One year later - <AUTHOR> https://eev.ee/blog/2016/06/12/one-year-later/ <comment><USER2> Fun read - after finishing that I went back and read the post from a year ago ("I quit the tech industry") that the author is now providing an update on. In it they wrote the following:

"I spent much of April and May increasingly grumpy and withdrawn and on edge. Weekends and evenings have become even less useful, instead being clogged by a sense of paralyzing dread that I'm wasting fleeting time if I'm not doing ten amazing things at once. I've foregone trivial maintenance like cleaning junk off my desk because I don't feel like I have 20 minutes to spare. I stay up hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going back to work.

(I hate dread. What a completely useless emotion. Let's just stop doing anything, and feel bad about something that hasn't happened yet, and also feel bad about not doing anything because we're too busy feeling bad. This will definitely improve anything in any way.)"

I suppose I always knew in the abstract that others felt this way, but reading it from someone else like this was comforting.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if _dread_ is the right word for it. I've always associated feelings of dread with knowing (or fearing) something is going to happen that will be terrible. You can certainly dread going to your job, but that weird state of limbo--where you do absolutely nothing because you simultaneously are avoiding something but also are feeling guilty for avoiding it--always felt like a different animal to me. Then again, I've never had a good word to describe it, so who knows.

<comment> dino-neil That describes it quite well.

That empty feeling where you have so much to do, but you end up just ticking over without any ambition or drive.

How do I fix?

<comment><USER4> In Indian metaphysics, this state of mind is called "rajas", which arises from a mind frenzied by self centred desires. It is characterised by desire ridden action which lacks a goal beyond the elevation of the actor.

It is compared and contrasted with tamas (lethargy/sloth) and satva (equanimity and poise).

You should check out the Vedanta Treatise[0] if you're interested further.

Disclaimer: studied Vedanta under the author in India.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Vedanta-Treatise-Eternities- Parthasar...](https://www.amazon.com/Vedanta-Treatise-Eternities- Parthasarathy-ebook/dp/B00I8D4ZFM)

<comment><USER5> What was that experience of studying Vedanta like? I'm currently in India trying to learn more about Indian philosophy and spirituality and I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER4> I spent 3 years at the Vedanta Academy[0]. The experience was life changing, mostly ineffable.

If you pushed me, I'd say that it provided me with a solid set of first principles from which value judgements could be made. It seems like I was 'living randomly' before.

If you're interested, check out this talk[1] by the author. Then if you'd like to visit the Academy you could shoot a mail to email@example.com

[0] www.vedantaworld.org

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSX7WIdt2E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSX7WIdt2E)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >I spent much of April and May increasingly grumpy and withdrawn and on edge. Weekends and evenings have become even less useful, instead being clogged by a sense of paralyzing dread that I'm wasting fleeting time if I'm not doing ten amazing things at once. I've foregone trivial maintenance like cleaning junk off my desk because I don't feel like I have 20 minutes to spare. I stay up hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going back to work.

I'm sorry the author wasn't able to get things done while in the `dread`. I've got an alternative perspective.

I like working on multiple stuff. I see the day job as one of the several projects I work on.

I've worked on projects, squeezing my brain through the longest span it can, on one single project and also the exact opposite - juggling focus spans between a few projects, when one gets too vague.

I'd say the latter worked best for me in terms of

#1. Getting stuff done.

#2. The satisfaction of being productive.

Time management is the key.

#1. Wake up early and start the day early. This would make your daytime extensive enough to accommodate several slots.

#2. Remember Parkinson's law. Put extra concentration while on the day job, so that you can wrap up early. Don't do this with dread. Consider the job as working on one of several projects, with a larger team, than those of your other projects. This has helped me overcome the feeling of helplessness.

#3. Side projects need not be hackathons. One meaningful commit, made everyday will take it a long way. Read [http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every- day/](http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/). So stop worrying about not doing much on a specific day. On the contrast, worry if you haven't been consistent in committing code everyday.

<comment><USER7> > Wake up early and start the day early

This isn't important if you're a night person. We all sleep roughly 8 hours, it doesn't matter what time you wake up or what time you go to sleep. I find the night to be very peaceful, and I get a lot done.

</comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong This was a really cool read. I had seen some eev.ee tweets before but I didn't know that they had a year away from a desk job.

I did something similar. I left my job last year and built [https://github.com/quiet](https://github.com/quiet) which was an incredibly fun project (end plug). I can empathize with eev.ee's fear of building something nobody uses :)

I'd love to see more stories about people quitting and doing something somewhat unconventional.

<comment><USER8> I remember Quiet! It's really cool, +1 to that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel the way she does. My highlight from this post:

"At worst, no one ever uses it, and I have nothing to show for the time. Even at best, well… let's just say the way programmers react to technical work is very different from the way everyone else reacts to creative work."

<comment><USER10> >the way programmers react to technical work is very different from the way everyone else reacts to creative work.

That's not specific to programmers. I bet technical experts in other fields react similarly to works in their fields. I mean, ask any science PhD if they feel _their_ work is appreciated.

It's not a programming thing, it's a laymen vs experts thing. Laymen are easy to impress. I can practice juggling for an afternoon and impress my friends. Circus professionals will be _less impressed_.

If you want to optimize for recognition from your laymen friends, there's a sweet spot where your work is both legible to laymen and advanced enough that it looks like magic. Games fall in that category. (Consumer software generally does.)

But if you go too far past that, or pick an arcane sub-field, your work is only legible at all to other experts, who understand how magic works, and who think they could have done it twice better in half the time.

tl;dr if you want to impress people, build _really nice bikesheds_ , not highly optimized, cost efficient electric turbines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really enjoyed the article. It touches on some key points for me, like not having enough time (oh what a special snowflake I am).

I enjoy life the most when I am not beholden to anyone else's schedule, and can take the time to notice the small good/bad things happening to me every day without getting stressed (this is after all what fills most of my life, and forcibly suppressing it, saying only productive time counts, adds a lot of tension) . I feel like this is very taxing and difficult to do after a long day at the office, but I know my quality of life would greatly increase if I could either see life in this way, or have more time available to fall into this rhythm.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not really "quitting tech" as in working on some different industry, but more like story about how the guy stopped working as an employee/in a traditional job. He cashed his stock options from Yelp and lives on that, but still is working on many projects that I would call tech (games etc).

<comment><USER13> "quitting tech" usually means severing ties with the valley.

working in tech anywhere else in the world is nowhere near what it's like working in tech in the valley.

<comment><USER14> Never having worked "in tech" (as in the valley) but in tech outside, I feel like it's not very interesting reading about someone who working in the valley not working in the valley anymore.

It would be many times more interesting reading about someone actually quitting tech as in moving away from the technology sector (not the silicon valley one, the anywhere else one)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I persuaded Eevee to live stream while making some DOOM maps. It was very fun to watch.

Thanks Eevee! :)

<comment><USER16> That sounds interesting. Are the recorded videos up anywhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've come already a long time ago to the conclusion that writing libraries (as opposed to writing applications) is a task best reserved for those who are:

a) too stupid to understand how crap their library interface/implementations are

b) super smart and can get it right the first time

c) people with endless time to work on their libs (and then recode their apps that dependend on their libs)

These days I'm trying very hard to avoid the compulsive disorder of library writing and just write applications.

</comment><comment><USER18> It might seem highly critical, but the things he worked on seemed rather dull to me. I suppose if i did the same what i would choose to do may be dull to others too.

<comment><USER19> If I were to quit my job, the things I would turn my attention to would be insufferably, oppressively boring to almost everyone.

<comment><USER18> I would probably try to do a startup. I guess that isn't quite the same as quitting though, just replacing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can't identify with that person at all.

Some adult guy preferring to draw pokemon avatars and doing some small things without value over more or less challenging things.

I prefer working on stuff which make sense in some way and i don't get much enjoyment out of little strange things i do/did. I deleted also a lot of stuff because they were bad/worthless. Blog articles, images, 2 small games, small code repositories.

But at the end everyone decides for themselves what meaning they give there lives.

A normal/good paying job is a least for me quite relevant: Family, nice house and having enough money when i retire. Sounds boring, probably is but i gave up my illusion of becoming a great indie game developer or <other dream>.

I'm good in my job after all.

<comment><USER21> Apples and oranges I guess. I'm good at my job, but I would rather quit to draw avatars, make games, and doing things that could change something without the prerequisite of making money. "Value" is a deeply personal thing, isn't it?

I really identify with that person.

<comment><USER20> I do believe that a lot of people would prefer that but as long as we are in a socity were we need money, we don't do it and we can't.

But besides that, i do also believe that those people creating the good stuff, are not the avg person just doing it for fun. A lot of people can draw, take really good pictures, make movies and games but most of it is not good enough.

I'm sure that i'm not one of those and it gives me at least pleasure to build something substantial like a house.

<comment><USER22> You seem to have pretty strong opinions about how other people should live their lives.

How is that working out for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Basically the author didn't earn any money aside from the money from Patreon?

Earning money on Patreon doesn't mean you're doing good things, but only that you know how to sell your own image as a brand. Am I correct?

<comment><USER24> The Dwarf Fortress authors set up their Patreon[1] a while ago, haven't updated it much since, and is giving them 4K per month, so... I guess that if you want to throw some money regularly at some project it's one of your best options, regardless of the author's ability to sell the brand.

[1]: [https://www.patreon.com/bay12games](https://www.patreon.com/bay12games)

<comment><USER25> That's well within what they were making in donations per month prior to using Patreon, though. They already had the support, they just added another interface.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, and they were doing that well before automatic online monthly payments were a thing!! People actually took some minutes every month to send them money.

But, to the point, it's not like you could accuse the Zach bros of "selling their own image as a brand". They just have this thing they are making, a healthy relationship with the community (but nothing histrionic like your average youtuber), and people just gives them money because they want them to continue making that thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but isn't the post basically saying that short-term gratification and procrastination feels nicer, so that's what he focused on? Not that I am any better, but that's not something I'm proud of.

</comment><comment><USER27> Classic case of Career FOMO [https://rachsmith.com/2016/career- fomo](https://rachsmith.com/2016/career-fomo)

<comment><USER28> Maybe, but I feel like that's abstracting it a little too far. There's nuance in both articles that a simple grass-is-greener mentality evaluation misses. For example, the author states feeling a prolonged sense of dread/exhaustion with regards to work. That's not a fear of missing out. That's an error state. Something is wrong, and needs to be addressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I nominate this for the most useless headline ever to make the HN front page. Should have been: "One-year followup after quitting my job" or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER30> What is this blog about exactly? I don't wanna read his whole life's story. I do like the name of the website though.

<comment><USER31> Also, it's her life story.

<comment><USER32> Really? The only gendered reference I can find on the site is from 2012 and self-describes as a dude.

<comment><USER33> On Twitter it says "she/etc" (but perhaps it really doesn't matter): [https://twitter.com/eevee](https://twitter.com/eevee)

<comment><USER32> I'm sure it doesn't matter, I just had a mental-model that eevee was a he, and hadn't seen anything to counter that!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git v2.7.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/670188/ <comment><AUTHOR>
        Users who are too busy to type three extra keystrokes to ask for
        "git stash show -p" can now set stash.showPatch configuration
        variable to true to always see the actual patch, not just the list
        of paths affected with feel for the extent of damage via diffstat.

Best change this release. :)</comment>


Show HN: Export Birthdays from Facebook to Google Cal - <AUTHOR> http://birthdayblob.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I whipped up in the last couple days. I know the landing page does an awful job of explaining what the app does, so if you have suggestions about that (or anything on the site), it would be appreciated :)</comment>


Patients' Symptoms Raise Concern About Ebola in New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/health/patient-at-mount-sinai-has-ebola-like-symptoms-hospital-says.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Update: Man Most likely does NOT have Ebola but they are still testing him/waiting for tests to come back.

"A New York City hospital is examining a sick patient who recently returned from a West African country where the deadly Ebola virus has been spreading, but authorities said it's unlikely that the man has Ebola."

[http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/New-York-City- Hospital-...](http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/New-York-City-Hospital- Examines-Man-Travel-West-Africa-Symptoms- Ebola-269878301.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_NYBrand)

<comment><USER3> The HN title is linkbaity (and editorialized). The original is better:

 _" Patients' Symptoms Raise Concern About Ebola in New York"_

Which is true, and still interesting. At this point, I wouldn't bet against the disease showing up in an international city, and it's nice to know the state of things.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't editorialized. The NYT changed their title. You can still see the original in the URL.

We've followed suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand the cause for concern. But I can not think of a single time i've had a virus that did not involve a fever, stomach problems, and or a headache.

<comment><USER2> But how many times have you had a flu where you bleed out of your orifices? Me.... none.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One child a minute dies from Malaria. [http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/malaria_facts/...](http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/malaria_facts/en/index2.html)

<comment><USER7> And that sucks, and we need to do more there... but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to pay additional attention to things that are more likely to present a direct threat to me.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/facts.html](http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/facts.html)

You are far more likely to be infected by malaria than ebola. Ebola is scary and makes for great news that draws lots of attention -- but it is largely sensational and not truthfully something you need to rationally fear, unless you work with infected individuals.

<comment><USER7> No. Based solely on rates in the past, rather than any sort of projection into the future, I'm incredibly unlikely to be likely to be infected by either (note from your link, that of the <2k/yr of malaria in the US we see "almost all in recent travelers").

 _If_ I am infected by either, I am overwhelmingly more likely to survive a bout of malaria.

And during an _unusual_ outbreak (which is the case for ebola at present), looking simply at past incidence will underestimate my risk.

It's _still_ probably not a _high_ risk, and there are higher risks (which I try to pay _more_ attention), but I don't think it's wrong to say it poses a greater threat _to me_ (or to the overwhelming majority on this site) than does malaria.

<comment><USER9> Actually it is very difficult to place any risk estimate on ebola (or any other new viral strain) as we don't really know much about it.

Imagine that it is 1918 again and someone was trying to make a prediction of the likelihood of influenza becoming a deadly pandemic that would kill 100 million people over the next 18 months. They would look at the past history of influenza and say there is a negligible risk of this happening. Of course now since we know that influenza can become very serious we keep our eyes on it, but for something like ebola we really know very little.

<comment><USER7> Based on previous outbreaks of _things generally_ I think it's most likely to be correct that this outbreak is also of low risk to the US population at large. Which is _not_ to say that there's not a tremendously high value of information - the next thing we learn _could_ change that (and again, probably won't, but...). I think it does make sense to be paying some attention as random individuals, and more attention as health workers or CDC employees, and I think it is probably still the case that my drive home is more likely to kill me (but I pay a lot of attention to my drive home!).

<comment><USER9> Humans tend to overestimate the danger of apparent low probability, high impact events (like pandemic ebola) and underestimate the risks involved in mundane events (like driving a car).

Given how infrequent pandemics occur, a better way to judge the risks involved would be to take a much long term view and try to measure the risk of a major pandemic occurring in your lifetime. When you look at the history of plagues over the last 2500 years they are infrequent, but common enough that we can get some handle on the risk. My very rough calculations based on past pandemic frequencies and death rates put the risk at around 1 in 1000 of being killed by a pandemic sometime during your lifetime. This is not huge, but at the same time it is not trivial.

Edit. I added the word apparent to the "…danger of…" as I realise that my wording is confusing without it.

<comment><USER7> You seem to have approximately restated what I said. That's fine, but it's best to note that that's your intent...

<comment><USER9> Not really, well not by intent :)

I might have worded it better, but pandemics are actually one of those areas that people get the risks wrong for the opposite reason than usual. While pandemics are considered low frequency, high risk events and so over-worried about, they are actually relatively frequent events on a historical time scale and are not worried about as much as they should be. They are really more in the car crash category not the stuck by lightning category, but we get complacent because a big one has not happened in living memory (unless you count HIV).

<comment><USER7> Ah, yeah, that _is_ a bit of a different angle on it. Truth be told, I'm not sure whether or not we're underrating the risk. On the one hand, increased travel and population density should see faster spread.

On the other hand we have a lot of changes in our favor: understanding how diseases are spread (starting with germ theory, all the way up through population models), understanding how many more diseases are treated, an astoundingly better ability to communicate, probably a better ability to coordinate...

I don't know how it nets out. The streak we've had should be taken as some evidence that it breaks in our favor. Certainly we should not succumb to the gambler's fallacy, there. However, I think we're well served to keep an eye on things.

<comment><USER9> Yes it is really difficult to know how the two major forces are tipping the likelihood. We have a better understanding of how contagious disease is spread and on average much better immune systems because of better diets (the average person was starving when most plagues struck in the past). Balancing this is as you mention increased travel and much high population densities. You just have to see the spread of a contagious disease through a modern animal feedlot to know what this does. All of this makes it really hard to know which way the risk has changed.

My biggest fear is a pandemic Rhadinovirus since it is airborne, has a long incubation phase and leukaemia is the outcome [1]. Something like a human pathogenic Ateline or Saimiriine herpesvirus could spread through the human population without us knowing until it is too late.

Interestingly, Saimiriine herpesvirus has recently been linked to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis [2]. All it would take is a more pathogenic strain of this virus and we would be in a lot of problems.

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

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050527/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050527/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we dealt with a spam attack on our newsletter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/csivit/how-we-got-37-000-subscriptions-in-2-hours-6fcddb09a658 <comment><USER2> tl;dr

> Something was not right the numbers were too good to be true. My facebook > ads weren't live yet; no way we were getting this amount of organic traffic. > We were under attack.

Edit: title was "How we got 37,000 subscriptions in 2 hours!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Made the title less clickbaity !</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you have personal bots? - <AUTHOR> What do they do? <comment><USER2> I have three GPT-2 bots that hook up to Slack so I can pretend I have coworkers.

One of them is general queries on the latest model, one is Gwern's poetry bot, and the third is trained on toxic/moderated comments and says only sadistic cruel things to me. I don't know why I built the last one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny. Are they open source?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I forked them over onto my github profile. The poetry model is available on Gwern's website.

[https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2)

[https://github.com/odomojuli/slack- gpt2-poetry](https://github.com/odomojuli/slack-gpt2-poetry)

You can train your own GPT-2 bot using minimaxir's GPT2-simple

[https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-simple](https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-simple)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I only run a small one for kicks: it updates my github page with a dummy commit each day. They got rid of streaks, but I still leave it running out of some misplaced sense of sentimentality.

A few years ago, a friend and I built one that would scan twitter for tweets in the vein of "like to win $ITEM" or "RT to win $ITEM." Our bot would automatically perform the requested action, and then text me (via twilio) for each DM and mention we got (so I could manually respond and claim the prize). We didn't disguise it well, and were shut down after about 4 weeks, but it was fun while it lasted! :)

<comment><USER4> What about your prize bot violated Twitter policy?

<comment><USER5> Automated liking/retweeting is not allowed.

<comment><USER6> So why expose it via the API?

<comment><USER7> So apps can do it in reaction to user input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes!! Bots are so fun to make and just have run. Like forever running rube Goldberg's machines :)

For over a year I had a Pi with a camera in a window at my Parents' house that took a photo every 15mins and uploaded to a server of mine. Then I had a mechanism to play back as a video. It was nice to watch the seasons go by while on the other side of the continent. They weren't very good at keeping it plugged in though.... Backend was in Play2/Scala since it was hip at the time and client in Python.

I worked on software for devices mounted on powerlines and had to build that functionality. That inspired me to have my own.

Have a Screeps bot in the top 20. About 40k lines of JS...

Working on a bot that can quickly connect you to a real person at [https://watch.ly](https://watch.ly)

Definitely want to build more. Following this thread for ideas. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> To manage my wife's medication on the correct timeframes I built my own bot. It's connected to our normal day to day messenger channels so it's been nice and convenient. [https://reminderbot.io](https://reminderbot.io)

<comment><USER10> Where do you host your bot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've got a bank account that offers bonus interest if I use the debit card five times within a month. I don't like to use debit cards, so I built a bot that automatically makes five $1 charges to that debit card.

<comment><USER12> Is the bonus interest worth $5/mth?

<comment><USER13> Money can be exchanged for goods and services. Even if you don't use a bot, you could just buy like, 5 things you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a bot that every 30 minutes iterates over every comment on the top 25 posts in Reddit /r/all and replies "Mom's spaghetti" to any comment that contains the string "eminem".

<comment><AUTHOR> How much karma have you gained? ^^

<comment><USER14> Actually I get more downvotes. People don't seem to find it that funny

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a bot that polls my Airtable list of birthdays and if it is someone's birthday, it sends me a push notification via IFTTT at 7am that morning so I can call or text them first thing in the morning.

[https://github.com/hkhanna/birthday_notify](https://github.com/hkhanna/birthday_notify)

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't it be easier to just make a yearly repeating calendar entry with a reminder?

<comment> o-__-o Lol I started doing this two years ago and now I have a reminder for all of my friends, family, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. It really makes a person feel good to send them a text on their bday

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes; several!

I have a Ruby bot running in Lambda that forwards emails in my Gmail inbox that are tagged with a specific label to Expensify automatically. This saves me a LOT of time, especially since Expensify doesn't have this feature yet.

I'm writing another small API on Lambda with Ruby that returns flight info from FlightAware in JSON format so I can use it with Tasker to do things like send travel updates on WhatsApp and log my travel in Google Keep. I do this every time I travel, and while I have a Tasker task that uses the FlightAware JSON at the bottom of the page to achieve this, it's given me stale information several times, which has been annoying.

Up deck on Trello, I want to write another bot that uses my TripIt trips to update my Slack status at work so that people know where I am!

I also have a few Tasker shortcuts that help me during my travels.

The less I have to remember to do, the better!

<comment><USER18> Not a bot, but... you could have TripIt update your Google calendar. Then link Slack to the calendar. It will update your status when in a meeting. Not sure about other statuses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I made a bot that sent me alerts whenever La Resistencia, a Spanish TV show, had tickets available to be in the audience. It is a very popular show and tickets are usually available in their web for less than 5 minutes. I even made an app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.teledhil.la...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.teledhil.laresistencia) It no longer works because they added a recaptcha.

I also have a chat bot based on megahal, a bot that downloads subtitles for my torrent videos. At work I made a bot connected to slack that alerted of some server issues.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wrote a Chrome extension that checks websites for best practices:

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)

It acts like a search bot does and gives SEO advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I use it. Thank you very much

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have an annoying co-worker who constantly haggles me on Slack. I've since made a Slack bot, masquerading as me, who communicates with said co-worker. It's been a life saver.

<comment><USER22> Sounds like a job for Son of Anton

<comment><USER21> Son of Anton can handle anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I built a Reddit daily digest bot. It grabs top posts from each of a pool of subreddits that I'm interested in and send them via email on a daily basis. It's a open source [side project]([https://github.com/jingw222/redditdailybot](https://github.com/jingw222/redditdailybot)).

</comment><comment> o-__-o I wrote a bot that watched twitter for stock symbols and then applied a social sentiment index based on the tone of the tweet. The historical stock quotes were downloaded, and the stock was added to a polling system to capture future quotes. The social sentiment could then be turned into an indicator to determine when to buy/sell especially if used with other indicators.

Well I forgot about the system then twitter changed their api rules. When I went back it had captured data for 2 years. I backtested the trades and I found that it sucked for indexes/etfs, worked mmokay for pop stocks (think Tesla, bynd, suneq) but really shined for pump and dump stocks. With Twitter out I added stocktwits, Reddit, and tradingview. I now have twitter again and all of these feeds are run on various dedicated servers feeding into a mothership

NB: the system was originally written for a stock pumper who disappeared after a month of development

<comment><USER24> Neat concept. Is there somewhere we can see this in action?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do have some, the most interesting ones running in Huginn [https://github.com/huginn/huginn](https://github.com/huginn/huginn)

I use it for some data gathering and most importantly, notifications and a 'personal newsletter'.

There are quite a few people in this thread that wrote things that send notifications to them; my setup kinda goes the other direction, because I don't want to be constantly spammed and nagged by my own bots.

So for instance, there are some software projects I want to keep up with, but I neither want to be interrupted by notifications, nor do I want to have a bunch of spam in my RSS reader. So I set Huginn up to watch some RSSs, some webs and instagrams and things like that, collects them, and then sends me one summary mail every two days.

Similarly, I also get one Pushbullet notification with all the headlines from a news portal every day.

Huginn is great, you guys.

<comment><USER26> How do you run huginn? I've been thinking about setting it up on a raspberry pi 4 but I'm not sure whether that's a good fit performance-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've got a simple run running that calculates my girlfriend's GPA. The University doesn't display your GPA where topics are listed, but it does list the grade and weight. The calculation is easy and it only runs once a month, and notifies her when new grades have been added.

</comment><comment><USER28> A few, doing things like submitting every article/link I add to my Pocket list to archive.org to combat long-term link rot and scraping fund information to help me doing data analysis supporting my investment strategy.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have one that sends PS4 deals posted to r/ps4deals based on a list of games im interested in.

I have another one that turns on a space heater remotely based on certain conditions to keep my cat warm.

I have one that sends my team mates and I notifications about our upcoming soccer matches, which includes the team we're playing including stats and time.

I don't run this one anymore but I wrote a bot that would screen shot insider ESPN articles if given a link for them and then replies with an imgur link of the article.

</comment><comment><USER30> Alerts from some services which I manage are sent to a slack channel, as well as alerts/alarms from systems like datadog.

There exists a bot which will notify an on-call engineer to examine the channel, via a phone-call - This uses a custom scripting language to handle decisions and twilios API to trigger phone-calls.

(Hard to be on-call if you can't get woken up by things breaking; slack messages are too easy to ignore.)

</comment><comment><USER31> Does home automation count? I have an OpenHab/Node-Red setup that automatically turns on the dehumidifier if the indoor humidity goes above 60%, turns a light on a dusk and off at dawn and one that sends a notification to my phone when the tumble dryer finishes (because I tend to forget it and wonder where all my clean clothes have gone)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does scripts count?

I have a Google Script, which adds a new row everday at 2am with blank fields for me to put time in & out in timesheet. Same script generates a pdf every month & puts it in my gmail draft.

Another one auto downloads all the changed repos from my gitlab & guthub.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wrote one just this weekend.

Not a chatty variety though. Keeps an eye on new CVE vulnerabilities being posted and forwards them to me.

[https://github.com/apankrat/cve-monitor](https://github.com/apankrat/cve- monitor)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've got one that grabs a few pages of my favourite background site and replaces my windows backgrounds every week. It'll loop through the thousands they have there a hundred at a time, so I'm right for the next couple years.

</comment><comment><USER35> I created a LinkedIn bot in 2017, during my last semester, to apply jobs on LinkedIn that match my profile. It helped me to invest my time in developing skills through freelancing instead of applying jobs.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess anything that is a script that repeats is a bot? I have one that scrapes over 2,000 used car websites to tell me if a specific type of collectible car is available under a certain price.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did this while looking for a new apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have a few things running that check stack exchange tags, Twitter, subreddits and sends alerts via slack to me when something matches.

Just a way to stay up to date on some things.

<comment><USER37> that's excellent. what language, what's the design, do you have your own personal slack server, and so on.

<comment><USER36> They're all using Python.

A bunch of friends from back in college got together about 2 years ago for Christmas. We all decided to use slack since we use it for work. I just created a private channel there and the python scripts all post to the channel

\- Reddit is using the .json endpoints on the url, [https://reddit.com/r/funny/.json](https://reddit.com/r/funny/.json) \- Stack exchange loads the URLs and uses beautifulsoup. \- For Twitter I use twython

For posting to Slack, I use the slackweb package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> no. kind of like the sometimes heard of painter whose house never has a decent coat of paint i rarely write any code for myself. i write code for a living.

but here are some of the little bots i've written on the dime:

\- ?lunch - an eggdrop command that displayed the catered lunch that day

\- scheduling bots that posted to channels who was "on call" for that day

\- yeah, that's it. in terms of bots. i thought i had more but i can't think of jack

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a bot that downloads and saves statistics from a game I play, and then plays a couple of the boring mechanical parts of the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> May I ask what game?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have a bot that scrapes the local Building Consents website for my home building project and emails me if the local council has completed an inspection because my builder can't communicate for shit. I have a bot that polls the Google Health API and syncs my current weight (which comes from an electronic scale) to a spreadsheet where some friends are doing a weight loss challenge. I have a bot which scans my Downloads directory and semi- intelligently identifies movies and TV shows and moves them to the appropriate directory.

The Health API and Consents bot are .NET Core running on a Raspberry Pi. The Download bot is on my main Windows machine, written in Python.

Other bots have come and gone, of course.</comment>


Though Its Network Of Mentors, HackHands Offers Live Help for New Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/17/though-its-network-of-mentors-hackhands-offers-live-help-for-new-programmers/

<comment><USER2> Welcome to our space! This looks very similar to AirPair.com (my startup), Wizpert, Codementor, Sudonow.com, anyfu.com, googleHelpouts, onscreenexpert.com

Would love to know how you guys differentiate?

In case you're customer that needs help, if you don't want to wait through the hackhands private beta and request an invite, you can get help in the next hour like hundreds of other folks that have been doing this for a year now:

[http://www.google.com/+AirPair](http://www.google.com/+AirPair)

If you need rails specifically (seem hackhands only support rails right now?). Have a look through some of our experts:

[http://airpair.com/ruby-on-rails](http://airpair.com/ruby-on-rails)

<comment><USER3> Any idea why this is such a crowded space? Doesn't seem to be a huge market to me, but maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><USER2> I believe most people start ideas because they feel the pain and think they can solve it.

Whilst it's yet to be seen how big the monetizable market for this concept is... the pain people experience is all over the world everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is that a typo in the first word of the headline, or am I failing to parse the headline correctly?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, it's a typo (on the original headline) - it was edited by HN after I submitted it, can't correct it anymore :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What ever happened to IRC?

<comment><USER2> IRC is a different use case. There are no gaurantees that your needs will be addressed. Help through IM had less benefits for "learning". Also IRC particularly shines for niche frameworks where the knowledge is limited to a few that really want to share it into a support community. But for something like Rails, you're better off following tutorials and blogs. But then you can get overwhelmed and connect the dots wrong. So guidance through pairing can fast track learning on time and resource sensitive projects.</comment></comment>


Time Series Accuracy – Graphite vs. RRDTool - <AUTHOR> http://grisha.org/blog/2015/05/04/recording-time-series/

<comment><USER2> How about instead of reporting the 'rate' of sales per minute to Graphite, just report the count of sales since the last report. Then set the aggregation method to 'count', and problem solved?

<comment><AUTHOR> You probably mean 'sum', 'count' doesn't look like a valid aggregation method according to Graphite docs. Storing the sum would indeed provide a way to update the datapoints later by simply adding to the total. (I don't believe RRDTool allows that thought).

But it doesn't solve the Graphite problem - if two reports come in during the same step, you still lose the first one.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Solving PDEs on graphs with message passing of torch_geometric - <AUTHOR> https://devpost.com/software/gdfgddfd <comment><AUTHOR> My PyTorch hackathon submission. Basically I am showing that how PDEs on graphs can be solved with Message Passing class of torch_geometric and created a tool torch_pdegraph to facilitate this. I work in the field of PDEs on graphs and I realized that Message passagin equation (the way of forward convolution) on graphs ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01212.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01212.pdf)) can also be used to solve some PDEs on graphs.</comment>


Sex by Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://sexbynumbers.wellcomecollection.org/ <comment><USER2> I'd be fascinated if a statistician wrote something about how convincing these numbers are, error and so on with reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was a nice touch to put a "tweet this" button at the bottom of a box with this sentence:

>Experts suggest that our over-connection with the digital world may be leading to less connection in the bedroom.

</comment><comment><USER4> So frustrating how it almost works on mobile but not on tap instead of click to refresh that chart, or the chart doesn't refresh?

</comment><comment><USER5> "Let's hope this rate of decline doesn't continue, as otherwise by 2040 the average person may not be having any sex at all."

This is idiotic argument. It's the same as my homophobic family member saying "if we don't stop more and more people becoming gay, in 100 years there won't be any straight people!"</comment>


Cooling off your Raspberry Pi 4 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexellis.io/cooling-off-your-rpi4/ <comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work for a company that owns a Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller.

We spend a ridiculous amount of money testing various cases from China. In testing we found that the heat sink style[1] cases with fan work best.

Having said that, for most use cases you just need to move the hot layer of air away from the SoC, so even a low speed fan will do the trick.

[1] [https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases- enclo...](https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/collections/cases- enclosures/products/armour-case-with-dual-cooling-fan-for-raspberry-pi)

<comment><USER4> Is it possible that a taller case with vents at bottom and top, plus a decent heat sink might provide enough convection to go fanless?

<comment><USER3> Certainly, the key is hot air needs to be able to get away from the SoC.

For my home lab, I don't bother with the fans/cases and instead just stack the Pis with brass spacers.

I haven't had any issues yet with the ambient room temperature around 20-22ºC (68-71.6ºF for the stonecutters who keep the metric system down[1]).

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

<comment><USER5> Have you checked if the CPUs are throttling at load?

<comment><USER6> I use a Pimoroni case with an open bit where the CPU and various other chips are. I also have a small heatsink on the CPU.

The machine doesn't throttle under load even when I hammer it with a compilation job on all four cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a fun thing I just did with my RPI4. I've got "watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_temp" running.

Equilibrium temp is arount 73C running a realtime website. Take a £2 coin and place it on the CPU. Temp drops 10C within seconds. I can get it under 60C by swapping a second coin. They stay pretty hot after you take them off. Also the equilibrium temp when you just leave the coin there seems to be a good few degrees less than with no coin. Possible the larger surface area helps remove the heat, just not as good as an actually designed heatsink.

<comment><USER8> I think that's called "throwing money at the problem"!

Taping the coin (or heat sink) down should give you better heat transfer, therefore better cooling.

Designing your own case in OpenSCAD and 3D printing is a piece of cake, building a large fan into the case (lower noise) is a nice weekend project.

<comment> jagged-chisel A bit of thermal paste between the chip and the coin would also help with heat transfer

<comment><USER9> Paste between coins with a stacking arrangement going big-small-big-small etc so that there was a semblance of fins would be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have tried many options (including powerful fans), but the Flirc case [1] (whole-case passive heat sink) is my favority so far and cools well enough for a 1.75 GHz overclock under torture testing (2+ GHz would crash under torture). [1] [https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry- pi-4-case](https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-4-case) (I'm not affiliated, just a content customer).

<comment><USER11> There is an even better take on the whole-case heat sink concept, although it gets pricey:

[https://wickedaluminum.com/products/raspberry- pi-4-standard-...](https://wickedaluminum.com/products/raspberry- pi-4-standard-case-with-heat-dissipation)

<comment><USER12> Might as well go all the way to AstroPi[1] at that rate. Though I wonder if Flir couldn't make a copper-top version for less money than either, really...

1: [https://makezine.com/2015/12/01/raspberry-pi- iss/](https://makezine.com/2015/12/01/raspberry-pi-iss/)

<comment><USER10> In which way is this "all" more than the flirc case? The Flirc case makes physical contact with the CPU and radiates heat all over the case. Don't let the black (removable) plastic top fool you - it's one solid piece the whole way.

<comment><USER12> I didn't meant the Flirc case so much as the machined, high-dollar one. The Flirc one looks great, esp. for $15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having recently built a picade with a Pi4 and ran it in a cool room for around 2 hours, the device kept crashing when playing various emulators. After the final crash, it didn't start up again. Opening up the back was like opening the door to an oven and the Pi4 was just steaming. Nothing was obviously melted, but it didn't work again :(

<comment><USER14> This seems conflicting with what I read about its behavior. It should heavily throttle (underclock) itself, but shouldn't destroy itself. Maybe you got a defective unit or the hot thermal environments caused issues elsewhere (again maybe due to some defect).

<comment><USER5> I had a power supply with similar problems which actually started on fire - <USER2> had been restarting it repeatedly after it kept (supposably) hitting thermal or some other shutdown condition.

Lesson: just because there are protections for going past limits doesn't mean that everything is fine when you are constantly hitting them. (applicable to our current government problems sadly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The heat will be spread out, but not moved away from the device, so once it's hot, it will likely radiate that heat around the board." The author doesn't seem to grasp the concept of convective cooling or how heatsinks are supposed to work.

<comment><USER16> I think that comment was in contrast to what they said about the fan:

> This option does apply a decent amount of cooling at idle and under load, it > also moves the heat away from the board unlike the heatsink.

I think the comment makes sense with that context, compared to a fan, the heat from a heatsink will stay near the board and make future cooling less efficient.

<comment><USER17> But with or without a fan, the point of a heatsink is to increase surface area for convection.

A fan also aids convection, but instead by maintaining a larger temperature difference between the surface (however large) and the surrounding air.

Either alone is good; both together are better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article is basically just a list of some options. Even for the most advanced option the author writes just about temperautures in "mostly idle" setup. Anyone has a link to an article with actual measurements?

<comment><USER19> Here's a nice summary video as well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa3YnWhzPsw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa3YnWhzPsw)

<comment><USER20> Another:

[https://youtu.be/AVfvhEJ9XD0](https://youtu.be/AVfvhEJ9XD0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So many ad-hoc solutions, but I can't seem to find the maximum power consumption/TDP of the RasPi4, which would inform the kind of dissipation you'd need.

Best I could find was the BCM2711 (the Broadcom SoC at the heart of the RasPi4) "datasheet" (a frickin' _Word document_ ) [1] that says the board requires a PSU capable of providing 3A at 5V.

So that'd be 15W.

[1] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711/rpi_DATA_2711_1p0_preliminary.pdf)

<comment><USER22> RPi power consumption and power supply is a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface.

A large problem is that even "3A rated" supplies suffer large voltage droop under load. This can be seen pretty easily using a cheap USB DC load [0]. As load goes up, voltage tends to drop slowly at first, then heavily at a certain point.

Several I've bought drop as low as 4.1V at just 2A load which will almost definitely make any Pi very unhappy. I haven't found an authoritative source but generally the Pi's power management system starts complaining (flipping the "undervolt since boot" bitflag [1] in "vcgencmd get_throttled") around 4.6-4.7V [2]

To monitor the throttled bitflags, which also report thermal throttling, I wrote a basic shell script that just converts the hex to bin then returns a Grok-ready string with the flags as booleans. I've already got Telegraf on the RPis sending basic host metrics to an InfluxDB instance so that script just gets called by an exec input to generate and persist the data for monitoring or analysis.

Eventually I'd love to write (or contribute to) a proper Golang Telegraf plug- in that just reads from the VC mailbox directly but that's still on the back burner.

As far as actual power consumption during use, I've recently started running tests using a decent USB power meter (WITRN/Qway U2 [3] and X models, in particular) to monitor load over time while running various workloads on a Pi Zero W, a Pi 3B+ and a 4GB Pi 4.

Power usage at idle is usually low but even that's unpredictable. Daemons are gonna daemon regardless of the user load. Generally though the load goes up substantially when powering peripherals - Ethernet, USB, BCM VideoCore enc/dec/CSI/SSI, SD card R/W, HDMI, fans, HATs, GPIO peripherals, etc. CPU load definitely factors in heavily, of course, but it's only part of the picture.

For reducing power usage, some surprisingly simple things can help. As a very minor example, shutting off the activity LED [4] can save a few dozen mA. :)

[0] [https://www.droking.com/Intelligent-USB-Adjustable- Constant-...](https://www.droking.com/Intelligent-USB-Adjustable-Constant- Current-Electronic-Load-DC3-21V-3.5A-35W-Mobile-Power-Detector-Tester-USB- Discharge-Resistance)

[1] [https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/48329/underv...](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/48329/undervoltage- warning-despite-decent-power-supply/48337#48337)

[2] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1477...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=147781&start=50#p972790)

[3] [https://usbchargingblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/web-u2-usb-...](https://usbchargingblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/web-u2-usb- meter-monitor-upm-quick-look/)

[4] [https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff- geerling/controlling...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff- geerling/controlling-pwr-act-leds-raspberry-pi)

<comment><USER23> >drop as low as 4.1V at just 2A

the whole point of a 3A rated 5V power supply is it will not drop more than ~5% under its rated load. What you describe is being a victim of a fraud.

<comment><USER24> According to [1] a 1 meter USB cable can have a resistance of 286 milliohms, for a voltage drop of 0.8v over a meter (taking the resistance of four contacts and two lengths of cable into account).

So if you have a '3A 5V' power supply without a captive cable, you can still get 4.1v at the useful end of the USB cable.

The official RPi chargers include a captive cable, presumably to stop users substituting such standard USB cables.

[1] [https://www.westfloridacomponents.com/blog/compensate- cable-...](https://www.westfloridacomponents.com/blog/compensate-cable- voltage-droops/)

<comment><USER25> The raspberry pi sells power supplies not chargers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> geeky nitpick -- do not use `while [ true ]; do ..`

It's not doing what you think; `true` here is just a non-zero length string. `while [ false ]; do ..` does the exact same thing!

Use `while true; do ...`. Or better `while :; do ...`

Even better, depending on the context, is

       while sudo sudo /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp; do
         sleep 2
       done

PS. why two sudos?

</comment><comment><USER27> I got a 5V Noctua fan and use this enclosure: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3723481)

Seems to stay very cool and is silent. Noctua makes some good fans.

<comment><USER28> It needs a 5V fan, right? You power it from the GPIO pins directly?

<comment><USER27> Yeah, exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I guess Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (or CM3+) was close to the sweetspot in terms of thermal management vs performance tradeoffs, for many applications. Unless you really need more RAM or higher USB speed.

I hope the next two main steps for the next Raspberry Pi (4+ or 5?) and the corresponding compute module will be:

a) including a SATA controller (SD cards are not... ideal.)

b) a more power-efficent node

<comment><USER30> I don't think a SATA controller makes sense for them. Keeping the price low is an important design goal, and adding more chips goes against that. An external hard drive with USB3 is probably the best option for a while.

<comment><USER29> I'd start looking at _actual_ volume prices for controller chips first, before dismisssing this, but that's just me. I have no idea what the cost is, but I could imagine it to be like maybe 5-10 cents by now. Just a guess. It's that kind of old but still very useful tech by now.

<comment><USER31> Nothing of that complexity is 5-10c in volume (even huge volumes). I would guess somewhere in the 1-2$ range, which _is_ a big issue for them. For reference, 5-10c won't even buy you a middle to low performance op-amp.

The Pi became possible because of integration, where the SoC supported all the required interfaces internally so very few external ICs were required. That's what allows them to keep the price so low. Additional chips add significant additional cost. That's why there have always been compromises like the USB- connected ethernet. They can only do what the SoC supports natively.

<comment><USER29> _Exactly how_ certain are you of this?

Keep in mind that this is a 10+ year old problem by now (talking about USB2-to-SATA). They've gone through all of the cost cutting methods possible by now.

I can buy that chip that also happens to come with a PCB, a very nice extruded and anodized alumunium case, plastic end-pieces + screws, indication LEDs, voltage regulators, 10-20 pieces of small passives (redistors/caps), a screwdriver, 2-3 pieces of instrution manuals/warranty notices, two layers of very nicely designed paper packaging + shrinkwrap... all for like $5 in retail. The cost to the retail store for these items is probably closer to $2.

(Oh, and there's also the assembly cost for that PCB inside the case.)

<comment><USER31> > Exactly how certain are you of this?

This is my job. I design consumer electronics that ship in volumes larger than the raspberry pi. You've probably used something I've designed before. The backseat engineering by software devs in these threads is annoying and presumptuous. The pi designers aren't incompetent, they've probably rolled up dozens of feature BOMs to find what they can afford to ship.

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if it was 50c instead of 1$, but _nothing_ is 5-10c, so you're off by an order of magnitude. Even a single transistor in a package is a few cents. Additionally, if they add the IC they still need a connector, and those are some of the more expensive components in a device like the pi, probably 25c-1$ depending on quality.

> I can buy that chip that also happens to come with a PCB...

You're right that the economics don't seem to make sense, but you made several mistaken assumptions:

1) The price of that device is _almost entirely_ driven by the cost of the IC. Those designs have almost no supporting electronics, and the PCB itself will be 10-20c.

2) You're overestimating the margins. It's probably not delivered to the retailer for 2$, closer to 3$. Generic electronics are not high margin.

3) In cheap, commodity devices the manufacturer can use grey-market ICs, but the pi designers can't get away with that. That easily doubles the IC price.

<comment><USER29> > This is my job. I design consumer electronics that ship in volumes larger > than the raspberry pi. You've probably used something I've designed before.

Fair enough. Thanks for your explanation.

> The pi designers aren't incompetent, they've probably rolled up dozens of > feature BOMs to find what they can afford to ship.

That's a borderline straw man argument. You're seem to be implying that I either wrote (or think) that they are incompetent, while none of those things are true.

> Now, I wouldn't be surprised if it was 50c instead of 1$, but _nothing_ is > 5-10c, so you're off by an order of magnitude.

Okay, let's say it's 50 cents. I would still think it makes sense to include this feature. Also, that's "half a magnitude off" compared to 10 cents, not a magnitude off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have the ICE tower with mad LEDs!

'cos I'm a little boy inside.

Stable 33% overclock, I'm typing to you from it now. :D

        $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq
        2000000

pic: [https://files.esotericnonsense.com/pub/rpi- tower.jpg](https://files.esotericnonsense.com/pub/rpi-tower.jpg)

<comment><USER33> Same with the ICE tower and 2GHz overclock.

Even with stress tests I can't get the Pi to break 50 C.

I don't use mine as a desktop yet, though. I just run 8 Docker containers for stuff like DNS, Time Machine backup, etc.

The goofy-looking Pi: [https://www.ericlagergren.com/share/d9htGfiETJHN3ua](https://www.ericlagergren.com/share/d9htGfiETJHN3ua)

<comment><USER32> Hehe. Yours is a little cutie too!

I've just borked my install trying to migrate to aarch64 from armv7h.

Currently rescuing it (I hope) with a chroot.

Fun! :D

edit: all sorted! aarch64 kernel compiled; migrated the userland over from armv7h (I've been using 32-bit for a few months) - no issues so far! whee!

<comment><USER33> Good luck! I'd like to hear how Arch works out for you. I used to use Arch before I switched to macOS. If I ever get around to using a Pi as a desktop, Arch will definitely my first choice.

<comment><USER34> GP is not talking about the Arch Linux distro, but rather switching to using a distro compiled for the 64 bit ARMv8 ISA. It's not a completely accurate comparison, but a fair analogy is armv7h is to aarch64 as i386 is to x86_64.

<comment><USER32> I was in fact talking about Arch (though the 'unofficial' ARM port; [https://archlinuxarm.org](https://archlinuxarm.org))

Though I believe barsonme picked that up from my other post below.

<comment><USER34> Heh! My bad then. Was going off the post replied too and assumed (this is what I get for assuming!) they wrongly read aarch64 as Arch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just put my stack of Pis in front of a Noctua NF-S12A and it cools them all very effectively, even under heavy load, without the need for any goofy hardware that blocks additions like the GPIO extender or any other HATs I may want to add. I bought an adapter to power it from one of the Pis. It's an easy solution that works for many of them with negligible effort.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have one of these cases[1] for my Pi4 4GB from Amazon. Comes with heatsink and small fan (very quiet). Right now running "watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_temp" puts it at 36C idle. Well I guess it is actually running k3s with no deployments/pods, so fairly idle.

I do remember it running a bit hotter before I updated to the latest firmware via "sudo apt full-upgrade" a few days ago.

Running "stress -c 4" gets it up to about 50C ...

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-iUniker-Heatsink-Model- Sing...](https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-iUniker-Heatsink-Model- Single/dp/B01LXSMY1N?ref_=ast_bbp_dp)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've got three 4GB pi4's running. Two are in FLIRC cases which do an Okay job (and they look good :-) They transfer heat to the case and the Pi peaks out on my loads at about 55C. I've also got a cheap fan+heatsink solution ([https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TZQHXZ6/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TZQHXZ6/)) which does a better job and keeps the Pi under 50C on all loads (it doesn't throttle at all).

</comment><comment><USER22> I recently put my Telegraf configs/scripts for monitoring RPi thermals and throttling into a git repo. These might be helpful for anyone doing their own comparative testing of cooling soliutions and/or power sources.

[https://github.com/fivesixzero/telegraf-pi- bash](https://github.com/fivesixzero/telegraf-pi-bash)

</comment><comment><USER38> Has anyone tried immersion cooling (i.e. submerging an RPi in mineral oil)? Tempted to try it myself; just need some spare time (that I don't squander by commenting on Hacker News ;) ).

<comment><USER39> Yes it has been done, and works[0-3], it's just a matter of effort vs reward. Generally a simple heat sink and/or small fan setup works fine for nearly any usecase the Pi is designed for, and if you really do need to do heavier loads that require that level of effort to cool, then you probably shouldn't be using a Pi in the first place.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJRrGCqG9Jc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJRrGCqG9Jc)

[1] [https://hackaday.com/2018/08/13/oil-immersed-raspberry-pi- ke...](https://hackaday.com/2018/08/13/oil-immersed-raspberry-pi-keeps-its- cool-under-heavy-loads/)

[2] [https://hackaday.com/2017/05/15/liquid-cooling- overclocked-r...](https://hackaday.com/2017/05/15/liquid-cooling-overclocked- raspberry-pi-with-style/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/bmeklj/pi_imm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/bmeklj/pi_immersion_cooling/)

If it's just for fun, then I think water-cooling Pi's looks way more interesting to play with:

[http://finniss.net/water-cooled-raspberry-pi/](http://finniss.net/water- cooled-raspberry-pi/)

[https://modmymods.com/modmymods-raspberry-pi-mini-water- cool...](https://modmymods.com/modmymods-raspberry-pi-mini-water-cooling-kit- mod-0171.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm no expert, but one of the blogs I read had detailed posts about putting a heatsink and fan on a RPi3B+ and using it as a desktop and dev machine:

[https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/09/raspberry-pi-3b-flirc- ca...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/09/raspberry-pi-3b-flirc-case- thermals-and.html)

[https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/09/project-pi3bdesk- making-...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/09/project-pi3bdesk-making-even- better.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Outside of maybe the ICE cooling tower I suspect that all of these heatsink/fan solutions are woefully under specified if you happen to load the system or overclock.

I grabbed one of my little 20mmx20mm heatsinks which are generally good enough for devices of that size that come passively cooled. In the RPi's case that thing got hot enough to burn me even with a small fan. So I repeated this process a few times with stuff from my junk box trying to find a passive solution eventually I ended up with a 40x40x30mm heatsink (looks sorta like this [https://www.amazon.com/Karcy-Aluminum-Heatsink-Cooling- Raspb...](https://www.amazon.com/Karcy-Aluminum-Heatsink-Cooling- Raspberry/dp/B07QQSQDXF/ref=sr_1_42?keywords=40x40mm+heatsink&qid=1573861603&sr=8-42) only that one says its 11mm) and a small fan.

The thing is huge, but the temps stay under control and it over-clocks @2Ghz now, but I wouldn't run it like that for long even with that heatsink. I've got mine pinned at 1.75).

</comment><comment><USER42> One of my disappointments with the Pi 4 is that the official case for it got rid of any ventilation. Previous cases had vents and a removable top plate. I've found that the Primori fan shim works really good, but only with the cover removed. Will have to try drilling some vent holes in the cover and the back side of the case, and see if I can make it look good.

</comment><comment><USER43> A model, temperature, noise, price - summary table would have been nice.

<comment><USER44> And size, that ice tower thing is huge. I'd prefer the heat sink case, which I've anecdotally heard does a great job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> +1 for the heatsink case! [yes I have one]

<comment><USER46> I also bought this one because I wanted a passive solution. Temperature looks fine (45°C in Idle). Although I think there are different versions and some of them don't fit perfectly on the RPi4. I got mine from amazon and it cools the three most important chips but the position where it touches the chips isn't perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Note that the main issue here is to avoid cpu throttling due to excessive heat. IIRC you can allow a higher cut-off temp (100ºC instead 77ºC) by setting a config parameter. This will possibly reduce the chip lifespan from whatever it is to _decades_! But make sure no one can accidentally touch the chip.

I have one case with a fan and one case where part of the case body attaches to the chip top with thermal goop. The fan works better.

</comment><comment><USER48> I read about the heat issues, so when I bought my pi4 I also got an aluminum fin cooler case with 2 fans built into it. Thankfully the fans are totally silent. I half expected it to sound like half a drone.

Now I can crank it up and rip the knob off, and the temperature doesn't get anywhere near throttle point.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have the fan shin on mine, set it up so it clicks over a certain temp, and it's been working great for me.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why do companies insist on shipping something that otensibly requires a heat sink, without the heat sink itself?

If I shipped out a fully-powered MK-R LED without a heat sink, saying "Oh it'll work fine!" I'd be getting chewed out within two minutes of the customer turning it on.

<comment><USER51> Maybe for the same reason that you can by a CPU without a heatsink - in order to provide flexibility. They assume that the number of people that will want to specialize and customize their heatsinks/fans will be so high in proportion to the people that will be just fine using the standard sink, that it is not worth it. There are very cheap easy to mount (like 2 seconds easy) heatsinks that will do the job (probably with thermal throttling though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The problem for me is I attach a card to the top of the Pi for robot circuitry. That makes putting a heat sink or fan on the board awkward. I feel like having to do this really compromises the versatility of the Pi. For now I am sticking to 3s until I hear the temp issue is solved.

<comment><USER53> The Pi 3 has the same thermal throttling issue as the 4, and the 4's performance under throttled conditions is much higher.

Though IMO even calling it an issue is overblown, most phones and laptops cannot maintain their peak clocks under load for extended periods of time either. Intel calls it turbo boost so it's a feature instead of a bug.

<comment><USER52> Really? Because I run a Pi with a servo board on top that gets quite hot (too hot to touch) and it seems like CPU is performing time sensitive calculations (walking kinematics) adequately. It could be that the calculations are simple enough that they are insensitive to the throttling down. Do you have a suggestion how I could write some Python code to check if the 3 is throttling down? (Maybe a link to an example?)

Maybe it wouldn't be an issue on the Pi 4 that I think it is. In that case I have been holding back on switching to a 4 for no good reason. This is very helpful, thank you.

<comment><USER54> [https://newscrewdriver.com/2018/09/06/detecting-raspberry- pi...](https://newscrewdriver.com/2018/09/06/detecting-raspberry-pi-thermal- throttling-from-console/)

<comment><USER52> Sam- thank you for this link. It is very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This video is pretty good, the guy does some testing of different cooling options: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkLr08K0c1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkLr08K0c1E)

TL;DW: The Flirc case is one of the best options.

</comment><comment><USER56> Does running an idle k3s cluster really require adding a heatsink to the rpi?

I would have thought this would generate very little load, and a major temp increase might indicate a bug in k3s?

Is there a bunch of cpu-intensive work an idle cluster needs to do?

</comment><comment><USER57> There's something to be said for having the cpu on the back side of the board, like some of the NanoPi models. Easier to spread the heat with no connectors in the way.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wish all fans use the pi temperature sensor to regulate speed. I got one with the CanaKit and it doesn't.

My OCD kicks in when I can hear the fan running all day long.

</comment><comment><USER59> What was the last version of Raspberry Pi that didn't require cooling?

What's the best-spec'd Pi (or comparable alternative) that doesn't require fans?

<comment><USER14> Most don't _require_ cooling, but will have better clocks. The 4 itself throttles under heat (above 60C and heavily over 80C), and seems to have good enough behavior even if not actively cooled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm not sure why, but my RPI4 become broken 4 times in a row. I returned it 3 times, but finally I gave up. Every time it eventually stopped to boot up and there was solid green and red LED light. There was original raspberry PI case, modified to mount Noctua 5V fan, with additional holes to allow air circulation. There was original power supply. It was only connected with ethernet, this fan through GPIO and HDD drive through USB.

Now I have HP T620, can be bought cheaply, it's definitely bigger than RPI4, but finally it just works.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder why PC cooling brands haven't discovered this market yet.

Building a heat sink case with attachable fans doesn't seem all that impossible.

</comment><comment><USER62> Yes, I know what a heatsink is and how to google for heatsinks for a RPi. TYVM.</comment>


Meet Alex: New York's Youngest Hustler - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/41539/

<comment><USER2> The depiction is decidedly not indicative of Williams Syndrome.

Rather, what I'd take away (from a cursory level, anyways) is not his glibness and glaringly ostentatious demeanor-- it's his glibness and glaringly ostenation demeanor at such a young age.

Rarely would we encounter such a young individual with such brazen behavior that he feels not that he's merely able to operate with an adult's social capabilities, but that he's in fact entitled to operate in such capacities.

While I realize that this boldness and brashness can be jealously misconstrued as simple pomp... this kid has true (thought perhaps not intellectual) genius and is certainly nothing akin to anything as depraved as, say, a Paris Hilton.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think he's probably literally psychopathic. I say this as someone reading who's been reading Wikipedia about the subject for about 5 minutes.

My official diagnosis is that he is a Factor 1 psychopath exhibiting symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder for positive effect according to PCL-R Model of psychopathy.

Alex behaviour demonstrates a strong correlation with the known symptoms of psycopathy including: glib and superficial charm, grandiosity, need for stimulation, pathological lying, conning and manipulating, lack of remorse, callousness, poor behavioral controls, impulsivity, irresponsibility, failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions.

I recommend that he eats humble pie three times a day before he gets his just desserts, after all you are what you eat.

I'm off to pop a few jealously tablets.

<comment><USER2> Sociopathic, perhaps... but psychopathic? I'm not sure he fits the description even based on the symptoms you've listed. \- Glib and superficial charm: Is there any other sort of charm? \- Pathological lying: Yes, there are depictions of lies (lady in the swimming pool), but are they substantively pathological? \- Conning and manipulation: These are mistaken for being the same thing; from the article, he is certainly a manipulator, but perhaps not a conman. \- As for lack of remorse, callousness, poor behavioral controls, impulsivity, irresponsibility, and failure to accept responsibility for one's actions... couldn't these be symptomtic of adolescence as well???

That said, I agree that this kid needs a dose of humility, and I'm sure he's going to get it in spades over the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read about a condition recently that was like the opposite of autism: people with it were extremely socially adept. Sounds like this kid has it.

Can't find a link at the moment; maybe someone else has read about it?

<comment><USER5> Williams Syndrome.

One of its major symptoms is also mental retardation; while the article didn't delve too much into that sector, not mentioning mental retardation is a bit of a glaring omission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to wonder if the attention he gets is _because_ of his age. He certainly wouldn't get away with a lot of the things mentioned in the article if he were, say, 20.

<comment><USER7> Good point. However, if he builds enough contacts between now and when he's twenty, that won't be much of a problem.

<comment><USER8> If he has a trust fund to support him for his entire adult life, then he's all set.

Otherwise, at some point he's going to have to do more than hang around, look cute, and do occasional odd jobs for free. I saw no evidence from the article that he's prepared for that aspect of adult life. It doesn't seem like his parents are even trying to prepare him.

<comment><USER6> The article states he works for free at the Nike store and others because of child labor laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So when this becomes a _Law and Order_ episode, will the kid be the victim or the murderer?

</comment><comment><USER9> I love this kid - he knows what he wants and is able to get them without whining to his parents.

I think the parents have done a pretty good job.

<comment><USER10> Sure did! With this type of enabling behavior at such a young age, who knows what might happen? He might be president one day!

<comment><USER11> My bet is on alcoholic.

<comment><USER9> The two ain't exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great parenting skills.

<comment><USER12> Not now, but maybe when he gets older and has kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, not precisely a role model.

</comment><comment><USER14> Poor kid. His life will suck.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why has this gotten so many votes?

</comment><comment><USER16> He's like a tiny Paris Hilton. Except even more worthless, if that's even possible.

<comment><USER17> Haha, more like _Perez_ Hilton.

<comment><USER17> Or maybe Turtle from Entourage.</comment></comment></comment>


We might live in a computer program but it may not matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160901-we-might-live-in-a-computer-program-but-it-may-not-matter <comment><USER2> This thought is similar to solipsism. René Descartes was afraid that he is truly alone because all his experiences are just imaginations. He said «Cogito ergo sum», but this was not enough to prove that others exist. The similarity to the simulation argument originates from the problem that we can't be sure that our perception is truthful.

However there is a counter-argument from Ludwig Wittgenstein. In a summary we have language. Language is too complex a construct to be invented alone. Because we speak we know we are not alone.

This is of special importance to me, being born profoundly Deaf. There exist poor deaf children who were isolated from language and never learned the basics. I had the misfortune to meet some of them. This drove the nail home that language cannot emerge in complete aloneness.

Now this doesn't apply to the simulation argument, because language might be provided from outside by the simulators.

<comment><USER3> >However there is a counter-argument from Ludwig Wittgenstein. In a summary we have language. Language is too complex a construct to be invented alone. Because we speak we know we are not alone.

I'm not familiar with that argument, so I'm just going based off your summary, but to me that sounds eerily similar to people who claim that life cannot evolve because it is too complex.

<comment><USER2> Good point. However it's different. There were billions of molecules to evolve to life. But a single molecule can't evolve to life. Of course this argument is hyperbolic but you know...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I figure that if we did live in a computer simulation it's been 13.8 billion years since the last downtime. I'm skeptical software could run for so long without any catastrophic bugs.

<comment><USER5> 13.8 billion years _in_ the sim might only be 12 seconds _on_ the sim.

Plus the whole mess seems pretty glitchy to me. I'm guessing undergraduate work at best.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, we hacked most of it together in Perl. [https://xkcd.com/224/](https://xkcd.com/224/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We don't live in a computer simulation. Here's why: No matter how efficient your computer is, the total state space of all the simulations in the universe is less than the total state space of the containing universe. In fact even if you dedicate the total energy output of the universe to running simulations, the total simulated state space is much _much_ less than the state space of the containing universe. And that applies recursively- all simulations contained in the simulations can't possibly add up to more than a tiny portion of the volume of the containing universe. So, you're incredibly more likely to be in a real universe.

<comment><USER8> I've never understood this argument in the context of this discussion. Why would the constraints of the simulation apply to that which is running the simulation?

<comment><USER7> You can't write a virtual machine with 20 GB of memory running on a real machine with only 10. Simulation isn't magic.

<comment><USER9> I have another counter-example. Why not simulate a smaller part of the universe, not the whole experience?

Suppose you have a real machine with 10 GB. You simulate a world of 1 GB. Inside the world, the universe is contained in 1 GB (say, a smaller version of the universe, simplified physics, etc). Inside the virtual machine, in the simulation world, the perceived universe is 1 GB. They simulation agents don't perceive a short-coming because they have never been exposed to the out-the- simulation experiences.

<comment><USER7> Right. But if you were randomly spawned somewhere, you'd be 10 times more likely to be in the 10GB than the 1GB.

<comment><USER6> Except we are anything but randomly spawned, on the scale of the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Similarly, Google's machine-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil has suggested > that "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high- > school student in another universe".

And for the other universe, who's experiment is it? I don't think the question matters. What matters is to acknowledge that we don't know and we have no way of knowing, it's the most urgent thing to do, in order for humanity to reach its "golden age". We'll get here eventually, since it's about the very survival of mankind. It's our "golden path", for those who get the reference.

<comment><USER11> >To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.

-Lao Tzu

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unless we can get out of the simulation and start kicking someone in the upper-dimensionals about all the crap we're put through in their test-to- destruction, all the philosophical theory don't really matter, does it?

If it turns out there is an afterlife, I seriously hope to haul management out into a back alley for some discussion about a few things.

</comment><comment><USER13> A great read on so-called modern society living in a simulation is Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation".

<comment><USER14> Also a good place to store cash and MiniDisc.

<comment><USER15> I had to look that up :)

[http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation](http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe our universe is just a microverse within another universe, and energy is extracted from our microverse to charge someone's car battery.

<comment><USER16> [http://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty/the-ricks- mus...](http://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty/the-ricks-must-be- crazy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.simulation-argument.com/](http://www.simulation-argument.com/)

<comment><USER18> As far as I can tell, this is just a rehash of the Boltzmann Brain paradox. Instead of random fluctuations in the heat death, it's intentional simulations run by our descendants.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> BigBang --> GRUB v12039.0.0-beta

<comment><USER6> Nah, the universe is definitely running on UEFI. Why else would it take hundreds of thousands of years after the big bang for the first stable atoms to form?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And rain could be a giant's pee? There's no evidence we do live in a computer so why bother

<comment><USER21> >There's no evidence

It's also an unfalsifiable claim, since there is no way to prove we are or are not. As such, it's a waste of time to think about, since it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> could this explain meditation, maybe you're not just rewiring your brain but the universe too.

<comment><USER23> So people who are bored on airplanes because they forgot to bring reading material are rewiring the universe?

<comment><USER22> being bored isn't meditation

<comment><USER23> It's very similar to unfocused meditation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>