Go reliability and durability at Dropbox - <AUTHOR> https://about.sourcegraph.com/go/go-reliability-and-durability-at-dropbox-tammy-butow <comment><USER2> What does "Reliability of 99.9999999999% (twelve 9s)" even mean? Obviously you have to exclude large classes of user-visible failures (network outage, account over quota) to achieve that. I don't think they're claiming less than 0.00000000001% chance of a zombie apocalypse/Mad Max/ex Machina/asteroid impact end-of-times situation. So just what failures are counted?

For comparison, public telephony systems aimed for five 9s. That was usually expressed as "20 minutes downtime over 40 years, combined hardware and software budget, for outages affecting more than 32 users." One software crash requiring human intervention would count for more than 20 minutes, so you were allowed <1 of these in 40 years system lifetime.

<comment><USER3> > _For comparison, public telephony systems aimed for five 9s. That was > usually expressed as "20 minutes downtime over 40 years, combined hardware > and software budget, for outages affecting more than 32 users." One software > crash requiring human intervention would count for more than 20 minutes, so > you were allowed <1 of these in 40 years system lifetime._

And all of that is total bogus (the "aim", not your information), as no public telephony system (and surely not in my country) ever had anything close to that.

A few hours of downtime a few times a year is much more like it, although it has been getting better over time.

<comment><USER4> Not really. The German phone and power networks get quite close to this reliability. I've had less than 30 minutes combined downtime in my life.

<comment><USER5> How would you know? Or at least, how would I know? If, back in the POTS day, the exchange went down half the night, I wouldn't have noticed.

Nowadays, you can look into your router logs. And Telekom had serious issues with their VoIP stuff.

Likewise, even the apparently planned outages at my previous location exceeded the 30 minutes. (It's still good, but not _that_ good.)

<comment><USER4> > Likewise, even the apparently planned outages at my previous location > exceeded the 30 minutes. (It's still good, but not that good.)

Yeah, they're starting to do maintenance here now, too (for introducing the 500/200mbps VDSL2), but I've never been with Telekom, and my existing ISPs never had real issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the actual video: [https://youtu.be/5doOcaMXx08](https://youtu.be/5doOcaMXx08)

</comment><comment><USER7> > It's easy to be productive in Go.

Hum, I'm not sure what this means. Is it saying go is a productice language, or just that you'll master go quickly and reach peek go productivity quickly?

<comment><USER8> Both, really. Go's so small you can be quite proficient with in months. While it's not as productive as, say, Python (wrt how quickly you can get your code up and running) it's much quicker than other languages (and nicer to use in the long run).

<comment><USER9> > months

? Go is tiny. The tutorial takes an afternoon. A C programmer will be profecient within days.

<comment><USER10> They may learn the language in days but not the standard library. That's always what takes the most time.

<comment><USER11> I agree. And may I add the ecosystem: which third party modules you should or shouldn't be looking at, and if you should rely on them or roll your own.

<comment><USER12> Then months for best practices, idioms, and understanding the pitfalls around concurrency and channels, which are nowhere near as "batteries-included" as people would lead you to believe.

This "hype" around go letting you be productive sooner is honestly just bullshit. I've been programming for 20 years, with C, C++, Ruby, Perl, Scheme, Haskell, Rust, Go, Java, and others I've surely forgot. Sure, I was able to start writing go within a day. But it was _terrible_ go, and months later I was still dealing with the consequences of early bad decisions.

This isn't unique to go by any means. But if you go in thinking you're going to write a project that does some sort of non-trivial task and be able to rely on that later, you're going to have a bad time.

<comment><USER13> But that's true with all those languages too. If you're an experienced Java programmer moving to Rust, you'll write Java in Rust.

So it's 1 day of learning Go + 1 month of learning style vs 2 weeks of learning Rust + 1 month of learning style. [1]

[1] Note, I think that Rust has the best community when it comes to getting beginners up to par, whether in #rust-beginners or on /r/rust. It just is a hard and not forgiving language.

<comment><USER12> > But that's true with all those languages too.

That is exactly my point, and I said as much in my post.

> So it's 1 day of learning Go + 1 month of learning style vs 2 weeks of > learning Rust + 1 month of learning style.

More like 1 day vs. 1 week, with six months of ramp-up before you're writing anything approximating production-quality code. At which point, does it really matter that you were able to write garbage in one day rather than seven?

<comment><USER14> Hi. Could you (or anyone else here!) kindly answer this question:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14934690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14934690)

One way to get your correct answer is for me to propose a wrong or partial answer. How is this as a message to the past (i.e. I am guessing your answer to the above request):

WRONG/FAKE ANSWER:

"Note to past self: although you can write code that compiles on day 1 and day 2, before considering your code idiomatic and ready to build on top of (or even deploy to production), DO/LEARN THE FOLLOWING:

1) read and work through all of The Go Programming Language book. This teaches all idioms.

2) Practice and use Go's testing tools (built-in). Always use its reformat tool applied on every save from your IDE.

3) Begin using a better error and logging library than the built-in error passing idiom. Google this.

4) Use a debugger. Google this.

5) Security and versioning with go get is broken: Google this and learn vendoring with versions. Otherwise your code cannot go on production.

6) You control garbage collection frequency. Learn to set this. In emergencies disable it entirely to trade memory for latency to gain one or two milliseconds (approach hard realtime), for example when you are dropping requests. Then reenable when you can take the (very small) hit. Garbage collection is very efficient and low-latency.

7) Channels and concurrency (goroutines) do not work as described. Specifically:

\- This link will solve your problems with channels: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41200505/whats-the- best-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41200505/whats-the-best- practice-to-synchronise-channels-and-wait-groups)

Adopt it. Then they work as described.

For goroutines:

Follow this document - [https://gist.github.com/pzurek/6642797](https://gist.github.com/pzurek/6642797)

After incorporating the above specific changes, you are ready to commit to production and build on top of what you want to build.

"

is the above message completely wrong and bullshit? Then please correct it.

Your insight and experience are appreciated and I would love to read what you would write as a message to yourself in the past, to save those lost months. Thank you.

<comment><USER12> Those months weren't "lost". There's no shortcut to learning idioms, best practices, and — more importantly — understanding the most natural way to model a solution in whatever language you're working with.

Sure, read books and blog posts. Test things. Learn debugging tools. But nothing really substitutes for actually working with a language. Having an experienced mentor helps, but only if they're advising you on _why_ they chose a certain approach, or why a critiqued approach you chose was bad.

<comment><USER14> Essentially I am asking you to be that mentor (to your past self) and share the email you could write, specific to YOUR particular coding that you were doing. Think a mentor should include "why"? Then include why.

Remember: I didn't ask for a shortcut, I asked for specific sentences that you could have sent back in time to prevent this:

>months later I was still dealing with the consequences of early bad decisions.

Your sentences can be literally anything, specific to your specific situation, that could have prevented those bad decisions.

So, let's be clear. Your message to the past you reads:

"Hi - I am you from the future. I was asked to send back a message in time listing specific things you can do right now, having just learned Go, based on my having to deal with your code, that can prevent your bad decisions which you will be dealing with months later. It is impossible to put this into English words. So, I have no advice for you of any kind. Fuck you, past-me. And also fuck me - I'll just have to deal with your lack of understanding. I hope you have found this mentoring by me to be as helpful as I have. I don't believe in mentoring."

So, that's the new version of your message, based on your review of your own code and memory of your decisions and learning process at the time.

Well, okay. I guess I accept your viewpoint. (Note: if there's some other reason you don't want to answer publicly, such as not talking about your codebase, you can email me at the email in my profile.)

I am looking for specific architectural advice, using your experience as a case study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh, I thought Dropbox was using Rust instead of Go for a lot of things, but maybe they ended up using both. I can see why they'd have wanted to be just moving to either Rust or Go since from what I understand they used to be mostly Python for everything.

Cool that they use Go a lot.

<comment><USER16> Go and Rust are not competing for same space. They are different language for different purposes.

<comment><USER3> Rust is multi-purpose, and with improved tooling and a little more maturity (Rust 2.0) I can see it getting all the (network/server) systems and command line stuff Go does.

(But not vice versa: Go wont be able to handle the no-GC close-to-the-metal use cases).

<comment><USER17> Rust is great, but to be honest, Rust's learning curve is way steeper than GO's. And this may slow down the Rust's domination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have an off-topic question: This is the second company (after GitLab) I see with an "about" subdomain. Is this a new trend of using "about.x.com" for the marketing website and "x.com" for the web app? Is there a blog post or discussion about this?

<comment><USER19> At GitLab we first used www dot the marketing site and the apex for the app but many people assumed they would have the same content. That is why we introduced about. Cool to see we might have started a trend.

<comment><USER20> Wow, never noticed that. When did you change? It would have confused me so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know where in the talk it has the mention of "Debugging tools (mostly!) work well"?

I'm skipping back and forwards through it, but the talk isn't in the same order as this article which is making it very difficult without watching the whole talk from start -> end.

Asking because debugging is a pain point I've been having with Go for a few months, so am surprised to see it described as mostly working well. I'd like to get my debugging experiences to at least that level of "(mostly) working well". :D

<comment><USER22> What are you having trouble debug? Or what do you think isn't working well for you?

<comment><USER21> The two main problems are:

a) Pretty much any platform other Linux doesn't seem to work (for debugging). ;)

b) Breakpoints occasionally not firing even when running Linux (Fedora 25 in this case)

This is with CGO enabled code, which isn't optional as it's from the libraries we use (no choice).

Using Delve for debugging (though Gogland atm), as we're not yet in production.

Fairly worried about how things will er... go ;) in prod though when we get to rolling things out.

With Delve, it's apparently the state of the art with Go debugging. If something else actually works reliably though, I'm happy to try it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The biggest pain with Go that Tammy identified was in dealing with race > conditions.

> Data races are the hardest type of bug to debug, spot, fix, etc.

Exactly what Rust aims at preventing. Sad to see that the industry is not learning.

<comment><USER24> > Sad to see that the industry is not learning.

Sad that Rust advocates are not learning. This sort of comment is what drives people away from Rust. Stop ramming your stuff down other people's throats. Go build that exclusively Rust based Dropbox clone that outperforms Dropbox and show how well Rust performs in that situation.

Rust has trade-offs just like Go has trade-offs. Being honest about the deficiencies of ones chosen platform is a good thing, it helps to keep you sharp and to avoid problems associated with those deficiencies.

Besides having an over-zealous community that posts off-topic comments all over threads that have nothing to do with Rust, Rust has deficiencies too.

Note also that Dropbox is already using Rust in some places.

<comment><USER25> Is it off-topic though? Go has warts and is plagued by poor design decisions, just like most software. I think it is worth mentioning those, and offering recommendations that don't have those issues, so people can make the best technical decisions when choosing a stack for their projects. It also may help Go maintainers in fixing legitimate complaints in Go, thus making it better. I've never used Rust, but I have used Go, and found certain things about it unappealing, so I'm interested in this information, and I'm also interested in Go improving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does rust gurantee data race free code?

<comment><USER26> This explains pretty well: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/beta/nomicon/races.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/beta/nomicon/races.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, Go has the worst possible model for concurrency there is - shared memory multithreading. Hopefully more and more companies will realize how bad this model really is and start looking into languages with decent concurrency models, like Erlang and Elixir or at least stick to event loops.

<comment><USER28> The worst _possible_ model? Oh my dear fellow, not even close:

[http://catb.org/esr/intercal/ick.htm#Multithreading-using- CO...](http://catb.org/esr/intercal/ick.htm#Multithreading-using-COME-FROM)

<comment><USER29> My favorite is still the multithreaded apartment model...

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/04/28/wh...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/04/28/what- are-these-threading-models-and-why-do-i-care/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-compton What a terrible article.

<comment><USER30> >This post was best-effort live-blogged at the conference

Cut them some slack.

<comment><USER31> To promote their own service. While the actual talk will probably be actually posted online in multiple forms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > She talked at GopherCon 2017 about

Ya'll too young to remember OG Gopher [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_\(protocol\))</comment>


The AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 3700X and 3900X Raising the Bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-ryzen-3700x-3900x-review-amd-done-did-it <comment><USER2> Aww yisss, finally, tangible performance gains and huge value increases for consumers in the CPU space. Intel getting curb stomped is just a bonus.

I'm worried about AMD since AFAIK, the enthusiast PC builder/Gamer for who these chips are addressed is a niche market and most volumes are in OEMs laptops (Dell, HP, Lenovo) that companies buy in bulk for their workforce and that's where AMD has zero presence while intel has a deathgrip on those OEMs.

Can AMD still recover in this market?

<comment><USER3> Where are you getting "curb stomped" from?

From the conclusion:

"When it comes to gaming performance, the 9700K and 9900K remain the best performing CPUs on the market"

"Ultimately, while AMD still lags behind Intel in gaming performance, the gap has narrowed immensely, to the point that Ryzen CPUs are no longer something to be dismissed if you want to have a high-end gaming machine. Intel's performance advantage is rather limited here – and for the power- conscientious, AMD is delivering better efficiency at this point – so while they may not always win out as the very best choice for absolute peak gaming performance, the 3rd gen Ryzens are still very much a very viable option worth considering."

This isnt to take anything away from AMD and people will finally consider them now as a serious alternative, but I would not call this a "curb stomping"

A curb stomp would be Intel vs pre-Ryzen AMD

<comment><USER4> AMD processors are reasonably cheaper, draw less power and get less hot for extremely competitive performance (especially in multi-core where they exceed).

I guess it depends on where you're defining 'curb stomped'. As a whole, I think AMD is besting Intel here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The new Ryzens perform very well, it's even more impressive considering that the Intel chips did not have the Fallout/Zombieload mitigations applied[1], that come with significant performance degradations.

LinusTechTips, that used to somewhat favor Intel, did their benchmarks with current patches to everything: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3aEv3EzMyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3aEv3EzMyQ)

[1] [https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1147867180282699782](https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1147867180282699782)

<comment><USER6> Hah, LTT is really milking the hype in that one. Good show.

I can't say they're wrong to be excited, though. When's the last time a processor launch _really_ mattered to anyone? The improvements to compile time alone have me sold, though it will be tough to pick between 12c/16c.

The biggest component missing in these reviews is where and when I can find these things on shelves. Especially as someone not terribly concerned with gaming performance.

<comment><USER5> You can buy them in most MicroCenters today, if they did not all sell out. Amazon has a 3600 and Newegg has 3600 and 3700 but not 3800 and 3900 (don't know if they sold out or if they just don't have them yet).

The short answer is they are available now, if they don't get sold out from your preferred retailer.

<comment><USER7> >You can buy them in most MicroCenters today

Off Topic, do people still buy components in Retail store and not online? I could understand people want to shop clothes, food, thing that you need to take a look first in Real. But Electronics, especially components, don't matter.

<comment><USER6> You can get things same day, returns/replacements are much easier, price matching is often an option, you don't have to worry about trickery with Amazon sellers or ambiguous listings (like laptops with similar yearly models) and sometimes outright lying listings, mixups, shipping problems (I had an entire computer go to the wrong apartment,) package theft (had a Unifi USG stolen even though it had been sitting for under a couple hours!) and honestly more.

Heavy stuff through shipping can be expensive if you can't get it through Amazon Prime. Shipping with Li-ion batteries is restricted to ground shipping.

I _still_ ship many of my electronics, but yeah actually it's not a wash. Especially if you are buying used stuff, I find eBay is often a ripoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm very impressed by the performance of the 3700X given its extremely low power consumption. AMD has historically delivered subpar mobile processors that had a higher power consumption that Intel counterparts. A processor with a TDP of half the 3700X's will be very competitive if the graphics module consumption can be contained. I'm looking forward to Zen 2 mobile CPUs although I do not know when they will be announced.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. And Bulldozer was an ultimately underwhelming run, but AMD still set the stage during that time for many technologies and practices that continue to raise the tide for consumers. Mantle API was opened to Khronos and became Vulkan, and opening their hardware has allowed open driver development to keep parity with the proprietary, negating the GPU vendor as middleman problem.

And not all of the A-series were awful, but it seems those were the favored ones for OEMs to put in the very popular $300 Ultrabook competitors. I'd also hazard to say that if we went back and benchmarked the Intel CPUs of that time with the mitigations of today, they wouldn't have fared better than AMD's.

We've come a long way from the world before smartphones, parallelism, SoC, and affordable flash, and I'm just glad we're finally here.

<comment><USER10> >opening their hardware has allowed open driver development to keep parity with the proprietary, negating the GPU vendor as middleman problem

Except until recently, AMD GPU performance was a bag of wet farts for both industry and gaming.

<comment><USER11> That's not accurate. AMD only recently lost the ability to compete with Nvidia in the high end for a while. But they still had cards like the RX 580, that are the best option for their budget, and Fury, Vega and the Radeon VII all were not slow. They just were not better than Nvidia's cards. See [https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/games/gpu](https://www.pc- kombo.com/benchmark/games/gpu) (I run a meta benchmark that includes those cards).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The improvement in the Dolphin benchmark (which probably indicates improvements in other JIT-based emulators/runtimes) is pretty impressive, especially compared to first-generation Ryzen. For a while that benchmark had every AMD processor performing worse than every Intel processor in a given review.

If the Chromium compilation benchmark (which reportedly was screwed up and will be added later) shows similar improvements, I think this generation will finally convince me to replace my Ivy Bridge box.

edit: I just saw the Phoronix benchmarks, which show LLVM compilation going from 547 seconds on 2700X to 406 seconds on 3700X. I'm not sure whether those were run with the same chipset/RAM/storage versus the 2700X result being an older one pulled out of the database, though.

<comment><USER13> Dolphin is probably very happy with the improvements to branch prediction.

As for compiling, Gamers Nexus' review of the six core 3600 had it absolutely trashing other CPUs (33% faster than the 9900k, 11% faster than the 2700x) in their GCC self compilation test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The AMD subreddit has a megathread with all the comparisons on it:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/c9ncvh/3rd_generation_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/c9ncvh/3rd_generation_ryzen_reviews_megathread/)

</comment><comment><USER14> It doesn't appear to work well with Linux, aka wont boot. At least current / new distributions of Linux... (at least ones utilizing systemd)

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-37...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-3700x-3900x-linux&num=2)

<comment><USER15> I suspect this will be fixed soon, since chips just came out, and a lot more people will look at it, besides AMD themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Terribly tangential, but is there a possibility at all that the higher core counts will converge with GPU core counts in the future, in a large CPU, many smaller medium cores, and hundreds/thousands of micro cores.

Programming those would require a new paradigm possibly.

<comment><USER17> In that case it would make more sense to move the smaller cores to a PCI card a la Xeon Phi.

The programming paradigm to enable this exists, it's just pure functional programming. But people are intimidated by Haskell.

We need more investment in functional programming before the dream of a 1000 core computer can be realized.

<comment><USER18> On paper.

Parallel programming in Haskell is hard. GHC's style of by-demand lazy evaluation and the ubiquitous use of monads impose a lot of sequential execution.

There has been good research around parallel FP programming languages, but that was mostly around the 90s (Sisal, pH)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of the software still has optimisation with Intel specific in mind, and for AMD to score close or equal to Intel in most single threaded benchmarks is an amazing achievement.

The Radeon 5700 is also amazing and seems to be better than the new / Price Reduced 2060 Super.

I am wondering what are the chances of Apple choosing AMD in near future.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's most exciting to me is how the new processors seem to do particularly well in less optimized benchmarks. From my experience these are more representative of day-to-day PC use, and I feel like the last decade of CPU releases has focused more on identifying which well optimized applications perform well i on which processors.

Ryzen 3 seems like a very strong improvement to general computing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why didn't they measure system idle power consumption? That is a key metric for energy efficiency, since home computers spend a lot of time doing nothing.

<comment><USER21> pc perspective rand idle power consumption benchmarks: [https://pcper.com/2019/07/amd- ryzen-7-3700x-ryzen-9-3900x-re...](https://pcper.com/2019/07/amd- ryzen-7-3700x-ryzen-9-3900x-review/#ftoc-heading-16)

<comment><USER20> So they're about 10 watts better than last-gen Ryzen, but still 10 watts worse than Intel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The radeon 5700/xt is also amazing.

That really was unexpected, unlike the CPUs which we already knew would be good.

<comment><USER23> The 5700 costs almost $100 more than the Vega 56 while being just a few % faster. The price:performance ratio on the new lineup of graphic cards is worse than the previous generation...

<comment><USER24> And according to Gamer's Nexus the reference blower cooler is abysmal.

<comment><USER25> "Abysmal" in what way? Enthusiast sites often confuse sufficient cooling with under-cooling. Cooling becomes more efficient when there's a high temperature differential. So engineers set up fan control so it only _really_ begins to kick in when the chip reaches 80C or thereabouts. Enthusiasts often confuse this with insufficient cooling. The chips themselves, however, don't really mind.

<comment> ben-schaaf IIRC it was 95C under load with 52db. So loud and hot. Normalising fan speed to 40db made it throttle. I'd certainly call that abismal.

<comment><USER25> That does sound pretty bad, if true, but more on the noise front rather than temp, assuming 95C is Tjunction and not Tcase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, they sold out instantly! Good for AMD. I'll be excited if I have the opportunity to build a workstation using a 3900X. That's such a sweet spot for a 12 core to price for media work. Unless someone buys me a Mac Pro, I'll probably be crawling back to Windows / AMD with this release now that they have motherboards with TB3 and 10GbE on them.

</comment><comment><USER27> 3700X looks like a great CPU for an all around work station at 65W and 16 threads.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems that 9700K still beats AMD in many workloads. I wonder if the comparison is with spectre et. al. mitigations on Intel turned on or off?

<comment><AUTHOR> It probably is, though they didn't explicitly state that. Windows 1903 is used, and AMD's latest strategy to improve Windows performance is in place.

Basically, if the higher clock of the 9700K can be put to use in a single- threaded application, then that chip can still come out on top. But in enough scenarios, the Ryzen 3700X and 3900X are quite competitive.

<comment><USER29> Single threaded performance isn't really that interesting anymore except for some specific gaming benchmarks, and even in gaming, you're unlikely to be bottlenecked by single threaded performance (though memory latency could be an issue).

<comment><USER30> Web browsing is still single threaded. Games still have a very busy main thread.

<comment><USER31> 1 UI thread !== only 1 thread

Firefox and chrome use a half-dozen or so threads parsing and compiling JS code so it loads quickly. Firefox's Quantum work adds a lot of threads for rendering as well. In addition, service workers, web workers, and Wasm all spawn additional processes which serve the same purpose if you aren't sharing memory directly.

That said, the Phoronix Selenium tests show AMD ahead by quite a bit. (source)[[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-37...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-3700x-3900x-linux&num=6)]

<comment><USER30> So Servo is just snake-oil?

<comment><USER31> Firefox's quantum work comes from their servo work, so I'd say it's been valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not to worry. Dev community will quickly release new and shiny interpreter of interpreter. That'll take care of performance gains ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Are these actually on sale yet? I don't seem them listed an Amazon.

I'll be using this soon to build a MAME arcade cabinet, probably along with the new GPU.

One thing Intel has the advantage is in the engineering desktop. I use a couple of programs that are compiled with Intel compilers. Also one that uses AVX 512. Will Intel compilers optimize for AMD?

<comment><USER34> Newegg seems to have the 3600x and 3700x for sale, but the 3800x and 3900x currently say out of stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anyone know when 3950x reviews are due out and better yet when the chip might hit stock here in the EU?

<comment><AUTHOR> The launch date is in September.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can anybody explain the poor memory latency numbers? Is this due to the new L3 and chiplet design or is it from the larger L3? Intel chunks their LL cache out too, so I wasnt expecting such a big difference.

Also AMD got stomped on the system performance testing (those tests seem like they might be difficult to unpack into individual reasons given their breadth). Why would that be the case.

And WOW. Any vectorised workloads written for AVX-512... Besides the larger operand sizes, the instruction set changed seem to matter hugely. I did a small not using avx512 too effectively scan hash table for the keys, and it made a huge difference too.

Still considering the top Ryzen chip for a sorely need new desktop, but I don't play games so it would mostly be a cost thing.

<comment><USER37> If I understand correctly, the higher memory latency is a between-chiplet problem for the most part, with the highest latencies being between CCX's.

If you _don 't_ game, I see absolutely no reason not to buy Ryzen, but you might not need to buy an X570 mobo.

<comment><USER36> Intel's L3 is sharded out into 2mb chunks on a ring bus too so I would have expected more comparable numbers. Is Intel's QPI link and cache coherency implemention that much better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So... not to sound like a naysayer here.. I mean, I do work for Intel, but I'm genuinely interested in the product.

Are these really, y'know, _launched_ launched? I can't find any 3000 series CPUs for sale on either Amazon or Newegg... Who's stocking them?

<comment><USER39> Already sold out most places, it seems.

<comment><USER38> But who stocks it? Amazon and Newegg don't (i.e. you can't look the products up at all as of right now, even just to see that it's out of stock), which implies that they're filling the channel only with exclusive retailers or OEMs. Or, less charitably, that this is a paper launch with product to demo but not to actually sell...

<comment><USER11> The less broadly reviewed 3600X (which should completely beat the i5-9600K) is still in stock on Amazon.com, [https://www.amazon.com/AMD- Ryzen-3600X-12-Thread-Processor/d...](https://www.amazon.com/AMD- Ryzen-3600X-12-Thread-Processor/dp/B07SQBFN2D). 3600, 3700X and 3900X are completely missing there though. But Newegg and B&H list those (Newegg also has the 3600X in stock), so the others will be in stock at one point. In Germany alternate.de has them listed as being shipped in a few days (it's already possible to buy them now), with the Ryzen 5 3600 being in stock currently. So while there is limited supply, the hype and demand around those processors is big and they are somewhat available, this is no paper launch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Incorporating a significantly upgraded CPU architecture and built using > TSMC's latest generation manufacturing process

How much of their innovation is due to TSMC vs AMDs in house research?

<comment><USER41> Interesting that they didn't choose Global Foundries. I guess splitting that off really was worth it.

One of Intel's big strength is their fabs. But perhaps that's becoming another drag on execution?

<comment><USER42> Global Foundries will never have 7 nm and Intel has failed to deliver 10 nm for years, so yeah, being tied to one fab looks like a bad idea.

<comment><USER43> Intel's 10 nm was delivered early last year in the form of one U-series CPU with a broken iGPU - not that it were a great chip, but they did deliver. Ice Lake mobile CPUs, built on the 10 nm+ process, are shipping as we speak, with Dell's XPS lineup already being available with said chips in them.

<comment><USER44> Got a source for Ice Lake products that are actually available? Dell's XPS 7390 was supposed to be one of the first, and it's still "coming soon": [https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new- xps-13-2-in...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new- xps-13-2-in-1/spd/xps-13-7390-2-in-1-laptop)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd like to see a comparison running different speeds of memory, different CAS latencies, etc. Can you run this thing safely with 3200mhz? or do you really need 3600mhz?

<comment><USER11> There is one from a german magazine, [https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/proze...](https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/prozessoren/50163-amds- ryzen-7-3700x-und-ryzen-9-3900x-im-test.html?start=13). You can use DDR4-3200 (that's also shown by most other benchmarks using that speed), but you get a performance increase from using DDR4-3600.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> According to [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and- ryzen-3700x-390...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and- ryzen-3700x-3900x-review-raising-the-bar/5)

They are rerunning all tests due to a mobo firmware upgrade showing non trivial improvements in turbo/boost mode.

There is still a chance that Intel with be beaten, even without taking ZombieLoad etc. patches into consideration on Intel.

</comment><comment><USER46> Curious why the TDP is the same for the 8, 12, and 16 core. I assume it's binned parts, but the switched off cores still consume power? Or some other reason?

<comment><USER47> The reported TDP is the designed TDP for the motherboard power delivery, not the measured consumption of each processor. To keep the number of TDP values low and to allow motherboard makers design a small number of variants, TDP values are rounded up to 65W, 95W and 105W. That means everything that goes above 65W in real life will be classified as 95W, even if the real consumption is 70 or 75W.

<comment><USER48> Not really. Intel made TDP numbers meaningless long time ago, AMD finally joined Intel with Zen2. While Zen1 180W TDP Threadrippers actually did consume 180W from the power supply, Zen2 take x1.5 the rated power similar to intel counterparts like "95W" 9900K consuming 150-200W.

<comment><USER49> Actual power cap for Zen2 seems to be 1.35x TDP, but the speculation about them choosing a small number of TDP categories and sticking all their processors into them sounds right aside from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What's the inter-thread latency on these things?

<comment><USER22> If you mean context switch latency, Phoronix's review has measurements. It's an order of magnitude lower than Intel's.

<comment><USER50> No. Two threads, each running on its own core. Send an int64 from one to another (and usually back)

<comment><USER22> So, inter-process communication? There's this: [https://i.redd.it/2z5580uugja31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/2z5580uugja31.jpg)

AMD does much better than intel, as long as the peer is in the same CCX.

For the case where it is not, zen2 has improved considerably relative to zen/zen+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the story with the chipset fan noise? Is it a big issue on new motherboards?

</comment><comment><USER51> I plan to build a new gaming machine on AMD. Civ6 with a huge world might even work well. Fingers crossed :)</comment>


Designing and Building an "Open-Hardware" Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/460922-crowd-sourcing-open-hardware-laptop/

<comment><USER2> This was covered on HN recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7517296).</comment>


Show HN: Yazz – Build Interactive Prototypes in Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zubairq/yazz <comment><AUTHOR> We built Yazz as a quick way to build quick apps and prototypes internally. It is still a work in progress, but let us know what you think.

It is free and open source, and the aim is to make it easy for anyone to get an interactive prototype of their app or website idea up fast, so that they can show it to others</comment>


Toast - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/toast-intro.html <comment><USER2> Tangentially, if you like Stross you may also like Peter Watts, who also has a backlist of work available online: [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm](http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm)

Watts' "Rifters" trilogy is there in its entirety. Also "Blindsight", which is fascinating. His latest book is "Echopraxia", a sequel to Blindsight, which isn't there, but you could always consider buying it if you like his other stuff!

Amusingly, as vampires are/were in fashion, both Stross and Watts have written books featuring nonstandard imaginative interpretations of vampires. Strossian vampires are explainable in the context of Laundry-universe magic, and enjoy investment banking [1], and Scrum practices. Wattsian vampires are resurrected from the dead by human genetic engineering, and have an unfortunate flaw (well, unfortunate for them, fortunate for the humans who enslave them) - "the Crucifix glitch" \- that cause them to go into seizures when they see right angles [2][3].

[1] novel: "The Rhesus Chart" ; [2] [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/VampireDomestication.pdf](http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/VampireDomestication.pdf) ; [3] novel: "Blindsight" .

<comment> david-given Seconding _Blindsight_, which is a great book (which he describes as 'a philosophical rumination on the nature of consciousness with an unhealthy focus on space vampires') You won't think about consciousness the same way again. And it's free!

This book also led me to discover _Portia Labiata_, a bewilderingly intelligent spider --- and so cute! [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hirzi/6285232356](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hirzi/6285232356) There's an accessible paper on what makes it so interesting here: [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duane_Harland/publicatio...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duane_Harland/publication/238671399_%27Eight- legged_cats%27_and_how_they_see_- _a_review_of_recent_research_on_jumping_spiders_%28Araneae_Salticidae%29/links/0deec525c9f5e52ae5000000.pdf) I wonder if Watts' suggestion that it timeshares its brain has any truth to it?

_Echopraxia_ is also superb, but I thought it was disappointingly similar to _Blindsight_. That doesn't mean it's not in any way a good book, but it's very much based on the same themes.

Be aware that the book called _Firefall_ is an omnibus edition of both books.

I haven't read any of the Rifters books. Worth checking out?

<comment><USER3> I have not read Blindsight or Echopraxia, they are on my list, but I did really enjoy the Rifters series. It is an interesting take on the whole dystopian genre. Starfish was excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The story in this collection "A Colder War" is a fantastic mash-up of Lovecraft and the US/Soviet Cold War. The combination of science and the occult in the story reminds me in weird ways of Half-Life/Portal, The Manhattan Projects (the graphic novels), and even the real-world Jack Parsons. If you strictly like hard sci fi, it's not for you, but for everyone else, I recommend it.

The story is available in stand-alone HTML here: [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm)

<comment><USER5> And if you enjoy that, then you should probably read his "Laundry Files" series, currently up to book 6 and counting. It's the same mashup of Lovecraftian horror, Cold War thrillers, and scientific/IT geekery, but on a larger scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Antibodies" is my favorite: a story about what might happen when P = NP, with a hard AI singularity.

</comment><comment><USER7> I absolutely adore his writing. It is again and again amazing to me how many new ideas he manages to implant in my brain with how few words. I am even more grateful to how easily accessible he makes his writings. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious about something in the license, "no derivative works". How does this relate to fan fiction? I'm pretty sure using characters by name is verboten. But what if my fan fic is in the same universe with different characters, but responds or references main events?

<comment><USER9> I would assume he would be pretty relaxed about that as Bob Howard is pretty much based on the BOFH.

<comment><USER10> Bob's initials are even B.O.F.H.

<comment><USER11> There can't be enough BOFH's in the universe, that is for sure, since they rule the universe after all ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> There are also a few short stories on tor.com based on Charlie's "Laundry" series: [http://www.tor.com/2008/07/20/down-on-the- farm/](http://www.tor.com/2008/07/20/down-on-the-farm/) ; [http://www.tor.com/2009/12/22/overtime/](http://www.tor.com/2009/12/22/overtime/) ; [http://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/](http://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/) .

<comment><USER12> He also has some other links to his short stories on his blog:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/online-f...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/online-fiction-by-charles-stro.html)

I believe _A Tall Tail_ could be of interest for the HN crowd:

[http://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall- tail/](http://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My only run-in with Charlie was at YAPC: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPQLKTcJ26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPQLKTcJ26s)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just finished (two hours ago) the latest Laundry novel, The Anihilation Score. Great to read a story from Mo's POV! I'd link to a review, but they are all spoilerific.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for reminding me that it's out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> title should be changed to 'toast (not postgres)'

<comment><USER17> I know you're getting downvoted, but to be totally honest, the first thing I thought of was postgres TOAST tables as well, given the general technical nature of this site.

<comment><USER4> Do we need to address every single possible misunderstanding in every headline? This wasn't a costly errant click and if you did click, the page made itself obvious right away, so this feels like nitpicking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross)</comment>


Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04

<comment><USER2> Duplicate with discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4621560></comment>


First-timer entrepreneur symptoms and cures - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/first-timer-entrepreneur-symptoms-and-cures.html

<comment><USER2> I think the "Symptom: you're about to give up too quickly." should also be followed up with "Symptom: you're sticking with an idea that is dead"

if you had 3,000 people come through your site, without a single sale, it's probably a good idea to try something else.

it's very easy to delude yourself into thinking that you are a hockey stick case. "oh yeah, we've had 2 sales @9.99 this month...but remember the hockey stick...a year later, we'll have 5,000 sales a day!"

if you are going to stick with an idea, you need to have consistent sales that are actually increasing. So that there is an indication that someone actually wants the product you have to offer.

personally I take a 3 step approach to this. 1) get actual people to the site and see if it actually converts(2-3000 people is plenty). Once you find out your starting conversion rate(even if it's 1:2000) 2) then your goal is to scale up so you get decent traffic to the site...100-200 people a day at least. 3) then you start optimizing...run a multivariate a/b test every week with 3-4 variations. Discard the crap and keep the better converting ones. Keep doing this every week, and by the end of the year, you'll go through 100+ different variations, and your 1:2000 conversion rate, will most likely be down to 1:50-1:100.

and with a/b tests you have to test EVERYTHING...don't leave anything to chance. You don't know your audience, until you actually test. You have no idea if you'll get more conversions with "buy" "buy now" "get it" "download it" "order" "order today" "give us your money" "stop being an idiot" or "insert coin"...not until you actually test it. For all you know that "stop being an idiot" order button will increase your sales 10 fold.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad this was pointed out. Doing a startup is definitely like doing a dance. You have to know when to step forward, and when to step sideways and when to step back. Do it at the wrong time and you'll end up in pain.

I know people who give up too quickly on an idea and I know people who stayed too long on an idea. The problem is usually that it's never so binary as to quit or keep going. It's easy to end up in a situation where you've spent 6 months or a year building a product. Over that next year you convince yourself that that NEXT feature is all that's needed for your product to explode. In the meantime you have a handful of users that give you validation that there's value to the idea.

A/B testing would be great but there's also a saying that A/B optimization too early is also a mistake. Time could be better spent understanding product- market fit.

Perhaps, more important than this was mentioned in the blog post:"spend a lot of your time thinking about customer acquisition (for me it's ~50%). Only very rarely will they come on their own early on."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I find most interesting is that no matter how many times these points are brought up or given advice... a person who is just starting out will not take these in until experiencing them first hand, almost in a rite of passage way...

I recall doing every single one of these mistakes, and more. But it only truly registers fully when you actually hit them.

<comment><USER5> Not only that... When it comes to our startup (<http://historio.us>), I (I can only speak for myself) find that a small piece of negative critique, or a new, better funded startup launching that is remotely related to what we do, can lead me to becoming demoralised and think that it's not leading anywhere, even though we've hit 3,000 users in two weeks, have tens of subscribers already, _lots_ of positive feedback from users and even some people asking to invest...

This post was very good for telling people things they might not already know, but which are indispensable. For example, when I'm demoralised, I regularly find myself saying "okay, it might feel bad but in reality people find the service very useful", and then the rational part of my brain kicks in and tells me to keep doing what I'm doing because it's probably worth it...

Many thanks to the author, the post was very encouraging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's very easy to fall for some of those, also if you're not a first timer!

Even big, established companies run by visionary or at least very experienced CEOs seem to get some of those wrong at times, especially the 'you build it, they will come' and 'you're about to give up too quickly'.

Wave and N1 for instance with Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> "You're about to give up quickly" is the hardest thing to judge really. Especially when you're a bootstrapped entrepreneur running out of cash, persistence becomes very tricky.

Would love to hear how fellow bootstrapped HN'ers dealt with such a situation.

<comment><USER5> In our case, we became profitable. When all you need is money to pay for a small server and can get consulting gigs to pay for food, becoming profitable at two weeks (so far so good, anyway) really puts your mind at ease that what you're doing will at least hopefully be self-sustainable.

I realise this is useless advice for most other startups, but hey, spend as little as you can (but not too little), and you're doing the best you can.

<comment><USER7> Yes doing consulting gigs is a great way to fill the coffers and we do that too but strictly speaking it's not your product which is profitable, right?

We are running at very bare costs but our biggest expenses are salaries for ourselves (which in an expensive city like Singapore) can drain your finances pretty quickly.

<comment><USER5> Oh, you misunderstand. The product itself is profitable, it makes more per day than the operating costs. Right now, actually, it makes the monthly operating costs every two days on average. Fingers crossed that this trend will continue.

The consulting gigs are so we can afford food. We aren't getting paid anything, but we don't count our time against expenses...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm going to go out on a limb and say the most important advice you can give someone just starting out, is to just go out and release something.That you are going to make mistakes is almost a given, so why not make them as quickly as possible

</comment><comment><USER9> A quote my father:

"Most ideas with an NDA attached aren't ones worth hearing."

IP is paper armor for most startups - you're advantages are going to come from things related more to execution than any sort of legal ecosystem.</comment>


The Startup Game: How Anywhere.fm is building a hit niche - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.business2.com/startups/2007/08/y-combinator-ko.html

<comment><USER2> Anywhere.fm is really cool...but how do they make money? That's what I'm not really understanding. I don't see any ads or anything...

<comment><USER3> From the article: "While it hopes to incorporate an integrated music store, it's eyeing a potentially more lucrative route - capturing a piece of the $20 bilion radio advertising industry."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now did i not say this. This is one startup product I can honestly say I am jealous of. Boy why did I not think of it? I am gonna start being a hater (lol). Just kidding. Love it. Keep up the good work.

<comment><USER5> So do I. When I first found them I was impressed, it's a wonderful service. I'm a little worried by the copyright issues. But well, for the music industry it's time to realize that their old business plans work no more today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would like to see support for windows sound formats.</comment>


Advertisers Blacklist Hard News, Including Trump, Fearing Backlash - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/advertisers-blacklist-hard-news-including-trump-fearing-backlash-11565879086?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> This is an important trend, but as usual the news people have slanted it to their own benefit: Advertisers are not blacklisting "hard news", they're just fed up with their brands being associated with negative, sensationalist reporting.

These types of blacklists are _good_ , especially if they ideally force media companies to drop the emotional clap-trap and get back to proper reporting and journalism.

Media has always been manipulative, but it's become incredibly heightened in the deathmatch for eyeballs and ad clicks. If the ad-buying companies continue this pushback, perhaps the media companies will start reporting the news in a more neutral & factual way.

<comment><USER2> Yup interesting trend. The real story is the public has made this happen.

Given the kind of cut throat competition that exists, Marketing manager don't really get "fed up". They are more focused on hitting their weekly numbers, than on where the numbers come from. It's all the screen grabs and naming and shaming on social media that makes them notice and change tack.

I see the public pressure getting more organized and targeted in future.</comment></comment>


Air Canada Reports $1,75B Net Loss, Confirms 20k Job Cuts - <AUTHOR> https://kokpitherald.com/air-canada-reports-operating-loss-of-15-billion/ <comment><USER2> AC makes a lot of money on overprices US Canada flights, so the virus resurgence in the US really hurts.</comment>


Blog Or Get Off The Pot (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/blog-or-get-off-pot.html <comment><USER2>
       "Blog entries should be organized by popularity, not time. Or ideally, you can
        pick either one. Why the hell don't blogs do that?"

Voting on good or bad articles for a blog? This is a good idea.

       "For instance, I want inline comments. Putting everyone's comments at the
        end is pretty lame. Even worse, most blog packages these days don't even
        seem to have Slashdot-style threaded commenting. Instead, the comments
        are ordered chronologically, just like the entries."

Comments along the side, remarking on the story as it goes? This is a good idea.

       "And I want versions. I want to make changes to my entries sometimes --
        heck, frequently. But that's culturally weird, and feels dishonest to me,
        because I've sort-of permanently overwritten the old version"

Diffs? This is a good idea.

       "All that revision-history stuff complicates the commenting, of course; each
        comment has to keep metadata about which blog revision it was talking
        about. It's even more complicated if you have versioned comments, so
        users can go back and fix their typos or change their minds."

This is a good extension of the previous idea.

       "When I go into Firefox, I want to be able to override every single
        configuration option on a per-page basis, or even better, with url pattern-
        matching rules. Doesn't that seem just patently obvious?"

... uhm. Well 4 in a row aint bad.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty sad that, 7 years later, all these good ideas still haven't been incorporated into any mainstream web publishing tool in a coherent way.

The closest we have to inline comments is the Google Docs interface and StackOverflow uses and exposes revisions, but neither has a self-hosted version.

<comment><USER4> The suggested commenting system was sorta implemented by Microsoft a long time ago (IE5?). Internet Explorer had a plugin called "Discussions" or "Discuss" or something to that effect. It let you have comment threads on any webpage, without involving the actual site.

I'm not sure if there was a public service, or it was more of an Intranet type thing. I do recall seeing the Discuss button in IE much later then IE5, and a quick search shows plenty of people asking what it is, so it mustn't have been too obscure a feature.

<comment><USER5> Google had that too. Can't remember what it was called though.

<comment><USER6> Google Sidewiki?

<comment><USER5> There you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article isn't about blogging software. To me, it was about the challenges of starting any project. Whenever I have an idea, I find that implementing that idea produces a fractal of ideas for how to make that implementation easier -- I always want a blogging platform that "just does this bit automatically", or I want my development tools to behave exactly the way I want them to, which ends up hindering my actual doing of the damn thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Unrelated comment directed at @martinced who commented on this page: you have been hellbanned, all your comments from the past 3 days are marked as dead even though they are (as far as I can judge) relevant and thought out.

<comment><USER9> Since the point of hellbanning is to not let the afflicted in on it, is it frowned upon to inform others of such status?

<comment><USER10> If people are actually contributing, letting them know that they have been hellbanned is good for the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _You shouldn't have to go to Reddit to get a decent directory of my blog. Anyway, you can't; anything that makes it onto Digg or Reddit or del.icio.us is mixed in with everything else, and gets bumped down into oblivion by stuff that's newer and/or better._

Actually you can "unmix" it:

<http://www.reddit.com/domain/steve-yegge.blogspot.com/top/>

I know this is a far cry from what he's asking for, but it's still damn useful.

</comment><comment><USER12>
       "For instance, I want inline comments. Putting everyone's comments at the
        end is pretty lame. Even worse, most blog packages these days don't even
        seem to have Slashdot-style threaded commenting. Instead, the comments
        are ordered chronologically, just like the entries."

Isn't this what Rap Genius does?

<comment><USER13> I may misunderstand, but it seems that rap genius has a specific type of annotation (ie best explanation rather than comment-thread). I think the OP's suggestion is more similar to how soundcloud does comments.

<comment><USER12> It's essentially a threaded HTML-box overlay for a certain part of text. I think that's how you would implement such a system, isn't it? Just because RG uses it for explanations doesn't mean that it can't be used for exposition/comments. In fact, I think that when RG blogged on their problems with Heroku, this is the style that they used.

<comment><USER13> if all you meant was text-overlay, then yes. in fact, lot's of sites do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't checked it out in detail, but Jeff Atwood's 'Discourse' (<http://www.discourse.org/>) does seem to have some of this stuff. It's a forum, but I wonder if it could be used as a blog.

And although I agree that the prevalent blogging software could use some lovin', but I hardly think it is as broken as the article seems to imply.

</comment><comment><USER15> His points make me think of Google Wave. I find myself missing the wave all the time, and the competing products xxx don´t come close.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure about the emphasis on commenting features on a blog. It might be for the best if blogs did not support comments at all, at least in a ideal world. Instead replies would be composed in the commenters personal blog, and some kind of trackback link system would connect the blog-posts together.

</comment><comment><USER17> From the comments:

> Keep an eye on ycombinator's infogami. The creator has strong ties to the > reddit crew and is probably pretty well placed to realise your redditblogiki > idea.

RIP Aaron.</comment>


Show HN: Gauntlet - the glove keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://gauntletkeyboard.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks really interesting as a hardware hack, you should consider adding a longer demo video.

I don't think that even with extended use i could type faster with this glove than using the standard on screen keyboard, do you guys have any data on how fast you managed to type using your glove ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We literally finished the prototype yesterday, so I can't give you a figure as to how fast we can type on it. We laid the keys out so the most used letters in the English alphabet are placed in easy to reach spots. But even after a few hours of use, I'm already remembering the keymap and was able to type with one hand without looking at the glove, which is something you can't really do with an on screen keyboard.

I can report back later when I get more used to the glove.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great to see more people exploring the world of wearable interfaces. How does it compare to existing gloves like the Peregrine? ( <http://theperegrine.com> )

<comment><AUTHOR> With Google's Project Glass, we are even more inspired to finish Gauntlet. One problem I see with Project Glass is complex input such as typing when voice is not an option. That's when a wearable keyboard interface could come in handy (no pun intended).

The Peregrine actually only has an USB interface, so you are essentially tethered to your computer and cannot use it with your phone\tablet or anything else. It is marketed as a gaming device, which limits the amount of possible inputs. I don't think you can replicate the entire keyboard with the Peregrine, which GAUNTLET could easily do. My hope is to have the comercial version (if pursued) of GAUNTLET to look as aesthetic as, if not better than, the Peregrine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would love to participate in a Kickstarter or something for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since our design uses really inexpensive parts (resistor arrays) to solve a relatively complex problem, we don't need that much funding, so I'm not sure if Kickstarter would be necessary. Although I'm not entirely familiar with Kickstarter. Are there any other benefits besides the money?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Haven't seen a bunch of hardware hacks on HN, so I figured I would share our project!

<comment><USER5> Got a video of the glove in action? It's hard to understand how it works (though I can guess).

<comment><USER6> The main image is actually a video that you can watch. It seems to work by pinching your thumbs against various parts of your other fingers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ridiculous Gigs - <AUTHOR> http://ridiculousgigs.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> It is not surprising that people turn to exaggeration in order to stand out amongst the hundreds of other basically identical posts. For example all the $1 price and keyword spam in the forsale section.</comment>


Ask HN: Is joining an early stage startup a good way to change industry? - <AUTHOR> I'm a senior developer and I want to break into a certain field. I can stay within my own industry and get paid very well, or I have a chance to join a seed funded start up, learn a lot of the things I want to learn, but with less than half the pay.<p>For a senior developer in his late 30s, is joining a early stage startup a good way to change industry? <comment><USER2> the devil is in the details. look at the pros and cons and the odds of various scenarios.

if you can afford to take the chance, you might not get another.

the down side you lose out on a lot of money and have a hard time getting another job in your old industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, if I don't even care about if the company takes off or not, I just want to learn something hands on, is it still worth it? as a senior developer, would you be able to learn more in a early stage startup than a late stage start up or established company?

<comment><USER2> completely different animals. I've never worked at a tech startup but I've started a small business before.

HR -> you. Desktop support -> you. Sales/Marketing -> you etc.

Not sure if you've checked this out before but pretty interesting

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLBji0k2qoPLoXyO8Tlgy...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLBji0k2qoPLoXyO8TlgyQ8FhxX7u4Auc)</comment></comment></comment>


Snickers: Open Source HTTP API for Media Encoding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flavioribeiro.com/snickers-open-source-api-for-media-encoding/ <comment><USER2> In the long term, do you think Go will be a good pick compared to any other language with better bindings or even C/C++?</comment>


Van Gogh paintings stolen from Amsterdam found in Italy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37516164 <comment><USER2> Van Gogh is most known for his painting, but he also created drawings. For example, he drew a pen and ink version of _Starry Night_ [1]. I particularly like _Windmills at Montmartre_ [2]. I think it'd be easy to argue his talent and skill carry over into his drawing.

I say all this to quote him writing to his brother: "I cannot tell you how happy I am that I have taken up drawing again. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but always considered it impossible and beyond my abilities." [3]

[1] [http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/1574/Starry- Ni...](http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/1574/Starry-Night.html)

[2] [http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/1729/Windmills...](http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/1729/Windmills- at-Montmartre.html)

[3] [http://www.vangoghgallery.com/drawings/](http://www.vangoghgallery.com/drawings/)

</comment><comment><USER3> >> We don't yet know how the clan got hold of them, nor whether its members had been planning to sell the works on the international black market.

Over the last several decades, stolen masterpieces are thought to have become a form of currency, collateral, amongst certain crime families. Those in possession probably had no intention on ever selling these paintings. Nor would they display them. The paintings are a commodity to be traded hidden and traded within a narrow circle of families. Perhaps decades later they may be sold off on a black market, but more likely they would be kept in perpetual darkness as are those taken in the legendary Gardner museum theft.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum_theft#Leads)

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like it would be a great movie plot.

<comment><USER5> Roof entry with hammers? Doesn't sound too riveting.

<comment><USER6> I think the idea is smashing. :-)

I took a cinema class at USC (one of my non-engineering credits) and it deconstructed the 'heist movie' in such a way that took a lot of the fun out of them. When the heist location plays the antagonist you get a sort of MI-5 movie, when the heist location is a simple smash and grab it plays the part of connecting the protagonist to the the antagonist. In this case it sounds like there was a long drawn out investigation so it would be the latter, with the story being the ups and downs of the investigating team tracking the painting post theft.

<comment><USER4> Where does _To Catch a Thief_ fit into the heist movie ontology? That's basically what I was thinking of when I wrote the post.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Silicon Valley Stocks Are Down, Why Are Home Prices Up? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/22/if-silicon-valley-stocks-are-down-why-are-home-prices-up/

<comment><USER2> Stock price is based on speculation. And these days it's not even speculation about the future performance of the company but instead it's speculation about what other investors are going to be willing to pay for a share.

"$76b in wealth disappeared" is a dumb statement. Speculative value is not wealth any more than fantasy football wins the superbowl ring.

It didn't disappear, that money failed to transfer from someone who has the cash to someone who had the stock.

The first dotcom bubble was fueled in part by opening up the stock market to new users through IRA and 401k accounts, and through direct, low cost brokers like Schwab and ETrade. A huge amount of money went into the stock market that historically had gone into bank savings accounts.

Where's the money supposed to come from these days to fulfill fantasy valuations?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Incredible stat:

"Facebook is one of the greatest consumer Internet companies of our generation, but for the time being the company is trading at half its IPO price. Groupon and Zynga, also titans of the industry, have been in free-fall since their last earnings call, now down more than 80 percent from their peak. $76 billion in wealth disappeared from those three companies alone — enough to buy every home that sold in Silicon Valley this year nine times over."</comment>


George Orwell and the whiff of genius - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/george-orwell-and-the-whiff-of-genius/ <comment> why-el Witty, but a bit contrived I think. Perhaps the book has more to say, but I was not convinced by the suggested Freudian interpretation.

Another example of a writer with a good sense of smell I think is John Steinbeck, whose first few paragraphs in Cannery Row is a marvel of the literary whiff, even without much description of the smells themselves. [1]

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=CQmjRCj- LNsC&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=CQmjRCj- LNsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER2> Has the line "Inside Orwell's Nose a slim volume called 'Orwell's Dick' is wildly signalling to be let out." which is both brilliant and clumsy at the same time, a hard combination to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER3> Low latent inhibition.</comment>


Quick Nexus 7 Comments By Linus Torvalds - oscar-the-horse https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/Qj5WnLJXLXX <comment><AUTHOR> > I prefer the plain android look, and dislike the various skins manufacturers > have used (I really don't understand the "pee in the snow" model of skinning > android to look and act horrible just so that the different manufacturers > can make their mark on it - I'm pretty sure the majority of people tend to > prefer plain android).

Tablet and smartphone manufacturers are doing this because they are trying to differentiate their devices. With the Android OS (along with Android apps) and the hardware converging to a dominant design (ARM-based processors, similar form factor), tablets will become commodities (Armdroid). Competitors will be forced to compete on price. Their margins will collapse.

This is what happened in the PC market. With the Wintel standard, PC manufacturers had little opportunity to differentiate their products. The OS and CPU are identical, as are the internal components and peripherals. What's left? The color of the case? Fingerprint readers? Ultimately, PC manufacturers were all forced to compete on price. As a result, while Intel and Microsoft earned margins in the double digits, PC manufacturers' margins were squeezed to the low single digits.

<comment><USER2> Why don't manufacturers compete on quality instead?

I can walk into a store and see the Apple computers on one side and the Windows computers on the other. All the Apple computers look and feel beautiful, but the Windows computers are plastered with stickers and 'Beats by Dr Dre' branding. They're made out of what looks like the cheapest plastic ever. I can understand why Apple is absolutely killing it at the moment - it's because everything else is shit.

<comment><USER3> Lenovo certainly does compete on quality, it just aims for a different set of quality seekers.

Apple targets people who want their computer to look pretty. Lenovo targets the people who want to get stuff done.

Want to quickly scroll through a document? page up/page down/home/end buttons? Lenovo's got it. Want to change the volume easily and still have access to f1-f12? Lenovo's got dedicated buttons for it. Spill your drink? There's a good chance your drink harmlessly poured out through holes in the bottom (damaging at most the keyboard).

Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first runs out. Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you want a new HD/etc.

Combine this with great linux support [1] and Lenovo is a clear win for me.

[1] At work we have macbook pros, getting it to work with linux was a disaster.

<comment><USER4> > Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first > runs out. Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you > want a new HD/etc.

This is one of the biggest factors for me in getting a PC laptop over a MacBook. When I buy a ThinkPad, I intend to keep it for 5 years. My friends with MacBooks all replace them every 2-3 years.

> Combine this with great linux support [1] and Lenovo is a clear win for me.

This is another big factor. I tell anyone who's interested in Linux that the best laptop for Linux is a ThinkPad. Everything works flawlessly out of the box.

<comment><USER5> the linux thing is not universally true.

i have installed a few different distros on my w500 over the years, and it runs hot every time. the ati drivers suck, the os can't seem to control the fans properly, and switchable graphics don't work. tried with opensuse years ago, and ubuntu a few times more recently.

i imagine it's better with a nvidia card, and no switchable graphics.

<comment><USER6> T400 here with same results - with Ubuntu (12.04) it is hotter than with W7, switchable graphics does not work (works in Intel X4500 mode).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's my very quick, nitpicking Nexus 7 review (had mine delivered last Wednesday):

\- It's a tiny tiny bit too heavy to hold comfortably. It feels like just a few grams would make the difference.

\- The battery life is fantastic. I've used it for hours and hours and it's still on 80-90%.

\- Android 4.1 is fast and efficient. I don't notice any difference in speed or usability from an iPad 2.

\- The screen has an incredible resolution. Some text is slightly too small to read comfortably.

\- (Not that it matters at all but ...) the box it came in was as hard to open as many people have said.

\- I bought GTA III with part of the "free" £15 credit and it's a piece of crap. I haven't even managed to play the game yet because it keeps crashing while downloading half a gig of data files. So I'll be finding out how well refunds work in the Google Play store.

Overall: well worth the money.

<comment><USER8> i am not sure why everyone is feeling that it is hard to open the box. there were 2 tapes on the box, which I cut with my room keys and everything was fine, it wasn't hard. Is it just me that feels everyone is just too idiotic when it comes to opening boxes?

<comment><USER9> Myself and my wife had absolutely no problem sliding it out of it's sleeve and then slicing the 2 tabs with a knife and lifting the top off.

Only thing i can think of, is maybe there was a defective batch of boxes that were slightly too tight? The complaints I had been reading for days definitely confused me once I got it and opened it with ease.

<comment><USER10> In recent memory, I haven't needed a knife to open an apple box easily. (Not counting brown outer shipping boxes.)

<comment><USER8> he cut open a tape with a knife. if you have nails, you can take off the tape with it, but I bite my nails, so I had to use my keys, and it's easier to do it with cut tape along a crevice anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Completely OT, but I'm really starting to like G+. I deactivated my FB account (reactivated because of a girl--go figure), and found myself browsing G+ for the first time in months. I was shocked by the difference in content quality. My FB newsfeed is full of inane posts by family and a few friends, whereas my G+ feed is almost a reddit/HN replacement. Quite impressed, although I don't see it replacing FB simply due to the family and distant friend aspect.

<comment><USER12> "whereas my G+ feed is almost a reddit/HN replacement"

any suggestions for people like Linus who post well and often to G+ publicly?

<comment><USER13> You should probably do a Google search for what you have in mind. Since Google allowed "sharing circles", much like sharing lists on Twitter, a lot of people have shared their "tech circles" or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's actually a really well done short review. It was well paced, and he did a good job of not just sharing his opinions, but explaining them so that I could tell if they would apply to me or not.

<comment><USER15> This is a actually a great, succinct review of Linus' short review. Short, compact and does a nice job explaining the components that will make the review helpful to readers.

<comment><USER14> For some reason, my lame throwaway comment got more karma than any of my other brilliant and insightful comments on HN. Maybe I just said something that lots of people were thinking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _You'd look like a complete dork trying to take photos with a tablet anyway_

"The best camera is the one you have with you" as we say, looking like a dork is irrelevant. The ipad camera is actually usable and if that's what you have in your hand you just take the photo with it. Now I agree at 200$ a super good camera would be asking to much for what seems to be an already very good device.

<comment><USER17> A thousand times my sister has facetimed me from New Zealand laying in her bed, chatting incessantly about her new life as a mother, then all of the sudden she flips the camera (not the iPad) to show me her little angel sleeping in her cradle.

Thanks Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Quick Google+ comment - it crashes Mobile Safari like nothing else. I can't even get to the content here.

<comment><USER19> Crashes Chrome on IOS too, even better.

<comment><USER20> It's the exact same rendering engine, but with the JIT turned off. It's likely to behave the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _But the %^$_ thing still cannot be set to send just plain-text emails. Why, google, why? Good technical mailing lists all know that html email is just spam or marketing people, and auto-delete html crap. Just give me the option to send text-only, ok?*

I have the opposite problem: My Gmail app only sends in plain text, and I have no way to change that on my Galaxy Nexus. Perhaps it's taking the default from my web Gmail sessions?

<comment><USER22> I don't have a problem, I never need to send HTML emails on my 2.3.6 Gingerbread phone with atrocious battery life (thanks, Samsung!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> His comment about 10-inch tablets being too big got my attention.

I am in the market for a tablet that I am going to replace my dead Sony e-reader(6 inch I think). But i think the 7-inch ones are just too small for reading. Has anyone tried to compare both sizes?

I am mainly interested in using it for reading tech books and the occasional email. Currently leaning towards a transformer.

<comment><USER24> for reading fiction, ~7" tablets or e-readers are the sweet spot. if you're reading technical stuff with diagrams, the ipad really is the best option. a 10" 16:9 screen sucks for anything but movies, you really will appreciate the 4:3 screen.

<comment><USER25> Right on all counts. Fiction on 6 inch e-ink works well - think paperbacks. Technical PDFs need more, and even at the same screen size, really work better on the iPad than on the old Kindle DX.

I also much prefer the 4:3 ratio - the narrow 16:9 devices give you much less area for the same diagonal measure, as this chart accurately points out: <https://twitter.com/trojankitten/status/221270669273468930> (or <http://a.yfrog.com/img615/4234/6j2n.png> for just the image).

Incidentally, the Archos G9-80 is a nice 8 inch Android tablet sporting a 1024x768 screen, currently selling for around 200 euros. I think the rumored mini iPad will be the same form factor.

<comment><USER26> For the ratio _not_ reflecting the actual screen area, IMO, manufacturers should reference screen sizes with four numbers: resolution (e.g. 1920x1080), aspect ratio (e.g. 16:9), and area (e.g. 22 in^2). I would drop the diagonal measurement, as it is completely misleading. I'd be willing to drop the actual resolution in favor of DPI.

As a consumer, you generally want a high DPI screen, with a specific aspect ratio, and a certain amount of screen area. The current spec reporting is not helping people out in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Taking photo and video on a retina iPad is an awesome experience. It is literly the best evf in the world. Being able to see a 1:1 live view of the resolution is amazing for video, and is equally impressive with photos.

</comment><comment><USER28> My main disappointment is with the lack of Flash. Flash is still needed on a lot of websites and every time I've needed it it's a reminder that Adobe has cost Android one of its big advantages over iOS.

<comment><USER29> This just made me realize that Android-users of newer devices may currently be in a worse spot than iOS-users when it comes to lack of Flash-support.

Since iOS has always been shipped without Flash-support, many popular sites target iOS specifically with HTML5-video. Android however, only recently lost support for Flash and is still likely getting the Flash-versions of videos instead of the HTML5 ones.

<comment><USER30> I doubt this is the case since Flash hasn't been bundled with the stock browser in quite some time (if ever, I'm having trouble remembering.) The real world websites I've seen and even worked on just serve HTML5 to both Android and iOS since you can't count on Flash being there for the former, and of course the latter doesn't have it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> my kindle has kind of spoilt me - i know it's unreasonable for a tablet to feel as light in my hand as a kindle, but subconsciously i'm noticing the weight all the time.

<comment><USER32> To be fair, some books can be difficult to hold aloft. The tech will miniturise in time (probably not long either.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm a long time Linux and Android fan, but had no interest in a tablet. I recently had not one, but two Android disliking friends buy a Nexus 7 and one even sold his iPad shortly thereafter. Needless to say, I wound up pulling the trigger.

It's really quite nice how well Android 4 and up work n multiple form factors. This just reconvinces me that there are a host of people that would adopt Android if they gave a more modern version a chance. I took the night off for some drinks and some TV shows and this has been nice to have over my Macbook Air for casual chatting.

<comment><USER9> I'm another linux fan that just did NOT see the appeal to an "oversized phone", and also got burned by how crappy earlier versions of Android were.

I've ignored all the tablets that came out, iPads, Android tablets, all of them... then when I saw this one, I figured "at that price, i'll give it a shot"... I'm SO glad I did. Absolutely loving my Nexus 7, and it has 100% converted me to being a tablet fan.

<comment><USER32> I'd almost buy one. No HDMI out, no SDMicro slot, and no USB support, has put me off until the next thing better comes along. I'm annoyed that Google has crippled this device.

<comment><USER34> Same here, I wanted to buy one then found out it had no USB device support.

<comment><USER35> Hu? It has USB support - get an OTG adapter.

It won't mount USB Flash drives out of the box, but that's why you root it and install stickmount.

<comment><USER34> My Nexus One phone let me install a 32 Gig chip, no root needed. Which reminds me, why would I want a tablet that even in the largest storage size is still 1) half the storage my Google phone has and 2) fixed, can't add larger chips or use an external usb device without rooting the phone?

I think Google is trying to force feed us using them as the cloud since people aren't buying Chromebook paperweights in the numbers they had hoped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Linus, man... the number of people who auto delete html emails is on the same order as the number of people who disable javascript or run desktop linux and don't know how to program.

<comment><USER37> He has a good technical reason for not liking html mail, but the number of people who care about this are vanishingly small and a device maker doesn't really need to care about them. There'll be an app to come along soon I imagine.

<comment><USER22> It's not the device-maker, it's a fault of the GMail app.

Ironic.

The people who would know and care about this stuff are exactly the kind of people who would have wrote the app: programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > You'd look like a complete dork trying to take photos with a tablet anyway.

Wow, I just got called a dork by linus. This is going on my resume.</comment>