good amount -- maybe not every day, but several times a week, mostly in the car. For me, it's a way to attune to mainstream music or a particular station format and briefly escape my otherwise carefully curated playlists, and available at no cost to me, unlike some smartphone streaming service.

In truth, to me the method of delivery is not relevant: it could be IP or OTA Digital or Analog. Rather, I sometimes enjoy the unattended, externally curated format of radio, vs. having to select the next playing item myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I have never liked FM radio. Far too much time wasted fiddling with telescopic aerials. I've always listened to AM broadcasts in preference. I don't listen to much radio at all any more except via podcasts.

</comment><comment><USER65> This seems like a severely premature move.

</comment><comment><USER66> DAB radio in my car stopped working and it costs £650 to fix. The service guys said they have to replace the whole centre console. As I won't pay that much, it's FM radio or Bluetooth for me.

<comment><USER48> To be fair, that's usually the only solution official dealerships know. When the CD drive stopped working in my LR Discovery 3, the garage quoted me almost £1000 for replacing the whole unit. I took it to an electronics repair shop, who took it apart, replaced something inside, and ended up charging me £100 for the whole repair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> What they should do is turn off the spectrum a bit each year ranging from the top frequency down. That way people can adjust, stations can move on the dial, and there is no cold turkey. In the US this might mean I could hear my favorite Top-40(tm)songs only 24*60mins/4mins/40songs times a day, (and who knows if I would be willing to buy [obnoxious furniture store ad] furniture any more at that rate) but it would be a resonable way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER68> As a Norwegian I support this. However it would be better to focus on 4g + streaming rather than DAB.

</comment><comment><USER69> It's interesting to note how valuable spectrum is for mobile internet use. Think about the bandwidth taken up by FM radio broadcasting next time your in a city with your phone struggling with sluggish connection.

</comment><comment><USER70> Some simple math- 1,500 crowns * 2M unequipped cars = 3B crown

That's 3B in capital costs (plus the cost of radios in unequipped homes) to save 250M/year. Seems expensive, but not totally out of the realm of reason?

</comment><comment><USER71> What are there plans for the AM frequency? I rely heavily on my AM radio stations here in Canada to get my daily dose of local/national/international news!!

<comment><USER9> Ideally, long wave, AM and FM spectrum will be used for DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) instead.

To quote Wikipedia: "The principle of DRM is that bandwidth is the limited element, and computer processing power is cheap; modern CPU-intensive audio compression techniques enable more efficient use of available bandwidth, at the expense of processing resources."

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> For more channels? I would've thought a country like Norway would use that bandwidth to make some sort of high-power long-range public-access network.

</comment><comment><USER73> Don't most smartphones have emergency broadcasts built-in these days? Who doesn't have their phone on them when they're driving in a car?

<comment><USER56> If I remember, it plays some kind of tone, and pops the alert up in text.

> Who doesn't have their phone on them when they're driving in a car?

Who's checking their texts when they're driving a car? Thankfully, that's a ticketable offense in my area now.

<comment><USER74> Ticketable offense probably most of the places. Still something that happens all the effin time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Finland used DAB since 1998. It was given up on 2005 because nobody actually used it.

</comment><comment><USER76> So stupid, I am completely against this.

</comment><comment><USER53> As a US citizen, I cannot imagine a world without FM radio. It's almost the only option for in-vehicle audio. I've heard of such a thing as AM radio, but outside of billboards stating that accident information on interstate highways is available via that frequency, I have no connection to it. I've heard pray- tell that NPR broadcasts on such frequencies as well, but I can neither confirm nor deny that.

I suspect that Clearchannel and the other one that have effectively bought up monopoly rights to the FM spectrum would fight this tooth and nail.

<comment><USER77> AM is a great place to listen to NPR, and tons of talk shows + sports are on AM.

And FM being the only option for in car audio? That's crazy. There's cell data and predownloaded music, podcast and audiobooks.

Though I agree that tons of people would fight this change in America.</comment></comment>


Coinbase is a hot mess - <AUTHOR> https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/coinbase-is-a-hot-mess-plus-mongodb-bank-of-nova-scotia-mcb-and-others/ <comment><USER2> The author here is clearly biased, having publicly declared blockchain to be useless [0] and having made bets against crypto [1][2]. It seems like his motivation here is to smear Coinbase for issues incurred by their payment processor.

[0] - [https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/blockchain-is- a-u...](https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/blockchain-is-a-useless- technology/)

[1] - [https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/betting- against-t...](https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/betting-against-the- cryptocurrency-bubble-via-and/)

[2] - [https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/some-ways-to- shor...](https://glennchan.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/some-ways-to-short- bitcoin/)

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, those are ad hominem attacks... it'd be more useful to address the actual points made

<comment><USER4> He did mention payment processor issues.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure blaming a supplier after a stream of ad hominems qualifies as addressing the actual issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not quite sure why this is trending, as it feels more than a bit like conspiracy mongering: "one of the world's most popular and reputable exchanges is borrowing money from consumers (without their permission) to stave off a liquidity crisis."

Really? Payment processor troubles and an increase in complaints, especially amidst rapid growth and volatility combined with growing interest in cryptocurrencies from largely uniformed consumers, doesn't obviously strike me as a sign of malicious behaviour. Lots of weighty allegations, but no real evidence. All legitimate signs I've seen point to Coinbase being one of the only reputable and law-abiding exchanges in the business, with recent backing from major VCs and banks who would not abide by the type of shadiness this blogger suggests.

(I say this as someone with no skin in the game: I have no ties to any cryptocurrency businesses, and possess a grand total of 0.073 BTC.)

</comment><comment><USER6> No one has mentioned it yet, so here it is. If you don't control your private keys, you don't control your bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency). Hardware wallets are easy to use. Of course you still have to physically secure hardware wallets, but at least you're in complete control of screwing that up.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have been trying to get a low 4 figure amount of money transferred from my Coinbase/GDAX account to some bank account I control since January 27th. The first one failed because the first name on my 25 year old bank account was my nickname and not my official legal name. Ok, fine. After 9-11 we all need to make sure that our names are all the same everywhere and never change. But this has never been a problem for me before.

Then the transfer to my other bank account also failed. I can't say for sure why, as they never tell you what the problem is specifically, but I think it is because my other bank account does not have my middle name. First and last name match exactly. On further inspection, the Coinbase site has Legal Name with only two boxes and my first and middle name are put in the first box. Does this mean my first name has been incorrectly entered by Coinbase?

Also, giving my banking account name and password is not something I have done for any other site online ever. If I knew that was required for transferring funds to my checking account, I would have likely not have signed up.

Hopfully this gets cleared up at some point. Now that the price of bitcoin is not skyrocketing, they should have some slowdown in new accounts and can catch up a bit on the service side.

</comment><comment><USER8> This guy needs to take a Stats 101 class. Taking a biased sample of Reddit posts and claiming that it must equate a liquidity crisis at the world's largest crypto exchange? Please.

80% of the problems Coinbase and every other exchange has are dealing with "Finance 1.0" banks & payment processors who still move funds around by having their employees manually type in numbers and sending transfer records via FTP. Seriously.

In a sense, Coinbase and other exchanges are moving money out of the traditional (fragmented) banking system and into a digital one. That takes friction and dealing with fragmented systems.

And personally I'd trust Coinbase over any of the other ones any day of the week. Have you dealt with Kraken/Poloniex/etc? Terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER9> Integrating payment is one of the most complex work to be done and operate, so yes this will fail every once in a while. In particular across different banks in the world. Coinbase must have grown 10-50x times last year so yes keeping your systems performant will be hard. Are you trying to go short on Coinbase?

<comment><USER10> > ...this sill fail every once in a while.

Nah, it rains in the desert once in a while. Coinbase seems to fail so much you could set your watch by it. Day in and day out I see the publicity nightmare unfolding and I ask myself: "Why on earth would someone still use Coinbase?" I'm fiercely curious to see what happens to them in the next few years because honestly, if they don't close up shop on their own, I kind of hope the SEC does it for them. Incompetence is not an excuse to screw up this badly.

<comment><USER11> Their competitors need to up their marketing game and user onboarding.

It took me about 4 weeks to get approved on Gemini which is just unacceptably long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How likely is it that Coinbase has blown through their latest $100m funding round in under a year? [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coinbase#section- fun...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coinbase#section-funding- rounds)

<comment><USER9> They did a billion in revenue last year. Coinbase doesn't need VCs anymore

[https://www.recode.net/2018/1/22/16911692/cryptocurrency- bit...](https://www.recode.net/2018/1/22/16911692/cryptocurrency-bitcoin- trading-coinbase-revenue-secondary)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _... one of the world's most popular and reputable exchanges ..._

Honest question: is it really? Every time I've peeked at Coinbase stuff over the years I've steered _very_ clear. They seemed alright ~2+ years ago, but not since, and oh _heck_ yeah does it look like amateur hour. It's far and away the most well-known from what I've seen, but in the bitcoin world that rarely equates to "works at all".

Anyone know of any alternatives that seem alright? Gemini is on my radar since they seem to be doing things by the book, but I really haven't looked closely enough yet.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't register at any of them at the moment. Every exchange is completely overloaded with new customers from the recent price spike and the media attention that came with it. If you want to sign up and get verified to the point that you can send/withdraw a decent amount of money you are likely going to be waiting for weeks. Wait a bit longer and see which ones can manage and which keep having more problems.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, waiting until the dust settles a bit is basically what I'm doing. Just hoping someone knows if there are any decent-looking options I can look into in the meantime, since the dust keeps getting disturbed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah my phone number was forced to change after my phone bricked now its like a season in hell trying to get them to let me back into my account. Authy 2 factor authentication is super painful why can't they hook into my google account, google has sane and functional 2 factor authentication. Authy is so painful to work with.

<comment><USER16> Authy is painful to work with? It's one of the easiest 2-factor auth solutions I've ever used! And the best part is that if you brick your phone, you don't lose your 2-factor auth stuff (like you do with google auth and a lot of the other solutions).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can only silicon valley produce amazing and successful products? - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on one web application idea since last few months. I have been discussing this with many people and got very good review.
But many investors with whom I am in touch with they say you can not develop this product any where else except valley because resources and ecosystem required does not exist at my place.
Now I don't actually believe completely in what they say, but I have been looking for some good developers but could not find one so had to do on my own. So as I see is that the quality of UI UX and code is actually compromised.
Is it really not possible to get it developed anywhere else then valley? If I have financial constrains how do I make my way to valley? <comment><USER2> Not true. The valley has a lot to offer but there are plenty of counter examples of successful tech companies outside of the valley too. I would say the valley is great and there are many benefits to being here but does it prevent you from building great stuff? No.

Disclaimer: I lived in SF, in Silicon Valley, and prior lived in a different state that was less tech centric. So I have experience from all angles albeit from a single point of view</comment>


Who, among your connections, has a PGP public key? - <AUTHOR> http://keymatch.stopel.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> author here. your comments are very welcome.</comment>


Will driverless cars really save millions of lives? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/will-driverless-cars-really-save-millions-of-lives-lack-of-data-makes-it-hard-to-know/2016/10/18/6a678520-8435-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_manvsmachine-09pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> Why are they not focusing their efforts on getting data from the insurance companies? They obviously will have far more detailed records on this.

Also this begs the question of when all of these super safe cars are rolled out what is going to happen to insurance rates? I have a hard time envisioning the insurance carriers drastically reducing their rates for self driving cars.

Another question I have is if a car is in an accident and it is proven to be the AI's fault how liable will the manufacturer be?</comment>


Did Codebreakers Crack This Mysterious Medieval Manuscript? - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/voynich-manuscript-cipher-code-hebrew-europe-spd/ <comment><USER2> Love this line:

Although the tool (Google Translate) works to translate words in groups, rather than word-by-word translation, it's still not nearly as effective as human translators.</comment>


Server monitoring startup doing some validation - <AUTHOR>

Have been working on this for a while now and recently did a video explaining our key features on the site.
Our differentiators are that we're easy to install and setup but as powerful as something like Nagios, we're designed for automation and continuously changing environments. We also have some cool technology around interactive alerting so you can fix stuff when you're out and about from your mobile phone. Any feedback would be awesome - be as critical as you can please as we're hoping to release a freemium service in the new year.
The url is http://www.dataloop.io <comment><USER2> Before I spent any time signing up I'd want to know what kind of pricing I'm going to expect. I've used both pingdom and nodeping... nodeping is more up my price alley.</comment>


Social Coding Site Github Unblocked and Accessible Again in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinasia.com/github-china-unblocked-accessible-again/

<comment><USER2> Github being blocked for a few days was annoying, but the real story here is that for a person / company in China, there are no "safe" web services upon which to build things, no matter how apolitical those services might be. Anything you build on technology that you need to access over the network is immediately at risk of suffering a massive, totally opaque, and totally unfixable (by you, at least) failure. Domestic services are a little bit better, but (and I say this out of sad experience) not immune. Non-China based services are just a crapshoot, especially these days.

It's sad and it's frustrating and it really makes you wonder how China is ever going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology economy.

<comment><USER3> I think it is unlikely that China is ever going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology economy, until its current government is overthrown or otherwise replaced.

This is a fundamental problem with totalitarian regimes that oppress their people. A key part of denying people freedom is preventing free exchange of information. Happily, though, the leading edge of economic success seems to increasingly rely on unfettered flow of knowledge and information.

This is, overall, good for the free world, as advances in information technology yield increased productivity for both organizations and individuals. It is not that good for autocratic regimes like the USSR and China, because they have to actively fight the tide of improving technology -- which both consumes energy and keeps their population less knowledgeable/capable, thereby disadvantaging them in the increasingly information- and knowledge-dependent modern economy.

<comment><USER4> I agree that most of the IT sector in China is copycat. But there is emerging innovation, eg. Tencent Wechat has no comparable competitor IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I definitely wouldn't argue with you; historically, China is the source of a huge portion of humankind's inventions, and I am sure there is a great deal of innovation happening there right now.

My point was more narrowly that the current system of government there, and the lack of information freedom the automatically comes with it, presents a serious obstacle for innovative businesses (particularly anything to do with computing, mobile, and internet, a huge swath of the modern economy).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you want to be notified about? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I'm developing some sort of "any kind of alerts" app. You can think of it like it is ifttt but just with the IFT part: something happens then get notified.
I'd love to know what kind of alerts would you be more interested. Can you help me? I will try to add your notification ideas to the app.
Thx in advance!
ps. I have already included classic alerts: weather, sports, tv shows, mentions, concerts, website-down… but for sure there is a lot of geeky stuff I'm missing. <comment><USER2> I want to monitor my Alexa rank

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! For sure we can include this. Maybe some % decrease/increase?</comment></comment>


Kyshtym disaster: radioactive contamination accident from 1957 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. There are so many nuclear accidents which have left permanent scars on our planet beyond the "Big 3" that everyone knows about.</comment>


Ember Testing Guide v2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://emberjs.com/guides/testing/ Ember now has an extensive guide on integration and unit testing. <comment><USER2> Just finished a big Ember project. Man, could've used this a month ago. The documentation was previously basically nonexistent. I had to rely on StackOverflow.

Overall, pretty thorough. I'm glad they included a section on runners. I wish they would include a section on ajax, the run loop and asynchronous tests. Wrapping code in Ember.run just to make tests work feel more like voodoo.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a page that is being hammered out on ajax testing. It's just not quite there yet: [https://github.com/emberjs/website/blob/master/source/guides...](https://github.com/emberjs/website/blob/master/source/guides/testing/testing- xhr.md)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was the combined efforts of (github users): \- cavneb \- mattjmorrison \- stefanpenner \- jagthedrummer \- coderstash \- rjackson \- pixelhandler \- kingpin2k \- JulianLevinston \- knomedia \- toranb

Great job everyone!

</comment><comment><USER3> W00t does this mean we actually have to start testing our code?

<comment><USER4> meh - it is just Javascript. No need to test it.

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really awesome, i'm going to have to set away some time for this now! Has the EmberConf talk on testing gone live yet?

<comment><USER6> not yet, but keep a close watch -> [http://confreaks.com/events/emberconf2014](http://confreaks.com/events/emberconf2014)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of work has gone into making a sane testing story for ember, props to all the people who have worked so hard on this!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great job everyone! Open source FTW.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome stuff! Good job everybody!</comment>


Seam Carving - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving <comment><USER4> I have an JavaScript implementation of Seam Carving :D [https://khuesmann.github.io/](https://khuesmann.github.io/) You can play around with it here.

<comment><USER5> This is great. Rando request, update % completed in title, for running it in background tabs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember seeing a demonstration of this during a keynote at Adobe MAX in Barcelona, in 2008 maybe? I'm fuzzy on the year, but I do remember there being an air of excitement around this feature in particular – it seemed like magic! Since then I've learned how the algorithm works, and it's beautifully simple to the point where I can't believe it wasn't discovered long before.

I particularly like how it can be composed with other algorithms (face detection has been mentioned) to change the energy function and make it even smarter. It's one of those things you can implement in a weekend and have a lot of fun with.

Kudos to everyone involved in developing this!

<comment><USER7> > Since then I've learned how the algorithm works, and it's beautifully simple > to the point where I can't believe it wasn't discovered long before.

This is actually the case for many such discoveries - once you understand them, and furthermore realize the simplicity behind the result, you wonder why it wasn't discovered earlier.

In some cases, it actually was - sometimes many times over by different people. The only reason it didn't catch on is likely due to societal factors, technology (for instance, many algorithms that were later used to great effect for certain work today were actually known much, much earlier - <USER2> almost to the dawn of electronic computing, or further back - but the technology to exploit them didn't exist; they were mostly "paper only", and sometimes only in a simplified form suitable for hand calculation, or only done for so many few iterations), or lack of application. Computed tomography is - I think - an example (among many) in this space.

Some discoveries and such sit around for a long time until society, technology, or application need "catches up"; during that time they may be "forgotten". Other times, they are published - but in the wrong place, or time, or whatever - and never reach the critical amount of audience to perpetuate them further.

One example of this that I know of happened with a graphics discovery on one of my childhood 8-bit computers; that discovery, had it been known more widely, might have made a greater impact within the community at that time. But while it was known then, it was at the wrong time and was published in the wrong magazine. Ultimately what doomed it was likely the fact that the transition from "home computers" to "PC revolution" occurred. So the discovery had to wait - and it was "rediscovered" by retro enthusiasts of the platform (many of which were now "old hands" of the same machine - who had been publishers, business owners, programmers, etc - in the machine's heyday), about a decade ago. So it had to wait about 20 years or so.

Some of these discoveries, though, really make you wonder, in a "what if" kind of manner.

The steam engine is one of them; it is such a simple device that a rudimentary form could have been built by the ancient Greeks; all the basic technology was there, at least for a low-pressure system.

But all that was known and created was arguably a toy, a curiosity, the aeolipile (Hero's engine). Even it was based on knowledge that had languished for about 200+ years. For many reasons, it was never developed further, nor was anything involving cylinders or whatnot created (although Hero certainly knew and understood enough to take things further).

What simple things are we currently sitting on - staring us in the face - <USER3> yet we do nothing with them, but if we did, might propel our society and culture forward (by anything of decades to potentially much more)? Can we identify them? Why do we not exploit them if we can?

In a way, it's analogous to so-called "black swans" \- that seem obvious in retrospective, but are likely impossible to identify prior to that point. These things don't keep me up at night, but they are interesting to ponder.

<comment><USER8> _One example of this that I know of happened with a graphics discovery on one of my childhood 8-bit computers; that discovery, had it been known more widely, might have made a greater impact within the community at that time. But while it was known then, it was at the wrong time and was published in the wrong magazine. Ultimately what doomed it was likely the fact that the transition from "home computers" to "PC revolution" occurred. So the discovery had to wait - and it was "rediscovered" by retro enthusiasts of the platform (many of which were now "old hands" of the same machine - who had been publishers, business owners, programmers, etc - in the machine's heyday), about a decade ago. So it had to wait about 20 years or so._

I'd be interested in learning more about that, if I don't already know about it. Was it something to do with the C64?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related post on using a forward-energy measurement: which seam would result in the minimum-energy image:

[https://github.com/axu2/improved-seam- carving](https://github.com/axu2/improved-seam-carving)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165889)

</comment><comment><USER10> Seam Carving is available in GIMP with the "Liquid Rescale" plugin.

$ apt install gimp-plugin-registry

GIMP->Layer->Liquid Rescale

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks, that was interesting!

I especially liked the linked demonstration video at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg) .

</comment><comment> ur-whale This algorithm is relatively old, but there is an interesting question about it: given how well it works (eg on landscape images), one wonders if and how it could be recast in a deep learning / differentiable programming setting.

The problem is, the dynamic programming and/or median extraction techniques that the algorithm uses (IIRC) are not very differentiable.

<comment><USER12> Given an energy map of an image and a target number of pixels to remove, the algorithm is deterministic. The step to apply ML would be the energy map generation. Saliency map generation with CNNs is an active area of research and it could replace a slew of more specific algorithms you would want to apply (face detection, foreground/background segmentation, edge detection, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's one of the assignments of the second part of the Princeton Algorithms course on Coursera: [https://coursera.cs.princeton.edu/algs4/assignments/seam/spe...](https://coursera.cs.princeton.edu/algs4/assignments/seam/specification.php)

<comment><USER14> Any thoughts on that course, if you've taken it?

<comment><USER13> I really enjoyed it. I liked the style, presentation, and the projects. Sedgwick clearly knows his stuff. The textbook is a classic, and the "booksite" is crammed with extra stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting, the steps for the algo are mentionned as: 1) Load an image. 2) Calculate energy of each pixel. 3) Find seams. 4) Remove seams.

My question here is: once #4 has been completed how do you 'merge' the pixels that are left once the seam pixels have been 'discarded'?

<comment><USER16> The "seam" is one pixel from each row (or column) connected together either vertically(/horizontally) or diagonally. You're left with two halves that you just connect. for instance

      1|2|x|4
      1|x|3|4
      1|x|3|4
      x|2|3|4

becomes

      1|2|4
      1|3|4
      1|3|4
      2|3|4

<comment><USER6> Your explanation makes much more sense than mine, with illustrations to boot – kudos! :o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FWIW the example image is of Broadway Tower in the UK. I can see it from my house.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Tower,_Worcestershi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Tower,_Worcestershire)

<comment><USER18> I was actually just blessed yesterday with a windows spotlight image of this tower. I then looked up how to get there from London the next time I'm there (My wife and I visit UK multiple times per year), but no easy public transit options unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The interesting problem for me here is shrinking quickly by > 1 pixel. I can think of multiple ways to do it, but I'm not sure I know what the fastest way is.

<comment><USER20> Morphological erosion is one solution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion_(morphology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion_\(morphology\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If someone is interested in seeing what this would look like in code, I recently made a Rust implementation of this algorithm :

[https://github.com/lovasoa/seamcarving/](https://github.com/lovasoa/seamcarving/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Caire ([https://github.com/esimov/caire](https://github.com/esimov/caire)) uses seam carving as well. It uses pigo for face detection as well to ensure that it does not resize around the face.

<comment><USER23> When I last used it, it hung up on bigger images. I've had more success using ImageMagick's liquid rescale

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's neat that "remove the lowest information portions of the image" is a great proxy for "remove the parts a human thinks are least relevant". Though it would probably work poorly for a picture of some people in a forest.

</comment><comment><USER25> I didn't know that such algorithm existed, this is impressive. It would be awesome if would be able to resize video to scale it to the target display, with face detection to avoid the wired effects.

<comment><USER26> The challenge with adapting any algorithm that operates on photos to video is ensuring consistency across frames so the effect isn't jarring. That said, perhaps not surprisingly, there has been work in solving this which seems to have started with the paper below.

[http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/SCWeb/vidret/index.html](http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/SCWeb/vidret/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Related HN post from a few months back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20285242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20285242)

</comment><comment><USER28> Robert Sedgewick's algorithm's course, available on Coursera (or if you're a princeton student I guess) implements this for one of the class assignments.

</comment><comment><USER29> Flash implementation of Seam Carving: [http://rsizr.com](http://rsizr.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> Both the results of seam carving and the underlying dynamic programming implementation are really fascinating

</comment><comment><USER31> Do any Wordpress plugins, for example, use this to generate the various sized and shaped thumbnails?</comment>


MIT Mathlets: Interactive mathematics visualizations - <AUTHOR> http://mathlets.org/mathlets/ <comment><USER2> what about [http://setosa.io/](http://setosa.io/) ? many excellent visualizations there

<comment><USER3> Also very much worth checking out is [http://visualgo.net/](http://visualgo.net/) for some computer science visualizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is great. I didn't know stuff like this existed, strangely. I made a few of my own in my free time at [http://projects.namanyayg.com/gyan](http://projects.namanyayg.com/gyan) (all open-source).

Does anyone has more links to simulations/visualizations like these? Is there any way I could contribute to places like Wikipedia with mine?

<comment><USER5> check out [https://www.reddit.com/r/mathgifs](https://www.reddit.com/r/mathgifs) \- that's the format to upload to wikipedia. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery) is one very prolific poster of such images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not bad, especically for the EE, Physics people. But most of these abstractions are pretty intuitively modelable in ones head. There are better Fourier transform visual models, which I'd argue is in the top five of least intuitive concepts one would encounter in the standard courses up to 200 level. I can imagine this being helpful for kids taking AP classes, but there's a real dearth of resources for visualizing higher-level course material. Like, amplitude, phase, the standard electrical engineering constructs made with passives (RLC, RC tau, cap charge and discharge), heat distribution, these are all fairly intuitive, no? All resources are considered a net positive in my book, but there are better resources out there, e.g., I think BetterExplained has a way better intuitive way of approaching linear algebra that even "non-math people" can 'get'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think some (most?) of these mathlets are used in conjunction with MIT courses [0], for example it's used in [1] with an assignment so that it develops the intuition of the student solving that assignment.

[0] [http://mathlets.org/courses/](http://mathlets.org/courses/)

[1] [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-01sc-single- variab...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-01sc-single-variable- calculus-fall-2010/1.-differentiation/part-a-definition-and-basic- rules/session-1-introduction-to-derivatives/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love projects like this. A lot of times what's written out as a formula is hard for someone to comprehend. Some people even understand a computer science code represnetation better than a mathematical representation of the same formula. Giving people a visual way to see what's happening is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER8> For the few that I looked at, clicking the "Description" tab tells you almost nothing. Clicking the word "Help" in the upper right gives a much more detailed description.</comment>


Ask HN: Database of cities - <AUTHOR>

I need to be able to validate a user's location. For this I was hoping there was a database of cities I could use. I don't mind paying for it.
Does anyone know of a good database of cities, states and zip codes? Only need Us but if world or even multiple countries were available that would be nice.
Another possibility that would be nice is if I could simply check the location against Google or Facebook but couldn't find any API for this. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction? <comment><USER2> USPS has an API: <http://www.usps.com/webtools/address.htm> Census.gov has downloadable data: <http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tigermap.html#ZIP>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used this in the past for projects and was pretty good:

<http://www.zip-codes.com/></comment>


Why Turing-complete smart contracts are doomed - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4p0um9/why_turingcomplete_smart_contracts_are_doomed/ <comment><USER2> This article overstates the problem quite a bit by saying, for example, "Only non-Turing-complete languages support formal reasoning and verification".

The point of Turing's result and related theorems is not that you can't reason formally about programs, or understand or predict what they do, or prove that they are correct. It's that no automated method is powerful enough to decide nontrivial properties for _every_ program; there are always programs for which the decision procedure will either say it doesn't know, or be wrong (or the decision procedure will take an infinite amount of time).

However, there are automated methods that can decide nontrivial properties for _many_ programs, and the existence of programs where a given property can't be decided doesn't mean that the answers, when they exist, have to be wrong.

We _do_ have specific programs in Turing-complete languages whose behavior or whose correctness to a specification is proven, and formal methods that can be applicable to them.

I think the article's conclusion might still be right, though: having environments where you can't always determine correctness may be playing with fire, so it may be a better choice to avoid that kind of risk entirely. But that doesn't mean that, given a program, we're always going to be completely in the dark about what the program does!

<comment><USER2> A thing that you could do for smart contracts is have formal-methods analyzers that check properties that you care about in the contract. The analyzer can say, of a particular contract, "good", "bad", or "don't know". Then you can avoid (or even somehow ban?) contracts that get "bad" or "don't know".

Or, you could simplify things by having "bad" and "don't know" be in the same bucket! You could call it "can't be proven safe". Because of the halting problem issue, some safe contracts will always end up "can't be proven safe", but if the analyzer is good enough to allow for quite a lot of flexibility in the contracts, you can say that writing something that can't be proven safe is the contract author's fault or responsibility.

Then you can say that you will only use contracts that can be proven safe. There's no contradiction between this and Turing completeness or the halting problem, and there's no inherent reason to think that these contracts will be rare or hard to find. You do have to be careful about what particular properties you're checking for in your definition of "safety", though!</comment></comment>


Interesting stuff coming up in Firefox 10 (Aurora) - <AUTHOR> http://arnorhs.com/2011/11/12/interesting-stuff-coming-up-in-firefox-10-aurora/

<comment><USER2> The battery status API could make an interesting side project.</comment>


Realtek 2.5 GbE PCIe Cards Now for Sale - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15026/25-gbe-card-w-realtek-rtl8125-makes-a-debut <comment><USER2> For those confused as to why this exists, it's about cabling. It simply isn't possible to run 10Gbase-T over most existing structured cabling. Even with new cabling the network closet is often too far away. But 2.5GbE works in many situations.

If you're doing new cabling go multimode OM4 fiber. It isn't that expensive (buy factory terminated, use MTP trunk patching) and it supports stupendous data rates.

<comment><USER3> Yes, for "just above 1G, and must reuse existing copper wiring, and both sides take PCIE", the card from the article will do. But it's a pretty narrow use case.

I agree with the notion of using fiber. I would certainly stay away from hardwired copper NIC's for anything except 1G, especially rarity ones like the one in the article. Rather, get 10G NIC's with SFP+ cages. Doesn't have to be a pricey Intel card, the cheap Melanox ones are acceptable for most users.

I disagree about OM4. If you're doing new fiber runs, singlemode (OS2 fiber) is the way to go. It's not really expensive anymore. But yeah, OM4 rather than OM3 for all fiber runs (for back to back patches, it doesn't matter ofc).

(Also, since we're talking about fiber networks... my personal lessons learned are: buy reflashable transceivers, especially when that's the difference between having DDM (Digital Diagnostic Monitoring) on all long runs and running it blindly. Standardize on a connector, hopefully LC. Be consistent which side TX and which is RX. Keep a 100-pack of dust caps around. And clean your fibers before inserting, especially patch fibers that get thrown around (they can look pretty bad on the fiberscope). Don't bother with Direct Attach Cables. Stay away from NICs with fixed 10G-Cu ports. Visual fault locators are cheap. BiDi SFP's are wonderful in one-fiber-run-broke or need-another-link- now type emergencies, so keep a few in reserve. And lastly, since all of this costs money, it's easier to beg for reimbursement than to ask for a purchase order.)

<comment><USER2> Hmm, lots more transceivers support multimode (not just Ethernet, serial/video etc) and a lot cheaper too. Direct attach is the only way to go for in-rack, both cost and cooling effects. Probably not the best in an office environment though.

In the desktop, QNAP recently released 8/12 port SFP+/T switches starting at US$500, which is the sort of pricing that will push this tech into small business. Probably buggy as hell at saturation and no features, but who cares, these are for doing occasional file transfers instead of passing around USB3 SSD drives.

[https://nascompares.com/2018/04/12/unboxing-the- qsw-1208-8c-...](https://nascompares.com/2018/04/12/unboxing-the- qsw-1208-8c-qnap-10gbe-switch-its-finally-here/)

<comment><USER3> I agree MM is more widespread, but I thought we were talking about new cabling (and I took that to include the transceivers). (Serial over fiber? Nice, didn't know that existed.)

Pricing-wise, what I meant is:

$18: 10G-SR (MM): [https://www.fs.com/products/11552.html](https://www.fs.com/products/11552.html)

$24: 10G-LR (SM): [https://www.fs.com/products/11555.html](https://www.fs.com/products/11555.html)

Compared to the cost of actually running the fiber through the building, that's not too bad for trunks. As I said, I don't mind multi-mode for the last hop, which is where price is a larger concern due to quantity. And in organizations where OEM pricing is used as baseline, relative to that a resourceful admin can go to single mode and still come out ahead (it's not a fair comparison, but reality in some places). Sure, things are probably different in an actual DC.

Direct attach is certainly cheaper (at first), but it can be a hassle compat wise, and I've never had quite the right length available. I can't speak to cooling, that's never been my department.

<comment><USER2> Wow those SR SFP prices have fallen.

Every SFP adds about 1W, but 10Gb-T ports are particularly thirsty, they were 5W when first introduced, still in that ballpark. It all adds up.

Another reason to prefer fiber/DA is 10Gb-T has shit latency, it has a modem doing QAM, hence the power consumption. Probably only relevant for HPC or HFT, but just inelegant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems very limited if you can't get any switches that support 2.5GbE. Makes more sent to just go the full 10GbE route, though 10GbE switches are still very expensive.

Anybody recommend a better option than the Ubiquiti ES‑16‑XG[1]. Unfortunately most of the ports are SPF+ with only 4 ports being RJ45 10GBASE-T.

[1] [https://www.ui.com/edgemax/edgeswitch-16-xg/](https://www.ui.com/edgemax/edgeswitch-16-xg/)

<comment><USER5> IIUC, the 2.5Gbase-t will work w cat5e cables, which is the highest signalling (or lowest cable spec) to fulfill building out a network. If you're stuck w or otherwise committed to Cat5e, 10GbE isn't an option. I guess it'd be a case- by-case decision whether that's a blocking consideration...

<comment><USER6> In practice a lot of Cat5e cabling can support 10Gbe up to ~40m.

I guess the standards folks are hoping future equipment just supports 2.5Gb, 5Gb, and 10Gb then auto-detects the link quality and scales to whatever the cabling can support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really odd to me that 2.5G was seen as the next logical consumer step forward in Ethernet tech. Especially since "consumer" grade 10G cards have been available for some time.

Granted, I'm a bit out of the consumer use case for this stuff since I've transitioned my home to 10G fiber (in many cases easier to run and cheaper than 10G copper Ethernet cable).

<comment><USER8> This is more about cabling capabilities than the NICs. 2.5Gbe can run on Cat5e.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isnt there a 5 Gb standard too?

<comment><USER10> Yup, we have 5GBASE-T too.

<comment><USER11> Not to be confused with 10BASE5[0] which is not to be confused with 10BASE2[1]

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2)

<comment><USER9> Back in my Windows 3.11 days, 10 Base 2 on 3Com cards was the cheap solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Best Answer to Fanaticism—Liberalism (1951) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/1951/12/16/archives/the-best-answer-to-fanaticismliberalism-its-calm-search-for-truth.html <comment><USER2> We've updated the link from a thread of tweets about a list from this article ([https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1017697437165785088.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1017697437165785088.html)). Another page with just the commandments: [https://www.panarchy.org/russell/decalogue.1951.html](https://www.panarchy.org/russell/decalogue.1951.html).

</comment><comment> ur-whale From a time back when "Liberal" meant in America what it still means today in the rest of the world.

<comment><USER3> I doubt it, in France liberal is used only regarding economics and in that case it refers to neo liberalism. In Sweden nobody agrees on the term and for some it seems to be a synonym of libertarian.

<comment> nv-vn Liberals of that time we're probably closer to libertarians than most American liberals today are

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link to the full PDF:

[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/16/898...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/16/89825036.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a Brit with parents who lived through both Fascism (World War Two) and Communism (Cold War), this rings true.

<comment><USER6> At issue today is that many who call themselves Liberals are in fact calling for a fascist, socialist new order. In age when words have no meaning (fake news, alt facts, unlimited, gender/sex, etc) how do we communicate?

<comment><USER7> Please don't post ideological rants to HN.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't trying to rant and I'm sorry it came off that way.

I was trying to ask a genuine question about how real conversation happens when neither sides seems to care about the real meaning of words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fanaticism - subjective word associated with being in the wrong, and can be subjectively used to accuse the other party when they don't agree with your groups solutions on most important issues.

NY Times selling liberalism is akin to Google giving away "free" OS.

<comment><USER9> It's not really subjective, unless you're going to go down the rabbit hole of "everything" being subjective making any discussion around this matter pointless.

>when they don't agree with your groups solutions on most important issues.

No, it's typically done when there are well-understood motivations behind people's opinions and the negative effects such opinions have when they make the status quo.

<comment><USER8> Most important issues in any society which is going back and forth between 2 parties are subjective, gun control, abortion, illegal aliens etc. Each party tries to insults other party's stance on very complicated subjective feelings, or at least that's what I see on news networks and late night shows(which are mostly liberal).

<comment><USER9> There is a narrative that things like gun control, abortion, etc are subjective subjects. They're really not. Being disingenuous (which is really pervasive in American politics) or taking nonconstructive stances to support a narrative does not make certain view points or stances subjective, despite some people's best efforts to control rhetoric surrounding these conversations.

All opinions are not equal and not all opinions deserve the same stage time. Especially when those opinions and view points are not based on any data but rather ideological motivations.

<comment><USER10> >There is a narrative that things like gun control, abortion, etc are subjective subjects. They're really not.

So, what are the objectively correct stances on these issues?

<comment><USER11> one objectively measurable observation is that freely distributing birth control reduces the incidence of abortion. [https://www.snopes.com/fact- check/colorado-birth-control-fac...](https://www.snopes.com/fact- check/colorado-birth-control-facts/)

<comment><USER10> Absolutely - and a great example - but that's more of a sub-issue than the actual issue itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Technology.

<comment><USER13> <Looks at the current state of social media.>

Come again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Political pieces aren't appropriate for Hacker News.

<comment><USER15> I disagree. Political flamewars aren't appropriate, but this doesn't seem to be that. It's a thoughtful piece, and will likely generate both thoughtful responses and flamewars.

Let's just downvote the flamewars and enjoy life :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about fanatical liberalism, though? How things have changed since this article was written. What is this "calm search for truth" they spoke of? :)

relevant to this topic is a new, controversial book called, "Why Liberalism Failed": [https://www.amazon.com/Why-Liberalism-Failed-Politics- Cultur...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Liberalism-Failed-Politics- Culture/dp/0300223447)

the author spoke with Russ Roberts on EconTalk this week:[http://www.econtalk.org/patrick-deneen-on-why-liberalism- fai...](http://www.econtalk.org/patrick-deneen-on-why-liberalism-failed/)

<comment><USER17> Progressive supremacism is a far more accurate term, denoting the outright hostility towards even tacit opposition or signs of hesitation.

<comment><USER18> First, I recognize we're painting with a broad brush here. I wouldn't call it supremacism. But too often I find "progressives" see themselves a moral high ground. Often dismissing nuanced conversation for a "winner" due to morals.

I don't care for discussing actual policies since I'm no law expert. I do like drilling down into first principles with "either side" and seeing what their ideal treatment of individuals in situations would be. It's just... difficult to discuss such things without being seen as insensitive or even prejudicial.

This being said, this article has nothing to do with technology :). And subscribing to view the full article... gross.

<comment><USER19> > But too often I find "progressives" see themselves a moral high ground. > Often dismissing nuanced conversation for a "winner" due to morals.

This isn't a trait specific to progressives alone, given how often conservatives insist their views are morally superior because they represent the will of God or the founding fathers.

See: every argument about abortion or gun control ever.

<comment><USER15> Libertarians, too. I consider myself an extreme libertarian, for what it's worth.

Why even make an argument if you don't believe it is the "moral high ground"?

<comment><USER19> >Why even make an argument if you don't believe it is the "moral high ground"?

Everyone, at the very least, believes their arguments to be correct (unless they're doing some Devil's Advocate/false-flagging/Socratic thing,) but the problem with believing one view to be morally superior is the tendency to then believe other views are immoral, and therefore invalid, rather than see those views as being held from alternate moral perspectives.

Both sides of the abortion debate, for instance, believe with absolute and unshakeable conviction that theirs is the moral high ground.

<comment><USER20> > Both sides of the abortion debate, for instance, believe with absolute and > unshakeable conviction that theirs is the moral high ground.

I know people who preface an explanation of their support for pro-choice policy with something like "I would never have an abortion myself, but..." That's the opposite of "absolute and unshakeable conviction that theirs is the moral high ground." Most of the time it's the words of someone who recognizes a compromise needs to be made.

<comment><USER19> Then again, the reason "pro life" exists as a term is to imply that the other side is "anti life" or "pro death."

I may have engaged in hyperbole but this particular issue is still legendary for the intransigence on both sides.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AMD still thinks more cores are better cores - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/tech/amd-still-thinks-more-cores-212147211.html <comment><USER2> Is AMD big enough to even be a viable competitor at this point?</comment>