Should scientific papers be anonymous? - <AUTHOR> http://www.statnews.com/2015/12/30/should-scientific-papers-be-anonymous/ <comment><USER2> At the root of this proposal is the fantasy that scientists would somehow be selfless adherents to the alter of the scientific method. They give up all honor, pride and recognition so that the "scientific method" be protected from the often selfish desires of human beings.

In the real world, having names on papers is a really good thing. In real academia, I've heard professors say "well that work was done by so-and-so, and they're bad researchers so I don't trust their results".

There's this popular misconception that just because something is published in a peer-reviewed journal that it must be true. Nobody in research actually believes that. All it means is the authors were able to convince the reviewers and the peer reviewers to publish it.

<comment><USER3> What if papers were cryptographically signed so that they can be claimed later and there were a period of, say, one year of anonymity after publication? This period would allow things like peer review and initial recognition of the paper to occur with less social bias.

Just as important would be institutional anonymity. A paper from Nowheresville should be considered equally to a paper from Harvard.

Finally I think papers should be required in their headings to disclose sources of funding for the work therein, although this would have to be done later so as not to indirectly compromise the anonymity period.

<comment><USER2> What problem are you trying solve? As bad as problems as the academic community has (it has lots!!), names on papers is not one of them.

Science is the organic collection of all people and resources and knowledge engaged in figuring out how our world works. Having blind papers would mean I would just have to spend an extra 10 minutes reading each paper to figure out what group wrote it.

The fact that Prof. Ivy League gets her results recognized more easily then Prof. Nowhereville is, actually, an ok system. Because Prof. Ivy is more likely to be pursuing interesting problems to the rest of the scientific community, she's more likely to be trusted by other scientists to be a good scientist (i.e. not careless), and the system supports people who have "made it" through the academic gauntlet.

If Prof. Nowhereville actually finds something interesting, pursues publication, passes peer review, and it gets published then great. His results are probably worth the attention of the scientific community. But the fact that the barriers are higher is ok, because he hasn't proven himself to be as trustworthy.

<comment><USER4> > What problem are you trying solve?

I think this is ultimately a manifestation of "scientific deontology ethics", a fantasy that we should approach each paper with identical, non-prejudicial priors and evaluate it on its own merits. (It is the scientific analog to the reductio ad absurdum of maximum non-prejudice in human affairs, where one never considers any background about a person before dealing with them.) This position only seem tenable to those who haven't yet had to wade through the morass of terrible and misleading result in the literature.

In other words, this sort of idea is not a consequentialist attempt to solve a problem, it's a deotological attempt to stop unfairness.

<comment><USER5> Every new scientist having to learn the heuristics to judge a high-quality paper from its metadata seems like a local maxima in fighting spam, and something that makes the profession harder to get into.

The community would be forced to develop tools and documentation to judge new papers based on actual content and aggregated opinions, which seems like a better way to filter poor-quality human-written content (we're not talking about email spam here). Plus, by making the process explicit and visible, it'd be easier for an outsider to engage with new scientific literature too.

Perhaps that's an approach we could use in software development. It's mostly how I use HN or Reddit -- I read plenty of comments, and only ever look at the name if the comment provokes interest in the writer's background.

<comment><USER4> > The community would be forced to develop tools and documentation to judge > new papers based on actual content and aggregated opinions

I think you've got it backwards. _First_ make the good tools, then stop using the bad ones. You don't force people to develop good Bayesian spam filters by banning whitelists. Rather, the Bayesian spam filters get invented, then people are _happy_ to stop using whitelists.

Likewise, scientists would love nothing more than to have the tools that enable a transparent frictionless utopia free to barriers to entry. They'd get access to a few new ideas caught in the spam filter! But we don't get there by anonymizing papers. That would just lead (almost instantly!) to good scientists whispering in the ears of their colleagues about which papers they just published, or to take a look at that new paper by so-and-so, etc. (And then the only people who could access the metadata would be those who are already at good institutions!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the journals in my field requires you to strip out all identifiers before submission. This is _remarkably_ difficult. Consider the things that might give you away:

\- GitHub, FigShare, institutional repositories etc. for code and data

\- Information on the location of the study

\- Statistical packages used (hope you didn't author the one you're using)

Of course, anonymity will be shattered the moment anyone talks about their work at a conference. Furthermore, several systematic reviews and meta- analysis studies I've worked on benefitted greatly from being able to email the authors directly with questions.

I'd also be concerned that people will mentally assign things to a "Big Name" in the field _anyway_. "Ah, another paper on HAART. Must be out of so-and-so's lab..."

<comment><USER7> Sure- you can absolutely figure out who wrote the paper given enough work. Yet, I really do like the idea of _first_ the paper being reviewed on it's own merit/ideas/findings, and _then_ potentially people seeing who was involved as a secondary thing at some later point after judgements had already been made.

<comment><USER6> I really like double-blind peer review.

This was more a note that, when the paper is accepted, those identifying things _go back in_. The proposal to have papers be anonymous would have to leave them back out, stripping the paper of important context, and making open science a bigger pain than it already is. Which is kinda contrary to the goal.

<comment><USER8> I have submitted several papers for double-blind peer review. (I work in the systems side of computer science.) My rule is that I will not weaken a paper through the double-blind process - that is, even if saying this paper builds on prior work _may_ give enough information to out me or my co-authors, I still do it. I still say what system we used, and say it builds on previous work, but I pretend that that work was done by someone else.

In practice, someone who really wants to break the double-blind veil probably can. But I don't think that's a problem, as very few people are _consciously_ biased, and will actively seek out such identifying information. By removing names and affiliations, and pretending all of our work was done by someone else, I think that's enough to help people avoid _unconscious_ bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone good enough to peer review would probably know who did it. Research areas are often not that large.

<comment><USER10> Yes. When I was doing peer review work in my field (Mass Com), it took about a year to get the landscape sorted. That includes being able to ID people behind submissions, based on writing style.

Unfortunately, I saw submissions get down voted not because of the content, but because of some long standing intellectual feud (I found this out after I became a sought-after "tie breaker." The journal editors figured out I was indeed casting votes based solely on the submission in hand).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The landscape of incentives within scientific publishing is complicated. You have to map out what drives each of the parties: journals, authors, reviewers, readers.

Journals want high-quality submissions from well-known authors in order to maintain the brand. They also want ongoing subscription fees.

Authors want to be published in good journals, but they also want raw publication count to be high. So the primary incentive may not be intellectual honesty.

Reviewers often are in competition with the authors of the papers they're reviewing, hence the term _peer-review_. They have an incentive to prevent publication of competing work.

Readers want all knowledge to be free, so they have an incentive to _not_ pay for journals. They also want to know which works are important and which are crock, so name-recognition comes into play.

I've probably left something out, but you get the idea. Coming up with new ideas is fun, but until you align the incentives, nothing meaningful will happen. And you've got hundreds of years of inertia and thousands of careers in the balance.

<comment><USER12> "Reviewers often are in competition with the authors of the papers they're reviewing, hence the term peer-review. They have an incentive to prevent publication of competing work."

This seems backwards to me. There isn't a fixed amount of interest in a field that is captured by peers. If others in your industry are getting attention then it draws attention to your industry as a whole. I'd think reviewers would be biased towards having competing work published not against.

<comment><USER11> In some fields, there is extreme pressure to be "first to publish" specific results, and sometimes multiple labs are working on the exact same problem. In this case, if the "peer" is with a competing lab, they are faced with the unethical decision of rejecting the paper in favor of their lab. Or even worse, of stealing the results and trying to publish first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I'm not sure about the complete anonymity suggested by Hanel, I do wish that journals would move to double-blind reviews. It would not be perfect, as often research know enough to guess who the authors might be, but it would still reduce bias.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't work. Gotta justify getting your grants by being able to point to previously published work.

Plus, everyone can tell who did what-- if not exactly who, then one of a small (5-10) group of people who are likely in the same geographical location.

</comment><comment><USER15> How would one decide who gets tenure, promotion and raises if all papers are anonymous? Once universal basic income is implemented, maybe. Meanwhile, no.

</comment><comment><USER16> No, but it would be nice if we had a place where we could discuss scientific papers anonymously. Of course, to keep things concentrated, it would be nice if there was exactly one such place.

<comment><USER17> I've always wanted arXiv to fill that role.

I understand though that simple anonymous comments don't cut it. It can devolve into youtube comments quickly -- personal attacks to the authors, low effort comments, spamming, "trolling", etc.

Those sites need a private reputation system: you can vote comments but the commentator is anonymous; it's hidden reputation should help sorting the comments.

<comment><USER18> A stackexchange site with an automatically posted "question" for each arxiv submission would be an interesting idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the main issue here is the problem of bias in the scientific community. Anonymity is just one proposed solution. There could be others.

We should remember that there are three major forms of incentive in the scientific community :

1\. Prestige (requires name) 2\. Salary and grants (requires credentials, and hence names) 3\. The joy of analysis and discovery (doesn't require names)

(I might have missed some forms of incentives, but these seem to be the major ones to me.)

Anonymity will take the top two incentives away. The second one is a very practical one. There's an existing competition for salary and grants, a pretty brutal one in some areas where money is scarce. We need to solve this problem first before the concept of anonymity can be realistically entertained.

I have heard other proposals for reducing bias that seem more tangible. One of them is democratization (partially or fully) of peer review in a centralized publication system (like arxiv).

</comment><comment><USER20> No.

Peer review can apply the scientific method to the paper well enough. This may take time. That is just fine.

People having their names on papers helps with motivation to publish in most cases, and it's good to understand who contributed what when trying to understand how an idea has formed and who might be with collaborating or talking to.

Some topics may be difficult politically. Those are special cases that can and should warrant doing whatever it takes to insure publication and the safety of the scientist.

There are also ethics. Anon publishing may well increase questionable research. This should fall into the special case bucket too, as it overlaps with politics.

</comment><comment><USER21> Previous discussion on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762409)

<comment><AUTHOR> That previous discussion is of a different article by a different author, but, yes, this issue deserves a lot of discussion. The article submitted to open this thread is by two authors who follow the research literature on this topic closely and who review much of the prior literature in their commentary article.

<comment><USER8> A different article, yes, but I think the currently submitted one is a reaction to the linked one. I was going to link to the previous discussion, too, as I think this discussion and that one are necessarily related.

Which makes me think maybe HN should have some mechanism to say "This article is related to this other one", and point to the HN submission for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Which makes me think maybe HN should have some mechanism to say "This article is related to this other one", and point to the HN submission for it._

I guess our user comments here in this subthread are that mechanism. By the way, this whole thread is an implementation of the new HN algorithm that revives threads that are missed on first submission and gain upvotes later. I notice that is implemented by resetting the submission date on the submission. (I was the original submitter, so I remember when I first submitted this thread.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It sounds like a good idea for the topics that are highly skewed by the political agenda. Like global warming.

Imagine a situation when some climatologist makes a discovery that global warming is a fluke. In the current political climate no reputable journal will accept his article on this topic. Moreover, no scientist will even SUBMIT one because of the possible damages to his reputation.

On the condition of anonymity, it may stand a chance.

<comment><USER23> They could do what Satoshi and Bourbaki did: submit pseudonymously.

<comment><USER24> For many (all?) journals, you have sign a consent to publish form. As soon as you sign it, your anonymity is over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Simple solution is to have blind and double blind reviews. People write papers not only for the greater good but also to improve their careers and profiles. Because thats the only way to get more funding to do more work.

By mandating blind reviews, the bias can be removed easily.

There are many who give good/bad reviews just by looking at the authors names, not everyone of course.

I am not sure why blind reviews are not mandatory by now

</comment><comment><USER26> Better idea: Submit it anonymously with your public PKI hash. Then wait X years (5?) and optionally announce yourself by signing the hash to prove you are the author. That way, enough time is given to have the content unbiasedly considered, yet you still get to take credit a bit later.

</comment><comment><USER27> The correct term is not anonymized, but de-identified.

This wouldn't work in almost any field because the community can already tell with high accuracy who the peer reviewers are, and it's usually easy to tell who wrote a paper by the language style and the conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ironically, none of the authors were selfless enough to submit anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER29> Should political actions be anonymous? Judicial rulings? Why _not_ anonymize everything we take part in?</comment>


Using Grunt And Bower for Frontend Package Management - <AUTHOR> http://realchaseadams.com/2013/11/10/grunt-build-and-bower-package-management/

<comment><USER2> Fwiw an easy way to get started with Grunt & Bower is to clone Bootstrap [1] and follow the setup instructions in the readme. That'll get you up and running with a well-developed Gruntfile.js, Grunt, Bower, Less & JS compilation, testing, and a number of other things. Then you can customize from there with the huge package repository [2] - separate test and prod builds, htmlminification, etc.

[1]: [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap)

[2]: [http://gruntjs.com/plugins](http://gruntjs.com/plugins)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you used Yeoman? It may suit those purposes better, especially if your just using it for the gruntfile and bower configs.

One of the reasons I love Grunt is because of it's robust contribution packages, so that's a great point.

Here's my Gruntfile if you're interested:

[https://gist.github.com/realchaseadams/7425232](https://gist.github.com/realchaseadams/7425232)

<comment><USER2> Yup, Yeoman's great too, only reason I suggest starting with Bootstrap instead is b/c the first time you start playing with Yeoman you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out which scaffolding to download.

There are multiple options for every framework contributed by different people and if you're not familiar with any of them, it can take some time downloading them all, reading through the source, and comparing. At least that was the case for me.

Bootstrap cuts out that step and is a simple, 'don't make me think' way of cutting straight to working with Grunt and Bower.

Thanks for the gruntfile, lots of things and ways of doing stuff in there I haven't seen yet, starred and will refer to it as I continue developing my own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a great point I hadn't really thought about as a reason to use Bootstrap.

Thanks for pointing that out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For the latest project at work I've been using Yeoman with Grunt, Bower and NPM for the Node part. It has been a fantastic experience and a brilliantly streamlined workflow. I would highly recommend it.

The yeoman-angular generator is great at setting up scaffolding and then grunt build spits out concatenated and minified js and CSS files. You can also run all your tests using Grunt (which also get setup by the yeoman generator).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeoman is fantastic! I actually used it to scaffold out my blog, which I use jekyll for. It's amazing the things that we can automate things we used to have to manually do and focus on making cool stuff!</comment></comment>


Monster Plane built by Russians - <AUTHOR> http://ritemail-amazing.blogspot.com/2010/03/russians-used-to-build-iron-pterosaurs.html

<comment><USER2> <http://www.google.com/search?q=project+903>

The youtube link in the above search shows the thing "in flight."

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool, but definitely blog spam.</comment>


Cunningham's Law - <AUTHOR> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law <comment><USER2> I use this on my kids.

"What happened at school?"

"Nothing."

"Did you race motorcycles in the hallways?"

"No, we had music!"

<comment><USER3> Man I had that conversation so many times (like, five days a week). I wish I'd had that in my toolbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is also a great way to solve a problem. If everyone in the room is stumped, throw out a stupid solution. If nobody can improve on it, then the last solution wins. Works surprisingly well as most people can critique while finding it hard to create from scratch.

<comment><USER5> Gone there, did there, and it's dangerous. Somebody might like your first solution, and be vocal enough to make everybody on the room shut-up.

<comment><USER6> That seems more like a hiring problem.

<comment><USER7> The problem was they hired the first candidate, figuring they could get a replacement when a better one came along , but the first one got entrenched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In similar vein, the best way to get help in Linux is by trolling: [http://bash.org/?152037](http://bash.org/?152037)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I've found ESR's old "how to ask smart questions" is very wrong. The more details you provide, the less likely you are to find an answer. (It's more accurately titled "how I wish people would have asked the question because I would have less work to do but it doesn't actually get their question answered, which is of course less work.)

It seems that every detail gives people another reason not to answer. If I say I'm trying to search for a word somewhere in a directory of files on OpenBSD, people who only know Linux will think that "well, grep must not work the same way on OpenBSD" and not respond.

Partially this is because of prior experience with assholes. If someone says "well, on Linux you use _grep -lr_ " then an asshole will shout back at them "HE WAS ASKING ABOUT OPENBSD NOT LINUX YOU MORON LEARN TO READ."

(Spoiler: the answer is the same on both Linux and OpenBSD.)

People get the Internet they deserve.

<comment><USER10> It works on focused technical forums. The less focused and the less technical, the less well it works... though I'd consider that a criticism of the forum rather than the technique. I've been on plenty of focused technical forums, and it is dead accurate for those.

If it doesn't work for you, I'd consider that evidence the forum in question is less technical than it may initially appear; there's a surprising number of forums that have the appearance of being technical, but aren't populated by very technically-skilled people. I've seen that on Ubuntu forums, for instance; someone asks a perfectly sensible question, and 5 people chime in with very convincing-sounding but ultimately completely wrong suggestions. OSes seem to attract that.

<comment><USER11> If someone posts a brief description to a simple problem without sufficient detail, they're more likely to get engagement because the initial question will be easier to process and read, and people will follow-up asking for additional detail. When the original poster replies with the additional detail, the participants in the thread will feel a stronger sense of social obligation to answer. This iterative approach that requires mutual investment and the establishment of a social expectation before the whole question is posted may be beneficial even in highly focused, highly technical forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The best part is that now that it's been posted it has now become impossible to disagree, because attempting to disprove it would actually validate the law.

<comment><USER13> Although funny, your logic is flawed. If you disproved this law globally, it wouldn't be necessary that this particular instance doesn't hold.

<comment><USER14> How would you disprove the law, though?

<comment><USER15> Find at least one example where it doesn't hold.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I believe that is the answer.

<comment><USER14> Sounds legit. Can you think of any such example?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is how I used to get help on Ubuntu forums. If your sound card isn't working and you say "Ubuntu can't play MP3s but XP can!" you'll get help in a minute.

<comment><USER18> This is trolling, and not posting the wrong answer. But for what I saw, trolling in Linux forums with mention of Windows can sometimes extract the best knowledges from people...

<comment><USER19> It's very bad trolling if all you get is an informational answer. The distance between Cunningham's Law and Trolling is measured in tears per fact.

As the fact drops to zero the ratio asymptotically approaches infinity, at which point you have entered trolling nirvana.

As the tears approach zero you have entered zen, the world where all facts are made plain and understandable, and problems no longer exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Relevant here: "I use a trick with co-workers when we're trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald's." By throwing out a "wrong answer," better suggestions are made.

[https://medium.com/what-i-learned- building/9216e1c9da7d](https://medium.com/what-i-learned- building/9216e1c9da7d)

<comment><USER21> When patients are having MRI scans I ask them what they would like to listen to. Everyone says they don't mind. I usually reply "Excellent, Meat Loaf it is!" And surprisingly often get a positive response. That or a specific request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've made a conscious effort recently to make more mistakes (my apologies to the people on julia-users). I feel it's improved the rate at which I learn things. And I feel validated by "Antifragile" which I've just started reading.

(By chance I am also currently being tested for brain damage. It's bitterly amusing that I end up being unsure if I am actually making more mistakes on purpose or not...)

<comment><USER9> It's absolutely the best way to learn. I remember my mistakes better than by successes.

But then you encounter an employer who says that they want to see your StackOverflow account which is full of wrong answers and silly questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, uh, what exactly is 'wikimedia'? How is it different from the straight-up 'Wikipedia'? This article seems like it should have been on Wikipedia, but it's on Wikimedia. I've never seen an article of this nature being hosted on wikimedia. What's going on here?

<comment><USER24> Wikimedia is the parent project of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikinews, and so on.

The wikimedia wiki is used for documentation and discussion on the topic of running a wiki, and on specifically running MediaWiki (the underlying software that powers these sites).

Since this is an article about a topic relevant to running wikis, it's on the meta wiki. It is unlikely to be notable enough to meet the criteria for being included in Wikipedia; in order to avoid everyone creating their own personal Wikipedia page or a Wikipedia page for their high school band or the like, which can be very hard to ensure is high quality and accurate, Wikipedia has notability and verifiability requirements. Something must be notable enough to have been published by several existing reputable sources in order to meet this guideline.

It's fairly likely that Cunningham's Law does not meet those criteria. But the Wikimedia meta-wiki has less formal requirements, and its topic is explicitly discussion about running wikis, so this winds up there.

If you click on the logo, you can see this described straight from the source: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

"Welcome to Meta-Wiki, the global community site for the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement in general. Meta-Wiki's discussions range from coordination and documentation to planning and analysis of future Wikimedia activities."

<comment><USER25> > It is unlikely to be notable enough to meet the criteria for being included > in Wikipedia

Why? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia [1], there is no need to keep the amount of pages low, storage is cheap and no one prints out Wikipedia on real paper.

The "not notable enough" is a real threat to Wikipedia and the future of the project. The German Wikipedia already lost a lot of former authors (volunteers) because of admins gone crazy. They don't want anyone to edit "their" pages, and revert and ban almost every new edit/user. You can read about this serious situation on Heise.de [2]. Read also the 650+ comments of the related discussion [3]. The English version is still better in shape, but it moves in the same direction, unfortunately.

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

[2] [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Blutet-Wikipedia- aus-...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Blutet-Wikipedia- aus-2123766.html) ; Translation: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FBlutet- Wikipedia-aus-2123766.html&act=url)

[3] [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Blutet-Wikipedia- aus/...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Blutet-Wikipedia- aus/forum-275514/list/)

Edit: I am not against "notability requirement", with a better balance it's fine. Wikimedia Foundation should have a closer look at the German branch... maybe resetting all "admin" privileges would help?

<comment><USER26> Various people have been claiming for years that the "notability" requirement is a threat to Wikipedia. Yet the project is still around and is still _the_ go-to source for encyclopedic information.

<comment><USER27> I go to Google for information. Sometimes it puts a Wikipedia page high in the results, and many times it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Related: In IRC channels, ask a question and state that a competing product seems to work better. You will get multiple answers within minutes. Works especially well if it is Linux vs Windows.

</comment><comment><USER29> This, and not simply invective, used to be what "trolling" was about. At least in my romanticized memory of it.

<comment><USER30> When a comment is simply invective, we call it "flaming". Trolling is about triggering a disproportionate response -- particularly, causing the other person to invest either much more time or much more emotion than the troll did. Common forms include:

\- using subtle digs make people angry enough that they lash out (thereby making them appear to be the instigator)

\- introducing a tangential or irrelevant point, often in a short and snark- laded comment, to get people to waste a lot of time trying to respond

\- copying and pasting large blocks of text, especially lists of problems with a particular viewpoint, and criticizing responses for being incomplete (thereby provoking people into writing very long and thorough responses)

\- as a followup to the above, making vague criticisms like "you're missing the point" or "you keep dodging my question", so that people will spend time trying to figure out what you're talking about and maybe reworking their entire argument

\- implying details, facts, or answers that don't actually exist (or that you don't know if they exist), trying to get people to spend time investigating something you haven't bothered figuring out. The "law" referenced in the article is an example of this type of trolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is also an interrogation technique: "We know you did X." "No, I was doing Y or was at Z."

Where Y and Z are what the interrogator was after. More reasons not to talk to the cops.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think people are often more motivated to point out that someone is wrong than by answering a question.

[http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/)

</comment><comment><USER33> More discussion from when this was posted on reddit.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1zv60v/til_of...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1zv60v/til_of_cunninghams_law_the_best_way_to_get_the/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've heard this attributed to Alan Kay instead of Ward Cunningham...

...which probably makes this comment a good example of the law.

</comment><comment><USER35> This actually used to be a joke about the Linux community.

</comment><comment><USER36> That's basically how I go with links posted on Hacker News or Reddit. Often I can save the burden of reading a terse article by reading the comments. There is always someone who has only read the title, who says something dumb; he is then quickly corrected by someone who did read the article and explain it thoroughly.

On the one hand, getting first to the comments is also good when the source is dubious. On the other hand, some article are definitely worth reading (which is usually easy to guess from the title or first comments), and it feels good to give back when you know what the article is about and can contribute to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sometimes you can get a solution to a problem by saying saying that after spending a bunch of time attempting to solve it, you've decided that a solution is impossible. The desire to prove you wrong is too much for some to withstand, and they go out of their way to provide you with a solution. (A consequence of [http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/) "someone is _wrong_ on the internet".)

</comment><comment><USER38> So the newsweek story should cause the real inventor of bitcoin to be revealed presently?

<comment><USER39> Exactly what I was guessed after reading the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Best is subjective. Who is it best for, the lazy individual posing the question(incorrect statement) or for people who will reply? In addition how many more questions can the person ask like this before everyone ignores them?

</comment><comment><USER41> This is how many get help in #rubyonrails on Freenode. Join the channel and state that x is impossible with ActiveRecord/ActionView/ActionController - solution posted in seconds.

</comment><comment><USER42> the best way to get an answer on the internet, as everywhere else, is to ask a very clear question to the right interlocutor.

in other words, you need to do enough work on your own to figure out what you need to know, after which you'll find that (as long as you have a decent command of the language you're expressing yourself in and the general terms in the field of inquiry) it's not difficult to get good answers.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is general human tendency, that is "to correct".

</comment><comment><USER44> Exactly.

</comment><comment><USER45> (with no legit wiki sources)

<comment><USER45> (sorry if I just spoilt the joke)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are no interesting examples of this law.

</comment><comment><USER47> YES THE BEST WAY TO GRT CLEAN WATER IS TO PEE INTHE WELL BECOS THEN EVERYONE WANTS TO CLEAN THE WATER YOU SEE

</comment><comment><USER48> Why do mods constantly micromanage submission titles? The original title was the actual law, not the name of the law.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is very true of Hacker News. Everyone here has to be the smartest fucker on the planet, longing for the great PG approval.

<comment><USER14> It's true. Not just PG, but everybody else in the room, too. It's the classic courtier situation. See: 48 Laws of Power

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't agree...

</comment><comment><USER51> Finally, someone has unmasked Newsweek's intentions.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm confused. Is the right answer or the wrong answer?</comment>


New 5th Edition of "Loving Common Lisp, or the Savvy Programmer's Secret Weapon" - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp <comment><AUTHOR> I just released the 5th edition of my book "Loving Common Lisp, or the Savvy Programmer's Secret Weapon" [https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp](https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp) \- this is a free upgrade for previous purchasers.

If you purchased a previous edition and did not get a notification letter from leanpub.com, then please manually login to your leanpub.com account to download the new edition.

<comment><USER2> thanks a lot for your effort.

I'll read this new version too.

I think your book is very underestimated. It's a great book to beginner perhaps the best one, because It's updated and It's very practical. If I would have to recommend someone about where to start to learn Common Lisp I'll say to start with your book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to make free static website - <AUTHOR>

feature:
Ad-free
Upload images,html,css,js,etc. via classic FTP
Google blogspot is optimized for blogging site. Github pages not for commercial purpose(e.g. Advertisement).
Please Help Me Thanks! :) <comment><USER2> BitBalloon to host. You can deploy as zip, and has a REST API.

To actually make the site, I believe most programs (Jeckyl, Pelican, Octopress) are configured for blogs. If you want your own structure, and aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty, you can use Flask + Frozen-Flask.

</comment><comment><USER3> you could contact me and I could let you host it in my server, If it's just a static site I don't mind :)

</comment><comment><USER4> neocities.org does it great, except FTP</comment>


Ask HN: Are eshares' 409a valuations independent and able to withstand audits? - <AUTHOR> Advice would be really appreciated on this.
We need to do a 409A valuation. Our lawyers, a large valley firm, said to not use eshares. Evidently, they changed the firm who was doing those outsourced valuations for them (it used to be preferred return and then greener equity) and couldn't give a sufficient answer that they were independent. And this could present issues in DD from investors but also IRS down the road. In a worse case scenario, options strike prices will have to be re-done with tax implications.
Anyone have similar feedback or thoughts on this? Is it OK to use eshares prior to Series B and then switch over to something more robust?  To make things more complicated, we need to do options and then a raise within a few months of each other so it would be nice to not waste a ton on this if we don't have to. <comment><USER2> (Full disclosure - I lead the valuations team at eShares)

The question of audit defensibility is ultimately the only question that matters in a valuation. Our goal (as is the goal of other providers) is singular - to deliver a valuation that will withstand Big Four audit and that utilizes the most applicable valuation methodologies for the situation.

Here's how we at eShares specifically have approached that:

1) One of our first hires on the team joined from a Big Four firm as a former 409A auditor

2) We actually built our product to anticipate audit - we provide a full valuation report in addition to all of the financial models and valuation models (with formulas still intact) to make the inevitable audit a much smoother and transparent process. (We actually post our models and reports for the world to audit as well on our website: [http://esharesinc.com/409a](http://esharesinc.com/409a))

We took the black box out of valuations and replaced it with fully transparent valuations models that backs up every output that shows up in your valuation report. In our opinion, this makes a much stronger case.

As the largest provider of 409A valuations in the country at eShares, if we couldn't stand up to audit, we would have been out of business by now. We've worked with companies from pre-Seed stage to post Series E, pre-acquisition and pre-IPO.

\--

tl;dr

1) Our team includes former 409A Big Four auditors, we've been audited and have never failed, and we deliver an audit-friendly valuation package with intact models instead of just a report.

2) eShares does more valuations than any other firm in the country (~200 this month alone). At that volume, we simply must be correct every single time.

3) We've applied our engineering team and the power of software to financial valuations. The quality is the same if not better than any other provider, but our valuation and audit process is just much more efficient and less costly for you

Just as stock brokers still exist after eTrade came along, 409A valuations firms will exist after eShares. But for those that do their valuation with us, we think it's a better (and certainly less costly) product and experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend finding a better law firm.</comment>


Ask HN: Business bank account for a Delaware Corp - <AUTHOR>

I can't be the first person who has had to deal with this. :)
My business partner and I have a Delaware registered corporation. It is an internet based business that provides tools for fundraising. We are making money, and it's currently sitting in a Paypal account. We need to setup a bank account to get it out and to get a merchant account. Where and how do we do it?
a) I am in California. I can register as a foreign entity in California and pay the $800 / year filing fee + any business income taxes and then go through HSBC (which seems to have really good virtual banking rates.) California, however, doesn't seem that friendly to corporations and since I have no use for actually doing business in California, this seems like a high price to pay on a margin business.
b) My business partner lives in NYC. We could register there as a foreign entity and pay the $125 / year filing fee + applicable foreign entity fees and annual taxes. Then go through HSBC as well. This seems at least a little more reasonable.
c) ? I don't know. What are the other options? What have other people done? Anyone know of banks in Delaware that would deal with us?
Also, if we are registered as a foreign entity in California and we make money online, can California tax that income even if it's from all over the world?
This seems like such a simple thing, but it's very clearly not. I would love any input or advice the HN community has to offer.
Thanks so much, Jeremy <comment><USER2> I'm in a slightly similar situation; Delaware C-corp, but we don't do business there. Our bank account is in NYC with Citibank, merchant account with First Data. We are an online SaaS business.

IANAL etc but I thought it was best not to do any business in Delaware directly, so not sure why/if it matters which banks in Delaware would deal with you. In any event, I think you really just need an EIN to open a bank account.

The whole subject of where an Internet business has "nexus" is apparently quite a complicated one.

Not sure if the above is of any help, hopefully it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It was a bit helpful. I'm mostly curious what other people do because it feels like something that has been done over and over again.

<comment><USER2> I found it a frustrating experience too...happy to share more insights directly at dusanb [at] devicemagic dot com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yep, you need to register as a foreign entity in the state, because you need a state tax id to get a bank account. Gotta pay the state, baby!

Re: California tax, I have no idea; I'd talk to a CPA about that. Many states don't tax online software sales, though.

<comment><USER3> p.s. I recommend you both be signatories on the bank account with equal privileges.</comment></comment>


Study: Facebook at bottom on customer satisfaction - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20080651-93/study-facebook-at-bottom-on-customer-satisfaction/

<comment><USER2> I like to hate as much as the next HNer, but that chart says that Facebook's customer satisfaction went _up_ this year. With so much actual badness to choose from, we don't need spin.</comment>


Ghost in the machine: Snapchat isn't mobile-first – it's something else entirely - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@basche42/ghost-in-the-machine-snapchat-isnt-mobile-first-it-s-something-else-entirely-4f6c265152a2 <comment><USER2> Great piece. The first thing I've read that captures what's special about SC. I'm an old who until very recently didn't use or understand it. But once I did, I was over come with my inability to describe why it felt so different, so significant. This article captures what I didn't have the words, or will, to put into a coherent thought. Thanks.

P.S. you should repost this after the holidays. Its not going to get as much play as it should with people away from their desks.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's crap-first. Snapchat reminded me of reincarnation of Myspace which was totally unusable, but teenagers still were using it because it was marketed as place where they can interact with musicans.</comment>


Best CPUs for Workstations - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/11891/best-cpus-for-workstations <comment><USER3> Updated to 3970x a few days ago. The performance has been good (llvm compiles around 5 minutes!) and it is stable (previous 2920x has soft lockups and have to workaround with idle=halt: [https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683)). Ubuntu 20.04 installed without much issue (other than NVIDIA driver, that's a different story).

It is still rough though, mostly around the mobo. The Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme mobo doesn't work out of the gate: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/enatk1/gigabyte_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/enatk1/gigabyte_trx40_designare_mobo_4gpu_d4_error/), [https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/ankjfx/inte...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/ankjfx/intel_10g_nic_driver_issues/)

Ubuntu 18.04 also has an issue with the dated kernel on 3970x: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux- Bo...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Boot- Threadripper-Zen2MCE) that can be workaround by mce=off. Due to combination of that and NVIDIA driver, I did 20.04, and it has been stable so far.

<comment><USER4> I want a desktop linux machine that "just works" (is that so unreasonable?). Is it genrally safe to buy a Ryzen? I've seen so many mixed messages.

<comment><USER5> [https://system76.com/desktops](https://system76.com/desktops)

If you want something that just works, _buy something with Linux preinstalled and supported_. If no vendor offers the distro you want, buy from a Linux vendor anyway and install what you want. When people buy Windows hardware then complain that Linux doesn't work it sends the wrong message to the market.

<comment><USER6> > If you want something that just works, buy something with Linux preinstalled > and supported.

System76 is known for simply rebranding cheap Clevo/Sager laptops.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17049463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17049463)

<comment> Tuna-Fish Just because they are not doing their own hardware does not mean that they don't test their drivers/firmware.

<comment><USER6> They are buying Clevo gear and slapping their logo on it. A sticker with a 40% markup does not change hardware support. In fact, if you take the time to read the links I've presented you'll eventually stumble on comments stating that they even fail to support basic hardware shipped by Clevo such as fingerprint readers.

<comment><USER5> The original comment asked about desktops, not laptops.

Figuring out which Clevo laptops can run Linux and which ones can't is work that is worth money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Those are great options, but the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X sells for less than $450 now.

Sure, it has half as many cores as the 3960X Threadripper listed, but 12C/24T is still a lot.

Also, it's much easier to cool -- 105W TDP vs 280W on the Threadrippers.

<comment><USER8> Just built myself a home dev server based around a R9 3900X. Paired it with 64G of RAM, a 1TB NVMe and an RTX 2060, running CentOS 8. Whole build cost me a little under $1400. It sits, headless, in the corner of my office crunching away.

I ssh in from my XPS 13 running Fedora and use X forwarding to do work on it. It's _so_ much faster than trying to do everything on an ultrabook. Not to mention quite a bit cheaper than a high-end laptop.

<comment><USER9> An XPS 13 isn't a high end laptop? What are you doing that requires that kind of power?

It sounds like an amazing build, but definitely not needed for most tasks. The XPS 13 seems a little wasteful in the setup. You could practically do it with a chromebook.

<comment><USER10> Any XPS 13 will be running a -U series low-power CPU. I would not consider any laptop high-end with regard to compute, unless it is using a -H series part, at least.

-U series (somehow, magically the same designation between AMD and Intel) will typically run ~15W, though this is configurable by the OEM (sometimes in BIOS?).

-H series (also, magically the same designation) will typically run ~45W, and this is also configurable by the OEM.

The increased power envelope of -H series typically allows higher base clocks. Turbo can sometimes be close between a 15W and a 45W chip, but a -H series will be able to maintain higher frequencies for longer, thanks to a superior thermal solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Real high end options only. Apart from the 1920X, that is a steal right now, but the board it needs is not cheap, it's a legacy platform, and Threadripper 1 did not work well for some workloads.

I'd not ignore Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9. If you can work with 128GB ram (and especially if you just want a regular strong system with the usual 16GB) 3700X, 3900X and 3950X are really strong processor and apart from the last one a lot cheaper. Most developers don't even need to go that high, not even on a workstation, one based on the Ryzen 5 3600 would not be weak.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's always a good idea to look at the performance/$ charts before jumping in on workstation CPU wagon: [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html)

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 currently rocks 103 CPU-Mark/$ whereas Threadripper 3960X has 40 CPU-Mark/$. You get a lot of power out of Threadrippers but you loose a lot of value.

<comment><USER13> A major drawback of CPU benchmark is that it doesn't include second-hand CPU prices. Actually many older series of Xeon CPUs can have better score/$ ratio. For example: E5 2695V4 is sold at $199 on AliExpress with ~20000 benchmark score on cpubenchmark (excluding the last anomaly data point), which suggests ~100 CPU-Mark/$

<comment><USER12> Hm that is actually good point. But newer CPUs will pay off with their energy efficiency in comparison to older generations.

<comment><USER13> That makes sense for a single-socket workstation. A main advantage of old Xeons over R5 3600 is dual socket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apologies for a tangential side-topic:

I wasted 6h of research trying to find a small machine with R1606G (or any of the V1000's) with dual 10GbE NICs, and failed. :(

Even Sapphire who promised such a machine retracted their pages and now only their dual 1GbE NIC offering are being sold[0]. The dual 10GbE NIC variants only exist in two PDFs[1][2] now.

I went through AMD's official list[3] of embedded offerings based on the latest R1000/V1000 platforms but exactly zero of the options have the promised dual 10GbE NICs.

Can somebody point me in the right direction? I need a strong and power- efficient embedded NAS with 1 or 2 10GbE NICs that covers several other homelab/server needs and I feel the R1606G is the best compromise in terms of money, power, wattage expense, form factor and required cooling (ideally I'd keep that thing in my bedroom or living room and want to never hear its fans but hey, it can sit in a closet as well).

I am willing to look elsewhere, it's just that the latest R1000/V1000 offerings seem to be so good!

[0] [https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/commercial/ipc- fp5v-1ge](https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/commercial/ipc-fp5v-1ge)

[1] [https://www.sapphiretech.com/-/media/sites/sapphire/product/...](https://www.sapphiretech.com/-/media/sites/sapphire/product/embedded/ipc_5p5v_1gbe/sapphireipcfp5vembeddedminiitxplatformdatasheetembeddedworld18f.ashx?v=afd503b2ff8444d8ac1449b4fe70c080)

[2] [https://www.sapphiretech.com/-/media/sites/sapphire/product/...](https://www.sapphiretech.com/-/media/sites/sapphire/product/embedded/ipc_fp5v/sapphire_ipc_fp5r_embedded_mini_itx_platform_datasheet_27mar19.ashx)

[3] [https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded-minipc- solutions](https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded-minipc-solutions)

<comment><USER15> Would it be feasible to get a motherboard with a PCIe v8 slot and throw in a cheap low power 10/40/etc GbE card? eg [0]

[0] [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mellanox-ConnectX-3-QDR-QSFP- Infini...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mellanox-ConnectX-3-QDR-QSFP-InfiniBand- CX354A-MCX354A-QCAT/164130634238)

<comment><USER14> I don't know. It probably is but I never assembled an embedded machine and I hear there's a lot I could do wrong and just let the hardware fry.

<comment><USER15> Hmmm, how about the Gen 10 HP Microserver?

[https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver- gen10-...](https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-review)

Depending on how many hdd's you're trying to use, it might be the go. Low power (energy use wise), but decent cpu, already assembled, etc.

It's not as small as a NUC, but the older generation one I have here is about 1ft x 1ft x 1ft (easily fits on a shelf, under desk, etc), and is pretty much silent.

<comment><USER14> That is actually an amazing recommendation. I don't mind it being small or large that much to be honest -- I would prioritise it being [almost] silent. And I don't think I'd need more than 4x 12TB disks for a few years.

Do you use yours as a NAS + media server? That's what I plan to use mine for.

<comment><USER16> The Asrock Rack X470D4U is pretty nice, and there is a variant with onboard dual 10GbE (X470D4U2-2T) albeit only 6 onboard SATA ports and loses the middle x4 slot. The base X470D4U also has the middle slot attached to the "NVMe lanes" (rather than fed from the chipset like normal) so it actually has 20 CPU-direct lanes.

If you put a Noctua L9a on it, anything will be silent (although you may need to set fans manually on a server board, or use the included "low noise adapter" to drop the fan speed). That plus a 3600 (or maybe a 3100/3300X if you can source one yet) would be a good little NAS build. Has IPMI, which is nice if you will be running headless.

Or if you don't care about IPMI (if it's not going to be running headless) then you can use pretty much whatever mITX/mATX board you want.

<comment><USER14> This is also a very solid tech, just looked it up.

Trouble is, I can't find it _anywhere_ except in the US Amazon, which will set me back like 30-40% premium on top of the $450 that the motherboard costs. :(

If I am going for that kind of money then I'll probably just shell out $1000 for some of the extremely good Xeon D mobos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a very cpu intensive application in Rust, that is able to use all cores given to it.

I am thinking about going for the Epyc 7502p with 32 cores but having a hard time knowing if the Threadripper counterpart with 32 cores would be better given its higher frequency.

Guess it is very hard to answer but which one would you go for? Will the threadripper perform much better?

<comment><USER18> Was the "in Rust" part mandatory? ;)

On HN I still don't know if it's an easy way to get upvotes, or the best way to get down-voted hell.

<comment><USER19> I sort of figure that got put in there for context, because Rust code so commonly gets multi-threaded in a serious way because of the borrow checker and drop-in parallel libraries. It makes it a little bit more clear that, yes, this person probably will benefit a lot from having those extra cores/threads, rather than focusing on processors where they could improve performance more with better memory or clock speed options instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm really quite dismayed by the purely _x_ 86/ _x_ 64-centric viewpoint.

No mention of POWER9, for example (my own personal favourite), which I'm running on my workstation ([https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/](https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/))

There's several other ISAs out there (ARM, obviously, but desktop-, let alone workstation-class chips are hard at least for now a dicy proposition).

EDIT: Surprised by all the downvotes. Is mentioning anything outside the domain of _x_ 86 considered controversial nowadays?!

<comment><USER21> What OS do you run on it? Is it hard to find software that works on it?

<comment><USER20> I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 for POWER9. You start from a server ISO and build up from there.

[https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power](https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just bought a pair of used Intel E5-2673v4 (20C/40T) for $450 each, an E-ATX ASUS motherboard for 99EUR, and 256GB DDR4 for $700.

A little older (~2017), but the whole system at a lower price than a 3970X, for similar performance on my embarrassingly parallel workloads, at similar TDP.

<comment><USER23> There is no way those even come close to a single 3970x or even the 3960x. This latest generation of AMD processors made all the old "good deals" pretty much crap.

Not saying your machine isn't nice, but the CPUs were probably not worth it. Each of the 30000 series Threadrippers will be about 50% faster in single core benchmarks than the 2673v4 and have better multi-core results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whoa, it seems that AMD has really blown it out of the water here. Good to finally see competition!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is great. But can I order a pre-built workstation from Dell or HP? Accounting won't cut a PO to NewEgg for parts.

<comment><USER26> You can and should. It's crazy to try to integrate your own workstation, for the reasons the article states but then ignores: ECC doesn't actually work on any of the random Ryzen motherboards, and Intel is sending all of their parts to OEMs instead of retailers. An HP Z4 workstation comes with ECC memory, actually boots, and all the other stuff you want from a _work_station.

<comment><USER27> I have a HP Z440 at home - E5-1680v3 (8 cores, 16 hyperthreaded), reasonably fast for everything I do. I replaced the GPU (some random Quadro) with a RTX-2070. Now, 6 months later, I get random beeps on boot (6 beeps = GPU error). I wish I stayed with the workstation as it was. The faster GPU was not worth the trouble.

Overall, I am a convert to workstations with ECC. Worth it the peace of mind that I won't corrupt my files and that it won't randomly crash. Had my share of those over years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So there is no reasonably simple way to tell if a specific ECC implementation actually works?

<comment><USER10> Simple, yes. Without purchasing hardware and testing, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Need a Zfs with 8 disk nas and on searching for a ECC based Server. Got It reverse as got the disk, the 10g Ethernet card and Sata card. 1900 seems too old. Is 3900 good for this?

<comment><USER30> The 3900 seems like massive overkill for that. You might want to look at something like the 3400G or 3200G, since who wants to buy a separate GPU for a NAS anyway.

<comment><USER29> Thanks. I did have quite a few spare Gpu around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's not well known but the desktop CPUs support ECC

<comment><USER32> Support is very MB dependent though

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to have a validation by someone trustworthy that it actually works. If you really want ECC, going with a workstation from Dell/HP/Lenovo/Apple seems still the better choice. Shame, would love to upgrade to one of these.

<comment><USER31> You just need the right motherboard. ASRock Rack X470D4U

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have a Ryzen 2700X. Is Ryzen 9 3900X going to be a good upgrade for me?

<comment><USER11> Depends on what you do. You'd gain 4 cores and 8 threads and also the single core performance is higher. If have some direct benchmark comparisons under [https://www.pc- kombo.com/us/benchmark/apps/cpu/compare?ids%5...](https://www.pc- kombo.com/us/benchmark/apps/cpu/compare?ids%5B%5D=AMD+Ryzen+9+3900X&ids%5B%5D=AMD+Ryzen+7+2700X). The blender benchmarks do not show a big difference, but things like 7zip and AES-Encoding do, so it really depends on the workload.

<comment><USER30> That Blender result is nonsense, they screwed up the test somehow. This is a better comparison:

[https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2125?vs=2519](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2125?vs=2519)

The 3900X has 50% more cores and Blender is embarrassingly parallel, so it's more than 50% faster, as expected.

That's the real question for whether it's worth it. For single threads the 3900X will be 10-20% faster. For well-threaded applications it's >60% faster.

Keep in mind that the 2700X still has a resale value of over $200, so if you're selling one and buying the other it's not a very expensive upgrade. But the value proposition is a lot better if you can use the extra cores. (Of course, if you can't and you just want the single-thread performance improvement, there's always the 3700X.)

<comment><USER11> It's a presentation issue. The benchmark data agrees with you, the transformation from "lower is better" to "higher is better" makes the result misleading. That needs a better solution, showing that the difference is actually quite high.

<comment><USER30> It's not a presentation issue, the pc-kombo.com site is just a garbage. In one of the Blender graphs it has the 3900X as "10839" and the 2700X as "10732" (very close together), but it links to the Anandtech results where the actual numbers are 161 and 268, not close together at all and completely different numbers. In another graph it links to a "source" where the 2700X isn't even on the page.

Their graphs are completely fictional, probably as a result of bad data scraping code since it looks like they're just pulling results (inaccurately) from other sites.

<comment><USER11> Look at the worst result in the anandtech benchmark. Remember what I said about converting from "lower is better" to "higher is better". It _is_ a presentation issue.

If the 2700X is not on the source page that page either got changed or it's a combined benchmark that was presented in multiple articles. In which benchmark do you see that?

<comment><USER30> This is that page:

[https://www.pc- kombo.com/us/benchmark/apps/cpu/compare?ids%5...](https://www.pc- kombo.com/us/benchmark/apps/cpu/compare?ids%5B%5D=AMD+Ryzen+9+3900X&ids%5B%5D=AMD+Ryzen+7+2700X)

This is the Anandtech benchmark that it links to from the first Blender graph (you can click on the graph):

[https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247)

The numbers on that page for the 3900X and 2700X bear no resemblance to the ones in the graph that links to it.

Compare to their first 7zip graph which links here and contains the actual numbers for the 3900X and 2700X, because they evidently scraped that one correctly:

[https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2240](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2240)

This is the page they link for the second Blender graph:

[https://www.computerbase.de/2019-11/amd-ryzen- threadripper-3...](https://www.computerbase.de/2019-11/amd-ryzen- threadripper-3960x-3970x-test/2/#diagramm-test-blender-benchmark)

The numbers in their graph don't match what that page has for the 3900X and the 2700X doesn't appear on that page at all.

<comment><USER11> Computerbase hides some benchmark results by default. Click at the top right "+29 Einträge" to see 29 processors more, including the 2700X.

I understand that the number in that specific benchmarks is confusing right now. Again, that's from the conversion done for the "lower is better" benchmarks. That's why it's not the same number, just the same distance. I hope a better solution can be used soon.

<comment><USER30> It's not the same distance though. The way to convert "lower is better" to "higher is better" is to invert the results, e.g. convert seconds per render to renders per second. You take 1/X where the original number was X. Or do renders per day if you don't want results as small fractions, which just means multiplying the inverted results by a constant, e.g. the number of seconds per day.

For both the Anandtech and Computerbase Blender results, the 2700X takes ~60% longer in reality, which is ~66% more renders per second (which is the same percentage more per day), but the difference in the length of the bars on pc- kombo.com is <10% for Computerbase and ~1% for Anandtech. Something has gone wrong there.

<comment><USER11> It's the same numerical distance. Look how small the bars are at the anandtech page, [https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247) also does not show you the one is 66% faster - same problem, just inverted. But the original is easier to get, and 1/X style comparisons could work - <USER2> in general just "how much faster" bars. Thanks :)

<comment><USER30> > It's the same numerical distance.

...

What people are going to care about is the difference as a percentage. :)

> Look how small the bars are at the anandtech page, > [https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2019/2247) > also does not show you the one is 66% faster - same problem, just inverted.

Actually the bar for the 2700X on the Anandtech page _is_ 66% longer than the bar for the 3900X, though it's admittedly harder to eyeball when they're both that short because of the much slower processors at the bottom of the page. You can imagine how much easier that page would be to see if they didn't include those two Celerons at the bottom. (You can also imagine how that would affect the results using the math you were using; if adding or removing a CPU changes not just the length of the bar but the actual numbers for an entirely different CPU, something's fishy.)

Doing 1/X for timed benchmarks helps that for the modern processors though, because it makes it so the bars that are short and hard to eyeball are the slowest processors rather than the fastest ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I prefer to pick from [https://www.amazon.com/bestsellers](https://www.amazon.com/bestsellers)</comment>


One in Three Farms Is Using FarmLogs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/one-in-three-farms-are-using-farmlogs-to-power-their-yields-with-big-data/ <comment><USER2> This number ("one in three") is really ambiguous[0], as I haven't seen them state what they consider a farm to be. It could be the Ag Census data (~2.2 million farms), or along some subset (say non-family farms at ~90 thousand), or some farm type (I believe I've previously seen them say "row crop farms").

I'm sure it seems like an impressive stat to throw out there, but it's a lot like saying they're offering a million shares of options to new employees; without the total number of shares we don't know what that means.

[0] [http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html](http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html)

<comment><USER3> Happy to clear that up. We don't count hobby farms as they aren't our typical users. We are focusing on the ~280k row crop farms in the US of which over 90k have started using FarmLogs. Most of our customers have between 600 and 10k acres of land each.

<comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic but I am dumbstruck by the size of US farms. Where I live it's common for farmers to manage 10 hectares fields and these are considered big fields.

<comment><USER5> Every year we take on workmen/students normally from outside Australia, who need to spend time actually working on a farm to finish their agricultural degrees or similar. It's always interesting to see their reactions after they finish telling us about their "big" farms back home, when they realise we can fit their entire farm + change into a single paddock here.

<comment><USER6> In some cases you can fit Israel into one of the farms: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station)

<comment><USER7> > In some cases you can fit Israel into one of the farms: > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station)

In the US, at least, I believe that particular example would be considered a "ranch" rather than a "farm".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mixed reviews from actual farmers:

[http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=564750&...](http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=564750&mid=4651068#M4651068) [http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=574159&...](http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=574159&mid=4735817#M4735817) [http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=544745&...](http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread- view.asp?tid=544745&mid=4477289#M4477289)

<comment><USER9> A lot of people who really love it, and some people who dislike that their satellite-based rainfall gauge is just an estimate? Am I missing something here? Seems more positive then just "mixed reviews" would imply to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are more than 2 million "farms" in the U.S. Snag "One in Three" of those as paying customers (at nearly $1k/year) and it's very unlikely you'd need to use TechCrunch as a marketing and PR platform.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to get a more comprehensive look at FarmLogs, hopefully they'll be more available in Australia soon. Although until then, after just browsing through the interface, I'd like to make a few points. I should point out I'm from a broad-acre farm of > 10'000acres, and we have single fields nearly 2.5x bigger than the 600acre size mentioned..

There's still seems to be to much of a focus on farmers having to manually enter data. Our machinery already records everything that happens in the paddock, there's no reason why we should have to sit down and manually enter everything we do. Farmlogs should connect to whichever machinery provider we use's API, and pull all the data straight from the machine. It's now possible to do that in real time, and it opens up far more interesting opportunities, (for example optimising variable rate maps in real time) as we can also push data back to the machines.

How do I connect and use my local weather station data within FarmLogs? One limitation of our current yield prediction software is that it's weather data feed comes from a BOM station nearly 30km away, that isn't nearly good enough, so we're seeing a transition to on farm weather stations. Ultimately we need to be able to collect weather info on a field by field basis, not only for crop modelling and yield prediction, but to better optimise harvesting/swathing schedules, and make more effective N applications (we can create better application maps based on the yield models + predicted weather).

Can I import my all my soil data? We've had extensive EM38 mapping, radio- metrics and soil testing done over the farm to better calibrate our yield models, and improve nutrient application, how do I put that data into FarmLogs? If I can, how do you use it? Can you generate my VR maps based on soil data + predicted weather information?

I'm also seeing some features that most farmers I know will never use. We don't need "another" calendar. We don't need to keep a record of all the grain we have stored in silos, or upload information about every piece of machinery we have on farm. What benefit does that give us? It seems like your almost trying to gameify farming with all the graphics..

I think tools like FarmLogs need to move away from just data collection/consolidation and much more towards yield prediction/modelling, and giving recommendations/optimising nutrient applications. We spend more than $500'000 a year on fert/chemicals, so if you can help me make a more precise variable rate map and save me 10% of that figure, thats something I'm going to use. Even if your charging me $5000/10'000/x'000 a year for it.

<comment><USER11> That's an excellent assessment, and we're actively developing our product in that direction. You can already upload your machine data files to create yield maps in FarmLogs, and this year we released the Flow, a hardware device that passively listens on the CANBus to create yield maps in real time on a FarmLogs account. We will be giving the same treatment to as-applied and as- planted data as well.

There are lot of challenges in this area. There are no open data standards and probably most farms in our target market do not have access to that type of equipment. Or if they do, they don't have great records of it. For them we offer a sort of progressive enhancement. We've licensed five years worth of satellite imagery to give us reasonable baselines of precision field performance history. And while we also need management decisions for our models, we can make use of manually entered data as well as machine generated precision data.

Over the summer, we piloted some products built from these models with great results, and will be announcing them soon. We're really excited about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth noting that FarmLogs is (YC S12).

<comment><USER13> What makes that worth noting?

<comment><USER14> Well you _are_ on ycombinator.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what their stack is. I can't readily determine that, which might just be a function of working too hard today. I don't have time to search for the info. (I was specifically wondering if they use Hadoop.)

<comment><USER16> I can't remember seeing them looking for anything other than Postgres, which seems less like "big data" than... regular data. Maybe they don't put their heavy duty stuff in job listings?

<comment><USER17> Farming is often in the raster world as opposed to the line/row/text/vector world. Some of things in Postgres might be huge. Farm data sets could easily be only adding a few thousand rows a day, but the objects associated with each row could be several gigabytes. Meaning that the size of the data is bigger than so-called "big data" but the row analysis tool set looks more like your "regular data." However, there's a lot that goes into the raster analysis that's a whole different beast.

<comment><USER16> Huh. Thanks for taking the time to outline this, I don't know why it never occurred to me. I have to admit, I'm unfamiliar with "rasters" in the way you seem to be referencing them. It sounds, though, like the relational bits of the DB are really being used more as a file system than a database, if there are even really distinctions in the first place. If "a couple thousand rows" are basically being used as a metadata store for the rasters, is that an unusual use of the database, or is everybody doing this and I just never had enough data to care?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1) The statistic is utter baloney 2) see "The Climate Corporation" for a real version of this. Founded 2006 by ex-Googlers, real tech, acquired by Monsanto for $1.1B, and best creepy-corp name ever.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been silently following FarmLogs for a long time, it is wonderful to see technology being merged with nature. I often thought about what it would be like working for them but the problem is that I'm from mid europe (Hungary). The majority of our country is farmland, we even have a somewhat similar and quite successful startup here, SmartVineyard who do similar stuff but specifically for grapes. Is it possible for non-US developers to join FarmLogs without relocating?

</comment><comment><USER20> Could you explain what FarmLogs does to someone that a) grew up on a deciduous fruit farm with some cattle, b) studied electronic engineering with computer science, c) works in embedded systems and d) doesn't come from the US?

</comment><comment><USER21> Can you comment on how you gained traction? Seems to be a difficult market to tackle.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is refreshing. I wonder what other blue collar industries in flyover country are ripe to be optimized by tech.

<comment><USER23> Thank you for not saying "disrupted". :)

Also, nice pun.</comment></comment>


Work/Life balance is bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/desk-of-van-schneider/work-life-balance-is-bullshit-f51bf8b3767#.nf4zj14uz <comment><USER2> > And this either means changing your job (yes you can) or simply looking at > your job from a different perspective. Maybe you don't like your job because > society tells you it's cool to hate what you do from Monday to Friday.

I applaud you for having a career where you never worked in a dehumanizing, humiliating bureaucracy, but knowledge workers are some of the most economically insulated people on the planet. Looking at your career in tech and extrapolating it to "Gee, why don't poor people get a new 'tude" is a simplistic as it is noxious.

<comment><USER3> It's also grossly dismissive of employment abuse (like not paying wages, making illegal demands, etc), of underemployment, of market forces regarding employment, and more.

This is just the most head-up-my-own-ass article I've ever seen. He's challenging Trump for most egotistical statements uttered this month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Maybe you don't like your job because society tells you it's cool to hate > what you do from Monday to Friday.

That has nothing to do with work/life balance. No one is saying work is evil. If anything society says the opposite is true, that work is necessary and noble.

You can hate your job and have great work/life balance.

You can love your job and have poor work/life balance.

For most people the proper balance means they can stop thinking about work on the weekend, or after their shift is over. They don't have to take support calls or talk with customers all the time. Work/life balance means they don't have to be online and connected to the office 24/7.

Of course there's exceptions. When starting a business your work/life balance will be skewed towards work. If you're working towards a deadline sometimes you have to push late at night and through the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The fact that we call it work/life balance automatically implies that one of the two is negative..."

2nd paragraph and already a made up claim. Saying "work/life" does _not_ imply that one is good and the other bad. It just says that these are 2 different concerns to be balanced.

<comment><USER6> Bingo. Nobody is going to say you have a well balanced diet if you eat nothing but Kale. It's one thing to embrace work as a healthy part of your life, it's another to let it destroy friendships and end marriages by letting it completely monopolize your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Every person can make a living doing something they love" is the "Let them eat cake" of the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the writer wrote the article just for himself. It's so specific</comment>