A Cold, Harsh Reality for Radio - <AUTHOR> http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2626719&spid=24698

<comment><USER2> I've been thinking a lot about radio as I've watched my hometown market of Boston - once vibrant and varied - consolidate under the big boys. One path forward is to swing the pendulum the other way: offer hyper localized, focused content relevant to the geography. As a lover of rock music, a station that plays emerging artists from Allston and Berkeley School of Music would have me over the moon. College radio does this to an extent, but they still have to contend with crippling costs.

<comment><USER3> Why would I use that over a curated streaming playlist that does the same thing?

<comment><USER4> I personally like the radio setup sometimes, where the playlist is determined by someone with their own tastes and with a reasonably broad audience. However, even wanting that, I'd still just pull up a stream on my phone rather than use traditional radio to hear it.

<comment><USER5> I'm lazy. While my phone has music on it, I haven't built playlists to curate my likes and such. Both of my cars have inadequate means of taking my phone music through the car speakers. Radio is almost my only option. It can get repetitive but I like that I can get news and local opinions between songs.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't get my phone to hook up to my car radio very nicely, because my car was built in the in-between years where it no longer had a tape player, but was too early for ubiquitous aux-in ports. So it has a CD player and a radio, and that's it. FM transmitters suck.

If you're in the same boat, then here's the secret: FM _modulators_ are great. These are the same basic concept as an FM transmitter, except instead of trying to pick up a foolishly low-power station with your radio antenna, it's a direct hard-wired connection from the modulator to your radio's antenna port. Quality is very good (not as good as a CD, but as good as the best FM radio station you'll ever hear) and there's no chance of any interference because it never picks up external signals. Installation can take some work, but it's well worth it.

<comment><USER5> I've had this damn thing bookmarked for a couple months now and I haven't bought it yet [http://dx.com/p/ultra-thin-bluetooth-v2-0-music-receiver- for...](http://dx.com/p/ultra-thin-bluetooth-v2-0-music-receiver-for- apple-30pin-speaker-white-106950) One of my vehicles is similar to yours, stuck in an awkward period where Aux ports weren't acceptable, tape players were too old, and the only input other than CD was the first-generation iOS port. Yes, an ancient 2009 model of car that already has an outdated port for fricken audio. What a mess.

<comment><USER4> At least you have that iOS port! My 2005 car doesn't even have that, just CD and radio. Made me wish somebody made a dummy CD you put in that would work like those dummy tapes with a headphone jack. Probably way too hard to build such a thing, though. The modulator works nicely after going through the hassle of installing it, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A program director for one of my local video stations sent me this link. The author of this article retracted his claims:

[http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/2013/03/retraction- the-...](http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/2013/03/retraction-the-exact- amfm-dash-story.html)

The actual conversation read:

Rhoads: "But if I own a radio station and I've got a lot of money invested in transmitters, or HD Radio or otherwise, and everything's gonna go to IP and you'rre gonna pull that AM and FM receiver to save twelve cents out of each car, I want to know it. Do you think that's likely to happen?"

Koslowski: "Absolutely. I think you will see that happening."

Rhoads: "When will that happen?"

Koslowski: "That will not happen over the next five to ten years, but past that absolutely."

</comment><comment><USER7> I never understood the love for XM. I'd get a year, then 6 months, and now just a short 3 months whenever I'd buy a new car. I liked the variety of news and talk channels. I loved the fact that I could drive down the highway, across 4 states and never have to search for a station.

The reception stinks, a lot like satellite TV. Going under a bridge? Radio goes out. On the north side of a large building? No radio. In the drive- through at Starbucks or a bank? No radio. And the worst offender, driving east/west with a large amount of trees on the south side of the road? No radio. C'mon.

I only listened to about 6 of the music channels, they have a lot of variety, but I only like certain kinds of music. The sound quality is terrible. I'm no audiophile but whatever they do to fit that many channels on their service makes for horrible sound. Plus, the channels I listened to don't have that many songs in rotation. Gets very repetitive.

The XM people are also very resistant to you canceling. They'll offer the service at a 50%, then 70% discount just to keep you to say. My girlfriend has had service for years for like $3 a month. I don't like having to remember to call in and cancel every 6 months so I don't even subscribe at the discount.

I've gone back to terrestrial radio. I only have a 15 minute commute now, and don't drive a lot other than that. The local FM radio stations have mediocre on-air talent and play just as repetitive mixes of music. I don't mind the commercials as much, we're the midwest so for a lot of events that's the only way word gets out about them. And I've found a lot of news/talk on the AM stations.

<comment><USER8> I had XM radio for a number of years, when it was cheaper and I had a discounted plan. I actually had great luck with reception, except in extreme geographies like the Columbia River Gorge. I like taking road trips, and it was awesome to have good radio in the middle of nowhere.

However, I canceled when my prepaid discount plan ran out, because it was more expensive than it used to be. ($12 at the time... $14.49/mo now, yeesh!) Also, they had to drop some of the channels I liked to make room for Canadian channels when they expanded into Canada. :/ I tried it out again recently in a rental car, and was disappointed that all the news stations seemed to be trashy sensationalist garbage.

For me, the way to go these days is to just have a phone full of podcasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found about about this article a month ago from a radio station manager that I know, which compelled me to write two blog posts for non-technical people involved in radio. The elephant in the room which the OP falls short of addressing is whether Internet access is so prevalent that it needs to be considered a public good. This relates to the argument (noted earlier here on HN and many places elsewhere) on the issues of private ownership and control of the Internet.

Here they are, with 2nd post addressing the OP listed first. For those about to nit about my technical definitions, please read my first post to understand the simplifications I've made.

[http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog- broadcasting...](http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-broadcasting- whose-spectrum-is-it-anyway.html)

[http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-radio- broadc...](http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-radio-broadcasting- a-slightly-apocryphal-explanation.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd have thought that assuming you've got any kind of sound system in a car, tacking on an fm receiver is trivial/extremely inexpensive. With that in mind it doesn't seem like there would be much benefit in actually removing it. It'll probably live on the same chip as your internet comms stack a bit like mobile phones.

<comment><USER11> "...these big radio advertisers want cars to have online radio only so they'll be able to measure their advertising reach precisely, rather than relying on estimates."

The difficulty or expense is not the issue here. This is purely an advertising decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Main point:

 _"AM and FM are being eliminated from the dash of two car companies within two years and will be eliminated from the dash of all cars within five years."_

<comment><USER13> This is good if it means Internet infrastructure gets treated with a new level of respect, as it is now the defacto emergency broadcast system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So this piece is a year old, and it looks like attention has been stirred up enough that Jalopnik wrote a piece about this a couple weeks ago: [http://jalopnik.com/will-am-and-fm-radio-really-be- eliminate...](http://jalopnik.com/will-am-and-fm-radio-really-be-eliminated- on-new-cars-453849045)

Jalopnik points out that GM actually responded to the Radio Ink editorial to stated that GM has no plans to eliminate radios (see: [http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2627785&spid=2469...](http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2627785&spid=24698) ).

<comment><USER7> They just eliminated cassette tape players a few years ago.

<comment><USER14> So what? A radio is different from a cassette deck, and the discussions around them are different (for a pile of reasons).

Additionally if someone was concerned that this was a process that's currently underway, GM has indicated that it is not.

That makes this a rather different (and considerably more academic) discussion. I'm surprised that nobody seems to care about this fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems absurd to remove radio support, even todays cellphones have a radio, why should car companies just rip it out to save maybe 1 cubic centimetre of space?! This is just GM shooting themselves in the foot again. IMO, government should not have bailed them out, when you screw up your business, it should have consequences.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, they didn't conclude this magically: they went to a consulting firm and they told GM that radio was unpopular.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the consulting firm had a financial interest in spotify or rdio

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most of this conversation suffers from tunnel vision. What we're talking about is mass content delivery, nothing less. It was once done with large, expensive, unreliable AM radio transmitters, then FM transmitters, now it's more efficiently done with digital data streams, from any convenient source -- a nearly WiFi hub, a distant satellite, a laser beam, a wire.

People want their data, for entertainment, education, work. How it gets delivered is secondary, except to say the most efficient way is to be preferred. So given that, how is it in any way surprising that car companies would consider removing a fossil from the dashboard?

</comment><comment><USER18> This:

"Safety is a giant concern. AM and FM radio stays available when the power goes down. Cell towers and the Internet do not."

I own radio stations, and that's one of the dumbest things I've ever read about the business. Having suffered through countless extreme winter storms and electrical events, AM and FM radio DO NOT inherently stay available when the power goes down. We have generators at the tower sites and the office, but that can be done at cell towers and elsewhere, there's no magic to AM / FM. Generators do not run forever, and they don't always kick on perfectly. Completely bogus claim on the authors part.

In fact, frankly, more than a few times it was extremely difficult to keep our stations on the air during severe storms (hello physical, outdoors receivers - both at the towers and the office, hello ice and wind and snow), and meanwhile I was able to use my smart phone for Internet access.

<comment><USER14> Right, but radio is considerably more scalable than cell phone towers. Cell phone networks congest in a manner which radio cannot. And when natural disasters occur, you end up with two things compound to incapacitate cell networks. First damaging physical infrastructure, and second a spike in demand. With cell phone towers out of the network, the increased load is left to whatever remaining towers are available to carry the increase.

A crowd can accidentally DDoS a cell phone network. They can't DDoS a radio station.

<comment><USER18> Sure, and maniacs can cut the guy-wires on radio towers, I've seen it happen on more than one occasion over the last 20 years.

With radio - regarding natural disasters - you typically have at most one tower per frequency. Often networks will combine their broadcasts onto one tower, aka one point of failure. There's nothing special that keeps a natural disaster from taking that tower out, versus a cell tower.

The counter argument is that cell towers tend to be highly distributed and numerous - even in a bad scenario, drive 5 minutes and you'll probably get another cell tower, and then another, and then another (partially true for radio, but you're going to jump stations doing that, and the Internet will remain up even if you can't access it at one specific tower, ie cnn.com remains up in an earthquake or blizzard).

Most radio stations are small to medium operations, even those owned by Clear Channel (they operate locally, mostly on their own budget, and have local equipment). So regardless of if eg Clear Channel owns the station in question, if you pack enough ice onto its tower, the hardware on it is going to be damaged, ditto for wind. For mom & pop stations, of which there are a huge number, the cost and infrastructure difficulties under that scenario are terrible.

<comment><USER14> Right, i'm not claiming that radio towers are impregnable.

I would still argue that they've got a better track record for fault tolerance than cell phone networks, which are also limited in reach to begin with.

Also regardless of _major_ natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, there are piles of smaller less predictable phenomena, such as tornados, flooding, blizzards, and wild fires for which radio is a more effective medium for reaching people.

There's still no suitable equivalent for the emergency broadcast system for cell phones, and even if there was, I'd be hesitant to stake my life on it in non-urban areas across the US (which is, lets face it, a big part of the country).

<comment><USER18> I would agree that radio towers do have a much better record, but there's a reason for that: cell towers use a distributed model that allows for a higher individual tower failure rate, radio towers use a single tower point of failure model. So there was never any other choice for radio towers but to maximize uptime, otherwise there's no radio business the last 60 years.

And the cell tower business is a whole lot younger than the radio tower business. Time is eroding the uptime edge radio has possessed as cell towers proliferate and get better.

And regarding local disasters. I always thought local events / local news / local weather etc would be the saving grace for most radio stations, the competitive advantage that Pandora could never take away. I no longer believe that to be the case so much. The threat is more Facebook, and other services, than Pandora. As people are all now connected on Facebook, and constantly share local news and events. I believe that may nuke the radio business the same way Craigslist nuked newspapers on classifieds (and not just Facebook, it's one example of a trend in new ways to distribute local events).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I highly doubt that they would eliminate AM/FM radios from cars. I can see CDs leaving because they take a lot of space within the dash that could be better used, let alone the fact they have a moving part.

The circuitry needed to support radio isn't much and would most likely be integrated with other services into a simple chip set. Plus lets be frank, the youth today who don't find radio "hip" or whatnot aren't usually in position to buy new cars.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a huge fan of Sirius/XM. Occasionally I flip to fm. I never touch am.

It's nice to allow omakase for music. I can't always spend time tuning a playlist.

<comment><USER21> Regarding Sirius/XM, I wonder if Marco Arment's prediction of its death once the Howard Stern show ends will actually come to fruition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was confused when I saw the article as I had originally read the title as 'A cold, Harsh Reality for _Rdio_ '. Sums up the problem pretty well.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, me too. I was like 'but Rdio is great!'

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't listen to radio anymore. Having a DVR for TV has made me intolerant of the endless commercials, and that has spilled over onto radio.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only thing I use my car radio for anymore is to play audio from my iPhone. I'll use the phone to play streams of local radio stations, even, because it's just more convenient, even though the radio can pick them up directly.

The article takes a bizarrely alarmist tone at the end. Yes, I'm sure there are people out there who will still want a radio in their cars, whether it's people who want to be prepared for disasters, or live in areas with terrible cell coverage, or whatever. Those people can easily buy a standalone radio that plugs into their car's auxiliary input port. The author appears to think that a car which ships without a radio can never be altered to have one, which is just bizarre.

<comment><USER14> Bizarrely alarmist? How do you figure? The author clearly does have a POV and advocates for it strongly, but nothing he says within the post is _alarmist_.

A panel of spokescritters from the automotive industry have said that the decision to remove radios from cars has been made and is being rolled out.

He thinks that this is a disaster for the radio industry, and also has ramifications for public safety vis-á-vis broadcast infrastructures superior accessibility when compared to wired technologies such as cell phone towers and wired phone lines (citing Katrina and Sandy).

I'm sympathetic to the issue of public safety as there are a whole pile of circumstances where Americans may be unprepared with their _own_ radio where it is useful to be able to assume that they can tune in for broadcasts.

The the south is afflicted with hurricanes, the midwest and north east get hit by blizzards, the south west by wild fires. Some of these events are sudden in onset as well as unpredictable in nature.

The weird part here is that we're not even talking about removing the _stereo system_ but just the radio components. The cost/benefit analysis on the inclusion of a radio receiver must have been really freaking weird.

<comment><USER25> I think the safety concern is valid, but it's more a wakeup call for the government than for people getting rid of radios. The new text messaging alerts system needs to be built as robustly as our radio alerts. Given the low bandwidth needed for text messaging, it's likely that this goal is not only workable but will result in a more robust system as the end result.

<comment><USER14> Maybe people just don't understand how radio and cell phones work?

Cell phones need scores of towers and fiber running to towers in order to connect to a telephone network. You have a network of them. Disrupting either the physical towers or the cabling that connects them incapacitates that part of the network. Worse yet, the more towers drop, the higher the network congestion gets (which can further jam whatever nodes are still up and available).

Radio has a gigantic broadcast tower (or maybe some repeaters too), that blasts electromagnetic waves across a large region, and, so long as you have power and your tower is intact, you can reach every radio in your listening area.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SL-1: The only fatal nuclear reactor accident in US history - <AUTHOR> https://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/sl-1-murder-by-nuclear-reactor/ <comment><USER2> I was a power plant operator on a nuclear submarine. We were shown a classified film that about the SL-1 incident as part of our training. Recalling that film still gives me chills.

A lot was learned about reactor safety as result of that disaster.

<comment><USER3> What else was in the film?

<comment><USER2> Nice try! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The SL-1 story is well known in the industry. The Atomic Energy Commission has a video.[1] SL-1 was an experimental reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, an 8000 square mile AEC reservation. It's an isolated area, and the test reactors were many miles apart, just in case.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOt7xDKxmCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOt7xDKxmCM)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's another youtube video that goes more extensively into the mechanics of the accident. It's pretty remarkable that they were able to work out the position of the control rods, given that they were blasted around the room during the accident, bent, broken and (in some cases) embedded in the ceiling:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phbaE_0LANc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phbaE_0LANc)

<comment><USER3> Or in the personnel:

 _Fifteen minutes later they found Legg, also dead—he had been impaled to the ceiling by one of the plugs used to seal the unused control rod channels_

That's pretty metal, I've got to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That part of Idaho is interesting to drive through. It's near craters of the moon national park. The Idaho Nuclear Laboratory is pretty big. I remember it being nearly 50 miles along one side of the road with all barbed wire fences. It's pretty lonely and creepy out there. There was one cliff in Atomic City that was covered with graffiti of large random numbers. It turned out that the numbers were from high school graduating classes but the numbers weren't in order so it seemed like some random code.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fortunately, this reactor was moderated by water, so after the incident, all the water was gone and the nuclear reaction stopped by itself. I don't want to imagine what would have happened if the moderator was Graphite instead :/

</comment><comment><USER8> "...killed by the only fatal reactor accident in US history."

Is that really true?

'"Nobody died at Three Mile Island" — unless you count babies.'

[http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/cancer-and-infant- mor...](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/cancer-and-infant-mortality-at- three-mile-island/)

<comment><USER9> Somewhat crazy, but: One more level of abstraction, and lots of people die at nuclear plants _because they 're not built yet_ (or existing ones were delayed, or in maintenance), due to the coal power which they would displace.

<comment><USER10> Even weirder, the rates of cancer are higher around nuclear power plant locations. Even when the plants haven't been built yet. Turns out, such things tens to get built in old industrial areas that are already heavily contaminated.

<comment><USER11> This is going to be my go-to factoid on nuclear plant nimby-ism.

My uncle had an interesting experience in this vein. It was well understood that high voltage power lines caused all manner of health issues, from cancer to various degenerative diseases. He understood that EM radiation from the lines really shouldn't be very dangerous, though, and didn't think much of the leg of a line tower in his back yard. Then one day the power company came through to clear out the underbrush growing around the base of the line's tower. In just two days after the spraying all vegitation was _thoroughly_ dead. Turns out they spray an Agent Orange-like chemical to keep the towers maintained from plant overgrowth. You can bet he moved shortly after noticing that. (This was some years ago, and likely has been (hopefully) rectified.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does the Demon Core count as a reactor?

<comment><USER13> Yes it does:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuclear_reactor](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuclear_reactor)

<comment><USER14> No, it doesn't.

The definition you're citing says, "Any _device_ in which a _controlled_ chain reaction is maintained", emphasis added.

First of all, the Demon Core wasn't a "device", but a shaped lump of plutonium, which briefly — and _accidentally_ — went super-critical. (Yes, twice. And, yes, subsequently deliberately.) A "reactor" is the entire assembly, not just the "hot" stuff.

Secondly, it wasn't exactly designed for _controlled_ criticality.

EDIT: corrections.

<comment><USER13> It was controlled using a screw driver. What makes a device? For me 2 plutonium spheres and a screw driver rotated to adjust the gap counts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find the term "accident" a somewhat meaningless distinction. Millions of people have gotten cancer (statistically) from the radiation in the atmosphere as a result of nuclear tests. Does it really matter that the tests were intentional or not?

<comment><USER16> Well, mostly because it would make discussing anything difficult and meaningless. And, in that case, if we wanted to talk about the about the largest nuclear 'accident' involving the most deaths, we'd discuss coal burning power plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty good book about this incident: [http://www.amazon.com/Idaho-Falls- Americas-Nuclear-Accident/...](http://www.amazon.com/Idaho-Falls-Americas- Nuclear-Accident/dp/1550225626/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Whoa:

> In the split second it took for the rod to travel the remaining 8.3cm, the > reactor spiked to 20 GW, 6300 times its safe operating capacity.

(Up from that days' configured power output of 3 MW, happened while operator was lifting a control rod)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the reactor went prompt-critical, which is pretty much the worst thing that could possibly happen. In the reactor normally there's two classes of neutrons present - "prompt", which are emitted directly from fission, and "delayed", which are secondary neutron emissions from decay of fission byproducts.

Prompt neutrons are emitted on a very very short timescale and so if the power were controlled solely by them it'd be impossible to control a reactor because any change in the control rod position would cause an extremely rapid change in the power. Instead, reactors are designed to be subcritical considering only prompt neutrons and then be made critical via the remaining delayed neutrons. This extends the reactor period (time it takes for the power to change by a factor of exp(1)) from milliseconds to minutes.

However, if there isn't enough control material in the core that the proportion of prompt neutrons is enough to make the reactor critical by itself then it goes "prompt critical" and exactly what happens in the article occurs. Reactors are _supposed_ to be operated with enough margin that this won't ever happen (which isn't that difficult), but it sounds like they were deliberately operating right on the limit, which scares me.

<comment><USER7> Interesting explanation thanks !

However, I think you made a mistake (probably a typo but I think it's worth noting it to avoid confusion of other readers) in that sentence: "However, if there isn't enough control material in the core that the proportion of FAST neutrons is enough to make the reactor critical".

Prompt neutron (short time between fission and neutron emission) should not be mistaken with fast neutron (high kinetic energy, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature))

<comment><USER19> Oh, you're right. I know the difference, just a typo. I corrected it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For what it's worth, I like the original title on the article better.</comment>


The world of Linux Handhelds in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.giantpockets.com/?p=5615 <comment><USER2> I used to be sort of obsessed with some kind of handheld Linux machine. Devices I've had included:

HP 200 LX with 40MB PCMCIA storage. Tried to run a cut-down 16-bit version of Linux on it, but I don't think I ever got that running properly.

Original Sharp Zaurus, the first Linux PDA. Tried to run Linux on a Compaq iPaq at some point too.

Asus EEE PC 401 with the 7in screen and 4GB of storage. The first of the netbooks. Performance and build quality were not good. But it was very cute.

HTC ADP1 (G1), the first Android phone. Decent keyboard, terrible battery life. Connectbot was awesome for SSHing into remote systems, and local development was slightly possible with a Linux chroot environment.

Samsung Sidekick 4G. By far the best keyboard on any handheld device I've ever tried. Great feel, and I could get up to 30wpm. I was also able to set up a chroot environment. Had to modify the keyboard map to enable the last few ASCII characters not normally available via Fn keypress.

The idea was that I'd be able to do some software development on the go. But that didn't really work out either.

The device I'm most happy with so far is my current Chromebook. I've got a full Ubuntu environment via Crouton on a 128GB SD card, though most of the time I'm just SSHing into a workstation. Light, cheap, and with a long battery life. The keyboard is good enough that I'm running at nearly full speed, though I do miss my dedicated caps-lock.

<comment><USER3> Like you, I have an almost obsession-level fascination with Linux on palmtops. I think I can trace it all the way back to seeing a young John Connor 'hack' an ATM or something in the watershed _Terminator 2_ movie when I was a kid.

Like you I've had an HP 200LX (the closest I've come to Connor's pocket Atari- or-whatever), a Compaq iPaq, a PSION Series 7 'netbook', and (most recently, not Linux-related) an Apple eMate 300 (the clamshell, translucent, school- oriented Newton 'laptop' variant).

<comment><USER4> Joining the club, I've had the same obsession with portables. The first portable device I tried to shoehorn Linux onto was a Fujitsu Stylistic 2300 from the late '90s (attempt made in 2001). From there I tinkered with the Sharp Zaurus series, the HP palmtops, and the Netpliance iOpener "web appliance", which I had running Slackware Linux. I carried that contraption to college and used it as a demonstration of the power of Linux to my NA instructor's delight.

I always wanted the eMate 300 having never owned a Newton. I also was a PalmOS fanatic from about 1999 through the late 2000s, with my first "smartphone" a Treo 650 after having owned over a dozen Palm devices previously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have pretty much every Linux handheld ever made, and my original First Batch Open Pandora is still the one I go to for my casual gaming needs. The reason is that the community around this device continues to produce absolute gems for the machine, as can be witnessed in what would have to be one of the most underrated app-store/repo's around:

[http://repo.openpandora.org](http://repo.openpandora.org)

My next-favourite device is the GPD Pocket. Its simply a _great_ Linux workstation - near-perfect hardware design (unibody: yay! shitty keyboard: boo!) and - since its Intel - pretty much everything you could want to run on a machine this size is just an "apt install" away. Paired with a couple of iControlPads' (lol!), this is pretty much the ideal portable gaming rig.

I can't wait for the Pyra, and if there's a GPDPocket2, I'm definitely in for that. I'd love to have a device that delivers the community and form-factor of the Pyra, with the materials (unibody) and architecture (Intel) of the GPD Pocket some day. In order that we get there, I'm supporting any of these companies that push us closer .. even though, of course, a Switch or an Android tablet would probably be a better investment for gaming needs. ;)

<comment><USER6> I really like the Pocket; everyone (including you) complains about the keyboard but it just takes a few days to get used to it imho. It has stellar battery life (ubuntu + i3wm gets me well over 20 hours while coding). For casual gaming my OpenPandora is still my go to. Indeed a Switch seems tempting but I like having a device I can code on, again, stellar battery life, and I have spare batteries for the thing so I can go hiking for days and do some gaming + coding at night. Can't wait for the Pyra indeed.

My ideal device would have unibody, swappable battery and 3g, so the Pyra. The Gemini seems great but not sure about the battery life on it. Or the Linux support although they seem serious about it.

<comment><USER7> The Pocket seems dubious to me - the article got my attention, but the price tag I'm seeing on Amazon ($600+) makes me shy away. Refurb 11" MacBook Airs are in that range, plus any other number of low-end Windows laptops, or even hacking away at a Pi-Top.

<comment><USER6> I want something that fits in my pocket; the Pocket does. It is not phone size but for me it is comfortable and it has a lot longer battery life. The air is too big for what I use the Pocket for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I pre-ordered the Pyra and have been following its development ever since. IMO, many companies could learn a lot from them. Despite being such a small team they give out regular updates and are completely transparent. I think as long as you're honest about what's going on people are very understanding about delays and many other issues.

For an example of a massive hardware screw-up, take a look at the Jolla tablet. They barely gave any updates, always pretending everything was great, and suddenly they're out of money and cancelling the whole thing. Springing that up out of nowhere completely killed my trust with them.

<comment><USER9> I'm still on the sidelines with the Pyra, but keen to see how it pans out! It's looking really really close now, though.

Two Months?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How could they not mention the most important and groundbreaking one, although it doesnt release in 2018. [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

<comment><USER11> That's true. We need a phone running a pure Linux userland.

The Nokia N770-N9 saga was too good to be forgotten. IMHO, Librem should include some form of physical keyboard to take full advantage of Linux. GNOME is already quite touch friendly, but still.

Aside, Jolla seems to be going to be purchased quite soon. I hope the new owners try to come up with a new business model that involves open-source. Sailfish failed to attract a critical mass of developers due to closed components and never meeting their own open-sourcing promises.

<comment><USER12> Jolla is very much in survival-mode. Their priority is to build a sustainable business. Making Silica open source is not aiding that sustainable business in the short term.

Be aware, making software open source involves a lot of work. You don't just throw stuff over the fence and be done with it. You need to maintain it, review and apply patches, answer questions, write docs. That doesn't come free, and doesn't help the cause of surviving in the short term.

Just look around at all the businesses that have failed to make a sustainable business out of mobile linux phones. Ubuntu Touch is dead, and forked into UBports. Firefox OS is dead, and forked into something else. Purism has a good marketing team, but they are just starting. It is not easy to create a sustainable business out of this. And users are very critical and often demand feature parity with iOS and Android.

<comment><USER13> _You need to maintain it, review and apply patches, answer questions, write docs_

I don't understand this. None of that is necessary at all in order to release the source code. Just make it available to download. Heck, you can even "protect" it (nominally) with a download code that you ship along with the device, like you find with music.

<comment><USER12> Even then you need to vet it beforehand, if it all legal and clean to offer as open source download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My personal take on Linux handhelds is that they're held back by their user interfaces. None of the options I've seen have the polish of iOS and Android; they just look ugly and painful to use. On desktop this is 1. improving and 2. partially masked by the paradigm that you're supposed to "get work done", but mobile is in a large part still a platform for consumption and issues such as these make it difficult to seriously use them as such.

<comment><USER15> I use Linux on the desktop and this is my biggest gripe their too (well it's the same on BSD too, nothing Linux specific). Sometimes I wish the desktop environments were a bit more opinionated like MacOS (but without all the restrictions). I'm keeping a close eye on elementary OS to see where that ends up.

<comment><USER16> Isn't one of the main criticism of GNOME that it's too opinionated?

<comment><USER17> And those people are exactly the reason why Linux will never be the OS of choice on desktop for the vast majority of people. Which it should be, because it's a great piece of software, underneath the horrible UX.

<comment><USER18> In this sense, Linux already _is_ the OS for hundreds of millions, in the form of Android.

It just got a very different UI and somehow reworked userland.

Is this what you'd prefer on the desktop, too?

<comment><USER14> Personally, I think so. Leave the custom Arch or Debian builds for those who need it, and have a polished Linux distro "for the masses". That's basically what Chrome OS is, and it's pretty popular (though, I'd like it if it was more customizable like Android is rather than just being a web browser).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm keeping it modular and simple: Jolla's Sailfish X on a Sony Xperia, and a Jorno bluetooth keyboard.

All my development tools run on a _native_ terminal (Emacs, SBCL, Erlang). SSH 'just works'. Android apps too, if I really need any of them.

Basically, for my needs, it's an ultra-portable computer with the benefits of telephony. (And protected - on trips - in an absurdly over-the-top armored case by Love Mei.)

<comment><USER20> Is it difficult to install Sailfish on the Sony Xperia?

<comment><USER21> No, it's not hard and it's officially supported by Jolla. Note that Sailfish X is a commercial product, it costs 50 EUR:

[https://jolla.com/sailfishx/](https://jolla.com/sailfishx/)

<comment><USER20> Thanks, it looks like a VPN is needed to purchase from the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You can put a Linux in a chroot on most (? all?) Android devices , even non rooted [https://www.xda-developers.com/guide-installing-and- running-...](https://www.xda-developers.com/guide-installing-and-running-a- gnulinux-environment-on-any-android-device/) and the Moto Z family has a landscape keyboard upcoming [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/physical- keyboard-mod-for...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/physical-keyboard-mod- for-moto-z/x/5633299) so that should be a contender too, I feel.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not optimal because your have to go thru Android anyway and since Android phone end up having a very limited lifetime of updates you will have to run a chroot on top of an unsecure/obsolete Android version over the long run.

<comment><USER23> There's Lineage OS

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you still have to download their builds on shady servers?

<comment><USER24> Build yourself, using your own signing keys and your own patches (if you need any - I do).

There are various Docker images with everything necessary in the Dockerfile and user needs to only specify the device's model name (and any extra options, like build type).

Takes some time but the only thing one needs to trust is the source code (which is nearly impossible to fully audit, though)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Check out Noodle Pi – [http://noodlepi.com](http://noodlepi.com)

It's the world's smallest and lightest handheld computer. And unlike most of these devices with tiny built-in keyboards, it features a modular docking system so you can dock it with a range of different keyboards, from a tiny thumb keyboard to a full-sized one, or a gamepad.

Noodle Pi can be assembled, disassembled, repaired and upgraded by users, with no soldering or tools required. Being powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero, it also runs entirely off a MicroSD card, which greatly facilitates physical security for your system. You can just remove the MicroSD card and keep it physically secure, rather than having to secure the whole device.

There are also a number of wearable configurations possible with Noodle Pi, including a wrist dock that enables wearing it as a wrist-watch, a belt holster, and a clip holster. Lanyard holes in all the docks facilitate even more wearable configurations.

Review of Noodle Pi by Bryan Lunduke: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_bPWyrPFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_bPWyrPFc)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > It's the world's smallest and lightest handheld computer.

Only for very specific definitions. Some phones are smaller than that, and there are GNU+Linux wrist watches.

<comment><USER25> Phones aren't PCs. They are crippled and locked-down devices. Of the ones that are capable of running a full Linux distro, I don't believe any are even close to the size of Noodle Pi.

I'm not aware of any Linux wristwatch or any other computer that's in production and available to buy that is smaller than Noodle Pi. If you know of a Linux wristwatch that's for sale commercially I'd love to know about it.

The only Linux wristwatches I see in a quick online search are two prototype devices, one made by Steve Mann and the other by IBM. Neither of those devices were actually usable as a PC, or available commercially. Mann's actually relied on a second hidden wearable computer to provide the actual processing power.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > Phones aren't PCs. They are crippled and locked-down devices.

We have differing definitions. I might concede phones as separate from "PCs", but the original phrase was "handheld computer", which most phones are. Yes, many are locked down at the bootloader level, but they're still general- purpose computing devices. With Termux or a chroot, you can even get GNU goodness on them. Even without that, Android/iOS are as much computers as Windows S devices; they can run programs compiled for that OS, and have normal full-function CPUs, GPUs, and network stacks. The _default_ use-cases are restricted, but worst case you can flip on the switch for sideloading APKs and run any code you want.

> Linux wristwatch

Prepare to be amazed(1) :) [https://asteroidos.org/](https://asteroidos.org/) is a proper GNU/Linux system for hardware that shipped with Android Wear. It's running a tiny QT GUI on the touchscreen, but you can SSH in ([https://asteroidos.org/wiki/ssh/](https://asteroidos.org/wiki/ssh/)) and get a normal system, systemd and all.

(1) I mean this sincerely; it still amazes me every time I look at what they've built.

<comment><USER25> Yes, for the sake of precision I should probably have used the term "PC" rather than "computer". I thought the meaning was pretty clear from the phrase "handheld computer".

AsteroidOS looks very cool, thanks for the link. But a watch "running a tiny QT GUI on the touchscreen", and which you can only really use as a computer by SSHing in via another computer, is not a PC, by any reasonable definition.

I'm aware of many little devices that can run Linux, but they're not full- fledged PCs unless they have reasonably sized screens and enough processing power to run regular PC apps in a usable manner.

Neither is a phone, which is neither marketed as a PC (or a "computer"), nor able to run any apps that aren't written specifically for Android / iOS, without all sorts of complicated shenanigans to jailbreak its lock-down, which is designed precisely to prevent it from being used as a general purpose computer.

Some people can "skate" on a bicycle while standing up on the seat and handlebar. That doesn't mean a bicycle is a skateboard. Especially if they had to first break built-in protections in the bicycle specifically designed to prevent them from doing that.

Also sideloading APKs is a far cry from "run any code you want". Can I run a GTK app written in Perl on an Android phone by sideloading an APK?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really like the idea of having the Gemini or Pocket for occasionally writing on the move, but I don't think I can justify them at that price. Is there any cheaper option for somebody who's not too bothered about Linux or powerfulness? I note the cool but ancient Psion 5mx still seems to go for £200 or so on ebay. Is there any kind of pocketable writing workhorse in production at a sensible price?

<comment><USER27> How about keyboard + storage + minimal display? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart)

<comment><USER28> I actually picked up a couple of these with the idea of putting a PiZero in them. There's a good bit of space in the area on both sides of the screen. If we could make the keyboard recognizable by the pi in some capacity (perhaps with an arduino translator), definitely some possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sloppy article. The Gemini _is_ shipping now and a, eh, handful, have landed in early backers hands. The question of future support have come up repeatedly and Planet Computers understands this and have promised to "open source what they can". While this leaves a lot of question, the specifically mentioned boot loaders. Thus, bleeding-edge Linux support might depend on community support, but it's not impossible.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Gemini is shipping now and a, eh, handful, have landed in early backers > hands

the same can be said for the GPD2, but that does not make it "officially released" until you can purchase it anywhere, anytime.

<comment><USER30> If you consider indiegogo 24/7 online, accessible through a browser, you can purchase the GPD2 anywhere, anytime. Delivery is a bit delayed while they still build them though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting thread, going to check out it and the OP. I've entertained thoughts of getting a handheld pocket Linux-based device. Would want a way to type on it to do light programming though, without it being too awkward or slow. A while ago, had almost decided to buy a Nokia N900 based on a glowing description of it by an acquaintance who had one, then did not buy it due to a couple of issues - read a negative review of one component of it (a USB connector, IIRC), and it was also discontinued, IIRC.

Apropos of the OP, anyone know what happened to LinuxDevices.com? It used to be a decent news site about the topic. Maybe it got acquired or closed down.

<comment><USER32> I don't know about LinuxDevices.com, but have you looked at the Neo900 project? They're updating the internals of the Nokia N900, and their plans include fixing the USB connector. Even though their specs won't be brand new, I think its a quite interesting project as it will be libre software from the bootloader up, and they're designing the circuits to be able to definitely power off the GSM chip from the CPU, so that you can control it, not vice verse (since there's no libre GSM chips available).

<comment><USER31> Just saw your comment now ...

Thanks for the info. Interesting generally, and also that they plan to fix the USB connector. Will check out Neo900.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hmm... with standalone HMDs coming out this year, I wonder what might be the VR equivalent of linux handhelds?

HMDs based on qualcomm's snapdragon 835 vr chipset are android, so perhaps someday linux on android on HMD.

But you can also think of HMDs as merely fancy monitors. And use a bluetooth keyboard (for flexibility). Leaving you with simply a portable headless linux box. Acting as a wifi hub.[1] Serving say a WebVR RDP client to the HMD.

So imagine a standalone android HMD (like [2]), decorated with a linux single- board computer. Or several. Maybe with power from the HMD battery (~4k mAh) via USB. So power-on all, run chromium in the HMD, browse to the linux board, run Xpra RDP in stereo. For passthrough AR, one often wants more cameras and associated computes than an HMD provides out of the box (for dynamic range, and high-res narrow-FoV to see lecture slides, and fisheye for better situational awareness (eg on public transport), and optical tracking of hands and keyboard and such). So imagine a Pi-based ecosystem of linux HMD-mounted symbiotes. And any boards with their own battery, and not doing camera, can stay in a backpack or pocket, simply connected by wifi. Thoughts?

Linux _head_ helds.

[1] [https://learn.adafruit.com/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-as-a- wi...](https://learn.adafruit.com/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-wifi-access- point/overview) [2] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12297/lenovo-details-its- stan...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12297/lenovo-details-its-standalone- daydream-vr-hmd-the-mirage-solo-at-ces-2018)

<comment><USER34> The Pockulus C.H.I.P. ([http://pockulus.getchip.com](http://pockulus.getchip.com)) is a Linux-based headset. It's meant to be a bit silly, but it's real, it's Linux-based, and it's a headset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can any of those run GNU/Linux without any blobs? That is, with the linux- libre kernel and no proprietary graphics drivers?

<comment><USER32> Not that I'm aware of. The only phone project I know that's trying to run libre software from the bootloader up is the Neo900 (new internals in a Nokia N900 case). And in the case of the GSM module, if I understand correctly, they're designing a circuit that guarantees you can power it off from the CPU. So basically, their architecture is to not trust the modem, since its running proprietary software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For years I was reluctant to type with a tactile screen, but after trying the "swype" mode to type, I found that I'm actually faster with it than with a classic keyboard. So a keyboard now seems obsolete for me. I admit that there are still issues with it, like for example this annoying bug when it does 2 words suggestions

However, I still have to find an adequate solution to efficiently type code (offline or online, but both should be possible) using an android, as gboard is definitely not designed for it.

There are apps available that can run python or other interpreted languages, so you can connect a real keyboard on an android, but even small keyboards are rarely high quality.

I guess a solution would be some tactile keyboard app that is designed for programming.

<comment><USER37> Now Swype is going, can you recommend anything in it's place?

<comment><USER38> Google keyboard or Gboard has swype like feature for a while now. Other options are SwiftKey and choorma keyboard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've got the GPD pocket, haven't had much time to use it because of a baby being around (she's pretty interested in it though). i wish the keyboard was better, I would probably use it more if it was.

<comment><USER39> I have the GPD Win 1 (Windows only) and while it's a pretty good pocket computer, I'm reluctant to ever buy another product from them because the support is lacking at best.

Several users have had batteries swell, and GPD has not provided any avenue for these users to get replacements. Some members of the community have stepped up, but the batteries are subject to shipping rules, so people in some countries are still out of luck.

<comment><USER30> Isn't a battery a battery? Anything that fits, with the right pin outs, works?

<comment><USER39> No. Without getting into too much detail (the /r/gpdwin subreddit can provide more info), the battery has to be a specific voltage, high drain and a specific size because the chassis has very little room in it. There are knockoffs of the battery on AliExpress, but people who have bought them have reported having all sorts of problem with them.

The unit also won't work without a battery on AC power only, because it looks like it was made with pre-existing tablet guts in that it only gets power from the battery irrespective of whether it's charging or not.

And given that the OEM batteries are subject to expansion, there's no reason to think that an OEM replacements wouldn't either.

FWIW, the GPD Win 2 doesn't have these issues, because it has a different design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What I hope to see (and would like to buy) is the one with form factor of VAIO UX or OQO. I think current technology of ARM can make this happen again with longer battery time.

I've used VAIO UX with arch linux and the keyboard is sufficiently comfortable enough to run emacs for "mobile coding" :)

</comment><comment><USER41> I had high hopes for the pocket C.H.I.P last year but it kinda fizzled out and ripped off a bunch of people.

<comment><USER42> I have one and it's neat in a retro kind of way; sorry to hear it's gone badly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Android phones and tablets don't count as handhelds? ;)

<comment><USER44> From a users perspective android doesn't really count as Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> These all seem like weird compromises satisfying neither to people who want to do serious computing nor people to just want to play some games on the go.

</comment><comment><USER46> The Pyra's PowerVR GPU is disappointing. I wonder how good power control will be without a free driver.

</comment><comment><USER47> Skip the keyboard and add another screen with stylus support.

</comment><comment><USER48> None of these work without binary blobs.

</comment><comment><USER49> rip Ubuntu Edge...</comment>


Tuning Your DBMS Automatically with Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/tuning-your-dbms-automatically-with-machine-learning/ <comment><USER3> If you are on MySQL RDS, the first thing you need to do is change the INNODB_LOG_FILE_SIZE to something reasonable, like 2 gigs. I have preemptively stopped at least 5 vertical scaling requests with this one change.

The default of 128mb is plain stupid. I get why Amazon chose it, because it directly eats 2x the value of your backing store - something that can be hard to explain to customers with 4gb disks attached and not really running any appreciable load through it.

But when you have 100+ gig disks allocated on a 2xlarge instance, the small value makes no sense whatsoever.

<comment><USER4> At my previous employer, a small (back then, 10x larger today) outourcing company, I saved a customer's project by increasing innodb_buffer_pool_size from 8MB to 2GB. As a context, it was back in 2010 when MySQL had MyISAM as the default storage engine and I think 99% of the tutorials on tuning MySQL's performance were focused on MyISAM, while the customer had most of its tables as innodb. As a bonus, the value for innodb_buffer_pool_size was expressed in bytes, showing a large, 7 digits, number. Before my arrival there all the senior devs tried to improve the performance of that db. The customer bought a server with 8GB of RAM and dedicated it solely to the db, while the db was about 4GB in size. It was useless. When traffic to the web app increased, the db daemon started paginating and the server load increased to a point of 0 responsiveness. There were simple queries on indexed fields in tables with less than 1k records which took 8 seconds to execute.

It took me about 2 weeks of internet scavenging to find the culprit, which was just the innodb_buffer_pool_size size. That was my first commercial project I worked on for the employer and it got me the reputation of THE db performance tunning expert in the company. I was with them for 5 years and that was a quick&easy way to position myself as a valuable team member.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On GitHub: "No description, website, or topics provided."

In the article: "and collects its Amazon EC2 instance type and current configuration"

... and I switched off.

I recently diagnosed a MySQL latency snag on a well known cloudy platform for a customer. I run rather a lot of comparative bonnie++, MySQL bench and Lord knows what else. I was able to convince the customer that my office PC ran MariaDB better simply because my single SSD on a rather shag Lenovo PC (a cast off from another customer!) had better i/o and latency than whatever they were being given by said cloudy provider.

I suggest you start with the basics: CPU, RAM, disc I/O and latency, network I/O and latency. Optimise those first and then work up the stack (and down, then back up etc.)

If you start with "assume a spherical EC instance" you may not be considering the whole problem -> solution -> realisation thing.

<comment><USER6> But then there's the issue of cost. Tuning performance on the software side only costs time and expertise but not money. And management doesn't really want to spend money unless you tell them they are going under within a week.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like GP is a contractor. In that world, time and expertise _is_ money - contracting rates aren't perceived as a sunk cost the way salaries are - <USER2> an SSD won't cost more than a few hours' billable time would. (Less than one hour, for high-end firms.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Technically there is a perl tool to make recommendations for mysql settings - although not with AI. As a DBA, I would probably use this, but 80% of the performance improvements come from indexing, fixing bad data models and archiving - especially with RDS where the options for performance optimization are limited.

<comment><USER9> I assume you are referring to this project [1].

1\. [https://github.com/major/MySQLTuner- perl](https://github.com/major/MySQLTuner-perl)

<comment><USER10> I love that project, but it seems like it could use a refresh. For example, it currently still complains if the query cache is turned off...but Mysql does that on purpose, and will remove it entirely soon. Last time I used it, it also seemed like it was still straddling suggestions between MyISAM and InnoDB. It seems safe enough at this point to have the tool strongly suggest converting MyISAM tables and focusing solely on newer storage backends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of this: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/01/17/self-driving- database-ma...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/01/17/self-driving-database- management-systems/)

<comment><USER12> Yep! Peloton is by the same people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Product Manager for the MySQL Server here.

The default configuration for MySQL is for a server with 512M RAM: [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/memory- use.html](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/memory-use.html)

.. so some improvement should be expected. The paper shows what has been tuned in each configuration (pasting below).

It would be diligent to point out that the DBA configuration actually changes the semantics so you may lose data (disabling doublewrite, flush-log-at-trx- commit=0).

(a) OtterTune Configuration (MySQL)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

innodb_buffer_pool_size 8.8 G

innodb_thread_sleep_delay 0

innodb_flush_method O_DIRECT

innodb_log_file_size 1.3 G

innodb_thread_concurrency 0 # this is the default

innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct_lwm 0 # this is the default

innodb_read_ahead_threshold 56 # this is the default

innodb_adaptive_max_sleep_delay 150000

innodb_buffer_pool_instances 8 # this is the default

thread_cache_size 9 # this is the default

(b) DBA Configuration (MySQL)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

innodb_buffer_pool_dump_at_shutdown 1

innodb_buffer_pool_load_at_startup 1

innodb_buffer_pool_size 12 G

innodb_doublewrite 0

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit 0

innodb_flush_method O_DIRECT

innodb_log_file_size 1 G

skip_performance_schema

(c) Tuning Script Configuration (MySQL)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

innodb_buffer_pool_instances 4

innodb_buffer_pool_size 4 G

query_cache_limit 2 G

query_cache_size 2 G

query_cache_type 1

(d) Amazon RDS Configuration (MySQL)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

innodb_buffer_pool_size 10.9 G

innodb_flush_method O_DIRECT

innodb_log_file_size 128 M

key_buffer_size 16 M

max_binlog_size 128 M

read_buffer_size 256 k

read_rnd_buffer_size 512 M

table_open_cache_instances 16

thread_cache_size 20

</comment><comment><USER14> So cool! Its not hard to image this same technique used on clouds to tweek infastructure for workloads.

</comment><comment><USER15> Similar concepts can be applied to optimize applications performance e.g. .net web apps or any similar stack. I got something to research during coming week

</comment><comment><USER16> I just see that Postgres have better performance than MySQL with default configuration.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn/implement local SEO? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Check out BrightLocal blog - they have good resources about Local SEO [https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/](https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/) Also you can check tools for Local SEO at [http://www.whitespark.ca/](http://www.whitespark.ca/) From my experience the main success factors in Local SEO are G+, maps, homogeneity of addresses, links and mentions in local blogs and services. Also the big weight is reviews in social networks and yellow pages. And you should constantly track & analyze competitors</comment>


Visual Guide to 65xx CPU Timing - <AUTHOR> http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/Visualizing%2065xx%20Timing/Visualizing%2065xx%20CPU%20Timing.html <comment><USER2> ARM was able to beat the 386 using similar principles, I think the ARM CPU itself was designed with DRAM timing in mind: [http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=144991&curposti...](http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=144991&curpostid=145604)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah if you go back and compare an 8mhz ARMv2 in the Archimedes machines with equivalent code in an Atari ST or Amiga, the ARM wins handily. Of course the Amiga had the advantage with custom graphics hardware for certain workflows. But the 68k is not as cycle efficient as the ARM.

<comment><USER3> There's a bit about this in Sophie Wilson's Computer History Museum interview: [http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746190](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746190)

See p21, but it's interesting throughout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks this is a very inspiring interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The same person made an extended CPU based of of a 65xx that could linearly address 16MB of ram. Here's a great picture of the back of the CPU board; a beautiful example of wire-wrap:

[http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/KK%200800%20f...](http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/KK%200800%20fr.jpg)

<comment><USER5> NB: This is _not_ a 65C816! It's a 6502 with a very unusual memory mapper. :)

<comment><USER6> Right -- not a 65c816. There's a summary and block diagram here: [http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/Kimklone_shor...](http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/Kimklone_short_summary.html)

I'm the builder! :o)

\-- Jeff

<comment><USER4> The KimKlone impresses me quite a bit; was it just a case of a thought like: "oh, if I did this and this, I could extend the address space..." and then a burning desire to see it work, or did something else motivate this?

<comment><USER6> I was in my twenties, I was hugely turned on by the electronics I was learning, and I was bursting with creativity! There's a little bit of Back Story explained here, especially the "my KIM" section at the bottom of the page. [http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/BrideOfSon%20...](http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/KimKlone/BrideOfSon%20KK%20Lancaster.html)

Also I'm a Forth fan, and when when I realized the counter/timer of a 6522 could be tricked into serving as IP for a 9-cycle machine-code NEXT instruction, the idea amused me immoderately (LMFAO) and I had to build the darn thing! :oD Previous HN thread here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070169)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever considered making a PCB of the thing and making it available to others? Hell, I wonder if it'd even be possible to make an expansion model for old 6502 machines using this technique.

It's very clever. Thank you.

<comment><USER6> Thank _you_ for posting. A PCB would be fun but I'd be inclined to do a shrink, moving away from all the jelly-bean logic. I'm pretty sure a KimKlone clone (!) could be done with just a 128 macrocell CPLD, a '574 and the 2 uCode EPROMs, plus the VIA, the CPU, and the stock memory complement (RAM/ROM).

Do you ever visit the forum at 6502.org? There's a smallish discussion about KK there... [http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1487](http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1487)

<comment><AUTHOR> I do visit, but hadn't seen this thread. Sorting through it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


InterPlaNet -- The New Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9802/1066/

<comment><USER2> Dibs on the .mars TLD!</comment>


$1,000 to fix open source bugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.hiremarshal.com/blog/hiremarshal/1000-to-fix-open-source-bugs-launching-hire-marshal/ <comment><USER2> Proposal 1: There are two XML files that keep track of recently used documents. Gnome panels only looks at one - it's the one that Open Office doesn't use. Makes "recently used documents" crap. Fix that. I could probably do that in a week if I knew $1000 was there (out of a project I'm doing, I've learned a fair amount about the Linux desktop, I program c++ and I am available - reply here).

But this is the "100 paper cuts" thing. I use and curse Gnome daily. I could list ten more if I had any belief there'd be action. $1000 is a week's worth of action if you sell yourself _really_ cheap.

Rant 1: If you look at a given "bug list" for any large project you'll find a dozen problems posted where the reply is a very curt "will-not-fix/not-a- bug/your-configuration-is-wrong". It feels generally snarky and unwelcoming, especially when I'm searching for a solution to the same bug. If someone could figure out protocol that would make bug-reporters _feel more welcome_ , it would really help the process. As developer, I know that, in fact, a lot of things people see really aren't bugs but expected behavior/configuration problems. BUT!, BUT... you have to create an atmosphere of involvement if you want people involved.

Proposal/Rant 2: The format for menus in Gnome is the convoluted piece of trash that anyone ever foolish - how freedesktop could possibly publish it as a "standard" is beyond me. It needs to be junked and replaced with a simple approach. (And suspect this format is why panels has notable, annoying delay to be displayed even on modern hardware that should show stuff instantly).

Proposal/Rant 2: Scribus has a zillion bugs I'd love to see fixed. I have a private list I keep out of frustration. I won't bother pasting it here unless I see more interest. It's more likely that Inkscape will become a viable DTP project through supporting multiple pages than that Scribus will ever stop being a piece of total garbage - because it's really hard fix large, poorly coded project. Yes, I've used Scribus, a lot sadly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Joe. Yours was the top-rated comment at the deadline so I'm trying to pull out a plan for what we fix, in what order.

The "recently used documents" seems like the most specific bug / fix that we might be able to get done first.

However, am I right in thinking that what you are seeking is essentially this: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/openoffice/+bug/66933>

If so, it looks like it has been fixed (or am I misreading the bug)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's an annoying Gnome Panel bug that's been open for years:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome- panel/+bug/4...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome- panel/+bug/44082) <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341441>

Changing the resolution of the display (ie., dock/undock laptop) causes the panel icons to shift around. The bug is marked fixed, but it isn't.

<comment><USER4> The issue is the way that the position of the icons is set by the user. By default, gnome sets the left-most icons to negative numbers as a position, and the right-most icons to some very high numbers. When a user clicks and drags their own applets to the panel, they are considered absolute positions and set their position in pixels.

The fix would involve an overhaul of the interface used to add icons to the panel, and it would not fix any existing panel configurations. It would also require at least some sort of an extra step of understanding for the user (Do you mean left justified, right justified, or absolutly positioned?) and some interesting Gnome-panel rendering hacks.

This is a lot of work for something that doesn't affect a lot of users, as most users do not customize their panels, and of those that do probably are not changing their resolution often. If someone who wanted to work on user interface hacking worked on other parts, such as improving file system access, preferences configuration, or even login screens, it would be more appreciated by more users.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly the kind of "reply" that seems to keep the open desktop crappy.

Sure, it takes work and testing to get a UI into a condition that seems, to the end-user, to just work

BUT that kind of work, each in the small end-cases that only come up ocassionally, is needed. Sure _"that doesn't affect a lot of users..."_.. yeah it will continue to "not effect a lot of users"* as long your usability sucks and not one uses the thing...

An app or desktop or whatever needs to fully implement the features it claims to have. And it is often true that the last yard turns out to cost as much as the rest put together. Yes but the last yard is necessary. I can understand if it won't get done 'cause there's not enough time or money. But the _attitude_ that it shouldn't get done 'cause "that doesn't affect a lot of users" makes my blood boil. Sorry, I'm sure people put lots of effort into this stuff but I just have to get this off my chest.

<comment><USER4> Look at it this way: Currently, there are a lot of problems with Ubuntu's user interface. The crappy way it deals with shortcuts when you click a menu. The ridiculous way that the calender flyout stays on top. The un-customizable log- in screen. The lack of vertical panel applets. The list goes on.

This complaint is similar to desktop icons not maintaining their position when you change desktop resolution. It requires far more work than changing the way the backend handles shortcut keys (to fix the menu bug), and doesn't improve most people's experience.

I'm not saying you're wrong! This is a legitimate problem! I'm simply saying that it's not a priority, similar to how it's not a priority for Apple to expose a user interface to customize the button layout on their windowing engine, or fix their dock to work properly in vertical mode. All projects have priorities, open source and closed source, and this bug doesn't seem very important to me.

<comment><USER5> I think he has a point insofar as Ubuntu's user interface has thousands of small usability issues like the one he mentioned; each of them a corner case that impacts a tiny subset of end users, and so each tends to get individually brushed aside because the fix would require a lot of hard work (polishing is, after all, about doing a lot of hard work), and wouldn't benefit that many people vs rewriting-the-audio-layer-yet-again or how-about-a-new-HAL-this-one- is-almost-mature or some other big/sexy project with mindshare.

The problem with that thinking is that all of those little corner cases, in aggregate, create a situation in which you are constantly encountering little unpolished, sharp edged bits of ungainly behavior, and it's never going to go away until people reject CADT-type behavior and realize that polishing enough corner-cases for small subsets benefits large majorities in aggregate.

Shuttleworth seems cognizant of this with his support for the paper-cuts project, but there's too little of this polishing going on upstream for a 100-odd little fixes per-release effort to really tip the balance too far towards improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There aren't actually a lot of open source bugs that bother me that anyone here can fix. If you go on Launchpad, for instance, you'll see that the majority of important bugs relate to hardware compatability, Flash, and WiFi firmware. [1]

However, if we can call _features_ a bug, I would really like some better graphical frameworks for HTML5 a-la Flixel or Flashpunk for Flash. As a game developer, I would love this, even if it's simple or bare bones, as it would send me in the right direction and show me some best practices.

[1] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.searchtext=...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.searchtext=&orderby=-heat)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm running through digging out a plan of action - this was the 2nd in the list at the chosen moment in time. I don't know what specific action we could take with the HTML5 idea within the budget - do you have any ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> \- Integrate RDP 6.0 (Vista and up) support into rdesktop. It is the one thing keeping a lot of us from using Linux exclusively (<http://goo.gl/1pm8>) This ties in with the Federal Information Processing Standards (<http://goo.gl/RKUD>) which will make rdesktop useless for U.S. government mandated connectivity requirements.

\- Fix suspend/resume on Linux or work towards integrating TuxOnIce/Suspend2 in the mainline. At the very least, improve DSDT debugging tools, so that non- geeks can help developers identify why suspend is not working on their desktops. <http://goo.gl/oUzF>

\- Create a SVGALIB backend to Plymouth, so that nvidia/ATI cards dont have shitty bootsplash (<http://goo.gl/1D52>)

\- Fix SIL-Graphite support in Pango so that Asiatic fonts (using smartfonts) are better supported.

\- Fix upstart scripts for postgresql, php-cgi and a zillion other services (migrate them from the old style - it really messes up having them in different places.)

\- And of course, the long running IPV6 slowdown bug (<http://goo.gl/y0SN>)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's one I filed 5 years ago:

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gksu/+bug/24280>

Short version: any theme installed by the user (to ~/.themes) will not be picked up when running admin apps (because they're run as root and thus look in /root/.themes, but it's a UX issue all the same).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this idea - this was 3rd in the list at the specified time. It looks like it's possible we will get to this one - but it seems like it is somewhat tricky (since it's been around for ~5 years). Any devs out there familiar with this part of the system who might be able to contribute a fix / idea (given budget!)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Extend compcache <http://code.google.com/p/compcache/> to cache disk reads/writes to a block device (SSD), use LRU or ARC. Look at cleancache (2.6.37) and integrate from there. This will allow for compressed ARC/LRU based caching similar to zfs's l2arc.

<comment><USER9> Do you know if compcache has finally been integrated in the kernel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When resizing a gnome-terminal window, refresh/rewrap text. This is how Terminal.app under Mac OS X works, and I'd love to see this feature on Linux.

<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336238>

</comment><comment><USER11> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90268>

The long and short: changing the CSS of a parent element of a flash movie causes the flash movie to reload.

</comment><comment><USER12> Help to debug and release Debian Squeeze :)

<comment><USER13> so your list is <http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/other/testing.html> ? That's about 270 bugs at the moment.

<comment><USER12> So there's plenty of room to choose, isn't? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My top 4 list of GNOME/freedesktop bugs is as follows:

4\. nm-applet crashes a lot! 3\. Often, elevating privleges (sudo and the like), runs the program as root, meaning that any files it makes belong to root, and the home folder isn't used but the root folder. 2\. If several users are on, only one of them will be able to run nm-applet. 1.Keyrings, aka. can a design be a bug?

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://bugs.php.net/52435>

<comment><USER16> not only is that filed in the wrong place, but by someone clearly not understanding _what_ they're filing. you can't fix stupid.

<comment><USER15> I did link to it as a joke, I wasn't genuinely hoping someone would think "let's fix that bug"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> the article links back to the hacker news submission, billing it as a "list of bugs." I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping people could list bugs here to allow the community to vote on the ones that should be fixed first...

Seemed an easy place to have the voting happen.

We need someone to get the ball rolling!

<comment><USER18> Not an uninteresting idea, but the $1k is just a tiny amount of money, eg. just 10x $100. It would be really interesting to have a (long-lasting) service around raising funds for open-source contributions and bugfixes and connecting users and developers. This could even look like a kind of reverse-kickstarter, where a number of people contribute money to a specific goal and only then find a developer/designer/... via the service.

As a sidenote: I always am a bit skeptical when i see links to a HN thread propagated in posts, primarily because it may bring too many new people here in particular if the post gets picked up by major news outlets. Nothing wrong with new users, but I think anyone interested in HN related topics learns of this site sooner or later anyway. The rate of submissions/changes on the front page has increased a lot during the last year and I'm a bit afraid where that will lead to (unless PG starts updating / trying a couple of things with HN, such as thresholds, categories, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback Chris. Thanks (and sorry if I bring too many newbies into the gene pool).

You're right - in many ways $1k _is_ tiny, but I was hoping that there would be a bunch of annoying bugs / bugs in boring areas that cause people headaches that (other) people could fix in ~1 hour or so.

If others wanted to chip money into the pot, I'd happily give it a shot at administrating it for a bit and see if it gets traction. So far, we aren't seeing bugs submitted that would cost > $1k to fix either - if we do, perhaps we can persuade some people to chip in to help meet the cost...?

<comment><USER19> Maybe you don't need money.

Could be enough to set up a website with accounts and a system that gives you "karma" for each bug you remove or a feature you add. Amount of karma depending on the bug/feature and maybe an additional voting system for users to push their favourite feature or most annoying bug.

Having a lot of karma on such a site may even be interesting for your resume when you apply for a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe there aren't any...?

Anyone going to get us going with a bug you'd like to see fixed in an open source project?

</comment><comment><USER20> This isnt an open source bug as such but ive recently noticed that the web version of rastorbator is down[1] and would like to see it up again or if someone could provide a mirror. I know there is an open source version of it[2] but i'd still like to see a web version up somewhere.

[1] <http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/>

[2] <http://code.google.com/p/rasterbator-ng/></comment>


Why hackers FLOSS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.milkingthegnu.org/2008/05/why-hackers-floss.html

<comment><USER2> I wondered about that too - so I googled it.

"free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software)"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS>

</comment><comment><USER3> FLOSS?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's a stupid term. I wish people would call it "Free Software" instead. It's not that much harder to type, it's more meaningful, and it's not a string you put in your teeth.

<comment><USER5> Most people are confusing "free software" with "open source" largely preferring (sometimes without realizing it) the latter, which (as they hope) translates into "free stuff without any obligations"

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually people call it FLOSS precisely to avoid choosing between free software and open source ... FLOSS means Free/Libre/Open Source Software</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Is San Francisco on a Data Engineering Hiring Spree? - <AUTHOR> http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/why-is-san-francisco-on-a-data-engineering-hiring-spree <comment><USER2> Indeed, why? I work at a medium sized company, a modicum of data, no particular idea what a "data engineer" would do for us. Most midsize-co "data engineering" positions I see could be filled by any software engineer of reasonable caliber. Huge-co data engineering is the land of specialists, but otherwise don't see a reason for a "hiring spree".</comment>