IBM's 24-core Power9 chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/08/24/big-blue-aims-sky-power9/ <comment><USER2> The article say Power9 chip will have "hardware assisted garbage collection" and that's all, that's a bit short for such an important topic.. Does anyone have more information about it?

<comment><USER3> The new SPARCs have something like that too. [http://www.mythics.com/about/blog/an-introduction-to-your- se...](http://www.mythics.com/about/blog/an-introduction-to-your-servers-next- cpu-the-sparc-m7)

<comment><USER4> > Other silicon accelerators include a SQL coprocessor in each core. Entire > SELECT statements now run at silicon speeds.

seriously? love to see how/why that was put in the die

<comment><USER5> Oracle did this in the past 2 generations of their UltraSPARC architecture.

At it's core a `SELECT FROM` statement is a filter lambda (without any joins, or before/after a join has been done depending on query optimization).

Fundamentally this is because an SQL table is a flat array. With row's being flat array's within the table's memory space.

Calculating the pointer to fields within rows within a table is ridiculously parallel. You're limited only by SIMD size. (this is 1 FMA + 1 add against a constant ~2 ticks).

Also custom wide SIMD registers can allow for `VARCHAR(255)` equality statements to be done in 1 processor cycle.

<comment><USER6> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that when a database company swallows a CPU hardware division that the CPU might sprout some more database specific operations, but I was.

I would love to see some benchmarks of how much this speeds up some sample workload queries, if you happen to know of some (preferably not from Oracle's marketing dept.)?

<comment><USER5> Oracle UltraSPARC purchasing agreement forbids 3rd party direct comparison benchmarks.

The only ones you'll find by 3rd party are non-direct comparisons like transactions per second in Oracle-SQL. Or Core Count.

<comment><USER6> Why am I not surprised by this. I sometimes find myself thinking I should check my bias against Oracle, just to make sure I'm not being too hard on them for past transgressions (for example, Microsoft is far from perfect but they've come a long ways from many of their more negative past practices). Then I learn something like this, which while it doesn't directly mean they are still continuing in predatory marketing and sales practices, doesn't exactly assuage any fears I might have have had.

<comment><USER5> I currently work for a company that heavily uses Oracle technology. It's horrible. Our culmative contracts are worth several hundred thousand dollars per years.

But they'll still cheat us on small things. We request information on a training seminar (we had a free attendance voucher), and they _lose_ our account information until 1 week after the seminar ended.

It's to the point where I just laugh. Everyone knows their cheating us, but upper management won't change.

<comment><USER7> Oracle's database is pretty good (if you can afford it). All their other software, from what I've seen, is shockingly bad considering their resources.

<comment><USER5> Yes if you shell out for all the money to run it on every core, and use a lot memory it is solid. But the bang for your buck, Microsoft SQL has a better support plan, and saner licensing model. My experience is working with smaller datasets <200GB so YMMV.

I mean I'd rather use Postgres. But large corps like having a vendor to call.

<comment><USER8> Check out EnterpriseDB. I don't know how good they are in practice. But their speciality is solving the exact problem you mentioned with Oracle vs Postgres.

[http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/produ...](http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/products/postgres-plus-advanced-server)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, this is the chip that Google, Facebook and Rackspace used in their design for the open compute platform[1][2]. Maybe the entry level price will drop when like those are buying them (or their components) at scale.

1: [http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future- google-...](http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future-google- rackspace-power9-system/)

2: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/3053092/ibms-power-chips- hit-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3053092/ibms-power-chips-hit-the-big- time-at-google.html)

<comment><USER8> Don't forget the Raptor Workstation. Allegedly, they plan to sell the thing for less than what SGI and Sun sold their boxes in the past. Using POWER8-9 chips in a market where ebay's best deal is $4,000 for a POWER8 CPU. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ISA 3.0 adds a new instruction 'darn' \-- Deliver a Random Number. That's a pretty good asm mnemonic :) I wonder if anyone has dug into the details of how that works yet?

<comment><USER10> Wow that's pretty good. My other favorite mnemonic is also from PowerPC 'eieio' \- enforce in-order execution of I/O.

<comment><AUTHOR> "IBM has a well-known disdain for vowels, and basically refuses to use them for mnemonics (they were called on this, and did "eieio" as an instruction just to try to make up for it)."

\- Linus Torvalds, 2009 ([http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/coding_style.html](http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/coding_style.html))

<comment><USER10> Haha, didn't know that. I figured an engineer had a kid with an affinity for Old MacDonald.

<comment><USER11> Old MacDonald had a (server) farm, eieio...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm quite naive regarding Power processors; does anyone know where I can see any motherboards with prices for power processors, or even if any of the BSDs run on them? It seems like it would be quite a nice platform/OS combination that side-steps the traditional Apple/OSX vs Intel/Linux workstation options

<comment><USER13> OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD all have support for the older Apple G4 and G5 hardware. Obviously being older they are kind of slow (especially compared to amd64) but if you just use them as file servers they are fine. The biggest problem with BSD on PowerPC, in my opinion, is the lack of modern programming languages. I believe on BSD you are stuck with C, C++, ruby, python, and perl mostly. No node, no Java, no golang, no rust. If you use Debian you have access to Java.

<comment><USER14> While Go doesn't have a port to BSD on POWER, there is a Go port for POWER on Linux (it's the s390x port).

I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult (relatively speaking) to do the port as a result.

<comment><USER15> s390!=POWER

The GOARCH for power is ppc64/ppc64le AFAIK.

(s390x is the mainframe processor, aka z/Architecture, the latest being the z13 which is most definitely not a power8/9.)

<comment><USER14> I had thought s390x could be based on POWER8/9, but you're right, that doesn't appear to be the case. I apologise. Regardless, Go does consider S390x to be a separate port.

<comment><USER16> As I understand it, the s390x ISA is fully backwards compatible to stone tablets. But it's essentially a POWER chip with a bit of extra decoder logic.

<comment><USER17> There's actually very little in common between z/Arch and Power, but I don't blame you since "everybody knows" they are the same thing.

<comment><USER15> Yah, most of the descriptions (just a little extra decode, aka PowerPC AS), and sharing the hardware actually apply to the iSeries, which _IS_ POWER based. But of course that is a minicomputer not a maninframe...

It seems the vast majority of people who consider themselves knowledgeable about computers are just massively ignorant/confused by IBM's product lines and capabilities (and don't even get me started about the nonstop and openvms). Which is a bit of a shame, particularly in the case of IBM i, which is probably one of the most interesting OS's still in support/production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When POWER8 came out in 2014 I ran a couple of numerical benchmarks against Intel Xeon CPUs. In my benchmarks the POWER8 CPUs where slightly faster than Intel Xeon CPUs when the data fitted into the CPU's cache, so far so good (the speed advantage of the POWER8 CPU can easily be explained by the much higher clocking). But once I started running heavy benchmarks involving gigabytes of data the POWER8 CPUs where at least twice as slow. Now 3 years later POWER9 CPUs will come out that are about 1.5 times faster, in my opinion this is not enough to compete against Intel. Why would anybody want to get locked into a rare and more expensive CPU architecture if there is no speed advantage?

<comment><USER19> Some of us believe that the open platform is worth the expense.

ME, and the absolute refusal of Intel to allow its own customers to disable it, is very scary to the tinfoil hat crowd.

Unfortunately, Raptor Engineering is still early in development of their POWER8 board, and even that may ultimately turn out to be vaporware.

<comment><USER20> If they haven't released by now, they probably won't. Sad but true, technology has a shelf life.

If they wait another 6 months it simply won't be economical to release it ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Am I the only one who thinks that Power9 die shot looks pretty? Reminds me of a stained glass window.

[http://www.nextplatform.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/ibm-h...](http://www.nextplatform.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/ibm-hot-chips-power9-die.jpg)

<comment><USER22> Intel used to publish poster-sized photos of their dies. I had one for the Pentium-II. It'd be cool to get one of this.

<comment><USER23> I had the 386 one in my dorm room at university.

Edit: This one, I think: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Intel_80...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Intel_80386_IV_die.JPG) It's nice that you can almost see individual wires.

<comment><USER24> Wow, that really is quite beautiful. People often don't realize the marvels of technology involved in uploading their selfies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know why, but I always had a thing for Power CPU's. Really curious how Power9 compares to Power8 and Intel Broadwell-EP/EX when it comes to power efficiency (and of course performance wise).

<comment><USER26> I loved the PowerPC chips, the 604 and G5 in particular. Too bad it never became a viable platform outside of Apple.

(In the '90s, the PowerPC had very competitive price/performance, but there wasn't a viable desktop OS available after Apple terminated the original MacOS clone program. 5-10 years later Linux would have been much more ready, but the chips were not competitive with Intel anymore.)

<comment><USER27> PowerPC essentially died as a desktop and server processor once Apple decided to go Intel. IBM decided to go back towards Power's roots with the POWER5 (the follow-on to the PPC970 in the Power Mac G5 and the PowerPC-based XServes).

<comment><USER26> PowerPC really died in 1997-98 when it became clear that Jobs wasn't going to license Mac OS (classic or X) for 3rd party PowerPC boxes anymore, and Windows NT on PPC wasn't going anywhere.

Without an operating system, IBM and Motorola didn't have an incentive to build PC chips anymore. The G4 happened because it was already in development and the vector extensions were useful for Motorola's embedded ambitions. The G5 happened because Apple basically paid IBM to make a desktop chip out of their POWER designs, AFAIK.

Around 2004, there was a startup PowerPC maker called P.A. Semi [1] that apparently competed for Apple's Mac CPU business. After Apple went Intel, they acquired P.A. Semi to design iPhone chips instead.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Now if only they'd make development boards available for less ~$4000.

<comment><USER28> The Wii and the Wii U is your friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> As much as I think the Wii, the Wii U and the Xbox 360 are all the equal-best gaming consoles ever (yes, I judge my gaming consoles purely by their CPU architecture), each of those consoles uses a custom chip developed under a specific IBM-{Nintendo, Microsoft} agreement, so they're somewhat different chips from the POWER[n] series :)

<comment><USER28> The Wii and Wii U are using PowerPC CPUs.

<comment><USER6> Yes. The distinction being made here is that PowerPC is not necessarily the same as Power, even if they have a shared lineage.

<comment><AUTHOR> More importantly, the _system_ architecture is different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm not too familiar with the PowerPC world, so maybe someone could help me out. I know I should just search, but I'm feeling lazy.

Is this a new ISA or just the latest revision in their existing ISA?

Also, what's the relationship with Freescale (NXP) here, who sells pretty decent "PowerPC" chips for server-ish platforms, such as the T2080.

Do they license the ISA from IBM sort of like how ARM works?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a new revision of an existing ISA. POWER8 implements Power ISA 2.07, POWER8 is 3.0.

The Freescale part of NXP was formed out of Motorola's semiconductor division - Motorola, in turn, was part of the original AIM Alliance with Apple and IBM back in the early 90s that developed PowerPC. So they've been making PowerPC stuff since the very beginning. I would assume they have a license of some sort from IBM.

[Disclaimer: IBMer, opinions my own]

<comment><USER30> typo on the second POWER8 ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh, yes, I meant POWER9. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Between Power9, AMD's Zen-based Naples, and Qualcomm's ARM-based Centriq, things are looking pretty interesting for the future of servers.

<comment><USER32> IMO Xeon will be tough to unseat for performance. But a lot of server consumers only want to be able to scale ever-more guest OS/containers on a single platform, so these challengers do pose a real threat to Intel's server market.

Open source software has been a powerful economic force: the fact that so much software exists that's designed to target many similar platforms and is frequently recompiled for those targets means that the impact to the end- consumer of switching among x86/ppc/arm is much lower than it was in the past.

<comment><USER31> I don't know if they have to beat Intel on performance per core. There are markets that require the best performance per core, but there is also a big market that wants more reasonably powerful cores for a given price point.

For instance, in the VPS hosting market, you see most providers offer "vCPUs" (virtual CPUs), because then they can sell their customers "four cores" (or 20 cores) on the cheap, and so on. It's a good marketing strategy.

What if they can offer _real_ cores for the same low price? That would be pretty appealing to their customers. They can also offer "24-core dedicated servers" on the cheap, and so on.

Also, in the long run, it would be best for hosting and cloud providers if they would at least adopt a strategy of 50% Intel chips, and 50% AMD + Power + ARM. That should get them much better prices in the future (from _all_ the chip providers), if they did that. Monopolies don't serve anyone but the monopolist.

<comment><USER23> They could look at the Cavium (ARM 64 bit) chips. 48 cores / socket, and typically two sockets per server. Each core is in-order and rather slow. eg: [http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product- page.aspx?pid=5460#...](http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product- page.aspx?pid=5460#ov)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So realistically, does processor architecture matter today from the custkmer's point of view? I mean performance and all that matters, but presumably that will be offset by market forces. But for example I rent a couple of ARM servers from Scaleway as well as a whole bunch of x86-64 servers from various providers, and they all can do all the same stuff. So why is it that x86 is the chip data centers prefer when they could have a variety of chips and let the customers and the market choose?

<comment><USER34> The only thing that matters in data centers is power consumption, so just as soon as these compete on compute per joule, data centers will roll them out.

<comment><USER15> Google/facebook datacenters maybe, but there are others where backwards compatibility is actually the most important metric because the companies in question have been investing in nonportable software for decades. Those places tend to be massively heterogeneous as different business merged/etc and absorbed the technology stacks or layered on newer technologies over older ones.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, absolutely. Your basic corporate in-house development shop using C# and SQL Server is married to Intel for all eternity. I think the Google/Facebook crowd is really the best market for this IBM stuff, because those companies control their entire stack and have the technical ability to port it.

<comment><USER6> Well, they released SQL Server for linux (even if pared down feature-wise), and that's probably a bigger hurdle than recompiling for a new architecture (depending on whether their compilation toolchain supports it, and how well), although there could still be some x86(_64) specific optimizations in place.

Sometimes weird stuff like supporting esoteric platforms happens because the companies in question are so large, that it makes sense to spend a few $100k on that project to make Intel squirm and get better pricing from Intel on your bulk deal. Keep in mind, Microsoft have their own cloud service...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Do these IBM systems have anything like Intel ME that might be used by Big Bro for remote, covert rooting or subversion of the server? If yes on the standard model, can we order a version of these systems that lack that feature?

I'd love to see some market forces nudging Intel to offer CPU's and Motherboards without ME.

<comment><USER36> Check out: [http://openpowerfoundation.org](http://openpowerfoundation.org)

and: [https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php](https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php)

Supposedly this could be a way out of Intel ME. Gotta see it first though, but I have one pre-ordered (whatever that means).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting, IBM wants to become ARM of server computing - "Open to IP changes"

</comment><comment><USER38> So, is the 24 cores 4 threads variant just the same as the 12 cores 8 thread variants but with each (ridiculously) wide core statically partitioned in two?

edit: should have read till the end.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand why IBM is not creating their own cloud services like Amazon, MS or Google. They have talent, they make their own hardware and software they are struggling a little bit with this new software landscape so why not just do it?

<comment><USER40> They acquired Softlayer, and they're pushing BlueMix and Watson pretty hard - so they definitely have a footing in the cloud hosting/ services!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why wouldn't IBM just have a simple product page for such an innovation?

Like an Apple.com/iphone page for Power systems :-)

Search for Power9 on IBM.com yields practically nothing.

[http://www.ibm.com/search/esas/search?q=power9&v=17&sn=23&us...](http://www.ibm.com/search/esas/search?q=power9&v=17&sn=23&us=utf&lang=en&cc=us&Search=Search#v%3D%2B1%26q%3Dpower9)

Perhaps the website is all maintained by the folks busy in "the cloud".

<comment><USER42> Because this is just a technical preannouncement, you can't actually buy anything yet? A search for POWER8 returns lots of hits.

<comment><USER41> Agreed. I wasn't looking for a buy button. However, an authoritative info page by IBM itself providing technical specs and details of the platform would earn them good credits at least amongst the tech audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 24-core seems odd here, 32-core will be a more symmetric design ? What is main reason for this ? Cost ?

<comment><USER43> I have no direct knowledge on IBM's processor, but from working on other processors, usually it's due to product yield.

Today's cutting edge fabrication of multi-core chips makes it quite unlikely to get many dies to manufacture where all the CPU's are working at high speeds. Chips must run at a single frequency, so the slowest frequency is the bottleneck. If you fabricated 32 cores, and 1 fails testing, the chip is garbage.

So the strategy is that the chips are fabricated with 32 cores, and then they speed-test the cores and take fastest 24 cores. The remaining 8 are fuse- disabled, and the end user sees a 24 core chip.

Note this strategy also allows them to produce a 16-core chip with the same die, if for example only 20 cores work at high speeds.

So you get both high yield and high speed chips.

<comment><USER44> Yes, that's done some times but in this case, from the die picture posted here in another thread [1], it seems to have indeed 24 cores in 12 pairs (each of the "houses").

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351729)

[http://www.nextplatform.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/ibm-h...](http://www.nextplatform.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/ibm-hot-chips-power9-die.jpg)</comment></comment></comment>


TED Talk: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html <comment><USER2> I've come to similar personal conclusions about what success means to me (although the speaker articulated it better I possibly could have).

The idea that you should define your success by what you are willing to lose/give up on resonated strongly with me. A few years back, I gave up a much better paying job and 'better' career prospects in the US after an Ivy League education, to move back home and stay closer to my dad (who'd just suffered a catastrophic stroke). While I might not be considered super successful in the popular sense, I've redefined the meaning of success for myself. I've realized I value relationships over traditional measures of success and I am willing to lose some of the latter to get more of the former.

Incidentally, this realization has been strangely liberating. I'm completely at ease at college reunions, even when I get the odd snicker from classmates who are more 'successful'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks to whoever posted this! I've been agonizing over my career for years and have only just started to realize the truth (and beauty) in what he's saying.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to second that. Unfortunately we can only vote once. But this talk is now tied with Jill Bolte Taylor's as my favorite Ted talk. Thanks for posting.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I'd tie de Botton's with Liz Gilbert's talk (<http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html>) for first.

For those that haven't seen it, it's really worth your time. Her speech skims across the surface of several ideas, and in the last few minutes comes together into an elegant and cohesive whole. I wish I could speak like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this kind of TED talks.

One of Alain's main arguments was that the "kinder, gentler" philosophy of success should partly be based on the negative implications of meritocracy, i.e. "if you are at the bottom, you deserve to be there and thus you're a looser". But to meritocracy's defense -- isn't it more fair to say that "if you are at the bottom, you can with an effort pull yourself out of there"? And thus "merit" a better position in the social hierarchy?

For me, once anyone at the bottom make the slightest effort to rise, they are instantly rising in social hierarchy. Thus, it's all up to themselves, and it's all based on a choice. Make a decision, and merit follows.

I'm not sure what I want to say with this argument. But somehow, the criticism forwards meritocracy seemed a little shallow in the talk.

<comment><USER7> One distinction that is useful is looking at things in absolute terms or in terms of rankings. In a ranking system, someone is always going to come out the winner, and someone on the bottom. At the Tour de France, someone wins, a bunch of other guys don't, and someone comes in last, even though they are all extremely talented and fast cyclists. In business, someone might make the most money, but most people doing good work create value for society, and increase total wealth, without it necessarily being at the cost of someone else.

In other words, ranking systems and contests are zero sum games, whereas plenty of other things are not.

<comment><USER8> status is a zero sum game, while the economy is not. one can't generally create status without lowering the status of those around you, the same is not true for wealth.

<comment><USER9> Is that realy so? Can we create system where person A is realy good at X, and person B is really good at Y, and thus both are respected (and respecting each other)?

In other words, can we make satuts into a partially-ordered set?

<comment><USER8> not as long as demand for attractive women far outpaces supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "A lot of times our ideas of what it is like to live successfully are not our own. If you're a man, your father. If you're a woman, your mother.. We are highly open to suggestion. We should be truly the authors of our own ambitions. It is bad enough to not get what you want but even worse to find out at the end of the journey that what you got is not what you wanted."

"That problem is envy. If there is one dominant emotion in modern society - that is envy. And it's linked to the spirit of equality. We don't envy the Queen of England...because we can't relate to her... And when you can't relate to somebody, you don't envy them. The closer two people are in age, in background, in the process of identification, the more there is a danger of envy... Which is why you should never go to the same school but.. The problem of modern society is it turns the whole world into a school - everybody is wearing jeans and the same and yet they're not."

"One of the reasons we fear failure... is the judgment and ridicule of others. The number one organ of ridicule is the newspaper... they have failed and they are described as losers."

"We tend to worship ourselves. Our heroes are human heroes. Most other societies have had at that center something that is transcendent. A God, a spirit, a natural force, the universe"

-Alian de Botton

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Really liked this.

For anyone who has read Alain de Botton: Could you recommend some of his books? I'm really interested in checking out his work after watching this.

<comment><USER4> This talk is derived from his book "Status Anxiety" as is the documentary of the same name which is available on Youtube in low quality:

<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=336D8AE0334C5C91>

<comment><USER11> I learned a huge amount from reading this book. I bought it second hand for perhaps 3 pounds. If it had cost 100 pounds it would still have been worth it for the gems I got out of it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tyler Brulé of Monocle did an interview with Alain covering his recent book. Typical of Tyler it isn't the usual puff piece but he actually pokes for real substance.

[http://www.monocle.com/sections/culture/Web- Articles/Alain-d...](http://www.monocle.com/sections/culture/Web- Articles/Alain-de-Botton/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazing talk.</comment>


Output of Dutch solar bike lane exceeds expectations - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F102994%2Fopbrengst-fietspad-met-geintegreerde-zonnepanelen-is-boven-verwachting.html&edit-text= <comment><USER2> Roads are quite a good place to place solar panels, logistically speaking. Yes they are 30% less efficient, but they are also closer to where the electricity will be used, and the marginal opportunity cost of real estate is zero since road use is retained. You don't need new land and you don't need to worry about transporting power at great distances. I'm glad such experiments are being conducted to see how well this idea performs in practice. It's good they started with bike lane as opposed to truck roads. It will give them opportunity to iterate on the panels resiliency.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why you are being downvoted, but I thing your comment makes a lot of sense, and I'd like to know why some think otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Logistically speaking, there's a nightmarish level of complexity introduced here. Put a country's food distribution network on top of its energy production system? Put solar cells where you know they'll be constantly driven over by heavy machinery? Replace some of the most durable materials known to man (asphalt and concrete) with glass encased electronics?

These things aren't impossible, but it's such an uphill battle that I wouldn't hold my breath. ([http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible- idea...](http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible- idea-1582519375))

<comment><USER5> Thick pices of tempered glass are vary durable and could easily outlast asphalt as a road surface. Right now the decreased efficiency makes this a non starter, but long term if solar keeps getting cheaper it may become a reasonable supplement to the power grid.

PS: Bullet resistant glass is surprisingly clear dispite how thick it is.

<comment><USER6> I wonder what the stopping distance is on this glass?

<comment><USER7> Not as big as wet glass or icy glass ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see some financial analysis:

1) cost of producing the same amount of electricity with Netherlands' most common electricity production

2) cost of building this vs. a normal bike path, and time for recovering the cost considering #1

3) expected life of this system + anual maintenance cost

4) cost of a typical roof installation for the same surface

<comment><USER9> 5) Cost of a normal bike path with ordinary solar cells of equal area next to it

<comment><USER10> 5.1 Cost of a normal bike path with ordinary solar cells on _top_ of it (providing shade, and shelter from the rain, with presumably greater efficiency)

<comment><USER11> This is actually what I envisioned before I looked up some pictures (if there were any in the article, they didn't load for me).

It seems more practical, in particular for a bike path.

<comment><USER12> That's already well-studied, for parking lots with shade structures.

I'm astonished how many people are weighing in to trash a small project researching something new that might be interesting!

<comment><USER10> I'm definitely not trashing it - I'm enthusiastically interested in whether it's viable. What I'd love to know is what the expected cost structure, at scale might be, in comparison to other options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really? On their website[0] they claim their _glass surface_ doesn't require snow removal because the heating elements melt it and as such asphalt roads have a cost of snow removal that apparently comes for free with these.

However, it takes more energy to melt snow than to push it to the side[1] which they simply ignore and that makes me question what other things they're leaving out in order to tell a good story. I'd really like to see the numbers crunched for how many snowy days a year will cause the system to consume as much energy as it produces.

[0] - [http://solarroadways.com/snow.shtml](http://solarroadways.com/snow.shtml) [1] - [https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/)

<comment><USER13> It takes moe energy to melt snow than push it to the side? This is northwestern Europe, where the snow never gets more than a few centimeters deep, and the temperatures never go more than a few degrees below freezing. I could definitely see heating a surface by a few degrees being cheaper than bringing a plow or other snow clearing machinery out to some path.

Now, northern Canada would probably be a different story.

<comment><USER14> The enthalpy of fusion for water is 335 J/g. The specific heat capacity of ice at -10C is 2.1 J/(gK). So the major part in melting the water isn't heating it until it melts - it is the melting itself that is expensive.

That said, I do see some value in solar ways in the space savings.

<comment><USER15> Why not awnings over the bike path? This can be done in ways that look awesome and do not ruin the scenery and the view from the bike path. Thin film collectors in the form of tarps suspended from poles would make the installation cost commensurate with installing light poles. You'd need significant R&D in the aerodynamics, etc. However, you already need significant R&D for collector roadways, and you're starting out with an inherently disadvantaged design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The FAQ of the project at [http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/](http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/) is worth reading. Among others, it explains that the €3.5M spent wasn't only used to produce this stretch of road (unfortunately without going into detail), and that covering _all_ rooftops in the Netherlands would only cover 25% of Dutch _electricity_ demand.

Given European clean energy goals, more square meters are needed. Those are hard to come by in a densily populated country such as the Netherlands.

Is this a sure win? No, but if it works, it can be a useful part of the energy mix. Also, if it works, I guess scaling it up will not meet much nimby resistance, unlike he alternatives of huge wind parks or sacrificing land or water area for solar arrays.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like the first comment hit the nail on the head: there being 25% more sunlight hours than expected.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting points:

1\. > _That is more than the upper limit calculated on the basis of laboratory tests._

Does this mean the panels generated more than they were tested to generate?

2\. Part of the purpose of the project was to beta test the suitability of their glass surface treatment as a biking/walking surface. (I'm imagining it's textured like a truck bed liner, but transparent.) They did have an incident early on with a bicyclist slipping, related to a stick-on surface, so they switched to a spray-on surface.

3\. Commenters slinging arrows at a Conservative strawman for the high price and comparatively low (factor of 500) energy output vs government building rooftops.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. No, it means that the panels generated more than the predicted upper bound. As a commenter on the source article mentioned, this year's April was one of the most sunny in recorded Dutch weather history, which might have contributed to this fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Numbers from the article:

3000 kWh in six months = 684W average

70 kWh per m^2 per year = 8W per m^2

As a comparison point, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_system#Solar_arra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_system#Solar_array) gives a typical output for a square-meter panel as 0.75kWh per day, or 31W.

<comment><USER20> That's the wrong 6 months though, since it's including the whole winter and none of the summer. Looking at the graph, April accounted for as much power production as the other 5 months combined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could this be the missing link to make electric cars winning the battle? No need for plugs at gas stations, inductive charging [1] while driving on the road will do it.

Am I being too futuristic?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging#Electric_veh...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging#Electric_vehicles)

<comment><USER22> No.

And no. The fault isn't Futurism but fantasy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _The cycle path was opened in November as a pilot project for three years > and was followed with great interest, also by foreign media._

I'm not following this new very closely. "Open" means that they allow cyclist, pedestrian (and dogs) to use a small 70m pilot segment, or that they have a 70m segment in the middle of nowhere?

<comment><USER24> Here's a photo. It's a bike path between two towns, and about 2000 cyclists per day ride on it.

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/05/worlds- fi...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/05/worlds-first-solar- cycle-lane-opening-in-the-netherlands)

<comment><USER25> It cost three million euros but can only power three houses? A _million euros_ to use solar to power a house? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER26> Government economics, working as designed.

<comment><USER27> >Government economics, working as designed.

You've been downvoted perhaps because it's not clear if you're being sarcastic, but I agree earnestly.

The primary purpose of government is to organise things that benefit people: and they only need to do this when business can't or won't. Governments should act as a balance to the negative aspects of capitalism.

As such, I genuinely believe that governments should be "uneconomic".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, it makes slightly more sense than the solar roads for normal cars and trucks, if only because it doesn't have to be quite as tough, but I do suspect that it would be cheaper to install, easier to maintain and far more efficient in terms of power generation, to put a normal cycle path down and put a roof of solar above it.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but it wouldn't be as pleasant to ride on the road. Riding a bike with a roof over your head? I don't know, but I appreciate seeing the sky and the horizon when riding a bike.

<comment><USER28> It wouldn't be a roof exactly. Because you can angle the panels and have much better transmission of light to the panel from not having to have a bike-proof coating, you wouldn't be completely covering the path and you would get the same amount of power from a strip that is thinner than the path, angled and fairly high up, this would cost far less money as it is available off the shelf, so you have more cash to spend on making more of it. Also, if you integrate it with lamp posts for your support pillars, you are not increasing the amount of street clutter either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are Dutch bike lanes like US bike lanes? Adjacent to motor vehicle lanes, with no grade separation, and an expectation that motor vehicles will use the lane whenever it is convenient, regardless of right of way? If so, this is really solar panels for the right shoulder, and I would really expect a big truck to break them

<comment><USER31> The title seems to be inaccurate. The test area is a dedicated bike path, not attached to a standard road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why anyone would pursue such a suboptimal installations is beyond me. Researchers finding ways to waste grant money I guess..

<comment><USER16> The company leading the project claims commercialization is five years away. They likely are optimistic or biased, but I am not sure they are outright lying.

Prices of solar cells drop fast. Extrapolate a few years, and costs of solar installations will be dominated not by what solar cells cost, but by what it costs to install them.

In this case, something must be installed anyways to build the cycle path. It might well be that installing a (cycle path, solar cells) combination will only be marginally more expensive than installing a traditional cycle path.

Will we get there? If solar cells and the electronics needed to wire than together (which, in this case, are more complex because the road may see highly variable shading patterns) get dirt cheap, we might.

<comment><USER33> Do you really believe that it is more efficient to build a bike lane paved with solar panels, rather than a bike lane paved with asphalt and separate, dedicated solar facilitates?

EDIT: Looking at the pictures others have posted you still have to use asphalt (or more likely concrete because you need better stability, which is even more expensive) underneath, so there really is nothing saved by doing this. What a waste of money.

<comment><USER34> How is the presence of asphalt underneath an issue? The deciding factor will be whether the marginal cost of a solar path over an asphalt path will be greater or less than building an equivalent solar facility. That seems like it could go either way.

<comment><USER35> Very good point. Plus even if the marginal cost is lower than a dedicated solar facility, we don't necessarily have that luxury. We do if we want just 5% sustainable energy, not a problem. But if we want 99% sustainable energy, surface area is a very tricky challenge [0] and so it'd be a matter of the one _and_ the other, instead of the one _or_ the other.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why is it bike lane though? any practical considerations?

<comment><USER37> In the video they explain they use a bike lane to learn before going to real roads. Bikes are much lighter than cars and trucks, and they want to learn what materials work best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What were the expectations?

<comment><AUTHOR> According to [http://www.solaroad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Artikel- So...](http://www.solaroad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Artikel-SolaRoad- BU2013.pdf) it was 50 kWh per square meter.

<comment><USER26> (over what unit time)?

<comment><USER39> Per year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Sorry, this is beyond silly. Do they actually have any scientists with some command of mathematics working on this project?

Other than to screw ignorant government morons out of lots of money I could not imagine any reputable scientist or engineer not falling to the floor laughing uncontrollably when presented with the idea of putting solar panel on a sidewalk/bike path.

The whole thing is so utterly ridiculous that the only possible explanation is someone is making millions with this project.

<comment><USER40> The dynamics of down-voting on HN can be interesting. I have this --possibly flawed-- mental image of emotional impulse voting devoid of any effort to analyze what is being said.

For the benefit of those who didn't take the time to think before down-voting my prior comment I'll try to spell it out here.

A few facts:

\- Good commercial cells deliver an efficiency in the 14% to 19% range.

\- This efficiency assumes the cells are aimed at the sun

\- Optimal winter angle for the Netherlands is approximately 76 degrees from horizontal

\- Peak efficiency also assumes the cells are clean and have nothing obstructing or altering light from reaching it's surface at the optimal angle

\- In all cases you can Google my claims and verify their veracity

Option #1:

\- Cover the solar panels with glass \- Scuff-up the surface so people and bikes don't slip and slide all over the place \- As an alternative, apply a film to achieve the same effect \- Mount them flat on the ground \- Place trees around it \- Have people, bikes and dogs walk on it

Analysis:

\- The cost of encasing panels in concrete and glass modules and installing them is monumental

\- The optimal angle for Amsterdam is approximately 76 degrees. Panels mounted flat simply throw away a significant amount of available energy.

\- Solar cells laid flat will produce between 20% and 30% less when compared to optimally aimed cells.

\- Glass will create problems based on how light enters. You have reflection, diffraction and scattering as possibilities. A percentage of the energy will never reach the cells.

\- A non-slip surface will scatter and absorb a significant amount of energy. Based on the images I've seen of these road modules I am going to guestimate that at best 70% of the light entering the road reaches the cells. I base this on years of working with a wide range of optical diffusers.

\- Dirt and particles on the cells can have huge efficiency effects. From light scattering to simply blocking and absorption. I'll go ahead and guess that you can't keep a roadway clean 100% of the time, therefore, you probably pay a, say, 20% penalty on average for having dirt, leaves and dog shit on the road. This is entirely a seat-of-the-pants number. It could be 10% or 50%. It isn't going to be zero.

\- Power generation is now utilization dependent. With more people on the road more light is blocked and less power is generated. I won't put a number to this. I will rather make a statement: If nobody uses the road, what's the point of building one in the first place or building one that is so much more expensive than simply pouring plain concrete?

\- Depending on angle, trees, buildings and even tall vehicles on the road will cast shadows on the panels.

A very rough calculation then says that, at best, our solar roadway will operate at 40% of peak efficiency. If we factor in the constant need for cleaning this number could very well go down significantly. For example, do we have a crew of a few people using gas powered leaf blowers cleaning the roadway a few times a day?

Option #2: Build a light steel structure atop a conventional bike path. Angle the panels for optimal efficiency at that latitude. You might splurge and add active tracking.

Analysis:

\- The cost of installation is significantly lower

\- By mounting the panels at the optimal collection angle we ensure converting power as near to the efficiency peak for the panel in question

\- Angled mounting also aids in reducing surface particulate contamination and makes cleaning potentially as simple as an automated water sprinkler system

\- The entire system is far less costly and efficient

\- The bike path gets "free" shade as a side effect

So, yeah, the entire idea is absolutely ridiculous if anyone bothers to do a little math. Someone has got to be lining their pockets or whoever is leading this project is simply in denial.

Go ahead and downvote, but, if you do, please show your calculations and how you arrived at the idea that this concept actually makes sense to deploy at scale. I'll bet you can't.</comment></comment>


OS X Mountain Lion Final Released to Apple Care Reps - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/22/os-x-mountain-lion-seeded-to-applecare-reps-ahead-of-launch/

<comment><USER2> July 25th can't come fast enough. iOS-like Twitter integration (and eventually Facebook too) is a feature I want to add to a project I am working on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what the draw is to Twitter. However, if you are using Twitter to somehow define your app, then I would be weary. I think you know why...

<comment><USER2> It's not a Twitter app per se. But there is info users would want to share over Twitter and Facebook to their friends so it's an important to have feature and I didn't want to roll my roll API client for these services.

<comment><USER3> Hm, this sounds like a really bad idea. I've worked the Facebook and Twitter APIs. They aren't that difficult to integrate, and there's definitely no need to roll your own (just look for 'SDKs' or 'language bindings' on their websites.)

So you'll set a limitation on who can use your software based on a perceived limitation that doesn't actually exist. I'd think twice before committing to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mountain Lion

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Fixed.</comment></comment>


Stopping Time: An Approach to Pandemics? - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/stopping-time-an-approach-to-pandemics.html <comment><USER2> The main problem I see with this is that while we wouldn't have to pay any mortgages etc, we wouldn't be able to receive paychecks either. This means we can't, say, buy food.</comment>


Programming is Frustrating – This is Why There is a Shortage of Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://robbieabed.com/programming-isnt-hard-its-just-frustrating-this-is-why-there-is-a-shortage-of-programmers/

<comment><USER2> "Programming Isn't Hard, It's Just Frustrating – This is Why There is a Shortage of Programmers"

I'm not sure your cargo-cult experiences with PHP qualify this blanket statement about the entire industry :|.</comment>


What Is Intelligence? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/what-is-intelligence

<comment><USER2> I like the formula suggested by Steve Pavlina (<http://www.stevepavlina.com/>): Intelligence = Truth + Love + Power.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, hadn't seen that before, thanks so much! I like how you can apply power to many things, not just financial or status. Interesting perspective he has.</comment></comment>


Pop Launches an App That Makes Video Chat as Easy as SMS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/19/pop-launches-an-app-that-makes-video-chat-as-easy-as-sms/

<comment><USER2> Will it blend?</comment>


How to Reduce Plane Boarding Time by 4x - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0733 This is the best use of MCMC to hack "the system."  Perfect "surprising result" for a Y Combinator application. <comment><USER2> To save you some reading time, the algorithm appears to be: Load the first 10 or so people in alternating rows only (not the same row and not adjacent rows) from rear to front. After they are done, load the next 10 people in alternating rows only from rear to front. Repeat.

This assumes that loading luggage into overhead bins is the biggest time sink for most loading. It maximizes the number of individuals who can be loading overhead compartments at any one time, rather than everyone waiting for the person at the front of the line to load their baggage 1-2 at a time or so.

<comment><USER2> They go on to state that doing it by blocks rather than strictly alternating may work better for cases of families that cannot be split up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see any mention of free-seating, where people are not assigned seat numbers in advance. As this is the method which the cheapest airlines appear to use, where time/cost pressure is at a maximum, I suspect that it does well in practice so I'm disappointed that the author did not consider it.

<comment><USER4> Southwest captured an entire industry. This was one of the major reasons. That's the difference between "research" and "practice".</comment></comment>


MongoDB Aggregation I: Counting and Grouping - <AUTHOR> http://kylebanker.com/blog/2009/11/mongodb-count-group/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty interesting: looks like they're laying down the foundations of their Map/Reduce framework with this -- this approach to their Group function is one of the most flexible I've seen so far!

In essence, they have implemented their Group function as a real simple Map/Reduce job, in which the "Map" phase is skipped partially Instead of completely decoupling the Map and Reduce phase, a Reduce is performed right after each object is Mapped: you perform a Reduce directly on the source object. Regular Map/Reduce frameworks usually decouple the Map and Reduce phase completely: you perform a Map on the source object, and a Reduce on all the emitted Map objects. This of course brings a lot of overhead (lots of Map objects emitted with just the value "1").

<comment><USER3> Mongo actually supports map/reduce now:

<http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/MapReduce>

I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't set up a function to update "map" objects when the collection it was generated from is updated or added to. That was my favourite feature from CouchDB

<comment><USER2> Ah, I should've looked better -- I didn't realize they actually already supported Map/Reduce by now -- good news!

 _I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't set up a function to update "map" objects when the collection it was generated from is updated or added to._

That sounds interesting, but it makes me wonder: what happens when an updated object is mapped again, as you describe? An update means that a previously mapped entry is deleted, so you should unreduce (inflate?) the previous map operation (which in many cases is not possible).

How are these things handled in Couch ?

<comment><USER4> In CouchDB, Map/Reduce is the primary way that you access the database. The first time you access a "view", it will do a Map/Reduce on the entire database. On subsequent access, it will redo the Map on new records. To make this work, the action of the Map function needs to be immutable with respect to the record; this is intellectually pleasing but incredibly annoying in practice.

I haven't really used the Map/Reduce functionality of Mongo yet, but I have poked at it a little. Basically, with MongoDB, you do a one-time transform from one "collection" of records to another. It doesn't automatically update the way CouchDB does, but I can do things like joins that I couldn't do with CouchDB.

Once again, Mongo's practicality makes me happy, while Couch gives me reason to admire but avoid.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Copies of malware used by intelligence agencies to spy on journalists - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles4/ <comment><USER2> So, it seems the NSW police here in Australia are a customer and use this.

Ignore for a moment whether it's a good or bad thing that police use tools like these. What I want to know is, what happens once they "get their guy", so to speak.

Does the malware stay on that computer forever, violating the privacy of family members, or other users of the computer should it be sold on and not wiped correctly? What happens if it's _not_ the correct person?

Basically, why are the police spying? To me, that raises some ethical questions and makes me feel that the police will handle things like this in a very ham-fisted way, like they usually do with technology. Worrying.

<comment><USER3> (I'm also in NSW)-- The list of "support requests" on the customers page suggests that the tools are used only in accordance with duly-issued warrants. Access would need to be removed once the purpose of the warrant had been fulfilled, but we may never know whether they get that right in practice. Ben Grubb has collated some background information on the operation of those laws.[1]

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nsw-police-use- ha...](http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nsw-police-use-hacking- software-to-spy-on-computers-and-smartphones-wikileaks- data-20140915-10h530.html)

<comment><USER4> I have not looked at the materials but I suspect most or all Western countries using this toolkit are using it for specific investigations where warrants have been issued.

I personally have no qualms with the FBI planting malware as just another form of surveillance (if they have a warrant to search your home and tap your phone, why shouldn't they be able to get a warrant to monitor your computer?). The problem with Gamma Group, and what I suspect is one of the core reasons for this leak, is that they happily sell their product to extremely oppressive regimes and give them personal support, knowing full well that the tools are being used to spy on and find dissidents, protesters, and political opponents.

<comment><USER5> There is a weird "Us and Them" vibe from your comment.

Is the US/Australia/Uk's treatment of Julian Assange (as an example) not count as "oppressive regimes" and "...dissidents, protesters, and political opponents."?

How is that different to <insert country you were thinking of when you wrote "oppressive regimes"> ? (I ask honestly, not rhetorically)

<comment><USER6> I'd wager that the difference is that your chances in the US, Australia, or the UK that a bunch of thugs kicks in your door at three am, grabs you and disappears you forever are a whole lot smaller than in some of the real oppressive countries.

I'm not claiming that everything is perfect in those western countries, but compared to them there are some truly evil regimes around in countries where absolutely no checks and balances exists to rein abuse in.

While this may get me down-voted into oblivion, since the author may be easily one of the most hated people in the tech world, I recommend Evgeny Morozovs "The Net Delusion" which is a quite insightful take on the abuse of tech by oppressive regimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This company makes millions upon millions of dollars from selling surveillance malware to (by the looks of the customer list) anyone who will pay.

If I were to set up a company which sold similar products at similar prices, I would expect the FBI to come knocking at my door very quickly.

<comment><USER8> And they'd probably want to seize all your 0dayz to use to spy on activists too. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting note on Mongolia on the bottom.

Also good to see that, at least for a time, Gmail was able to detect infected files (see the Mongolian feedback numbers 10-12)

[https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles4/database.html#feedback](https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles4/database.html#feedback)

<comment><USER10> Hmm, I'm not sure if that's Gmail detecting an infected file. I'm pretty sure Gmail just blocks .exe and .bat files altogether (even in .zip archives).

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6590?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6590?hl=en)

<comment><USER9> The file in question was a PDF - can it detect that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I were to download this, I'd do it with some masking tape over my webcam, booted from Kali Linux, inside a Windows VM from a library or coffee shop.

<comment><USER12> > masking tape over my webcam

what people always seem to forget is that it's not the webcam but the _microphone_ that presents the greatest privacy risk.

if you tape it off, it'll just lower the volume (and possibly dampen higher frequencies, but you just need 300-3800Hz for voice).

additionally (outside the coffee shop scenario you describe here), what's a webcam do? ok, it'll see your face. chances are they already know your identity. maybe it'll catch one second of your underwear, big deal. now compare to a microphone, much less data, but it picks up every conversation in the room, regardless if they're "in view". much worse.

<comment><USER13> I have my microphone (and webcam) disabled from the BIOS. It's pretty effective.

<comment><USER14> Up until you catch a BIOS exploit. If the disabling is done by software, it's not really disabling.

Physical switches and/or duct tape FTW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These periodic reminders that Internet isn't a safe place and that anyone might be spying on us probably makes a lot of people learn about security, come up with better passwords, hesitate before downloading unknown software and so on.

When people get their identities stolen, or lose all the money from their bank accounts, this might be regarded as "random" events, in the same way that most people won't get mugged and when it happens it's because of "randomly" being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But more people have experience dealing with the government, and though they believe that criminals aren't interested in them they know that the government might be, and thus the government is seen as a more tangible threat.

Is it possible that governmental surveillance is on average a good thing, since it raises people's awareness and makes them protect themselves more? Having enough money in your bank account to buy food is, after all, a more basic need in Maslow's hierarchy than not having copies of your e-mail conversations in a government database.

</comment><comment><USER16> shared pad for compiling patterns: [https://pad.riseup.net/p/gO8Ng806lNnl](https://pad.riseup.net/p/gO8Ng806lNnl)

<comment><USER17> And they all use gmail?!?!?!

<comment><USER18> It is called NopSec

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Handle with care."

Hey guys, let's unzip this so the next guy can run it and spread the worlds most advanced malware on our home network.

<comment><USER20> It would be fun to install in a VM though! Or maybe not.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will phone home. Don't do it unless it's disconnected from the network. It might also try to spread the infection through other attack vectors, like bluetooth, or trying to break out of the VM.

<comment><USER21> > break out of the VM

I wonder if this has happened yet?

<comment><USER22> Most definitely. Here is an example: [http://1337day.com/exploit/22519](http://1337day.com/exploit/22519)

<comment><USER23> Got anything that doesn't involve the 2d/3d video acceleration? Those are a rather obvious and off-by-default attack surface.

<comment><USER24> See here [http://www.vupen.com/blog/20120904.Advanced_Exploitation_of_...](http://www.vupen.com/blog/20120904.Advanced_Exploitation_of_Xen_Sysret_VM_Escape_CVE-2012-0217.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Down for me. Here's a cached version:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140703130707/www.vupen.com/blo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140703130707/www.vupen.com/blog/20120904.Advanced_Exploitation_of_Xen_Sysret_VM_Escape_CVE-2012-0217.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't usually click EXE,

But when I do,

I do it on my production computer with 200 VM running.

</comment><comment>

and none of my firewalls pop a warning.

<comment><USER26> My AV deleted it as soon as it was extracted.

<comment><USER27> Ha. What AV do you use?

<comment><USER28> You can just run it through [https://www.virustotal.com/](https://www.virustotal.com/) to see which AV's will get it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope Norton is updating their database accordingly.

<comment><USER30> You can try and submit the files here: [https://www.virustotal.com/](https://www.virustotal.com/)

<comment><USER31> Pretty depressing. Only 2 out of 54 scanners currently detect something in the zips of the spyware.

[https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/6ee40b8e7d49f4ea70b7ce...](https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/6ee40b8e7d49f4ea70b7ce5ca55a445897395323cd298a40baca76432a3a13bc/analysis/)

[https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/688f1e15390faf8d977351...](https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/688f1e15390faf8d977351572a9a5c84d5bb228135ebd6c4c306708a9420f359/analysis/)

<comment><USER32> Those zips are encrypted, that's why. I have included links to the unencrypted results [1,2], with ~80% detection rate. Notable green checkmark by Microsoft, perhaps FinFisher made extra sure to not get caught by Microsoft's heuristics?

[1] [https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/f827c92fbe832db3f09f47...](https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/f827c92fbe832db3f09f47fe0dcaafd89b40c7064ab90833a1f418f2d1e75e8e/analysis/)

[2] [https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/0b465877a998a993a64a14...](https://www.virustotal.com/en- gb/file/0b465877a998a993a64a146c80beaea2adf8e854644709706c6173a853ec8dba/analysis/)

<comment><USER31> Microsoft too detects them now. Too late, but at least they are updating their signatures fairly rapidly.

Interestingly, both files were first uploaded to VT in 2010, meaning that AV vendors have had chances to analyze them.

<comment><USER30> Malware vendors usually use these services to test their load. They wouldn't release anything that would get detected on day 0. And I think antivirus vendors do more in-house analysis only if there are reasons to - such as votes from users, or other AVs detecting the sample.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I know many love to consider Snowden and Assange "heroes", but I think these two are people we should think outside the box on. Are they acting in the interest of everyone, themselves, or another party? The releases, interviews, and otherwise that get released seem very scripted and controlled. The propaganda machine is skilled and there may be unseen benefits to these leaks.

<comment><USER34> The releases are outside Snowden's control now. He carefully gave a dump of information to two newspapers. Those newspapers control the flow of the information now, and they obviously want to maximise the benefit to themselves by releasing the information in controlled manner.

<comment><USER33> Snowden is milking the attention as well. Look at the livestream going on right now, he's discussing the information live.

<comment><USER35> You're deliberately trying to discredit a person who made available proof that the surveillance machine is out of control.

While everyone else is dissecting the information and trying to digest it and working on solutions to the surveillance problem; you're obsessed with the messenger.

Why?

<comment><USER15> Well, I'd agree with you, but the way you phrased it made me feel uneasy. Are you saying that source criticism in journalism is overrated, or that Assange should be an exception to the rules?

This is the Internet. Isn't there enough room here for discussions about both the message and the messenger? Or is it that when the message gets strong or important enough, the messenger gets irrelevant in comparison?

<comment><USER35> What has the message to do with the messenger, in this case? Sure we should be skeptical to all sources - media, individuals, government. Isn't this common sense? The presented information, however, stands on its own, no matter who the person who delivered them represents.

What exactly would we gain from discussing the messenger? Would that move anything forward?

What if we found out Snowden was paid by some russian agency. What exactly would that change? Would the guys at Stellar say "Oh, the russians paid him? Everyone stop changing passwords and re-issuing certificates, guys, everything's fine; he got paid by the russians", and the slides with router passwords would suddenly disappear from the face of earth?

I hope it's the language barrier and I'm failing to understand your point.

<comment><USER15> You're probably correct that it's the language barrier. The message has very little to do with the messenger, and I can't see who's claimed otherwise.

The difference seems to be about whether we SHOULD discuss the messenger. Assange still has the power to decide what to publish, and maybe more importantly when to publish it. Everyone who has a message to convey will wait for the right time to do so. This is true for political statements, for press releases, for when you ask your girlfriend to marry you or for when you tell your parents that you failed an exam. It would be silly not to accept that Assange cares about timing.

A discussion about the messenger shouldn't be seen as a dicussion about the truthfulness of the message. For example: The Russian government accused the Ukrainian government of being fascists, and one of their excuses for entering Crimea was that they needed to protect the Crimean Tatars from these fascists. But the Tatars are pro-Ukrainian, and many of them fled when the Russians took control. Those who remained are being harassed, and there are Tatars who were even denied re-entry to Crimea after having traveled to Ukraine. Sure, there are far-right extremists in Ukraine. Of course there are. But the Russians didn't want to admit that the phenomenon is far more prevalent in Russia. Knowledge of the messenger helps us to put all of this into a context.

All I'm saying is that we should be generous enough not to censor discussions just because we're not interested in them. In this case, it means discussions about both the message and the messenger. When combined, the outcomes will provide us with even more information. Ad hominem arguments like "you're obsessed with the messenger" are designed to silence one of these discussions.

<comment><USER36> >A discussion about the messenger shouldn't be seen as a dicussion about the truthfulness of the message.

If it isn't seen as a discussion about the truthfulness of the message, it should be seen as completely worthless gossip. Why would I be discussing Snowden as a person if I don't know him personally and I don't dispute the truth of his disclosures? Can't we pick a prettier celebrity to discuss to no particular end?

The only purpose in gossiping about people who disclose information which nobody seriously disputes is to confuse the simple-minded.

<comment><USER37> > I don't dispute the truth of his disclosures?

That's the problem you should at least be questioning that truth just like you question the truth of what the government tells you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does Ubuntu Touch consume less than Android? - <AUTHOR> http://askubuntu.com/q/476137/82315 <comment><AUTHOR> A comparison between linux and android in general( has a chapter on power management) but its obsolete and doesn't have any benchmarks:

[http://handycodeworks.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/linux_v...](http://handycodeworks.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/linux_versus_android.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: S3 but with append? - <AUTHOR> Ideally, append-only.<p>Basically, what do you do if you want to pool a bunch of streams into a (potentially very large) log file? <comment><USER2> You can use Kinesis Firehose to stream data to S3. It'll buffer data for a while -- you set thresholds based on size of data or time, whichever is hit first -- then it will save the data to S3.

It won't be a single large file, but they'll all have the same prefix based on date. Most data processing tools will let you suck up an entire prefix and treat it like a single file.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you know the size ahead of time, you can use multipart uploads. Otherwise you would have to buffer to disk. you could consider kinesis firehose which had dumping to s3 built in

The google storage api has a mode where you can stream bytes, and it doesn't become visible until you close it(and then can't modify like s3). And unlike s3, it requires a delete permission to be able to overwrite, though with s3 you can turn on versioning and not give deleteobjectversion.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could always parition them into chunks and upload to S3 as individual objects.</comment>


Ask HN: Router resale and FCC certification  - <AUTHOR>

Brainstorming some hardware ideas, and maybe someone has experience with this?
I'm considering low quantity resale of a wireless router with a slight modification (3 wires soldered on the PCB). 1) Would the manufacturer care (Asus)?  Legal reasons I can't do this? 2) Would this modification require FCC certification?
If I sell more than 30 of these, I can justify/finance spinning my own PCB, etc. <comment><USER2> Reading this decision, I would say you're likely to run into issues with the FCC if they were to find out about it:

<http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2008/DA-08-167A1.html>

Relevant quote:

 _If the radio frequency equipment is modified by any party other than the grantee and that party is not working under the authorization of the grantee pursuant to Sec. 2.929(b), the party performing the modification is responsible for compliance of the product with the applicable administrative and technical provisions in this chapter._

In other words, if it's a certified device (has an FCC ID number on the label), you would need to obtain a new certification (new FCC ID) after making your modifications. Doing so would probably eat whatever profits you stand to make (and then some).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link and quote, appreciate the help. From my searching it sounds like the FCC operates off complaints mostly, so maybe low risk if I did it. But I should be able work around this problem. I'm basically just exposing a GPIO to a RJ-45 connector, so I can access some custom hardware.</comment></comment>


Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/body/human-teeth-evolution/ <comment><USER2> As a slight aside from the premise of the article, I was reminded of a story my friend once told me. He is a policeman, and works with the Water Police department in our town.

One day, they got a call from some dirt bikers who were riding in the mangroves beaches across the bay that they had found two skeletons partially buried in the mud. As per standard procedures, a police patrol was dispatched to investigate (which included my friend), and also as per SOP, because the area was a known ancient Aboriginal burial ground, they took an anthropologist out with them as part of the investigative team.

When they got to the site and were approaching the two semi exposed skeletons, the anthropologist said (while still a few feet away from them) "Oh, these pre date local colonial settlement and are probably over a hundred years old".

My policeman friend was curious, and asked her how she could tell even from afar that these were not more current remains, and she said "It's the teeth. There is absolutely no sign of decay caused by sugars in modern diets".

He (and I) never realised the extent of damage done to our teeth by what we eat today.

<comment><USER3> Two thoughts:

1\. They really are no sugar in aboriginal societies? No fruit or carbs?

2\. I know a handful of people who eat Western diets who have zero tooth decay.

Doesn't seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull.

<comment><USER4> "Doesn't seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull."

The confidence of people far away at a different time without any relevant knowledge to dismiss an experienced local on the ground based on flawed high- level logic never ceases to surprise.

<comment><USER3> It's because the story sounds like bullshit.

I have no doubt that you can tell the age of a skull with a close inspection of the teeth. This story was an anthropologist looking at remains from several feet away and claiming that it's aboriginal from the lack of dental decay.

I proposed a few exceptions to that rule. Certainly not a quip about the expertise of the anthropologist, but rather the accuracy of the story.

<comment><USER5> I agree it sounds like bullshit.

However, I have listened to a talk by a lady (she consults on murdered cadavers) who can tell which season a body died in by analyzing the teeth! Apparently there is a lot there.

<comment><USER6> That I can believe, assuming a detailed analysis in a lab. But snap judging from a distance? Cavities are more common in modern populations than before, but hardly omnipresent. I do find it an amusing thought that apparently my skeleton would be assigned a more distant past simply because I am filling free. :D

<comment><USER7> It might be not that hard for someone who's literal job is examining skeletal remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Teeth are annoying. Mine are ok, but as I get older I start to notice their deterioration.

I've always felt that if there was a part of our anatomy that we should think of replacing completely with an artificial design, it's teeth. We already do so now (at great expense), but it's literally one or two teeth replaced but I'm thinking more along the lines of replacing every single one with something stronger and more efficient for it's intended purpose.

<comment><USER9> This used to be quite common. In Ireland for example back in the 1970s about 30% of the population had no natural teeth whatsoever. It used to be a common thing for young women to have all their teeth pulled and replaced with dentures before being married. It was seen as a desirable trait for en eligible bride to be.

<comment><USER10> Do you have a citation on that, I'm genuinely curious about the stats on that.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about Ireland, but I did recently look up the same statistics for the UK: [https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical- beauty](https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical-beauty) You can source it to the UK national dental surveys (which wouldn't be surprising if they covered Ireland as well), for example, [https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1](https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you haven't heard of orthotropics, it sounds a bit pseuodoscience-ey, but it attempts to solve the crooked teeth issue by enlargening the jaw rather than through braces. Thus far, I have to say that I think there's some truth to exerting a little pressure to my maxilla/mandible, and if anything I can breathe much better, which for me is a bigger win than getting straighter teeth.

<comment><USER13> I think the real science here is Orthognathic Surgery [1].

I mean - I'm not an orthodontist or a surgeon, but once growth has stopped in the palate as a teenager or young adult I'd be skeptical of claims around bone growth or sculpting. Do you have any resources?

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

<comment><USER14> I'm 34 and have personally experienced significant changes in my face thanks to orthotropic pressure / mewing, and have the photos to prove it.

In addition, my bite has been stable without a retainer, whereas in the past I've had braces twice.

My background is I had an undiagnosed mild tongue tie that I discovered a bit over a year ago. I previously couldn't press my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which led to a tongue thrust on swallowing, which led to an open bite, and my nasal breathing was very constrained.

<comment><USER15> Care to link to a good methodology? I've been intrigued by this but there's a lot of conflicting information out there

<comment><USER13> I would go and schedule an interview with an orthodontist instead of relying on the internet, here. "Orthrotropics" appears to be a registered trademark, which is, at the very least, a yellow flag.

A cursory search on details has broken this down to extractive / surgical vs. non-extractive / non-surgical orthodontics, the latter of which has proven to be effective before the palate and growth plates have fused -- in children.

Talk to somebody you trust with a degree in the field.

<comment><USER14> Orthodontists are incentivized against embracing orthotropics by their current knowledge and business model. They prefer interventions they can charge for (braces, slenderizing) over practices which can be adopted without intervention. This may be why the field emerged from dentists rather than orthodontists.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" — Upton Sinclair

<comment><USER16> > This may be why the field emerged from dentists rather than orthodontists.

Orthodontists _are_ dentists.

<comment><USER14> I'm referring to dentists who do not practice orthodontistry, and therefore do not have careers hinging on the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Weston Price talked a lot about this

[https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional- diets...](https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional- diets/ancient-dietary-wisdom-for-tomorrows-children/)

<comment><USER18> I highly recommend reviewing Prices account of his studies in the field: [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html)

His conclusion was quite different: that the cause was a lack of nutrients in the modern diet.

It is difficult to point to an example from his work that would clearly rule out the theory of chewing in this article. Sugar and white flour that he pointed to are both easy to chew and low in nutrients.

However, it is hard to think of lack of chewing as the primary factor in tooth decay, and Price was focused first on decay rather than crowding. Price did note a very strong relation between decay and crowding, and in that light it is difficult to view lack of chewing as the primary force in either decay or crowding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A dentist told me that eating too many soft foods as a kid is often the reason for crooked and weak teeth, and that parents should feed their kids tougher whole foods, like apples, meat, carrots, nuts, etc.

<comment><USER20> Definitely true for muscle and jaw bone density.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121) for some interesting past discussion

</comment><comment><USER22> What are the aesthetic consequences of having a more developed jaw from chewing tough foods as you grow? Given how sensitive people are to cosmetics when it comes to their teeth, would doing this to your child positively impact their dental outcomes at the expense of conformance with modern norms of physical attractiveness, given trends like how having a small face is seen as attractive in Asia, or soft jawlines for women?

I pose this since it is likely many people would worry about aesthetics more than actual dental health, and also because the social consequences of being/not being conventionally attractive can have significant impact on people's lives as well, so answering this sort of stuff is probably necessary for actual behavior change.

<comment><USER23> There is surgery in Asia to shave the jawbones to achieve a slimmer face, so I'd expect that this kind of information would lead to an increase of giving soft foods to children in order for them to have the slim face that matches Asian beauty aesthetics. After all, orthodontics are much less expensive and painful than jawbone reduction surgery...

Example surgery site: [https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring- surgery/ja...](https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring-surgery/jaw- reduction.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't an alternative explanation just that well-aligned jaws and spaced teeth are selected for via both (A) natural selection, esp. in predator species (well-aligned jaw = more efficient prey capture, chewing, defense) and (B) sexual selection as a holdover result of the first? As in, if ancestors relied heavily on their jaws and, behaviourally, a selective preference for well- aligned jaws and teeth helped favor offspring with the same, that selective behavior itself would be selected for -- and could perhaps persist even after "well-aligned jaws" were no longer a deciding factor in objective fitness?

So now there's significantly less actual natural selective pressure on well- aligned jaws / teeth in human populations, meaning phenotypic variability in human jaw / teeth is simply the result of genetic drift in a very large population. The holdover, of course, being there's a market for and industry around striving for perfect jaws and smiles in Hollywood because we have a behavioural (but no longer naturally selective) predisposition towards that signal of health and fitness.

... that's always sort of been my mental model of orthodontia as an industry, at least.

<comment><USER24> I think a stronger argument, along similar lines, would be to observe that the human skull underwent pretty drastic architectural changes in the last 200K years because of the rapid growth in size of the brain cavity. And, since the importance of teeth fell behind the importance of intelligence, not enough selective pressure existed to "fix" the teeth given the other radical skull changes.

<comment><USER25> In addition, let's not forget the invention of cooked food. Soft cooked food no longer requires a massive jaw with jaw muscle attached to the top of the skull. Furthermore, the higher sugar content of the (post)agrarian diet creates a healthy environment for bacteria.

"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human" has a lot to say on this subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My dentist told me the reason I never needed braces, but all my friends did was from wearing a mouth guard from all the ice hockey we played growing up. They aren't perfectly straight, but except for 2 teeth, very close to it. Every dentist I ever had was like, "Did you ever have braces?"

</comment><comment><USER27> Misaligned teeth are not the worst problem IMHO. The fact teeth of most of the humans decay in less than a lifetime and this is considered normal feels much more weird to me.

<comment><USER28> The average human lifetime has more than doubled in the past few hundred years.

<comment><USER29> But average is a useless statistic since many people who survived childhood lived to a similar age as today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the argument of orthotropics[0], bad tongue posture, is much more convincing.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU)

</comment><comment><USER31> This article seems to be part of the recent wave of content about orthotropics/mewing. I'm not sure why it seems to have picked up so much recently.

<comment><USER32> Orthotropics and mewing was widely discussed on incel communities and now that the prominence of these communities has grown, the topic is trickling to the mainstream.

<comment><USER33> Why would they be popular with incels?

<comment><USER34> Why is it surprising that unattractive people try to become more attractive?

<comment><USER16> My impression of many incels is that their looks are not their problem.

<comment><USER34> It's not like their opinions are written on their foreheads. Hit on a woman on tinder she won't know. Hit on a woman in a bar she won't know. Clearly the rejection is for simply being unattractive.

<comment><USER35> Personality is often very obvious through body language.

<comment><USER34> Oh certainly. Having a boring or timid or otherwise unattractive personality can be a big hindrance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My teeth aren't that bad but are bad. My upper teeth are nearly perfect but my bottom middle 4 teeth are a little messed up. Most people can tell because I expose my upper teeth while talking, but if I smile it's pretty obvious they're not aesthetic... For years I've been ok with this, my parents never showed me to an orthodontist. But recently I'm getting more and more self- conscious about this every day. I searched a little about this and saw that, being 22, fixing them at this age is insanely expensive (up to 10k). I wonder if someone went through this treatment and can chime in whether this 10k is worth it?

<comment> barry-cotter I'm 35 and have had braces for over six months now. I kind of regret it because it's purely cosmetic and a massive pain in the behind. I also cheaped out and got train tracks instead of Invisalign. Don't do that.

Seriously consider medical tourism. I live in China so total cost is going to be just under $3,000. You might be able to go to Mexico or Thailand every two months for your teeth cheaper than getting it done locally. If you get crowns (veneers?) on your bottom incisors you can definitely get that done cheaper in Thailand than the US, including flights and a two week holiday.

<comment><USER36> Ah that makes sense! Will definitely look into medical tourism to Mexico. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Also see Weston Price's research from traveling around the world. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price)

</comment><comment><USER38> You ever wonder when they show a tribe from G-d knows where that had barely any contact with our civilization, how come they've got perfect white teeth and they've got them all? Nothing crooked, nothing missing.

<comment><USER39> I think a big part of it is that once you have even a minor cavity, eating anything sweet hurts like hell, so people just don't eat sweet stuff when they're older and have lost their baby teeth.

<comment><USER40> The feeling of a candy bar getting just right into the cracks of your molars is a great motivator for avoiding such things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting.

I was born without "Wisdom teeth", which my Dentist claims is widely accepted as human evolution. (apparently the number of people born without them is growing)

But I also have a bad, and getting worse "popping jaw" issue. where my jaw pops (loud enough to make my ear ring for a while after) or locks up when under too much pressure or opened too wide.

Her advice is to eat soft food.... which seems to go against what TFA suggests we should be doing.

<comment><USER42> > apparently the number of people born without them is growing

I don't see what the selective pressure for this would be, since people with wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them, so there's no real difference in terms of reproductive fitness right?

<comment><USER43> > people with wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them

I think this is mainly a US and Australian thing: [https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need- to-g...](https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need-to-get-your- wisdom-teeth-removed-ever)

In Australia it's particularly bad. During a checkup my dentist casually mentioned how he'd be removing mine (at a later date), even though he could provide no reason for doing so. The cheeky bugger just assumed I wouldn't ask why!

Since then my trust in dentists has been further eroded by this Cochrane review [https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and- pol...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and-polish- periodontal-health-adults) that concludes with:

 _Authors ' conclusions: For adults without severe periodontitis who regularly access routine dental care, routine scale and polish treatment makes little or no difference to gingivitis, probing depths and oral health-related quality of life over two to three years follow-up when compared with no scheduled scale and polish treatments (high-certainty evidence). There may also be little or no difference in plaque levels over two years (low-certainty evidence). Routine scaling and polishing reduces calculus levels compared with no routine scaling and polishing, with six-monthly treatments reducing calculus more than 12-monthly treatments over two to three years follow-up (high-certainty evidence), although the clinical importance of these small reductions is uncertain. Available evidence on the costs of the treatments is uncertain. The studies did not assess adverse effects (of the scale and polish treatment)._

I know it's a bit of a joke that HN commentators assume they know more than the experts, so just to be clear: I consider the experts here to be the study authors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In addition to all the other arguments here (more chewing for bigger jaw development), I have another theory about tooth decay.

I think that pre-civilization humans did not eat much sweets past adolescence. This is because, as soon as a minor cavity starts developing, it hurts like hell to put anything sweet in your mouth. Sweet stuff was for children and adolescents, then we just stopped eating it.

<comment><USER44> I never had pain putting sweet stuff in my mouth when I had cavities.

<comment><USER39> I think that many toothpastes make our teeth less sensitive. I think it is supposed to reduce pain, but it can backfire...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This article implies that if you can't change your diet then you could achieve similar results with chewing exercises. The comments below mention _mewing_ , but I suspect greater force would be better. Googling "chew toys for adults" gave interesting results but they are mainly used for anxiety and ADHD. Curious if anyone knows of a chew appliance for children or adults that would address the issues mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER46> Crooked teeth "run in my family" but mine are pretty straight.

I always attributed it to my obsession with ripping my teeth out as a kid. Weird, I know. I figured that it gave my teeth room to grow.

After reading this I'm curious if it was due to my parents doing baby-led weaning with me. They started it pretty young and always fed me whatever they were eating.

</comment><comment><USER47> Human teeth development changed sometime during the industrial revolution when women were expected to work outside the home and breastfeeding norms were shortened from 3-4 years to more like 1 year. Or that's at least one interesting hypothesis from someone looking at old skulls.

<comment><USER48> Do you have a reference for this school of thought?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> As always, prevention is more important than treatment. Teeth problems can cause problems with mouth (lips), mandible and even facial structures. Braces can fix teeth if done properly, but it can hardly fix these secondary issues, especially for adults.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ok, we know it's messed up. But, the question is how can we do better?

</comment><comment><USER51> My hypothesis is that all the sugar from modern diets creates an environment where bacteria can grow and mess with the alignment of your teeth.

See the British and how the introduction of sugar into their tea created so many crooked sets of teeth.

</comment><comment><USER50> Yeah, wisdom teeth are so annoying!

</comment><comment><USER52> Excess protein intake (vast majority of diets, not exclusive to keto or paleo, etc.)

<comment><USER53> The article claimed that modern diets don't put enough strain on the jaw in childhood, so the jaw doesn't grow as much and there's more crowding. Has nothing to do with protein intake.

<comment><USER54> I suppose meat, as a protein source, is typically l chewier that fruit or veg.

<comment><USER55> Meat is easy on teeth, what traditionally wore down teeth in human history were rough unprocessed grains, tough vegetable fibers, nuts, and the use of teeth as tools (working plant fibers for example). Of course the inclusion of sand or grit in food also contributed. People also chewed a lot of bone in history, either whole or as with Aboriginal Australians, as a mash of whole animals.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=p...](https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=ppub)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> >I remember asking my wife not to cut our daughters' meat into such small pieces when they were young. "Let them chew," I begged. She replied that she'd rather pay for braces than have them choke. I lost that argument.

If a distinguished professor in dental antropology can't stand up for himself for his daughters welfare in his field of study he's lost a lot of respect from me.

<comment><USER57> I see what you're saying, but standing up for something and winning the argument is not the same thing, and he only said that he lost the argument.

A scenario where one's wife doesn't believe in one's own scientific findings is another matter, which might ellicit thoughts about "standing up for yourself". Maybe that's what you were reacting to.</comment></comment>


EU climate law could cause deforestation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/eu-climate-law-could-cause-catastrophic-deforestation <comment><USER2> With the current Copyright law plus other proposed things, do they not think about consequences...</comment>


Charles B. Wang, co-founder of Computer Associates, has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/obituaries/charles-b-wang-dead.html <comment><USER2> 10+ years ago, I had the opportunity to pitch to Charles and his wife.

His advice to us was stop trying to raise money and "Just fucking do it."

If you've never read the history of the company he founded, Computer Associates, it's an interesting story of growth by M&A - at one time it was the largest software company in the world, ahead of Microsoft. [http://www.company-histories.com/Computer-Associates- Interna...](http://www.company-histories.com/Computer-Associates- International-Inc-Company-History.html)

RIP Charles.

<comment><USER3> Interesting link!

> After an initial failure, he succeeded with CA-SORT, a program enabling > computers to sort through data quickly and economically. Wang's SORT offered > competition to a similar IBM program, and Wang convinced many businesses > with IBM hardware to change over to CA's product. Mainframe software was > licensed rather than sold, and the recurring revenue from the licenses of > the SORT software was a great boost to Computer Associates.

<comment> le-mark Interesting to note that legacy mainframe sorting isn't just moving values around in memory like all the algorithms we mostly study today. Mainframes back then had vanishingly small amounts of RAM (compared to what we have today) and had to use tape and later disk (dasd) for any real storage. So this type of sort is known as disk or tape sort. One "nicety" was that most records on tape (and subsequently disk) were "fixed" length, so could count on advancing x number of bytes reliably for next/prev record etc.

It was a different era for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sold my first spreadsheet with macros build in SuperCalc 1 to the dutch government. What a time.

<comment> java-man Do you know if they are still using it?</comment></comment>