Writing Software is Hard - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/writing-software-is-hard-388d5e982ad9 <comment><USER2> I completely agree with the idea that we are overestimating the impact of tools, specifically, programming languages.

I often see startups that rewrite their software one or more times just because they think that changing the tools is the key to success. They switch from PHP to Python, then from Python to JavaScript then from JavaScript to Go. It's so easy to say "We failed because X language, now we have to use Y".

The case when choosing a given language will give you a considerable advantage over choosing another one is very rare.

The worst thing is that we tend to say that languages suck while completely ignoring all the evidence of the opposite. How many times we have heard that PHP, C++ or JavaScript suck? How many amazing software projects have been built using these technologies?

On the other hand, look at the tools that self proclaim the best ones (lisp, haskell), how many big complex software projects have been built with them?

In the end they're just tools. Yes, they make a difference, but it's tiny compared with all the other pieces of the puzzle of how to build good software.

<comment><USER3> > The case when choosing a given language will give you a considerable > advantage over choosing another one is very rare.

> How many times we have heard that PHP, C++ or JavaScript suck? How many > amazing software projects have been built using these technologies?

Languages are better or worse suited depending on the application. How many of these amazing software projects in C++ are web backends? Most of entire Web 2.0 boom has been built on higher-level languages/frameworks like Rails/Ruby, Django/Python, and more recently Node/JS. Its simply not possible for the average software engineering team to build systems as fast and as reliable in something like C or C++. Similarly, the revolution in applied machine learning we are currently seeing would not be possible without tools like NumPy or scikit-learn and the frameworks that have been built on these. On the other hand, 3d game engine code is almost universally written in C/C++.

Sure, choosing between Rails or Django will not matter all that much to your stack in the long run. And its just as important to build a good team around your tech. But the best team in the world is not going to be able to write a highly optimized game engine in Python or quickly prototype new NNs in Ruby.

New languages become popular because they address some need that was not previously met. Understanding these roles different languages play is an essential skill in software engineering.

<comment><USER4> >How many of these amazing software projects in C++ are web backends?

Varnish cache is written in c

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Writing software is hard but to me the hardest part is always taking a random abstract concept from someone's mind (or worse, several people) and converting that into something "real" in a fixed timeline and budget. There will have to be lots of tradeoffs and miscues by definition. We are always making something that doesn't already exist, it is creation and creation is hard.

I do agree that tools (and process and ....) can make it less hard but that requires real, active participation. And I think that is even harder...

<comment><USER6> I will parrot what a professor told me years ago. The hardest part of writing software is proper requirements gathering. He said it was like pulling teeth. By proper I mean the developer knows exactly what the client wants and the client knows exactly what will be delivered. A "meeting of the minds," I call it. I always tell clients this is the hardest part.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure I have worked on a project where gathering requirements was a problem. But, most of the time my work has been on systems that have been a work in progress as they were actively being used. The needs are normally abundantly clear. I am not sure I have worked on a product not currently in use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion the biggest reason why writing software is hard is that the requirements are often not clear from the beginning. Changing requirements can kill a software project. What makes it even harder is when data has to be migrated during the process.

Analogy for clueless manager types: in many cases, software is 99% plumbing. But imagine the cost of changing the plumbing after the house has been built :) Also consider the problem of changing the plumbing while people are actually living in the house.

</comment><comment><USER9> Writing software is hard yes, but I disagree with the author: I _do_ blame the tools. Every language since C has been created as a reaction. What I mean by this is:

> C++ was created as a reaction to OOP being so difficult to do in C.

> Java as a reaction to memory management being difficult.

> C# as a reaction to Java not being concise enough.

> Javascript as a reaction to HTML not being dynamic enough.

> Go has a reaction to parallelism/concurrency being difficult.

> Rust as a reaction to what C++ has become.

And it goes on. There are many other languages too that you won't hear of that are created as a reaction to the status quo not being good enough either, but those ones I listed were backed by a big enough majority to become known. There is also the Lisp family and the functional paradigm too, which come round again and again in popularity.

All these languages/tools are the problem because no one is sitting back, and pro-actively realising that the _entirety_ of these languages are no good. I am not saying this to start an argument, I have happily been a programmer for 15 years. But I recognise the problems, and they are the same problems, that will repeat over and over again ad-infinitum. I actually started writing down problems I've found and possible solutions and it's already reached over 30 pages.

What it boils down to is that all languages share the same flaw; they specify the _what_ and the _how_ , but never the _why_. Until we figure out how to encode the _why_ , we will forever be going in circles.

<comment><USER10> This might be related:

[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

Edit: Besides that, I agree, except one thing, I'd say C# is just MS's reaction that there is something awesome which does not belong to them.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't matter which way you look at it, Java today, after all the work put into catching up, still pales in comparison to the C# of 2007.

Really, C# is a public service to correct for something that for so many reasons should be awesome having turned out so-so at best.

(You may say writing a million getters and setters, declaring types twice, stuffing your code in deep directory hierarchies, and dealing with bizarre licensing/version issues feels normal; that's the Java talking.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised at how little DHH says here. He could have stopped writing after the fifth paragraph. Or just added the phrase "Don't blame your tools" to the headline. Like bad code, this post is verbose and most of its verbiage redundant. Good writing, like good code, is a long apprenticeship.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yeah if my horse was tied to RoR I'd start criticizing people who criticize tools as well.

<comment><USER14> If your horse was tied to an insanely successful framework? I'm not sure if you are criticizing "horse-tying", or mocking the post itself. In the latter case, I think hacker-news aficionados and the like will be deeply disappointed where hot framework X is in a few years...or, you could do a lot worse than Rails.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/hell-freezes-over-microsoft-office-mobile-arrives-for-ios/ <comment><USER2> Hm. Clever strategy releasing only for Office 365 customers first.

Microsoft is clearly aware that most people with a tablet already have something by Apple or an Android device and that trying to use Office to sell them a Windows RT device isn't going to work.

However enticing organizations to "upgrade" to Office 365 (which comes with a regular subscription fee and better long term profits) to get a version for the tablet they already have might actually move some 365-licenses.

I say they are making the best of the situation.

<comment><USER3> I understood that it's only for iPhone. I hope they're not sacrificing office sales, just to force you to buy RT. It's not yet available for me so I can't check that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I struggle with the move towards everything being subscription based. Very quickly it becomes difficult to quantify just how much it is costing to own, and maintain ownership of a license for a piece of software.

If I see an application that is $50, I can quickly quantify that into hours I need to work for this to be paid off. I can compare the value I am getting to the amount of currency that I expend on it. I know that if I need to in the future, it will always be there for me to rely on.

If I see a service that is $12 a month it becomes a much harder game. Sure it might be worth it for the first month, but the second one becomes a much harder decision. Do I unsubscribe, and lose all the data that I have stores, or do I pay another $12 and hope that it continues to be useful to me in the future? In the future I might need to sign up again, which is a lot more hassle than it is worth.

All of these "small" subscriptions are beginning to cost me more than I'd like.

<comment><USER5> It really depends on what the prices are. With your example, it's obviously a bad deal. But in this case, Office 365 is $150 a year ($12.50 per month), while the packaged version of Office Professional is $400. So you get a good 2.5 years of use out of it before the curves cross.

<comment><USER6> I'm still running Office 2007. Bought it for $50 as a student and it's still fine.

<comment><USER7> I recall reading somewhere that Office's biggest competitor was its previous version.

<comment><USER8> This is most definitely true for Microsoft and Adobe. Hence, they're both switching to subscription models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish Microsoft had decided to separate into several companies way back during the US v. Microsoft case.

Office is actually a great product and Excel in particular still is the best available spreadsheet around. But Office has been hamstrung by being part of Microsoft; in particular by not supporting iOS or Android or online (until being forced to). If Office was its own company, I'm sure these platforms would have been supported years ago.

I feel like Microsoft is one of the rare cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.

<comment><USER10> Office would do well without the rest of Microsoft (in fact possibly even better), but I'm not sure the rest of Microsoft would do well without Office. Office is a huge stable cash-cow that allows Microsoft to experiment on things like Kinect without having to worry if they aren't always profitable.

You could argue the same thing with Apple and iOS. iOS would be better if it weren't so tied to OS X, but I'm not sure the rest of Apple would be in anywhere near the same position (or even still around) if it weren't for the big iOS and iPod cashcows.

<comment><USER11> _iOS would be better if it weren 't so tied to OS X_

Why is that?

<comment><USER10> Two main reasons:

1\. If people could develop for it on other platforms it would significantly increase the number of people able to write iOS apps globally, particularly people from lower socio-economic groups. In the short term it doesn't make a big difference, but there are millions of people in India and China that can't afford even an entry level Mac, and I think in the long run this is detrimental to the ecosystem.

2\. Many iOS services are tied into the Apple ecosystem, such as messages, notes, facetime etc. If they weren't using iOS to try to get people onto OSX then these services would be more likely to be cross platform and therefore far more useful.

<comment><USER11> I think it's more of a push to full stack Apple-only solution than being tied to OS X.

I wish Apple cared for OS X that much.

<comment><USER10> It's the same problem with Office. MS are using Office to help keep big business on a full MS stack - Windows, Sharepoint, Windows Server etc. And it's business that really matters to Microsoft. If Office were to be split off, they would be more likely put it on all smartphones, Linux, write a better OSX version etc, but it could weaken Microsoft's position wrt its other products.

It would probably be great for consumers if these companies took the attitude of making their products work _best_ in a full stack, but still play nicely with everyone else's products, but they seem believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is in their own best interest to push for vertical integration and implicit or explicit lock-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The pricing makes sense. But not from the perspective of what's best for Office. It makes sense in that Microsoft doesn't want Apple to take a 30% cut.

</comment><comment><USER13> With regards to the mentions of Office and Excel on Android...

Android spreadsheets which are Excel compatible are something I am interested in. There's a few options - Documents To Go, Quickoffice, Olive Office...

Two years ago I started to write a spreadsheet which could handle Excel format on Android without network access. I used the Apache POI libraries. I could handle pre-2007 Excel files OK (XLS), but post-2007 (XLSX) was more of a challenge. I learned the hard way of Android's famous 2^16 methods per Dalvik executable file limit while doing the project, and discovery of the existence of that limitation put the project on an indefinite hiatus. I tried to get around the problem - I pulled a lot out of the schema but it was still over the 65536 method limit. One option available would be custom class loading of multiple Dex files, which would be a pain. Another possibility is some kind of cloud solution where XLSX files would be uploaded to a server - something I have little interest in.

The remnants of my project are here - [http://bit.ly/1abDbhK](http://bit.ly/1abDbhK) \- although there is not much there, just a very, very bare skeleton of a spreadsheet which can handle XLS (pre-2007 Excel) files. I have to update the README though since the API of the Apache POI libraries have changed - it still works with the archived and still downloadable, circa-June-2011 POI libraries though.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice, and they already styled it to look like iOS 7!

</comment><comment><USER15> It will look perfectly at home on iOS 7.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is Apple setting up iWork for iCloud (very Microsoft-y naming here) subscription based or free if you happen to have an iCloud account? I ask because these two applications/SOCs would be direct competitors with MS having the advantage

<comment><USER17> iWork applications and apps are paid but dirt cheap, cloud sync is free for first 5GB storage. Pages handles MS Word formats well, even full "track changes" interop from iPad, so you can round trip office docs from a train.

<comment><USER10> > Pages handles MS Word formats well

Does it? The people that I've known to try this have all complained to me about problems. Not sure if this is a compatibility issue or Pages itself (and not sure if it's just my small sample of friends).

<comment><USER18> Long time Pages user - It does handle Word reasonably well, just as Numbers handles Excel, and Keynote handles PPT. But as with most import/export functionality it has quirks so that you cannot use it exclusively. It is not useless, but not perfect. Depends on the document.

I'd say Keynote<\-->PPT is the best of the bunch, followed by Pages<->Word. VBA Excel macros are hard to port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Microsoft is opening up - Linux VMs, SDKs for Android / iOS, Office everywhere. The religion has been cast off (finally) at Microsoft and its going where the developers and users are.

<comment><USER10> I'd love it if that were true, but I'm not sure how much has really changed.

They have always allowed Windows to run in a VM on Linux - it's just the special free VM packages that didn't run on Linux before.

They have also always had Office on Mac - it's the best way to make sure no other office suite can get off the ground, and makes Office documents more industry standard.

If they were to release Office for Linux, then _that_ would be something.

<comment> at-fates-hands Doesn't Libre Office do pretty well in the Linux space?

<comment><USER10> It does do well, and for personal use it's fine (far better than Open Office ever was), but it's just not on the same level as MS Office. When you start getting into document tracking or Macros things start to break down, and the general usability is not as good - especially for Excel vs Calc.

I'm happy with Gimp for image manipulation and indie games (I've got a 3DS and a Windows partition on my desktop for that), but I still boot into Windows or fire up a VM on my laptop to run MS Office (or watch Netflix).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If only Microsoft released Office for Linux and Apple let OSX run (in a VM or otherwise) on non-Apple hardware the world would be a much better place.

<comment> k-mcgrady If Apple let OS X run on other hardware the OS would suffer with them having to spend time supporting so many different configurations. If they didn't their reputation would suffer.

Microsoft building Office for Linux would be a complete waste of time and money. The majority of Linux users would complain that it was expensive, closed source, and continue using the free, open alternatives.

<comment><USER20> > The majority of Linux users would complain that it was expensive, closed > source, and continue using the free, open alternatives.

I don't know what you're user base you're sampling but the vast majority of Linux users are not opposed to closed source ( Steam, VMWare, Humble Bundle ) and are quite willing to pay for quality software.

<comment><USER21> It's hard to say. I get the sense that there's a huge disconnect between the demographics of all Linux users, and the impression one might get of those demographics by doing a survey of blogs, forums, mailing lists, online polls, etc.

For example, if you just read the most popular Linux forums, you could easily get the impression that every single Linux user despises Ubuntu with every fiber in the fabric of their being, and that they would never use any closed source product under any circumstances, and that they would only consider paying for anything if what they were paying was itself 100% open source.

As far as I can tell, though, that's not necessarily the case at all, with the Steam/VMWare/Humble Bundle cases being well-known counterexamples. As far as I can tell, nobody really knows. The Humble Bundle cases are interesting because Linux users have historically paid more than users from other platforms, on average, but is that because most Linux users want more closed source Linux software, or is it because a subset of Linux users want to encourage more closed source, and are voting with their wallets to demonstrate that?

Anyway, nobody knows. But if you are correct that the vast majority of Linux users are not opposed to closed source, then that would imply that pretty much the entire online Linux community is a hugely disproportionate misrepresentation of Linux users as a whole. Given that Linux as a platform is far more reliant on having a healthy online community than other platforms, that would be a big problem. However, my gut feeling is that you are correct, and that the online Linux community is a vastly disproportionate subset of Linux users, and that it's unfortunate that the online community is so dominated by one particular type of user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have any insights on who really uses these kinds of apps on their phone (and how)? Whether it's MSO, iWork or GDocs I can't find any productive use for them other than a quick lookup. Even editing a simple 10 page document is just a huge pain and there's really no piece of mind that it'll look good on a desktop device.

<comment><USER23> Corporate types like to be able to read documents sent to them via email on the train or in the pub. I have seen an impressive number of edits done to documents and long emails typed on blackberrys by people in the pub in the past.

The process will be much more reliable on an official MS set of apps, and for many companies that's worth a _lot_ of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hell freezes over? The trade press has mentioned this was in the works for awhile.

Microsoft actually makes some decent iOS apps. A company of 100k will have different groups with different beliefs/approaches. It's like the thread earlier this week about a particular person's experience with the group he was in after 8mo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Being a 'free' download looks like a good compromise for Microsoft and bad for users. Apple wasn't going to make a pricing exception for Microsoft (30% to Apple). So Microsoft just shifts the 'purchase' to the web.

</comment><comment><USER26> Now if we could just get Google to play nice and release apps for Windows Phone...

<comment><USER27> I expect BlackBerry apps would be first, since they still have the larger market share [1].

[1]: [http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816](http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816)

<comment><USER28> The numbers are trending in MS's favor. Q12012 share for BB was 6.8 now only 3. Windows Phone in Q12012 was 1.9, now 2.9

Not rocket growth but the trend clearly points to MS being the _weak_ #3.

Not sure how the existing install base for both effects this conclusion. Sales are only 1 piece of the puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It should be noted that this is apparently an iPhone-only only app in terms of resolution. Which kind of makes it not super useful (in addition to requiring an Office 365 subscription).

</comment><comment><USER30> Highly editorialized title. It was quite an expected move.

<comment><USER31> It's an allusion to Steve Jobs' somewhat notorious "hell froze over" introduction to iTunes for Windows, from 10 years ago (... wow). This was also a widely anticipated introduction but it still seemed a little subversive.

[http://news.cnet.com/Apple-launches-iTunes-for- Windows/2100-...](http://news.cnet.com/Apple-launches-iTunes-for- Windows/2100-1041_3-5092414.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Their commercial stating that the iPad can't have Office just became obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some 600 million iOS devices have been sold. Microsoft is ultimately a software company (despite the recent "ape what Apple does" corporate direction. Microsoft would be worth treble if it diverged into self-interested divisions years ago), and this makes complete sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> $80 subscription for Office 365 is too expensive for someone on a student's budget.

<comment><USER35> Sorry, $80 for a _four year_ subscription? Because that's what the Office 365 for Students deal is. That's $1.66 per month.

Seems pretty in-budget for a student.

<comment><USER34> Then charge us per month - don't ask for a freaking down payment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does it have an NSA backdoor?</comment>


Achieving reliable UDP transmission at 10 Gb/s using BSD socket - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00333 <comment><USER2> > (abstract) _Optimizations for throughput are: MTU, packet sizes, tuning > Linux kernel parameters, thread affinity, core locality and efficient > timers._

Cloudflare's u/majke shared a series of articles on a similar topic [0][1][2] (with focus on achieving line-rate with higher packets-per-second and lower latency instead of throughput) that I found super helpful especially since they are so very thorough [3].

Speaking of throughput, u/drewg123 wrote an article on how Netflix does 100gbps _with_ FreeBSD's network stack [4] and here's BBC on how they do so by _bypassing_ Linux's network stack [5].

\---

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763323)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12404137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12404137)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063816)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408672)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15367421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15367421)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16986100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16986100)

</comment><comment><USER3> Optimizing UDP transmission over internet is an interesting topic.

I remember reading a paper a while ago that showed that if you send two consecutive UDP packets with exact same data over the internet, at least 1 of them will arrive to the destination at pretty high success rate (something like 99.99%)

I wonder if this still works with current internet infrastructure, and if this trick is still used in real-time streaming protocols.

<comment><USER4> 99.99% for two tries would be a 1% drop chance which I'd say is pretty lenient - we average better than that on our sites running off 4G (jitter is horrible though and that will kill any real-time protocols without huge delays added).

Generally you'd just implement a more generic FEC algorithm though unless you had 2 separate paths you wanted to try (e.g. race a cable modem and 4G with every packet and if one side drops it hope the other side still finishes the race) as there are FEC options that allow non integer redundancy levels and can reduce header overhead compared to sending multiple copies of small packets.

<comment><USER5> >99.99% for two tries would be a 1% drop chance

Not per se. The drop chance for consecutive packets is likely correlated, such that if you know the first one was dropped you should increase your prior that the second one will also be dropped.

<comment><USER4> Depends on the cause and root question. For instance in the most common scenario of congestion routers do intelligent random drops with increasing probability as the buffer gets more full [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_early_detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_early_detection). The internet actually relies on this random low drop chance to make things work smoothly rather than waiting til things are failing apart to signal to streams to slow down all at once while it catches up. Same randomness with transmission bit errors which will cause drops but the randomness is not by design as much as by the way noise is what is causing those.

On the other hand if the root question is if there is an outage style issue then yeah if the path to the destination is having a hard down style issue no number of packets are going to help because they are all going to drop. Likewise if the question is "on a short enough time scale is reliability of delivering a single packet somewhere on the internet ever less than 99%" then yeah somewhere there is a failure scenario and if you look at a short enough time scale any failure scenario can be made to say there is 0% reliability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you do something similar with TCP and increase the packet size such that the "TCP Overhead" is reduced compared to 64 byte payloads but with the increased reliability over UDP?

<comment><USER7> In the system proposed, not really.

To use TCP instead of UDP there are two big problems:

1) the sensor device would need to keep unacknowledged data in memory, but it may not have enough memory for that

2) if they're running at line rate (max bandwidth in this case) in UDP, there's no bandwidth left to retransmit data

All of the buffer manipulation is going to be more CPU intensive on both sides as well, and you'd run into congestion control limiting the data rate in the early part of the capture as well.

For a system like this, while UDP doesn't guarantee reliability, careful network setup (either sensor direct to recorder, or on a dedicated network with sufficient capacity and no outside traffic) in combination with careful software setup allows for a very low probability of lost packets dispite no ability to retransmit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In a readout system such as ours the network only consists of a data sender and a data receiver with an optional switch connecting them. Thus the only places where congestion occurs are at the sender or receiver. The readout system will typically produce data at near constant rates during measurements so congestion at the receiver will result in reduced data rates by the transmitter when using TCP."

At that point a better paper title would have been "Increasing buffers or optimizing application syscalls to receive 10 GB/s of data" as it has nothing to do with achieving reliable UDP transmission, which it doesn't even seem they needed:

"For some detector readout it is not even evident that guaranteed delivery is necessary. In one detector prototype we discarded around 24% of the data due to threshold suppression, so spending extra time making an occasional retransmission may not be worth the added complexity"

As far as actual reliable UDP testing at high speeds one might also want to consider the test scenario as not all Ethernet connections are equal. The 2 meter passive DACs used in this probably achieve ~10^-18 bit error rate (BER) or 1 bit error in every ~100 petabytes transferred. On the other hand go optical even with forward error correction (FEC) it's not uncommon to expect transmission loss in the real world. E.g. looking at something a little more current [https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/transforming-enterprise- applicati...](https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/transforming-enterprise-applications- with-25g-ethernet-smf) is happy to call 10^-12 with FEC "traditionally considered to be 'error free'" which would have likely resulted in lost packets even in this 400 GB transfer test (though again they were fine with up to 24% loss in some cases so I don't think they were worried about reliable as much as reading the paper title would suggest).

Generally if you have any of these: 1) unknown congestion 2) unknown speed 3) unknown tolerance for error

You'll have to do something that eats CPU time and massive amounts of buffers for reliability. If you need the best reliability you can get but you don't have the luxury of retransmitting for whatever reason then as much error correction in the upper level protocol as you can afford from a CPU perspective is your best bet.

If you want to see a modern take on achieving reliable transmission over UDP check out HTTP/3.

<comment><USER2> > _Generally if you have any of these: 1) unknown congestion 2) unknown speed > 3) unknown tolerance for error_

> ... _If you want to see a modern take on achieving reliable transmission > over UDP check out HTTP /3._

Not an expert but I have seen folks here complain that QUIC / HTTP3 doesn't have a proper congestion control like uTP (BitTorrent over UDP) does with LEDBAT: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546651)

<comment><USER8> LEDBAT-style congestion control is not proper for "foreground" Web traffic and it will result in lower performance than TCP-based HTTP. Fixing bufferbloat is an ongoing project and it isn't fair to blame QUIC for being no worse than TCP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TLDR:

       sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=12582912
       sysctl -w net.core.wmem_max=12582912
       sysctl -w net.core.netdev_max_backlog=5000
       ifconfig eno49 mtu 9000 txqueuelen 10000 up

</comment><comment><USER10> Relevant discussion on HN from 4 months ago of IBM's proprietary large data transfer tool: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reading through the paper I can't see what the authors mean with "reliable transmission" there, and how they achieve it.

I only see them referencing having increased socket buffers, which then lead - in combination with the available (and non-congested) network bandwidth and their app sending behavior - to no transmission errors. As soon as you change any of those parameters it seems like the system would break down, and they have absolutely no measures in place to "make it reliable".

The right answer still seems: Implement a congestion controller, retransmits, etc. - which essentially ends up in implementing TCP/SCTP/QUIC/etc

<comment><USER9> They want reliable UDP, not TCP. They state that very clearly.

<comment><USER4> Yes but they didn't do anything to make UDP reliable they just said in our test scenario we didn't notice any loss at the application layer after increasing the socket receive buffer and called it a day because elsewhere in the paper they noted "For some detector readout it is not even evident that guaranteed delivery is necessary. In one detector prototype we discarded around 24% of the data due to threshold suppression, so spending extra time making an occasional retransmission may not be worth the added complexity."

I think the paper meant "reliable" in a different way than most would take "reliable" to mean on a paper about networking similar to if someone created a paper about "Achieving an asynchronous database for timekeeping" and spent a lot of time talking about databases in the paper but it turns out by "asynchronous" they meant you could enter your hours at the end of the week rather than the moment you walked in/out of the door.

<comment><USER12> I just think they meant reliable in a 'how to dimension to greatly reduce the possible loss'. No protocol is 'fully' reliable in all dimensions (latency, message loss, throughput). Sometimes you benchmark your exact physical conf and you add large margins, add some packet loss detection mechanisms, eventually retries (but if your latency requirements are hard no dice) or duplicate the physical layer (oh god, de-duplication at 10GbE...) or just accept some losses.

I just meant 'reliable is a spectrum'...

<comment><USER13> Reliability in the context of networking protocols means a specific thing to me - guaranteeing packet delivery (to the extent that it is physically possible of course).

This does seem to be a technical term with a defined meaning that matches my assumption too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_(computer_networki...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_\(computer_networking\))

<comment><USER14> Try considering what the authors of the paper mean.

<comment><USER13> If the authors of the paper are using a term that already has a specific meaning in the area they are working in, but meaning something different from that then they are making a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the abstract:

>"In addition UDP also supported on a variety of small hardware platforms such as Digital Signal Processors (DSP) Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)"

I am curious what would be the use case for implementing a network stack and using UDP directly in a DSP chip? Perhaps I have a very narrow understanding of DSPs.

<comment><USER12> Well you might have to use a DSP to get the signal from your ADC to your PC for signal processing. You might find 8-core DSPs with built-in 10GbE capabilities easier to program than a 10GbE IP on a FPGA...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish I had seen this at my last job. This is something I had to set up and it was painful - lots of trial and error.

</comment><comment><USER17> (2017)

</comment><comment><USER18> This would be interesting to try on today's faster ethernet speeds, wonder how it goes at 100G.</comment>


The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/07/19/the-wrath-against-khan-why-some-educators-are-questioning-khan-academy/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article. I have some qualms with a few points, however:

>There's actually very little in one of the videos that distinguishes Khan from "traditional" teaching. A teacher talks. Students listen. And that's "learning." Repeat over and over again (Pause, rewind, replay in this case). And that's "drilling."

I don't fully understand what the purpose the author had with this, and I find it somewhat misleading. A student doesn't repeat it over and over again for the sake of "drilling"[1] themselves, but rather because the "pause, rewind, replay" action enhances understanding and therefore learning. There's no question that listening to something multiple times at your own pace assists in learning. Actually, I see this as one of the clearest primary advantages of an online video lecture over a live one. Concerning the quality of the lectures and whether they encourage deep understanding and serious inquiry/curiosity is a separate issue.

Personal thoughts on Khan Academy:

I definitely have my own concerns with the Khan website, and am slightly irritated and worried with the holistic light that some people view it in. Seriously, it's not intended, nor can it effectively, replace teachers and entire curricula! People with power, including the media, please realize this! The last thing I want (and I'm sure Khan as well) is for good teachers to be fired as a result of this view point.

Concerning the badges and the "gamification of learning" -- I believe they can be a force of good, however it is important that teachers and Khan Academy use other methods as well to encourage an intrinsic motivation (learning for the sake of learning and growth) simultaneously, to prevent the artificial targets (the badges) from becoming the sole motivator. Studies have shown that a focus on extrinsic motivators, such as badges, can lead to shallow and short-term learning/understanding (Dweck).

[1] Concerning "drilling" -- I sense an unfair negative connotation with that word in the article as well. Drilling in and of itself isn't bad or ineffective as long as it's done properly and for material where it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I've seen in the Khan Academy videos is that they focus on one small slice of information at a time. This is often hard to do in the classroom. While I tend to lean toward the "cover less in class, but get better understanding of what is covered" side of the spectrum in my teaching, I'm still often giving the equivalent of 2-3 Khan video descriptions in each class.

Personally, I refer my students to the Khan Academy videos in class as well as other online resources. They don't much for many students, but for others they make the subject matter click.

IMO they're a boon, as are the other online resources as well as abebooks and Powells where great textbooks from the past are available for less than lunch money as alternate resources.

<comment><USER4> Yes! Teachers need to start trusting modern tools to help them teach.

I'm married to a teacher and have 8-10 teachers that I socialize with on a regular basis. Whenever I start talking about charter schools, Khan, statistical analysis of grades, etc, they always roll their eyes "oh, that's just too much work for me to do" or "it's a bad idea to slot someone as a 'visual' learning" or "not everyone can handle being self guided" etc, but they always miss the point.

The majority of teachers are stuck in their ways. For 100 years (longer?), the education system hasn't really changed at all. The addition of computers has been more like 'faster horses' than 'cars'. Highschool/gradeschool teachers aren't really that effective at learning new things. Sure, there's professional development, but that's the equivalent of HR presentations on sexual harassment.

In the last 5 years, we've had a revolution of the available teaching tools and an institution that is resistent to change/improvement.

A friend of mine is working on a pilot project at one school where everyone gets an iPad. I feel this is a huge waste of resources, since they are just modeling their current process but with an iPad. It's basically being used in place of handing out photocopies. It's a huge waste. Technology should be leveraged and used to evolve so we can do things we couldn't before, not be an expensive drop in replacement.

If you have kids, ask them if their teachers forbid the use of wikipedia, or embrace it as an imperfect information source. Has a class ever worked on updating a wikipedia article? Ask them if they've ever had a skype video conference with an expert from a particular field. Ask them if their teachers include kahn videos as supplement resources. Or do they watch VHS tapes of PBS recordings during class time like I did 15 years ago?

These are the things I expect every classroom should be doing today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion, anything that improves upon the current system of education in public schools is a welcome innovation. As it stands, teachers have little leeway when it comes to actually TEACHING a class. Teachers are forced to follow a curriculum that the school board deems appropriate for the majority of students. How is that effective? Generally, it caters to the lowest common denominator.

Personally, I think it's a great idea to let students follow the lectures on their own time and use class as an opportunity to engage the teacher in more personal questioning. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually got personal time with my teachers in school. Why? Because 99% of school was suffering through lectures. My teachers never had time to actually work with students one on one.

The Khan Academy recognizes that teachers could be better utilized by actually tracking where students are excelling or failing and working with them In the classroom on a personal basis. In the end, the proof is in the pudding. I think it's great that this concept is even being tested. There isn't much use in arguing that the state of public education is in turmoil, that's a fact. The real question is what anyone is going to do about it. Whether right or wrong, at least the Khan Academy is TRYING to help improve the situation, that's more than I can say for my local board of education, who seem to value ego arguments over actually getting anything done.

<comment><USER6> It's easy to say "anything that improves on what we have today is a welcome innovation" but the whole point of the article raises the question of whether these videos are, in fact, an improvement. Bear in mind that anything you do in the classroom is connected with a cost (based on the finite resource of time) -- if you spend time doing something, you lose the ability to do something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't find the article that moment, but in it there was a teacher who used kahn academy videos as the "homework" and then class time for further explanation, practice problems and most importantly, questions from students.

I like this approach for a number of reason but imagine your child with an iPad watching several lesson videos a night. It makes the "homework" significantly easier to manage (i.e. rewind videos, rewatch difficult parts, and parents watching together to help with concepts) when compared to traditional worksheet homework. By shifting the conceptual learning work to the home, students are able to get a better experience from one-on-one work with their parents, and then handle the practice and application of knowledge to the school room which, in general, the teacher is better suited to handle.

</comment><comment><USER8> Different people learn best in different ways. Undoubtedly Khan Academy isn't going to work for everyone. Neither does the standard classroom. Diversity in education is a good thing, so long as people can find out what works for them and use it, instead of being forced into something that doesn't work.</comment>


We Should Be Eating More Canned Fish? - <AUTHOR> https://heated.medium.com/you-should-be-eating-more-canned-fish-bbf84969b063 <comment><USER2> No, please don't.

Commercial fishing is not good. Do some research to find the many reasons.

Plastic is not something you want to eat, and fish have increasing amounts of plastic in them.

Same goes for Mercury. Sardines (and probably anchovies) don't have much, but other larger fish do.

Were it not for these problems, then I too would advocate good canned sardines for health. They have higher calcium per weight than any other food or drink. They have a good amount of protein, and of course they have the omega oils.

But the current state of things is such that it would be wise to reduce consumption, not increase it.

<comment><USER3> So what's the alternative? Beef? Chicken? Pork? Vegetarian?

Every one of these has significant downsides to them (for you vegetarians out there, the phosphorous that leeches into the runoff is huge, affecting the ecosystem in ways we still don't understand).

I get every point you make, but honestly, what is the real alternative?

<comment><USER4> Most vegetables are grown for lifestock food, so I don't think that's valid concern about vegetarianism.

If you eat a lot of meat, then you have all the vegetarian concerns you can come up with plus all the concerns directly tied to meat plus the rest of the indirect concerns.

<comment><USER3> If you remove all the meat from the world's food supply, you're going to have to make up for a lot of bulk as well as protein. So you will still be growing lots of plants. And those plants will be fertilized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I completely agree. I think the author could have made a much stronger argument. And whenever I try canned fish from Europe, it's far better than the American brand.

<comment><USER6> In the US many brands are Portuguese or Italian, unless you're talking strictly tuna, then yes, most are US brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a Cajun, it amuses me to read the comments. We'll boil up some crawfish, break them in half, eat the meat, suck the head, chuck it, do it again.

<comment><USER8> Amen - [https://imgur.com/Neh25YR](https://imgur.com/Neh25YR)!

<comment><USER7> I left out a few instructions, good catch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fish always freaks me out, because I don't know how to handle it.

Take oil sardines with the starry eyes. Am I supposed to eat the sardine whole, with head, eyes and tailfin? Am I supposed to bite the head off and spit it out? Cut it off?

It's so basic and I feel like an idiot, but I really have no idea.

<comment> yoz-y A few years back I wrote this: [https://yozy.net/2012/11/smelly- spread/](https://yozy.net/2012/11/smelly-spread/) and still do the same thing all the time. Just mix the sardines with butter and onions, and smash it all together with a fork. Oil, fins, heads...

<comment><USER10> Very nice and concise article! Loved the "mix furiously" part ))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The vast majority of tuna stocks are healthy and abundant"? I am highly skeptical of that claim. Does anybody have any up-to-date, global numbers?

<comment><USER12> Canned tuna is usually Skipjack, which is still considered sustainable in most places vs the rate of fishing.

Many other species of Tuna are threatened.

So it's hard to talk about "Tuna" as being threatened or not threatened as it varies wildly.

The statement "the vast majority of tuna stocks are healthy" I guess could mean anything. Are they healthy because the vast majority that are left now that we fished out a few species are Skipjack?

It's indeed a statement to be skeptical about. You can bend it to be trueish while at the same time saying "the vast majority of tuna species are threatened". Glass half empty or half full.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did I miss something or was his only argument why we should eat it is that he likes it? He says its not that bad for you, but it's not really good for you, it's not that expensive, although it's far from cheap. it's not that gross eating bones and eyeballs and shit after you get used to it, but it is until then. None of these at all imply we should eat it.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a kid my Dad introduced us to sardines while hiking. Friends always thought my brother and I were crazy when cracking open a can at the summit of whatever peak we just climbed, until they try one and realize that nothing else they have packed for their own lunch will now satisfy their newfound craving for oily fish. I don't know why, but it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> In Norway, sandwiches with a spread of mackerel in tomato sauce is a breakfast/lunch staple

<comment><USER16> I recently discovered this and cannot get enough of it. I'm trying to find a good place to purchase it (at a reasonable price) in the USA though. Damn tasty!

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what brands except King Oscar that sells abroad, but looks like they sell in Walmart atleast [1]

[1] [https://www.kingoscar.com/where-to-buy/](https://www.kingoscar.com/where- to-buy/)

<comment><USER16> The one I've been eating is Stabbur-Makrell by Stabburet. It's Norwegian, and delicious!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm very worried about heavy metals, plastics, and chemicals too much to eat any seafood.

<comment><USER18> The balance of the evidence indicates that the health benefits of fish consumption, particularly omega-3 fats, far outweighs those concerns.

<comment><USER19> I hate to be one of those people demanding sources, but I'm wondering where I can find someone who's carefully weighed the evidence.

The article does mention that smaller fish often found canned are lower in the food chain and thus have less mercury, but I would think that you'd have to look carefully at each species, and the sourcing, and the packaging before you could really say the health benefits are worth it.

<comment><USER20> [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fish/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fish/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> healthy or not, how sustainable is the can itself? Let's assume you put it to recycling, better or worse than plastic?

Also mostly per serving, not per gram. You can buy fish and meat without packaging that weighs as much as a sardine can.

</comment><comment><USER22> And fish in jars, too, like herring and sprats! I eat many of these each week.

</comment><comment><USER23> if you are high in triglycerides, no, you should not be eating fish packed in oil.</comment>


Ruling in Twitter harassment trial could have enormous fallout for free speech - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech

<comment><USER2> TL;DR:

1\. Some fuckwad in Canada released a game where you punched an image of a feminist blogger.

2\. Two feminists (who were not the one in the game) organized an internet shaming campaign against him.

3\. George Elliot, who had a cordial online relationship with the two feminists from #2, tweeted in opposition to internet shaming, which he considered as vicious as the face punch game.

4\. The two feminists blocked Elliot on Twitter, told him to stop mentioning them, and to to stop commenting on heated political issues.

5\. They also organized a massive twitter shaming campaign against Elliot, including having someone pose as a 13 year old and accuse him of being a pedophile.

6\. Elliot is now on trial for criminal harassment. There are no allegations that he threatened them or sexually harassed them, but they claimed they had feelings of fear, and that is apparently all this is required for "criminal harassment" in Canada!?

Edit: This seems astonishing, but a bit of Googling on the newspaper (National Post) and the reporter (Christie Blatchford) didn't turn up anything--they appear to be legitimate mainstream press.

Edit 2: Coverage in the Toronto Star: [http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/01/09/gregory_alan_el...](http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/01/09/gregory_alan_elliott_frustrations_boil_over_in_twitter_harassment_trial.html)

Looks like Elliot did insult them, in that he made a #FascistFeminists tag in relation to them, and in response to someone in the shaming campaign against him calling him a "perv and a sad little man" told that person they were wrong and they should go "listen to (Guthrie) play her s--- music in crappy bars with your loser faux-feminist friends".

<comment><AUTHOR> I found Blatchford's wikipedia and did a bit more research because at first I thought it could be someone from 4chan trolling. One of the accusers is a gender justice consultant who has given a tedx talk in Toronto. I found more on infowars and the Toronto standard. It looks like the case originated in 2012ish but is close to being ruled on now.

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

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't want this thread to devolve into a flamewar about tropes and internet memes, but this is pretty serious so I wanted to post it. If a conviction is declared it would be a massively dangerous precedent.</comment>


My own Rap Genius API - <AUTHOR> http://timrogers.co.uk/2013/08/17/ballin-with-my-own-rapgenius-api/

<comment><USER2> I appreciate that you want access to their content, and _I_ may personally agree they ought to build an API. But isn't it up to them to decide whether or not to do so?

Otherwise isn't it just stealing?

(Fully expecting this to be a controversial comment, but I'm curious what the prevailing sentiments on scraping without permission are these days. Good, because all content should be free, especially crowd-sourced content? Or bad, because the contributors didn't agree to such third-party usage, and it could limit Rap Genius' ability to build a business?)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. It's a fair point. I'd love to hear the thoughts of other HNers.

I tend to think that this kind of thing is okay for personal use, whereas it wouldn't be en masse - for instance, if you were using it to power and advantage a competing music site. Others' opinions may differ.

For instance, I've previously built scrapers for banking services (American Express [[https://github.com/timrogers/amex](https://github.com/timrogers/amex)] and Lloyds TSB [[https://github.com/timrogers/lloydstsb]](https://github.com/timrogers/lloydstsb\])) and the UK's university application system, UCAS ([https://github.com/timrogers/ucas](https://github.com/timrogers/ucas)) and none of these organisations seem to have had any problem with it, but the library has been really gratefully received by users.

<comment><USER2> Thoughtful reply, I really appreciate that. Thank you.

And don't get me wrong—I love APIs, I build them for a living. And I know how much users love them. Unfortunately, not all companies love providing them, or have the economics of doing so fully worked out.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem - great to engage with people's opinions. HN has such a wealth of knowledge.

You might find my response below ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229617)) interesting, on that front. My guess is that for Rap Genius, the only API that will make real sense is one offered on a commercial basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great stuff! I honestly find it shameful that they don't have an api. A couple of months ago I built one in Node.js ([https://github.com/kenshiro-o/RapGenius- JS](https://github.com/kenshiro-o/RapGenius-JS)). If anyone is interested in improving/using the project let me know!

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually saw your library, it's super cool - it's currently pretty much the top result for "Rap Genius API", apart from the tweet I refer to ([https://twitter.com/RapGenius/statuses/245057326321655808](https://twitter.com/RapGenius/statuses/245057326321655808)).

As I've said in other comments, I'd love RG to have a public API, but I can see why they don't.

It'd be cool to compare notes on parsing Rap Genius. Drop me an email if you have a moment, email@example.com.

<comment><USER3> Sure! I'll send you a mail tomorrow when I return to London. Sharing ideas on how to improve parsing is a great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Speak to you soon hopefully!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> why-el I would assume they are at least thinking about an API, as it's fairly easy to construct/what they are doing is easily portable elsewhere (Think Medium like comments all over the place).

With this said, nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'd imagine an API is on the cards, but I could be wrong. As far as I can see, beyond the website, their data has two markets:

\- Embedding in personal blogs - this is probably best achieved by a simple embed code (which I'm planning to use my gem to build), rather than a full API

\- Commercial use - for instance, Spotify (or competitor) might like to display rich lyrics in-app.

The situations which would demand a full-on API, I suspect, would be commercial use. Thus, I'd imagine that any API they build will be private and commercial, providing a (first?) revenue stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks George - I appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone done a GV Sprint? - <AUTHOR> I am a single founder and thinking of using Google Ventures Sprint method to test a new idea and prototype within 5 days. Has anyone done one before? Either in a team or alone? <comment><USER2> Not a direct answer, but..

Are you aware that they have published a book on it few weeks back? Going through it as of writing this. It is very detailed and prescriptive. If you read it, you would have a very good idea on how to run one yourself.

[http://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test- Ideas/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test- Ideas/dp/150112174X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458719746&sr=8-1&keywords=sprint)</comment>


I, Pencil (1958) - <AUTHOR> http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the great texts on economics. Together with "Economics in One Lesson" by Hazlit, should be required high school reading all over the planet. These texts immunise the mind against logical fallacies about material progress. They will make mankind come together without politicians or enemies.

"There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found." This is one of the beautiful miracles of our kind, a fact that remains unknown to most of us. Including many who figure themselves at the commanding heights.

Every attempt to make this fictional mastermind more powerful makes our fate worse.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I think it's very interesting and makes some nice points with beautiful language, but I don't follow the conclusion. It oversteps in arguing without proof that all forms of enterprise must function just like pencils, soluble by the natural dynamics of a free market. But not all forms of enterprise have the same properties as pencil production.

You could imagine an antithetical essay "I, police" involving a lawless village in which each person trains extensively in martial arts and marksmanship in order to protect themselves. Then each realizes it is more efficient to focus on their own vocation and hire a private security guard. Then a few neighbors realize it is more efficient to pool their money and hire just enough security to protect their block, and finally the whole village realizes it is most efficient to pool their money into just enough security, at which point they realize they have formed a government with taxes and police force. The story could end with "It is a fact most astounding that the forces of an unencumbered free market lead directly to an inevitable centralization into a collective governing whole."

Of course this story does not prove that all affairs should be handled by the government; but the pencil doesn't prove the opposite either.

<comment><USER4> One difference is that the pencil story actually happened. It describes real practical life.

Your village police story OTOH is made up.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure there are police forces.

<comment><USER6> I usually hear about villages forming militias rather than hiring professional security. It would be interesting to read examples of primitive governments formed like that.

<comment><USER7> If you count in "hiring" security from within the community, then this would probably describe most governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This piece gets posted here occasionally, and I really disagree with the conclusion that people think that we have to have government because they don't understand the capabilities of non-directed, bottom-up systems.

> Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions > of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to > satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous > conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master-minding."

It's possible to understand that non-directed systems can produce impressive results and still believe that a directed system might be the right choice for certain situations. Plenty of biologists were Marxists for example (JD Bernal, Steven Jay Gould was very left wing). Surely, they would have understood that complex organisms don't arise from central planning, but from an undirected, emergent process. Yet they also believed that government should play a major role in human society.

<comment><USER9> I can't find the source but I remember hearing of some tale of Margaret Thatcher strolling around London or someplace with some Soviet official. Supposedly he was astounded at the bustling economic activity whizzing about them. He asked her something along the lines of "who is your central planner that has yielded all this?", to which she replied something to the effect of "no, one, this is the Free market operated by individuals, etc etc."

Doing a cursory search for the above, I did find this quote that seemed to capture her sentiments against central planning, to which I think a lot of people use the I, Pencil fable to show the folly that some centralized individuals would have knowledge at all times and all places about what goods and services should be in demand and what they should be priced at and that there's an arrogance to even attempt so much.

"The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 70's and 80's is that central planning and detailed control do not work and that personal endeavour and initiative do. That a State-controlled economy is a recipe for low growth and that free enterprise within a framework of law brings better results…. And that means action to free markets, action to widen choice, action to reduce government intervention. Our aim should not be more and more detailed regulation from the centre: it should be to deregulate and to remove the constraints on trade."

<comment><USER10> Of course, as soon as you go into a shop and ask the question "how did this get on the shelf?", you find that rather than being done by free individuals interacting on an adhoc basis it's done by employees taking hierarchical direction from a centralised business, run by a single person who pays themselves a huge amount while congratulating themselves on creating all those jobs.

(See Coase on the _Theory of the Firm_ )

<comment><USER11> Exactly what I was thinking when reading this story.

And not only was each step along the way to the pencil a result of direct and carefully planned action, the side effect of pencils from rail cars is only made possible at all because pencils are economically viable. Otherwise they may not (still) exist.

There is a certain harsh reality to this free market—it does not favour quality or popularity or even efficiency.. The blade falls on just how much rent can be extracted at each step without nudging itself into oblivion. What is the practical difference (for a pawn like myself) between a system or a person giving directorial control over the allocation of resources?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am always fascinated by the fact that in a remote village in India I am eating with a disposable spoon which I deem cheaper than wasting 10 seconds washing a steel spoon.

That disposable spoon comes from a local shop which buys it from a distributor in a factory 100 miles away who buys plastic raw material from a seller 1000 miles way who brings the crude from middle east (10K miles) to make that plastic. Someone has built Oil rig deep into ocean spending billions of dollars to extract that crude oil.

More importantly people of all castes religions races are working to achieve this none of whom have any special love for each other yet everyone benefits.

<comment><USER13> > _More importantly people of all castes religions races are working to > achieve this none of whom have any special love for each other yet everyone > benefits._

Well, "everyone benefits" is the Disney version.

Oil producing countries and their citizens are usually royally fucked over, either from foreign powers invading/meddling to take control of the oil supply, or by their friendly lackeys (royal families etc) in power.

Ways of living (farmland, hunting spaces etc) are destroyed along the way, for pollution, extraction of resources etc.

Workers leave their villages (which are often ravaged from modernization, their previous jobs, commodities, commerce etc drying up) and are forced to seek work in large industrial towns in Dickensian conditions.

And all for "disposable spoons", which will merely save "10 seconds washing a steel spoon", end up in huge piles of other plastic garbage in dumps, oceans, etc.

Even those "10 seconds washing a steel spoon" saved, and most of the other savings due to such products, will end up being eaten up completely by the modern life and modern pace that makes those products possible in the first place -- the average working person in the US having less free time than comparable professionals (even CEOs) in the 50s or 60s.

<comment><USER12> > Oil producing countries and their citizens are usually royally fucked over

Mostly fucked up by politicians. Nothing to do with the fact that people on Oil rigs and me both willing to co-operate.

> Ways of living (farmland, hunting spaces etc) are destroyed along the way, > for pollution, extraction of resources etc.

Don't see the problem with that.

> Workers leave their villages

They leave for better life. I left my village for better life. Village life sucks.

> And all for "disposable spoons", which will merely save "10 seconds washing > a steel spoon", end up in huge piles of other plastic garbage in dumps, > oceans, etc.

Dont know if it worse that wasting water on washing steel spoons but surely technology helps us manage that problem well too.

> the average working person in the US having less free time than comparable > professionals (even CEOs) in the 50s or 60s.

The average working person in USA is having much better life that CEO in 1950s.

<comment><USER13> > _Mostly fucked up by politicians. Nothing to do with the fact that people on > Oil rigs and me both willing to co-operate._

I don't think it's that clear cut, the "bad politicians" vs the "peaceful people". Peoples (citizens of a country) will pursue their interests, even if that means stealing/taking advantage of others as a nation.

At least, throughout history, that has been the case, even in very explicit scenarios, e.g. ancient Athens, when the will of the citizens was pretty much directly put into policy, they opted to take advantage of nearby countries to build their power and economy.

What politicians/governments in powerful nations do is not just to serve their self interest, it's also in the interests of their country. In less powerful nations, politicians can be "bought" by foreign powers, so that's not always the case, but an "empire" like nation will promote the "strategic interests" of its people (way beyond mere defense). Of course that goes first through the interests of its rich people, but that also trickles to the common folk (e.g. cheap oil).

> _Don 't see the problem with that._

Sure, no problem with pollution and exhausting farmland etc...

> _They leave for better life. I left my village for better life. Village life > sucks._

Not everybody leaves for a "better live". A lot like their life just fine, thank you, but then its destroyed by external forces (in some cases, they are outright forced too, like in several "urbanization" and "industrialization" pushes, from Industrial Revolution era England to Stalin's USSR and beyond).

> _The average working person in USA is having much better life that CEO in > 1950s._

Citation needed. More toys != "much better life".

<comment><USER12> > Sure, no problem with pollution and exhausting farmland etc...

None at all.

> Citation needed. More toys != "much better life".

Are you kidding ? I would rather be an average working man in USA in 2016 than a rich guy in 1950s. Hands down.

<comment><USER13> > _Are you kidding ? I would rather be an average working man in USA in 2016 > than a rich guy in 1950s. Hands down._

Then you probably have no clear idea what either entails., except if you think that the differentiators, like access to the web and mobile phones as an "average working man in 2016" are so much better than a cozy and much simpler life in the 50s (there are social differentiators that could turn the tables, of course, e.g. if one is black etc, but you only mentioned "rich guy").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's also a version of this condensed into a short, ~7 minute video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a great children's version of this as well: [http://tuttletwins.com/pencil/](http://tuttletwins.com/pencil/)

<comment><USER16> It sure is a great edition. It's available in multiple languages as well, such as: Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Italian.

I'd also recommend [http://tuttletwins.com/law/](http://tuttletwins.com/law/) \- which is available in all of the above languages and German as well.

Great reads regardless of the size/age of the person. And definitely thought- provoking, considering the questions they yield.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I highly recommend the podcast that is sponsored by econlib. Its called Econtalk and it one of the best podcasts that exist.

He had many great economists and other people on his show, like 10 nobel price winners, both Friedman and Coase shortly before they died.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives.html#date](http://www.econtalk.org/archives.html#date)

</comment><comment><USER18> The article is well written but takes a little anti-social view of how things come to be. The private industry is doing a great job of procuring, manufacturing and delivering of consumer goods at affordable prices. However many of these inventions were either discovered by scientist and inventors who either pursued it for purely intellectual reasons or were funded by public money by grants. For example, the Darpa grants were the main cause for the internet today. The article does a great disservice by not giving this aspect its rightful due.

<comment><USER13> > _The article does a great disservice by not giving this aspect its rightful > due._

That's because it has a predetermined agenda, nothing scientific about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I believed in requiring work from other people; this would be required reading :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Freakonomics did a nice podcast on this topic: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/)

The idea is that no one alive has all the skills to make something as simple as a pencil from scratch. This is a result of our industuralized socity.

<comment><USER21> "This is a result of our industrialized society"

Is that the idea? Isn't the point rather that the existence of a pencil is only possible as a result of industrialization and trade. It's not as if before industrialization, there was an artisanal pencil maker who traveled the world gathering the materials needed to make a batch of pencils, and crafted them together using pencil-making secrets passed down from father to son over generations.

No person has EVER been able to make a pencil; it's something that has only ever been possible for a network of interdependent industrial concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Classic.

By the way, the same applies to software: If any developer can say they're "full-stack" without further specification (i.e, they're full-stack everything) with a straight face, than they should be punished by being given $200 or less of electronic components and a processor of their choice, and asked to make a webapp. No external libraries, that's cheating. Maybe give them an assembler if you start feeling sorry for them.

<comment><USER23> Am I allowed to reinvent my own protocols? How much time do I have? Will you cover my living expenses in the mean time? If so, sign me up.

Edit: I guess you said no external libraries, not no manuals/specs. That makes it less fun.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, it's got to be a webapp, so that means implementing actual TCP/IP and Ethernet. And you'll probably want to implement a compiler for an HLL (even a rudimentary) one, at some point, before you lose your mind. Then you'll have to implement at least some percentage of the HTTP spec, because you're writing a webapp, remember?

However, you _don 't_ have to implement an FS or a display module (but you'll probably want to implement a serial monitor).

But yeah, if I had the time, I might consider doing this ( _after_ I finish my Z80 SBC and actually learn more electronics (the Z80 SBC is a popular enough project that I don't have to do all the circuits myself. And I can do the bare minimum)). This probably doesn't reflect well on me.

<comment><USER23> Why stop at hardware, though? I can imagine the book title now: "FULL Stack: From Electrons to 'Electron'". The first chapter would review basic quantum mechanics and semiconductor physics, MOSFETs, and CMOS gates. The second chapter would review digital logic design and computer architecture. The third chapter would move into compiler and OS theory and design. The fourth chapter would briefly diverge to discuss microwave and fiber optic transmission lines, and the fifth chapter would return to discuss network architectures and communication protocols. The sixth and last chapter would tie it all together with a MVP implementation.

<comment><USER22> That would be awesome. I would absolutely write this, but I don't have the requisite knowledge. So unless you're willing to wait quite a long time, or for someone else (or, more likely, several someone elses) to pony up, you'll have to make do with NAND2Tetris.

<comment><USER23> If someone would pay me to, I would love to write it. I would definitely need several reference books, but there's nothing in there I couldn't handle given enough time. I could even imagine some people on this site being interested enough to purchase it.

I hadn't seen NAND2Tetris before, thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I Residential Mortgage-backed Security Collateralized Debt Obligation

<comment><USER25> Ironically, as hard as it is for people to understand what those are, they are much simpler to produce than pencils.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I also really like "How an Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't". There are some issues with it and you have to ignore the political stuff if you don't enjoy those but by and large I enjoy the simple explanation.

Link to PDF version: [http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy- grows.pdf](http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> my favorite pencil story: [https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/9442877455813...](https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/944287745581369:0)

 _Archimedes said he could move the world with a lever long enough, but when it came to proving it, he needed a pencil to make the point_

</comment><comment><USER28> Corollaries are:

      You didn't build that.
      It takes a village.

<comment><USER9> haha, are you quoting Obama in the first line and Hillary in the second?

<comment><USER28> Actually, that's President Obama borrowing from Elizabeth Warren.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn't_build_that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn't_build_that)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The need for government or direction is seen not so much in the pencil's ancestors or antecedents, as in all its offspring, which curiously go totally unmentioned. The pencil's family tree might have a lot of roots but it has a lot of branches too.

Example from Ceylon: toxic mine tailings, leading to soil pollution, leading to either poisonings/cancers/deaths when attempting to grow food locally, or to having to import it from afar, or move away. Broken homes/families. Strains on the social safety net if there is one.

Example from Oregon: clearcuts, leading to soil instability, leading to landslides, leading to deaths and destruction of property, and also to the silting/sedimentation of streams & rivers, destroying salmon spawning habitat, leading to decline of the fishery, unemployed fishermen, broken families/alcoholism/crime/strains on society.

Technology metes out equal parts punishment and convenience; this site's audience should know that better than anyone, or they'll learn it soon.

</comment><comment><USER30> beautiful text but, as with others, I take issue with the conclusion.

What about the internal hierarchies of the firms involved? Who was freer, the owner of the pencil factory or the men in Sri-Lanka working for pennies to mine the graphite?

And the crass juxtpositioning of 'central planning' and the 'free market' is lazy and disingenuous. I'm no celebrant of the USSR but they weren't incapable of abstraction in their central planning,a s this seems to suggest. They werecapable of coordinating the production of pencils without Stalin knowing every process involved (just as mail functions without one man who knows each of the streets in America)

It's far from a perfect comparison, but I'm reminded of this classic Brecht poem: [http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-worker-reads- history/](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-worker-reads-history/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Milton Friedman's book "Free To Choose" opens with a reference to this essay. At the core of it is the idea that Human beings indeed co-operate and help each other at a massive scale that what we might perceive individually.

It is also a reminder that politicians who claim that they can make college and healthcare free, create jobs, increase wages, protect use from Chinese people stealing jobs, negotiate "smart trade deals" are basically people who have no clue what they are talking about.

<comment><USER5> Have you heard of "Countries that aren't the USA"? Many of them have politicians & have achieved those claims.

<comment><USER12> I am not from USA and there is no country where politicians have achieved that. If they had wouldnt Americans move to those countries instead ?

<comment><USER31> There are certainly countries where healthcare is free to the patient at the point of delivery; countries where no one is ever refused healthcare for lack of ability to pay, or need ever consider such a thing. If your quibble is that it's actually paid for by general taxation, well, yes, but this is well understood by everyone as what is meant by "make healthcare free".

(Similarly for college tuition, while we're at it. As for "create jobs" and "increase wages", these are relative terms, but there are certainly countries where such things have gone up at times in response to specific policy decisions (including here in the U.S.!). I'll leave the rest untouched upon for now.)

Sometimes Americans do move to other countries! Sometimes they don't. More factors generally go into a person's decisions to move or not move than any one policy choice, and people have attachments to where they grew up, and so on. It's no small matter.

<comment><USER12> > healthcare is free to the patient at the point of delivery

Sure I can offer you an rotten apple for free as the ONLY choice and claim you are getting a free apple. But that is not any better than USA where government mandates the floor on quality of apple and gives freedom to set the price (which will be high because of quality floor).

Both scenarios are very different. When cost of things is distributed over large population it might not be visible to a naive mind but it is indeed the cost one ends up paying.

For example wait times for an ordinary surgery in Canada are simply mindblowing: [http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/healthcare-wait-times- hit-20-we...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/healthcare-wait-times-hit-20-weeks- in-2016-report-1.3171718)

You wont hear an old lady complaining about wait time but you will hear a man praising that he did not pay anything for a bypass surgery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great read. Reminds me of an article I read a few years ago (which I now notice includes an acknowledgement of "I, Pencil" in its footnotes), "What Coke Contains": [https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke- contains-221d4499...](https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke- contains-221d449929ef)

</comment><comment><USER33> > Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can > thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or > wants.

If everybody is working in this process, then where do the people who expropriate the most from this process - the idle class heirs - get their profits?

> There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of > anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring > me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the > Invisible Hand at work.

The invisible hand...this is Adam Smith being misquoted. Adam Smith did use the metaphor of an invisible hand - Smith said the invisible hand was something that _blocked_ free trade, not facilitated it. L. Read is using the metaphor in the exact opposite manner in which it was proposed.

Also, much of this could be said about a pencil being made in the USSR. Did any one person in the Soviet Union know how to make an entire pencil, from tree to graphite and such? Perhaps some government bureaucrat looked at his charts and ordered it to be made, but how different is that than the corporate bureaucrat looking at his charts and ordering pencils to be made?

Also, in our era of TARP bank bailouts, quantitative easing, farm subsidies and such, this notion of say the US government not having a central role in the economy as it exists is absurd. This medium we read and type on now was created through military contracts to Fairchild Semiconductor, DARPA grants for ARPAnet research and such, over many decades.

<comment><USER34> > The invisible hand...this is Adam Smith being misquoted. Adam Smith did use > the metaphor of an invisible hand - Smith said the invisible hand was > something that blocked free trade, not facilitated it.

You're wrong about this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand). Adam Smith is not being misquoted.

<comment><USER35> Though he's indeed wrong in saying that the "invisible hand" acts only as to hamper trade, he isn't far off. The only use of the expression "invisible hand" in _The Wealth of Nations_ occurs amid the discussion of why investors and traders might be biased towards their home country, which is still a discussed issue [0][1] and is considered a kind of market failure.

But nowhere in the same passage does Smith's use of the expression suggest that the "invisible hand" would act merely to hamper trade, but that this simile generally describes an unintended outcome of a decentralized process. The action of the invisible hand might not be necessarily beneficial, as it isn't in this case.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hard to get past the capitalist propaganda in the article and introduction. Maybe if the essay were hosted on a more neutral site.

I say this because when the article is hyping up the "timelessness" of this essay, I know that there is political motivation behind it, rather than some kind of (more nearly) objective opinion on it.

<comment><USER37> I agree that the essay should just speak for itself, so changed the URL from [https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil-audio-pdf-and- html](https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil-audio-pdf-and-html) to the one that has appeared on HN before.

<comment><USER36> Thanks! And yes, perhaps my wording was overstimulated.

<comment><USER37> Heh. I took that bit out as perhaps a little overstimulated in its own right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I refute it as follows: I could wedge a thin piece of lead in a cleaved branch, and tie it back together with fibrous material and make a pencil.

Apparently I'm the smartest man alive /s

This is more in response to the article than the contents of the actual paper, which I won't be reading.

<comment><USER37> Please don't post unsubstantive comments.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017901) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER13> What exactly was unsubstantive about the parent's comment?

<comment><USER37> Glib dismissal, snark, and making a virtue of not reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Someone should show this to Donald Trump.

</comment><comment><USER40> What is 'from scratch'? Why can we use anything other than elemental hydrogen?

Shit. Turns out humans, as a species, cannot make a pencil from scratch.

<comment><USER9> I'd say scratch means from raw materials as found in their natural state on Earth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_material](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_material)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: 5K 27" computer monitor recommendation? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a 5K 27" computer monitor but it seems there is literally only one option on the market: the LG/Apple UltraFine 5K 27" display.
I prefer this resolution at this size because it amounts to 220 PPI, which is 'Retina' (HiDPI) at macOS's native integer scaling.
Apparently there were a few models some years ago, such as the Dell UP2715K, the HP Z27q, and the Philips 275P4VYKEB, but they're discontinued. Other options like the Planar IX2790 and the iiyama XB2779QQS are impossible to find now. What's the solution here?
There's a glut of 4K 27" monitors on the market but to get Retina, you'd have to run them downscaled by 4x to 1080p, which is less than ideal. <comment><USER2> 90% of the reason I'm still on an iMac is the screen, 10% is cause I prefer macOS over Windows, but 0% because of what's inside of it. But I'm a photographer who does a lot of media production work, both still and video. So far, I haven't found a screen other than the iMac/Cinema Display's that hold up over time.

The only alternative I've been satisfied with LG UltraFine 5K.

We had some LG 27UD69P's as budget screens on some edit bays, they're 4K 27" displays, I believe the 27UL850-W is the current model. Nobody has hated them.

I haven't had much luck with the Dell's or HPs, even on the higher end displays. Color washes out after a year or so. Hard to get them to match unless you pull two from the same batch out of the box on the same day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tried HP z27q for a month under Linux with Cinnamon, didn't like it. Being a DP 1.2 monitor, 5K resolution is implemented as an ugly hack using MST and two displayport connections. The system views it essentially as two independent monitors. Stuff like maximizing windows just plain doesn't work, you always work on half the screen, window panels are half sized, etc. Some work went into fixing user experience on GNOME, but for Cinnamon the maintainers are not interested in proper support for MST and I'm not interested in switching DEs. The situation is a better in newer monitors with DisplayPort 1.4 though, which gets rid of MST. But these are only Planar and Iiyama which you say you have problems sourcing. My monitor examplar also every so often would randomly flicker for a few minutes on a cold start, which also contributed to my decision to get rid of it.

My recommendation is to just get a 4K 27". Much more options and similar enough PPI, you would hardly tell the difference. Well, you won't have the perfect 2x scaling without stuff looking too big, but most desktop environments today support fractional scaling and/or you can play with your font sizes. I have 2x scaling now on 4K 27" with smaller font sizes, stuff looks about as good as what I had on 5K.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have two of those Planar's.

Pros: 5K over a single display port is great. Awesome price. Glossy finish, same form factor as the 27" iMac. Costumer support is good.

Cons: Expect lots of dead pixels, burn in/ghosting. I RMAed two of them for these issues and the replacements had the same problems.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only company that is making 5K Res panel is LG. And all the Monitor you mentioned above were using the same LG panel.

Unfortunately as with everything manufacturing you need scale. And the volume of 5K panel is tiny by today's standard.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's too bad that the iMac doesn't support Target Display mode anymore.

I've been pretty happy with the 5K Ultrafine.

Besides availability, the tricky part may be matching the display interface, as the LG is Thunderbolt only.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alas, outside of crazy hacks like this one ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTVe6aVgww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTVe6aVgww)), there's no way to use the 5K iMacs as an external display :(

<comment><USER6> Sad that Apple abandoned Target Display Mode with the Retina iMacs, though pre-Retina models support it (2011-2014 via Thunderbolt, 2009-2010 via Mini DisplayPort.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apart from the Planar that has QC issues there is nothing else. The PC / monitor industry has decided that 4K should be enough for every desktop pc user. Don't forget that until the arrival of DP1.4 you couldn't even feed a 5k display with enough data using one cable. Plus the fact that Dell and HP discontinued their 5k offerings shows that the demand was likely low (which is to be expected given their price and their incompatibility with laptops).

There is an 8k currently sold by Dell, but it is out of most people's budget (>$3.5k)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can afford it, jump straight to the 30" Pro XDR. It is pricy but a great screen.

I also have two of the LG/Apple UltraFine 5K 27" displays and both suffer burn-in (strangely the iMacs we have w/ the same panels do not).

<comment><USER9> I recently got ultra fine, anything you recommend to prevent burn in?

Are yours the old version or the refresh?

<comment><USER8> Mine are both the old version, and got them at an "OK price" when Apple was selling USB-C HW at a discount.

I found that if I turn them off (for days), the burn in goes away.

This is the kind of burn in I get from a few seconds: [https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared- Image-2020-08-17-09-1...](https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared- Image-2020-08-17-09-15-27-aO6Qm.png)

ends up looking like:

[https://files.littlebird.com.au/Untitled-3-JCFxO.png](https://files.littlebird.com.au/Untitled-3-JCFxO.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have an LG 5K plugged into my iMac Pro and really the LG is just as good to my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER11> What about a 4k ultrawide? (Proper 4k, proper ultrawide)

[https://us.msi.com/Monitor/Prestige- PS341WU](https://us.msi.com/Monitor/Prestige-PS341WU)

<comment><USER12> 2160 vertical pixels is a difficult fit.

* At 1x, UI elements are very small unless it is a very large monitor.

* At 2X, you have 1080 addressable resolution which looks clunky at larger sizes. Fractional scaling can be blurry and can tax the video card more.

* 5K with 2880/1440 is just enough better at most sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Time to Upgrade Your Monitor [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983)

</comment><comment><USER14> Agree with you on internet scaling. 4k 24" or 27" isn't that good at 1.5x scaling even in Windows which has native support for fractional scaling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Apple knows this and that's why they offered the LG 5K UltraFine to begin with. The greatest mystery is why there's been no "mid-market" Apple- branded display to supersede the Thunderbolt Display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The LG 5K Ultrafine is all but discontinued. There are basically no realistic aftermarket "retina" monitors currently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did see this bit of news last week ([https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/28/apple- sold-out-of-standalone-...](https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/28/apple-sold-out-of- standalone-5k-mac-displays-with-no-official-solution/)) where Apple Retail's direct supply of the monitors has run dry. But you can still find them (at least in the U.S.) through other common retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, so I wouldn't say they're officially discontinued (yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I bought a HP Z27q on eBay and it's great.

Only screen that works with dual mini-DP input from a 2013 nMP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad that's working for you. Ideally the monitor I'm imagining would have a single USB-C/Thunderbolt connector into my Mac.</comment></comment>