Building a Lightroom PC - <AUTHOR> https://paulstamatiou.com/building-a-windows-10-lightroom-photo-editing-pc <comment><USER2> I can't imagine spending $6000 on a computer for editing photos and then saying "It also means I don't plan to buy and meticulously use a color calibration device". My computer might not be half as fast, but at least I know my blues are the shade of blue I think they are.

<comment><USER3> Fair point :) I should reconsider. The UltraSharp line is factory calibrated but yea that doesn't mean much as it varies between display.

<comment><USER4> In what sense are they calibrated if things vary between displays?

<comment><USER5> They do a base calibration. Do a Google search for Dell Calibration report. It shows what they calibrate. Keep in mind, it's still a pretty loose calibration. I've never once gotten two of the same models that look the same out of the box.

<comment><USER6> This has driven me nuts more than once. I've very intentionally ordered two "matching" monitors at the same time, supposedly from the same lot, and they were vastly different. It may be an overreaction but since a number of years ago I've gone to just one big and nice monitor (even if it's not technically as nice as the others) because those details get in my head so much.

As the saying goes: "comparison is the thief of joy" - so I remove the second thing to directly compare to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use both Lightroom and Darktable regularly.

While DT has a bit more bumpy UX, it makes up for that by being more flexible than LR and really fast on Linux with a good GPU with OpenCL support. And there is nothing that LR can do that DT can't.

I.e. you don't need to shell out 6k for new box to make LR run fast. Just bite the bullet and learn another RAW editing app.

If you have thousands (or ten thousands, in my case) worth of RAWs processed in LR, just keep editing them in LR if you still have to. I often hear this as a reason why people don't want to switch.

I switched to DT in 2011. Everything before is LR. I use LR when I get images from friends who use LR and want me to do some advanced stuff for them or when I have to touch one of my pre-2011 RAWs. It is always slow on the same machine, compared to DT, but it's quite ok if you use it occasionally. :)

<comment><USER8> Lightroom is slow as fuck in my experience. Just bought a new laptop with a top of the line i7 CPU, SSD, 32GB RAM, 1050 GPU, etc. and it tears through video editing, solidworks CAD work, etc.

But even still LR lags constantly working with a small collection of photos from my M4/3 camera. Like I can't scroll through a collection without it hanging.

I assume this is caused by poor GPU utilization, but it's very frustrating whatever the cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paul, did you consider buying an existing workstation like the HP Z840 ( [http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business- solutions/z840-workst...](http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business- solutions/z840-workstation) ) or similar?

I did this a number of years ago and never regretted it and dual-Xeon has really helped with DxO PhotoLab and Adobe Lightroom processing time (compared to all the other computers I had access to).

Even years later I still believe that this is performing better than something I could've built myself. I think of computers like cars, in that if you upgrade 1 part significantly for performance (i.e. the engine) that it forces upgrades to everything else (i.e. brakes, chassis, cooling). A pre-built workstation balances all of these things to give one package where all of the potential is achievable.

<comment><USER10> Following on from this, if you don't need the latest hardware (i.e. you are currently using a laptop as your main device), you can buy used workstations on eBay rather cheap.

At the end of 2016 I bought a three year old Dell T3600 with 32GB ECC RAM and a 8c/16t Xeon E5-2670 (Sandy Bridge) processor. I just threw in a modern graphics card (GTX 1060) and SSD, and it's perfect for my needs. Total cost was under €600.

I still have a laptop, so if I'm out I will just SSH in to work.

<comment><USER11> +1 here. Buying used professional grade gear is the way to go. I just built a fileserver with better passmark than threadripper for 700 dollarydoos (plans for lots of concurrent transcodes), and got ECC ram to boot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> N.B.: the "switch to Windows" is from macOS and not from Linux, just in case anyone was wondering. I think it's very interesting that the availability of Linux on Windows helped the author choose Windows.

<comment><USER13> The switch stories are always either "from Mac-OS" or "to Linux", the former being a "oh no you didn't" and the latter being "I'm with cool birds now" narrative.

It's basically non-stories because your OS matters as little as what programming language you use.

Pick the one that works for you, but don't become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.

<comment><USER14> >> Pick the one that works for you, but don't become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.

I find that people naturally tend to want others to be like them.

It doesn't matter whether its politics, religion, OS, camera brand, camera sensor size, programming language, diet fad or whatnot.

Maybe it makes them feel better about the choices they made?

<comment><USER15> More like people want external confirmation that they made the right choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm leaning in the same direction myself. My 2017 MBP Pro has been a disappointment. The touch bar is a nuisance. The excessively large trackpad leads to a lot of phantom taps, and I'm _still_ using adapters to plug things into it.

Since I'm wrapping up the last of my iOS client work there's nothing really tying me to macOS any more and a PC seems to provide way more bang for the buck for the things I care about - Android Studio, VS Code, Ableton Live, ZBrush, and a bit of gaming here and there. Apple's hardware playbook for the last few years seems to consist entirely of making things thinner for thinness' sake and making piecewise upgrades harder and harder.

<comment><USER17> 2016 MBP with touchbar reporting in. I have the 13" model without a dedicated graphics card, and I made the mistake of getting an external 4K display. The laptop can use the display, but everything is remarkably sluggish for a computer I paid $3000aud for. Especially safari with a few tabs open. The most embarrassing part is that I sort of got used to it and stopped noticing, until I spent time on my Windows gaming pc. The difference is night and day.

I've recently ordered an external thunderbolt GPU enclosure, and I'm hoping I can solve the performance issue that way. But in the long run ... I'm not really sure what I want to run on my next computer. To be honest all the answers seem a bit bad. Macs are overpriced and underpowered. Linux on a laptop still seems like an endless stupid time hole - I had the Ubuntu installer reliably kernel panic on me the other day. And windows ... does windows support smooth scroll yet? Can you turn off the telemetary and pre- installed games in the start menu? Will I be able to install and try out the database or exotic programming language of the week on Windows, or will it be more fighting?

Is it just me or did computers stop feeling better with each generation? When did we lose our way?

<comment><USER18> "Linux on a laptop still seems like an endless stupid time hole - I had the Ubuntu installer reliably kernel panic on me the other day."

Reading comments like this, I can't help but feeling that somebody is missing a trick here: I don't doubt your experience, and I've seen similar comments, but they don't match my experience at all, which is that Linux works with no tinkering. It would be really interesting to collect experience reports from folks like you, to see why there is such a divergence, and figure out what could be done about it. Back in the day, the worst cause of Windows crashes was basically a single problem: the quality of ATI drivers were bad, and once that was clear, it got fixed.

<comment><USER17> Thats a great idea. For what its worth, in my case I was using the 16.04.3 LTS installer (17.10 had been pulled at the time due to a bios issue). The kernel was panicking on boot because of issues using the opensource noveau driver for my NVIDIA gtx1080 graphics card. I needed to blacklist the driver to get the installer to boot. (And once I did that it ran fine.)

I ran into exactly the same bug installing ubuntu on my friends' PC a couple of weeks ago. In his case he has an nvidia graphics card from a few generations ago. (8xx series? 7xx? I can't remember.)

Whatever the bug is presumably its been an unfixed problem in the 'LTS' release branch for 2+ years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like _massive_ overkill, but it doesn't look like OP actually cared about money, given the $400 VESA mount and the $159 (wat) custom PSU cables. Also surprising that one would spend that much money only to get a little bose speaker.

But if ya can afford it, more power to you.

<comment><USER19> In regards to speakers, I found over time I rarely use speakers and are thus happy with a rather basic set (maybe not quite as basic as OP). Headphones is where I prefer to put the majority of my audio budget.

<comment><USER11> Totally fair, just surprising that one would splurge on literally everything else but not a decent pair of speakers.

Although it looks like OP does know what he is talking about and gave options for higher quality speakers if one wanted them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing to keep in mind: Disabling UAC is a VERY BAD IDEA. No matter how you look at it. Look at it this way, if you do that, then any moderately smart ransomware will be able to do wonders on your PC.

That's reminiscent of a 4chan post where the user downloads a program, tries to execute, is then warned by Firefox, but ignores it, warned by the AV Software, but disables it, warned by Defender, and disabled, and finally warned by UAC and disables it, only to get it infected and flame away because Windows sucks.

<comment><USER3> Agreed - I mention that in the post as well. It can allow for any automatic software to take over. Known risk, especially for when I was setting everything up and installing 100 different things and getting the UAC full screen takeover so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > PCPartPicker.com is one relatively new resource that I have found to be > invaluable.

Just the greatest site ever, if you're into building your own PCs. Fun to browse other builds, and then it makes it so simple to put together a system.

<comment><USER22> I second that - Anyone reading this thinking about building a PC, make sure you use this site. Can't stress that enough.

<comment><USER23> Second that, it pulls data from a number of retailers and has localized sites with local retailers which is a nice touch.

Something I noticed is that if the item price can't be displayed you can search around the item options and enter your own pricing to get a feel of the price of the system if parts would be in stock

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've had similar a experience doing Android Development. I much prefer OS X over Windows 10 for doing work, but performance can be a real issue.

Over time, and with every new yearly incremental software refresh, compile times on my MacBook getting slower and slower, it started to hurt productivity. So looking at options for new hardware, I realized I could either spend $3000 on a new Mac, that on paper might not even be that much faster then my current machine, or just throw together a PC from components for a bit over $1000 and get a much faster machine.

There is just no good Mac option if you're looking for a simple i7, 32GB RAM, 256 SSD for a reasonable price.

<comment><USER25> Some of the Thinkpad range fit your criteria, and can be tricked into thinking they are Macs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, the main reason he switched to a Windows machine was to use the latest/fastest hardware with Adobe Lightroom and Premiere, but then he goes on to say the Lightroom and Premiere don't take advantage of many core CPUs, the fastest GPUs, fastest SSDs, etc...

And Windows is fine after tweaking and adjusting dozens of settings.

I'll just stick with a Mac.

<comment><USER3> Premiere Pro definitely takes advantage of GPU and CPU very efficiently. Lightroom does not - which is why instead of going for some 18 core i9 7980XE build where it has more cores but a much lower clock per core, i opted for just 6 cores but with a very high clock.

<comment><USER27> I don't think that Premier does really take advantage of video cards. I saw a video where they had switched a really old GTX 660 vs a 1080ti and the render time was not changed between them.

<comment><USER3> I did a bench of the Premiere Pro h264 benchmark ("PPBM") with CUDA acceleration and without (software): the difference was 7m 4sec without GPU and 48 seconds with GPU.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, I should have phrased it better, you don't have to have the latest and greatest video card for Premiere. But, yes, you are correct, having GPU acceleration does work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a brilliant post. The ability to navigate around the article easily and then parachute into a section and revel in detail is beautifully executed. Using links to add asides is another excellent touch.

When scowls complain that the Web is crap, this is where you take them to see what the Web could in fact be.

<comment><USER29> Can anyone shed some light on how some blog posts of his are done (coded, styled, built)? (For example, [https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new- zealand/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/) and [https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new- zealand/auckland/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/auckland/). They're simply marvelous!)

<comment><USER30> [https://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog- development...](https://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-development- part-1/)

Jekyll, and a whole lot of attention to detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love the detail that the author goes into, it's a nice change of pace from the normal articles on the web. His travel photography is also stunning, almost makes me want to do something with my travel photos as well, but once I see how much time he puts in, I think I'm not going to do it until I'm well retired.

At any rate, I'm glad he enjoys what he's doing and shares i with the world, the photography really gives an effect of how he saw it, which is all to rare with people's vacation photos.

</comment><comment><USER32> Paul (and anyone else who uses Sony cameras) I would like to suggest that you test out Capture One for processing your RAW files.

I have found it does a better job of handling the Sony files than just about anything else. Also is GPU accelerated.

My experience is based on the Sony RX10 files, and a friend of mine who uses it for handling his A7Rii files.

A free version is available for use with Sony RAWs; or you can upgrade to the full version of the software at a low price. Just a happy user, I have no financial interest in the company.

<comment><USER33> Lightroom is plain bad with Fujifilm X-Trans raw files so I tried to find an alternative but I couldn't. The Lightroom workflow really is what makes the difference. I feel at home with Lightroom.

So I keep exporting jpegs that look like garbage until Adobe decides to have decent support for the Fuji X line.

<comment><USER34> Try Capture One since they have specific support for X-Trans since version 10. Or if you want to continue Lightroom you can bulk transfer the raw files with Irident X-Transformer then import them in Lightroom. Only worth it if you really want the best quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Word of caution 4K@27" is still pretty terrible in Windows. It's fine if you stay in specific apps for 99% of the time (such as a cad workstation or a Lightroom machine as in this case) but 27 requires scaling and many apps simply don't scale well.

The "simple" solution is to run 4K at 32" or larger where you can run att 100% scaling. Unfortunately, if you want a screen with decent color you are adding serious money to get to 4k@32".

<comment><USER36> Why is this said in every discussion of high-dpi displays? I've been using high-dpi displays on Windows for longer than Retina was a thing and it's totally fine with only the extremely rare app/dialog not supporting it. My main display right now is 4k@27" with scaling on. Most apps are built properly and Windows now even supports fringe features like multi-monitor setups with different scaling ratios (a feature I was eagerly awaiting).

It's not perfect and I'll occasionally come across some old utility that was built 10 years ago and renders poorly, but never a commonly used or modern one. The level of inconvenience doesn't even register.

What do you want to use that doesn't work? Please be specific!

<comment><USER35> I definitely use _lots_ of apps that aren't rebuilt in the last decade which is pretty common in the enterprise (in house stuff).

But among the "new" and "widely used" apps on my desktop right now that don't scale _well_ (i.e. bitmap scale) are e.g. Skype, McAffee, Cisco AnyConnect (it seems about 50% of the apps on my desktop are not properly DPI aware, but simply bitmap scaling).

That's not the bad part though, I can learn to live with a few blurry bitmap scaling apps (and the odd miniature one that doesn't scale at all for some reason), but the bigger problem is apps that partially scale so they become unusable. Here is a screenshot I just took, of JetBrains DotTrace (a profiler) at 2x scaling (At a laptop with 15" @ 4K): [http://prntscr.com/i4tpmb](http://prntscr.com/i4tpmb) It not only looks terrible, but some things are actually unusable.

The bad thing about _that_ kind of bug is that when an app is unusable, even if it's only one app of 100 that you use, you have no choice but to change scaling or resolution _just to do that task_ which is a terrible interruption, especially for scaling that might require a logout to take effect.

Edit: I don't consider multi monitor with different DPI's a fringe feature, since the high DPI is very common on laptops so any setup with a laptop plus an external screen will often be using different scaling for the laptop screen and the external screen.

<comment><USER36> Wow that screenshot of DotTrace is pretty bad, thanks for sharing. Skype supports high dpi just fine though (I use it regularly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> [offtopic] show me a 1080ti for $799 and I'll buy it on the spot.

Effing miners devoured everything even for twice the price...

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately yea that was the price when I purchased it - I got it shortly after launch and built the pc later

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, if you think water cooling is cool, try passive cooling.

A few years back I build my current PC:

\- Core i7-4770S (Haswell, so you see its not that new anymore)

\- 32GB RAM

\- SSD 840 EVO 1TB (not that new either)

\- some passive PSU

Last year I added an

\- AMD Radeon 460

So the whole thing is completely passively cooled.

So no noise at all and I am pretty happy with the performance. I don't know what 'instant' performance in Lightroom means, but so far my experience with Darktable was just fine (actually, I was wondering why some options have a 'slow' or 'fast' suffix). That said, I am just a casual Darktable user, so I take all my photos in RAW and JPG and view them most of the time in the JPG version, but when I would like to create a photo calendar of some sort I use Darktable to get the most out of the pictures.

The only downside is that hardware doesn't age that good :-/

      $ grep -m1 bugs /proc/cpuinfo
      bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2

<comment><USER15> Passively cooling 65W TDP?

<comment><USER38> Apparently ;-)

Actually, I bought the CPU, mainboard and cooler assembled together from mifcom, so they did the testing that everything runs stable and smooth.

Just looked up some other details:

\- Mainboard: ASUS Z87-Deluxe

\- Case: Xigmatek - Asgard Pro

\- PSU: 500W - FSP Aurum Xilenser

\- CPU Cooler: Thermalright Macho HR-02 passive [1]

As you can see that cooler is pretty big. The case isn't too fancy but it does the job and venting slots on the upper side. Interestingly dust doesn't seem to be a problem, in fact I never had so little dust in any previous pc.

[1]: [http://media.bestofmicro.com/N/G/460924/gallery/Thermalright...](http://media.bestofmicro.com/N/G/460924/gallery/Thermalright- HR-02-Macho-Zero-13_w_600.jpg)

[2]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Xigmatek+-+Asgard+Pro&t=ffab&iax=i...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Xigmatek+-+Asgard+Pro&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=images)

<comment><USER15> Now that is a brick of a cooler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Both me and my wife recently realized something: the JPEG produced by the Pentax cameras we own are 90% of the time better than what we achieve with hours of raw conversion tweaking.

Given that I'm not doing retouching most of the time, dealing with raw files becoming more and more a pain, without an actual gain.

Had anyone else thought about this?

<comment><USER40> I usually shoot to JPEG and RAW simultaneously. Most times I never touch the RAW file but in case I ever want they're there. Disk space is cheap nowadays so redundancy isn't a real problem for me anymore.

Haven't used a Pentax expect for my trusty K1000 so I don't know if they support that.

<comment><USER39> The higher end ones can - they even have an option to choose between PEF and DNG for RAW format.

This is what I'm doing as well, but the DNG files take 20-30MB of space, even at pathetically low 16MP (/s, high quality 2MP was enough for A4 prints...) resolution, and disk space is not THAT cheap once you want local and offsite backups as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A lot of the photos are great! And a lot of them..meh. Which is fine! I'm no star shooter, and far be it from me to judge someone wanting to show off their holiday. But he's spent an inordinate amount of time editing quite a bit of photos that surely could be left on the hard drive, or simply given a batch auto-touch-up by Lightroom in a matter of hours. And it's even stranger that the hobby would drive him to such a monumental and costly upgrade.

<comment><USER42> Consider the possibility that he simply has a (relative) lot of money.

<comment><USER43> And time!

<comment><USER3> It's a project :) I get joy some going in depth with everything I'm passionate about. I do it with my photosets (spent a year editing the 11k+ photos and then designing/developing the 9 photosets): [https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new- zealand/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/)

and other projects like my RasPi Frame: [https://paulstamatiou.com/getting- started-raspberry-pi/](https://paulstamatiou.com/getting-started-raspberry- pi/)

or documenting one of my design projects at work: [https://paulstamatiou.com/twitter-video/](https://paulstamatiou.com/twitter- video/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like he built a really fancy and nice gaming machine. Makes sense to switch to Windows if you are a gamer.

<comment><USER44> Good gaming PCs are good development and creative machines. All of these activities excel with more cores, ram and gpu cores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The setup is nice but I'm long over the tower on the floor. I actually wanted to go back to the start of my computing journey (Commodore128, then 286, etc) and get a desktop[0] again.

It's very unfortunate that while Intel was still probably the right call for Adobe software, the I/O impact on from Intel's Meltdown patches are going to be significant on that machine. Once it all settles down and is finalized in a few months that is.

As well, the watercooling thing was pretty neat back in at the turn of the millenium. That's when the Celeron 300A and custom machined watercooling was big. I lost interest once CPUs became mostly no longer thermally limited (exception for Intel's current CPUs with the +~18C IHS issues). In general I prefer air cooling because I tend to always go for simplicity. A fan on a chunk of metal is pretty easy to troubleshoot and repair upon failure and reliable.

I did get my 80's form factor desktop again. I built a Ryzen system[1] back in March 2017, the first new computer I put together since 2008 and I love it. I get by at least.

[0]Back in the day, horizontal desktops were referred to as desktops and towers were towers.

[1][https://i.imgur.com/JpgeAje.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/JpgeAje.jpg)

<comment><USER46> I can tell you are a computer wizard with the perfectly aligned windows and task manager open. How long did it take you to prepare for that photo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There are lot and lot of advices in this article you SHOULD PRECISELY NOT FOLLOW when you build an editing PC.

> Watercooling

Watercooling addicts will try to argue that you can achieve a better cooling performance than with aircooling. The truth is that watercooling is at best only 1 or 2 degrees cooler than a proper aircooling system, or even worse in some tests. Then they will argue that watercooling provide a better performance/silence ratio, which also falls short when you consider that top aircooling systems are basically dead silent. You really don't want to deal with water in your PC (even with all-in-one systems) for nothing to gain.

> Not using a calibration device

I don't even understand how you can come up with the idea of writing an article about building a PC for photography/video editing while you don't already use and don't even plan to use a calibration device. The point is not even if you plan to publish, print or whatever, what is at stake is the way you view your own images. And there is ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE in buying a top of the line monitor if you don't calibrate it.

> Buying the best performing components

For 60-70% of the price of the top of the line product, you will get 95-99% of the performance of it. The same best performing product will anyway be "obsolete" (compared to the new best performing product) in a couple months and its price will drop 20-30%. This has always been true and will always be true for any PC building. This is even more true for an editing station since the top of the line will not even give you the 1-5% performance benefit you should expect.

> Buying a gaming video card

Particularly the top of the line. Your editing software will never use the processor and the memory that comes with such a gaming video card. And only pro cards will provide you 10-bit workflow, which is what you need if you bought an editing monitor with 10-bit panel and 99-100% Adobe coverage. You can buy an entry-level pro card, it will be more than enough for Lightroom/Capture One/Photoshop/Premiere/etc. IF you don't buy a pro card, then why do you buy such a monitor?

> Bothering with huge overclocking or with RAM latencies (!)

I agree it's quite easy now to do some overclocking, but you should not aim for the extreme. It's your work machine, you want stability.

> Delidding your CPU

What?! Just don't that. Let's be serious a minute.

<comment><USER3> I think you are misinformed about the current state of watercooling (even AIO). I'm running a very hot overclocked machine running extra voltage than normal. A 280mm radiator is an improvement over even the largest copper hsf.

As for the gaming card - it's not top of the line (that would be Titan Xp and Titan V) - but yes it's very high-end. So why did I opt for that? Why not? I do a ton of 4K gaming and VR as well. Definitely not the primary goal but a nice side benefit. I mention some of the games I play in the setup section.

As for the pricing - obviously monetary concerns were not much of an object with this build but the price of my graphics card has doubled since I purchased it. And RAM has gone up another $100.

But yes - it will get outdated in just a few weeks. The benefit of the PC is that I can just swap out an upgrade to the next high-end thing over a weekend when I want. I already did that once - this build started out as a 7700K cpu/mobo and I swapped them out for an 8700K before publishing this.

<comment><USER47> > I think you are misinformed about the current state of watercooling (even > AIO). I'm running a very hot overclocked machine running extra voltage than > normal. A 280mm radiator is an improvement over even the largest copper hsf.

I'm not saying it's not an improvement, I'm saying the improvement is marginal, meaning it's not worth it.

> I do a ton of 4K gaming and VR as well. Definitely not the primary goal but > a nice side benefit. I mention some of the games I play in the setup > section.

I think that's my point, it's more a gaming/overclocking station than an editing workstation. The article is fine and well written from this perspective.

Oh, and a small bonus for you: you should move your cpu watercooling radiator from front to top. In your configuration your radiator is basically heating your whole computer, including you graphic card. Since the graphic card is warmer and usually louder, this is not what you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > I wanted to place the more active drive that I would install the OS on > there, and leave the less active Lightroom scratch drive in the standalone > M.2 slot.

> I couldn't quickly ascertain how each slot was identified in the UEFI and I > didn't want to mistake installing Windows on the wrong drive. To solve this > I only installed the SSD under the heatsink first and would install the > other one after I had Windows up and running.

I've found this to be the best way to install Windows whatever the circumstance as it will often install the bootloader on whatever the BIOS says is attached to slot 0 and then the rest of the operating system to the disk you specified.

By only having one disk installed you save the hassle of sorting it out later.

</comment><comment><USER49> The first item in the 'Tweaking Windows' section is _Disable User Account Control_. Can someone share a clear explanation of what this means and the nature of the risks involved?

<comment><USER50> UAC limits software to user privileges, even if you're running an administrator account. If you're running an administrator account, you just click YES in a popup to grant elevated privileges when they're requested. If you're running a user account, you enter an administrator password. Disabling UAC lets anything you run use administrator privileges without alerting you. Similar to running a Linux box as root. It's a really stupid thing to disable.

<comment><USER44> It may be stupid depending on what you are doing, and how savvy a user you are.

The problem with UAC is that 90% of users have no idea when it would be necessay to click "no" when that dialog box shows up. For them, it's the box that always annoys you and you have to just click "yes" to make it go away.

I understand what it's supposed to do, but have had it disabled since it was released, and have saved hours of task interruption it in exchange for no other problems.

<comment><USER51> > how savvy a user you are.

I strongly disagree with that caveat. As a savvy user, UAC behaves like a burglar alarm for me. I am not savvy enough to open a 7z, PDF, JPG or DOCX in a hex editor and determine whether it contains an exploit. Even if I were alone on the planet due to the ability to do so, I wouldn't have the time to do anything else. Because I have UAC enabled, if I open a zip file and get a UAC prompt I know that something is fishy.

There are known unknowns and your savvy is perfectly suitable for that; however, your savvy won't help at all for the unknown unknowns. Double- clicking an .exe isn't the only way to get pwnd.

> you have to just click "yes" to make it go away.

Exactly, UAC doesn't really work for non-savvy users. In which case, who is the target audience?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The only issue I have with this glorious build is the totally inadequate Apple keyboard. It doesn't have so many keys I need to be productive. Not to mention it's simply too small to use. Also it fits in with the rest of his setup like an apple in a bucket of oranges.

Also, OP should take a look at VS code. It integrates very well with GNU/Windows.

</comment><comment><USER53> It was also a good investment. After recent spike in RAM and GPU prices he can sell it and make good money.

<comment><USER3> Yeah no kidding - price of the graphics card doubled since I got it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I use Lightroom in VirtualBox which seems to work ok for me

(I don't really do that much fiddling with the photos though).

The photos are actually stored on my Linux filesystem and provided to Windows via VirtualBox's file sharing feature.

And then I just rsync the photos to a backup computer.

<comment><USER55> How's performance on that, have you compared with plain Windows or wine?

<comment><USER54> I think I tried and failed to get lightroom to run in wine quite a while ago. Maybe the situation with that has improved now? I haven't used it on plain Windows I'm afraid.

I don't do anything that intensive though, just brightening images and tagging which seems to work fine for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I believe Capture One Pro will take better advantage of all that hardware than LightRoom.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is really interesting. Reminds me to a degree of John Siracusa's OSX reviews. I am struck by how customizable windows is. Is it possible to customize osx to such a degree?

<comment><USER58> I'm not sure, but much of this was to get Windows to function as baseline macOS anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Great write up, and incredibly impressed with your post on New Zealand.

I recently upgraded from a 5d2 to a Mark4, and the integration with the iphone made for an interesting workflow. As I shoot, I take mental notes about what type of adjustments I'll make in post processing, and with Lightroom Mobile, I was able to take a handful of shots, and share them via social media.

I'm considering switching a workflow from my heavy duty gaming rig, to using something like a Surface Pro.

</comment><comment><USER60> Great article. I have almost the exact same components and I'll definetly get use of the overclocking segment when I get around to it.

Why did you go with a water cooler?

</comment><comment><USER61> Is it really worth using 6K on a non work PC, even if you have the extra cash?

I think, personally, I would prefer a 3K machine that I replaced twich as often.

</comment><comment><USER62> What I want to know about is that lovely desk

<comment><USER3> It's a walnut humanscale float sit/stand desk: [https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/#desk](https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff- i-use/#desk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Question for Paul, if you could use a Windows machine for work, would you? If not, why?

<comment><USER3> For actual work I would miss two things: Sketch (design app) which I need to use because our Twitter design team has a lot of shared assets for it. There is Figma design but I can't use that in isolation. Then I also need Framer for prototyping which is currently mac only. Those would be some very significant hurdles to jump over if I was to use it for 100% of my work too.

<comment><USER63> I had the same problem, but affinity designer helped me move to windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Anyone can be an amazing photographer - but there is a distinction between a camera nut, and a photographer, to this end, Ken Rockwell makes a really interesting point:

"You need to learn to see and compose. The more time you waste worrying about your equipment the less time you'll have to put into creating great images. Worry about your images, not your equipment."

[http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm](http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm)

You can guess which category I feel this fellow falls into.

I hope he got a great deal of pleasure building his system - it does look very impressive (if not downright pretty), but it doesn't make me think any more, or less of his photography.

<comment><USER3> I am definitely of the same mindset - but it's also my hobby and I do get some fun from building a bit of an overkill system (and documenting it in detail) :) I also viewed the build as its own project - I tend to do these very long blog posts about such projects in the 12 years I've been running my website.

I started out with just the cheapest camera I could get my hands on, including working on my high school's yearbook staff in ~2000. Now that I've been working for over a decade and have some resources I pick up a few gadgets here and there for my hobbies.

<comment><USER64> Awesome!

I'm still a film guy when I want to go make pretty pictures - though I've taken some killer stuff on my iPhone of all things - I dont have a good digital camera, so all of my really good cameras are still film bodies - nothing to me beats the Ergonomics of an EOS-1

At the risk of giving myself the hug of death - [https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/](https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Isn't this a good use case for the iMac Pro?

<comment><USER66> I guess at the time of building this PC, iMac Pro stil wasn't announced. It would be great to hear what author thinks now about iMac Pro.

<comment><USER3> It was - but iMac Pro can't be upgraded. You want a new motherboard/CPU for the next gen that comes out in 9 months? Can't just go out and swap the parts out over the weekend. Also the Vega GPU in it is not as performant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> _Then I installed my essentials:_

Atom text editor (Give vsCode a try too). Also look at FileSearchEX, the proper way to find files.

</comment><comment><USER67> _I have little use for any of the features included in Windows 10 Pro_

Except securing it with Software Restriction Polices.

</comment><comment><USER68> very nice and informative... i also think you like to write a lot :D

</comment><comment><USER69> Step 1. Be wealthy :P

I am always enamored with the simplicity of one's living space being directly proportional to wealth. I try hard to not have much stuff, but my living options are seemingly always going to be working class style places with pretty much the antithesis of what is apparent in this photo.

Of course the camera lies, and I shouldn't compare my insides to some else's outsides. There's probably a new puppy being paper trained just behind the camera, or a bunch of pocket change and random pens in a pile usually on that desk, but I do lament that I may never have such a simple, clean, and uncluttered living space. The spaces I may ever have will have things like unvaulted ceilings, windowsills, trim, standard door size passages between rooms, probably _carpet_ heh...

I do wonder if such things prevent clarity of thought.

<comment><USER70> "I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html)

<comment><USER71> There's another dead comment that explains a lot of it.

I cannot see a reason why that particular comment is dead so I guess it's based on the posting history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Not related to the blog post, but I think Paul has one of the best looking personal websites on the web. Simple and clear, but very delightful to read. Also he has amazing travel posts with nice photos. For example, his Japan post triggered me to travel to Japan three years ago. Keep up the good work Paul.

<comment><USER3> Thank you!! It's the very rare comments like this that bring me joy. While I mainly do the site and photosets just for myself (so so many times when I'm out to dinner with folks and am telling a story about some trip I can instantly pull up the set and show the journey) it's nice to see when others get some value from it, especially for something that has consumed countless nights and weekends over the years.

<comment><USER73> I really like the blog as well, its one of the nicest I've seen.

Are you using your own custom made jekyll site?

Just curious about how you designed your blog and what components you use

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Really expected more when i read the title. It's a stretch to call this a "water-cooled machine", when it's just one all-in-one CPU cooler.

Water-cooled machine should be a custom loop. It's a lot more hassle, but that's exactly why it's interesting. All-in-one systems are just like traditional air systems with big radiators, the only big difference is that you can move the radiator around.

<comment><USER3> Custom loops are such a hassle between leak testing, constantly changing the liquid, adding anti-algae additive. I've done many of them when I was really into PC building in the early 2000s (I was even on the FutureMark 3DMark Hall of Fame for a while for some extreme overclocks). The new AIO coolers are extremely performant and a no-brainer cost wise. No harm in trying out the new tech :)

<comment><USER74> You don't have to constantly change the liquid if you don't go for the looks and use the good coolant, instead of shampooie colored one.

If you have build custom loops, you should really understand the difference. AIO are much closer to traditional air coolers, than to custom-loop water cooling.

Keep an eye on VRM btw. Point of failure in your system right now.</comment></comment></comment>


SSL 3.0 Vulnerability dropping tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/14/nasty_ssl_30_vulnerability_to_drop_tomorrow/ <comment><USER2> Here we go again...

If the vulnerability is limited to SSL 3.0, an easy workaround would be to disable it on both servers and clients.

Most servers should already support at least TLS 1.0. I have been using security.tls.version.min set to 1 on Firefox for a while (which disables SSL 3.0 and below, and also disables the "no extensions" fallback), and other than a period of time when archive.org was SSLv3 only, I have seen no issues.

For clients, a quick look at [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/clients.html](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/clients.html) shows that even older clients (Android 2.3, Java 6, the oldest supported version of IE, etc) support TLS 1.0, so there should be no issues disabling SSLv3 on servers too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very easy to take SSLv3 out of the allowed protocols on nginx

All modern browsers support pure TLS, even IE8 on XP

<comment><USER4> Modern browsers aren't the only things we have to deal with. A lot of older (embedded) devices do not speak TLS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why I built [https://snitch.io](https://snitch.io) \- security and SSL secured sites in particular are moving targets and not "fire and forget".

Snitch already generates an alert if a site doesn't use TLS v1.2 - I'll be watching this announcement closely and adding alerts as needed.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's always a good idea to regularly check [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS) and ensure your web servers / load balancers are using the best possible (for your particular users) settings. If you don't have to worry about very old and unpatched WinXP users, going with the "intermediate" compatibility level should be the bare minimum.

Also, don't forget about your clients as well. Things like Ruby and Python each have their own set of SSL/TLS configuration that people always seem to forget about.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some hint of what the mitigation will end up being would be nice. In particular, does this so thoroughly destroy SSL 3.0 that we need to be prepping to turn it off entirely, in which case frankly all hell is going to break loose? Is it tied to ciphers such that we might just be able to cut off RC4 or something? Will it turn out to be "don't allow people to make over a trillion failed connections to an SSL 3.0 service"? This is so vague as to be useless, even as a heads up.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it has anything to do with the ciphers itself. That would impact far more than just SSLv3 and would also be easy to mitigate, 'disable these ciphers', so much less need for the whole cloak-and-dagger thing that's going on.

A heads up is always useful. Knowing that a vulnerability is being disclosed tonight means I'll make sure to track that and react the second it becomes clear what's going on. That in turn means we'll either disable SSLv3 directly or roll out the patch if that's directly available, instead of only being aware of this after you wake up in the morning and have to hope to god no one used the vulnerability on you in the mean time.

<comment><USER7> "I doubt it has anything to do with the ciphers itself."

Me too, I just wanted to give a rich range of examples.

I fear it will end up being the "turn off SSL 3.0 everywhere, it's now been rendered useless".

"A heads up is always useful."

Yes, but one _slightly more useful_ would be even more useful, without having to be anywhere near detailed enough to give away the problem.

If anything argues against this being serious it is that it is apparently not such a big deal that the actual responsible people feel a need to issue any sort of warning. While I fear the worst, here's hoping the Register is just fearmongering, as is their wont.

<comment><USER8> Since the heads up _as given_ turned out to be detailed enough to give away the problem, that's clearly false. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076983#c51](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076983#c51)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hoping that whatever ends up coming out is able to be mitigated easily. So much older gear still only supports SSL3.0/TLSv1.0 (I am looking at YOU CISCO ACE).

</comment><comment><USER10> * No source whatsoever.

* No information beyond what is in the (linkbaity) title.

What's the purported scope? Is it implementation specific? What's the exposure? Session decryption? Memory leak? RCE?

> El Reg cannot confirm whether or not it is indeed a serious bug as we have > not received details of the vuln.

Then what the hell are you reporting exactly?

[✓] Fear

[✓] Uncertainty

[✓] Doubt

Keep it classy, Register.

<comment><USER10> _Speculation time_

I went on a brief hunt for more information about this, and there seems to be a cluster of CVEs created 4 days ago around improper validation of X.509 certificates in android (and libgadu), allowing MitM. If this is it, it is nowhere near the severity of heartbleed.

libgadu: [http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-448...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-4488)

many android apps: [http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-688...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6887)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-689...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6891)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-690...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6904)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6934)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6935)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6936)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6937)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6938)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-693...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6939)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-694...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6940)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-694...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6941)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-704...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-7046)

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-704...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-7047)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://securityreactions.tumblr.com/post/99994455427](http://securityreactions.tumblr.com/post/99994455427)

</comment><comment><USER12> the register is not exactly the most reliable news source as they're sometimes troll-ish. I would wait until a more reliable source before even worrying about it.</comment>


How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II - <AUTHOR> https://www.greghausheer.com/articles/how-to-interview-engineers-when-youre-not-technical-part-ii <comment><USER2> Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hours they choose to do the same exact thing they do at work: programming.

Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It's one thing to expect them to have a code sample (anyone should), but many strong programmers have interests and responsibilities that take them away from computers in their spare time. This doesn't make them less effective or dedicated programmers, so while it's always interesting to hear about the projects of those who have them, it shouldn't be assumed (and you shouldn't consider it 'points off' in an interview if a dev doesn't do side projects)

<comment><USER3> Please read the article further down. The author explicitly says:

> It's OK too if an engineer doesn't have any side projects.

I always ask about side projects to give candidates an opportunity to highlight their side projects, not because we require candidates to have side projects.

I'm sure some hiring managers out there have side projects listed under their "must have" criteria, but in my experience the good hiring managers are just collecting as many data points as possible. In fact, I've known many hiring managers who take side projects as a potential risk factor, because they can pose a distraction to the candidate if they become too demanding.

All other things equal, a candidate with extensive side projects is going to have more experience than a candidate who has never worked on any side projects. In the real world, you never find two candidates who are identical in every way except for their side projects. The goal of an interview is to collect as much information as possible about the candidates in the limited interview time. Asking about side projects is just one more place to search for those data points. It would be equally unfair to disqualify side project experience from the consideration process.

In my experience, have side projects is largely a boost for junior candidates who haven't had enough opportunity to build a long professional resume yet. I can't remember the last time we interviewed a senior developer where side projects were the tipping point in our decision making process.

<comment><USER4> One thing that I've never disliked about hiring managers asking for side projects, is that when I work on one, I do what interests me. I like trying new things, experimenting on stuff that I don't know how it will turn out. When I get bored or I hit a dead end, I stop. A lot of it is unfinished and messy. It's for me, not anyone else. My time is valuable, especially outside of work.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. I'm building an http server for fun. Last year I wrote a JSON parser one weekend. A few years ago I wrote a YAML parser. I make things like this fun & learning, not because I'm trying to impress anyone. When someone asks why I'm reinventing the wheel, or is generally unimpressed that I didn't do something they view as more useful, it can be awkward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also a general technique for filtering experts when you don't know their domain well: ask them do something known to be impossible. [1]

Very bad answer: "Sure, no problem." [2]

Bad but tolerable answer: "Not possible but it's too hard to explain why."

Good answer: best attempt to explain why it's not possible, and the nearest solvable version or what you would need to change to make it solvable.

There's a great Better Call Saul episode (s4e5) where an expert is idenified as a unsuitable (in part) because he insists a project could have a firm maximum duration without caveats about what could go wrong, and he could do it without something it obviously needs.

[1] That's arguably what the unnamed MP was doing when he asked Babbage if he'd get the right answer if he put the wrong numbers in the machine:

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_\(1864\))

[2] At best they might silently replace it with the possible version, but that's still hiding the tradeoffs from you and means they could be misrepresenting other answers.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a professional programmer I spend almost all of my free time NOT programming, but I do spend it taking care of my family and social obligations instead. While I love what I do I would love it less if I did too much of it.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. When I was a junior I had plenty of side projects that I rotated through. Then that got old, I developed deep passions for other non-computer things, have a family, enjoy knowing people, and what do you know? Not many side projects that involve programming. I haven't updated my blog in 15 years. I'd rather go fishing with my kid, rock climbing with my bud, or banging together a garden with my wife.

<comment><USER9> Seems to me it still makes sense to only hire people who program in their free time... if your real goal is to hire people willing to do a lot of overtime work. (I am not saying this is a good thing to do.) Things that prevent you from programming in your free time are more or less the things that would prevent you from working overtime.

Or it could simply be thinly disguised ageism. "Hey, I am not saying we shouldn't hire people who have kids... I am just saying I don't trust people who are not passionate enough to write code in their free time!"

<comment><USER10> As someone who specifically chose not to have kids because I want to spend more time programming (crazy, I know)... I'm not that interested in working overtime for the company. I'll do it in emergencies, but my time is my time. I only have so much of it and there are things I want to do. No amount of money, or recognition, or pride in helping someone else get rich will give me that time back. Just because I want to spend my time programming, does _not_ mean I want to give it to someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How do you calibrate yourself on these open-ended questions? How can you compare one good answer to another completely different good answer and figure out which one is better overall?

You can't rely on a "The very best engineers have a checklist they apply depending on the type of bug." type of framework here -- each "very best" engineer might have a completely different way of doing things.

You have to have at least some questions that are difficult to answer but have a countable range of responses, and watch for specific lapses that can show how well a candidate demonstrates specific experience required in your job description.

For example, if you require some experience in distributed systems or scaling things to many users, have them talk about "Could you talk about an or program you built to scale to n users, what performance or reliability issues did you see (or foresee), and how did you solve them?" Have a loose set of industry specific things to watch out for, like caches, load balancers, monitoring/observability, etc.... You don't have to have the specific knowledge yourself, but if the candidate can explain to you what they did, and how/why, in the framework of the specific experience you're looking for, that's good signal!

<comment><USER12> > The very best engineers have a checklist they apply depending on the type of > bug.

This is misleading at best.

Masters do less work than beginners. They have years of intuition built up that let them apply heuristics extremely cheaply and save their energy for solving the novel parts of the problem. There is no 'list'. There is only the verbal part of the brain trying to introspect on what just happened. Sometimes accurately, but quite often not. The ones who get it even close to right become mentors, instructors.

I can spend as long as you like explaining my debugging process and the first time we sit in a war room you'll call me out for not following my own 'list'. Every situation is either unique or the result of a lack of self-reflection (why do we keep solving the same problem over and over? Are we not programmers?)

The biggest danger to people who can't explain at all is when advances in their field arrive and they can't introspect enough to adjust their behavior. There are limits to how much you need to address this in an interview process. For many of these people, they'll already be in that space when you meet them and easy enough to spot.

<comment><USER13> Most problems aren't special. They occur because some good general guidance wasn't formed or applied.

Having a checklist does help masters. It helps make sure they don't miss the obvious issue in front of their face.

Checklist manifesto is good reading on this.

<comment><USER12> Hmmm. I think the checklist exists, for sure, but tends to be more Plan B. If your initial strategy is exhausted with no progress, fall back on the checklist.

As a programmer I have an opportunity not everyone else has. I can codify parts of my checklist in a way where I don't really have to think about them at all save for a few times a year with the big outlier problems, teaching someone to do basic troubleshooting themselves, or starting a new project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You know, one of the things I found most amazing about interviews and the hiring process was that to a large degree, the things that a person _says_ in an hour session determine whether they will get hired.

Yes, not their references or resume (at a certain stage) or what they're able to prove that they coded, but the things that they are able to come up with to _say_. Doesn't that strike you as sometimes amazing?

Now, that may be a crazy notion and flawed in many ways, but I came to realize the following. The reason that that is often acceptable is that it frequently is a good proxy for weeding out the unqualified. In this sense:

If someone doesn't even know to say that something is important, or that they solved a problem a certain way (regardless of whether you have proof the actually did it), they probably have never even thought about those things being important.

If someone tells you (just offhandedly) that they solved something by jumping right in to doing x,y,z at the detailed level and coming up with the _technical_ solution (the algorithm), but not the project planning or scoping part of it -- they probably have no idea or experience about what's necessary to plan out a project. They may not be good at estimating or communicating. They may be someone who gets lost in the details. If they have no pitfalls to warn against, probably they haven't even seen how a project has gone wrong before. They are probably not a good candidate for a senior developer role.

Whereas, if someone knows to say that they had to do some top level estimating or quick pass of which solutions would be the best from a cost/resource standpoint, consider the timelines to implement and risk of doing so, how to decide who on the team would be put on the project and in what sequence, etc... Then I know that they at least realize these things are important.

(Yes of course you should probe deeper. And I know that this applies to some kinds of roles and not others, but since the article is about interviewing for non-technical people and is often about hiring for a role requiring a higher- level hiring decision)

</comment><comment><USER15> > There are countless ways engineers choose to spend their off hours. Some > contribute to open source. Others take online classes. Some are tutors, and > others work a second job as a freelancer.

It's called off hours for a reason. Being a tutor or a freelancer is a second job.

</comment><comment><USER16> > [From the preceding article] how were teams split, tasks delegated, and > projects managed throughout Sprints?

> Did they use Agile, Kanban, or Scrum? How long was their Sprint?

How about asking whether they used sprints, or formal agile methodologies, at all? Why assume that every engineering org has drunk the kool aid?

<comment><USER17> The context is companies with 30+ engineers. At that point you're going to want some form of formal project methodology that allows everyone to co-exist somewhat peacefully. Generally, the results otherwise are varying level of dysfunctional.

<comment><USER16> I worked in a handful of teams at Google and none used Agile (I believe some do, but they're a minority), and very little formality besides a weekly team meeting. From what I hear, FB and other big companies are in a similar situation. Sure, you can stretch the definition and say they're dysfunctional ("omg lol google kills projects") but you can't deny they're successful.

<comment><USER17> First of all, I used the word Agile in my response zero times. I used the words formal project management for a reason. Agile tends to be assumed but if someone asks then either you can infer what they actually want or you're going to be a terrible hire in a startup anyway.

Second of all, as people love to say here, your small or medium sized company isn't Google so you shouldn't make decisions as if it was. What works for Google does not necessarily work for random startup or small company number 7521. Every small and medium company I've seen without a project management process was a disaster. Partially because, unlike Google, they can't throw 10 million at a problem and shrug if they waste 9 of it or cancel the whole thing in 2 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > What's the one thing you would not compromise on as you write code?

Code that works.

I'll take a gordian knot that works over an over-engineered system that fails or never ships. Some of the worst code I've seen comes from engineers who focus on "unit tests, documentation, and refactoring code." Those are all good things, but they aren't #1.

The "done" question is a very good one.

<comment><USER19> I completely agree about the unit test point. I'm not arguing that it's useless - quite the opposite. But it's damn hard to write useful unit tests. I've seen a case where an internal IT team took ownership of code I delivered. A few months later I was asked to make some enhancements, and I found that they've added a lot of unit test code. It was absolutely useless. Essentially, they were testing the compiler, not my code. Complete waste of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or get two candidates and ask them to ask each other questions. Ask them to score themselves and "opponent". Infer score yourself. Promote winner to next level to interview other winners, until final battle. Brutal, but what can you do when you're not technical?

<comment><USER21> Jesus Christ. Somewhere a hiring manager is explaining the benefits of this to human resources.

Step 1 - regular interviews.

Step 2 - group interviews including memory check with coding task

Step 3 - this thunderdome you just created.

<comment><USER22> We never did group interviews but did try panel interviews as we noticed the order of interviews ended up skewing how we felt about a candidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are some good questions here.

Still, if you're non technical when interviewing, how would you know the right answers to technical questions?

Eliciting underlying thoughts about problem solving is important, but is more than just saying the right keywords.

If interviewing is not much more than a game of keyword DDR, it makes successful outcomes even more challenging.

Maybe hiring is broken because it is designed for linear working paths, but engineering is not linear.

<comment><USER24> _> if you're non technical when interviewing, how would you know the right answers to technical questions?_

My reaction to the article was similar. My answer to the title question would be: "Find a technical cofounder you can trust."

<comment><USER23> Absolutely. Don't take advice from someone who doesn't have relevant experience.

I find a much better success rate in not hiring he traditional HR ways. Tech folks are not linear workers with floors and ceilings, they are growing much faster and on multiple layers at the same time.

It's humorous when non technical ppl try to manage things they don't understand.

That table seems to be currently being turning in society because of covid, if you ask me.

Technologists will have to move into each area of management, because maybe it's technologists turn to learn and manage business after such a long time of business trying to manage tech.

<comment><USER25> The biggest tech companies you know are founded and run by techies.

<comment><USER23> Yup. Lots of non tech companies (pretty much most) which are still doing tech hiring

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thought I'd write a Part II to my first article on questions non technical founders and managers can use if they need to interview engineers.

</comment><comment><USER26> I consider myself good at programming in general. But let's say the interviewer was hiring me for a technology stack that I'm pretty much clueless about... let's say assembly language or cobol...

Even then I can bullshit my way past all of those questions, and I'm sure most people who can't program can also do the same too.

<comment><USER27> "What's the one thing you would not compromise on as you write code?" Its not hard to figure out the right answer to that one: "I never compromise. Must be perfect." But of course that's not true. There are always pathological conditions that can reasonably ignored especially in the first release.

<comment><USER28> That's funny, I came to the almost opposite conclusion that the obvious answer was that everything is tradeoffs and compromises.

I suppose very easy things like consistent indentation width might be done perfectly in a codebase, but any non-trivial thing always could be "more X" or "less Y".

<comment><AUTHOR> "I came to the almost opposite conclusion that the obvious answer was that everything is tradeoffs and compromises."

Probably the smartest answer there is.

<comment><USER26> No this is not true. Definitely not smart either. Not everything in the universe is a nice yin yang tradeoff, this is a philosophical and scientific mistake. There exists in this world solutions to problems that are the most optimal.

When humans think in terms of design tradeoffs they are thinking in a domain where there exists no theoretical or mathematical technique to find the optimum. This does not mean a technique can never exist, it just indicates a lack of knowledge. The keyword is design. How do you design the best looking website vs. how do you design the shortest distance between two points? I would say for the later, we have enough knowledge and theory to say that the shortest distance between two points does not need to designed... it can be calculated.

Design implies alternative designs and tradeoffs due to the lack of techniques to determine or find an optimum. Calculation implies greater knowledge.

<comment><USER29> Most real world problems have constraints that render global optimums moot. Usually opportunity cost, but also risk, experiential components, satisficing ...

In fact, any interview problem with a global optimum is worthless for evaluating candidate's ability to handle ambiguity or demonstrate capacity for creativity, second order thinking, communication ...

Expecting candidates to lead with absolutism like in your post os a good recipe for finding Brilliant Jerks.

<comment><USER26> Dude, the entire field of Machine learning is an attempt to find a global optimum. It is an attempt to turn what is otherwise a design problem into a calculation.

To say that global optimums are moot or don't exist is categorically wrong. Global optimums and trade offs exist in equal measure everywhere. I value good judgment in both.

Catering to one extreme is unwise on every level.

>Expecting candidates to lead with absolutism like in your post os a good recipe for finding Brilliant Jerks.

First off I never said or implied this. My post is just saying that not _Everything_ is a design tradeoff. Second off are you implying I'm a Jerk? Did you just call me a Jerk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been hired to perform "technical-interviews-as-a-service" for a handful of non-technical founders / leaders. Has anyone partook in this format, either as leader, interviewee, or interviewer?

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like problem solving and estimation questions during interviews, and I favor them over coding skills, etc. A question that I frequently use is how long would it take to evacuate a city like Phoenix, if there was a 24 hour warning that some dictator du jour is going to drop a nuke. It boils down to assessing a throughput of various modes of transportation: cars, buses, trains, airplanes, and yes walking. One candidate responded "by helicopters" at which point the interview was pretty much over.

<comment><USER31> Google used to do this kind of question but found it wasn't predictive of future perfomance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm a good enough developer who has worked on enough projects that if someone tries to tell me that I need to show them personal projects I'm working on, then that ends the interview. I used to be a recruiter, I know how to conduct an interview and sit on the other end of that desk, and I know what I won't put up for in the workplace.

My personal time is my personal time. If there's a good work-related reason for me to put in more hours, fine. But you get none of them that you don't pay me for.

<comment><USER23> Another angle of this question is often to elicit what kinds of problems you have solved in your personal time, ideally technical, but not necessarily so.

I have had great conversations with someone who has built an automatic pet feeder that lead to the work.

It shows a different facet of one's personality. This, in turn may come in to play when creative problem solving is involved. Quite often even non-technical problem solving around the home can transfer to work

It can delineate the difference between a developer who sees what they do as a profession, vs those who started with it as a passion and continue to solve problems.

<comment><USER33> This is presumptuous of a level of trust that is not there.

There is no talent shortage, and if there is, it's of _management,_ not the ability to write code. The difference between a good developer and a code monkey is that the first is self-managing. They _have_ to be, to do their job. But even they can't do it without clear communication about the project---and cash, of course.

That the shortage is of _management,_ not developer talent (if you protest that there _is_ a developer shortage, I have bad news for you about where the shortage of management ability is), means that the interviewer is generally in the power position.

Ergo:

How great can the conversation be on such unequal terms? I'm not saying I haven't had good conversations with interviewers or interviewees, but it can't be expected to be a regular thing. What I _really_ think is a smorgasbord of hunches, folk wisdom, and Alan Kay quotes---but I would never be so rude as to express such in an interview.

Buy the girl a drink first, sheesh.

<comment><USER17> Pre-pandemic I've found that in many markets there is a shortage of good senior developers. Good defined by those who can interview well in whatever the current in-vogue interview style is. Or more specifically those that could get jobs at Google, Facebook, etc.

<comment><USER33> I feel like the caveats prove my point.

<comment><USER17> It's more that you can't lump all developers into one category and make blanked statement like you did. Some developers in some markets aren't in demand. Some developers in some markets are absurdly in demand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SQL Server 2017 on Windows Linux and Docker is now generally available - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/10/02/sql-server-2017-on-windows-linux-and-docker-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> "Windows Linux" my eyes hurt... And now Microsoft bury windows desktop/server and take the full step and use Linux as the kernel!</comment>


Show HN: A better way to stay on top of SEC filings - <AUTHOR> https://filingsdb.com <comment><USER2> Or visit their SEC page.

[https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001543151&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0)

Or their SEC RSS Feed.

[https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001543151&type=&dateb=&owner=exclude&start=0&count=40&output=atom)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cant get email alerts from the SEC on each filing or filer.

<comment><USER2> Right, you'd have to use Zapier, IFTTT or Huginn RSS to Email or Twitter, or whatever you want and filter by 8K, 10K or other keyword depending on what type of filing you want to get alerts on.

Regardless of which you use, it's free, trivial and takes less than 5 minutes to set up.

This is how I do it anyway, maybe there's a better way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's nothing I can see here :(

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed :)</comment></comment>


BATAS: 8086 assembler written in MSDOS batch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mniip/BOOTSTRA/tree/master/ <comment><USER2> I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. He's trying to bootstrap a programming environment from the basic tools provided with a default MS-DOS install ( [https://github.com/mniip/BOOTSTRA](https://github.com/mniip/BOOTSTRA) ) and build everything from the "cleanest" possible state.

 _That_ is mad as badgers. The batch file assembler is merely what will get him more years in the asylum. ;)

<comment><USER3> I think a lot more people have tried something similar when they first read about DEBUG (and the source code listings in PC magazines of the time would use it for assembling short programs)... including me.

 _At the start, the most powerful tool is undoubtedly DEBUG.EXE with its ability to assemble and create executable files. It has just one handicap though: there are no labels. One has to manually adjust jump and variable locations._

My solution, instead of writing an assembler with batch files, was to use DEBUG itself to write the label-understanding assembler. I think I still have it somewhere, in incomplete form --- never got around to finishing the whole thing, because real life got in the way. ;-)

Looking at the number of "bootstrap pilgrimage" projects that have become public, it's great to see many others trying the same thing; there was this one recently too: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17851311)

<comment><USER4> I had initially considered doing it that way but deemed it too tedious. I really can't stand calculating and correcting offsets all the time.

<comment><USER5> I think I would get a Forth up and running ASAP, and write the assembler, if one still is needed, in that Forth.

looking at [https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...](https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.S) for a simple example, that needs assembler labels and macros, but I think a few batch files can give you rough approximations of those (example of rough approximation: assume every function is 64 bytes long, and every jump needs a 2-byte offset. That makes address calculations a bit easier. Wasteful, but that can be fixed later, once you have a better assembler written in your Forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Appears to be based on a very similar design to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882066) , except that batch files are far more limited than bash.

Also, may I suggest a small optimisation to APPFB.COM : there is no need for push cs/pop ds at the beginning, because in a .COM format executable all the segment registers are initially set to the same value. You can eliminate two unnecessary bytes ;-)

<comment><USER6> Sorry I think you're very slightly wrong.

There was a bug in either some revision of MSDOS or a compatible version that needed it. That's why it's common (though agreed technically unnecessary as it's unlikely to ever be run on those...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this is a blast from the past. I got started "programming" by writing batch files to do all sorts of interesting and crazy things. Stuff like sleeping for a second by printing a predefined number of spaces because the sleep construct didn't exist. There was some guys homepage (think 1996/7) that I remember had an incredible amount of scripts to do things like grabbing the logged in users name, etc all through batch files. In the process of researching possible commands to use in the scripts I came upon "debug" which seemed to be its own language but was far too advanced for me as a 9/10 year old. Glad to see someone finally found a use for it! Good times.

<comment><USER8> I once wrote a batch file virus... it was mostly a proof of concept because the only programming documentation I had access to was an MSDOS 5 manual. It was a great manual!

<comment><USER7> I showed off the "net send" flood in my school which was a batch file that looked like this:

        :label
        net send username
        goto label

Someone then substituted * for username and flooded the network. I got to spend a week in in school suspension for that!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ouch! The author must have incredible pain tolerance doing this in batch.

</comment><comment><USER10> >He's trying to bootstrap a programming environment from the basic tools provided with a default MS-DOS install

Wasn't some version of BASIC provided with every version of MSDOS?

<comment><USER11> Up until MSDOS version 5, MSDOS was shipped with GW-BASIC. From MSDOS 5 onward it shipped with QBasic.

If you can create an assembler with batch files it should certainly be possible to create one with BASIC. :)

Hmm, interesting idea...

<comment><USER12> I don't remember any longer, did PC-DOS, DR-DOS and all other DOS compatible variants also ship GW-BASIC?

<comment><USER11> I don't believe that is the case, Those versions of DOS might ship with some version of BASIC though. GW-BASIC was/is a Microsoft product. If I'm not mistaken (or as lore tells us), the GW-B stands for Gates William Bill. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is glorious for its clever use of batch. Like another poster says "mad as badgers".

If you have spare time can you recreate the .Net ILR from batch scripts? :-J

</comment><comment><USER14> Now we need an LLVM target for this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. A more period-accurate name, I think, would have been "BatAss" lmao

</comment><comment><USER12> I would say it is quite ingenious.

</comment><comment><USER16> Obligatory FSF idea : why not start from a blank disk ?

<comment><USER17> blank as in "no bootblock on it written as a binary blob from a non-free tool" then?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I know the limits of the FSF reasoning. Well, what about starting from Silicium and Carbon molecules ? :-)</comment></comment></comment>


The Sexual Is Political - <AUTHOR> http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-sexual-is-political/ <comment><USER2> > The vision of social relations that sustains transgenderism is the so-called > postgenderism: a social, political and cultural movement whose adherents > advocate a voluntary abolition of gender, rendered possible by recent > scientific progress in biotechnology and reproductive technologies.

What a bizarre claim.

<comment><USER3> Not just bizarre, but actively backwards.

There's a decent amount of conflict between people advocating "no one is gendered" postgenderism and transgender people going "I'm suffering for my gender identity, get out of here with that nonsense". I'm a bit baffled by the claim that "I am gender A, not gender B" is somehow a call for "abolition of gender".

<comment><USER4> Unless I misunderstood, I thought that was part of the conflict they're discussing.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, the writing style makes it almost impossible to tell.

<comment><USER6> Žižek is a challenging read if you're not accustomed to it. Typical for a philosopher (or indeed any expert), he uses technical terms with the assumption that the reader knows them or at least will take the time to look them up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Which man has not caught himself in momentary doubt: "Do I really have the > right to enter GENTLEMEN? Am I really a man?"

Honestly, I never had this thought. Am I strange?

<comment><USER8> When I was younger and saw the full word "Gentlemen" on a toilet door I would wonder whether I was polite enough to qualify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish I could select the text to quote on iOS but I can't.

However, there's a core premise of the article that I disagree with: it is not more acceptable to emphasize your identity as a minority. People emphasize identity as a white, as male, as part of their class every day. People are OBLIGATED to make an effort to embrace or at least accept and work with minority cultures, but are not restricted from emphasizing or being proud of their own. I certainly know a few Germans and Scandinavian Americans who have no issues celebrating their heritage non-offensively.

I think the same applies to sexuality. Cis people have no issues expressing their identity as cis daily. To draw a parallel to the black lives matter movement, the reason #AllLivesMatter is offensive is not because all lives DONT matter, but because it negates the efforts of other people to raise awareness of minority issues. Similarly, nobody is going to give you shit for being cis unless you do some thing like try to start a heterosexual pride day --that's just the norm, EVERY day is heterosexual pride day. You can be joyful of your sexuality daily and express how much you enjoy it to the world. It's called pop music!

Secondly, there was a lot of talk about a class binary. This isn't really a thing outside of dialectical materialism, to my knowledge, and the rhetoric about the 1% vs the 99%. Neither of those describe a social class structure but certain interesting economic behaviors characteristic of the times in question. A revolution is inherently binary; a class queer economic revolution isn't an idea that makes sense.

Third, the mention of the end of sexual reproduction was... Weird. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything but the end of the male sex thought experiment. Certainly not related to anything happening today.

At this point, I stopped reading. Some sources or building on other material would be helpful to see the conclusions in an incremental manner; this reads as a manic rant by a young student who reads philosophy but neglected anything about the topic in question.

<comment><USER10> > the reason #AllLivesMatter is offensive is not because all lives DONT matter

I'm not sure I agree with that wording. To be clear:

      * No lives matter outside the narrow scope of humanity.
        The universe is an uncaring void. In the context of the
        universe, no lives matter.

      * Within the context of human society, all lives should
        matter. Fairness requires a certain amount of equality
        and equity.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the wording is a little weird in my post.

But nobody has argued that all lives don't matter. Nobody has argued that black lives matter more than any other lives. It is not the statement itself that is offensive, it is the hashtag used to deny systemic racism by shouting over people attempting to raise visibility to a minority cause--often unarmed black men being brutalized or shot and killed by police.

It's like someone gets hurt, and then you start talking about how everyone gets hurt, too, instead of giving the person help. Perhaps there are better ways to communicate the initial half but I haven't been able to figure out a better brand off the top of my head.

Edit: also I think the reason the #AllLivesMatter movement has been so successful is because who wouldn't agree with that statement? You must think not all lives matter! Which is a little silly and, I think, is intended as self-reassurance that these #AllLivesMatter proponents can self-love as the #BlackLivesMatter movement self-loves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really wish philosophers would stop using a half baked understanding of trans folk as an intellectual plaything.

<comment><USER12> I really feel like Zizek must be aware of the fact that practically all of the social, ontological, etc. issues he brings up about transgenderism have been discussed and debated within and outside of academia for many years, and he just doesn't care and doesn't believe his opinions need to be informed by any of it.

<comment><USER9> I recommend all people interested in philosophy engage in it, but go to classes for critical theory. This is where most of the interesting philosophy of the last 50 years has taken place, including the entirety of queer theory. His view is so backwards from where the jargon he uses comes from I wonder if european philosophers are even aware of the field of queer theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> LGBTQQIAAP FTW!

The speechifying conventioneers of the last several weeks had enough trouble pronouncing "LGBT". A more mellifluous acronym (or, dare one suggest, actual _word_ ) would make this an easier topic to discuss, but perhaps that wouldn't do justice to it: is every new letter a new inclusiveness?

TFA takes the bathroom brouhaha as its starting point. ISTM the only tenable long-term solution is to have any number of single-toilet rooms, each of which may be used by whoever wants to use it. In locations that serve many people at once, these could be supplemented by a single many-toilet room, reserved for those who are comfortable eliminating in the presence of other humans. Future generations will laugh at us silly Victorians.

</comment><comment><USER14> Author: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek)

 _What justifies the limitation to the binary form of marriage? Why not even a marriage with animals? After all we already know about the finesse of animal emotions. Is to exclude marriage with an animal not a clear case of "speciesism," an unjust privileging of the human species?_

This is a question I like to entertain, and was wondering if the HN community had thoughts on the matter.

Most argue that romantic/sexual relationships with animals is wrong because: 1\. an animal is incapable of consent. 2\. even if the relationship was "consensual", there is a power dynamic that the human enjoys over the pet animal that the animal has little control over, so the relationship is still predicated on some kind of exploitation.

This suggests that we can only seek ethical relationships with intellectual and equally independent entities.

Now replace "animal" with "mentally disabled" or "children". Are they capable of consent? Who are they allowed to have a relationship with?

I am not suggesting that children or the mentally disabled are equivalent to animals - I just find the arguments very similar.

Edit: it's my life objective to maximize HN karma, so my feelings get hurt when I get downvoted. I'd like to hear why you disagree!

<comment><USER15> > an animal is incapable of consent.

They don't exactly consent to being killed and eaten, either.

Looking for consistency in human ethics, particularly sexual ethics, always seemed a bit foolish to me. We didn't develop them with ethical consistency in mind, nor do our basic biological drives care.

<comment><USER14> Without ethical consistency, of what use are the ethics?

<comment><USER15> I'd say that ethics define a local and situational landscape of guidance, rather than global policies.

There are cases where our ethical intuition breaks down altogether or gives contradictory answers depending on how you argue, such as the trolley problem, utilitarianism/deontology - and really, many of the great social liberal/conservative arguments are based on different ethical approaches to the same situation. Like the mathematical value of 0/0, it all depends on how you get there.

This is to be expected, since after all, we're social animals. Our ethics, such as the sense that murder is generally wrong, evolved and developed over many thousands of years as value systems (via government, law and religion) that preserved cooperative and successful societies. I expect meta- ethics/attempts to codify our ethics, in general, not to succeed, since they never developed as cohesive, all-encompassing systems in the first place. Our society's code of law is as close as we get, and that's a long way off being ethically coherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is gibberish.

<comment><USER16> I expect nothing more of Slavoj Zizek.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Zizek is so far out of his depth here that it's comical, and it shows in his juvenile "trans leads to bestiality" concern troll. Idiotic. Does LARB have an editor, or are they just supremely aware of the fact that even the worst garbage by name-brand thinkers will get eyeballs on the page?

I don't even know how to approach the weird discourse on Jews....

</comment><comment><USER17> Was this killed by flags? What happened?

<comment><USER13> It appeared so, but then I clicked "vouch" and it came back. Of course, this may just be a sort of hell-vouch, visible only to me? [EDIT:] No, not a hell- vouch; it still appears in incognito.

[EDIT 2:] ...and now it's flagged again. Philosophy on HN casts pearls before swine. If I were illiterate I would call it "ironic". A simple essay that addresses matters of broad public discussion (certainly on HN) in slightly idiosyncratic fashion ( _not_ rude, _not_ disrespectful, only a bit out of the rut of banal everyday discourse), is immediately round-filed by the right- thinking brigade? Could there be a more convincing proof of TFA's title?

<comment><USER5> I suspect it was flagged by left-thinking people. I'd flag it if I could: in the _second_ paragraph the author conflates transgender people with postgenderists calling for the abolition of gender. None of the trans people I know believe anything like that. It's possible there's some subtle argument that's going over my head, but either way this article seems like poorly grounded flamewar fodder.

<comment><USER13> Haha, every line is a point, when viewed sideways.

The reactionary "whew I've made it in now close the bathroom door" position you ascribe to certain "T" people wouldn't be shared by all that many "Q" folk, although it is of a piece with some "G" voices elsewhere in this thread. There is a natural tension in any political coalition, between those who join for ethical reasons and those who are primarily self-interested (and, one supposes, those for whom the whole movement is only a political tool). Do we see some fraying around the edges?

Perhaps TFA _is_ flamewar fodder, but that says more about this forum than about TFA itself, which when taken on its own terms is interesting and imaginative.

<comment><USER5> > The reactionary "whew I've made it in now close the bathroom door" position > you ascribe to certain "T" people

To be clear, I only ascribed a _lack_ of uniform belief in "a voluntary abolition of gender, rendered possible by recent scientific progress in biotechnology and reproductive technologies", and thought it strange that the author assumed that trans people shared this vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1\. That was painful to read.

2\. Be excellent to each other.

<comment><USER19> Station!</comment></comment>


Synchronise LVM LVs across a network by sending only snapshotted changes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mpalmer/lvmsync#readme <comment><USER2> Looks neat, though I can't help but wonder if you'd be better off with DRBD (run it disconnected by default, then just connect and let it sync naturally when you feel like it).</comment>


Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Beautiful Data Visualisations - <AUTHOR> http://www.helenanderson.co.nz/beautiful-data-visualisations/ <comment><USER2> Some fun updates on the "rock family trees" [0] idea but it might have been interesting to have more technical detail - for some of them it says what technologies are used, which is interesting to know, but I'd love to see links to a github or any blogs/interviews where the creators talk about the tech and any design decisions they made

(e.g. how do you represent lineup changes over time, how do you stop lines and names appearing on top of other names, any other concerns about readability when members have been in a lot of bands all over the map - for a hand-drawn example, the Louisville hardcore/post-rock scene map [1] looks lovely but is kind of hard to track the individuals in because they're all just so interconnected)

I liked the page though and will definitely click through to find out more about these later, so thanks!

[0] Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees: [https://rockfamilytrees.co.uk](https://rockfamilytrees.co.uk) [1] Louisville: [https://www.paynomindtous.it/david-grubbs-squirrel-bait- tree...](https://www.paynomindtous.it/david-grubbs-squirrel-bait-tree/) \- zooming image at top and link to full jpg near the end</comment>


Like.com's Creepy, But Effective, Facebook Ads  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/01/likecoms-creepy-facebook-ads/ <comment><USER2> Everyone repeat after me: Coincidences happen. Correlation is not causation.

Then again, I highly doubt the author of the post seriously believes it's anything other than a coincidence himself - but whatever brings the traffic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidence. I've seen that ad many times before, and I'm fairly confident few or none of the profiles I viewed contained sunglasses in the profile photo.

<comment><USER4> i can say the same</comment></comment>