Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-27/airbnb-is-suing-hometeown-san-francisco-to-block-rental-rules <comment><USER2> Can't help but think of the obvious time and time again with the faux-sharing economy. Sharing is a pathetic use of neural linguistics, you're not sharing, your not doing anyone a kindness, you're making money and you're providing a service.

Uber and Airbnb will be regulated legislative or through unions. Ask yourself just wtf are cabs so much more inefficient than Uber and hotels more expensive then Airbnb?

Few drivers depend completely on Uber for their income, Airbnb is still on a legal gray zone.

This won't last forever. Uber drivers will unionise, tenants who live around Airbnb hosts will pressure the government for legislation and so will hotel providers.

Uber is pivoting to logistics. What's Airbnb doing? Wouldn't surprise me if they soon build their own hotel.

<comment><USER3> Sharing may not be the best name but there is clearly value to be gained by using valuable assets like cars, housing and spare time more intensively. What's fundamentally wrong with this?

<comment><USER4> Well, this is the angle that airbnb likes to push, that people are renting out a "spare" bedroom that wouldn't otherwise be used, or are renting out their place while they're on vacation. In other words, there is no displacement, there is just efficiency.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out that way - housing that was used for permanent residence is now getting converted into airbnb rentals. People are now acquiring properties in order to have a "spare room" \- ands those "spare rooms" would absolutely be occupied by a long term resident if they were not being used as short term hotel-like rentals. For instance, people are now using the anticipated income from a spare kid's bedroom to outbid a person who would have otherwise used that bedroom for, well, a kid. Kids cost a bundle, and they don't pay anything like a well heeled tourists for the right to occupy their bedrooms. In a place like SF, where everything goes to a bidding war, a family with the extra costs of kids has very little hope going up against an investor who plans to convert the house into a hotel.

BTW, I absolutely agree that some of this really is efficiency (spare rooms, people on vacation). But at this point, I think it's pretty clear that airbnb is driving displacement and conversion on a large scale.

It is immensely reasonable (yes, in my opinion) for cities to pass laws that ensure a proper mix of housing, including housing for families with children. These laws are not obsolete just because someone wrote a Rails app where you can type in an address and click a "Create Hotel" button.

I overwhelmingly agree that SF needs to build more, but I don't think this basic reality will change. SF's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime, from about 22% to below 14% now. Airbnb is hardly the only factor, but I believe it is making the problem worse.

<comment><USER5> Look, no one has a right to live in a particular city. You can buy or you can rent, and if you can pay then you can stay.

To your complaint about people factoring in future rental income - what about people betting on future price increases like during the housing bubble? Should people not do math?

As to your last stat, maybe kids just grow up and then more adults moved in to work in tech - would that explain the pct drop or are you blaming airbnb?

<comment><USER6> Sure, no-one has a right to a particular city. But cities do get to set zoning laws, and do get to say things like "no, you can't turn houses into quasi- hotels". If you don't believe there should be zoning laws or restrictions on use, make the case for that. Otherwise, this is a pragmatic question of how we best shape cities to balance individual liberties against people's reasonable expectations of quality of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First amendment, for sure.

I'm guessing this is about this, "The new law would require Airbnb and other short-term rental websites to post registration numbers on listings or email the number and name of the host to the Office of Short-Term Rentals, The City's agency tasked with enforcing the regulations." (From [http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-poised-require-airbnb-list- regi...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-poised-require-airbnb-list-registered- hosts-pay-fines/))

So "their" "free speech rights" are "violated" because they have to post registration numbers.

<comment><USER8> It's nothing so silly. As a counterpoint to the Examiner's piece, please read Airbnb's post about the proposed law: [https://www.airbnbaction.com/an-update- for-our-community-in-...](https://www.airbnbaction.com/an-update-for-our- community-in-san-francisco/)

Basically, the city wants to hold Airbnb responsible for user-generated content. The city also wants Airbnb to hand over users' personal information. Both the EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology think that these requirements violate federal law. (Though EPIC thinks otherwise.)

<comment><USER9> > Basically, the city wants to hold Airbnb responsible for user-generated > content.

Airbnb gets paid for the rentals, not for the listings. Also, they actively control the content (try putting an URL in the listing). Mistaking Airbnb for a publishing medium for user-generated content seems disingenuous at best.

<comment><USER10> I think it's a false dichotomy to say they're either/or - why cant't they be both?

If they're actively controlling user generated content, then it's obvious they benefit from better content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When does Campoes term out anyway?

There certainly is a struggle between ownership rights and the right of cities to regulate business within their jurisdiction.

As a renter, I can sympathize with wanting to avail more rental properties to renters, but I am also very uneasy with politicians dictating what you can and cannot do with your property when that act in and of itself is not otherwise illegal. It's not confiscation, but it also kerbs your ability let your property as you wish --and I say this as a renter who arguably would benefit from this politician's policies.

PS move HQ to Brisbane and take the corp taxes with you.

<comment><USER12> But your neighbors might not want you to let out your place to an endless parade of strangers. This is a case where the government needs to listen to the people, and determine if the majority want more freedom or a nicer neighborhood.

<comment><USER13> Then your neighbors should put that in their HOA rules. The city is getting involved to protect hotels not "neighbors".

<comment><USER14> Absolutely not. There are significant negative externalities associated with transient populations.

For starters: Occupational safety (branches falling down and crushing you on a tire swing), fire safety, bedbugs, noise/loud parties, litter, criminal occupancy, secondary vice (drug dens/prostitution/craigslist orgies/etc). The problem of a bunch of sailors coming into port has been recognized since antiquity. Skeezy/short term motels have a reputation for a reason, and are regulated for even better ones. You yourself may be a perfectly upstanding citizen who just couchsurfs for a weekend to check out a cool area, but others are not.

It's unreasonable to expect neighbors to file daily lawsuits against their neighbors to keep a modicum of peace. It's a known problem and it's perfectly reasonable to preempt it by either requiring a formal lease with a minimum term of a month or more, or requiring more identification/scrutiny of the clients and some formal standards of the rentiers.

Analogously, it's perfectly fine for banks to scrutinize large cash transactions. Some of them are legit, some of them are tied to crime. But you need to look and be sure because it's high-risk activity. If you don't want that level of scrutiny, send a check/transfer/CC payment and your reputation will speak for itself.

<comment><USER15> _...secondary vice (drug dens /solicitation of prostitution/craigslist orgies/etc)._

Since we are regulating what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom, shall we also bring up the possibility of homosexuals engage in sodomy?

If that's somehow off limits to regulate, what distinguishes it from the private bedroom activities you bring up?

<comment><USER16> Your parent post is talking about the (already illegal) negative effects that follow from the presence of a transient population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No legal expertise, but the thing that struck me is Campos' extremely flawed analogy. If we want to make comparisons to rental cars, the hosts are the rental companies. There is no third party platform to compare to AirBnB.

<comment><USER18> how about something like Getaround? [https://www.getaround.com](https://www.getaround.com)

<comment><USER19> I was thinking the same thing -- this law is more like a hypothetical law requiring people who rent out their cars (not the renters themselves) to register with the city, and requiring Getaround to police that registration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So basically SF wants companies like Airbnb to do their police/enforcement work for them. The city should be going after the unregistered renters themselves. Sure, that's potentially harder, but I can see that it'd be a burden to order a company to do it for them.

<comment><USER20> Who would pay for all this extra enforcement? My guess is that a large portion of this short term rental income is untaxed. Can't have both sides, no regulation and no tax. I pay my share when I rent a hotel. (Apologies if airbnb renters are paying the appropriate city, state, and federal taxes).

<comment><USER21> Airbnb takes the appropriate local taxes automatically as part of the booking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Airbnb is an unlimited well of bad PR. They need to start whacking people with a clue-stick.

<comment><USER23> They'd probably do well to just fire their PR person. This is one of the most unprofessional responses I've ever heard from a company to a reporter:

> We emailed Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty to ask whether the library ad > was "real." He responded by email, "as opposed to a fake one :)"

A follow up email, explaining that we were in fact seeking confirmation as to whether the ads are actually from Airbnb received the following response: "Are you seriously writing on this?"

Nulty did not respond to another follow up email.

[http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/10/21/passive- aggress...](http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/10/21/passive-aggressive- pro-airbnb-ads-appear-on-muni-shleters)

<comment><USER24> _They 'd probably do well to just fire their PR person._

No, it's not "the PR person" who's at fault.

One way or another, these decisions (and the mentality and ethos that drive them) always trickle down from the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They must be extremely dependent on these commercial operators listing multiple units, else they wouldn't be fighting this so hard.

It kind of makes their whole "helping the middle class" shtick even more nauseating.

</comment><comment><USER26> Regardless of how strong Airbnb's legal standing is or isn't, they are the definition of a company who believes it better to ask forgiveness then permission. I believe that maxim is all fine and good when you're a person who cares about the well being of others, but when it's a corporation whose only goal is profit or growth it has the potential to be extremely detrimental to society.

<comment><USER27> Depends on your point of view. It's also detrimental to society if every new idea has to prove its viability while following the rules written for (and often purchased by) the previous generation of technology. It'd be a lot easier to get stuck in local maxima that way. Some ideas would never get traction, because getting the rules changed requires power and traction in the first place.

<comment><USER28> I would submit that this maxim does not well apply to the business model of AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and the like.

They do not IMO represent an interesting application of technology. Just the profits of exploiting lag time between what is possible, and what is 'burdened' by consumer and labor protections.

I.e.: the industries they have moved into are highly regulated for pretty transparent reasons. Their MO works well until the regulators catch up.

<comment><USER29> Seriously?

Uber had not proven how much of a quality-of-life improvement it was for users, there is absolutely 0% chance that any city councils would have reformed taxi laws and made explicit exceptions for them, sight-unseen.

They are only BARELY at the point where their critical mass of users can force city governments to give them a legal path (see: de Blasio in NYC), and even that doesn't always work (see: Austin).

<comment><USER30> A quality of life built on relabeling employees as "contractors" to avoid paying them a fair wage with appropriate benefits. But yes, the medallion system was also very broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > David Campos, a supervisor who has been harshly critical of Airbnb, called > the ordinance a "modest piece of legislation," according to the San > Francisco Chronicle, adding "If you are a rental car agency, you have to > make sure the person that you rent that vehicle to has a license before you > rent them a car. That is exactly what we are asking the short-term platforms > to do here."

This analogy is obnoxiously flawed.

rental car agency:consumer != (airbnb:host or host:guest)

<comment><USER32> Genuinely curious why the agency:consumer::host:guest is flawed. (agency|host) temporarily allows use of their property by (consumer|guest) in exchange for money.

<comment><USER33> Driving a car is a complex and potentially dangerous activity, hence the license. A license to rent a place to sleep makes no sense.

Edit: Instead of responding to every single sub comment I will just add that car accidents __kill __30,000 people a year. Whether or not you think AirBnB should be regulated, the analogy pairing their activity to the commonly fatal activity of driving is unambiguously on a different level. A more appropriate analogy is perhaps a fishing license.

<comment><USER34> Licenses aren't just for ensuring competence (as in the case of driver's licenses). Sometimes, they're to make sure that the government knows about the people doing it (as in the case of car registrations), either to collect tax or to be able to find people associated with an activity. And sometimes they exist to limit the number of people who can do something (as in the case of liquor licenses in many areas).

In this case, it seems like SF wants to "license" rental activity in order to tax it, and it wants to tax rental activity in part to limit it. Zoning could do this, too, but a tax is more flexible on an individual basis.

This is especially meaningful in a city in the midst of an affordable housing crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Would love to hear an opinion on this one from a legal mind, the case does not seem strong for Airbnb from my laymen's couch.

</comment><comment><USER29> Free speech rights are a stretch here. I wonder if you could make a viable case for the 3rd amendment though (to my knowledge it has never been done).

Strictly interpreted, the 3rd amendment prevents the government from being able to force homeowners to quarter soldiers. If you think about the real intent of the bill though, it's obvious that the mindset is "you are free to use your own house without government interference."

Realize that at the time, HUGE numbers of homeowners informally had a room or two for boarders to supplement their income. It would have been considered ridiculous at the time for the government to say you couldn't lend a room out for money, which is probably why this interpretation was not formally codified.

It's a stretch, but amendments have been interpreted in more creative ways to accomplish personal-freedom goals (think, right to privacy -- interpreted as an implied constitutional right, but not mentioned anywhere).

<comment><USER36> >Strictly interpreted, the 3rd amendment prevents the government from being able to force homeowners to quarter soldiers. If you think about the real intent of the bill though, it's obvious that the mindset is "you are free to use your own house without government interference."

that's a real stretch. that would nullify all zoning ...

<comment><USER29> Maybe? But then again, the 2nd amendment doesn't allow nuclear weapons, as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

Would be easy to interpret it as, the right to use residential properties for lodging purposes (hotel, apartments, B&Bs) cannot be violated, without letting you set up industrial operations.

<comment><USER37> What does "easy" mean here? It is easy to say, "the third amendment really means that A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Amendments." In fact I just did. However, to actually believe that original meaning of the third amendment as believed by the people who negotiated it was to prohibit the federal government from banning boarding houses strains credulity. It similarly strains credulity to believe that those who negotiated the 15th amendment had a genuine meeting of minds over their belief that the due process clause implied that states and municipalities could not regulate boarding houses.

Dot get me wrong: If it wasn't for Airbnb I probably wouldn't be married and I too share a geeky desire to see the 3rd amendment used in anger.

<comment><USER38> Well, I doubt that the people who wrote the Commerce Clause would have dreamed up Wickard v. Filburn in their worst nightmare, either, yet here we are. So, at this point, the majority of federal laws are based on an interpretation of the Constitution that strains credulity far more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Kinda surprised that no one is debating jurisdiction here. Why federal and not state courts? Are federal judges more friendly to this type of case?

<comment><USER40> Isn't it federal law that they are using to defend against this?

<comment><USER39> Yes, but there is a tactical decision at play here. AirBnB seems to believe that it has a better chance of winning on privacy and user-generated content issues then state/local laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is the biggest problem of sharing economy. To solve this problem we have to make new system not to fight with established system.

</comment><comment><USER42> I love to see individuals and companies step up and fight against the psychopaths that run San Francisco.

<comment><USER43> 100% agree.

The "control them, tax them, make them lick our boots, what can they do?, they can't do anything about it" mentality is heavy in the SF city leadership.

Believe it or not, some people -- lots of people, actually - are 1000% okay with that. Too many in SF, that's for sure.

Campos wants:

\- to be seen as someone who helped the City make more money from the fines and registration requirents

\- to appease the vast majority of renters in San Francisco who feel that no owner has a right to their property, the City must be in control -- Campos' voting bloc consists of that group

The problem with objectively dictatorial behavior from government is no one has the guts to stand up to them.

EXCEPT AirBnB!!!

GO AIRBNB !!

Britain just told Merkel and Hollande (who are the real string-pullers in the EU) to scrap off and die.

Tyrannical behavior from people "who tell you what to do and you can't do anything about it" usually ends badly for the perps.

See Nicolae Ceausescu for example. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD- XNTVgDW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-XNTVgDW0)

Sometimes people who abuse their power do not lose it gracefully.

Many of us are watching what becomes of Maduro in Venezuela. The entire population there is out of food and rioting and eating dogs and cats.</comment></comment>


Vodafone Ireland begin PirateBay censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.vodafone.ie/static/blocked.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Further details of the court order [0].

Seemed to come into effect at midnight IST, with no prior notice given. Though another ISP had 'voluntarily' blocked access, this is the first time access has been restricted based on the new Irish law.

[0]: [http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/high-court- ord...](http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/high-court-orders-six- internet-service-providers-to-block-pirate-bay-access-29339933.html)</comment>


Coding maniac seeking same in Chicago - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm the founder of lonelylearner.com and I'm looking for a Chicago-area partner with whom I can work on the project. I'm looking for a hacker and also a (perhaps separate) gregarious, people-friendly marketing/usability person. Please watch the screencast on the main page if you want some introductory info, and please keep in mind that the current site is a rough draft. I started coding Lonely Learner in my spare time a few months ago and I'm now going to start adding new features and increasing usability very fast. I have a list of (IMO, innovative) features that I plan on adding by the end of June, and I also plan on having a German version running by the end of July. At that point I plan on pitching the site to foreign language departments in high schools, colleges and universities. Ultimately, I want to make it plain to anyone learning a foreign language that they would be foolish to not use my site.
I am pretty smart and am one class shy of a degree in Economics with minors in CS and Math from the University of Chicago. I am a versatile maniac when it comes to coding and fiercely dedicated to making a successful start-up. I am working hard to overcome myself and carve out space for my imagination, to study my thoughts and reactions, and to solemnly search for the right combination of factors that will make my site successful.
Want to join me? Please contact me off-list.
Adam (bezeichnung) <comment><AUTHOR> Oops, email addresses aren't visible through profiles. join('adu', 'ston', '@', 'gmail.com').</comment>


New Cryptographic Tools on Keybase - <AUTHOR> https://keybase.io/blog/crypto <comment><USER2> I use Keybase as a daily driver and I really love the platform, but almost every other chat client I use when switching from Keybase feels butter smooth in comparison. These tools look like a great addition, and the Stellar integration is something I think has a lot of potential if it ends up being able to manage other wallets as well.

I just really wish more love would go into the UX of the application. I have duplicate undeletable conversations with contacts, duplicate folders in KBFS that I cannot delete or access which cause I/O errors in tools that do full system scans. I keep running into errors in the UI with obscure error codes that I keep reporting to no avail. There are currently 3,292~ open issues on Github at the time of writing so it's difficult to track what the team is focusing on.

Everything feels just a little too janky.

Still, I don't believe there is any other decent alternative to Keybase that offers the same identity based mechanism for communication, and Keybase absolutely nails that. I can message half the users on HN with very little friction. People can encrypt and send me documents without registering with a single page view. A bit of polish and I think Keybase could shine, but right now It's hard to suggest as a Slack alternative.

<comment><USER3> I'm with you. I feel like Keybase are the only people actually innovating on "usable cryptography", except maybe Signal?

Just needs a bit more polish.

<comment><USER4> Polish and a better sense that their long term business model makes the most sense for the sort of infrastructural platform they want to be. Cryptography infrastructure seems like something that should be delegated to something much more like a 501(c)3 than a for-profit corporation.

<comment><USER5> I'll settle for a for profit corporation that guarantees that I don't have to trust them... Not sure that's Keybase, but I'm curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an example of the magic referred to in the post, here's some encrypted text that could be read by `pg` here on HackerNews: [https://pastebin.com/raw/bxRaymaB](https://pastebin.com/raw/bxRaymaB) . As explained in the article, the unlocking step trusts HackerNews at one step in the process.

P.S. I'm the blog post author. BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE. kXR7VktZdyH7rvq v5weRa0zk7RUjCs bLeGBWHRNe047t1 63n5tVSjvbZwtwt nQVqdDHEZIR4kgD PpRDesKecb1Y4U2 jcnOUuLfKvsiGZY PP7SbO79zoRFEuv e8gXRm44Brjfdym iwy2mGXI9VW5PDf WMxwJdTflgruGMK SUkEhjqwUOEc8KR AC6aF8iJadgq3bz oGMLpY750H1Deus EGPgtQQVIeh05mx HY7K3oFOn3SjeS3 cL1duil9YgmZi1y zKu3bfFSbjelgzc 5UMZ42xTJJs0gT. END KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE.

<comment><USER7> Should I, a random Keybase user, be able to read that saltpack signed message in your comment? (I can't, I'm assuming that's correct)

EDIT: sorry, my bad, I was using Decrypt instead of Verify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be honest, as neat as it sounds, I could very easily see this being banned from a lot of platforms. Its disruptive to any community to have some parts of the messaging being inaccessible on that platform. Keybase own terms and services requires their users to use their services in accordance with the law, so that puts growing number of countries where these messages will be impossible to ever access.

And from an archive standpoint, in 20 years, no one is going to appreciate walls of text encrypted on a system that may no longer exist.

I'm not saying that I don't approve of the tools, or the concept, but I think the implementation and this envisioned usage are off.

I don't think I would have launched this without an accompanying browser plugin that could handle the decryption and verification in place, but even that only solves have the problem.

<comment><USER9> A plugin exists I think

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like I'm alone in my sentiments; Keybase is my favorite messaging app. #1 reason is that it has the best cross platform behavior I'm seen (but I need a RISC-V version). However every feature addition fills me with angst that it'll add more unwanted bloat.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish Keybase had a couple of extra features:

Ability to use it as an SSO authority. You could grant certain access to new employees, who have already proven their identity in Keybase. Imagine having your own identity that can be given roles by multiple organizations.

Ability for Bitwarden to use Keybase as its store.

A way to store your homedir in Keybase's filesystem.

A way to use Keybase as a development space. Imagine Alice gets a job at Corporation X. She's given the "programmer" role. That automatically makes Docker images, Jenkins access, Artifactory access, Git repos, other relevant software, all through KBFS. You could even use KBFS as the store for Jenkins and Artifactory. As Keybase already has PGP/GPG support built in, signing commits in Git would also work smoothly.

(I really like Keybase, I just hope it can continue to grow, fix bugs, and add features)

<comment><USER9> The SSO thing really needs to happen. Its perfect for it.

There was already research done on this by a third party. And they showed that it works but didn't open anything up as far as I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would not trust any tools made by keybase after triplesec. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9655245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9655245) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420739)

> However, if she joins Keybase and proves her Twitter account

Seems like something that can easily be abused by keybase.

<comment><USER12> > When she someday establishes keys, and cryptographically proves her Twitter > account, the Keybase servers will ping my apps and ask for me to make > available the decryption key to her. My app will check the signed statement > from myself, check her tweet, make sure the proof is valid, and then send > the decryption keys to her, encrypted for her device keys.

> Keybase is not a trusted man-in-the-middle here, and no one else has keys. > The only weak link here is Twitter: my assertion is like this, in English: > "once someone who owns the @billieeilish Twitter account publicly proves a > Keybase connection, I'll unlock it." If Twitter gives that account to > someone else or takes control of it, I'll be trusting Twitter's answer. > @billieeilish is not yet a human. She's a Twitter account.

That seems decent at first pass. Keybase could maliciously not notify about her joining keybase, but everything after that seems like it follows a cryptographic path.

Is your concern that their code is improperly implemented (which seems the concern cited for triplesec)? I'm not seeing the abuse risk. Any pointers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Keybase is a bit ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER14> BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE. kiNJamlTJ29ZvW4 RHAOg9hm6h2eHRE 3lGMepOBsADbesY QiIisNmlv3oKZNW UD08OhMsrOIUK5O KuOTXfmv9omvViX 18jJPe9E9KpfSk7 xQ1jfIyJWFnfh6k h78GwAnyNDb3cTD JQASMD9FGLUUSON qxBCKGQM0fPvcQU 0DgPBCJBaFJb4fj X6zImVnRIRVooQ1 urMBI3NtQic7qe3 vj071LT7tCUBMHl 7Oo4S7YkMnWfvPE ETbAxt1uHPdJA31 oJdHxoa4sy4bBVq MYKsjB6jcL6ZyzE y5GRzJBA6xw0fPy CdZD9zjqrN8NFzc KwejHPHFkpFrP7O 849KXzT2tR09vVW qRClL7ewfCVUzpL 65K6x44R7dYnUqE XCgcrH16Hc4Fw2Y tXuV16VKzA9gW2C J8RXsWJHX8afoUj xuwcth22jxKMRAv gW4sUtXcWxwRDsW fvgqtErWXxFDG4B m76cMOEaAESxy5O xdhfddDY9UTdiex Bz6oF35JK3hq8qf YDvYB. END KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE.</comment>


AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server - <AUTHOR> https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-dns-announcement/ <comment><USER2> The instructions to use adguard DNS on their website doesn't contain how to use adguard DNS over TLS with Android.

For anyone running on Android 9 (edit) or later, navigate to

Settings -> WiFi and Internet -> Private DNS

Select Private DNS provider hostname

Add dns.adguard.org (DNS over TLS)

Click save.

Visit [https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/](https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/) and you should see browser's 'Server not found' instead of Google's (disable existing ad-blockers or they might jump in and block the URL anyway)

\---

For anyone on Android 4.0 or later, consider using Google's Intra [0] to use adguard DNS over HTTPS, if you prefer it over cloudflare's or google's.

Install Intra.

Open the app, click on Settings.

Choose customer URL and paste: [https://dns.adguard.com/dns- query](https://dns.adguard.com/dns-query)

Be sure to 'lock the app' to prevent it from being killed in the background.

[0] [https://getintra.org](https://getintra.org)

<comment><USER3> If your goal is to get rid of ads, why would you use _anything_ made by an ad company?

<comment><USER4> Because some don't mind the text-based ads, but do mind the 10mb+ animated flashing overlay ads with audio that make the internet unusable.

<comment><USER5> The principal concern is pervasive tracking, not ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Pi-Hole on my home network and it's amazing. Routinely 18-20%% of DNS requests are blocked. When my wife goes out onto another network she says she is shocked at how ugly her web browsing becomes (ads on nytimes, huffpo, etc). I highly recommend it. Am using it with cloudfare's encrypted DNS just as one more middle finger to my ISP.

<comment><USER7> > Am using it with cloudfare's encrypted DNS just as one more middle finger to > my ISP.

Curious how you set this up? I see cloudflare as an option in the pihole settings but doesn't appear to be encrypted? (at least as a default)

<comment><USER8> Probably via 'cloudflared':

[https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/](https://docs.pi- hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/)

<comment><USER6> Yup cloudfared

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's lots of "privacy" improving DNS servers, but none of them mention trying to remove unintentional DNS queries.

It turns out lots of things will resolve anything that looks vaguely like a hostname to see if, in fact, they are a hostname. eg, "untitled.pdf". These queries get passed to your ISP, and then on towards the root name servers. So if you run a large nameserver, you quickly find that most of your DNS queries are very obviously rubbish.

With DNSSEC there are two new records (NSEC, NSEC3), that let you say "between these two names, I guarantee there is no valid records". Thus if your nameserver supports this, it can say "there are no valid names between .pccw and .pe, and thus anything that ends with .pdf is invalid". NSEC and NSEC3 records can both be cached and your resolver can synthesise NXDOMAIN records for them. (See RFC8198 for details).

So, instead of spraying queries for "untitled.pdf" across the internet, you can quickly, and efficiently return NXDOMAIN.

Another cause of these is search paths, when you look up "news.ycombinator.net", if that resolution fails, it will try adding the search path, eg: "news.ycombinator.net.example.org", again, leaking typos, and filenames to everyone in your search path.

If you actually value your privacy, this is the first step that you should take.

<comment><USER10> The easiest solution to that, that has been known for many years, and the _actual_ first step that one has been able to take for quite some time now, is running one's own root content DNS server on the LAN. DNS traffic for queries that use invalid top-level domains never escapes the LAN and never even reaches an ISP.

It's a fairly simple exercise in content DNS service. I actually set my machines up with a root content DNS server each.

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/services/djbdns.html#D...](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/services/djbdns.html#Default)

* [http://cr.yp.to/dnsroot.html](http://cr.yp.to/dnsroot.html)

Search paths are a subject in their own rights.

* [http://jdebp.eu./FGA/web-fully-qualified-domain-name.html](http://jdebp.eu./FGA/web-fully-qualified-domain-name.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pi hole (free) is good for this kind of thing if you are at home [https://pi- hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

I found that pihole did too much so wrote my own. I dont think it has any users, except in my house but it seems to work

[https://github.com/time4tea-net/py- hole/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/time4tea-net/py- hole/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER12> But does it work on outside home and on 4G?

<comment><USER13> For $5/month you can roll your own OpenVPN server with Digital Ocean and it will. [0] Bonus: your cellular ISP can't see your traffic and you're automatically protected at coffee shops.

Downside: Battery life takes a slight hit due to encryption.

[0] [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- bloc...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-block- advertisements-at-the-dns-level-using-pi-hole-and-openvpn-on-ubuntu-16-04)

<comment><USER4> Regarding the bonus: you're just shifting the problem. Your ISP can't see your traffic, but now digital ocean can.

<comment><USER14> Digital ocean has not nearly as much of an incentive in selling or tracking the huge amounts of traffic that goes over most of their B2B customers, while your ISP wants to up that ARPU number from every B2C customer in every way possible. And you can switch your cloud server provider easily, your local monopoly ISP not so much. Digital ocean has far more to lose by doing that, while ISPs have a captive audience.

DO will forward those torrent scare / spam server abuse emails ASAP, so they won't be good for that kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You might want to checkout AdGuard Home if you want to run it on your own server or in your own network: [https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome](https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome)

Notable differences between it and Pi-Hole:

1\. Easy to set up and use. It's just a single binary, everything you need is inside.

2\. Supports every DNS encryption protocol out-of-the-box: DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, DNSCrypt.

3\. Can run on any platform (even on Windows since today).

</comment><comment><USER16> I never liked the idea of using DNS services for filtering web content.

For one, it seems like the wrong tool for the job. Filtered content can simply switch to identifying content by IP address instead of DNS, correct? Or change DNS constantly.

And for two, of course there are concerns with handing someone your DNS queries in return for filtering...

<comment><USER17> In practice, I've never seen filtered content change to ip addresses or rotating dns names. Do you know of an example?

<comment><USER14> A lot of adblock can be circumvented if the ads were served from first party servers and didn't use obvious keywords or advertising sizes.

The NYT could serve their ads from NYT servers instead of nagging you to turn off adblock and continue with their 3rd party ad providers.

So they are not doing that, so I doubt cirumventing DNS adblock will be something that they will care much about either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On one hand, it looks pretty cool and convenient. On the other, using a DNS server requires a lot of trust.

Giving some unknown company the ability to trivially man-in-the-middle your connection or sell your browsing history is pretty scary. The fact that their code is open source helps a bit, but there's no way to tell whether the code running on their servers is the same as on github.

I'll stick with my pihole/hostsman [0]

[0]: [http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman/](http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman/)

<comment><USER19> it doesn't seem like they have mentioned it but this is an alternative to their existing self-hosted dns solution.

[https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome](https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> IIRC the company and the servers are based in Russia.

So this is not for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great idea, but how is this monetized or supported? What are they doing with the data?

<comment><USER22> It doesn't cost that much to run a DNS server, even with DoH/DoT. You can easily serve a few million users with a milisecond latency off a cheap instance with 2GB instance.

That's not to say the cost is zero, but with with multiple caching layers (O/S, browser, router, etc), and serving same results for everyone, server costs are not very high.

<comment><USER23> This might be a little more expensive than usual if it returns NXDOMAIN for known ad serving domains. Many DNS clients don't cache failures.

<comment><USER24> Don't know how AdGuard does this, but pihole returns 127.0.0.1 for ad-serving domains. I don't know enough about DNS to guess why it does that instead of returning a failure, though my guess is that maybe doing so prevents software from falling through to a user's secondary DNS server.

<comment><USER23> Interesting. Could produce odd results if you run a local webserver and don't have SNI on. Seems like that behavior should be something configurable.

Edit: Apparently it is. [https://pi-hole.net/2018/05/18/nxdomain-and-null- blocking-wi...](https://pi-hole.net/2018/05/18/nxdomain-and-null-blocking- with-ftldns/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really groundbreaking but it got less noise than I thought it would. Adhell (an app that is capable of doing system wide ad blocking along with many other things thanks to Knox which is Samsung-only capability) was the main reason I stayed with Samsung for years. Now every phone with Android Pie will be to use dns based ad blocking in all networks without running an annoying app in the background.

<comment><USER25> There's also AdAway, which runs on any rooted Android phone, and doesn't require you to show all your traffic to a particular DNS server.

<comment><USER26> There is also Blokada, which creates a local VPN on Android and runs it against a hosts file: [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been looking for something like this for quite some time. I was hoping Cloudflare will offer it but they haven't

My main questions are How do we know if we can trust them with our data? How fast are they compared to Cloudflare ?

I wish there was something like Signal but for DNS. Similar in the way that you don't have to trust them to know they are not doing nefarious things with your dns queries.

I know I can install Pihole in my home network, but I want something that works on every network

<comment><AUTHOR> This script might help you compare the speed of the DNS server to any other DNS server out there: [https://github.com/cleanbrowsing/dnsperftest/blob/master/dns...](https://github.com/cleanbrowsing/dnsperftest/blob/master/dnstest.sh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> update: They say they do not log anything, and pass no information upstream to the authoritative DNS server.

\</comment><comment>

I didn't see anything in the announcement about logging or other privacy related questions. The FAQ also didn't list this information.

The only thing they mention about privacy is how a dns request to them is protected, but not what they do with the data.

Did I miss something?

\</comment><comment>-

Reading their privacy policy:

>We do not collect anything for tracking purposes and take all necessary technical, administrative and physical measures to protect the information we get.

>When AdGuard DNS user tries to visit a page, our server receives following information: User's IP-address; DNS request which contains domain name.

>The DNS request will be forwarded to a root or authoritative DNS server, but for the upstream server it looks as if this request is originated from AdGuard DNS server, there is absolutely no way for them to identify the original user. We, in our turn, do not log or save any of this information.

[https://adguard.com/en/privacy/dns.html](https://adguard.com/en/privacy/dns.html)

<comment><USER29> I suspect this really screws with the DNS tricks used by many CDNs to route requests to near-by servers. So I would not be surprised if, when using this, YouTube, Netflix, etc, get much slower.

<comment><USER2> I see the website loading speeds are affected, but I think it is worth it. This is a good stop-gap for anyone who have not setup a pi-hole just yet but at do not want to install an app or an extension in its stead.

Prior to this, I was running Intra [0] on my Android phone to route all DNS traffic to cloudflare-dns and had been pretty happy to use it in tandem with PrivacyBadger, uMatrix, and uBlockOrigin on Firefox.

Someone suggested using AdAway [1] on rooted devices and another app that does a similar trick of running a local VPN on Android through user supplied hosts file. Great alternative.

[0] [https://getintra.org/](https://getintra.org/)

[1] [https://adaway.org/](https://adaway.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How is it being monetized? I have become more and more suspicious of "free" privacy services. Unless there is an exchange of money for a service, it is highly likely that eventually the company will either fold, or decide to sell the previously private information.

<comment><USER31> Its a marketing expense as far as I can tell. They sell a mobile adblocker.

</comment></comment><comment> lota-putty Has/Is anyone here tried/using [https://zenz- solutions.de/personaldnsfilter/](https://zenz-solutions.de/personaldnsfilter/) for filtering Ads/Tracking?

</comment><comment><USER32> Misleading claim: any external DNS server is not private. Your requests are directed to a third-party. I suspect data-mining you is how they pay their server bills.

The correct technical solution for privacy is running your own DNS server locally.

<comment><USER8> [https://188.8.131.52/](https://188.8.131.52/)

> We will never sell your data or use it to target ads. Period.

> We've retained KPMG to audit our systems annually

<comment><USER33> On Reddit I'd never dare to say this. Cloudflare is widely hated and painted as the enemy of privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I find it ironic that AdGuard blocks the very CDNs that they (and Facebook) uses.

</comment><comment><USER35> So they would like you to please use their own DNS servers... no thanks, I'll just keep using my own, on-premise, private DNS infrastructure at home.

Private infrastructure for the win.

<comment><USER36> Slightly out-of-topic: I am running an own bind9 internally on a bananapi. I'd like to combine this with the functionality of a pi-hole, ideally without needing to set-up a new raspberry for it. I tried several searches on how to combine the exclusion lists of pi-hole with bind9, to no avail. Does anbody know a simple solution for this (I know I could run bind9 in a different port and install the pi-hole binary on the same machine, but this is beside the point).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I believe Cisco umbrella(opendns) public resolver does similar filtering,although not sure if they have one for AD filtering.

Some mentioned trust,for me support for dns ovet https is much more important since I'd be using it over a VPN anyways. And for those thst dont,NAT and inability to correlate DNS lookups with actual (especially encrypted) traffic makes privacy a less significant concern for me.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you want to track AdGuard DNS users with Google Analytics see: [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/save-your-analytics-from- con...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/save-your-analytics-from-content- blockers-7ee08c6ec7ee)

</comment><comment><USER39> Love this service and wrote a blog post about it with some of my blacklist and whitelist entries: [https://calebyers.com/blog/dns-ad- blocking](https://calebyers.com/blog/dns-ad-blocking)

</comment><comment><USER40> You can use hololo DNS changer on the Play store to point to a permanent DNS server. I did this and built my own version of pi hole... The stats are at opens3.net and so is the DNS service. Blocks 140000 domains

</comment><comment><USER41> I tried this a while ago, and it broke one of my sites. No idea how or why. There are no ads on the site or problems with any ad-blockers. Put a bad taste in my mouth.

Edited to add: But I like the idea.

<comment><USER42> Quite possibly blocking CDN address space, or shared hosting. Pretty easy to end up blocking way more than intended if the hostlists aren't sanitized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm a little disappointed they abandoned CoreDNS. I was really enjoying work with it.

</comment><comment><USER44> someonewhocares.org/host

Local solution. I remember this url from memory, "install" on every device/router I touch.

<comment><USER45> Neat! Minor note, I think this should be [https://someonewhocares.org/hosts](https://someonewhocares.org/hosts) (note the plural)

<comment><USER44> indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Another great solution is Pihole: [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

It does not just protects your privacy, but improves your bandwidth too.

Troy Hunt wrote about it a couple of months ago: [https://www.troyhunt.com/mmm-pi-hole/](https://www.troyhunt.com/mmm-pi-hole/)</comment>


Integrated Circuits Can Be Easy to Understand with the Right Teachers - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/05/20/integrated-circuits-can-be-easy-to-understand-with-the-right-teachers/ <comment> compiler-guy This video was reasonably good, but still required a lot of background.

If you want really terrific easily understood, yet totally in-depth information about integrated circuits, starting from the physics how semi- conductors actually work at the electron level, all the way up through gates and on to an entire computer, Ben Eater's videos are outstanding.

Most people know his work from the Breadboard computer, [https://eater.net/8bit](https://eater.net/8bit), where he builds an actual functioning computer, with instructions and microcode and output, from scratch on a breadboard, along with terrific explanations.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. All his videos are amazing, and super easy to understand. Here is his version of how nor gates work: which is way easier to understand to me than this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTu3LwpF6XI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTu3LwpF6XI)

Here is his whole channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA)

and his website:

[https://eater.net](https://eater.net)

<comment><USER2> That video is great, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I studied as an EE. I struggled as a freshman to figure out how flip-flops work (building blocks of registers) when it dawned on me while in the shower that they only work due to propagation delay. What an eye openning shower that was...

<comment><USER4> I feel like some teacher failed you that this wasn't made more explicit.

<comment><USER5> Eh, it's a subtle point. Unequal propagation delays are how a bistable F-F finds its initial state, but once static operation is established, only the maximum toggle rate depends on propagation delay.

And astable flip-flops usually have separate, explicit timing elements rather than relying on gate charge or whatever.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I actually think my instructors were excellent. I had a mental block that needed clearing. My EE instructors went out of their way to spend as much time in office hours as needed to students that needed it. I remember spending several hours in one instructors office trying to figure out where I was going wrong. She was also confused because all of my intermediate work was correct, but I always came up with the wrong answer. Short of it was that I was entering numbers in as reciprocals of what they should have been. E.g. I was entering 1000 in my calculator instead of 1/1000\. Took 2 sets of eyes and a couple of hours to spot the problem. Went from barely getting a C at midterms to not losing a point the rest of the semester. Finished with a solid B amd the next semester was perfect. Only ended up there because of my instructor's help and accessibility.

<comment><USER6> > I remember spending several hours in one instructors office trying to figure > out where I was going wrong. She was also confused because all of my > intermediate work was correct, but I always came up with the wrong answer

In grad school, I was a TA for some undergrad EE courses. We (the TAs) and professor corrected tests together and whenever we encountered a wrong answer, we'd always replicate the student's work to find where things went wrong so we could a) point it out and b) give partial credit whenever possible. For a class of 120 students, it took four of us two days to get through all of the tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was extremely lucky to have learned ICs from a very special man who helped design/refine the concepts at PARC. Thanks to that, he was able to explain the entire course from a perspective of an "inventor".

This is _very_ similar to the way he taught, although we didn't have 3D representations, they were mostly transparencies taped together and layered. Very cool to see it done this way.

<comment><USER8> Do tell more

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understood this but I have an EE background. I feel like it would be still quite difficult to follow even for self-taught makers because some concepts were missing entirely, like the basic function of the transistors he's constantly talking about.

</comment><comment><USER10> IC designer here. Most people struggle to grasp semiconductor circuits because they think about them in terms of voltage drops when in fact they should be thinking about them in terms of current loops. With this approach, the scales are lifted from your eyes.

<comment><USER11> This is a great insight. It's hard to break the habit of defaulting to the node voltage method when it's been beaten into your head via practice in EE labs. In the lab I used in college, something like ~90% of the ammeters were broken or wrong (mostly due to blown fuses by other clueless undergrads), but the voltmeters were always reliable. Defaulting to the voltmeter also meant you didn't have to move things around on the breadboard. I think this hands-on experience influenced the way I approach circuits even if they are on paper or a computer screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not just about integrated circuits.

I found best teachers are the ones who actually solved real-world problem. Only then they understood which piece of knowledge is helpful because they actually understand it.

Teaching is not for the theorists.

</comment><comment><USER13> _How does a purposefully contaminated shard of glass wield control over electrons?_

It's not a shard of glass, it's a slice of silicon monocrystal. These materials are less alike than graphite and diamond.

<comment><USER14> It's humorous exaggeration/misstatement with a wink. The same way people often refer to hard disks as "spinning rust".

<comment><USER15> Except old hard disks really did use iron oxide as the magnetic storage material. Semiconductors were never made from glass.

<comment><USER16> Oxygen doped silicon isn't necessarily the same thing as glass but it's not entirely far off either and has been used in semi-conductors. Actual Glass layers are also a major component in transistor and IC design, so I don't feel like this is any more stretched than the rust comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Neat exhibit! So sad this could be the last Maker Faire [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/18/attendees- bittersweet...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/18/attendees-bittersweet- at-what-could-be-last-bay-area-maker-faire/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Easier, perhaps, I doubt it's easy for anyone, ever. Maybe if you work at some higher abstraction level. But just understanding those bipolar transistors is quite a challenge. You can measure them, but understading why what's measured happens...

</comment><comment><USER19> Anything is though.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's not understanding integrated circuits at all, that seems to be just understanding how a device functions on a chip.

<comment><USER21> I don't understand your comment. They're describing an Integrated Circuit with several transistors.</comment></comment>


The Windows Store is a Cesspool of Scams – Why Doesn't Microsoft Care? - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtogeek.com/194993/the-windows-store-is-a-cesspool-of-scams-why-doesnt-microsoft-care/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft clearly has the resources... They simply don't care because they want to artificially inflate the app count for their marketplace.

Microsoft should take care of this issue soon or they will eventually lose the trust of it's customers (eg. IE).

</comment><comment><USER3> If I needed a reason to avoid Windows 8 and Windows phones, this would do nicely. As it happens, I have for years had a policy of avoiding Microsoft, but it's nice to have my prejudices validated by fact.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try a search for Windows update - ouch.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what would happen if someone with $5 to spare took it upon themselves to repeatedly buy each and every one of the scam apps, and asking ms for a refund of them in between.

<comment><USER6> My guess is Microsoft would flag _you_ as a scammer

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Give them a break. Its a large ship trying to re-orient itself to the new world order.

<comment><USER8> Any reason why they should be given that chance? Trust is to be earned not asked for</comment></comment>


Show HN: okhired - a marketplace for small jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.okhired.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something I built whilst out of work. Ironically, it helped to land me a small contracting gig so I haven't had a chance to promote it recently. It's getting a small amount of traction in the London area - would love to get some feedback, especially from UK readers

</comment><comment><USER2> Well this is certainly a great idea as we've since with the launch of <https://iamexec.com/> You should aggressively pursue the London market. Good luck.</comment>


Humanizer hit V1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mehdi-khalili.com/humanizer-v1#.U0ZKDst2Mu8.hackernews

<comment><USER2> I already made my own method for huminazing dates (3 hours ago), but i use it to Humanize my Enums... (seperating with spaces, ..) and to show them in my view :)

Good job</comment>


Pandora prices IPO at $16 ($2.6 bln valuation) - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/14/pandora-ipo-wednesday/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is on revenue of $50 million in Q1 2011 (~$200 million annualized) [1] and a net operating loss. Revenue for Q1 2011 was almost as high as for all of 2010 ($55 million) [2], making this look like a growth bet.

[1] [http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pandora-revenue- double...](http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pandora-revenue- doubles-q1-132057) [2] <http://blog.eloqua.com/10-fast-facts-pandora/></comment>


Sunless, rainless farming - Trey-Jackson http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110411/ap_on_hi_te/eu_netherlands_sunless_farming

<comment><AUTHOR> _Meeuws says a building of 100 sq meters (1,075 sq. feet) and 14 layers of plants could provide a daily diet of 200 grams (7 ounces) of fresh fruit and vegetables to the entire population of Den Bosch, about 140,000 people._

So that comes out to 280 kg/m^2, or 57 lb/ft^2? Sounds really high to me... AeroFarms claim 30 lbs/ft^2 (<http://aerofarms.com/why/comparison/>). Color me skeptical.</comment>


Bob Cringely Fired from His Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2010/03/another-new-gig-for-bob/

<comment><USER2> This is good to know. I originally signed up for the Home-Account after seeing his recommendation and was very disappointed with the service. It seemed to have changed its tune from when it first started up. And then they started billing me monthly without sending an email or any sort of notification. Their refund policy requires sending in a whole bunch of documentation that would be a big pain in the neck.

I cancelled right away and still occasionally get emails from them. Odd! Anyway, I really think they have become a Scam service now. Has anyone had any good experiences with them?

<comment><USER3> I had a similarly scammy/scummy/shammy experience with <http://Home- Account.com>.

When I used their recommendations for lenders to apply for lower APR home refinancing (the core service they offer). I did it twice and neither bank ever even got back to me. It was like the form I filled out on the home- Account site just went to no where. Scary stuff when you're submitting a lot financial data. Anyway, I cancelled my account after that and changed some passwords elsewhere and moved on.

I then had to ask them three times over the next few months to stop billing me. Finally had to get someone on the phone which took several calls. I will say the CSR I spoke to was great, but the product is so hopelessly broken otherwise it doesn't factor.

So... Terrible experience with Home-Account. It's too bad, too. They're stated business model _really_ solves a problem a lot of people had/have, their execution is just awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He really has gone down hill since that great movie he had "Triumph of the nerds", was really interesting seeing the history of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates starting their companies. Probably one of the better things I've seen on PBS

<comment><USER5> He also had a very interesting follow-up series "Nerds 2.0.1" <http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/> which is the history of the early internet. Make sure to watch that too!

<comment><USER6> I ended up buying a ebay copy of the VHS for 2.0.1, but I've never seen it on DVD- Were you able to find a copy that I'd missed?

<comment><USER5> No, probably it was never released on DVD. I always wondered why he didn't continue the series with, say, Nerds 2.1 (The Fall of The Nerds) covering after-the-bubble internet and Nerds 2.5 (A New Dawn) about web 2.0

It looked like a solid and successful storyline, so much so that he could eventually become a nice cliche. Really pity he stopped working on the series.

Did he ever give any explanation as to why he never made another sequel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does a founder get fired? So, the CEO says "you're fired". Well, I'm guessing that if you're a founder then that means you're a co-owner. So, don't you just tell the CEO, "um... no"?

<comment><USER8> Sure, if you hold 51% of the equity, and even then it would get messy.

The power to hire and fire is (usually) the CEOs, devolved from the board. The board is (usually) appointed by the equity holders.

For some set ups reversing a CEOs decision might require 50%+ of the shareholders deposing 50%+ of the board and replacing them with tame board members who fire the CEO and appoint someone else.

That's going to look pretty bad to the staff, any investors who don't agree, anyone you might try and hire as the new CEO, customers and any potential future investors. And after all of those people have run away as fast as they can how much of a company is really left?

<comment><USER9> In many venture-backed companies, the Series A (and B, C, ...) shareholders are guaranteed a certain number of board seats--solely by virtue of holding preferred stock. The founders (who hold common stock) have no control over how the preferred shareholders use their board seats.

If the preferred shareholders have an outright majority on the board, it's black and white that they can effectively fire the founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cringely actually does something besides writing broadly over-generalized predictions that end up totally missing the mark?

<comment><USER11> You can do better than that comment, Michael.</comment></comment>


Hacking a car purchase is like hacking fund-raising? (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/buying-a-car

<comment><USER2> The thing he ignores here is the value of your own time. Call 8-10 dealerships? Two FULL weekends? On a run of the mill kind of car (like a Honda, Toyota, etc) the most you can possibly save this way is probably $500-$1000 (getting bank financing and selling your old car yourself are more, and probably worth the time it takes).

I don't think it's worth my only non-working time to save that kind of money. Now if I were buying a BMW or other high-margin car, maybe....</comment>


List of the best fonts for programming with comparative screenshots. - <AUTHOR> http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-programming-font

<comment><USER2> I wish these perennial programming font lists would make clear up-front which fonts are designed with anti-aliasing (or ClearType) in mind.

I don't like the fuzzy look of anti-aliased fonts, plus I typically work with two monitors, one in landscape mode, and one rotated 90 degrees for portrait mode. I don't think ClearType works correctly in this case anyhow.

So far I haven't found anything I like better than BitStream Vera Sans Mono.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey mate, I've got some free time tonight so I will go back over every font and update them with that information. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ugh, the anti-aliasing kills most of them for me. I realize I'm probably in the minority, and my opinion might change as screen resolutions get better and my eyes get worse, but I vastly prefer crisp fonts for screen use.

When I switched from Windows 2000 to Ubuntu 6, I spent hours tweaking fonts.conf in the hope of getting something that looked as good as the standard Windows fonts, without much success. It's gotten easier now.</comment>


Gundo.vim - An undo tree visualization plugin for Vim - <AUTHOR> http://bitbucket.org/sjl/gundo.vim/

<comment><AUTHOR> About a month ago I wrote[1] that I wanted something like this. I got tired of waiting, so I put it together myself.

[1]: <http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/#gundo>

<comment><USER2> BTW, I see you want vertical splits by default, just like me. Some of us on the vim list have been working on a new option called splitvertical that would open splits vertically by default (You'd use :horizontal to override). I'd love to have you try out the patch and send bug reports (it's been my production editor for a few weeks).

<https://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/msg/679fee5026967b82>

<comment><USER3> Real question: why is this really necessary? Creating a vertical split quickly is something I do often, all day, with ctrl-w v.

<comment><USER4> Because plugins usually open split buffers that are horizontal by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great, but would be even better with Git integration. To have a visual representation in vim of my git branches would be glorious.

<comment><USER6> This is an idea that I've had in the back of my head for a few years. Tying the undo stack to source control so that you can trivially walk up and down versions extending far into the past. No more "Already at oldest change" messages. I've never got much past "I should do that someday" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I try using this, my macvim blows up: [http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/147/screenshot20101019at2...](http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/147/screenshot20101019at220.png)

Any ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like you have an older version of Vim. Gundo requires 7.3's new undotree() function. MacVim definitely has a snapshot with 7.3, so grabbing that should fix things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was already the histwin plugin available. (<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2932>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, Gundo is inspired by histwin. I got the "playback" idea from it.

Histwin only seems to show the "leaves" of the undo tree, much like :undolist. For visual people like me I just can't grok that as well as seeing it all drawn out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does vim have the undo tree built in, or this this plugin also providing that functionality? I've never seen an editor which represented the history as a tree instead of a line.

<comment><USER10> The tree is built in. There's a really good explanation (with "pictures") of the tree behavior detailed here: <http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_32.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny I was thinking about the same thing yesterday. But alas I decided I'd rather sleep than make it myself so kudos and thanks a bunch, it's probably a really helpful plugin.</comment>


Rogue Behaviour Detection [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://numenta.com/assets/pdf/whitepapers/Rogue%20Behavior%20Detection%20White%20Paper.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is actually pretty scary.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know why searchyc.com is down?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Comcast decided to drop hosting. <http://searchyc.com/post/6027748746/why-is- searchyc-down>

Also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605959>

</comment><comment><USER3> As a side effect, Chrome extension "HN Sidebar" is not working.</comment>


Response from Oracle to Apache on JCP - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/2010/11/moving_java_forward_open_response_from_oracle_to_apache.html <comment><USER2> _"Oracle provides TCK licenses under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms consistent with its obligations under the JSPA"_

IIRC, the whole problem of the Apache folks is that this is simply not true.

<comment><USER3> So, what agreement did they actually offer?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/sun_apache_ip_in_pi...](http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/sun_apache_ip_in_pictures)

Is probably one of the best explanations of the situation.

FOU restrictions would stop any real open source implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does Oracle _still_ not realize that there's no-one in the entire FOSS community that trusts them?

To Oracle: If you want to get our trust back, you need to do these two things:

1) Drop your stupid patent dick-waving against Google 2) Open source Java proper

Then, and only then, will we talk.

<comment><USER6> As much as I would love to see that happen, it wont.

What is developer trust and why does Oracle care?

As long as CIOs trust Oracle to run their business on Oracle products, they are fine.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm, I have to wonder.

E.g. when will "Javaschools" (for which I'll include MIT since it's a Python and Java school) switch to something else?

Not any time soon (new curriculum development is expensive and very political), not even in the foreseeable future ... but when I started playing this game (1977) lower tier schools were teaching FORTRAN and COBOL. That situation did not last forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm having a difficult time reading their response, as their raised middle finger aimed in the ASF's general direction appears to be obscuring the view.

Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I haven't seen such a shining example of, "This response has been vetted by legal and PR" in quite a long time.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like Jim's response on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/#!/jimjag/status/4284342641623040>

</comment><comment><USER11> The way I put together this whole issue is this:

1\. ASF wants the java license to be a grant of patent license.

2\. ASF needs this for the Apache Harmony project.

3\. Google Android uses Apache Harmory.

4\. Oracle sues Google because of copyright infringement in the apache harmory related codes.

5\. Oracle couldn't sue Google, if Harmory had a proper TCK license with patent grant in it.

Am I seeing this through correctly?

<comment><USER12> No. First, understand that the Sun-ASF disagreement is older than Android. Second, TCK licensing doesn't matter to Android because they would never pass anyway.

The issue is really about Sun promising to certify Harmony, then realizing that such certification would jeopardize the J2ME cash cow and finding a sneaky way to break their promise. (I suspect the cow has already died from other causes, but by now the parties are deeply invested in their respective positions.)

<comment><USER13> Won't mobile phones soon be powerful enough to run OpenJDK SE? Will this matter in one year?

<comment><USER2> I think wmf implied the dead cow is also an irrelevant one. I am not sure about it being dead - lots of phones still come with it and, if licensing terms include number of units, that's quite a lot. It will die soon, but, in the meantime, it may be getting Oracle some free money anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find remote contract work? - <AUTHOR> I've looked at sites like RemoteOK.io or "who's hiring" threads, but my impression is that most of those companies are looking for remote employees.
Whereas I am looking for contract work - paid by the hour, 3-6 month assignments.
It's a subtle difference, and I'm sure there is some overlap. However, I'd like to find a more direct source of pure contracts, since that's what I'm looking for here
For on site contracts, there are many "brokers" in my country offering contracts with clients. Is there something like that for remote?
Other ideas for finding remote contract work?
FWIW, my target rate is $80-120/h <comment><USER2> It seems like you're looking at the wrong post from the whoishiring account. You want to "freelancer" threads. (Seen here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16492995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16492995))

Additionally, if you're looking for work, why are you using a throwaway account?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just don't have a regular HN account and I used the one I happened to have open.

I'm actually running an agency with several other people (in Sweden FWIW) and finding a supply of remote gigs @ decent rates would be a big help to the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Got LinkedIn account? I would suggest to just announce to your network that you are available for remote contract work, additionally directly ping friendly connections who have any decisive power in their companies. A network and reputation is a must if you want to earn good money while freelancing remotely.

Also better to pitch a daily or weekly rate, otherwise the hourly remote work may become micro-management nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER4> Look at upwork.com, you will find the kind of contracts that you are looking for. The competition is really high and be able to be paid at your rate is really tough. Look also this repo [https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote- freelance-jobs](https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance-jobs) maybe there is something useful for you.

<comment><USER5> Upwork is a terrible place for contractors. It doesn't fit that salary range. It's hard for really good contractors to stand out. And a lot of higher paying people there expect contractors to have lots of hours under their Upwork profile, meaning that most people will have to work far below their expected rates to qualify for something just barely decent.

Practically every other site is a better choice, even Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This service seems to do that.

[https://www.moonlightwork.com](https://www.moonlightwork.com)</comment>


Ask HN: What do regret not doing with your child before they grew up? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm not a parent but I would encourage parents to try and challenge their children to do things beyond their comfort zone, whether that's academically, socially, physically or otherwise. Some of the most valuable lessons a parent can impart on a child is confidence and resilience and challenging kids to do things they are scared of helps impart this wisdom.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested in this question too - I've gotten some excellent parenting advice from HN.

<comment><USER4> #metoo. My first child just turned 10 and I always feel I did/am doing everything with her. Hiking, boating, ice skating... even though I don't know what I am getting into most of the time at my age. I am just dropping by to see if others have some awesome ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a guy, getting into fights to defend myself instead of keeping it under the lid and festering in anger. This keeps up your self esteem and cuts back years of therapy.

Consequences are much lower - a few cuts and bruises here and there from a schoolyard scuffle. Kids don't really know how to fight and aren't super buff yet. You also quickly learn to avoid them and talk your way out of problems. Or at least develop some good smack talk.

If you actually had a father, that is what he would tell you after your mother scolds you and tell you to avoid conflict. This helps in developing your masculinity.

Getting into fights as an adult is worse. You might get knifed and the fighters are stronger. It's also a dumb thing to do.

<comment> a-saleh I am not sure if this is a thing you regret not doing `as a child`?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Checking 320M passwords in milliseconds with serverless bloom filters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jthomas/serverless-pwned-passwords <comment><USER2> "found password in bloom filter:..." is sort of a misleading message. Bloom filters don't tell you that something is present. They can tell you either that something is not present, or that it is _likely_ to be present.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I'm planning to write a blog post about this and I'll be clearer on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but you probably didn't need to write your own filter :). Google's Guava library has the best designed and performing Bloom filter I've ever seen. Lockless concurrency, extremely fast hashing function.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't :) I used this package: [https://github.com/willf/bloom](https://github.com/willf/bloom) as I wanted to use Go.

<comment><USER3> Ah, good :) . No wheels invented today

<comment><USER2> There are many benefits to reinventing wheels, though. Often the benefits outweigh the costs.

<comment><USER3> Said everyone trying to reinvent the wheel ever :) . I would replace that with "rarely". Sometimes it's obviously optimal to roll your own thing but in almost every case it wasn't.

My bar is pretty high. Unless you can write an academic paper on the thing you just invented you should try what's out there first.

<comment><USER2> That first line is a little flippant.

And the rest is opinion, not fact.

It really depends on the particulars and the benefits of each path. When you build your own ("invent" is disingenuous and "reinvent" seems pejorative, so going with a more neutral phrasing) you own the result, you own the intermediate steps, you learn more, and you have more flexibility in thinking of new tweaks.

It may take more time, but the investment of time pays dividends.

Wheels themselves are one of the best examples of something that has benefited from repeated "reinvention," to use the flawed term, over the last few thousands of years. I don't think you'll find a Maserati wheel on a Tesla, and it's not because Maserati wheels are bad, or because somebody cared about your bar or academic papers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gowalla MILF (terrible linkbait, but clever) - <AUTHOR> http://gowallamilf.bram.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> That's a really clever thing, to take an existing and very catchy acronym, then to tack on a new meaning. There has to be a better use for that trick!

If you could somehow get rid of the feeling of 'I've been tricked' after landing on the page it might even go somewhere. The bounce rate of that page must be a record.</comment>


20,000 Leagues Under ActiveRecord - <AUTHOR> http://patshaughnessy.net/2014/9/17/20000-leagues-under-activerecord

<comment><USER2> I can see the advantages of using the Arel predicates, but to me this:

        User.order("id desc")

reads better than:

        User.order(User.arel_table[User.primary_key].desc)

The latter seems a lot less expressive.

Also, Pat's book is great if you're curious about Ruby internals:

[http://patshaughnessy.net/ruby-under-a- microscope](http://patshaughnessy.net/ruby-under-a-microscope)</comment>


Unicornify (Unicorn Identicons) - <AUTHOR> http://unicornify.appspot.com/whats-this

<comment><AUTHOR> My favourite part is the "How does it work?":

<http://unicornify.appspot.com/making-of>

I love how they put it in 3D space and then rotate it. Genius!</comment>


Easy AI with Python - <AUTHOR> http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/71/

<comment><USER2> The video of the talk: <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1947373/>

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI, if you liked this talk you might also like 'Programming Collective Intelligence'. If you haven't read it already...

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321/>

<comment><USER4> Nice recommendation!

The book description sounds a lot like data mining. Isn't it? Why didn't they use the buzzword anywhere?

<comment><USER5> It does some data mining, but there's also a lot of soft AI (optimizing an airline travel search, building a basic search engine).

It's quite good, although there are a number of annoying typos in the code, a trend that I've noticed recently with a number of O'reilly books unfortunately.

Still, definitely worth a read, the intro to practical applications of some of the AI topics in particular is really cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hands down, my favorite presentation at PyCon

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for submitting!</comment>


Entire Roman city revealed without any digging - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-entire-roman-city-revealed.html <comment><USER2> Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465370)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Abstract/article (open access):

Ground-penetrating radar survey at Falerii Novi: a new approach to the study of Roman cities

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/gr...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/groundpenetrating- radar-survey-at-falerii-novi-a-new-approach-to-the-study-of-roman- cities/BE7B8E3AE55DB6E03225B01C54CDD09B)</comment>


Windows vs. Linux Scaling Performance 16 to 128 Threads with Threadripper 3990X - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3990x-windows-linux&num=1 <comment><USER2> There is no mention in the article whether the software suite was vetted for support of more than 64 threads on Win32. The API has a peculiar weakness that limits thread scheduling to a single processor group by default and a group can have no more than 64 hardware threads. To get above this limit, the application must explicitly adjust the processor affinity of its threads to include the additional hardware threads. MS was not in a hurry to adjust the C++ STL and their OpenMP runtime after the basic processor group API appeared in Vista. I am not sure if they managed to do it by now. Some of the benchmark results look to me like the missing scaling from 64 to 128 hardware threads on Windows might be caused by this.

<comment><USER3> It's not just the API, it's the scheduler in NT itself that won't move threads from one process group of up to 64 hardware threads (on a 64bit system) to another and so it has to be manually managed by the application if you want to scale out farther than that on NT.

Given that it's a fundamental limitation of the NT scheduler (not present in Linux), it seems like it'd be on the table for "yeah, windows makes this way harder, and a lot of applications won't scale the same way on windows as their Linux versions will", rather than "oh, that just doesn't count because they aren't using it right".

EDIT: As an aside, this kind of thing is exactly why Linux doesn't provide binary compatibility on the driver level. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner by making decisions that were perfectly sane 20 years ago. Now NT has fundamental limitations, hitting even harder in kernel space where nearly every driver out there has some macros compiled in that touched these structures. It's bad enough at the syscall layer, but it's even worse when you can't change things with code that's directly modifying internal structures.

This is exactly why Linux won't provide a driver ABI, and why it's a good thing.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's a fundamental binary API limitation type thing as the issue does not exist in Windows Enterprise or Server. This was covered the last time this was posted [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15483/amd- threadripper-3990x-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15483/amd- threadripper-3990x-review/3)

<comment><USER3> > the issue does not exist in Windows Enterprise or Server.

It does. There's maximum of 64 threads in a processor group. This is because the affinity mask in tons of internal data structures inside NT are pointer width (so 64 bits on a 64bit platform).

Server and Enterprise's scheduler adjustments are just around making better decisions balancing which processor group a new process is assigned to at creation time.

You can read more about processor groups and the manual work by user space needed to manage them on all flavors of windows that support them here: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/procthread/pr...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/procthread/processor-groups)

<comment><USER4> So it is, thanks for the link. Does anyone know how to access this[1] page that is referenced towards the end of that, it comes up as "Access Denied" with no hint as to what access is needed but it's referenced all over the place in these documentation pages.

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/Sysinternals/MoreThan6...](https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/Sysinternals/MoreThan64proc.mspx)

<comment><USER3> It's available on archive.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reveals one weakness of the Windows development model: if something isn't a feature that is driven with a PM behind it, it won't happen. On the other hand, if some obscure internal thing isn't optimal yet, you can bet some obsessed hacker is going to tackle it one day. How many schedulers has Linux had already?

<comment><USER6> I don't necessarily consider that a weakness

<comment><USER5> Ok, its a trade-off. The year of the Linux desktop is surely coming soon. I must say I did not expect the scaling performance difference to be so large though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my experience for a long time the Windows NT (from Win2K onwards) kernel and scheduler were actually better than Linux in several ways. That always amazed me, because Linux was a better server OS in many other ways.

Now at 64 cores and above it is clear that the Linux developers have spent a lot of time making the Linux kernel better. May have something to do with the fact that a big proportion of servers in production with many CPUs/cores are Linux servers so they started investing in this quite early?

<comment><USER8> It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft spends more time and effort on tuning and providing OS services for the particular commercial applications that are typically used on high core-count Windows server boxes, several of the most prominent of which are also Microsoft products.

I suspect SQL Server has no trouble scaling to 64 cores and beyond.

<comment><USER9> That is true. I have seen some terrible queries written on enterprise hardware that returned at the drop of a hat without being cached ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly a little surprised it's as close as it is. I have consistently hated having to deploy anything that requires lots of cores on a windows machine.

I have been keeping on eye on DragonflyBSD for years now, it does some very interesting things, so this:

> Coming up next I will be looking at the FreeBSD / DragonFlyBSD performance > on the Threadripper 3990X

has me excited.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see comparisons of compilation time. I wish there was a standard for benchmarking CPUs by compilation time. I know quite often a compilation of the Firefox source code is used, as well as the Linux kernel, I just wish it was more prevalent in these reviews.

</comment><comment><USER12> The linux kernel has been run on "big iron" for a long time now, it would be surprising if it weren't better prepared for scaling to 128+ cores.

linux/Documentation/vm/numa.rst states it was started in 1999, was windows going anywhere near NUMA architectures back then?

<comment><USER13> Since windows was mostly running on x86 and the memory controllers were in the northbridge back then even multi-socket systems wouldn't have been affected by NUMA. Moving them on-die only happened later.

<comment><USER14> There were NUMA x86 rigs long before the memory controller moved to the CPU. IBM xSeries and serverworks chipsets from around 2000 had NUMA topologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are all embarrassingly parallel multiplication workloads. Would be nice for a change if anyone would run something like MySQL or a gRPC server or something like that, you know one where it actually makes a difference how threads get scheduled when they go to sleep and wake up and when packets arrive and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER15> With no clear explanation of wildly varying results between different benchmarks, I wonder if the the analysis is flawed.

Were those programs built with the same toolchain? Could it be, that some library the lagging ones use is causing the problem?

</comment><comment><USER16> looking at the results make me wonder if MS is keeping separate branches of win 10 internally or some CPU hogging services are disabled on Win 10 enterprise version.

<comment><USER17> Windows 10 Pro crippled the scheduler. Windows 10 Enterprise uses the same uncrippled scheduler as Windows Server. "CPU-hogging services" don't consume 32 full cores.

<comment><USER16> but this proofs my theory that MS is keeping internally different repositories for win 10 also we know that some tracking services are disabled for Win 10 enterprise which leads to logical conclusion that tracking services could potentially limit OS I/O ops.

<comment><USER18> Lol no, it's just licensing policies and nothing more.

By the way, going Enterprise -> Pro or Pro -> Enterprise doesn't need a reboot.

<comment><USER19> Hard to believe that when you saw reboot prompts after plugging usb drives

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, the get max pref from the Windows kernel, the software should use the completion port API, and not regular threads/locks.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/i-o- co...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/i-o-completion- ports)

However, any software that does that will likely NOT be cross platform.

In addition, if you want to benchmark the kernel, you should run against ram disk and not SSD.

<comment><USER21> In the general case, to maximize performance on any platform requires you to use platform-specific code.

There are some decent "cross platform" platforms, such as Java or C#, which have a better degree of performance compatibility. But if you're working at the system level (aka: PThreads / epoll with Linux, or Windows Threads / Critical Sections / Completion Ports), you need to use the OS-specific code to truly reach best performance.

Java, especially with high-performance JVMs like Azul, can be surprisingly efficient. But to achieve the best performance on the Java Azul Zing runtime, means to use Java Azul-specific libraries! Once again, tying yourself down to a platform.

As it turns out, performance is the hardest thing to port. You can somewhat easily port functionality to any system and kludge things together (with effort, your C# code can port over to .Net Mono and run on Linux). But to actually get performance guarantees with primitives is almost always platform specific testing.

Case in point: you may make certain assumptions about the Linux scheduler, only for the Linux scheduler to change from O(n) to O(1) to Completely Fair, and today the System Admin can change scheduler details to better tune the needs of your application. These things have an effect on performance that make it difficult to port between systems... or even between the SAME system running slightly different configurations (ex: misconfigure Huge Pages on one box)

<comment><USER20> Right. So in this case, what does the article compare?

<comment><USER21> Oh yeah, I'm agreeing with you for sure.

I don't know what to say about the article, aside from Windows vs Linux comparisons almost always have a degree of inaccuracy. In this case, Phoronix are clearly Linux experts and I fully trust their Linux data.

Its very difficult to find someone who knows how to optimally compare Windows vs Linux, because most people only really learn one platform. I've taken it upon myself to become a "jack" in both platforms (having neither the expertise of a Windows expert, nor a Linux expert), so I'm better positioned than most to see and understand cross-platform issues.

But very few people bother to learn both systems. (And frankly, most people don't have to learn the other system, so why bother learning? You really can make a solid career on one OS without ever thinking about the other one...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They're using `Clear Linux 32280` which is a distro produced by Intel.

Presumably built using the Intel compiler which specifically penalizes using AMD CPUs.

Would explain the advantage at low core counts that windows has.

<comment><USER23> Interestingly the opposite is true. AMD performs surprisingly well on Intel Clear Linux [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/12/surpr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/02/12/surprise- amd-recommends-intels-clear-linux-for-best-ryzen- threadripper-3990x-performance/)

<comment><USER24> To the point where the benchmarks in the post get a bit misleading, as clear Linux will outperform Ubuntu (or Fedora or whatever a user is more likely to install) by a quote big margin.</comment></comment></comment>


David Cameron on Broken Society - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcjjzFdU_pA&feature=player_detailpage#t=228s

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 is here:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2fa08TlG4></comment>