This water bottle apparently turns air into drinking water - <AUTHOR> https://konstruktor.com/Article/view/929 <comment><USER4> Extracts water moisture _from_ air, to be more precise :)

</comment><comment><USER5> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8541997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8541997)

</comment><comment><USER6> We have oxygen in the air, so no problems here. But hydrogen is high up in the atmosphere. So they have to break down the nitrogen into a lot of hydrogen - <USER2> guess it is possible - but they have to send their methodology to CERN - <USER3> guys will be delighted.

But anyway - if they have mastered the subiron fission to hydrogen - we have a Nobel Prize winners right here

<comment><USER4> We also have water vapor, about 0.25% by mass. Significantly easier to get: a chemical reaction not inherently necessary, just filtering (you're not _combining_ various elements of the air mixture, just taking one that's _already there_ ). Thus, no revolutionary breakthrough needed: just iterative optimization of water vapor collection.

Of course, the efficiency of this bottle depends on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity) \- in a desert, with 0% humidity, there is very little to extract.

<comment><USER6> Still the title is extremely dumb.</comment></comment></comment>


A Stroll Through the Minefields – Avoiding Startup Tarpits - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/a-stroll-through-the-minefields-surviving-the-startup-ramp-up-95320ab78759?pg <comment><USER2> It seems I am one of those in the tarpit. I think the problem for us engineering types is that there is so much bullshit around marketing, that it's offputting to us. That's the case for me at least. If I spend time/money on a feature, I know how long it will take, how much it will cost and when it will be ready. Compared to this, marketing seems like burning money with voodoo rituals.

It doesn't help that marketing efforts are only meaningfully measurable on a larger scale. If you're bootstrapping something yourself, you don't have 12k to spend on marketing this month. You have $300. It's easy to burn that $300 on adwords or facebook ads and get zero signups, with no meaningful data whatsoever.

The usual advice goes: hire a marketing expert. But how do I hire a marketing expert that a) isn't full of it, b) will even listen to me if my current budgets are in the hundreds of dollars?

I think the article is right on point, but I wish it pointed me to a way to deal with the marketing problem.</comment>


Show HN: Europa – An Open Source Self-Hosted Container Registry - <AUTHOR> https://www.distelli.com/europa <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the founder at Distelli and we just released a new container registry. I'm happy to answer any questions.</comment>


Ask HN: Good JavaScript codebases to read? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'd personally love to see a frontend-heavy codebase that is using relatively new tooling (for example, ES2015 with Babel, React on a significant scale, etc.) if anyone would like to share :).

</comment><comment><USER3> Derek recommends Backbone and Underscore - at least they can be found nicely annotated here:

[https://sivers.org/learn-js](https://sivers.org/learn-js)

[http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html](http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html)

[http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html](http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd start with the repos for the libraries/framework(s) you've been using lately. Or for something a little different, take a look at Babel's codebase ([https://github.com/babel/babel](https://github.com/babel/babel)).

</comment><comment><USER5> While it might bring a few boos or hisses these days, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from reading the jQuery code base.

<comment><USER6> Even better is the annotated version of the _original_ jQuery release, which contains John's rationale about how things are the way they are.

[http://ejohn.org/blog/annotated-version-of-the-original- jque...](http://ejohn.org/blog/annotated-version-of-the-original-jquery- release/)</comment></comment>


Lyft and Uber Will Return to Austin on Monday - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/27/15705060/lyft-uber-returning-austin-texas-fingerprinting-requirements <comment><AUTHOR> I know this is a little delayed, but I didn't realize this happened until today.</comment>


Hyper-G Organizes the Web (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://much.isds.tugraz.at/projects/hyper-g/9.htm/ <comment><USER2> "keeps surfers from getting lost in cyberspace"! The web was such a magical mystery in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER3> On the second page, you can read "Why the Web won't work"...

[https://much.isds.tugraz.at/projects/hyper-g/10.htm/](https://much.isds.tugraz.at/projects/hyper-g/10.htm/)

Most of their criticism is spot-on. But Google for example managed to build an empire from one of the shortcomings of the Web they've listed: the lack of full text search in servers.

<comment> em-bee yup, it's tcp vs OSI model, vhs vs betamax.

hyper-g had the better solution, but http+html was easier to implement so it took off.</comment></comment>


Generating a private key I can trust - <AUTHOR> http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/09/generating-a-private-key-i-can-trust/ <comment><USER2> This is extremely silly. Construct a scenario in which a compromised hardware random number generator enables NSA to somehow recover the bits from a GPG key you generate at some unknown point in the past. Try to be as specific as possible.

I think the concerns about backdoored hardware RNGs are really overblown, but if we're going to stipulate they're to be taken seriously, they relevant on _online attacks_ against systems that make repeated requests for entropy.

Along a similar vein, every attack you've heard of on AES or even RC4 requires many repeated calls to the cipher, often with other parameters fixed.

Just generate the damn GPG key and be done with it.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to be a tinfoil hatter when everybody else is now just as paranoid as you were 6 months ago. So tinfoil hatters have to up the ante or go mainstream :)

<comment><USER4> Given that I keep hearing security professionals say they weren't paranoid enough, I suspect the truth is everyone else now is _more paranoid_ than you were six months ago, which must be really disconcerting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > First of all I do not trust any hardware. It's impossible to verify that the > hardware doesn't have a backdoor and randomness looks random even if > tampered with.

Well if you can't trust any hardware, how can the author trust any off-the- shelf computer and CPU to generate the private key even if he is using Linux+GPG? For all he could know the CPU could contain a backdoor that performs the necessary arithmetic and operations incorrectly (in the process making the key weaker).

He is also trusting his CPU to do the session encryption correctly (even with his external smartcard). Perhaps the CPU could leak information about the session key to another processes, allowing people to decrypt your communications?

Now I trust my CPU and hardware, especially because we have little alternatives. Perhaps it would be better to use an external smartcard to generate the private key too, because the physical hardware is orders of magnitude less complicated than a CPU/computer, so you could verify the hardware contains no backdoors by examining the physical circuits using a microscope (I presume this would still be very hard to do but millions of times simpler than that for a modern CPU).

<comment><USER6> Smartcard _is_ the whole computer, minus power supply and the clock. You are right that it's smaller than one x86 and the rest of your notebook or desktop though. Still you'd have to investigate all the hardware and software on your desktop that you use with the smartcard too -- how would you know that the desktop isn't just pretending to use your smartcard? And if you trust the desktop, why do you waste the time with the smartcard, as long as you make the whole setup only for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about rolling an octahedron? You can generate 3 bits per roll, it takes about 3 seconds to roll and record the result, for a total of 1 bit per second. How much entropy is needed to generate a 4096 bit key?

Of course this is likely less secure than using /dev/random, as you will be typing in the bits, someone could log the bits you type in, someone could have a telephoto lens and take pictures of your dice rolls.

It's always possible to be paranoid to the point that whatever you do isn't secure.

<comment><USER8> >someone could have a telephoto lens and take pictures of your dice rolls<

Roll a braille octahedron in your bathroom with the door locked and the lights out. Type the bits on an offline computer so the keylogger can't report back to its owner.

<comment><USER9> They can use an infrared lens to look at indentations created on your fingertips as you read the braille. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beware of the key size limitations of OpenPGP smartcards: most of them can only handle 2048-bit RSA keys, a size that is now considered not safe for new RSA keys.

<comment><USER11> They handle 3072-bit keys now. [http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/product_info.php?cPath=1_26&pr...](http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/product_info.php?cPath=1_26&products_id=42)

<comment><USER12> This is correct. I have a 1.5-year-old OpenPGP card and can attest that all 3 of my keys are 3072-bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think most of these types of posts are not seeing the forest for the trees. If you for some reason have become a direct target the NSA has been tasked to investigate then you've already lost. They have much more manpower, money, and clever ways to get their hands on your data than you have to keep it from them. Most probably don't even involve some techno conspiracy supercomputer type RSA cracking fantasy, but simple social engineering.

Keep using what you are using and it will protect you from the 99.999999% of the world who has no idea who you are, doesn't care, and can't be bothered to spend any amount of time backdooring your system because you aren't interesting enough.

</comment><comment><USER14> > So whom do I actually trust? This list is short: the Linux kernel (Linus > tree) and FSF/GNU.

Why would you leave out the BSDs?

<comment><USER15> I'd love to see a version of this post or the "Securing a Linux server" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6384603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6384603)) post but for OpenBSD or FreeBSD.

I'm surprised more people haven't been mentioning the BSDs after the NSA / GCHQ revelations and in the drive for more security.

<comment><USER16> block in all

pass out all

last rule wins, and obviously if it is remote allow ssh port etc.

You can read more here: [http://home.nuug.no/~peter/pf/en/long- firewall.html](http://home.nuug.no/~peter/pf/en/long-firewall.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that you can only buy an OpenPGP smart card from a supplier with a broken SSL implementation. [https://shop.kernelconcepts.de/login.php](https://shop.kernelconcepts.de/login.php)

<comment><USER12> They're not broken; they're simply using cacert.org instead of a mainstream CA. From a business standpoint, that's a terrible idea for selling to the general public, but from a security perspective it's fine.

Incidentally, they sign their order confirmation emails with PGP. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was hoping that this would have been something interesting, like a discussion on using avalanche noise ( [http://holdenc.altervista.org/avalanche/](http://holdenc.altervista.org/avalanche/) ) in a portable way, or other bits of proper hardware hacking. Not trusting any hardware RNG is silly, especially if you can learn from first principles how they work, and build one yourself.

</comment><comment><USER19> Most S/MIME certificate authorities require the generation of private keys using the "keygen" tag. Most browsers that support this tag require the generated key length to be 1024 or 2048 bits, whereas forcing either 2048 or 4096 bit keys would be more sensible.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495836](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495836)

</comment><comment><USER9> How hard would it be to print a smart card with currently-shipping consumer 3D printers? If not-that-hard, then would collaborating to create a verifiable Open Smartcard Board + Firmware be a useful idea? It'd neatly short-circuit having to trust the entire consumer hardware+software stack.

<comment><USER20> The card itself is just a piece of plastic, it is the microchip that is the important part and I am not aware of any 3D printing system that could print something that complex just yet.

<comment><USER9> How many gates does a chip need if it's basically a single-purpose crypto ASIC? Presuming you can expand the traces out to cover the entire back of the card (no die, just raw PCB), what process size would you need?

I guess, if that doesn't work, we could always just work on an Open Smartcard Microcontroller For FPGA-based Cards. Then the one thing you need to trust is that FPGAs don't have a special backdoor mode for when they somehow detect that the chip they're running is doing crypto ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought this was a great idea, a GnuPGP ready card! This means there's firmware on the card that is known to be compatible with GnuPGP protocols, and pscsd as well. Very nice.

So I went to buy, and the seller _has a market place with a self-signed certificate_. They won't get my dime.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Obviously there is still the risk of a tampered compiler but I consider this > risk as rather academic.

Some part of me wants news to come out that there has for years been an NSA code-injection backdoor in, say, Debian's binary "lineage" of GCC. Imagine the reaction.

<comment><USER22> to be honest not that much. most people have never heard of Linux let alone Debian compiler toolchains. and almost everyone who has heard of it, already is reacting about as hard as they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any recommendations for USB HSM/token? Trustable, foss-friendly, good software/standards support, buyable in singles? Smartcards are kinda nice, but the lack of integrated reader HW makes them mostly just bulky USB tokens (card+reader).

<comment><USER24> Yubico makes a couple products that might fit your requirements. The YubiHSM [1] ($500) is a USB HSM designed to be connected to server. Yubikey Neo [2] ($50) is does end-user authentication (OTP, CCID, SE, JavaCard) over NFC or USB. They can both be ordered in quantities of one and have open source SDKs [3].

[1]: [http://www.yubico.com/products/yubihsm/](http://www.yubico.com/products/yubihsm/) [2]: [http://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey- neo/](http://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey-neo/) [3]: [http://www.yubico.com/develop/open-source- software/](http://www.yubico.com/develop/open-source-software/)

<comment><USER23> Yubi Neo looks nifty, NFC should make it real convenient to use (drop keys on desk to authenticate, what would be easier!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious why there was no consideration for OpenBSD?

</comment><comment><USER25> So really, what you want, is a convenient & easy but totally secure method. Because if you want security, a one-time pad is pretty much your best option. But at the same time, since you pretty obviously are willing to go great lengths for security, let's not beat around the bush. Granted this has some of the same problems (need randomness), and can probably be more work than it's worth...

</comment><comment><USER8> I applaud the author's idea, but let me share some of my experiences (both good and bad) since the DoD uses smart cards every day for a myriad of things including: document signing, document encryption, computer logins, website logins, biometric information storage, medical information storage, and probably a few more that I am forgetting.

1\. You should choose a long PIN. In the DoD there is a feature on the smartcard that locks the card after three consecutive incorrect PIN entries (no time limit). Obviously this is a good security measure. When DoD personnel have locked out their smartcard they go to the computer help desk where there is a trusted agent like a (properly trained) young enlisted troop who has a high privilege key that can unlock your smartcard. You do not have a worldwide network of locations where you can get your card unlocked, so you cannot implement the "three tries and you're dead" feature. Therefore, make your PIN as long as practically possible to prevent someone who stole your card from being able to brute-force the PIN and get your keys.

2\. You might want to make a duplicate card and store it in a safe location. You WILL eventually lose the card you are carrying around with you, and when you do, it essentially means the loss of all your encrypted data. While the second set of keys lying around is a vulnerability, it might be an acceptable one to hedge against the loss of your data. Having a duplicate card might also allow you to implement the feature where the smartcard locks after a number of unsuccessful PIN entries.

3\. Do NOT use USB drives as an alternative token because you don't want to shell out for a smartcard. USB drives introduce known vulnerabilities and they are prohibited DoD-wide on ALL of their networks (including all our classified nets). If the lowly USB drive has the power to make the DoD shake in its boots, you shouldn't be using one when you need security.

4\. Smartcards are cool in an enterprise setup for signing documents and stuff, but make sure you aren't triple locking your door and then leaving your window open. If you decrypt an email and view the cleartext with a text editor, make sure you are not beaming that back to your attacker because they compromised your machine in another way.

5\. Related to #4 above, the most secure systems are standalone systems that NEVER connect to a network. Instead of shelling out for some smartcards and readers, buy a Raspberry Pi, and generate your keys on it- and your private key will never leave this machine. Use write-once media to get your public key on a networked computer (this should be the ONLY time you transfer data off of your standalone system). Whenever you need to decrypt something, use more write-once media to get the encrypted data onto your standalone RasPi, and decrypt it and view it. If you want to be super paranoid, maintain an 18" air gap between your standalone RasPi and any networked computer. This is the proper way to wear your tinfoil hat. Plus, the RasPi is cheaper than a smartcard setup, and invulnerable to keyloggers and pretty much any other attack because data exfiltration is impossible when you never connect it to the network and you never send data off of it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess this is why RMS dislikes binary blobs. Something like the Lisp machine, where you can access/modify OS source while it's running, would be dream come true in today's world.

<comment><USER27> your post give me one idea:

what about using am Rodeh Btree[1], to create concurrent snapshots of the running kernel, in this btree, so we could switch them in runtime.. you compile a new version (CRC does not match) them it will create a new branch/snapshot on memory and will start from there..

kernels of course should be designed in a transactional way manage states, etc.. rsrs..

anyway just a wild idea, dont know if its even useful doe..

[1] - B-trees, Shadowing, and Clones -[http://www.usenix.org/event/lsf07/tech/rodeh.pdf](http://www.usenix.org/event/lsf07/tech/rodeh.pdf)

<comment><USER27> other design note to make this feasible, its to design it in a way, where each cpu core, could have its own kernel copy.. so you can try to boot up, the other version in another core, while you are using the old version in an active/context core?</comment></comment></comment>


Space Invaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerarcheology.com/Arcade/SpaceInvaders/ <comment><USER2> > The code makes some dangerous assumptions . . .

In this era, code for games was essentially write-only, by one or two engineers. No one would be confused by the code in later releases because there simply weren't any. Code that was common between games was the exception rather than the rule (at Atari, some of the best debugged and well-structured code was the stuff that operated the coin mechanism, because it _had_ to be right or customers would aggressively exercise the tilt switch mentioned in the article).

Code also had to run on really tiny hardware. ROMs cost real money, and marketing wasn't going to give you more just to make your life easier. If your code ran in 4K, but Joe's code was a complete train-wreck that ran fine in 2K, guess who got the big bonus?

One cow-orker of mine had spent some time writing code for pinball machines at Midway. He said that on one project the hardware engineers wanted to save money by half-populating the board's RAM; unfortunately the way they sliced it was to only provide the bottom 4 bits of each byte.

"The ROM is still 8-bits wide, you can work around the RAM thing in software."

He only got his full-width RAM by pointing out that the processor's stack wouldn't work.

<comment><USER3> > sliced it was to only provide the bottom 4 bits of each byte.

That's hilarious. I guess people were not that knowledgeable back then.

<comment><USER2> You underestimate the cruelty of a hardware team intent on cost reduction. They knew perfectly well what they were asking. IIRC the showstopper was that the CPU wouldn't be able to handle interrupts.

<comment><USER4> One thing that struck me when I started studying pinballs in more depth is that they really had the same basic technologies in use between the 40's and the 70's, decades spent entirely on finding creative uses of EM relay logic and coils and rubbers. To the extent that those games have memory, it's just enough to count credits, trigger a score reel and serve bonuses.

And that scale of logic translated into a microprocessor makes for some pretty trivial software; the games got to skip over all the intermediate technologies of vacuum tubes and drums and core memory. So part of that initial video game boom - and the corresponding switch to solid state pinball - really was a kind of seeking out of applications for hundreds to thousands of bytes of memory, often supplemented with existing analog tech. It's a fascinating crossover in many ways with a punctuated ending: the '84 games crash and the '85 computers crash precipiated cheaper RAM and in following years, suddenly all the games started having more expansive worlds, full soundtracks, keyframed sprite animation etc. The development shifted from a hardware and manufacturing focus to a software one; and the computing devices became much more convergent and portable. And that is the trend we've been on since in the consumer space - inexhaustible cravings for more memory and higher fidelity, held at bay only by the whims of hardware teams.

But I'm looking at coverage of CES this year and see this long trend as something that's played out, with a lot of companies across the board aiming to pitch new concepts. We're in a space where people have Enough Memory. So things are getting exciting again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note this other recent Space Invaders effort. Space Invaders in C. "a memory accurate reimplementation of the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders in C." [http://blog.loadzero.com/blog/si78c/](http://blog.loadzero.com/blog/si78c/)

<comment><USER6> Discussed a month ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719575)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I would like to know is, how come David Bowie uses the term "space invader" in his 1971 song Moonage Daydream, when the game didn't come out until 1978? They don't seem to me to be words that naturally belong together. Glitch in the matrix?

<comment><USER8> Space Invader Arcade Equipment from 1954, probably pinball

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xB4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&dq=...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xB4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&dq=%22space+invader%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBgtDyl_7mAhWHXsAKHazOAggQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22space%20invader%22&f=false)

<comment><USER9> It's actually a shooting game: [https://strangewars.livejournal.com/21891.html](https://strangewars.livejournal.com/21891.html)

<comment><USER10> The Oxford English Dictionary has let me down, it doesn't have anything prior to the 1979 game.

[https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/185414#eid2154...](https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/185414#eid21541915)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some interesting trivia on Space Invaders watch this wonderful 40th- anniversary educational demo on C64 by Hokuto Force (running in an emulator):

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?file=c64/space_in...](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?file=c64/space_invaders_demo.prg)

(alternative YouTube link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU49fpXtUTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU49fpXtUTU))

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article, but I'm curious about a spelling error in it that I've seen more and more recently:

> Move so you are peaking out of the right edge

Obviously, "peaking" should be "peeking".

I don't recall seeing it much until relatively recently, and it seems to have become very common.

Have I missed something? Was it always a common homophone error? Or is there a reason for it peaking recently?

<comment><USER13> Grammarly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I might have played a clone as a small child. Or maybe an early revision? I distinctly remember questioning what happens when more than 9 credits are added to the machine. This was because there was only one digit for credits. I found that adding 10 credits only counts as 9. Looking at imagery I am seeing two digits.

Incidentally, 9 credits of space invaders ruins the space invaders experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> Loved this game. First video game for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget that you can hunt them IRL through the flashivaders app. We need to stop the invasion !

<comment><USER17> That's pretty neat: [https://space-invaders.com/flashinvaders/](https://space- invaders.com/flashinvaders/)

<comment><USER18> Damn, I noticed a bunch of these when I was in Paris.

That's awesome.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Free Zone - Share and search on your phone with no data charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com.ph/intl/en/mobile/landing/freezone/stp.html

<comment><USER2> My first thought was that it sounded like a walled garden, basically AOL for the mobile age, but then I saw this:

 _When you click on a link in the search results page, you don't pay anything. If you click on a link after this, you will need to pay for this data usage (but don't worry, before you are charged, you will see a warning page with the option to sign up for a data plan if you want.) So for example, if you click on a search link to a Wikipedia article, you won't pay anything. But if you click on a link within the article, you will be charged for the data costs incurred loading that link._

That part is a really interesting. As the old saying goes, the first hit is always free! It's freemium for data plans.

I wonder if the phone operators are keen on this because it's a way to get people who were previously hesistant onto data plans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Currently, this is only offered by one mobile phone operator, and it's in the Philippines:

[https://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](https://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2692512)

<comment><AUTHOR> Got this via SMS from Globe Telecom (PH): "Make sure that there are no running applications connecting to the internet when using the service to avoid incurring data charges"

Tried it in the Philippines and it works well. One possible problem here is that for smartphones, users may be charged unexpectedly because background apps that access the net. There should be a separate APN for Free Zone use so users are sure they are not charged for normal data rates. I don't think users will use this if they are uncertain that it is totally free.

<comment><USER4> Agree. They should use different APN.

Hope Smart would support it also

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've got to say, from the headline I was expecting the exact opposite of what this product turned out to be.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, it's a terribly ambiguous name. Rather than "Google Free-Zone" (which is read as "Google-Free Zone"), it should be a "Free Google Zone."

<comment><USER2> In the linked page all references are "Free Zone powered by Google".

<comment><USER6> Ah, that just got updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People celebrating things like this is how net neutrality will die.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Many people and companies (including Google) have fought tooth-and- nail to stop scenarios similar to this on the wired space when the telco's wanted to make websites pay for premium access from their users. And now Google is offering to foot the bill for Free Zone users?

<comment><USER9> Is Google really offering to foot the bill here? I don't see anywhere that says this is sponsored/paid for by Google, although maybe I missed it.

It seems like the mobile carriers are footing the bill for this one. Or, for now, one mobile carrier in the Philippines. It looked like it still costs money for 99.5% of all mobile internet users.

<comment><USER10> What would motivate the carrier to foot the bill for access to a single domain if not some kind of sweetheart deal?

I think this bodes very badly for the internet. We need to maintain a model where:

1) I pay for access 2) I access whatever sites I want

If anyone but me pays for my access, they're going to want to make back room deals, make favored sites faster, make sites they don't like inaccessible, and generally destroy the level playing field of the internet.

This is a first step. "Let's search for that on DuckDuckGo." "No, that costs money. Google is free." Boom, innovation stamped out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook has had this for a while now. You can go to 0.facebook.com from a supported carrier for free access.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of Facebook Zero:

[http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next- billion-u...](http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion- users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/)

</comment><comment><USER13> What are the implications for Free Zone users, Google, the carriers, advertisers, websites, and phone OEM's?

1\. Free Zone users can access their favorite Google communication tool (G+ / Gmail) and search. 2\. Google gets to serve its ads on all these properties, apart from valuable usage data and improving its products (the more people search on Google, the better its results, etc). 3\. Carriers have two obvious benefits – acquisition and/or retention of price sensitive users seeking free access to G+/Gmail/Google Search and acquiring users for data plans. Another benefit could be revenue sharing for lead generation via Google's ads. The wild card with the carriers is to launch sponsored browsing as a product – where anyone could sponsor access to one/more web services. 4\. Advertisers have a compelling incentive to allocate budgets for Google's Ad Words product. 5\. SEO wars will be taken to a new level. 6\. The days of feature phones with no internet access could be numbered. In the optimistic (for Google) scenario, Free Zone will increase demand for low end internet enabled phones. And OEM's will gleefully comply.

Note - Extracted from my blog: [http://u2697.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/sponsored-browsing- and...](http://u2697.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/sponsored-browsing-and-the- infinite-buffet/)

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a full page that describes a service that may be relevant to everyone, but nowhere in the page does it say which 1% of the planet it applies to.

If you mean "specific operators in one country", then name them.

If you saying "mobile operators" while meaning "<1% of all mobile operators" - that is simply lying. Well, 99% lying and 1% truth.

</comment><comment><USER15> It sucks that this is just offered in the Philippines. I hope it catches on in other parts of the world.

<comment><USER16> I don't. We need cheaper internet access, not subsidized content by providers.

<comment><USER15> Both of those would not do any harm as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The name for the service is very unfortunate one. II thought it's some kind of anti-Google campaign.

<comment><USER18> That's one of the few cases where getting pedantic about the hyphen (or, in this case, lack of it) solves ambiguity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This could be a nice way to help people save money on data usage, but there are obvious problems beyond the fact that it's only available in the Philippines:

1\. The offering is carrier specific and the language suggests that even if this were expanded to other countries, you can only use it from home. 2\. Two- factor authentication isn't supported, which most of us are probably using. 3\. You may be getting charged for data by services running in the background.

And, of course, the expanding concept of free access to certain sites only serves to help make people think that sort of thing should be ok.

</comment><comment><USER20> Something similar to this has been available in Saudi Arabia for quite some time now. It's a subscription based access to google services with no data caps. [http://www.mobily.com.sa/wps/portal/personal/mobily- connect/...](http://www.mobily.com.sa/wps/portal/personal/mobily- connect/laptop- internet/google/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_gQQ2cvL2OLADNHPy9nA09Tc- MgSxcvQwMDQ_3g1Dz9gmxHRQBs_d2i/)

</comment><comment><USER21> The one thing, and to my mind, the most important point that is not addressed in the FAQ is "How does this work"? Presumably Google must have some arangement with the mobile carriers?

</comment><comment><USER22> How does this work? Philippine users accessing this URL don't get charged at all, regardless of their data plan? If so, does Google pick up the tab?

</comment><comment><USER23> with the amount of stuff you can get from Google Now (or it can get for you), this makes it way more useful

</comment><comment><USER24> It's only offered in Philippines...

<comment><USER25> I'd imagine this will expand, as Facebook Zero has (same idea, but free Facebook access instead).

<comment><USER24> Yes definitely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> An IP-over-Gmail tunnel, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER27> great</comment>


Open-Source Quartz Crystal Microbalance - <AUTHOR> http://openqcm.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just found this on hackaday recently, it sounds fascinating how you can use a quartz crystal, which when a weight is applied changes the frequency enough you can get extremely precise readings.

One thing I'm wondering though, is aren't quartz crystals effected by temperature a lot? Is there a simple way this would be compensated?

<comment><USER2> It depends on the way the crystal is cut, usually they are optimized to have a maximum around room temperature so that effects from variations are minimized. The effects might partly be compensated by measuring the temperature and applying a correction to the data since the temperature dependency is known, but the sensitivity is also affected. So, temperature control is definitely important for accurate measurements.</comment></comment>


My Fantasy: A Cellphone I Can Use as a Desktop Computer - <AUTHOR> https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/my-fantasy-cellphone.html <comment><USER2> Atrix and Bionic got _super close_ but were before their time: After Android 4.0 rolled out with proper support for landscape/tablet form factors, their dock was updated to be "desktop Android" and was a great implementation. Had they come out when Android was ready to support them, they'd have done better.

Windows 10 Mobile got closer. Windows PCs and phones were offering a large library of the same apps, and you'd get a close-to-desktop UI. Of course, Windows on ARM still sucked, Win32 emulation wasn't a thing yet that it is today, PWAs weren't a thing yet, and Microsoft was afraid of failure and caved to Google. Had Microsoft stuck it out, we'd be there.

I am excited about the new phase of Linux phones coming out, like PinePhone and Librem 5. They look to legitimately offer real desktop OSes on their phones. Some stuff will be tailored to mobile, some won't be, but that will be okay, because it'll be the same platform.

What I'd really like to see is a way to keep the storage/configuration of all your apps and data and such on your phone in that mobile form factor, but when you dock it, you gain not just a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse, but additional processing power you can put behind what's stored on your phone.

<comment><USER3> the idea of your phone being a front end to your private server cloud is somthing that really should be explored. The smart phone could also be a great ubermouse, way more than xyz and 123 inputs are possible with a touchscreen.

<comment><USER2> I have a Sandstorm server for my private cloud aspect, but I'd really most like to just carry my data with me and then have a backup at home. I don't like to be reliant on the Internet being available at any given time, ideally.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells - <AUTHOR> https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a <comment><USER3> I'm writing this from a late 2008 Macbook (the first Unibody Macbook, and the direct ancestor of the Macbook the article talks about). On this laptop, I finished school, develop, Photoshop, store all my pictures/videos/music. It is my only machine. It's great. I'm about to purchase my third battery for it (they decline dramatically at around 1300 loadcycles); replacement is very simple (there's a door on mine), even though Apple no longer sells replacement batteries. I've maxed the ram to 8GB, put in a 256GB SSD.

So what happens when I finally purchase a new laptop, use it for 5 years, and Apple no longer supports replacing the battery? Then I'm spudgering out glued- in batteries with iFixit's iOpener. And I'd eventually like to upgrade to 512GB, but $700 up from the base price of the 13" Macbook Pro is not how I want to do it... I'd rather wait and upgrade it myself. Will OWC make the SSD card to do it? Hopefully. It's just... disappointing. I'd like a way to get the bulletproofness (just over 7 years on this one without issue) of a solid aluminum unibody but not give up the upgradeability.

Perhaps I'm a dinosaur.

Guess I'll shoot for another 3 years with this thing until the base Macbook Pros are a significant upgrade. Oh well.

<comment><USER4> My primary computer is also a late 2008 MBP with 8GB ram. I have to say, having used a modern MBP at my last job, it's crazy how little day-to-day difference there is. I do plan to finally upgrade if the Skylake MBPs are good, but if not then there's really no immediate reason to do so. Given the rate of change in the 90s, it's wild to think that this thing might make it past Obama's presidency on both ends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One additional reason it still makes sense as a product: last 3-4 years have been... Quite underwhelming, from a CPU power perspective. A little bit of power efficiency, which does have its place on a laptop, but other than that, hardly anything noticeable in day to day use.

Intel is _clearly_ not feeling the heat from competition and their pricing, minimal improvement and feature fragmentation clearly show it.

Giving up on AMD ever going back to making them feel a bit of heat again.

So wishing for Apple to release an ARM MacBook, just to put some fear into Intel, and return some health to the market.

<comment><USER6> I want an ARM MacBook as that implies OS X on ARM which means an iPad Pro should be able to dual boot

<comment><USER7> ARM is not magic. I bet that as soon as it performs in the same range as an x86 under OSX, power consumption will be similar. You may feel better the ISA is neater, and that it may be Windows-proof, but that's about all you'll have.

<comment><USER8> _it may be Windows-proof_

Fear not, Windows runs on ARM and has done for several years.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/02/09/building- wind...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/02/09/building-windows-for- the-arm-processor-architecture/)

<comment><USER7> Yes, but they'd still need to port some bits and pieces. I don't see Microsoft doing that.

<comment><USER8> You think they would't port Windows to run on an ARM MacBook? Do you know they made Windows to run on the Raspberry Pi ( [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/windows-10-for- iot/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/windows-10-for-iot/) )?

Because I think a MacBook version would have even more backing than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have an ancient mid-2009 MacBook. I walked out the Apple retailer and straight into a cut-price PC parts shop and upgraded the ram and hard drive to avoid some Apple tax. I am probably overdue to replace my second battery but I haven't been travelling much for awhile. My second or third HDD was swapped for an SSD quite some time ago.

It wouldn't be fast enough for some jobs but as long as I have browser and terminal I cope ok. I have been going to replace it for years but Apple keep on making more and more unserviceable hardware.

I am a very satisfied Apple customer who will never buy another Apple product. When this machine dies I will buy a quality laptop that isn't disposable and run Linux again.

<comment><USER10> > I will buy a quality laptop that isn't disposable and run Linux again.

you have a model to suggest ?

<comment><USER9> Not really. The Mac keeps on going. I lost interest and stopped looking. I bought a nice carbon road bike instead. Much better investment for me. All those components I can adjust, swap and upgrade for the life of the bike. Jobs wanted using a computer to be like riding a bike. Here we are in 2016 and I can still upgrade a bike. No hope with the shit the computer industry is making.

At one stage I thought I should put business Dell's way because they made an effort shipping some XPS-13 with Ubuntu but they were limited to 8GB. I had that in 2009. What is the point?

The nail in the coffin for an upgrade was when I bought a Chromebook to play with. I realised I could just about live with a machine that only had a terminal and browser. I moved local dev to VPS and I can scale that however I want, whenever I want. No concerns about soldered in RAM there. The Chromebook was a bit flakey so I went back to the Mac, deleted a heap of virtual machines and containers and apps and I pretty much live in Chrome and iTerm2 now and feel less pressure to change than I did two years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > It's very inexpensive, even when specced up. $1400 buys the fastest CPU, 8 > GB of RAM, and a 1 TB disk from Apple

I had to laugh a little at this. $900 bought me a 5th gen i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB SSD and 256gb SSD. I do have to suffer through w10 and a lenovo backdoor though.

<comment><USER12> You don't _have_ to - you can install a different OS, if you want to.

<comment><USER11> Hackintosh for my model is said to be unstable, otherwise I would've done osx in a hertbeart. Linux is fun to play with, but not something I am willing to use day-to-day. This laptop and w10 have killed all my M$ enthusiasm though, my next computer WILL be a mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The built-in ethernet is the biggest selling point for me. My work often requires me to plug into various devices via wired ethernet and it's almost guaranteed I would forget/lose an adapter one day.

If the 2008 macbook I've used every day since I bought it new fails, and the spare I got from a rich client who felt the need to upgrade also fails, I would probably consider buying 2012 version.

<comment><USER14> I cannot believe this ... I read it here in your comment and I read it in the article ...

This is the only mac laptop available with an ethernet port ? Seriously ?

The current large size (15", right ?) macbook pro does not have an RJ45 port ?

<comment><USER15> You can look up a picture, but to paint one more evocatively through description: there's about 2mm of metal casing above and below the USB ports. The sides are effectively one USB-port high. RJ-45 ain't gonna fit.

<comment><USER16> With a little ingenuity, an ethernet port could have fitted [1].

A new Macbook Pro is my first Mac (provided by work), and I was surprised how much crap like this there was, which the other developers mentioned over the course of my first day. "Oh, you'll need a Magsafe to Magsafe 2 adaptor." "Careful with the Thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor, we've had to replace two motherboards when the cables snagged on the port." "Here's a USB hub."

And the Mac keyboard has a non-standard USB plug [2], as well as the non- standard keyboard layout.

Apple have very effective marketing though, the other developers didn't seem to think there was any other laptop which had a metal body, or comparable battery life.

[1] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/Sony_V...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/Sony_Vaio_X_79.jpg)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/YhjBHOI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YhjBHOI.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One reason not mentioned is that you can actually replace the disk drive with a caddy to put in another hard drive. I replaced mine with an SSD. I also upgraded the RAM so I could finally appease Chrome because I would get a lot of swapping to disk previously. I'd say it's quite competitive to the later models and does everything I need. (Just don't look at a retina screen or you'll be jealous) Repairability is a huge feature that is being lost, so I'm very grateful to iFixit for advocating for it and putting out such valuable guides. Sadly, there's an issue with mine where the hard drive cable breaks after a few months and I've had to get it replaced about 4 times already. The thermals also aren't very good so under heavy CPU load it heats up, though that doesn't happen for me much unless I (rarely) play a game or use all my cores. The added ports are just a bonus, even if I don't use them often like the Ethernet port.

Edit: Just noticed that it is mentioned in the first footnote.

<comment><USER18> I did that drive bay caddy thing on my 2011 MBP for a while. That setup ate battery like you wouldn't believe. I could barely get 2 hours of time on it.

Thankfully, SSD prices dropped significantly and I ended up replacing both drives with a 1TB SSD and sticking the optical back into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The short version of this is that there is a lot of money to be made from enterprises by selling them outdated technology because enterprises are almost always slow to adopt new technology. That's how Dell and Microsoft Sharepoint still make a lot of money.

It's not necessarily a bad thing when taking into account the economics of training IT personnel and the added costs of supporting cutting edge technologies. But I don't think many individual buyers would argue that the 2012 MBP is a better computer in pretty much any way than a 2015 MBP with Retina display.

<comment><USER20> I see a lot of complaints about Sharepoint, but this one is new to me. What about it is outdated, and especially when you compare it to what other options? I'm no fan, and Sharepoint is super-heavy and requires enterprisey- typical levels of care & feeding, but it's a mature platform and offers a lot of pretty spiffy bells & whistles when correctly configured. None of the open source options remotely compare.

<comment><USER19> _I 'm no fan, and Sharepoint is super-heavy and requires enterprisey-typical levels of care & feeding, but it's a mature platform_

You seem to have just agreed with me.

The Sharepoint vs. open source argument is a straw-man, since I never once mentioned open source. Sharepoint is used by all manner of organization for all manner of tasks. I just recently ran into an organization using it as a CMS platform. Past teams I've been on have used it as a document sharing platform, but even that experience is far from ideal. Sharepoint is used because enterprises are not in the risk business when it comes to software procurement. But for document review and sharing there are a host of better options available. Very few small teams that I've worked on that had their own control over what software they used chose to use Sharepoint of their own volition. Take that as you will.

<comment><USER20> Actually, I'm not agreeing at all. I think software (especially extensible platforms) are perfectly allowed to require care & feeding.

I also agree that Sharepoint is misused frequently, and that it's totally unsuited to small teams. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about large enterprises, which the GP said is ostensibly why Google bought Bebop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This 2012 MacBook has been a cult hit amongst doctors and other medical professionals that I support, largely because patient information is still transferred via CD or DVD.

<comment><USER22> Makes me think that there could be a business in making a snap-in case for the 12" MacBook to add an optical drive, extra battery, Ethernet, etc.

<comment><USER15> Interesting thought. I could picture it for an iPad Pro as well: a "docking station" with peripherals, that is itself portable. You could market it primarily as an extra battery, the way those "portable USB chargers" work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am also still on the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro and I love it. I have added an SDD, moved HDD to DVD slot, replaced the battery and added an extra 8gb of RAM (will upgrade to 16gb when I can justify it).

I love my MacBook Pro and am dreading when I have to upgrade, the price of buying a new one doesn't seem worth it considering just a moderate spec upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER24> Writing this on mine right now. I went with the mid-priced model figuring the HDD size and extra RAM would basically cost me about the same if I bought and installed them myself.

After a year I took out the DVD drive and replaced it with a 512GB SSD giving me over a TB of storage. That hurt the battery life (and increased the weight) quite a bit but it dramatically decreased startup time, made everything a bit faster and made sure I wasn't constantly hurting for storage.

Next up is the battery which is definitely not holding the same charge anymore.

At work I have the latest and greatest and it is fantastic but most of that is just cake for most users. Biggest things I like about newer Macs? Retina and a thinner/lighter profile. For the really hefty stuff (games, graphics programming, 3d modeling...) I have a custom built PC from the same time that blows it away performance wise.

In the end, right tool right job.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have been thinking about Apple and EPEAT for a while now. Why not make MacBooks with removable batteries etc that are not outdated for governments etc that need it?

<comment><USER15> Apple's laptop internals are increasingly commoditized, to the point that with things like the 12" Macbook, you can basically consider them a battery in a case with ~$100 worth of other stuff attached. You may as well throw the whole thing in the battery recycling bin. (Also, given the way the battery cells are packed directly inside the case now, a sealed Macbook has the same number of layers of aluminum between the recycler and the electrolyte as a regular AA battery has. It'd probably be _more_ trouble for the recycler if you take the battery _out_ : they'd be having to deal with a soft bag of electrolyte that may have been punctured in transit.)

<comment><USER25> There is still the matter of EPEAT though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The 13" Air can often be had for $799 which makes it that much more appealing.

I have an i7 2012 13" Pro loaded up with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. It's a pretty potent machine but the screen resolution holds it back somewhat - <USER2> wish they had put a 1440x900 screen in it like the Air.

</comment><comment><USER27> All the bad things people are saying/ implying about the new MacBook are completely right! But the truth is, I wouldn't trade mine for anything, because I love the fact that it's incredibly light and does not have a fan. I have many, many, MacBook Airs and mac pros, but the MacBook Air has always seemed to have a problem with the fan going on at random. Now that there's no fan, I'm a very happy developer.

</comment><comment><USER28> An excellent write up. In 2013 I was afraid they were going to get rid of the 101, so I bought it. Still using it today, and I just purchased a hard drive upgrade to put in it. It will probably be my last MacBook for many years to come. Upgradability, is the most important feature in my book. I still have A 2009 model running Snow Leopard, and it works great. I see no reason to go to a retina machine

<comment><USER29> My wife is using a 2009 15" MBP with SSD and original spinning HD moved to the opti-bay, and maxed out RAM -- same upgrades for me except I have the late 2012 MBP 15".

The trackpad is one of the _main_ reasons I love the mac book pro's -- the PC laptops all have such crap trackpads I just can barely stand the computer at all--on my mac I never use an external mouse -- ever. I think the stupid / dirty / lame reason Apple switched to the retina MBP's is that they are easier to force people to upgrade.. super difficult to upgrade hardly anything, super lame..

I use VMWare Fusion like crazy and its awesome.. with a fast quad core CPU, SSD, and ~8-16GB of RAM, VM's are awesome on the MAC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hear that a large Seattle based software company known for being 'cheap' gives their developers the oldest/cheapest Macbooks that they can...

:)

<comment><USER31> You reminded me of this interesting bit of tech history :)

> "It's an alpha kit, it has the Power PC processor. It's the closest thing to > what is in the console. It's the best source," Mario Rodriguez, a Microsoft > employee on hand at Microsoft's Xbox 360 booth at E3, told TMO.

> The Xbox 360 has long been known to use a special version of the G5 > processor, as has the fact that temporary Xbox development systems were > modified Power Mac G5 units. The demonstration at E3, however, are the first > time that Power Macs have been used to show Xbox 360 games to the public.

[http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Power_Mac_G5s_run_Mic...](http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Power_Mac_G5s_run_Microsofts_XBox_360_Demos_at_E3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just realized that this is the one that I use and love. Given the ample number of ports USB/Ethernet/Thunderbolt and SSD I have never felt a need to replace it. The lack of non-Retina screen does not bothers me much since I use it with an external monitor. Having read this article I am now worried about breaking it since it seems Apple has no better options yet.

</comment><comment><USER33> Writing this from a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 Ghz processor). I've also upgraded RAM/HD over the years, as well as replacing the battery. It's mostly for internet with some occasional programming and sound editing. It runs the latest Mac OS.

Is there an obvious reason to upgrade that I'm missing?

</comment><comment><USER34> I have late 2011 MBP 13. I did upgrade it with 16GB ram/512SSD and 32GB MiniDrive (SD). Don't see any reason to upgrade ATM. Looking at MBP 12'' single port insanity im scared to even think about it...

</comment><comment><USER35> I needed a Mac to write iPhone apps using XCode. I found a 101 on eBay for about $750; 256GB SSD plus 4GB memory; upgraded to 16GB memory for $80. The 101 was perfect for what I wanted.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is my favorite model. Just suffered a spill and I'm debating whether to fix it, and I have once before, and it was not easy, or get another one...

</comment><comment><USER37> I love my current 17 inch 2011 MacBook Pro for a lot of reasons outlined in the article and will not be happy when I need to replace it.

</comment><comment><USER38> 13 inch is SMALL. Does a MBP exist with the same features (user-accessible disk/ram/battery/optical) in the 15in range?

<comment><USER29> Yea when they killed the 15" MBP with matte display, I pretty much freaked out since I was planning on buying it as my main computer from the remainder of my life if Apple continued to exist as a company.. instead, I am now trying to figure out what to do next.. I've been thinking about getting a new computer, but really don't want to buy a non-apple piece of junk that has a super crappy battery or trackpad or display.. those are things apple just does a great job with and are so critical to the normal use of the device, and most other vendors do a terrible job with..

<comment><USER38> tbh the long battery life of OS X/iOS devices is a byproduct of a more resource-efficient OS.

Apple really can optimize its kernel and userland because it controls the hardware, Microsoft (and Google/Android) not as much because their software needs to run on everything that people dream up when smoking pot.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tech Managers/Directors/VP's how much of your time is in meetings? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to get some perspective on my own schedule from this diverse group of folks.  I routinely find my schedule dominated by 6+ hours of meetings every single day of the work week.  I feel like this is overkill and part of the reason I am having difficulty keeping things running while capping my hours at about 40 per week.  Basically all the work that gets created in meetings seems to overwhelm the available time based on a reasonable work schedule.
How much time do you leaders spend in meetings?  How do you reconcile a meeting heavy role and the ability to get things done while still keeping a sane schedule (< 50 hours a week)? <comment><USER2> When I was initially a manager of a world wide, cross-corporate project, meetings consumed all available time on my calendar. I was still evaluated as an I/C so I would do my "I/C" stuff at nights and on weekends. This was unsustainable. Over time (I'd say 14-18 months) I convinced my management to either judge me as an I/C and replace my corporate role with someone else, or let me bring on someone (call the role whatever you want, lieutenant, Chief of Staff, whatever) who picked up my I/C work. I still did "I/C" work but as a peer to the guy I brought on board. For meetings I restricted who could add me to a meeting to about 100 people across the company. Anyone else had to go through an office assistant we had who'd vet the request and run it by both me and my lieutenant.

The other thing I did, even with those restrictions in place, was to narrow down the time window anyone could schedule a meeting to be no more than four hours a day. If it was critical to the business they'd call me or someone around me and we'd work it out, but that restriction wiped out a lot of stupid meetings that I really did not need to be in.

Put another way: put a visible price on your time, and really push back if there isn't a clear reason for you to be in the meeting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Generally, it's helpful to follow the 80/20 rule and time-box whatever you're willing to allocate per week and no more. Do this and only the most valuable things rise up. People have a funny way of filling up the time they're given, so constrain the allotment.

epc's advice on limiting and gatekeeping your time availability is a good one. Also, keep in mind that long email back and forths are micro-meetings and avoid that trap whenever possible. A piece of advice I got as I was running five teams was: "Do you ever see executives answer these emails? No, they just have the conversation and they're done with it."

Setting time budgets for meetings and gatekeeping your availability means "No" is your friend. Used well results in focus. I find it helpful to consider urgency and importance as the criteria for prioritization.</comment>


Senator: Crime Victims Should Be Able to Sue Apple, Google for Encrypting Data - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/senator-crime-victims-should-be-able-to-sue-apple-google-for-encrypting-data <comment><USER2> How about we let citizens sue members of congress for passing legislation that violates the constitution?

Instead of waiting years for the supreme court to maybe take a case, we should be able to take them to court where they have to meet a burden of proof to prove the constitution authorizes the legislation (Every line of it) and if they fail they are personally liable if they voted for it (or signed it in the case of the president.)

Putting their own necks on the line might instill some discipline.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) was first elected in 2006, meaning he is up for re-election in November 2018. In 2012, he was the only candidate for the Democratic party and then beat his Republican opponent 64.81% to 34.97%. [1]

Who among you would be willing to allocate volunteer-hours to help a civil- libertarian Democrat running to unseat him in 2018? Who among you would be willing to lead such a team? If politicians spend hours upon hours raising money that they can use to pay campaign workers, how would they feel knowing that an opponent has such a team already?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Rhode_Island,_2012#Democratic_primary)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. Let's also allow crime victims to sue car companies who make getaway cars.

<comment><USER5> And how about construction companies that laid the road and made the bridges? And driving school instructors for teaching the criminals how to drive?

Geesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Democrats are supposed to support sound science. In practice, the supposedly enlightened left is often confused on these subjects (see also: support for the TSA).

Are there no progressive think-tanks willing to step up in the tech policy department and educate Democratic politicians?

<comment><USER7> The Democrats have a lot more intelligent, competent politicians among their ranks than the GOP, but that doesn't mean most of them aren't self-serving, out of touch assholes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I guess we can also sue gun companies that make murder weapons, right?

<comment><USER9> We can be pretty sure he doesn't like this law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_in_Arms_Act) The Republican he replaced was no prize, was one of only two who voted against it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: 99Designs vs Local Designers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering what everybody's experience has been in using a site like 99Designs vs hiring a local designer? Cost/Benefit analysis kind of thing.
Also assuming I wanted to go local how would you recommend finding an excellent local designer?
Thanks!! <comment><USER2> In my experience, someone local you can go to their office and discuss ideas with is _always_ better than any big-name firm off in the horizon. Big firms generally have less time for you than for their bigger clients.

If you do decide to go local, do a bit of research first. Find a designer people say good things about. Look through portfolios. Pick a designer who's work you really connect with, and see if when you talk to them that they have a good understanding of where you are and where you're trying to get.

You may also want to post your location, people on here may be from the same area and could have good recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think 99designs is a great starting point. You get to see designs from many different designers, which can help you learn what you like and keep costs down as you start your project.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you don't already know and trust a local designer, you might be better off with 99Designs. Local designers can be more expensive and flaky— a designer in Boston had an unfortunate death in the family which caused my design work to be delayed by a month. You can avoid a lot of those types of issues with 99Designs, but you may be (not always) sacrificing some quality.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would you mind giving us a bit more details? What kind of designs? Logo? Website? Poster? What is your budget? What do you want to accomplish?

You can find local designers through websites such as dribbble.com, behance.net, craigslist.com, and many more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for a logo and a landing page. I was hoping to find somewhere to vet designers and find price quotes and whatnot. Someone to work with in a more iterative fashion than perhaps 99Designs.

<comment><USER5> You seem like you know what you want. =) Anyway from my experience 99designs is usually cheaper but the quality of work is subpar. If you are someone who is really picky about quality, originality, etc I would say away from them. That being said, a good designer will probably cost around 1,000 USD for a logo. That probably includes 3 original concepts and a few revisions (depends on the designer). As for the landing page...why not just use something like launchrock.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry landing page was a red herring. I'm slapping that together now but I need an actual homepage and conversion page. Thanks for the tips I really appreciate it! I've already found some good people using behance.net.

<comment><USER5> Can't really tell you how much an actual homepage might cost because there are too many factors. It is a one page website? Do you need front-end development with it? etc.

I do want to give you a word of caution, sometimes after paying 1,000 USD for a logo, you might not get exactly what you imagine or want. The best way to approach it is have a good idea of what you want or better yet know exactly what you want. For instance: I want a cute panda mascot that's chewing on bamboo would be much better than "we are a social networking website that wants a clean and minimalistic blue logo." The latter is so vague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want local designers:

1\. Visit Dribbble/Behance.

2\. Search by city.

3\. Surf the work of the designers till you find one you like.

4\. Reach out and you know the rest~</comment>


The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2014/press.html <comment><USER2> I think this is really well deserved. Back in the day I was working on R&D for medical diagnostic devices. These kinds of LEDs were a critical part of our sensors. No one but Nichia could make them exactly like we needed and without them we would have never had the success we did.

It's just a shame that that the key dude in all this got the shaft for years. The performance of these LEDs was a big deal at the time in a lot of different industries, so it was obvious that lots of money would be flowing around... there really was just no need for anyone to deny him his, well deserved, part in that.

<comment><USER3> I'm really glad that there is an industrial use for them.

Blue ones are used, at least around my area, to decorate things.

<comment><USER4> The "white" LEDs you see in light bulbs in the store are actually blue.

<comment><USER5> How? Or is it a mix of Red, Blue and Green?

<comment><USER6> There are down-converting phosphors on the surface that convert a fraction of the blue light to other wavelengths to get close to white.

<comment><USER7> Is that the same method as fluorescent lighting?

<comment><USER8> Similar in principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shuji Nakamura originally received only $200 from Nichia for the invention. He later received an $8.1M settlement.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12light.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER10> I assume that in the USA or even in Europe with a restrictive contract, he would a minor reward at best?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who read only the 'Blue LED' part from the heading -- most white light produced by LEDs is actually just Blue LED light that mixes with yellow light, produced when it passes through a phosphor layer. The first blue LED was demonstrated in 1994! The 'white' LED saw mass production only in the last decade. So a phenomenal discovery indeed that touches physics, electronics and material science, and something that will keep revolutionizing electrical lighting in the coming days.

<comment><USER12> If I'm not mistaken, Nakamura was responsible for the white LED too -- Nichia Chemical made phosphors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shuji Nakamura was also previously awarded the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize for his work on blue LEDs.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been cursing Shuji Nakamura since about 2005. Suddenly every gizmo had a blue LED brighter than the sun. Took me months to realize that all that blue light was wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle.

<comment><USER15> "They have no taste" applied in spades to most every consumer electronics company, with one exception that I noticed (yes, Apple).

I had a 2007 laptop festooned with about ten of those eye-piercing blue spots, but it's hardly fair to blame the inventor for the poor use of his work.

Alfred Nobel had it worse - he did make an explosive ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An amazing choice of something that is used daily, which unlike many Nobel price level physics, everybody can relate to. Generations of physics students will be raised by this particular choice.

<comment><USER17> I'm still on the hedge about it. Yes, it's more relate-able and inspiring, but it isn't really a contribution to physics as much as engineering. If they had been given the prize for their underlying work on semiconductors, that would have been a lot more valid.

While I'm happy for them, and am in no way qualified to question the Nobel committee, it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of physics".

<comment><USER18> > it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of > physics"

You have to consider it within the context of the intention of the Nobel prize, which is to reward the "invention of greatest benefit to mankind". So perhaps it's not fundamental physics per se, but it's certainly in the spirit of the prize. [Disclaimer: I work on this stuff, and was lucky enough to see Nakamura talk just recently. So I'm definitely biased!]

Edit: Also, coming from a background where I've gone through the whole gamut of physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering and the rest, I have to say that there's a tendency to undervalue the contribution from actually going from something that's theoretically possible to actually practical. In some respects, the fundamental physics is the 'easy' part–nice neat equations describing nice neat systems. Actually trying to make them, when you're up against entropy introducing all manner of crystal defects and impurities and what-not, is a whole different story. And it's so complex, and the tools you use so rudimentary, you can very much feel like a blind man feeling around in the dark just trying to understand what's going on, and what you've actually managed to make. To go from that to a functioning, reproducible device? It definitely deserves recognition.

<comment><USER16> Is it possible for you, with the HN forum limits, to describe some such interesting major issues with LED (for a physics illiterate)?

<comment><USER18> Sure. I can give a flavour of some of the issues that people are interested in within the nitrides, but it wouldn't be an exhaustive list...

So, to start at the beginning: how do we grow these things?

At the heart of every LED is a crystal. For blue LEDs, this crystal is gallium nitride (GaN). How do we grow these crystals at scale? This achievement is behind this Nobel prize, but it's far from a solved problem even today. They found out you could grow GaN by flowing hot gasses containing Ga and N on top of an artificial sapphire film, which would act as a template for the crystal to grow. The problem is that GaN crystals and sapphire crystals are slightly different sizes (the gaps between their constituent atoms is different) so they don't match up exactly, and this resulted in a lot of strain and defects in the GaN crystals–but sapphire was the best we had, and it worked. The trouble is, sapphire isn't great: it's expensive and you can only make small crystals.

The big push now is to find a way of growing GaN on top of silicon. This would make it a lot easier to grow larger crystals and would also make it a lot easier to incorporate GaN into silicon-based devices. But growing on silicon comes with its own problems, so it's even harder to grow high quality films. Specifically, cracking as the crystal cools from its growth temperature is a big problem because the thermal conductivity of silicon and GaN is so different.

There's also a push to try and grow GaN directly from a liquid, which would be more like how we grow silicon 'from scratch' (rather than growing on top of a template). This shows a lot of promise but it's a long way from commercial viability yet.

I'll try and come back and comment on some other issues later on if there's interest :)

<comment><USER19> What about using nanomaterials as seed/substrate for crystal growth? Design the unit cell to the exact dimensions? Or use the (imperfect) GaN crystals to grow incrementally better crystals over multiple rounds?

I work on biomolecular crystallography and nucleation is half the battle! The other half, used to be size, but thanks to microbeam beam lines, at synchrotrons like APS, we can get away with very tiny crystals for X-Ray diffraction data.

I am fascinated by the idea of using semi/synthetic materials as seeding agents. But then again, biomolecular crystals have huge unit cells compared to semiconductors. People have tried zeolites in the past, but surprisingly a random speck of dust sometimes works better than the best designed substrate.

<comment><USER18> > Or use the (imperfect) GaN crystals to grow incrementally better crystals > over multiple rounds?

This is exactly what's often done. It's all about scale fundamentally. It's slow to grow crystals, they have to be very high quality single crystals, and they can't have even the slightest trace of impurities, and ideally they're going to be large and easy to process too. If an alternative substrate is also hard to grow at scale, it's not going to work. But I don't want it make it sound like it's just a scaling issue, because to my knowledge better substrates haven't been found even as a proof of concept. It's not just lattice parameters, but a whole host of other things too. But people are still looking :)

> People have tried zeolites in the past, but surprisingly a random speck of > dust sometimes works better than the best designed substrate.

Hah, that sounds both incredibly frustrating and good fun!

<comment><USER20> Is Ostwald ripening a problem?

<comment><USER18> Not specifically. I haven't really heard it mentioned, but I don't actually do growth myself. It's mostly Stranski-Krastanov growth with islands growing until they coalesce. There's not really any significant flow of atoms between islands to my knowledge. What's your interest in it?

<comment><USER20> One of my labmates from grad school did colloidal quantum dot synthesis, and he regularly cursed Ostwald and his infernal ripening. Just general curiosity if it came up in this area, and if so, how it was dealt with.

By the way, your series of posts on this topic have been superlative—many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Urban legend? I had heard that while most of the industry struggled to develop a blue LED, someone eventually asked this guy to look in to the problem and he had a solution rather quickly. Like they just had to ask the guy with the right background to solve the problem an viola. Is there any truth to that?

<comment><USER22> No, I think it's a more interesting history. Nakamura basically lived in the lab for months, cooking different materias in a special oven until he came up with the blue led. Then did the same for the green led.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long ago that people had to make due with rush lights: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight)

I tried to find a graph of inflation adjusted lighting prices, but found some interesting links:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the- history-of-light)

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

[http://phys.org/news202453100.html](http://phys.org/news202453100.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> It is not groundbreaking at a theoretical level, but its implications in the everyday lives of people seems to be far reaching. It is a signal of how much things have changed in the world, now not concerned with great advances, instead focused on technologies to use resources more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER25> One person who should also have got the Nobel prize for pioneering work on III-V LED's is Nick Holonyak.

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

</comment><comment><USER26> Why did they spell it "funda-mental"?

<comment><USER27> It was probably for manual line-breaking on an unsophisticated word processor, and it got by their copy-editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> btw, Nobel priZe

<comment><USER29> Did someone call it a priSe?

It was only a prise when Obama got the Nobel Peace one.

<comment><USER30> Nope, original spelling of the topic said "price".

<comment><USER31> Autocorrect is wreaking havoc with the language!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Future of Email: From SMTP to XMPP - <AUTHOR> http://www.anarchogeek.com/articles/2008/6/20/the-future-of-email-from-smtp-to-xmpp Email is dead! Long live email!<p>Email has long been the killer app of the internet. It has taken us to a world were everybody has an address and anybody can send an email to anybody else. Email works incredibly well. <comment><USER2> I am so tired of hearing that email is broken. Mine isn't. It works great. It's faster, more powerful and universal than anything web-based, like Facebook messages. It works on nearly any kind of phone even.

Yes, it's overused: my inbox grows faster than I would like. But not because "email sucks", but because other ways of communication are often inferior. At least I am glad I had stopped emailing links to myself after I found about delicious some time ago.

I like email. Am I the only one?

<comment><USER3> The problem with email is trust.

 _ANYONE_ can leave something in my inbox. Whereas you have to be on my contact list to send me messages over other mediums.

Sure, I can setup filters. But when I exchange business cards, we find each other on Facebook , Twitter, Jabber, etc.

People just don't have an address book that ties into their email as a trusted system.

<comment><USER2> Find each other on Twitter? Oh Jesus... Have you looked for each other on Grand Theft Auto?

<comment><USER3> Actually, yes. I used to work on games for Sony. So, I add people on XBox Live and PlayStation Network.

And Twitter is actually valuable based on the people that you follow. A ton of my friends work in the mobile space and push location info to Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it going to prevent spammers from sending athentication requests as spam?

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work: <http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt>

</comment><comment><USER5> Repeat after me, kids: SMTP != email. You need MX records, local MTAs, and client protocols (POP, IMAP, proprietary Exchange/Notes/etc.) _at least_ to make a full email stack.

Furthermore, XMPP makes no provision for server-side storage and organization of messages. I for one consider that a huge step backwards, at least in terms of functionality.</comment>


First Live Hologram Call Between Seoul and New Jersey on a 5G Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2017/04/today-the-worlds-first-live-hologram-phone-call-was-made-between-seoul-and-new-jersey-on-a-5g-network.html#more <comment><USER2> this is interesting, but when you see that this companies charge 100$ for a 2gb data plan it makes you backup</comment>


Ask HN: Steve Jobs: We are working on something you've been expecting for years. - <AUTHOR>

The comment was on Steve Jobs G+ account, any thoughts what it might be. https://plus.google.com/109951318521803670908/posts <comment><USER2> ARM-based Macbook. Or maybe a TV - I know it has been rumored a lot.

But is that Steve Jobs' real account? If so, I can't say I'm surprised. I knew that if Steve Jobs would have to use any social network it would be Google+, mostly because of how well it's designed, being the closest to his own principles.

</comment><comment><USER3> _But is that Steve Jobs' real account? If so, I can't say I'm surprised._

I would be astonished if this is really him.

<comment><USER4> An Apple branded television, it's been rumored they have partnered with Sony... and there's only a few things Sony does decently well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are working on a way to detect fraudulent online accounts with a special focus on identity theft of famous people.

<comment><USER6> I liked the sarcasm!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to market a new social network? - <AUTHOR>

I've built a small social networking service that is a spin on Twitter, amongst other services. The main problem I'm running into is that it's hard to get users to start using it.
I think most people find social networks interesting because people they know are on it. But without an established user base, how do you actually attract the early users?
I've tried the general spray and pray method of submitting to various blogs that cover startups and social media, at various tiers. I've also reached out to friends to get them to try it out, and a small contingent have been using it and do enjoy the service. However, it seems hard for me and them to spread it beyond that.
Social networks are all about virality. I've added various triggers for my service to piggyback off of Facebook and Twitter, and allow the users to share/publish to their friends. However, I need that initial group of users in order to get the ball rolling. Any ideas on the most effective ways to do that? <comment><USER2> Density density density. You need to identify a core set of densely connected, ~1,000 people to get your social network started.

MySpace had the LA music scene. Facebook had Harvard. LinkedIn had the Silicon Valley hotentots, thanks to Reid's reputation and network. Quora has a similar group of highly active, densely connected users from Silicon Valley.

So you need to think about the ideal community for your network and find a way to get 100 to 1,000 of them on your site ALL AT ONCE, i.e., within a few days of each other.

The onboarding experience is absolutely crucial, too. There's a paper out there by Facebook's data team and some CMU researchers about what early experiences (on Facebook) are the strongest predictors of long-term engagement.

Not surprisingly most of them involve some sort of interaction with a friend. I don't have a link, but you should find it and read it.

<comment><USER3> Interesting concept, never thought about it like that. Any related articles/links?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.thoughtcrumbs.com/publications/paper0778-burke.pd...](http://www.thoughtcrumbs.com/publications/paper0778-burke.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For starters, you could give us a link.

</comment><comment><USER6> You say you've done the 'spray and pray' method, but have you posted on HN for feedback (I didn't see it in your submissions).

What did you spray and pray?

</comment><comment><USER7> It should be really innovative and self-evident service, otherwise it is impossible to convey people why they should pay attention to something other than Facebook or Twitter which are already serving them well.</comment>


Zika scare means Olympics Games should not be held in Rio, 150 scientists say - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/zika-scare-means-olympics-games-should-not-be-held-in-rio-150-top-medical-experts-say-a7053046.html <comment><AUTHOR> Imagine athletes from poorer states take it back to their countries which don't have good healthcare infrastructure and it becomes an uncontrollable epidemic there.

A very real possibility of Half a Million people taking the virus back to every city on the planet and all they are saying is we'll use mosquito repellents near the stadiums and hotels and everything will be fine.

I understand that there's alot of money and sunk cost at stake for Brazil and IOC but it their adamance over this is dangerous.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to query mainframe data using SQL? - <AUTHOR>

Old mainframe system which we need to query using SQL. Any ideas appreciated. <comment><USER2> Which mainframe architecture are you on? IBM iSeries / AS/400 mainframes can provide socket services. These return data as CSV.

CSV in turn can be queried with tools such as [http://pythonhosted.org/querycsv/](http://pythonhosted.org/querycsv/)

I'm not sure if SQL really is the right approach here, though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We have CA DATACOM databases on a Z10 series Enterprise server running Z/OS 1.13. We're looking for an easy solution to analyze, update and/or transform lots of data from a PC based interface (not the current terminal interface) - we thought SQL would be the most flexible.</comment>