AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU? - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15787/amd-ryzen-5-3600-review-amazons-best-selling-cpu <comment><USER2> For several (3) years now I have had no reason to update my desktop with a i7-6700k because single core performance has remained relatively flat (in fact my particular processor has quite good single core rating still). I would have liked increased cores but the reduction in single-threaded performance wasn't worth it. Zen 2 changed all of that...

Now EVERY single Zen 2 chip is at least smidge faster than my 6700k in single threaded benchmarks AND close to 100% faster in multi-core benchmarks. So for $180 I can buy something that takes a huge meaningful shit on my (fairly nice at the time) 6700k (~$350 when I purchased it).

That's just crazy to me how much performance I can get for so little. I'm going to buy something beastly with at least 16 cores, but! I also plan on building a little cluster using mini-itx B550 boards and the 3300x. In fact, I'll probably build the little cluster first, because each 3300X is still faster than my 6700k and the total cost per system will be like $450!!one! It hasn't been since the orig Core-2-Duo days I've gotten such a meaningful upgrade for so little. Plus, when Zen 3 comes out it's a drop in upgrade.

AMD is delivering insane value to their consumers, and I love it. I just wish I could buy a Zen 2 chip in a laptop that doesn't look like it was made for a fourteen year old (no offense to any fourteen year olds). I heard someone say the lack of 4k and more professional style laptops could be Intel back-channel fuckery, but... there's also a chance no-one expected AMD, in a single fucking generation of CPUs, to sweep every single market.

<comment><USER3> >> I just wish I could buy a Zen 2 chip in a laptop that doesn't look like it was made for a fourteen year old (no offense to any fourteen year olds)

I just wish I could buy a decent motherboard that doesn't look like a 14yo's first attempt at drawing an f-35. My current rig does this weird glowing thing at night when it is supposed to be off. For my next machine I would honestly pay more to NOT have RGB support.

<comment><USER4> Check Asrock Rack series motherboards, like [https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X...](https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U) (am4) or [https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X...](https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X399D8A-2T) (tr4). It is minus the RGB and plus IPMI.

<comment><USER3> Those are server boards. They lack some basic 'desktop' features like AIO control. I also need more than a pair of USB connections.

I did get a laugh out of the integrated graphics, probably the lowest specs on the market: "DDR4 16MB" \- that's not a typo. I'm a little interested in how that is accomplished. Can one allocated a 16MB chunk of DDR4?

<comment><USER4> Server or workstation; AIO falls gently into RGB gamer territory.

The integrated graphics is for BMC, not for the console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is absolutely on top of the Performance/$ chart on PassMark: [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html)

It offers exceptional value. Pair that with a GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER which is at the top of Performance/$ chart for GPUs: [https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html](https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html)

And you have a champion of a workstation right there.

<comment><USER6> Does anyone know if the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, combined with a 3600x, is able to power a 4k monitor at 60hz?

Note: this is NOT for gaming. Just everyday workflow and dev environments in 4k, 60hz.

<comment><USER7> If you go on NVIDIA's website you can find the specifications of the card where it states the maximum resolution and refresh rate is as follows:

7680x4320@120Hz [1]

[1] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics- cards/gtx-1650...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics- cards/gtx-1650-super/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is easily the best bang for buck CPU on the market, that allows pretty much 99% of workflows that require a PC. Gaming? Check. Programming? Check. Graphics design? Check. Video editing: also check (but on the lower end, true that).

It has also some really fantastic thermals, it does not produce that much heat. I use it in a fully fanless / passive cooling setup and it works great.

<comment><USER9> I just built a new machine around this CPU back in March too. I built a new machine specifically for playing Half-Life: Alyx, and couldn't be happier with this CPU.

My thermals were pretty great with the stock CPU cooler, but I ended up going with a Noctua NH-U14S which might be a little overkill, but when playing Half- Life: Alyx, I stay between 45-60c which seems pretty good to me. The game runs at a perfect framerate on High settings with the AMD 5700XT, 32GB of DDR4 RAM on the Vive Pro.

I may end up upgrading to a Ryzen 7 4XXX series when they come out, but for now, this CPU is performing great. Def best bang for your buck.

<comment><USER10> > but I ended up going with a Noctua NH-U14S which might be a little overkill

Yes. I have the same cooler* on a Threadripper 3970X with 280W TDP. The only thing that it can't handle is a sustained all-core load for >10-15 minutes. Even at all-core load it still turbos above base clock (but less than max turbo).

Technically a different SKU with a larger base plate, but otherwise the same design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Price for performance. It plays the latest games at high resolution without being a CPU bottleneck. In gaming benchmarks the 3600 is usually within a few fps of the 3800x. [https://youtu.be/9OXbhgnHvXQ](https://youtu.be/9OXbhgnHvXQ)

<comment><USER12> It's more than price for performance. It's also a very high absolute performance. Especially in games, where something like a Threadripper processor is not faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The 3700X is very slightly lower on performance per $ but it does have 8 cores and 16 threads so if you're going to be compiling code it's totally worth it.

The 3900x has been selling for $400 which is also amazing value.

Intel CPU market is behind after many years. Long live AMD design + Taiwan manufacturing.

<comment><USER14> > Intel CPU market is behind after many years. Long live AMD design + Taiwan > manufacturing.

Except Intel still delivers better and more consistent gaming performance largely based on better overall architecture (L3, IMC and what connects these).

Both Intel and AMD are billion-dollar publicly traded companies. I don't get why people would fanboy either of them. I don't want AMD to win, because then they are going to abuse their position, just like Intel did. Conversely, I don't want Intel to win. Two players in a market is already problematic; trying for one player is just suicidal.

<comment><USER15> I don't think anyone actually wants AMD to "win", regardless of how they express themselves. What they want is AMD to have a lead on Intel, since it's been so long since that's been the case, and we'll all benefit from Intel not being continuously in a hefty lead, like it has been for decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bought one for a new PC back in January. The value is great and I haven't noticed a single bottleneck. I don't do anything too intensive, and the games I play haven't stressed it that hard. The best part of the upgrade has been Rust compile times. Coming from an older ThinkPad, it's a huge change.

</comment><comment><USER17> AMD is making good CPUs, but i had an issue with Ryzen 5 1600 that left me with a bad experience with AMD. It's was my first ever build and i used this CPU, all good, but from time to time the Linux Desktop i use will freeze, hard reboot is the only fix. I noticed that this happen when i left the PC idle and the screen turn off, i tried everything and just accepted that this is a bug in KDE/Ubuntu/Kernel/Motherboard/RAM or GPU, not in my wildest thinking thought it would be the CPU.

Turns out it was the CPU and how crappy AMD handle C-states that save energy, i had to turn them completely off and that resolved the issue (In AMD defense, freezing the entire OS do save a lot of energy)

This was exactly 2 years ago, and i had the issue for almost a year before figuring out the fix. I wonder if the new generation have this problem too?

<comment><USER18> I've just been through this exact thing with a 3200G on Ubuntu 19 and 20. Took months to disgnose. Extremely painful. Ended up replacing the RAM and motherboard before finally determining the problem was with the CPU. Disabling C-states helped but didn't resolve the issue. Tried a bunch of other things too, none of which ultimately worked.

In the end I switched to a 3700X; so far the problem hasn't reoccurred. No doubt it will now that I've posted about it (fool me twice, shame on me).

<comment><USER19> I stopped using Ubuntu 10 years ago, when I had a weird issue. Out of nowhere computer locked up and required a hard reset. It took a while when I figured out that issue originated with Intel WiFi card. I eventually found the bug, it turned out that kernel crashed whenever the adapter sensed an 802.11n packet (the protocol was very new at the time so it wasn't everywhere yet). Ubuntu still decided to go ahead with the release, yet hold off on including freshly released major version of Open Office (I think version 3), because of stability. This was extremely frustrating, because there was no fix and no option to rollback to older version. So that was when I dropped this POS and used a different distro. I'm wondering if that's again Ubuntu issue and not CPU.

<comment><USER18> Yeah. Who knows. It's just an anecdote, really. But one that hopefully saves someone months of tedium.

<comment><USER19> There were more issues, but that one was what pushed me over the edge.

I constantly had problems when attaching/deataching external monitor to my laptop, once in a while it wouldn't switch, or various parts of desktop (like task bar etc) would move around.

When they introduced PulseAudio, it wasn't ready at the time, so there were a lot of audio problems back then.

Overall the experience with Ubuntu was that every new release was taking some old bugs away and replacing them with new ones.

I hope things improved since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a pretty awesome chip. I bought one the moment they came out with a B450 motherboard. It sounds like I won't be upgrading to Zen 3 with it, but that's probably fine. It's more than enough for the tasks I do.

With that said, once the 3300x is out, I would likely go that route with a cheaper a320 motherboard. This would bring the cost of the cpu/motherboard to about $175 which is terrific value, and leaves you with more money for other components.

<comment><USER21> 3300x won't work on anything lower than b5xx, afaik.

<comment><USER10> Ryzen 3000-series will run on B450+ and X470+, based on current specs. Obviously, at some point there will be a future motherboard release that will change the +'s to ranges.

[https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press...](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th- page-008.jpg)

Motherboards don't need to have the xx. There is only B550. There is no other B5xx.

<comment><USER21> But B5xx I also meant X570. Anyway, I am almost 100% sure, it won't work on A320, as the someone in the message abovedesired to run it on. And it is unclear if there will be updates for the BIOS for cheaper B450s.

<comment><USER10> Again, [https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press...](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th- page-008.jpg)

A320 supports Ryzen 1000-series, 2000-series, 2000-series APUs, and 3000-series APUs.

A320 does not support Ryzen 3000-series, and future Ryzen processors.

I can keep reading the linked chart for you, if you'd like.

<comment><USER22> Some A320 boards actually do support Ryzen 3000 with a BIOS update, like the one below. I wouldn't really recommend getting them because you'll probably need to flash the BIOS, but they can be used.

[https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/A320M-GAMING- PRO#sup...](https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/A320M-GAMING-PRO#support- cpu)

<comment><USER10> MSI seems to have committed to different support than AMD has. Gamers Nexus has covered the AMD chipset stuff recently to great detail.[0]

There are several issues that come together to make it difficult to support all AM4 CPUs across all the AM4 motherboards. MSI seems to have committed to their AM4 motherboards supporting all AM4 CPUs, and they are having to perform some gyrations (and potentially some reverse-engineering of AMD-supplied binary blobs) to meet their claims.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X-8vZtml8&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X-8vZtml8&t=0s) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JluNkjdpxFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JluNkjdpxFo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bought the Ryzen 9 3900X (12-core) for my new work PC and it absolutely blows anything I've previously used out the water. I was considering a top- range i9 but for the price and performance I'm happy to have gone with the Ryzen and am now an AMD fan.

</comment><comment><USER24> The bundled cooler with the Ryzen helps a lot as well, as those low tech hunks of metal are crazy expensive.

<comment><USER20> I find the included cooler for the 3600 not so great. I bought one the month it came out, and was hitting pretty high temps when creating h264 using only CPU. I tried applying paste before buying a better cooler. I think 3600x and up have much better coolers.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the X series processors come with the Wraith Prism which is a really nice cooler. My processor isn't overclocked but the fact that I've never seen it get above 55 degC with the prism is impressive.

<comment><USER26> >never seen it get above 55 degC with the prism is impressive.

Pretty sure I've seen 75+ on mine 3700x

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I find it more interesting that AMD Ryzen chips are the _top 6_ best selling CPU's.

</comment><comment><USER28> Last summer, the 3600X was my move away from Intel after 20+ years of building strictly Intel machines at home.

Here the build: [https://pcpartpicker.com/b/p9D2FT](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/p9D2FT)

</comment><comment><USER29> The newer AMD machines are amazing. Its the second coming of Moore's law, but for core counts instead of clock speed. I just put together a machine with a 3900x at home and it is about 2/3 the speed of the three year old Intel Xeon machine with dual processors and 28 cores I use at work. The 3900x was around $450; the processors in the Intel machine were around $8k.

I only wish the AMD desktop and workstation machines could support more RAM. I have 256GB on the Intel machine, whereas 128GB was the max for the 3900x. I think the threadripper line only goes up to 256GB, which seems a little low for machines which such a large core count.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does AMD have any plans for an integrated GPU?

They make great stuff, but the value proposition disappears pretty quickly if you aren't building a gaming rig/workstation that already requires a dedicated GPU.

<comment><USER31> Yes, they call them APUs

[https://www.amd.com/en/processors/athlon-and-a- series](https://www.amd.com/en/processors/athlon-and-a-series)

An 8-core zen 2 APU is expected

[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd- ryzen-7-4700g-desktop-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd- ryzen-7-4700g-desktop-apu-pic)

<comment><USER32> and the Ryzen 3 & 5 with a "G" label.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe slightly off-topic, but how do y'all feel about the Epyc for workstation-type workloads? I really want ECC for my next workstation, and my understanding is that Ryzen/Threadripper ECC support is very hit or miss (the common failure mode is that it will claim it's on, but not actually detect or correct memory errors). But on the other hand, these Epyc chips sure seem slow on paper compared to consumer-grade stuff. I am not sure it matters, though, and am interested in what HN's thoughts are there.

<comment><USER34> Asus has an X570 with supported ECC don't remember the exact middl model name, but it had WS in the name.

I do wish memtest86 had a rowhammer style test, as that should tell if ECC is working

<comment><USER33> memtest86 (the non-open-source one) has a rowhammer test. It passes on my non- ECC machine though.

[https://www.memtest86.com/tech_individual-test- descr.html](https://www.memtest86.com/tech_individual-test-descr.html)

<comment><USER10> Overclock the RAM for the test?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been looking into building a pc this last week after almost 2 decades on Mac laptops. My motivation is that I'm playing around with Blender and my old MacBook is not having a fun time with it.

It looked to me like a modern AMD combo is the way to go - is that the general thinking these days? Are there issues you need to watch out for if you're going to use them with Linux?

<comment><USER36> I built my first gaming computer two years ago and have been ravenously following the scene ever since. In my opinion, AMD is the best price for value in both single and multithreaded workloads, and becomes only slightly outclassed in single threaded workloads at the extreme high end ie 9900k+ models. AMD seems to be particularly good in high end multithreaded workloads like graphics processing.

It's important to note most CPU benchmarks are utter trash and many are on the payrolls of intel including CPU benchmark.net (thanks google for granting them incredible SEO).

My current build is still an 8700k but my next will most likely be AMD for a mostly gaming workload.

<comment><USER35> That's excellent info thanks. Would you mind sharing ballpark figures on how much it cost? How did you go about choosing motherboard etc? I haven't built a pc from scratch since the late 90s, so I'm a bit lost with it these days! Back then it was a matter of what compatible components you could even source...

<comment><USER36> One thing to checkout is YouTube build videos, you can often find ~2 minute shorts of a professional installing your exact part into your exact motherboard. This really removed a lot of the anxiety and trepidation I had while installing parts (it was my first time ever). Funny enough I plugged my monitor into the motherboard directly (when you're supposed to plug it into the GPU) and had a black screen panic until I figured it out.

As far as figuring out what parts I would recommend three strategies:

1) start at reddit.com/r/buildapc and reddit.com/r/buildapcforme and checkout some of the threads at price points you are interested in. These builds will include pcpartpicker lists which are a tool that checks compatibility and general prices for you through a web ui. These builds are not perfect but will give you a general idea for how people are commonly building for the given ~6 month cycle. They all have their own biases, some like to save costs by getting a slightly weaker CPU, some spend more on the motherboard for future proofing, some need more storage so they throw in a giant SSD etc.

2) once you get a feel for the common components you'll want to pick out your main two items: the cpu and gpu. You'll already know your options from step one, so this step will be the icing on the cake. As long as you get a powerful cpu and gpu you will most likely be thrilled with your build (also an SSD and decent monitor for completeness). The cpu choice will also help you select a motherboard since that is really the biggest compatibility check throughout the whole process. Watch a video or two if you need help making a selection and to understand how to get your best value. I strongly recommend Paul's hardware videos or Linus tech tips for a little more entertainment value.

3) now you're ready to go on pcpartpicker and pick your full parts list with all the secondary pieces that complete your build, first the motherboard, your ram, SSD, psu, and case. From 1 you already have an idea of what you should go for, but now is your chance to tweak things around. If you don't understand the difference between an nvme SSD or a sata SSD look it up, just like with software development, and you'll find it easy to make an informed decision. Remember your cpu and gpu were the biggest difference makers so all of these decisions are relatively minor as long as you stick with reputable brands.

Iterate with 3 as much as you'd like. Post the build and see what people say about it. When you feel satisfied buy it and build it with the short YouTube videos demonstrating the exact parts you selected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have the 1600. When comparing it to an i7 from a few years ago, although PassMark says the 1600 is faster, the i7 with integrated graphics on a laptop feels much snappier against my desktop with an NVIDIA GPU and twice as much RAM using Manjaro XFCE.

Just anecdotal but I'm still on the fence between Ryzen vs I series.

</comment><comment><USER38> I built 5 workstations with these CPUs and RTX 2060 Super GPUs last Friday. Love the price/performance and power usage. Would have went with the GTX 1650 Super but wanted the raytracing and tensor cores (we use both).

</comment><comment><USER39> Very unfortunate that no ML/math acceleration works with these chipsets.

The standard on the software side is CUDA..which is nvidia only.

<comment><USER40> Could you expand on this?

I'm looking to gift a laptop that's good for ML stuff. What features should I be looking at?

Any specific recommendations?

<comment><USER26> You'd be looking for something with a discrete Nvidia graphics card with as many CUDA cores as possible.

Recommendations...depends on $$$...high end laptops are expensive as hell. Maybe something like a 1660 Ti?

Broadly I'd avoid ML work on a laptop though due to thermals

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> And despite all these amazing reviews. AMD still isn't selling much CPU or APU at all. I am wondering why. On Steam Survey [1], AMD grew from November 2018 at 17.5% to April 2020 at 21.9%. That is less than 5% increase in total. ( I was actually surprised it had ˜18% in 2018 ) And despite EPYC offering, [2] it barely make 5% of the Server market even if AMD had zero revenue from console.

Why is that? Enthusiast has been overly excited they ignored the actual reality? Or what other factor at play? Inertia ?

[1] [https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware- Softw...](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software- Survey-Welcome-to-Steam)

[2] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd- reports-q1-2020-ear...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd- reports-q1-2020-earnings)

<comment><USER42> Most people don't buy new processors every year, and pre-built machines (especially laptops) are slower to switch from Intel. Slow adaptation is part product lifecycle (laptop lead time is on the order of a year) and part customer demand: Non-enthusiasts consumers still want their i7, and businesses will often have requirements for Intel specifically, and will have to work to change that, if anyone internal even cares to.

<comment><USER43> This. Some of my friends are still running Intel's 4690k, which was released all the way in 2014, as that suffices for most of their basic tasks and games at low-mid settings, as a lot of gaming is GPU-bound.

With the typical 5-year upgrade cycle on CPUs for most non-hardware-enthusiast gamers and general-purpose users, I would expect the AMD share in Steam stats to drastically increase by about 2022.

Also, mind you, Steam numbers are not really representative of the overall market. Most online hardware retailers reported 50%+ of their high-end CPU sales to be AMD in Q1 2020.[0]

0\. [https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-market-share- gain-q1-2020/](https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-market-share-gain-q1-2020/)</comment></comment></comment>


DHH reviews, refactors and shows BaseCamp code. - <AUTHOR> http://www.vimeo.com/1752667

<comment><USER2> "The best programmers are the ones who write the most legacy software. The best programmers are the ones who learned the most from their projects and go on to be better and better."

The second bit is true. The first bit is almost certainly not. DHH makes some good points in this talk, but it sure seems as though most of his experience is on projects that he either started or was with from the early days, and that he's been spared the pleasure of working on codebases where 'svn annotate' shows names of people who have been gone from the project for years.</comment>


CIO's #1 cloud choice: App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://intacct.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-morgan-stanley-research-cloud.html

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest I would have thought EC2 would be way in the lead. Azure is still only beginning to kickstart the marketing machine.</comment>


Show HN: Meta API for Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and Box - <AUTHOR> http://cloudrail.com

<comment><USER2> This looks interesting. I've just build Dropbox and box integration for Matterhorn.io, The next big one is Google Drive and OneDrive.

I've only had a quick glance over the site, its a little hard to navigate but the general idea looks great. I'd love to find out more, who's the best person to contact?

Edit --

Ok, so I signed up. I really hate it when products set my password, its incredibly annoying, please don't do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Please contact us via firstname.lastname@example.com. Happy to answer any questions. And sorry for the preset password ;) We'll change that with the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The idea is interesting , it would be awesome if you guys provide support for other languages too . Greaat work

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What languages are you especially looking for?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now available for JavaScript & Node.js. Open for any feedback...

</comment><comment><USER4> smart idea!</comment>


No Email please, we're collaborating - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rohitsharma.com/hacking-email/ <comment><USER2> Basically, it is saying use the twitter model, not the email model. Let people choose what to receive and encourage them to publish everything globally (yes, with private messages if you really need it).</comment>


Does Baseball Need Umpires?  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469381382610114.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's only a matter of time before they change the current system. The NFL seems to have struck a good balance between on-field refereeing and instant replay, while still giving coaches an option to challenge calls.

Here's another good article on the subject: [http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp- replay101009&pr...](http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp- replay101009&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)</comment>


An artificially intelligent, open-source bionic leg - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1636413/an-open-source-ai-bionic-leg-is-the-future-of-prosthetics/ <comment><USER2> This leg uses advanced AI and Machine Learning algorithms with a cloud Prosthetic as a Service (PaaS) model. Utilizing the latest in state of the art open source blockchain technology, this leg will bring added value while synergizing with your efficiency to optimize your bottom line.

<comment><USER3> The Prosthetic as a Service (PaaS) model uses a pay-as-you-go approach.

<comment><USER4> first 20 miles for free

<comment><USER5> after that, the fall of man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm the owner of a very dodgy right leg (fibula hemimelia) that will probably only last another 10-20 years. 15-yr-old me dreamed of being able to eventually replace it with something more iRobot than steel-post.

Godspeed to these amazing researchers.

</comment><comment><USER7> More than any other field prosthetics MUST be open source. If you do not have full control of your body do you really have control of anything?

</comment><comment><USER8> Breakdown of the cost:

* Star Prototype (machined parts) ……………….. ~$15.6 k

* Dephy (actuators and encoders) ……………….. ~$8.7 k

* SDPSI (belts) ……………………………………… ~$0.2 k

* McMaster-Carr (bearings, fasteners, etc.) …….. ~$1.6 k

* Misumi (shafts) …………………………………… ~$0.1 k

* Motion Industries (angular bearings) ………….. ~$0.8 k

* Amazon (batteries and case) …………………… ~$0.5 k

* K&J (magnets) …………………………………… ~$0.0 k

* Shipping charges ……………………………….. ~$0.9 k

* Total Cost ……………………………………….. ~$28.5 k

The greatest cost (~$15.6k) is for the machined pieces.

That seems seriously inflated though.

Wonder how much someone with a well calibrated workshop CNC could get that down to...?

<comment><USER9> We have a full CNC shop in house with the latest equipment. I took a quick look at the design. It really isn't optimized to reduce fabrication cost. The CNC work on this leg is substantial and very expensive. It simply isn't designed for low cost manufacturing. I am not being critical, just stating a fact in response to your question.

In CNC machining cost reduction can be obtained through the reduction of what's called "setups" (how many sides of a part you have to machine), judicious selection of feature types (some types of cuts require the machine to slow down a bunch, special tooling or both) and fixtures.

The last one, fixtures, are custom made tools to hold the raw material and in- progress machined parts for machining. They can make a significant difference in cost. Without them a machinist has to spend a lot of time manually managing what is known as "work-holding" (how you hold the material for machining).

Beyond that, it's a matter of volume. If you are only making one set at a time, without tooling and without optimization to reduce CNC machine cycle time and tooling requirements it is going to cost a lot. If, on the other hand, the design is optimized for the process, part counts are reduced, setups are reduced and you pay for palletization tooling (allows you to make more than one part at a time) cost can be reduced substantially.

In addition to this if you can reduce or modify the size and shape of the parts such that you can fit, say, ten of them within the working envelope of a machine rather than five, it can make a huge difference in cost. This, again, requires the design of a palletizing fixture.

Fixturing and workholding for production of a few parts at a time costs money. Think of it this way: Each part you have to make requires a fixture to be made for every setup. In other words, if you machine from the top, bottom, left and right of an aluminum block and want to design a fixture to hold ten of them at a time, you have to design one fixture for each setup or side you are machining. There are ways to reduce this by working closely with the designers and optimizing for work holding.

You can also integrate work-holding such that one pallet can hold the part in different setups. In other words, you hold four parts in setup 1, four in setup 2, four in setup 3 and four in setup 4. A pallet designed like this produces four finished parts per machining cycle. After each run you move the parts to the next setup location. So, the four parts that were being machined from the top are moved to the right one position and clamped onto an area of the fixture designed to hold them for bottom machining. The other parts are similarly moved one position for the next setup and the parts on the last setup slots come out of the machine for finishing (clean, debur, inspect, post-process).

If you do the math on this the scope of the manufacturing problem starts to be revealed. If you have ten parts to machine, and each part requires, on average, machining from two sides, you need to design twenty individual holding fixtures. Some can be integrated into a unified multi-setup fixture but the design work isn't any different, in fact, it can be more expensive. If the parts require machining from four sides you need 40 fixtures.

Once you are done with mechanical design of the fixtures and setups each one of them requires CNC programming and tool selection. This is a detailed process that requires time, expertise and testing, lots of all of them. In a design like that of this leg the design, fabrication, programming and testing of fixtures can easily cost much more than what the posted cost for machining one set of parts.

In short, cost reduction for something like this requires detailed and intense engagement with the manufacturing process, which would lead to design changes necessary in order to reduce manufacturing complexity, machine cycle time, fixture count and complexity, material waste, etc.

One way they could have reduced the cost to manufacture these for other people could have been to, for example, pay for manufacturing fixtures to make four to ten of these at a time. Customer #2 would then benefit from this and possibly cut their cost by a substantial amount (25% to 50%). At the limit the cost of machined parts become asymptotic with material cost + hours on the machine + aggregated costs-per-hour for the shop (people, wear and tear, power, etc.).

It's an interesting project. If the market is large enough it might make sense for someone to pay for the design and fabrication of the tooling to offer these parts at a lower price.

At a larger scale you'd have to design the parts for a casting + machining process, which will make them far less costly.

Metal 3D printing might be another option but that's not as cheap as one might think and has its own design requirements.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for looking at it. :)

My experience thus far is using a (somewhat modified) Shapeoko 3, so personally I only have a very basic practical understanding of using fixtures.

Most of my stuff was cutting MDF, for engineering prototypes though. Haven't done much with alum or anything tougher (yet), thus the limited fixturing experience. ;)

> It's an interesting project. If the market is large enough it might make > sense for someone to pay for the design and fabrication of the tooling to > offer these parts at a lower price.

Yeah, similar thought. They look to have added a forum (without any posts yet):

[https://opensourceleg.com/forums/forum/ankle-knee-control- sy...](https://opensourceleg.com/forums/forum/ankle-knee-control-systems/)

Asking the above there (eg have they considered potential changes to reduce manufacturing cost?), would _probably_ get it in front of the right people.

Any interest in pinging them? If not, I'll can do it and share the response (etc). :)

<comment><USER8> Pinged them manually via email, as their forums don't have a functional log in yet (being working on apparently).

Discussion around improving the manufacturability seem welcome: :)

      **********************************************

        We'd definitely love to have some DFM help!  You're right that we weren't really
        thinking too much about that when we designed it; mostly, we wanted it to be as
        lightweight and high performance as possible.  But it'd be great to have you or others
        help on the DFM side of things, especially if you're more familiar with how exactly
        machining costs are calculated, and what steps / features can be modified for
        the greatest improvement in cost.

        -Elliott

        Elliott J Rouse PhD

        Assistant Professor
        Director, Neurobionics Lab
        Department of Mechanical Engineering
        Core Faculty, Robotics Institute
        University of Michigan

      **********************************************

<comment><USER8> Their forum is working now:

[https://opensourceleg.com/forums/topic/reducing-the-cost- of-...](https://opensourceleg.com/forums/topic/reducing-the-cost-of- manufacturing-for-the-mechanical-structure/)

<comment><USER9> Just posted offering to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool. I think the more open and available this technology is, the quicker we'll be able to optimize and iterate on it. I'm hoping the price of current generation prostheses plummet over the next decade as a result.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there a link to the source? I can't seem to find it from their website or github.

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing this is what you are looking for: [http://dephy.com/wiki/flexsea/doku.php?id=sourcecode](http://dephy.com/wiki/flexsea/doku.php?id=sourcecode)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Transhumanists are coming. As are bionic cyberterrorists. The future is both amazing and scary!

<comment><USER14> Hmm, in both cases I think we'd need to have developed an (open-source or proprietary) prosthesis that was superior to the limb it replaces, which seems like it's a ways off still. Then you could imagine people voluntarily replacing their old-fashioned biological limbs; right now the replacement process is a lot less voluntary, and the recipients would be excited just to achieve parity...</comment></comment>


Real-World Relativity: The GPS Navigation System - <AUTHOR> http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR.. GPS satellite clock ticks need an accuracy of 20-30 nanoseconds. The satellites move fast enough that their clocks fall behind by 7 microseconds a day due to time dilation, but orbit high enough that the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass puts them forward by another 45 microseconds. GPS receivers have to perform relativistic calculations to determine their location.</comment>


Dealing With Clients Who Refuse To Pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/09/dealing-with-clients-who-refuse-to-pay/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone speak to the legality of the CSS kill switch?</comment>


Steps You Can Take Right Now Against Internet Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/ten-steps-against-surveillance <comment><USER2> I am surprised that the EFF is recommending two factor auth instead of avoiding Google, Facebook etc. at all. Also no mention not to use certain proprietary OS.

I think this list provides some better overview of alternatives: [https://prism-break.org/](https://prism-break.org/)

<comment><USER3> Exactly! While 2-factor is a good defense against data/identity theft from criminals or malicious hackers, I don't think it'll be of much help against governments.

In fact I'd argue that 2-factor authentication actually _helps_ governments _and_ private Internet companies because we willingly associate our mobile phones to our Internet accounts.

<comment><USER4> That's right! Moreover, an average user is violated by the government more than he is by a random hacker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two-factor authentication requires me to give my phone number to the companies whose products I use. That way, my Facebook profile can get associated with the GPS location that my mobile phone may transmit. This does not seem like a good measure for privacy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like overreaching surveillance will have to go if they keep up with international pressure.

[http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/24/exclusive...](http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/24/exclusive_germany_brazil_turn_to_un_to_restrain_american_spies)

And also this was quite surprising news to me

"After suspected abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act were brought to light in June 2013 with articles about collection of American call records by the NSA and the PRISM program (see 2013 mass surveillance disclosures), Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds. He released a statement saying "While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses." He added: "Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.""[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#Controversy)

</comment><comment><USER7> 'grugq' shares current best practice, and recently stopped by HN when his blog came up for discussion:

Anonymity Is Hard [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521517)

OPSEC for Hackers (video) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU)

<comment><USER8> ta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Turn on two-factor (or two-step) authentication. Google and Gmail has it

Only problem being, that involves me handing over my phone number to Google - one personal detail too many, for me.

<comment><USER10> You can also use Google Authenticator app. AFAIR it doesn't associate phone number with your account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it significant they still recommend using Tor even after a seeming exposé a couple weeks back. [1] Is it the fact that some measure of security is better than none or it makes surveillance incrementally harder?

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks- nsa...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users- online-anonymity)

<comment><USER12> Tor is still the best solution for online anonymity, even with the shortcomings it has. (low-latency for one). The exploits were related to the Tor Browser, not the Tor daemon/network.

<comment><USER13> Tor is the lazy man's attempt at anonymity. I wouldn't trust it since it receives the majority of its funding from the US Government, and that government is the reason many are looking for anonymity.

For better anonymity, ditch your cell (tracking device) and use open wifi networks, with a fresh MAC address each time (you can't necessarily trust routers at $Coffee_Shop to not identify who you are).

<comment><USER12> If you think the government is one coherent entity with all of them wanting to become Big Brother, you are wrong. The fact that Tor gets its funding from the US government is irrelevant. The source code is out there for you to see and inspect and has been done so by many researchers from universities around the world.

Example: The NIST openly went against NSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Cowboy" attempts to somehow outflank the NSA are foolish.

Time and resources would be better spent asking voters to shutdown the NSA's illegal collection of information on US citizens (for starters).

</comment><comment><USER15> > 1\. Use end-to-end encryption.

> 2\. Encrypt as much communications as you can.

[http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) has got your back.

<comment><USER2> or [https://gnunet.org/](https://gnunet.org/)

</comment></comment><comment> jarek-foksa > use EFF's HTTPS Everywhere browser addon for Chrome

Chrome meets all criteria to be classified as malware software, just because a big name company is behind it doesn't make it any less malicious.

</comment><comment><USER16> Quit Facebook. Use an alternative, like Diaspora*.

</comment><comment><USER17> 0\. Become a hermit and stop using the internet</comment>


Our customer hated our pricing plans. This is how we fixed it - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/customer-hate-pricing-plan-how-fix <comment><USER2> IMHO they hardly "fixed" anything.

Besides the (irrelevant but mathematically and financially incorrect) higher price per unit of the "Medium" plan against the "Small" plan of 14.90 vs. 14.50 per user, they have only re-labeled Personal/Pro/Enterprise to Small/Medium/Large, while:

1) Increasing "Small" by roughly 30% from 10 to 14.50

2) Leaving "Medium" as it was before

3) Lowering "Large" by roughly 50% from 25 to 12

So, if I hypothetically had 12 "Enterprise" users before, I paid 300 bucks, and now with the same people I pay 600.

Nice "fix" for anyone in the 11-23 people range.</comment>


Study Finds Gender Pay Gap in Lawyers Due to Performance Differences [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.upf.edu/rs/_pdf/jornadesGenere/GenderGaps_Ferrer.pdf?hnmodscensor <comment><USER2> And performance is, at least to some extent, driven by gender. For example, one of the metrics is selling business. There are tons of studies showing that women have a hard time being taken seriously, especially in "old boys' club" type professions.</comment>


MHTextField – iOS UITextField extension with toolbar, validation and scrolling - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mehfuzh/MHTextField MHTextField is an iOS drop-in class that extends UITextField with built-In toolbar, validation and scrolling support. <comment><USER2> Cool! This was my approach to form validation UX on iOS: [https://github.com/benzguo/BZGFormField](https://github.com/benzguo/BZGFormField)</comment>


Show HN: My 2 Day Project - <AUTHOR> http://grewordsonline.com/ My Other Projects http://whatnextplus.com http://testmetrics.in/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am preparing for GRE exam this year, i found the softwares i was using were too clumsy , This may not be best in initial version.</comment>


OMG Digital (YC S16) Is BuzzFeed for Africa - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/omg-digital/ <comment><USER2>
      $1.3 trillion that the continent is projected to spend
      in 2020.

Please don't use statistics like this. The combined consumer spending of a continent (54 separate countries, I think) is not really a fair portrayal of the opportunity. The linked source notes that $200bn is projected to be discretionary, which is closer to being relevant (as discretionary spending is largely the target of advertisers.)

The real question, which that metric may have been trying to address, is the purchasing power of the average consumer.

      From 1993 to 2008 the average per capita income of sub-Saharan
      African economies barely budged—it increased from $742 to $762
      per year (measured in 2005 purchasing-power parity-adjusted dollars).
      If we exclude South Africa and the Seychelles, we see a decline from
      $608 to $556 over the period.[0]

For individual spending that small, you (an company making money from ads) either need:

a) Companies who have incredible operations to sell at scale across the continent, given the low average customer value (e.g. Coca-Cola)

b) Many companies, each tackling local markets, that you (or an underlying ad network) can reach effectively at scale

Are there examples of large corporate ad buys from (a) or an underlying network for (b) in Africa?

[0] [http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/incomes-...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/incomes- sub-saharan-africa)

<comment><USER3> It's maybe not the best statistic, but many African countries are pushing for a common currency, so it's not completely unjustified.

<comment><USER4> You are correct its 54 states counting the latest addition South Sudan which is looking like things are going to kick off there again any minute. So out of that 54, 7 are failed states. Also I think the majority of Africa operates an "informal economy" which calls into question the accuracy of those projections.

I do wish them the best though. Also Kenya has become something of a startup hub the last few years. I hope it continues. It's exciting to see Africa represented in tech news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's good to see a media startup getting some attention. Not every tech company has to be some cutting-edge, shiny research project to be successful. (In fact, most of them aren't.) There's nothing wrong building a business by taking existing, time-tested technology and bringing it to a new, growing market.

</comment><comment><USER6> If they actually manage to combine Nigeria/Ghana and Kenya into one site I'm going to be really impressed.

Primarily, because I know from personal experience that a lot of people on the east side of Africa, do not actually care about random news on the west side of Africa (reasonable considering the two sides are approximately 3000 miles away from each other and have utterly dissimilar histories).

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that it's described as currently catering to Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria because the content is solely Ghana specific. These 3 countries also have very different social perspectives and very different flavours of entertainment and lifestyle. A number of popular sites also exist in this niche targeted at each country. Likewise, the remaining 51 countries also have significantly different cultures whose entertainment needs probably can't be comprehensively addressed by a single site.

Edit: There's a different page for each country; I missed seeing the button to select accordingly the first time through.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm kind of surprised the name "OMG Digital" didn't raise any flags with legal given OMG is what Omnicom Media Group is often referred to, and is the media services division of Omnicom or OMD (one of the largest ad agency holding companies).

Couldn't find any relationship between the two from a cursory look, but I'd be shocked if they didn't have OMG trademarked in some form.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this one of the first media startups funded by YC?

<comment><USER10> In this batch of YC (Summer 2016), we also have The Athletic: [https://theathletic.com/](https://theathletic.com/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe listicles like 10 ways Western oil companies committed atrocities in the Niger Delta?

<comment><USER12> [http://omgvoice.com/](http://omgvoice.com/)

"This is how these famous Ghanaian men would look if they had dreadlocks"

"Different Kinds Of Women You'll Find In A Typical Ghanaian Church"

"13 Times The English Language Made Absolutely No Sense At All"

I mean, good luck to them and everything.

(EDIT: This post sounds grumpier than I intended it to.)

<comment><USER13> > I mean, good luck to them and everything.

Rule #1: Build something that people want!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't exactly agree with BuzzFeed's business practices because it uses a lot of clickbait tactics. For that reason this comparison carries a sort of negative connotation, although I understand it.

<comment><USER15> Putting aside your "that damn liberal media!" misgivings, of course they compare themselves to buzzfeed. I had zero idea what LadBible was until your post, I know exactly what buzzfeed is.

There's a reason that "Uber for X" is a bit of a meme, but "Lyft for X" isn't.</comment></comment>


"Our current initiative to try to teach girls to code is misguided" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hardaway/why-women-shouldnt-code-82205165e64a

<comment><USER2> This article is justifiably getting a very large amount of criticism on Twitter. [https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40h...](https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40hardaway%2Fwhy- women-shouldnt-code-82205165e64a&s=typd)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with the article is that exactly the same argument can be used to recommend that women shouldn't learn Math or Physic.

I heard horror stories of Math departments in USA with only one or two female professors.

I have a different perspective. I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Each faculty inside the University has its own Math department. For example in the Exact and Naturals Science Faculty, the 30% of the Math professors are females. [http://cms.dm.uba.ar/depto/profesores](http://cms.dm.uba.ar/depto/profesores)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a much better title would have been "Why We Shouldn't Force Women To Code". Some women have an aptitude, and do well, and that's terrific. An analogy is the number of men who're good at interpretive dance.

I won't get into the battle of whether physiological/neural differences matter, though I think there's something there. The fact is that despite plenty of encouragement, women tend not to like math, physical science, and computer science on average.

@gus_massa: Having 30% female math professors is great, but it still means 70% are male.</comment>