Aquarius builds an engine others only dreamed of - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-little-startup-that-could-aquarius-builds-an-engine-others-only-dreamed-of-1.8984355 <comment><USER4> There are about 15 free-piston generator projects. Toyota had a prototype in 2014.[1] Here's one from the UK in 2016.[2] It's a more reasonable idea today because switching power supplies are so good. You're going to get variable- frequency AC out of the thing, but converting that to something more useful is easy today. Also, using the generator windings to start the engine is easier with current power semiconductors.

You have to have electrical control on all the valves. There's no camshaft and no place for one. Electrical control of engine valves has been a dream for a long time, but the actuators were a problem. Someone finally built a working engine in 2018 with total software control of all valves.[3] The valve people say "Electromechanically, you could look at it and ask 'why didn't you do that 20 years ago? The difference is in the electronics that control it. What's happened in the recent past is that there's now sufficient processing bandwidth at a low price that can tolerate top of engine conditions, so you can actually put real time control on top of these motors."

This will probably all work commercially about the time everybody switches to electric cars.

The parent article is lacking in solid "why ours is better than the other people who already did this" information.

[1] [https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a6326/out-of- turn-t...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a6326/out-of-turn-toyota- engine/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/u4b0_6byuFU](https://youtu.be/u4b0_6byuFU)

[3] [https://newatlas.com/camcon-digital-iva-valve- system/55827/](https://newatlas.com/camcon-digital-iva-valve-system/55827/)

<comment><USER5> >"The difference is in the electronics that control it. What's happened in the recent past is that there's now sufficient processing bandwidth at a low price that can tolerate top of engine conditions, so you can actually put real time control on top of these motors."

is something a non EE person would say about another branch of science he is totally unfamiliar with. We had 40GB consumer Hard drives 20 years ago. 20GB per platter, 7200 RPM. Now think for a second what precision of timing you need in a hard drive versus mechanical engine. We are talking ~50 nm/bit, ~250 nm/track, ~100K TPI, >500Mbit internal transfer. The level of precision required to control engine valves more accurately than mechanical means (cams) was achieved in consumer off the shelf ~$200 hard drive controllers around 1995.

<comment><USER4> That was a quote from the CEO of the company who makes the thing.

Fast precision proportional valves for ordinary compressed air have been available since the 1990s. I once had to price some. Price was over $1000 each. They're now a moderate volume product from Festo and others, and precision positioning of pneumatic cylinders is available. It's still not common.

Automotive valve actuation has all the same problems, plus pushing back against big forces from the combustion process and operating through the entire under the hood temperature range. A solenoid-type actuator for this needs considerable power. Schemes with pneumatic and hydraulic power to drive the valve have been used on some race cars. Plus there are little problems; neodymium magnets start to weaken around the boiling point of water, a temperature easily reached on top of an engine block.

There's now a supercar using this technology.[1] It may filter down to less expensive vehicles.

It's an obvious idea that turns out to be quite hard to make work. Study guide: [2]

[1] [https://cecas.clemson.edu/cvel/auto/systems/valve- timing.htm...](https://cecas.clemson.edu/cvel/auto/systems/valve-timing.html)

[1] [https://www.freevalve.com/](https://www.freevalve.com/)

<comment><USER5> I fully agree with everything you said about this being a big electro- mechanical challenge, but the dude pointed squarely at the controller with "processing bandwidth...real time control" quote.

<comment><USER4> If you approach the control problem the way a modern programmer would - <USER2> position sensor, adjust actuator current - you need some control loop running at some speed like 100KHz or higher. Probably doing floating point calculations. So you need a powerful CPU.

If you didn't have that, you might have to do the valve fine position control with analog hardware controlled by the digital system. That's how daisy-wheel printers controlled the daisy position. And you might have to have hardware timers for triggering events, like SOiC systems with PWM drivers. That's what you'd probably do if you were making a million cars.

If you're making 300 supercars, just throw some very fast CPU at the problem and let it do all the work. You'll never see the extra $20-$100 or so per car in the sticker price of a supercar. You can get hardware for automotive environments with that performance now. 15 years ago, you couldn't.

<comment><USER5> >modern programmer would - read position sensor, adjust actuator current - <USER3> need some control loop running at some speed like 100KHz or higher. Probably doing floating point calculations

Modern programmer would make sure to do those floating point calculations in an ISR too ;-). Cars have been fine with lookup tables and interpolation. If you can precisely control spark, you could valves as well.

As for hardware requirements. Afaik control always outraced controlled business end. Lets take Honda for example, all their ECUs from 92 (P05) onward had full facility to drive individual coil on plug, but officially Honda switched away from mechanical distributor in 1999 (S2000?). You can trivially convert 92 car with a small adapter board, ECUs shipped with all the needed hardware sitting unused for 7 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They did not talk about oil and how it lubricates itself. Only that it magically does not need oil changes. It is a two stroke engine and two stroke engines do not need oil changes, but that is for a very bad reason, environmentally-wise.

Two stroke engines do need oil changes because you are supposed to mix in the oil with the fuel and they just burn the oil and get new oil when new fuel comes in. This is very bad for the environment because burning lubricant is very bad for pollution. It is also costly because you have to pay for much more lubricant.

Perhaps Nokia figured out that it would be much cheaper for them to burn oil rather than occasionally send people to remote locations to service engines. This may be true but they should not pretend this is environmentally friendly. It isn't.

If you are older you may remember how gross and foul smelling two stroke lawn mowers used to be back in the times. We don't need to bring this back.

<comment><USER7> I was also wondering about this claimed lack of oil from a different perspective.

Based on the article, the video embedded within it, and the Technology section of Aquarius' website, this is a double-acting uniflow two-stroke internal combustion engine. As it is double-acting, there is combustion on both sides of the piston, so I am wondering how the piston is cooled, especially given the high power density of this device.

In conventional IC piston engines, the piston is either cooled by the oil [1], or, in the case of small two strokes having a total-loss lubrication system (the sort that the parent post is concerned with) piston cooling is aided by the flow of the incoming mixture through the crankcase. Neither method seems to be feasible here. Has there been a breakthrough in materials (ceramics, perhaps?) which allow for a piston to work at high temperatures?

One other point that just occurred to me is that if you are using a total- loss, combustible lubricant design (which is what conventional gasoline two- strokes do), then the efficiency calculation must include the energy input of the lubricant as well as the gasoline (or whatever is being used purely as a fuel), as the lubricant is also a fuel.

[1] [https://dieselnet.com/tech/combustion_piston- cool.php](https://dieselnet.com/tech/combustion_piston-cool.php)

<comment><USER8> In the video [0] it doesn't show combustion occurring on both sides of the pistons.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26PjRQmIoeE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26PjRQmIoeE)

<comment><USER6> This looks like video jacking. The description talks about acquarius, but the video is about a completely different free piston system being developed by a research group at newcastle university.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not particularly impressed with the prospects for vehicle range extension. All-electric seems like The Way To Go at this point. But improved efficiencies for a home backup generator seem like a potentially really great thing.

<comment><USER10> Yeah generators are really the "killer app" for this

<comment><USER11> related work: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free- piston_linear_generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free- piston_linear_generator)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chuckled when I read they had a difficult time trying to talk with car companies. In Detroit 2020 isn't different than 1950 in one aspect: not big believers if not-invented-here. However if they can steal the idea like intermittent windshield wipers they'll adapt the idea, but not quickly.

<comment><USER12> "Not invented here" isn't a big issue with automakers, unless you're talking about Tesla. Most automakers license core technology (i.e., engine, chassis designs, etc.) from other companies. Many of them license technology _from their competitors_ or even co-develop their tech. The primary driver is cost. They couldn't care less who developed the tech if it saves them enough money (or brings in more money, if it's a saleable feature).

Tesla is the only company that insists on reinventing everything from scratch, even at the cost of grossly overpaying.

<comment><USER13> That's cause Telsa has the culture of Elon, similar to SpaceX. All their success derives from rethinking traditional automakers.

<comment><USER14> You are only supposed to drink the kool-aid, not marinate in it.

<comment><USER13> You could also argue that they're getting better at building things from scratch by practicing with the mundane stuff. It's not a complete waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I know it's great that engine efficiency is getting better, but this is still working using old, crude principles. Combustion engines are the equivalent of analog in computing and engine makers still need to reach their digital "Eureka!" moment.

The gas turbine is [226 years old][0]! Computing on the other hand has seen significant change from [Charle Babbabe's mechanical computer][1], to vacuum tubes, transistors and (hopefully within the next 50 years) quantum computers.

Hopefully with progress in batteries and clean energy generation, we'll see the death of the great polluters before the end of the century. We can (and should) do better.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#His...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#History)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#First_computing_devic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#First_computing_device)

</comment><comment><USER16> Also check out Koenigsegg's Tiny Friendly Giant (TFG) 2l three cylinder twin turbo that makes 600hp and 443lbft of torque: [https://www.koenigsegg.com/gemera/tiny-friendly-giant- engine...](https://www.koenigsegg.com/gemera/tiny-friendly-giant-engine/)

It is really cool to see these advancements happening in engine design.

<comment><USER17> I assumed most of the trick was that the car costs a million dollars or so.

"The total output (of the hybrid system) is a combined 1700 bhp or 1.27 MW of power and 3500 Nm of torque."

Is that torque at the wheel? If it's at the engine, who cares? It won't show up after the gears.

<comment><USER18> That design uses a single gear instead a traditional transmission.

[https://www.koenigsegg.com/gemera/tiny-friendly-giant- engine...](https://www.koenigsegg.com/gemera/tiny-friendly-giant-engine/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how clean burning this engine is. Normal 2-stroke engines burn oil along with gasoline so emit many more particulates than 4-stroke engines, but this seems to require less oil than a 4-stroke.

</comment><comment><USER20> 34% efficiency on their first tests? That would be a _huge_ deal. Microturbines have similar benefits (few moving parts, long lifetime, etc), but they only realize 30% efficiency on the high end.

<comment><USER21> 34% is not that impressive...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake- specific_fuel_consumptio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake- specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_of_values_of_BSFC_for_shaft_engines)

Gas turbines and 2-stroke diesels can have over 50% efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could this be useful for medium to long-range aviation as an intermediate step before battery densities become more viable?

<comment><USER23> Medium to long range aviation doesn't use ICEs, so no probably not. Aviation gas turbines have had efficiencies >50% for a decade already anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems to generate quite a bit of vibration, even if you couple two of them in an alternating way you just change the vibration from parallel to the pistons to perpendicular to the pistons. It's not as easy to balance as a rotary engine.

<comment><USER25> It's not for vehicles though. It's for power generation. I guess you could use it in a vehicle, but I think it's intended for stationary use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anybody care to suggest an accurate and neutral title, so we can replace the baity one?

</comment><comment><USER27> Archive for those with ad blockers: [http://archive.is/R7VlA](http://archive.is/R7VlA)

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone have any thoughts on how you extract the mechanical energy from a two sided piston?

<comment><USER29> In this configuration you aren't extracting the mechanical energy, instead it's being converted into alternating current through a linear solenoid coil. The energy leaves as electricity.

<comment><USER28> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully they'll make it into automobiles some day.

</comment><comment><USER30> If this was invented 20 years ago, it would be ok, but now with Tesla basically taking over the market not just with cars, but solar, insurance, SpaceX, communication, network of electric charging station, batteries ... Tesla is taking over not just one market but the entire market (pumps, wells, communication, transport, all...) Tesla is currently putting fear in bones of other car manufacturing companies, I think now they are on high alert/panic mode. We will see how all this pan out.

<comment><USER31> That's what Tesla is known for but not the brands people know for these things.

Most people haven't heard of Tesla for solar panels. In Europe most people don't know Tesla at all.

<comment><USER30> I cannot agree about last Europe statement if we talk about 28 EU countries they are quite aware of Tesla. In Germany there is new Gigafactory and Norway has a massive explosion of Tesla cars on the roads. If you check the map [https://www.tesla.com/nl_BE/supercharger?redirect=no](https://www.tesla.com/nl_BE/supercharger?redirect=no) you will see that network is already covering, entire Western Europe...

<comment><USER32> Norway is special.

Norway has no domestic car industry (not even major component suppliers) and about 100% (yes, you read that right) taxes on cars.

Electric cars are exempt from tax in Norway, so it doesn't matter if you buy a $20,000 ICE or a $40,000 Tesla. In addition you don't have to pay toll, annual road tax, public parking fees,and may use bus lanes.

So with all these incentives in place, it's no wonder Teslas sell like hot cakes in Norway (other EVs like Nissan Leaf and VW eGolf, too, by the way).

Every other market than BEV is practically non-existent for Tesla in Europe. Even in the BEV market, Tesla is ranked 3rd (with the exception of Norway) in terms of market share - behind European and Asian brands.

So unknown - no, dominating? Hell no!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to begin to teach yourself how to code, starting from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://jrheard.tumblr.com/post/421656059/you-yes-you-can-teach-yourself-how-to-program <comment><USER3> I really don't think you should advise someone to read "_why's poignant guide to ruby" as an introductory text. The sillyness is very distracting, the humor doesn't suit everyone, it's not very well structured and the information density is quite low. I feel there's a ready chance it will be demotivating. I definitely didn't consider it a decent introduction to Ruby or programming. </heresy>

<comment><AUTHOR> Much as I love _why's works, you may have a point - I've been reading through <http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/> on the suggestion of a couple commenters on the post, and I'm pretty impressed so far. I'm going to forward it along to the friend whose question spawned the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There needs to be more content geared to people who know nothing about programming. Those people have the highest hurdles to jump, as they don't even know what they don't know.

<comment><USER5> I couldn't imagine jumping into programming (or even wanting to) without a problem to solve first. That's the whole point of programming, anyway. If someone wants to learn programming, maybe we could help by directing them towards a problem they'd find interesting.

<comment><USER6> What about those of us who are insatiably curious and love to learn for learning's sake?

I'd find it more frustrating than anything to be confronted with a significant problem right out of the gate.

<comment><USER5> I don't think a problem has to be significant to be _useful_ to someone. I just think it'd be ideal to work towards a product (no matter how trivial) that the beginner could feel proud of and actually appreciate how it's helping them.

Learning programming "for learning's sake" sounds great, but it also sounds damn hard without goals.

<comment><USER7> that's been the most difficult part for me, actually -- finding fun problems that I could work on that aren't completely impossible. I spent a lot of time reading books on Python when I should have just been playing with code.

<comment><USER5> I learned programming by hacking on other people's code – manipulating it to fit my needs. Try to find an open source project you can mess with.

I can't say for sure how much _fun_ this'll be for you: The next time you think to yourself, "I wish this thing worked like this" or "I wish this thing had this feature", if it's open source, just load up the code and start playing with it. Your problem might be easier to solve than you'd think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started a little blog about trying to learn to code from scratch: <http://newbiehacker.wordpress.com/> As that blog post says, it is really difficult finding resources for people who want to learn but really have _no_ programming background whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great blog - it's really interesting to see what the code-o-sphere looks like to a newcomer!

I saw that you were having a little trouble dealing with some of the proper- noun Concepts thrown at you in Beginning Ruby, and that you weren't entirely sure where to go next in terms of finding exercises not already in the book.

As far as the Concepts go, it's probably best to approach them all as a bunch of different ways of solving the _one main problem in programming_ : complexity[1]. When you're coding anything longer than ten lines, you're usually tackling a problem that's too big to fit into your head all at once. So, you need to break the problem into a bunch of little chunks. Coders do this by building _abstractions_.

All an abstraction is is the act of deciding you've got a problem ("I need a way to print the contents of the screen!"), solving that problem (by writing code that grabs whatever's being output to the screen, translates it into something the printer can deal with, and prints it), and then _hiding that solution from anyone who has that problem_. The key here is that you're hiding the solution, but you do expose an interface - a "print_document" function, say - that allows them to benefit from your hard work without having to think about it[2].

That's really what nearly every programming technique is all about: minimizing complexity. So when you see big scary words like Encapsulation and Polymorphism and Mix-Ins, just remember: they're almost certainly just different ways of minimizing the amount of stuff you have to think about at any point in time, and if they're any good at letting you do that, they're probably worth learning about.

Oh! And as far as finding fun exercises to work on goes: Try writing something that'll automate a chore in your daily life. Say, an automated grocery list, or a "books to read" list, or an apocalypse-detector that checks every five minutes to see if Google's down. You know what they say about the sky and the limit and all that :)

-

[1] "Managing complexity is the most important technical topic in software development. In my view, it's so important that Software's Primary Technical Imperative has to be managing complexity" - Steve McConnell, Code Complete

[2] "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them" - Alfred North Whitehead

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly the point of Hackety Hack.

I need to wrap up this OSX and Windows stuff so that I can actually promote it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never been able to successfully use Hackety Hack, as back when _why was still actively developing it and I was still on a Windows box, it would always insta-crash on my machine, but it's always sounded like a great idea, and I'm definitely looking forward to 1.0!

<comment><USER9> Thanks. The cross-platform nature of shoooes is a lot of work, and it's been holding up the 1.0 release for a while.

It's looking like a Shoooes 3 release may happen soon, though, and that should help. I'll certainly let you know when it's usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who's never really been able to break into coding my biggest problem with most of the learning material is it does not tackle a broader perspective on problem solving. Learning syntax and libraries is easy. Knowing where to apply them and how to architect your program is the really hard part. I'm not sure how you learn that other than experience and for a novice that means countless hours of work before they can produce anything unique and useful.

<comment><USER11> have you tried "how to design programs"? <http://www.htdp.org/>

i haven't used it, but i think it's aimed at this kind of problem ( _where to apply them and how to architect your program_ ).

<comment><USER10> Thanks I'll check both of these links out. I'm designing a little Google Maps based web app that has already had two major architectural changes due to issues I hadn't considered. Before I go forward with it I want to go through these resources and try to get the third iteration right.

<comment><USER11> HTDP starts off pretty basic, but it's by the same people as SICP (a famous textbook), and if it's anything like that book, it's "surprisingly deep", so don't dismiss it too quickly as "too easy"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Usually "I stopped reading after..." is used as a metaphor, and the article still gets read.

In this case though, I really did stop reading after "as a matter of fact, any self-respecting programmer you've ever met is mostly self-taught."

<comment><AUTHOR> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How'd that work out for Reba?

And why did Reba want to learn programming in the first place?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully it works out pretty well - I haven't heard back from her about it yet what with school and all, but hopefully she'll have some questions in a week or so, and working through them would probably be really educational for both of us.

I think she was probably interested for a couple of reasons.

* First, the house we live in has a strangely high proportion of coders, and so she hears us get really excited in our discussions about programming on a pretty regular basis. I think this is probably one of the main reasons that other people who live in the same house have, in the past, asked me the same question she did.

* Second, she thinks coding seems pretty practical; it comes up in a bunch of fields, so it's probably a pretty useful skill to have.

I think that most of the people I know either have no idea what coding is and see it as a foreign and scary thing, or, like her, they think that it must be pretty useful, and are curious about it. It'd be pretty nice if we were able to convert those in the former camp to be in the latter, but I think that what's even more important than that is that people who are already curious about programming should _immediately_ be made aware of the fact that programming is fun as hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am trying to learn; currently reading how to think like a computer scientist on Green Tea Press.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best of luck! Sounds like a pretty good idea, actually - I just grabbed the .pdf for the manuscript of the Python version of the book from <http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html> and sent it off to my Kindle for a rainy day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Should I learn PHP or Ruby?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just like everything else, the decision's based on nothing but trade-offs. Here's my analysis.

If you learn PHP:

* You'll be able to see results running in your Web browser a lot quicker

* Your knowledge will be really relevant if you're looking to work on slightly older, more established Web sites like Facebook or Yahoo!, but

* You probably won't learn very good programming practices on your own - PHP has been pretty notorious for this, but maybe this has changed with PHP5, I haven't been keeping up.

If you learn Ruby:

* First you'll have to learn the language, and then you'll basically have to learn a framework like Sinatra or Rails before you'll be able to do awesome Web things

* Your knowledge will be really relevant to most startup-style Web sites begun since 2005 or so (e.g. Yelp, which is written in Python, which is _basically_ sort of like a sister language to Ruby, _give or take_ )

* You'll be much more likely to learn a lot of really good programming practices as you go that will serve you throughout your career.

Having worked with both PHP and Ruby, I'd recommend Ruby, because I think it's easier to learn, it's more fun, and it's a better investment; I'm pretty sure most HNers would agree if given the choice between those two languages, but your sample of respondents is probably pretty biased :)

<comment><USER15> "Your knowledge will be really relevant if you're looking to work on slightly older, more established Web sites like Facebook or Yahoo!"

Many newer sites are using PHP as well. PHP is used on established sites, but that just means that it's a proven concept. I also see many more jobs for php developers than Ruby (I have seen a few startups using ruby).

"You probably won't learn very good programming practices on your own - <USER2> has been pretty notorious for this, but maybe this has changed with PHP5, I haven't been keeping up."

I suppose this is true. But I think you can pickup good programming practices in any language.

Another reason to learn php is because it uses a C-style syntax, which will make it much easier to transition to other languages like c/c++/javascript/c#/Java.

Ruby uses a syntax all its own that you can pretty much only use in Ruby.

I also don't feel people should be learning a programming language through frameworks. It's like learning how to add and subtract using a calculator.

What beginners need to learn is programming concepts that they can use in any language.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've definitely got some valid points. I think I may be biased toward Ruby and Python because I like programming in them so much, in addition to the fact that I feel that my knowledge of them directly contributed to the quality and quantity of job offers I received when I was on the market.

My enjoyment of programming in Ruby and Python may have something to do with them both being scripting languages, and having easily-accessible REPLs (for the uninitiated: Read-Eval-Print-Loops, like irb, a program I mention and show example output from in my post). In addition, scripting languages just... feel _easier_. If you've got Python installed on your computer, go ahead and pop up a terminal if you'd like to follow along:

      [jrheard@jrheard:~]$ python
      >>> import webbrowser
      >>> webbrowser.open_new('http://google.com')
      True

If you weren't following along: Firefox just opened a new tab with Google in it! Isn't that awesome? How many lines would that be in C?

      >>> import urllib
      >>> goog = urllib.urlopen('http://google.com')
      >>> page_source = goog.read()
      >>> len(page_source)
      6917
      >>> page_source[:27]
      '<!doctype html><html><head>'

The real power of Python and Ruby is that I can do awesome stuff without even thinking about it. At all. At least half the time I have a problem, the most I have to do is one Google search to find the built-in library I need.

The point I'm trying to make is that, syntax aside, I feel like Python and Ruby just get out of my way most of the time, so I can focus on solving problems and learning programming concepts I can learn in any language.

Jeff Atwood sums up a lot of my sentiments in his post "A Scripter At Heart", which you can read at [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-scripter-at- heart...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-scripter-at-heart.html) .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines - <AUTHOR> http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ny-congressman-introducing-ban-on-3d-printed-high <comment><USER2> > _announced he would be introducing legislation to renew a ban on firearms > and magazines that can't be picked up by standard metal detectors. The > current ban on plastic firearms expires this year._

In other words, the only thing this has to do with printed magazines is that printed magazines are being used as a talking point to promote the bill.

Printed magazines, when printed with plastic, would still be picked up by a metal detector since they need a large metal spring (yes, there are printed plastic springs. they suck). Printed magazines printed with metal would obviously be unaffected by this law.

The concept of a "plastic gun" is (currently at least) largely an urban legend anyway. Glocks set off metal detectors just fine.

<comment><USER3> The idea of a plastic Glock appeared in one of the Die Hards. For all I know that's where it originated.

<comment><USER4> It didn't originate in the Die Hard movie. There was a media fueled rumor about the Glock 17 containing so little metal that it wouldn't show up on metal detectors, and Die Hard 2 merely perpetuated that idea. However, none of it was ever true.

In the mid '80s there was a rumor about a Soviet all-plastic 3-shot gun, and there was a guy who patented the idea of an all-plastic gun, and then the media picked up on Glock making guns using plastic frames (but still more than 80% metal by weight). Then someone wrote a breathless story about how Libya was trying to buy Glocks, and this rapidly snowballed into a media fueled freakout about plastic guns and the Glock became a "terrorist special" and so forth.

<comment><USER4> P.S. Here's an article from 1986 which was one of the major sources for the "plastic gun" scare:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19860418&...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19860418&id=Ol4eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2cgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3270,4275428)

As an intellectual exercise, see how many mistakes and logical fallacies the author commits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, I don't understand the hysteria over 3-D printers when it comes to guns. For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. This has been possible for decades now. Hell, you can see youtube videos of CNC projects where someone takes a manual lathe and puts together his own computer control for a grand total of $600.

<comment><USER6> >For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage.

I think CNC machines probably fall into the same category as 3D printers when it comes to things like this.

The issue isn't that someone with a little money can manufacture a firearm. This has been the case since firearms were invented. The issue is that it's becoming easier and cheaper to do it, and as time passes it seems plausible that object fabrication equipment will become a staple home appliance. Which will make attempts to ban anything that such machines can produce about as effective as trying to stop people downloading pirated movies.

The funny thing is that they think passing a law against it is going to do anything. The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.

<comment><USER5> >The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.

Gun and explosive laws are already unenforceable. Explosives are easy to make - you can get recipes off the internet. And guns are easy to make, too, as I pointed out above. It's not clear to me that 3D printers will be any cheaper or more ubiquitous than milling machines, but in any case milling machines are _already_ ubiquitous.

What keeps people from making machine guns and bombs is the severe penalties associated with doing so. That won't change with the advent of cheap 3D printers, even assuming a printer that could make a gun is ever cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally- motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.

<comment><USER8> > This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally- > motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.

Even if what you're saying is true, one could argue that means "some protective effect."

Yes, it's probably true that someone who intends to ignore the law and most moral codes and commit a crime with a firearm will almost certainly ignore a sign and the associated additional legal penalties.

"Gun-free" school zones are not really meant to address that problem. They're an attempt to address the problem of crimes/accidents committed with firearms brought into a zone _without_ intent to commit a crime, but that end up being used criminally anyway in a confrontation or when they end up out of original hands, etc. Given that these things happen, restricting access to firearms in a place like a school probably has some marginal positive effect (you can credibly argue there may be a negative effect too -- not having _anyone_ armed in a school represents a targeting opportunity -- but the intelligent response to this is probably to figure out what reasonable exceptions might be rather than throwing up your hands and letting any student or visitor carry).

Similarly, I think it's possible that making attempts to restrict the legal manufacture of high-capacity clips will have some positive impact -- probably a greater one, since the larger scope makes leaks through neighboring less- restricted zones less likely. It will remain true that where "criminally- motivated" means someone with resources and strong resolve, they will be able to acquire not only high-capacity clips but probably just about any form of contraband they'd like. It's also true that by placing restrictions on the process of making of high-capacity clips, the bar for sufficient resources and resolve will be at least somewhat higher: there will be fewer made, fewer people making/distributing 3D printable designs, introducing scarcity, making it harder to do.

Would this be an absolute deterrent? No. Some people will still do that. Is the lock on a door an absolute deterrent? No. It raises the bar: you need to be more determined and you face additional risk of being conspicuous while breaking in. Seat belts don't protect you from many risks of driving. Sometimes, making improvements in the margins is how you get things better.

Now, that's not to say that there might not be other problems with any given measure. Personally, I think if you're going to ban manufacture of something, focusing on the method is probably a bad choice. There's also the question of tradeoffs -- what does it mean to "ban" 3D printing something? Does it mean every 3D printer gets a regulator or a monitor? That might be too big a cost for the benefit.

<comment><USER4> This is just plain silliness. There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity magazines out there in the world right now. If a criminal can manage to get their hands on an illegal gun they can certainly manage to get their hands on a full capacity magazine just as easily and for far less money. They are too easy to make, too easy to store, too easy to transport for it to be otherwise.

That was true even during the period of time when the national "assault weapons" ban was in place.

Also, when you call a magazine a "clip" you immediately make yourself look like someone who knows very little about firearms. A magazine is a spring loaded device that holds bullets in a gun, and may or may not be detachable. A "clip" is a device which is sometimes used to store bullets for quickly loading into a magazine.

<comment><USER8> > Also, when you call a magazine a "clip" you immediately make yourself look > like someone who knows very little about firearms.

Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack, I appreciate knowing what terminology communicates to people.

> There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity > magazines out there in the world right now.

And billions of people. The argument isn't that we can wave a magic policy wand and make _anything_ disappear, or impossible to make or get. The argument is that it may be possible to make it harder for any one of those billions to get their hands on some of the millions of things.

Here's what I'd expect to happen if we were to legally restrict the manufacture and general possession of some magazines (or anything else, for that matter):

1) Owners would split into 3-4 different categories: (a) some who would decide any legal risk isn't worth it, and get rid of theirs through approved channels, (b) some who would keep what they have but stop buying, (c) some would sell or buy on the black market. Overall, though, unless you assume that (a) is completely negligible, we're talking about a reduction in existing general circulation.

2) Regarding additions to general circulation, I'd expect manufacturers would split into different categories as well. Some would (a) comply with regulations and would no longer make or ship through general market channels, some would (b) continue to manufacture and supply the black market. Some (c) new manufacturers would spring up to fill any demand gap left by (a), but remember, some people in (1a) have dropped out of the market, so demand has probably shrunk, and risk is higher, so it's a pretty big presumption to claim supplies to general circulation from b+c are going to be equal or greater than a+b under no restrictions. Overall, we're talking about a reduction in supply coming into the pipe.

3) So at this point, if my assumptions hold up, the bar's up at least three or four notches:

* perhaps we still have many banned magazines in general circulation (US estimates I've heard thrown around are closer in order of magnitude to the tens of millions rather than hundreds, though), but there's nevertheless a reduction in number vs the baseline of no restriction, so that's increased scarcity.

* anyone wishing to buy/sell will need to have contacts willing to run the risk (your average postal worker or 19 year old suffering from socialization problems may or may not meet this bar)

* greater risk to buying/selling means some people will prefer to hold on to what they have and not sell at any price, except perhaps with highly trusted acquaintances. This effect in how magazines circulate would be more powerful the higher their concentration in a small number of hands is.

* cost would go up do to increased scarcity and risk associated with buying/selling, meaning any given individual would need to be prepared to pay more

4) That's not all, though. Remember what I said about door locks raising the bar in terms of conspicuousness? In a world with no door locks, the act of walking up to any door, opening it, and walking through is easy and unsuspicious to most given observers. In our world, you're going to need to batter the door down or spend time fiddling with tools -- both activities that are somewhat likely to draw attention. There are ways to allay the resulting suspicion, but that's another bar to meet. Similarly, someone incidentally observed with contraband is now under scrutiny; secondhand evidence it's possessed/traded at all in the neighborhood may even draw law enforcement on the trail.

> This is just plain silliness.

Based on your username, it looks like you would know. ;)

So... what part of what I've laid out above do you expect would _not_ happen if magazines over a certain capacity were banned, and why?

<comment><USER9> " _Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack..._ "

The Associated Press (AP) _finally_ updated their style book to make this important distinction, and I've noticed their writers are actually following it, so it's not pedantry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This headline is pretty misleading. He just introduced a bill to renew an already existing ban on non-metallic guns and magazines.

<comment><USER11> My read is that while non-metallic guns are currently illegal, the existing ban doesn't cover the magazines themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you ban plastic, someone will figure out a way to do it with metal. Besides, the only way a plastic magazine would be undetectable is if it were empty, which make it effectively useless anyhow.

<comment><USER13> Even then, plastic magazines (such as those for Glocks, "Pmags" for AR-15s, any many others) still have metal components, most notably the spring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It does bring up an interesting ethical scenario with respect to 3D printing. You can ban the sale of high-capacity magazines all you want, but if it's simple to just make one with a 3D printer the point of the law is completely moot. Since the law won't ban making these magazines (to not conflict with US manufacturers exporting these) and the law won't outlaw the existing magazines, this is a huge loophole.

And magazines aren't anything special, definitely something that is perfect for 3D printing. Simple designs punctuated by slight one-offs - depending on cartridge size, cartridge count, and weapon fit.

<comment><USER15> It would be fairly trivial to outlaw non-licensed manufacturing of high- capacity magazines.

The same way distilling alcohol is illegal in the US, but owning a still, owning alcohol, and purchasing distilled alcohol is not illegal.

<comment><USER16> When that happens, I'm immediately printing off several high-capacity mags out of principle, and I don't even own a firearm (thought about it, but I don't have time to go to a range so the liability isn't worth it for me).

While I understand the intent of the law, it's a totally impractical way to solve the problem. It sounds like the majority of weapons used in violent crimes are obtained illegally so it will do little to deter criminal activities; meanwhile, it increases the liability around owning a 3d printer.

<comment><USER15> I believe that the majority of weapons used in non-gang-related mass shootings were purchased legally.

Why are you not immediately distilling a few bottles of moonshine on principle? My feeling is gun-freedom supporters view gun ownership as a proxy for freedom. Why not view alcohol distillation as your symbolic meter-stick instead? Just like illegally produced spirits, owning a gun won't stop the TSA from violating your rights. Nor will it stop the FBI from raiding your home.

<comment><USER16> Ironically, I'd be much more likely to harm someone with moonshine than with an XL magazine.

In any case, the stand I'd be taking is about the absurdity of trying to ban 3d printing of specific devices, not about gun rights. I can't think of a reasonable excuse for a private citizen to own high-capacity weapons of death, and the theoretical argument about defending ourselves from the government went out the window long ago in my eyes. The second amendment was written well before the days of SWAT teams (on the low end of potential government firepower) and anyone crazy enough to think that stockpiling high-powered weaponry will be sufficient to take on highly-trained professionals is, well, crazy.

<comment><USER9> You're failing to exercise your imagination; perhaps look at the recent difficulties the US military has had in the Middle East with adversaries who had no interest in playing by the former's rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who cares if a magazine can be picked up by a metal detector?

<comment><USER18> Let's see: Everyone who does screening. Everyone who poses a natural target (judges, DAs, federal officers, etc) whose protection depends on screening. Everyone who works in a federal building where they are not allowed to carry guns, and therefore relies on a metal detector to keep gun carrying people out. Everyone who flies. One could go on.

<comment><USER19> Until someone figures out a way to make plastic bullets (pedantic edit: and cartridges) I'm not going to worry too much about it.

<comment><USER20> <http://wideners.com/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8699>

Plastic 308 rounds. Those are real projectiles, not dummy rounds.

I do not know if the entire cartridge is plastic, though. That primer definitely looks like metal. And I'm going to assume steel for the cartridge body (wow, it was hard to think of another word than 'brass').

Now, a fully plastic gun is another story...

<comment><USER21> Thus are military training rounds. The bullet are plastic, but the cartridge is brass. They are generally not deadly, and are sometimes used to fire at people with (as a form of paintball, but that is ill advised).

They are meant for training with outdoors. They are cheaper then normal bullets, less pollution then lead and don't goes so fare (a normal 7.62mm bullets can be deadly for upwards to 3.5 kilometers, making random shouting in a simulated setting outside unsafe).

More info about this bullets are available at [http://gunlore.awardspace.info/rifledarms/ammunition/dag762b...](http://gunlore.awardspace.info/rifledarms/ammunition/dag762by51.htm)

However caseless ammunition also exist: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caseless_ammunition> . Thus could probably be made without any metal.

<comment><USER22> The IDF uses rubber bullets extensively as a non-lethal form of ammunition. I think during the Nth intifada there was a story about plastic bullets being used, with them being actually worse than metal since they wouldn't show up on x-ray, although they would shed energy and momentum really fast compared to metal.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/29/world/us-protesting- israel...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/29/world/us-protesting-israelis-use- of-plastic-bullets.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/world/israeli-army- lawyer-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/world/israeli-army-lawyer- defends-use-of-plastic-bullets.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. I'm surprised that Rep. Israel beat Sen. Schumer... Usually he wins the race for getting this type of vapid thing out on a weekly basis.

</comment><comment><USER24> It begins!</comment>


Intel brings a six-core i9 CPU to laptops - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12607/intel-expands-8th-gen-core-core-i9-on-mobile-iris-plus-desktop-chipsets-and-vpro/ <comment><USER2> There appears to be no LPDDR4 support in these processors, which seems like a major omission:

[https://ark.intel.com/products/134903/Intel- Core-i9-8950HK-P...](https://ark.intel.com/products/134903/Intel- Core-i9-8950HK-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_60-GHz?q=i9-8950HK)

Which means they'll be stuck using LPDDR3-2133 memory with the same bandwidth as previous generations in any power conscious design.

For example, Apple's MacBook Pro line continues to use LPDDR3-2133: [https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/](https://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs/)

I wish AMD would add LPDDR4 support to their mobile chips, if only to light another fire under Intel to have feature parity like they did with core count.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how long will this bullshit continue. At the moment your average phone can technically support more than 16GB of RAM (LPDDR4), but not Intel's laptop CPUs. Is there some kind of massive obstacle that we don't know about?

<comment><USER4> With super fast SSDs, does anyone really _need_ 32GB of RAM?

I don't even shut down my multiple JetBrains IDEs and gazillion browser tabs or bloated Slack when I take a break and pin the CPU with Ableton Live and a bunch of soft synths on my MBP. Nothing skips a beat.

Is anyone seriously running into issues with only 16GB of RAM?

<comment><USER5> Oh yeah! When I showed up at my current employer, I had a laptop with 32gb and 2 PCI SSDs in RAID0. Almost immediately, I had to upgrade to 64GB.

I'm a data scientist and regularly work with multiple datasets simulataneously that require the RAM usage. Both Python and R rely on in-memory processing. Loading on/off disk is substantially slower and does not fit with what I am trying to do. For really large datasets I also have a 28 core Xeon with 196GB that I can remote into, but it is nice to not have constraints on my laptop.

Of course, you could go with Hadoop or Spark to process some of these datasets, but that requires quite a bit of overhead and its easier (and cheaper) to just buy more RAM

<comment><USER6> Once your datasets go out of the bounds of single reasonable machine, it's time to switch to Apache Spark cluster (or similar).

You can still write your data analysis code in Python, but you get to leverage multiple machines and intelligent compute engine that knows how to distribute your computation across nodes automatically, keeping data linkage and parentage information, so computation is moved closest to where data is located.

<comment><USER7> You know, sometimes you are in that uncomfortable spot where you have too much data for a single laptop but too little to justify running a whole computing cluster.

That is the kind of spot where you max out everything you can max out and just go take a break when something intensive is running.

<comment><USER8> This - honestly depending on the task hundreds of GB can be still the "single computer" realm because it's just not worth it to set up a cluster in terms of time and money and also administration overhead. However parallel + out of core computation doesn't necessarily imply a cluster: single-node Spark or something like dask works fine if you're in the python world.

<comment><USER6> Setting up ad hoc (aka standalone) Spark cluster with a bunch of machines you have control over is ridiculously trivial task though. It's as easy as running spark --master=x where you designate one machine as master. All others started with --master=x become slaves of x. Then you just submit jobs to x and that's all.

<comment><USER9> Spark is slow though. On the other hand, Pandas is also extraordinarily slow :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, the laptop processor has a higher turbo frequency than the desktop parts?

Sigh, the same old intel, they accuse others of selling desktop parts as server cores, but they are the ones that don't have a proper desktop lineup. Rather their focusing entirely on power/thermal constrained mobile parts, and then packing as many as possible into a server part. Desktop users get whatever random dies are left over. At least the new "workstation" series xeon's acknowledge that there are users for which single threaded desktop performance is still important.

<comment><USER11> turbo frequency is not everything.

Every benchmark i know from intel desktop cpu versus mobile cpu is the same: desktop wins by big margins.

I'm guessing that the mobile version does have less execution units.

<comment><USER12> It's several things. Desktops dissipate more heat, so sustained clocks are possible. Max Turbo is theoretical in most laptops. A decent example of this phenomenon is the m5 vs m7. Though the much is theoretical faster by double digits, in practice the clocks that those systems can sustain are identical (so save $100 by getting the m5).

Let's compare a 8550u and 8700k. The desktop has a base clock of 3.7 instead of 1.8. it has 12mb cache instead of 8mb. Twice the bus speed. Faster supported memory and more bandwidth. Desktop also has 16 pcie Lanes vs 4 (both can access more via the chipset, but then there's that bus bandwidth issue). Instruction and feature support is almost identical (except some things like vpro).

Sustained clocks, bandwidth, and more cache make a huge difference.

<comment><USER13> Very true, trying to evaluate laptop CPU performance is highly deceiving. Unlike desktop parts the actual performance depends completely on the particular laptop's cooling capability, which is impossible to know from looking at the spec. And often that cooling is terrible.

That's why desktop high end CPUs have such a large gap in performance in desktop vs. mobile. The gap seems small if you just look at the specs, but is much larger in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Much better article. [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12607/intel-expands-8th- gen-c...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12607/intel-expands-8th-gen-core- core-i9-on-mobile-iris-plus-desktop-chipsets-and-vpro/)

<comment><USER15> OK, we'll change to that from [https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/03/intel-8th- gen-i9-laptops...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/03/intel-8th- gen-i9-laptops/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Intel Core i7 laptop series also features 6 core CPUs:

Core i7-8850H

Core i7-8750H

Core i7-8700T

Just not clocked as high as the i9.

I wonder if any of these 6 core laptop CPUs will have the AMD integrated graphics - it appears not at this moment. I was looking forward to that on an upgrade to my Dell XPS 15.

Who is getting the AMD integrated graphics CPUs then? Apple? I really wanted one in my Dell as I was hoping it would be faster and more power efficient than the NVIDIA 1050/1050 Ti.

<comment><USER17> The model numbers you're looking for are iX-8xxxG.

Dell are doing preorders on XPS15 2-in-1; HP doing same on the 15" Spectre x360.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> WTF. The Core i7-8700T is a desktop CPU with 6 / 12 cores/threads at 2.4-4.0 GHz at 35 W for 303 dollars.

The i7-8750H has the amount of cores and thread it is rated at 2.2-4.2 GHZ. But it's 45 W and 395 dollars. That's a lot of money and heat to pay for a paltry 5% speedup at the very top -- and let's not forget the non Turbo speed is 8% lower.

<comment><USER19> Ghz range != performance. Among other differences, the i7-8700T only has turbo on one core.

<comment><USER18> At least this article doesn't say anything about that. In fact, it presumes all cores have turbo (which would make sense): At the peak turbo of 4.0 GHz, or for all-cores somewhere in the middle (again, Intel won't specify), the power will obviously be higher.

Later they do some "sleuthing" to quote them and come up with this chart which again indicates turbo across all cores: [https://images.anandtech.com/doci/12607/Turbos.png](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/12607/Turbos.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Intel press release: [https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-core-i9-processor- come...](https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-core-i9-processor-comes-mobile- best-gaming-creation-laptop-processor-intel-ever-built/)

</comment><comment><USER20> So, are those chips immune to the Spectre and meltdown already ?...

<comment><USER21> and Intel ME has been removed from those chips already ?...

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys 11 years after the first quad core laptop hitting the US market. Well done Intel!

[https://www.cnet.com/news/first-quad-core-laptop-hits- u-s/](https://www.cnet.com/news/first-quad-core-laptop-hits-u-s/)

<comment><USER22> Because there was some contract that cores have to be increased before some end date?

If anything, most cores are underutilized in laptops even today...

<comment><USER23> Why does it matter if some people are underutilizing cores on their laptop? Mine are constantly pegged (developer running a lot of different heavy processes) and I'd appreciate the ability to pay more for an upgrade. There are many others like me.

<comment><USER22> Not many enough (or not paying high enough), or there would be a market.

Instead, the major market pressure was on power efficiency.

(My cores are pegged too -- I run DAWs and NLEs -- but me and you are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, if there are not enough of us. And that's not determined by counting us, but by the emergence of a market).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > All of the new processors and their accompanying chipsets will support > Intel's Optane technology. [..] Intel claims the technology helps game > levels load 4.7 times faster on the Core i7 8750H

Anyone try out these Optane chips yet and seen a significant difference? This is apparently the other big announcement coming to laptops...

<comment><USER25> I think that's compared to loading from a 5400rpm mechanical hard drive. I'll easily believe that optane is 4.7x faster than that.

I also expect most high-end NVME SSDs are going to be in a similar ballpark, maybe "only" 4.5x faster or something.

<comment><USER26> Optane performs much better at low queue depths which accounts for many common workloads, and has better power usage at these depths -- this lets it compete with NVMe at the same performance for many tasks with a smaller footprint (e.g. battery). It's not all about peak GB/s, though to be fair not even Intel's blurb makes this obvious...

That said it's quite possible NVMe drives will be "good enough" where PCI-e Optane never makes major inroads, even just in terms of pure volume. The dollar-per-GB needs to come down a lot, still.

Optane in DIMM form is also still MIA. I'm extremely skeptical it will live up to the original hype it was put through ( _" thousands of times faster"_) but I imagine it will be able to outclass many competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just hope the do extensive testing on cooling these machines.

As a former user of laptop workstations, there is nothing worse than having to always lug around a bulky UPC as well as worry about overheating.

The other reason I could see them doing this is maybe related to wanting to push people to use more graphic related applications (3D rendering), but even that is slowly going to cloud.

</comment><comment> mark-r Intel is dead to me until they support ECC memory in their desktop processors like Ryzen does.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't really understand the demand for this, does not having an i9 defeat the purpose of laptops (working without a power source)? I usually buy laptops with i5 processors which is the perfect trade-off between performances and battery life.

<comment><USER29> There is a market (not sure how big, but there is one) for modern-day luggables. They're more often called "desktop replacements", and "working without a power source" is really far down the list of requirements for them.

The common use case for these machines: a developer who needs a fast CPU and lots of RAM (and often a dedicated video card) coupled to a 15" or better yet a 17" screen and a ton of hard drive space. You may unplug to go to a meeting for an hour or two, but you'll be back to your desk (and docking station) pretty quickly. You're not working from a coffee shop or a couch because you need a real mouse and a real desk. You occasionally take your work computer home when you're the on-call resource that week.

In that case you don't need a big battery (or rather you need a big battery but not a lot of battery life). Five hours is more than good enough, but you can't trade that performance for anything you don't need.

I know because I have one sitting unused beside me (Thinkpad W530) from back in the days before I started traveling for work.

<comment><USER30> > Five hours is more than good enough

Was only a few years ago where any decently performant machine didn't get more than 3 or 4 hours anyway. Everyone has a different use case.

<comment><USER31> Who's got 5 hour meetings?

<comment><USER32> In my experience, it is usually 5 1-hour meetings.

<comment><USER29> All day "strategy meeting".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Based on the slides, do some processors lack virtualization support?

<comment><USER34> Must be a mistake. Other than video rendering, virtualization is a good task for a multi-core processor.

<comment><USER35> "vPro" in this context is probably Intel AMT (Intel uses the "vPro" branding to cover several unrelated technologies)... but Intel's used virtualization capabilities (specifically VT-d and VT-x) as a point of product line segmentation before, so its not that far-fetched that they might omit something, especially if they're concerned about cannibalizing server-class processor sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Did I miss it or is there no mention of price? I assume that's because it's going to be more expensive than AMD's 8-core chips?

<comment><USER14> $583

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good is competition. Began the Core Wars have.

<comment><USER38> Finally the regular i7 has moved beyond four cores. It only took ten years.

<comment><USER39> IIRC there were i7 chips with six or eight cores available for a while, they were just ridiculously expensive.

<comment><USER38> The X series has always been ahead of the curve, but priced astronomically expensive, usually well above the equivalent Xeon part.

The i7 was introduced as a 4-core part and only now have they started to shift that to 6-core by default.

If their initial trend with Core continued we'd be at 16+ by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anyone more in the know - how much ram could one of these new chips handle - the 16GB limit is something that has to go.

<comment><USER41> Isn't the 16 GiB a self-imposed limit by the laptops manufacturers rather than the processors?

<comment><USER42> Bit of both. Current Intel chips (including these ones) don't support LPDDR4. This is largely because Intel is at this point years behind on their roadmap; phone chips have supported LPDDR4 for a while. They support LPDDR3 and plain (non-low-power) DDR4. So if you want to go over 16GB, you have to use plain DDR4, and power usage, especially suspended power usage, suffers.

Next-gen Intel chips will support LPDDR4, making the whole thing a bit of a non-issue.

<comment><USER43> If the next gen was close, it would not be an issue. But because it's way behind and one commenter up above stated its 18 months out. So it's an issue.

My dev team is _finally_ abandoning mac books for lenovo laptops with 32 gig.

<comment><USER44> If you mean mbell's comment, they said it's 18 months late, not 18 months out.

How many months it's out from this point is presumably something only Intel knows. Or maybe not even Intel.

<comment><USER43> ah, thanks for the correction. so when is it expected, if not in 18 months? I've been waiting for > 16 gig for literally 2+ yaers.

<comment><USER45> Hopefully soon. I've been waiting for > 16GB for almost 7 years now. :/ (I have a 2011 MBP with 16GB RAM)

<comment><USER43> It'll be this decade or next, never you worry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> That web site is extremely heavy. I hate to think how much Javascript it's trying to run in the background.

<comment><USER47> It's super fast and light here. Is your ad blocker up to date?

<comment><USER48> He's probably talking about the previous link before it was changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Accidently dropped my gaming laptop during the weekend. Guess I will buy a new one. The Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 looks promising. So this is a nice coincidence.

The only issue is the missing Spectre / Meltdown silicon fixes. And even when they are available, its probably pure luck to get a model having it. :(

</comment><comment><USER50> Great. Can we get > 16GB RAM while we're at it? :-)

</comment><comment><USER51> Does this generation add any hardware support to mitigate/eliminate meltdown and/or spectre?

</comment><comment><USER52> How's the TDP?

</comment><comment><USER53> I miss the old processor wars; is this a reboot?

</comment><comment><USER54> Yes, but no Vega. :(

</comment><comment><USER55> one a related note, this is the chipset many in the iMac world are expecting for some new models. being that it will also be a twentieth anniversary of the platform there is expectations of a new chassis as well

<comment><USER56> iMac doesn't use mobile CPUs. The current top end iMac has a 7700K

<comment><USER57> Would be an a$$ kicking mac mini with 6 cores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 12-core laptops have been available since 2013.

[http://www.eurocom.com/configure(2,234,0)](http://www.eurocom.com/configure\(2,234,0\))

<comment><USER59> That design is stretching the definition of "laptop" pretty far.</comment></comment>


Mac Pro Trash Icon - <AUTHOR> http://jonathanhirz.com/macprotrash-icon/? <comment><USER2> Google cache while the site is down: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&client...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjonathanhirz.com%2Fmacprotrash- icon%2F%3F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjonathanhirz.com%2Fmacprotrash- icon%2F%3F&gs_l=serp.3..0i20j0i46j46l2j0i20j0.4302.5245.0.55220.127.116.11.0.0.0.148.504.0j4.4.0.eprnk%2Cfr%3Dtrue%2Cfrlen%3D1...2...1.1j2.32.psy- ab..3.4.497.nMomjqfQRsY&pbx=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice, reminds me of this funny Mac Pro parody [1].

[1] [video] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wShNx6cdk_8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wShNx6cdk_8)

<comment><USER4> Anyone know where this was filmed?

<comment><USER3> It was shot in France (mostly Paris) by Woow Your Life [1].

[1] [http://www.woowyourlife.com](http://www.woowyourlife.com)

<comment><USER4> Awesome thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the best things about corporations and the product development cycle: the general public's reactions that not even a company like Apple could predict, and to what length they will go to make sure you don't forget that unintended perception.

Great work.

<comment><USER6> Fortunate for Apple, the iPad debacle was short lived.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great work.

ps. The hardware structure design of the NMP is great, but WHY THE HELL apple make it a cylender? And WHY it is black and glossy, differ from any other Apple hardware.

<comment><USER8> A cylinder is a very silly shape for a computer IMO but that's just the sort of thing Apple does.

They might even have brainstorming sessions that go,

        "Ok what would our competitors *NEVER* do. Yes Dave?"

        "Make a cylindrical computer!"

        "Brilliant!"

<comment><USER9> I'm waiting until the next MacPro looks like the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey. The entire grey black slab could slowly pulse a über faint glow like the power light on late model PowerBooks. The idea would be to eliminate all indicator lights and make the entire monolith surface into the indicator that it's on and replace brightness with area.

I present to you, your next MacPro:

[http://atypicalsnowman.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/2001_mono...](http://atypicalsnowman.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/2001_monolith.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it won't be long before someone starts selling a real Mac Pro trash can for your office.

</comment><comment><USER11> Teehee, cute! I still really like the Mac Pro's new design myself, but this is pretty funny :)

</comment><comment><USER12> beautiful... almost makes me want to buy a mac pro to use as an actual trash can. :)

except i'm not wealthy enough to ever consider buying one anyway... XD

</comment><comment><USER13> This is sooo damn cool!

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice!!

<comment><USER14> Why did this get down voted. It really is nice. It reminds me of my OS 9 days when it became popular to use icon sets to replace the stock icons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> genius</comment>


Sign your Ruby gems: gem install waxseal -P HighSecurity - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/steakknife/waxseal/blob/master/README.md

<comment><USER2> I'm assuming this is just one of many different efforts to cryptographically protect gems, right? It's phrased as if this was the de facto standard way to do it, but this is the first I've heard of it. Or does waxseal just automate something RubyGems already does?

<comment><USER3> Looks like it's just adding convenience to built-in RubyGems signing.

Relevant lines:

[https://github.com/steakknife/waxseal/blob/master/bin/waxsea...](https://github.com/steakknife/waxseal/blob/master/bin/waxseal#L59) (generates the signature using "gem cert --build ...")

[https://github.com/steakknife/waxseal/blob/master/bin/waxsea...](https://github.com/steakknife/waxseal/blob/master/bin/waxseal#L83) (modifies your gemspec file to include the signing key and cert)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The readme barely says what it is and what it does.

<comment><USER5> Something something signing gems.

It's a good idea, but wow, super thin on documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If rubygems would sign the gems themselves it would already be an improvement (and rubygems the library check for it). It would make distribution of the gems to third-party for mirroring or over http possible.</comment>


Show HN: zodiac, a new approach to monkey patching in python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colinmarc/zodiac

<comment><USER2> On a related note, Michael Foord's `mock.py` was recently added to the python stdlib.

<http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/mock.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't see how this is different from mock.py. Mock can also do temporary patching:

with patch('path.to.object') as my_mock: my_mock.method.return_value = ...

also you can patch a module/class with a function.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd avoid monkey patching, it can confuse the programmer as to which module is being used. In a small program it's not a big deal but in large systems it can become an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes sense in certain situations. For example, if you're using non- blocking i/o with an event loop (using gevent or similar) then as soon as you have one blocking operation, performance suffers dramatically.

Monkeypatching gevent's socket globally allows you to use libraries and drivers like pymongo off the shelf, and they will be non-blocking by default.

<comment><USER5> While true, this can hardly be considered good engineering. The more complexity in your system, the more likely it is to break. The question is: do you want to take the productivity hit today and fix the socket libraries, or do you want to fix it at some time in the future when you finally realize your code/test/release cycle is twice as slow as your competitors'?

(I've worked on a lot of code that took the second trade-off. The result is almost always a full rewrite. Maintain your codebase or it goes out of control really fast.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that before monkeypatching, a team should weigh their options. But for many projects, "fixing the socket libraries" could be a lot of work, or not an option at all.

In the example I gave, you'd have to rewrite whatever database drivers you're using, or at least hack them to work in a non-blocking fashion. That could have just as much development cost as monkeypatching.

zodiac is an attempt to address the problems that make monkeypatching such a risky, unpredictable option, by making patches smaller and therefore using more system code. Hopefully, for situations where monkeypatching is necessary, I can make it cleaner and more maintainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we say this is very un-pythonic?</comment>


German federal court rules Google liable for autocomplete suggestions - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/bundesgerichtshof-google-muss-umstrittene-suchtipps-loeschen-a-899688.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't find an English source, sorry, but I'm sure Google Translate will do the job.

Some notes:

This is the highest regular court (ie. apart from the constitutional court and European courts).

The decision invalidates an earlier decision by a lower court which ruled in favor of Google; that court will now have to review the case and determine whether a specific autocomplete will have to be removed.

For some reason this is a fairly big thing here, with many supposedly important people taking issue with autocomplete suggestions associated with them (which of course causes pranksters to game the system even more, YHBT/YHL/HAND). Incidentally, bashing Google for all the wrong reasons and none of the right ones is popular here.

Last but not least, Google has to police individual offensive autocomplete suggestions _only after being told about them_ , which I guess makes it at least somewhat feasible. I'm not sure if any changes they make only have to be made on google.de, with the full supposedly defamatory experience remaining available on google.com. I hope so.</comment>


Pure CSS 3D Camera Animation - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/neoberg/pen/HyqKf

<comment><USER2> That's amazing! This is the best thing made with css3 I've ever seen.</comment>


Why the Moto X "always listenting" feature didn't make it to the Nexus 5 - <AUTHOR> http://siggis.im/post/68044456086/why-the-moto-x-always-listenting-feature-didnt-make

<comment><USER2> Oh noes! An always networked device that can't constantly eavesdrop on everything I do! What will I ever do without one?! Boo hoo! Boo hoo hoo!</comment>


Netflix is ditching five-star ratings in favor of a thumbs up - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14952434/netflix-five-star-ratings-going-away-thumbs-up-down <comment><USER2> I'm actually very disappointed by this. In almost any case, I prefer a 5-star system over a binary thumbs up/down. A more detailed rating system allows me to differentiate my absolute favorites from content I thought was merely interesting. It also helps me to do pairwise comparisons of different titles. If my only option for saying I like something is "thumbs up", then I lose a significant amount of information about which titles I like more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I agree with this decision. People have different tastes and when looking at stars I would say anything between 3 and 5 is a good indication that it might be worth checking out.

If you limit that to just thumbs up or thumbs down whatever gets the most votes is what its going to rate. There is no "partial thumb" option to know if its neutral

</comment><comment><USER4> This makes sense.

I see two problems with stars:

1\. they force you to think: should it be 5, 3, 4? Too many options.

2\. people use stars in different ways: I have seen many reviews that read "best product even", with 4 stars instead of 5. Some people "save" 5 stars for something really out-of-the-ordinary good, while others give 5 stars more easily (me)

<comment><USER5> I agree and disagree. Option paralysis on movies is real - It does introduce friction to think about how you felt about the movie. I think that's time well spent for netflix users. I, personally, like to think about and re-enjoy my favorite moments from movies, and coming up with a rating encourages me to do that.

The second problem is controllable. Ultimately, Netflix is learning _my_ rating habits, and can pick people who have similar sets of ratings. They don't need to know whether "Ernest Saves Christmas" is a better movie than "The Godfather", they just need to find other people who've rated them 5 and 4 stars respectively and figure out based on their ratings what I'd think of "A Series of Unfortunate Events".

There's a second aspect: They can figure out from the distribution of stars that you've given whether you're a binary rater (all 1 and 5), one who uses the full scale (a mixture of each), have a critical bent (more 3s, than 4s or 2s than 1s or 5s), or simply tasteless (see above). They can leverage that into the averages - Weight the ratings based on who's using what rating. A thousand people hitting 5 star who're all habitual 5-and-1 raters might do less to move a movie's rating than one critic rating a 4. And that's okay.

<comment><USER4> That makes sense. I guess ratings are important to Netflix enough that they could invest in that.

Thumbs up/down is definitely easier, though, and don't take away any satisfaction from rating IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember when digital music first came out, I tried to rate my songs. I eventually realized that I should really just _delete_ anything that I don't consider great. I did this even with stuff I paid for or maybe used to like. It naturally leads to a much more enjoyable library of content where pretty much everything is worth your time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure I'll enjoy this as much as I enjoy the autoplay previews they won't let us disable.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's okay, I'll just have to use rotten tomato and google to find which shows are worth watching.

</comment><comment><USER9> [XKCD#1098]([https://xkcd.com/1098/](https://xkcd.com/1098/))</comment>


CoreOS and Vagrant setup - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dropletpay.com/droplet-infrastructure-using-vagrant/

<comment><USER2> (CoreOS eng here) We no longer have a Chaos Monkey. Since the beta release, the "Chaos Monkey" can be disabled via configuration. See the "reboot- strategy:" in this post. This is the recommended way to do that:

[http://coreos.com/blog/coreos-beta-release/](http://coreos.com/blog/coreos- beta-release/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I actually wrote most of this before the beta and missed that, I will update it.</comment></comment>


Mobile MVP – Ask community about your decisions, take pic, rate it - <AUTHOR> https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/2N1F4T7UV

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you think, any feedback, good or bad will be appreciated.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you return to work after a long sabbatical? - <AUTHOR> I've been on an extended sabbatical for about 18 months and need to return to work. I feel like I've practically forgotten how even to program, and there is no way I could pass a technical interview right now. Not to mention, I'm a bit behind on things like new frameworks and tech.
Am I unhirable now? How do I explain a significant gap in my work history? I worry employers will view me as flakey or something for taking so much time off work.
I also worry that maybe I've fallen too behind and have badly hurt my career.
Any advice? Have others successfully returned to work after such a long break? <comment><USER2> Not really enough details. How long is your work history? If you have 18 months experience followed by an 18 month absence, that's going to be a tough one. If you have like 5+ years experience, you can always just say you tried consulting, did a lot of RFPs, prototypes, pitching, but never landed anything serious so you're returning to the corporate world. "I like the programming side, not the rest of running a business" is what I would say.

In any case, if you're competent and your skills are still in demand, you shouldn't have any problem finding work.</comment>


Show HN: BootCamper - a resource for all things programming bootcamps - <AUTHOR> http://bootcamper.io

<comment><AUTHOR> I've built this website with an intention of making it a one-stop resource to easily find programming/technology bootcamps, schools and academies, learn about them, and most importantly engage students in asking questions and sharing their experiences.

Currently the list is by no means complete, but I am adding new bootcamps on a daily basis.

I hope it will be of use to many new aspiring students and alumnis alike.

Feedback and ideas are always welcome and appreciated.

Thank you :)</comment>


Referly Homepage Simplification Retrospective - <AUTHOR> http://blog.refer.ly/referly-simplification-continues-before-after

<comment><USER2> I would recommend randomizing the initial condition for the images you are showing.

Right now you say 'items being referred now' but I refresh the page and it shows the same items sliding of the page again and again... Makes the _activity_ on the site appear fake...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we wanted to do something cooler. Right now it takes a snapshot of the 200 most recent products and shows them to you, based on when you first hit the site. If you were to clear your cookies and refresh, you'd see something different. I agree randomizing them would go a long way to make it more believable if people do referesh

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh god. Showing old versions of my designs is like showing the world my underwear. This thing was clutter city just 6 weeks ago.

Thanks for keeping today interesting, Danielle :)

<comment><USER4> The current design doesn't look the same on my computer (Chrome 20) as your screenshot. The form wraps to a second line:

<http://i.imgur.com/EjV2n.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Solid improvements.

I suggest placing a cookie in the browser to remember what link I created and I "log" back in to my "account" with links I shared.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We currently cookie you and remember links you created when logged out (or not signed up) and merge them to your account when you create OR login again. Is this what you meant, or is there another case I am not thinking of?</comment></comment>


How to Predict Bad Cops in Chicago - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-predict-which-chicago-cops-will-commit-misconduct/ <comment><USER2> I think journalists and police chiefs/PR often misuse the "few bad apples" metaphor.

A few rotten apples will _ruin the whole barrel_. Their rot encourages the rest of the apples to rot. A few bad apples can't be tolerated-- they have to be sorted out _immediately_ or the whole barrel will be ruined and has to be thrown out.

I feel that it's an appropriate metaphor.

<comment><USER3> When Van Dyke can shoot a gunless prone person _sixteen times_ while twenty other cops just look on rather than stopping him at five or six, they're all rotten. If their training is no better than this, they should carry break- action pistols without magazines. On the other hand, in some cities it would be considered a miracle if an officer were capable of emptying his weapon without losing _any_ shots downrange, so they have that going for them.

<comment><USER4> Yes; The rottenness of the other officers does not necessarily mean that they do these bad things, it means that they provide a shield for some officers to continue to behave like this. It means that they enable this behaviour. It means that they cover for it.

<comment><USER5> This is what is so damning. Until the good officers stop supporting the bad officers, the public will be against all of them. Seems so obvious, but they don't seem to get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The CPD's ability to react to data like this is severely hampered by the public employee union that is the real governance for the force.

<comment><USER7> I love the idea of labor unions in the private sector. It gives small voices some power against exploitation, and collective bargaining is something the anarcho-syndicalist bit of me loves to see happen as a form of self- governance.

No matter how I look at it, I can't see any net good for voters when public employees unionize. Public employees are meant to serve the community they are employed in. The benefits of taking a government job are supposed to be in that you have a direct result in helping the communities around you; instead, the benefits most people see in government jobs are fat pensions and a bureaucracy that, if you're clever enough, you can get lost enough in to where you don't actually need to work to get paid. If anything ever hits the fan, you have multimillion-dollar, politically-connected attorneys ready to serve you.

In the case of police unions, it strengthens the "thin blue line" into a powerful bureaucracy that only looks out for the interests of its members, very often to the detriment of the people these public servants are supposed to be serving (and always in cases such as we've seen in Chicagoland recently.)

I would love counterexamples to this thought. I can't seem to find any of recent noteworthiness, but that could be due to the current anti-law- enforcement/anti-government streak getting pageviews in the news these days.

<comment><USER8> In my state, the legislature broke the public sector unions a few years ago (while sparing the police and firefighters unions). There has been a wave of retirements -- pretty much any K-12 teacher who can afford to retire or leave the profession is doing so. In some schools, there are no teachers left who are older than 50. I know a few of these people, and we are losing the best teachers, not the worst.

Two other non-union teaching gigs are preschool and college, and in both of those areas, the age distribution of teachers drops off precipitously at around 25 for preschool and 35 for college. My interpretation is that teaching has ceased to be a career. Disclaimer: I taught an engineering course at the nearby Big Ten university, but with no intention of doing it for more than one semester.

The teachers union doubtlessly protected the bad apples, but it also protected the good apples from things like wage erosion, gradually increasing workload, and getting blamed for outcomes that they can't control.

And I'm sure that education is in need of massive reform, but any reform will now have to be done with nobody interested in becoming a teacher.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure in no small part that is due to the fact that often teacher pensions are based on the last several quarters/years of pay, and without a teacher's union pumping up teachers' salaries based strictly on age and tenure as opposed to skill, it was get out now or risk a lower pension payment in the future.

<comment><USER8> From the people I talked to, it was mostly about morale and the work environment, but certainly, the erosion of wages and job security increased the economic risk of being a teacher. I'm not sure the numbers work out for giving up 15 years of salary in the hope of having a slightly higher pension.

I think that an unusual problem for public sector employees is that their wages are public knowledge, and as a result, are a target of resentment.

Going forward, I expect to see more of a relationship between pay and skill. As I said, the best teachers are the ones who are leaving.

Granted, I'm not wholeheartedly pro union, but I see some areas where unions have served a vital role with no obvious replacement. One is to function as a labor movement in general. The unions weren't perfect at it, but as the unions have been effectively defeated, nobody else has stepped up to speak for workers.

The other has been to make certain occupations -- such as teaching -- worth the risk of pursuing as a career, by providing a trustworthy career roadmap. Other countries provide such a roadmap through government oversight of education -- perhaps the state functions as a union in countries with more pro-labor governments. But our governments haven't stepped up to serve that role. Again, the teachers union wasn't perfect (most teachers believed that it needed to be reformed), but nobody has figured out an alternative way to make teaching career-worthy, or how to make schools work if teaching ceases to be a career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Incredibly cool to see this data released!

I FOIA'd the same data twice and got rejected both times. Apparently the data was part of an active court case where ex cops were suing to get 4+ year old complaints deleted. It wasn't that surprising of an outcome, but... Damn.

<comment><USER11> disclaimer: i'm an engineer at socrata

the Obama administration has pushed for more cities to start publishing this data. While it's pretty light on standardization of formats between cities, it's still a step in the right direction. in the next year we're going to start seeing more cities publishing use of force data [1].

One neat example is Indiana's page here [https://data.indy.gov/view/eg2v-uzn3](https://data.indy.gov/view/eg2v-uzn3) , though anonymized, you can still draw your own conclusions about things like race, sex, and age and how that plays into how willing the officer is to use force, and how far the force is taken

[1] [https://www.socrata.com/socrata-and-white-house-partner- on-p...](https://www.socrata.com/socrata-and-white-house-partner-on-police- data-initiative/)

<comment><USER12> Hey, just want to say that you should tell your colleagues...great work! Last year I assigned my class [1] an exercise in HTML scraping the officer-involved shooting incidents of the Dallas PD (which was, with HTML tables, already far and away the most transparent department in this regard). Then a few months ago, I saw that the Socrata portal for Dallas now has the same exact data but as a spreadsheet/CSV...including URLs to the PDF narratives (I don't expect the narratives actually exist in a more parsable format on the basis of them being narratives)...and hell, that is not even the most interesting police- related dataset on the Dallas portal.

Whatever your public-officials-facing evangelists are doing, they are doing it incredibly well, at a level that I would have never imagined when Socrata first popped up.

[1] [http://www.compciv.org/homework/assignments/dallas- ois/](http://www.compciv.org/homework/assignments/dallas-ois/)

[1a] Another example of someone resorting to programming to collect this data (which is how I learned about its existence in the first place): [https://github.com/dallasshooting/dallasshooting](https://github.com/dallasshooting/dallasshooting)

[2] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police- Public-D...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police-Public-Data- Officer-Involved-Shootin/4gmt-jyx2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this methodology is nice, but consider how hard it can be to even file a complaint:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8v7lF5ttlQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8v7lF5ttlQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h08jwjYVNAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h08jwjYVNAE)

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

As you can see, the cops, in true fascist form, take extremely unkindly to the concept of filing complaints. I highly doubt that the numbers used by 538 are inclusive, given how many complaints never make it to the official statistics or how many times citizens are abused and don't file a complaint for fear of further abuse.

To be fair, there's also not much data on which reports may be false, but who cares about mincing a minuscule percentage of the crystal clear data: the police in the US are a gang of criminals on the streets who are utterly out of control and have to be severely and immediately curbed/reduced for the sake of public safety. The cops can't stop slaughtering unarmed people. The cops can't stop seizing people's property. The cops won't stop covering up bad behavior of other cops. If one of a gang's members murders someone and the others cover it up, do we simper that it was only "one bad apple" and that the rest of the gang members are fine? No.

Whether in Chicago or elsewhere, the police are completely self servingly corrupt, and cover up for their fellows rather than clean house and support justice. I guarantee that there cannot be racial peace in this country without a public defeat being chalked for the police nationwide. The rest of us will benefit from such a defeat as well, of course.

</comment><comment><USER12> As a reminder of how the obscurity of data can make it unused for vital analysis -- and as a corollary, how the statistical analysis doesn't even have to be that sophisticated when you get your hands on obscured data, I frequently point my students to this writeup of how reporters tracked misbehaving police officers in Florida (a state in which it is actually very easy, comparatively speaking, to get this data):

[http://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story- trac...](http://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tracking- police/)

> _It is the cleanest set of data I have ever worked with. There was no big > clean up with the data. Sometimes you get a data set and find out it has > errors or wrong information. Everywhere we turned this data pointed us > correctly...When we got the data I spent a week or more playing around with > it – sorts and counts, which officers got written up the most number of > times. Then I started looking at certain types of offenses, like "he had > both a domestic violence and an excessive force." From that I created a list > of 150-200 officers. Once we had a nice healthy pool of targets we tried to > find out more details on them by asking for the reports on the incidents._

> _" This was a case where the government had this wonderful, informative > dataset and they weren't using it at all except to compile the information. > I remember talking to one person at an office and saying: "How could you > guys not know some of this? In five minutes of (SQL) queries you know > everything about these officers?" They basically said it wasn't their job. > That left a huge opportunity for us."_

via the 538 article, this sentiment is repeated:

> _The city had the tools to identify and curtail troublesome officers before > Kalven pursued legal action. All of the complaints were stored within the > department long before the Invisible Institute had access. As Kalven put it, > "All the knowledge to transform the system existed within the system."_

edit: The 538 article is greatly appreciated...I didn't even know of the Citizens Police Data Project, and now I do...but skimming the dataset, I would take a different approach than the one implied in the 538 article title. A good data investigation doesn't have to come up with a statistical model for predicting bad behavior. A simple group-by-count is devastating enough. It is merely enough to show that with a simple aggregation of tabular data, we see that the majority of police officers are doing "fine" \-- but that's not the point. The point is that when police officers are _egregiously_ and _repeatedly_ bad, there is apparently no institutional mechanism to root that out. And we have little reason to expect that to change if, God forbid, more and more police officers decide to go bad.

In other words, we can argue that Chicago cops are generally good/great. But the fact that we don't have as many cop-problems as we hypothetically _could_ is a matter of luck and faith in human behavior and actions within a bureaucracy...Faith in the human spirit is a nice feel-good thing -- like believing the next shuttle will safely launch even though the Challenger just blew up -- but when it comes to public safety and justice, it is imperative to demand more. If the police loathe releasing disciplinary data (nevermind it being the law, of course), they should consider being a bit more proactive in policing themselves and removing the low-hanging bad apples.</comment>


Canada to become first G7 nation to legalize marijuana - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/canada-become-first-g7-nation-legalize-marijuana-government-204501904.html <comment><USER2> The source [http://www.afp.com/en/news/canadas-new-liberal-government- se...](http://www.afp.com/en/news/canadas-new-liberal-government-sets- legislative-agenda) has more than 2 paragraphs, is less click-baity, and has less obnoxious ads.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a bit of a premature headline.

As far as the article says, nothing has actually been effected yet; this is just the PM confirming his intention to legalize marijuana.

<comment><USER4> If his party holds the majority in the Parliament and they're all on the same page regarding this issue, I say it's already in the bag and it's just a matter of a few formalities.

<comment><USER5> I know some people already going into business on the assumption that it will pass. I wouldn't be surprised. Canada could use the income.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any idea what this could be? - <AUTHOR>

I found this while sniffing Tor exit node traffic: http://vps6.vpnzz.com/farmer/<p>Any idea what it could be? Looks dodgy. <comment><USER2> Can you describe what we're about to click or include just the src or screenshot?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/ZFV8gJr.png>

I found it using my exit node to request a page returning some network and internal details of their system, and the IP address of my node, along with a parameter stating that my node was "unusable" for some reason.

<comment><USER3> Those damn asians!</comment></comment></comment>