CERN Mystery Object identified - <AUTHOR>

I correctly identified a CERN Mystery Object ( https://cds.cern.ch/record/1764794 ) as a Multi-Wire Proportional Chamber, see Fig. 2 http://lhcb-muon-mwpc-cern.web.cern.ch/lhcb-muon-mwpc-cern/ . I worked on a similar device almost 20 years ago, my design can now be found here: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/TPC/ . For the curious, I now run a 3D-printing related start-up. Physicists can do (almost) anything! <comment><USER2> Are you German? Would be glad to get in touch. Cheers,</comment>


Show HN: NinjaReply - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
Today I want to show you my litle project that I've been working on these couple of weeks!
I realy want your honest opinion and I hope to hear your 2 cents!
Here's: NinjaReply - (http://NinjaReply.appspot.com) is a litle app that tries to help you save money and make all the best decisions regarding your site / web app / etc.
With the help of our Ninja reviewers - NinjaReply can offer you quality feedback on your site's design or even the features of your app.
Everybody can become a Ninja reviewer - and also can earn some money! *Every Ninja reviewer gets 10 cents for every review they make (+ another 10 if the costumer likes his review)!
Plase visit the site (http://ninjareply.appspot.com) for more info!
I will realy apreciate your feedback on my ideea! Thanks! <comment><USER2> Very interesting site - poor design.

I think if you clean it up and not use such curvy, written-looking fonts, you will come off as a little less Geocities.

However, that said, it would be a decent idea IF you get people actually giving good feedback rather than just doing reviews for the sake of racking up $0.10 a pop. I would actually love to give reviews on websites and the money is a bonus, but a part of me feels that I am one of the very few who are so interested.

Happy to give you more feedback, and I won't even charge! ;)

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea sounds pretty cool, but 20 cents seems pretty low. I'm no sure what the market for reviews is though.

Is it possible that those reviews can be made public? It seems like if there is a bunch of rave reviews but it's all private, it's kind of all for nothing.

If you turn it into a public forum where people can search for app reviews, then that turns into something very valuable.</comment>


Workers paid $1.21 an hour to install Fremont tech company's computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26778017/tech-company-paid-employees-from-india-little-1 <comment><USER2> It's quite aggravating that the DoL can only fine them $3500. I think that at the very least there ought to be punitive as well as economic damages in cases of blatant abuse like this. The problem with our politics is that as soon as someone proposes putting muscular penalties in place for egregious misbehavior some lobbyist or PR flack will pop up with a story like 'Joe Schmoe made a simple math error in distributing tip income among his restaurant staff...under a proposed new law, he could face ruin and even jail time at the hands of heartless government bureaucrats.'

 _Beverly Rubin, vice president of HR Shared Services with Electronics for Imaging [said:] "During this process we unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local U.S. standards."_

That's a bit like your VP of accounting expressing surprise at discovering a requirement to file annual tax returns.

 _The company said it cooperated fully with the U.S. Labor Department once it became aware of the problem, and paid the back wages of the employees._

And why wouldn't they when the costs of noncompliance are so low? Despite being caught, they still only paid CA minimum wage of $8/hour to make up the difference - good luck finding anyone competent to install computers at that price on the open market.

Hopefully the firm will be held to account for immigration fraud as well as labor violations, because there is no way they applied for work visas for these employees - doing so requires making declarations about wage/salary equivalence. Most likely they told their Indian employees to apply for tourist visas and say they were staying with relatives.

<comment><USER3> _We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from employers_

then

 _resulted in more than $40,000 in back wages paid to the eight employees and a fine of $3,500_

Show no mercy!

<comment><USER2> The DoL can bring suit for back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages - which is still not a very aggressive penalty, but would have been more impressive than this. I don't understand it.

[http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/backpay.htm](http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/backpay.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" During this assignment, they continued to be paid their regular pay in India, as well as a special bonus for their efforts on this project," said Beverly Rubin, vice president of HR Shared Services with Electronics for Imaging. "During this process we unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local U.S. standards."_

For someone at the senior management level (directly responsible for cross- border staffing, no less) to say that they "overlooked" such laws is either a sign that they are either utterly incompetent -- or plainly lying.

</comment><comment><USER5> > a fine of $3,500

Are you fucking kidding me? Sounds like it's worth the risk in case you don't get caught. Cost of doing business, baby!

<comment><USER6> I hope they paid their attorneys a LOT more than that to get the fees down to $3,500. California's labor board is notoriously pro-employee and punitive towards employers who do not honor labor laws.

<comment><USER2> First, this is federal and not state, because they were foreign workers. It even says in the first paragraph of the article that it was the US Department of Labor rather than the California one.

Second, I hope you're wrong since a hearty income for the law firm would not benefit the underpaid employees, who I think _still_ got a shitty deal even including the back wages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> More importantly than the $1.21 is the fact that there's absolutely no reason for them not to continue doing it, and for other companies not to join in. If you don't get caught, you save $41K. If you do get caught, you pay $3.5K. You will rarely get caught.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not just call them interns and not pay them at all?

<comment><USER9> Because that's also clearly illegal.

<comment><USER10> Its not actually, if you define the work done in a specific way.

<comment><USER11> Except it's not up to you to define the work. It's up to the IRS, and they have a very specific set of tests, none of which these guys would come even remotely close to passing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Electronics for Imaging's executive team should be publicly branded with some kind of colorful letter for doing this. Yet the punishment is a fine they likely found in an old couch.

</comment><comment><USER13> After going to India a couple of times I could see people from there not caring about the low wages just so that they could go to California.

With that said the fines should be MUCH higher.

Also, this is a dupe of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498341)

</comment><comment><USER14> Who are these people that exploit their workers in this way? What do they look like? Where is their shame?

<comment><USER15> They look like you and me. They may in fact, under different circumstances, _be_ you and me.

It's IMO dangerous to think about this sort of thing as being only possible by a certain "type" of person. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and human beings are very, very good at rationalizing their own behavior, particularly when the descent is gradual.

"If I don't pay them [unfair wage] they'd be out of work anyways. I'm the least of the evils."

"They're earning they would be at home with this bonus, this is good for them."

etc etc. The number of rationalizations is practically infinite.

All of us are susceptible to it. I've seen people better than me fall to frog- boiling rationalizations and I'm not insane enough to think I'm immune. There's a lot to be said for reality checking yourself frequently.

<comment><USER4> And hey, just for fun: next time you're in some work situation and you get wind of behavior like this, or even something far less egregious (such as blackhat web scraping or other blatant IP abuse -- _very_ common out in start- up land, btw), try confronting those responsible on it. It usually doesn't end well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know how they would have been able to bring in the foreign workers to do that job in the first place? Is there a short-term work visa for this sort of thing?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is doubly insane given that it's in the Bay Area. I don't know how anyone can live there for under $100k/year.

<comment><USER18> They aren't living there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be nice if the legions who decry "illegal immigration" at every opportunity could get upset about this, but unfortunately many of them only criticize in circumstances of a racially-precise nature. Actually even if I got my wish and most of our racist immigration laws were repealed I would _still_ support new regs to lower the boom, in remaining-in-business- threatening fashion, on companies that pull this shit.

EDIT: If you don't want me to be referring to you, then I'm not.

</comment><comment><USER20> Must say, as an Israeli myself, I'm embarrassed. I've never heard of the company before but knew they were Israelies when I saw the names involved.

Just goes to show that exploitation, not (jewish) "genius", is behind most of what we mistake for success. So much for the Israeli "startup nation" and its offshoots.

<comment><USER5> What? This has nothing to do with Israel or Jews. It was a California company flying in Indians for cheap labor.

<comment><USER4> Perfectly relevant, given the background of company's principals.

<comment><USER5> I could get into it about Israel, but it's totally irrelevant in this case.

<comment><USER4> There's nothing wrong with a person from country X saying he expects better behavior from fellow people coming from country X. That's all that happened here. There's no reason at all for people to get so touchy about it.

<comment><USER5> If you took what he said but replaced "as an Israeli myself" with "I'm not Israeli", it would be racist. That's what annoys me. It might be different if race/ethnicity/religion were involved in the article.

<comment><USER20> That's just being cynical. Israeli national sport is to point out Israeliness/jewishness (two completely different things, IMHO) of anything that smells of success. We love to do this when it's positive, we try to hide it when it's not. Like in this case. My first suspicion was that it was an Israeli, not because I saw the name and suspected. I had no clue. Just a suspicion which was verified. My reasons are probably my own experience in Hi Tech in Israel and the abundance of indian programmers in many of our own local companies.

PS-0 And don't get me started on how racist the jewish diaspora is, or Israelis, in general. Towards black, arabs, other jews etc. It's a stinking pile of self-hatred and racism.

PS-1 You can down vote as much as you want, it does not change the sad and ugly truth.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi vs MK802 - <AUTHOR> http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2012/11/raspberry-pi-vs-mk802.html

<comment><USER2> Chip wise this is the BroadCom BCM2835 Vs the AllWinner A10

The AllWinner Clearly has the better CPU with a Cortex A8 compared to the ARM1176JZF-S. It's almost twice the speed clock for clock on general code and more so if using things like NEON.

Video decode seems sufficient in each one since both can decode 1080p and then some.

GPU is rather hazy. The BCM2835 has VideoCore IV, The A10 has a single core Mali-400 I haven't seen any real head to head comparisons on straight GPU performance. If anyone knows of a comparison I'd be interested. If anyone has both devices running similar OSs I'd be very appreciative of some benchmarking.

For IO the Raspberry PI wins over the MK802, but the CubieBoard is another A10 device that is better yet again. <http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard> . The biggest advantages of the CubieBoard are SATA and EtherNet (the R-Pi Ethernet is USB based) VGA is also available from the headers which is a big plus if you are aiming for older monitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone talks about having the gpu/vpu/dsp/you-name-it that can decode hd with drivers.

Except, even with drivers, some movies still lag, for example, try [http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbp...](http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv)

Yes it's high profile 40mbps 1080p. But then again, if you want to play files from a box and all you do is play baseline blurays, then I don't see the point. I believe such a box should play "anything" HD.

The page also report their own tests <http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/>

Bird certainly lags to death on my exynos 4210

<comment><USER4> The hardware decode blocks in each processor/GPU/etc are rated to handle certain bitrates at certain profiles. The tech sheets usually specify. Going over those bitrates is usually death on these types of CPU's. They don't put much work into software decode, and even if they did, it wouldn't even come close.

A lot of the cheaper ARM SOC's folks are talking about have decode blocks (either in CPU or GPU) that can only do H.264 high profile @20mbps or 30mbps at best.

By comparison, intel hd graphics (even the oldest ones) will support decode of at least 40mbps of high profile h.264 (and newer ones often have no problem with 100mbps). Nvidia's purevideo hd and ATI's UVD can do the same, obviously.

Realistically, if you want a box that plays stuff out of the mainstream (and honestly, mainstream is 20-30mbps or less right now) you have to pay more for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the great advantage the Raspberry Pi has over the Mk802 and other Allwinner A10 based devices right now is the community resources.

Let's say I wanted to install Debian on the Raspberry Pi. I can go to <http://www.raspbian.org/> and find a healthy project and well-organized documentation. What if I wanted to install it on the MK802? After a lot of googling and skimming results, I'd probably end up at <http://linux- sunxi.org/Debian> if I wanted to build the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem myself or <http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6> if I trusted somebody else's work. The experience is very different.

This is why I'm hoping <http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod> succeeds. I think what they plan to do is exactly what the A10 platform needs to succeeed with hobbyists-

        Maintain a community forum and wiki
        Provide source for everything we create and share it on Github.
        Provide a package repository for the PengPods.
        Provide prebuilt images, with updates as available.
        Provide tools, scripts and guides as we go.

<comment><USER6> Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic PR disaster named Liz Upton who actively insults and derides developers and others in the RPi community.

Here's a fun excerpt from <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221> :

 _Liz: ... keep trying to rustle up some outrage if it gives you a kick; I'd recommend finding something else to do soon, though. We don't want you developing an ulcer.

Developer: Am I allowed to be outraged by the fact that it's not really open, since I see no mention of actual documentation for the hardware? Or by this: <http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/> ? Can I get outraged by that?

Liz: Well you /could/, but you wouldn't half look silly._

Nice going, Liz. That's right, anyone who actually wants to make full utilization of the hardware they paid for is 'silly' and we're only rustling up outrage for 'kicks' when you post a press release announcing how open source you really aren't.

Here, have a nine page thread of people complaining they were banned under weak, insane excuses like 'concern trolling' because they dared to mention things like 'your supplier isn't sending me anything' and 'My SD card gets corrupted when I unplug the device sometimes': <https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081>

It's got massive hype since it's a $35 Beagleboard, but otherwise it's bringing nothing new to the table that hasn't been done by others and increasingly done better by other devices.

The remainder of the situation seems to be a collection of people more interested in their awards, hype and press releases than their actual users and developers on their forums. Frankly, there's quite a few ARM SoC boards out there with GPIO pins and all the bells and whistles of the Pi, many of them have even beefier hardware. None of them have this horrible baggage and all of them will run the same software for the most part.

So that's great that many people are going to target this device, but it's hardly an 'exclusive port' to the RPi. The real bet to back is Linux on ARM.

Personally, this board gets me much more hot than the RPi and prices are only going to come down on similar future boards: <http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page>

<comment><USER7> Hmmmm... That's a bit shady, especially charging for MPEG-2 support and other codecs. Not quite sure what they're getting at there.

<comment><USER8> Why shouldn't the people tha want to use the MPEG-2 patents pay the license fees? I don't play MPEG-2 on any of my RPis and am fine not paying them for those those that want to use that format.

<comment><USER6> Except that totally overlooks the fact there are parts of the world where they could implement their own MPEG-2 decoder legally as they do not have software patents. Instead, because of this blob system without documentation they're forced to pay for it. How is this in any way not contrary to goals of education?

<comment><USER9> They still can, no one is stopping them! All they have to do is compile ffmpeg in software only mode. It would be dog slow, but it's what you are after.

They are optimizing for the British education market, not for some ideal libertarian education market in Somalia that can ignore patents.

And licensing agreements are a bitch. It might be against Broadcom's license with MPEG-LA to give enough info about implementing MPEG-2 regardless of jurisdiction.

<comment><USER6> > All they have to do is compile ffmpeg in software only mode.

Let them eat cake!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The manufacturer of the MK802 claims a processor speed of 1.5 GHz. The CPU runs at 1.0 GHz, the GPU at 500 MHz. They add this to get 1.5 GHz. LOL

</comment><comment><USER11> In early 2010, HN went bonkers over Panic's 46" LCD TV dashboard:

<http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/>

It's rather nice, but they picked an expensive (>$2000) TV with an embedded x86 PC designed for digital signage applications.

Since the bottom has fallen out of the consumer LCD TV market, you can now get a brand-name 46-inch LCD TV for about $600. A low profile wall mount will set you back less than $40. One of the various MK802 incarnations will set you back less than $80, and if you pick the right stick incarnation and TV, the TV can power the stick through the HDMI port, meaning that you just give the TV power, plug the stick into the TV, and you're done.

One caveat with the MK802-alike Android sticks is that there are a _lot_ of variants out there, and not all of them use a chipset that's properly (GPL'd drivers w/ source code available) supported by Linux proper. Also, the feature set varies widely. But if you do your homework before buying, I have no doubts that a giant status dashboard thing that's functionally equivalent to Panic's could be created for under $700.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not seeing any I/O pins on the MK802, which I thought was the reason for the Raspberry Pi. Not much hardware hacking potential without these pins.

<comment><USER13> The original "reason" for the Raspberry Pi was just to be a super cheap computer that kids could pick up and learn to code for like they did with the old BBC (or VIC20/Commodore 64/Apple II/TRS-80/Atari 8bits/etc). At least, that's what the Raspberry Pi foundation was pushing as the reason.

The GPIO pins and the fairly fast gpu for video rendering were secondary things.

The Raspberry Pi somehow or other really caught the zeitgeist at the right time. It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, but it is by far the most widely known and thus there are huge network effects that make it a good device to be tinkering with.

This situation is quite similar to smaller microcontrollers where in the minds of many people that whole segment has become nearly synonymous with the Arduino despite the fact that there are many other options, some of them just as capable but far cheaper (eg. TI's MSP430 which you can buy for less than 5 bucks) and some about the same price but far more powerful.

Of course, once all the software, tutorials and/or hardware "shields" crop up for the mind-share winner, that platform certainly becomes the most convenient to hack on and then that popularity feeds on itself. In both cases hopefully the entry device serves as a gateway for the interested hacker, but not their final destination.

<comment><USER9> > It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you > consider price,

Can you point to others in the price range ($35) that come close? And from your intro above, I would guess "what it is doing" includes GPIO?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads widely ? Otherwise there are plenty of platforms that would be better for learning programming starting with a simple browser no ?

<comment><USER15> I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers.

For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you _could_ use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.

<comment><USER14> I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is comparing against an MK802 II there is a recently released dual core version, newer models also have an extra full size USB port. <http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> You can run Linux and XBMC on the MK802 add an Arduino to get hardware pins and you're where most of the Pi ppl are. I got them both, haven't booted the Mk yet, but I think it would be nice to use it for running my Reprap and hook up a webcam so I can monitor it in the basement. Could use the Pi also, but I don't think it can handle the camera simultaneous. Or I use the Pi and use the MK as Mediacenter or use the Mediacenter to run my reprap ... Or something :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems like they fit a different need -- the differing number of USB ports and wired/wireless Ethernet are what most users are going to care about.

(Sure, you can use a USB hub, but then you're into another rats nest of cabling.)

</comment><comment><USER19> pardon my lack of electrical engineering conaissence but would it be feasible to use a solar power supply to power these devices ?

<comment><USER20> If the wattage output of your solar panel is greater than the wattage input of the device, then yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a pretty poor comparison given that the RPi has full linux, hardware accel, etc. The MK802 is not nearly as open. No results about XBMC playback, etc :(</comment>


Back to Windows after twenty years - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-years/ <comment><USER2> Interestingly, if you have a 4K display, text in Windows looks much better than MacOS (which requires scaling). Unfortunately that only applies to the OS interface, it still looks like a monkey's ass in the browser.

<comment><USER3> macOS doesn't "require" scaling, it's an optional feature if your display PPI is low enough that straight 2x rendering makes things look "too big".

<comment><USER2> It does require scaling at 4K, no misunderstanding there. The system is unable to scale the UI itself like Windows does and is unusable at either base resolution or 2x - unless you find (and want) an odd 20in 4K monitor.

<comment><USER3> > is unusable at either base resolution or 2x - unless you find (and want) an > odd 20in 4K monitor.

Or, - and stay with me here, I know it's a big concept to get your head around - if the person's preferences for display resolution are different to yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A strange thought process. If you wanted Unix on not-Apple, a Linux desktop remains the more reasonable option(sub the perpetual caveat of having to vet the hardware for compatability).

And my first inclination would be to see how things go with Msys2 before banking on WSL. You will eventually end up navigating build processes in some depth - but I don't see that as a Windows problem so much as a Unix/libc monoculture problem that gets swept under the rug by never leaving that environment. You won't have quite the same experience with a fully MS stack or with not-specifically-Unixy tools.

<comment><USER5> Same. This is utterly bizarre.

He somehow thought being a second class citizen in a second class OS would be better than just biting the bullet and buying one of the Dell developer edition XPS 13s that ship with Linux installed. I don't get it.

Font rendering in Linux is hilariously one of its strong points these days. Whether you prefer the OSX way of font rendering or the windows way, it's just a config setting. You change it to the way you like it and then it's the way you like it. There's no giant faceless organization trying to convince you that the "other" way of rendering fonts is objectively bad.

Also the Linux machines Dell ships all have 4k displays, and it's objectively difficult to render fonts poorly at those DPIs. That probably helps.

I use msys at work, despite WSL. It's just... easier. Haven't been able to get into powershell, but were I to go all in on the windows platform, I'd probably try to start there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting write-up, but it sounds like he didn't want to succeed. I have been using WSL for two years now as my primary development environment and it works great. Yes, file I/O is slow, but unless you do a ton of I/O it really isn't that big of a problem for dev work. I like having access to Ubuntu repositories and I actually prefer it to MacOS/Brew.

He also spends time complaining about Edge when it just takes a few minutes to download and install Chrome as your default browser.

Finally, Linux is pretty good these days. I have a System76 laptop running Pop!_OS and it's super nice, everything works out of the box. Why he decided to use Windows if he wanted a *nix environment is a little strange.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The first version of WSL is marred with terrible file-system performance...

Does anyone know why this is and how it can be fixed? (Either by the Windows team or by end users)

<comment><USER8> As I recall, WSL1 uses NT's built-in personalities functionality to provide a Linux-compatible environment, but it still used NTFS which is much slower in the lots-of-small-files use case.

<comment><USER9> People I know have given up on NTFS, and use Linux file systems served to Windows (WSW?) via SMB for anything not read-only. Amazingly, that's faster than native, at least for their uses.

Ultimately, to bring Windows into the 21st century, Windows will need to be transformed to a gossamer-thin Wine-like wrapper stretched over a sturdy non- Microsoft frame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lol MS must be p*ssed.

Half the problem is that rails doesn't work on Windows. I'd put that a Rails problem rather than Windows.

<comment><USER11> I think at the core it's a Ruby problem. Ruby is the programming language ecosystem I've never been successful in using Windows native builds of it. Ruby on Windows has long been a nightmare of kludges and it really seems to show how few Ruby developers must use Windows as a daily driver given how poor the support has always been for it.

(I say this as someone that used NodeJS when Windows native builds of it were an unsupported community project around the time of the IoJS fork and no one was sure Windows support would survive, much less be officially adopted. That was still a better situation than any time I've tryed to bootstrap a Ruby environment on Windows.)

Ruby is my primary and sometimes sole usage of WSL.

<comment><USER12> When I worked at a Ruby shop, we hired a Windows developer. He ended up leaving the first week because he refused to use a Mac and coudn't get Windows going with Ruby

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dude if you need Linux, just get a Linux laptop. They sell them now, System76 comes to mind, but I think Ubuntu partnered with Dell and/or Lenovo to make one as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> How can a usually intelligent, sometimes very insightful guy like DHH be so foolish as to buy something, spend some short time trying to make it act like something else, and conclude it's no good?

Does the Mac have a Windows subsystem? Would you investigate that and use it as the sole determinant of the Mac's quality?

Sheesh!

<comment><USER15> Yeah to me this just sounds like another case of trying to force Windows to be Unix. Its ok if you want Unix and are used to it, but to say Windows is no good because it isn't Unix is just wrong.

The author didn't even seem to try to learn the Windows ecosystem or tooling at all. He didn't check out Windows package managers (scoop or choco), he didn't try to learn powershell (which has a ton unix tools built in), and he didn't even try to use git on windows which can check out a repo just as fast as any other system!

Additionally, I dont think its fair to blame Windows for the Docker company's failure at making their product work on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i am confused about font rendering, this article states the exact opposite: [https://pandasauce.org/post/linux-fonts/](https://pandasauce.org/post/linux- fonts/)

<comment><USER17> this is quite a subjective opinion, some people prefer crisp rendering, other prefer smoother edge (even if high dpi screen render this comparison moot).

Then with font hinting, I would agree, but I am mainly working on windows, doing non graphic work and looking at wall of text all day long.

</comment></comment><comment> java-man The first time I launched Windows 10 on my machine my eyes bled. The font rendering is just awful, the OP is right.

After much effort had the anti-aliasing disabled and system font switched to Tahoma. Guess what? Next update reverted them all back to the terrible blurriness of whatever the default font is.

While, after much registry patching later, the fonts are not changed, but the damn thing still changes the default associations after what appears to be silent updates.

What? The user explicitly told me to use Notepad++ as a default app for .txt? Change that - to the full Notepad idiotic glory! Prefer to use Foxit for PDF? Back to Edge you go, stupid user!

I am not going to start about telemetry. Whose problem is Microsoft solving? Certainly not the end user who plopped $200 for Win 10 license. Whose then?

<comment><USER18> They are solving _Microsoft 's_ problem, which is that they are frustrated they only get paid by this customer one time every five years. They would much rather this customer pay them every month _ad infinitum_ or lose access to Windows altogether, which is what the whole push of Windows 10 towards "Windows as a service" is about.

But it'll take a long time to wear people down to the point where they'll accept renting their operating system, so in the meantime they're hungry for any other way to have Windows bring in extra revenue above that one-time $200 -- which is where things like Candy Crush ads in the Start menu, intrusive and inescapable data mining, etc. etc. etc. come from.

<comment><USER19> If the payments is the issue then MS chose a really terrible solution considering upgrades are free for the life of the device which is usually far greater than the cadence of paid upgrades in the past.

I agree it's solving MS's problem, but the problem it's solving is the need for MS to support 10+ years of OSes at any given time.</comment></comment></comment>


The Next Wave - <AUTHOR> https://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/index.shtml <comment><USER2> Took me a minute to figure out how to even navigate through the online magazine. The navigation is half way down the side on the left. Also, a PDF of the entire thing:

[https://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/tnw204/articles/pdfs/TNW_20...](https://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/tnw204/articles/pdfs/TNW_20_4_Web.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I greatly dislike the NSA and think they should be dismantled. So let me take a moment to think outside of that box...

Page 9 of that report essentially says 'we read all your social media, browsing, and email'. I've always been ok with corporations doing this because they'll never kick down my door in the middle of then night, unlike governments. But the NSA isn't kicking down doors either (not that I've heard of). Even their most famous malware (Stuxnet and Flame) were carefully designed only to screw over certain people. Sure, they're grey-hats; testing systems and not reporting bugs. But they're not yet black hats. They haven't been caught yet fucking over innocent people (I think we can agree the Iranian nuclear program doesn't qualify as innocent people, though again an act of war against it isn't exactly white-hat activity).

Maybe they're not guilty until they commit a more egregious crime?

Probably not. Probably they're still a negative influence in the world. But it's interesting to consider other perspectives.

<comment><USER4> It really does not matter. In a free democracy there should be no surveillance of innocents. The sole feeling of being watched alone changes people (someone help me with the citation here).

<comment><USER5> Panopticon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon) There is also something named after Caesar where if you treat people like criminals they will become criminals (someone help me with the citation here).

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if this is the citation you wanted, but it does deal with the issue in the context of public schools:

[http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2013/07/19/if- criminals-i...](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2013/07/19/if-criminals-is- what-you-want-criminals-is-what-youll-get)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The NSA has had a NASA sized budget or larger since its inception. One looks out at the universe, the other within.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be nice if the title would say what the next wave actually is. The next wave of spying, of IT attacks, of found documents that make us unhappy to read?

"But you find out immediately after you click the link" is not an acceptable argument. We have this website exactly to not click all the links on the internet to find out what they contain.

<comment><USER9> "Welcome to The Next Wave, a quarterly publication of the National Security Agency's Research Directorate to disseminate technical advancements and research activities in telecommunications and information technologies. Mentions of company names or commercial products do not imply endorsement by the US government."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ha, sadly misread as nasa.gov, expecting some new ideas from SpaceX collaboration ... My apologies.

<comment><USER11> Every single time there is something on hacker news with NSA in the title, I first read it as NASA. I either get very excited or very confused before realizing that I'm an idiot :)

<comment><USER10> I was probably still under the influence of the very nice article about SpaceX's birth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The NSA has lost the trust of the American public and now needs to work hard to regain that trust. This is tone deaf in the extreme...the NSA must be in full-blown denial mode. Job #1 is admitting you have a problem. We have a problem. The NSA needs to figure out how it will achieve all of those positive outcomes (example: healthcare) while mitigating the risk of abuse of Big Data. Isn't this the story of the founding of America? Build bureaucratic and political structures to mitigate the abuse of power? Isn't this our heritage?

I think the NSA has already hired most of the people qualified to understand how best to build NSA 2.0 which I can only hope will lead to USA 2.0. A crack team of political scientists, social scientists, computer scientists, some historians, some mathematicians, and a couple of representatives from the organization without a name should be able to come up with something.

The democratic processes need to be renewed from time to time...isn't the NSA in the best vantage point to understand the future of democracy? If we could all get together and just nudge it in the right direction...</comment>


The Morning Routine That Will Save You 20 Hours a Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/this-morning-routine-will-save-you-20-hours-a-week.html <comment><USER2> Title is a little clickbait-y and misleading, but still a very informative article</comment>


Microsoft warns Berlin data protection authority - <AUTHOR> https://www.no1geekfun.com/dispute-over-video-conference-software-microsoft-warns-berlin-data-protection-authority/ <comment><USER2> AFAICS, the text linked from TFA (in German) only mentions MS Teams/Skype as a generic example of a service of a company that, while having an office/subsidiary in EU, does provide fullfillment via its US-based head company, with the general risks associated with US jurisdiction wrt data protection and other legal matters. I don't see how that gives rise to MS sueing the Berlin data protection authority. FWIW, the Mozilla Foundation a couple weeks back, at the height of coronavirus-induced demand for video conferencing, published recommendations for video conference providers here [1], giving MS a pass but not specifically addressing non-US users even though published in multiple languages, including German.

[1]: [https://foundation.mozilla.org/de/blog/which-video-call- apps...](https://foundation.mozilla.org/de/blog/which-video-call-apps-can-you- trust/)</comment>


Show HN: the other way to do local product search - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN! We're just two guys in a garage and we just launched a new local product search called Goodzer.
http://goodzer.com
We do not directly interact with the individual stores or national chains (as Google or Milo does) , our smart crawler scrapes the internets and extracts inventory data from stores' websites and then finds where those stores are located. Right now we're testing our service in New York City - we found more than 15M products in about 15,000 stores there. We plan to raise next round and launch the whole US and Canada and possibly 3-4 European countries in 6-8 months period. <comment><USER2> 15,000 stores? That's brick-and-mortar, i.e. "offline"? How many stores competition have in NYC?</comment>


The 14 Characteristics of Fascism (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html <comment><USER2> Before you get too pleased with how well this aligns with the president-elect, think about how well this lines up with the current president, or any administration in the past few decades.

My point isn't that all of those administrations were fascist, it's that each item in this list allows too much range for critical analysis.

<comment><USER3> An alternative formulation is that the neoliberal US _has_ long been a fascist state.

For example, how often do we choose to use the force of the state and how often do we choose to do nothing?

In this formulation, the big difference with Trump would be that he isn't very good at it. He's ham-handed about it, too obvious.

<comment><USER4> This is my preferred reading as well, but neoliberalism likes to keep its oppression and overt violence overseas, while Trump's rhetoric brings it out into the open at home. This is not denying that America was always a racist, sexist state, but now the elected power is no longer shy about hiding it.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This seems like a legitimate opinion to me.

<comment><USER6> My guess is that this is due to a matter of fact stating of a rather controversial opinion held by a minority of the population.

<comment><USER7> My tone may have been blunt but I will stand firmly behind that America's race and gender relations, despite great progress in the last few decades, leaves much to be desired and in most parts of the country it is dangerous to be a part of a marginalized group.

<comment><USER6> You missed my point. I don't care what you happen to believe.

I'm pointing out that people probably objected to inserting a debatable & unpopular held view as a subclause in another argument. That forces people to either go along with accepting your point or getting into a pointless & unsettleable argument that's not even being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably superior to this piece is historian Robert Paxton's article "The Five Stages of Fascism" ([http://theleder.com/docs/Misc/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fa...](http://theleder.com/docs/Misc/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf)).

It was later extended into a book length treatment ([https://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton- The%20Anatomy%...](https://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton- The%20Anatomy%20of%20Fascism%20%20-Knopf%20\(2004\).pdf)) which is very worthwhile, and readable, if you are interested in what he calls (paraphrasing) the most significant political development of the 20th century.

</comment><comment><USER9> A more interesting look at fascism is in my opinion Ur-Facism[0] by Umberto Eco. It was posted on HN a couple of months ago as well[1].

[0]([http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur- fascism/](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/))

[1]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823))

<comment><USER10> "I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land."

This sentence seems apt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Heaping the likes Pinochet and Franco with that of Mussolini is conflating authoritarianism with fascism, and that can only debase the meaning of "fascist". No wonder the word is thrown around so often.

<comment><USER12> Basically worthless word nowadays - it's shorthand for "I think I'm progressive and I dislike this".

("Gresham's law to the white courtesy phone, please.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This list excludes the essential characteristic of facism and without it reads more like an ultra right-wing, ultra-nationalist state. I'll let Il Duce wax authoritarian about it:

"We have created the united state of Italy remember that since the Empire Italy had not been a united state. Here I wish to reaffirm solemnly our doctrine of the State. Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I expounded at the scala in Milan everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state." [0]

"We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789. "[1]

Does this kind of united state, with everyone marching in lockstep towards a common goal, sound even remotely close to America? A country hurtling towards facism would not allow people protesting and crying in public areas days after an election. Healthy protests that aren't broken up by jack-booted thugs are a sign of a healthy democracy. :)

[0] speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927

[1]Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927

</comment><comment><USER14> I find it a bit disturbing how this focuses on people in power's attitude, and not on the mass of people's behavior, like if fascism was something a handful of people put in place and the rest of us had nothing to do with/about it.

Well, I'm certainly not an historian, so this is just my two cents, but it seems to me that the very core of fascism is anger and defiance. And believing just a few people can make history (thus, the exaggeration of the leader role).

</comment><comment><USER15> I would say the main characteristic is the murdering of people who oppose the fascist government. All the rest is just wishywashy blah blah. Oh, and watchdogs on every corner, prepared to punish you if you step out of line.

Honestly, I wish all the people comparing Trump to Hitler would spend some money and read a book on how the Nazis came to power and what went down in Germany when they had grabbed power.

<comment><USER3> Mass killings are an excellent bright line test for recognizing that an authoritarian regime is spiraling out of control, but it seems like a good idea to find indicators that work a little earlier.

I kind of made one of the low-vocabulary posts on the page here, I guess that is part of the problem with our politics, that people don't really have the tools to reason about it. I would certainly defend criticism of the US as being (for a long time) excessively authoritarian and oddly patriotic a lot more strongly than I would hang on to the 'fascist' label.

<comment><USER15> Good point with the warning signs. I think Hitler was always driven by hate and given to hateful speeches and writing, including his infamous book. He and Stalin also emerged from turmoil of WW I, bloody revolutions, socialism (nazis are socialists). But I admit I don't know enough about other fascist dictators to generalize.

It's just that Hitler's story is the complete opposite of Trump. There are zero similarities there. What motivation would Trump have to go on a killing spree among the US population?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is remarkably stupid, at best descriptive of convergent evolution in generically authoritarian regimes. It's not too far from describing the current Chinese government, which to put it mildly has no connection to the thought of Benito Mussolini.

"Fascism" is a word that actually means something, it's not a signifier of generic BadGov. It was a specific historical movement driven by WWI veterans with socialist backgrounds, whose core idea was using militarism & nationalism as a way to suppress class conflict. It's related to but distinct from Nazism; Franco, Mussolini, Gömbös, etc. didn't have any elaborate racial theories.

It's really not always 1934. Pick a different historical analogy, it's as ridiculous as seeing everything in light of the Russo-Japanese war or continually worrying that we're seeing the rise of Orléanist governments.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone provide a solid background on Britt? Everything I've found is simply referencing his article, not much about his credentials.

<comment><USER17> I don't know how reliable this source[0] is, either, but it's something.

[0] [http://civilliberty.about.com/b/2007/09/10/one-nation- underr...](http://civilliberty.about.com/b/2007/09/10/one-nation- underrated.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> More actual: [http://jimmarrs.com/news_events/news/america%E2%80%99s-uniqu...](http://jimmarrs.com/news_events/news/america%E2%80%99s-unique- fascism/) and esp. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150316053541/http://rationalre...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150316053541/http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/rise_of_american_fascism.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> Trump cares mostly about staying in the headlines. If saying fascist things accomplishes that goal, he'll ape a fascist. If the public starts to resonate with Bernie Sanders post-election narrative, Trump will start sound like a union organizer.

As a result, I don't fear Trump because of his politics (which I actually think in many ways are center-left), but his inability to execute effectively. Until Macau cratered, I think he was basically the only man to lose money in the casino business.

</comment><comment><USER20> On the other hand, the original objectives written in the fascist manifesto were very progressive and you'll likely agree with most points.

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

</comment><comment><USER21> This is very far fetched for current US administration and making assumptions about the upcoming one is a bit too early. BUT like 95% of this applies to Russia

</comment><comment><USER22> America has been descending into fascism for decades, Trump is just the next rung on the ladder.

<comment><USER23> Are you saying that makes it okay, or that you are not surprised, or ... I guess, what is the point of saying that Trump is a continuation of existing trends? Is there anything that we could do differently because of that to not move towards fascism?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One thing missing from the list: a real worker's movement that is threatening to the wealthy.

People remember the Russian Revolution toward the end of World War I, what they tend to forget is that Hungary had a revolution and became a Soviet republic in 1919. Many things happened happened in different European countries at that time.

Germany had an attempt communist revolution starting in October of 1918 which went on for months, you could even say years.

In the German elections, vote results were:

                Nazis  Socialists Communists
        05/28   2.6    29.8       10.6
        09/30   18.3   24.5       13.1
        07/32   37.2   21.5       14.3
        11/32   33.09  20.43      16.86

So in four years you see an increasingly powerful communist party going from getting one in ten German votes to one in six German votes. You also have communists and socialists outnumbering Nazis. Unfortunately for the left, the Catholic Center party got 11% of the vote, and after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi seizure of power occurred, and the the Center party voted for the enabling act and the de facto Nazi seizure of power became de jure.

But it was prompted by 37% of voters being reds, and 16% of voters being communists. Red voters outnumbered brown voters.

In Italy, the 1922 march on Rome followed the Biennio Rosso. The working class tried to take over and failed, and the fascists took over.

Returning to red power in Germany at the turn of 1932/1933 - on February 20, 1933, Hitler met with representatives of German industry - Gustav Krupp, Fritz Springorum from Hoesch, an IG Farben board member, Fritz von Opel, a board member of Siemens etc. In the midst of stormtroopers taking over the streets he asked them to bankroll the Nazis in the upcoming elections so they could pass the enabling act. German industry bankrolled the Nazis, because they feared the 37% red workers (the majority of the working class) and the rising power of the KPD.

The situation is nothing like that in the US. If anything, the little existing of the worker's movement is disintegrating - Michigan and Wisconsin just became right to work states. Board members of the Fortune 100 are not going to bankroll a party like the Nazis. There's no left to fight. The wealthy and upper middle class are becoming increasingly liberal, as there's no socialist movement to worry about, in comparison to 20th century Europe.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate your careful reply here. You have pointed out a lot of useful historical background, in particular, the fear the German industrialists had for the Communist party, and the fact that the Nazi party never had great success at the ballot box.

Certainly the US situation is different (no potent workers' movement to fear).

But elements of the wealthy Right are fearful of national health care, environmental regulation, the costs that might come from climate change. They see great advantages in changing tax rates. These fears and forces could play a similar role to fear of a workers' movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 6 and 14 are the only ones missing on the list, but some could easily argue that 6 is already here in a minor way and 14 was attempted through voter purges in potential swing states and the repeated attempts at suppressing votes and/or upholding needlessly cumbersome voter registration rules by both parties (one more aggressively than the other).

<comment><USER25> A constant litany of complaints about unfair and rigged main stream media by the president elect (his latest tweets about the NYT being an example) has convinced a significant portion of the public that the main stream media cannot be trusted.

With social media the propaganda can now directly be delivered to the base, so control of the main stream media is no longer needed, except maybe to limit the dissemination of unwanted information to the opposition.

For a couple of days I was hopeful that we would witness a more reasonable Trump, but it seems that he seems intent to continue following the fascist playbook. If he follows through on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton, we will know for sure.

If you haven't done so already, I would implore everybody to subscribe to the NYT/WaPo or any other reputable newspaper. I did so today, and I'm not even from the US. Digital subscriptions are only a couple of bucks per month. They could use the support. The USA cannot afford to lose the independent media.

<comment><USER26> > A constant litany of complaints about unfair and rigged main stream media by > the president elect (his latest tweets about the NYT being an example) has > convinced a significant portion of the public that the main stream media > cannot be trusted.

You have this backwards. Many people voted for Trump because they could see with their own eyes the media bias against him (and read the DNC emails working with the media to block out Sanders). NYT/WaPo are _not_ reputable sources, they are extremely biased and so obviously so that they're working against their own mission out of arrogance.

<comment><USER27> Accidentally downvoted. Replying to give it some karma back.

<comment><USER3> Read all the stuff by the username. Click the stuff that says "undown".

<comment><USER27> On the mobile app I was using, there was no such thing, sorry. I am sorry, too, as I got downvoted for trying to make up for it by replying.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making a Fortune Telling Machine (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://lea.zone/blog/making-of-fortunes/ <comment><USER2> This was absolutely marvelous! Apart from it being the best wedding present ever, the write up is superb: generally with build projects the focus is on HW, however, the most intriguing aspect of this one was the design of the cards and fortune generation. The fact that people could affect the fortune being generated by manipulating cards was an ingenious touch. When people have an input in the generation they'll be more apt to believe in the generated fortune.

The references to folktales and automatic plot generation are great. Something like Llull's Ars Magna wheels could also have been used for random, rather than deterministic generation perhaps.

I looked at other projects done by the author, they are fascinating. You can read a good interview with her here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160507041048/https://femhype.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160507041048/https://femhype.com/2016/05/06/blanket- fort-chats-game-making-with-lea-albaugh/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing execution! I love fortunes and the tarot data set linked looks amazing.</comment>


Show HN: LanguageTool – Grammarly Alternative (open source, multilingual) - <AUTHOR> https://languagetool.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm one of the developers behind LanguageTool (primarily working on the Chrome and Firefox extensions). Let us know what you think.</comment>


The "terrible" 3 cent MCU – a short survey of sub $0.10 microcontrollers - <AUTHOR> https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/the-terrible-3-cent-mcu/ <comment><USER2> These have their uses.

A friend who frequently does contract development in the toy space has (or at least used to have) a favorite go-to MCU that costs under $0.06 in bare die. It is essentially a 6502 with 100 bytes of RAM and a metric butt-load of mask- programmable ROM. It was originally designed for greeting cards. He has designed it into toys.

It is hard to use, you need a dev kit and a good relationship with the distributor to get the documentation. It only makes sense in high-volume products, since it comes as passivated bare die so assembly requires a die- bonder and expoxy encapsulation depositer.

Not for everyday use. But as my friend says: "You haven't lived until you have spent an entire afternoon arguing over $0.05 on the BOM."

<comment><USER3> "metric butt-load of mask-programmable ROM"

What would that be in this context? I'm guessing we're talking KB rather than TB?

<comment><USER4> I'd guess about 1 MB order of magnitude. That would be a butt-load even for samples.

1 MB would be enough for 45 seconds audio at 8 bit PCM @22 kHz. If they're half competent, they could use ADPCM or much better (and cheaper to decode too!) vector quantization.

With VQ, you could go even down to ~1 bits (~6 minutes of audio per megabyte) per sample while maintaining good audio quality. Decoding is very simple, so 6502 would have plenty of oomph to do that.

<comment><USER5> > [Vector quantization] Decoding is very simple.

Do you have an encoder/decoder to point us to?

<comment><USER4> VQ is a very well known technique. For something quick, you might be interested to check this blog post about (unmodified) C64 playing high quality audio at 44.1/48 kHz, VQ compressed down to 96-128 kbit/s: [https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital- mus...](https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player- for.html)

There's some decoder code there as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some Philips sonicare toothbrushes use(d) a _4-bit_ microcontroller from an obscure Swiss company. (From memory, since I can't find the EEVBlog video teardown) 52 bytes of RAM, custom size mask ROM, ? Kilohertz clock speed. It makes sense, they just needed a timer for the "2 minutes of brushing is up" feature, and maybe some battery management. It still surprised me that it was worth the hassle to save a few cents, even if they sell millions of the things. They must make insane margins: $80 for a vibration motor and $25 brush refills.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty easy to make the hassle worthwhile, if you are selling (particularly many) millions of things. Even saving a dime on BOM for a million units shipped will pay an engineer year, roughly.

I still remember a friend relating with a mixture of horror and fondness that in 15 years probably the biggest impact he ever had to the bottom line of [big computer manufacturer no longer in existence] was re-routing a PCB in a way that let them make it smaller with no functional change. The materials cost savings over product lifetime was in the 7-8 figures range, he claimed.

<comment><USER8> A product I was working on had different variants based on what parts are populated. There were config resistors to help route the signals based on what was populated. I replaced that all with a simple software lookup table in firmware to reroute the signals correctly. Furthermore I figured out how to auto-detect the dozens of supported configurations on first bootup. The PCBs were very small so I made the board designers job a lot easier due to eliminated resistors. The factory folks were thrilled that they didn't have to manage the jumpers.

<comment><USER9> I would hire you. These techniques should be applied pervasively.

Could you write a guide? I would buy it.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the kind praises. Unfortunately I'm not much of a writer though I have lots of interesting experiences that I tell my friends and coworkers.

A big part of how I'm today is due to my boss at that time. One of the most brilliant engineers I worked it. He also gave us a lot of time and freedom to think of these kind of approaches. Sadly these days a lot of companies are always in a rush so one can't think things through properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is interesting that its possible to produce chips at this price for more than a short time period. Also that they are all basically PIC clones or variants speaks to the core competency of these companies is manufacturing and operational efficiency, not MCU design.

I think a fascinating experiment here would be to invest some time in an unencumbered scalable design that could be implemented very inexpensively (say less than 10K gates). Would these manufacturers pick up that design and run with it, making variants and parts that people could buy? It would get Microchip off their back (several have been sued apparently).

<comment><USER11> I would think a lot of manufacturers are looking to RISC-V for that kind of eventuality. But in the meantime, and looking at that chart, it seems a lot more convenient to just rip off the PIC.

<comment><USER12> I don't think a RISC-V would fit in this gate count niche. Just the register file for an RV32-C core is half these chips' RAM.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the PICs don't have a register file at all. They also have quite a simple instruction set, again providing gate savings, but then the size of program ROM may be a bit larger as a result.

The ALU can be a reasonable chunk of the processor size, and an 8-bit ALU is going to be much smaller than a RISCV ALU. Although I read somewhere that some of the Z80s, although an 8-bit processor, had a 4-bit ALU, and also I read somewhere that the 32-bit NIOS processor has a 16-bit ALU. But whether that's true or not ...

I designed a size optimised 16-bit MSP430 clone for small size low cost machxo3 FPGAs that used an 8-bit ALU. It a good way of keeping the number of LUTs down when optimising for size over speed.

For something like the low cost ice40 FPGAs, a PIC would probably be a very good match for those too compared to RISCV, because ice40 doesn't have distributed memory, which is what you'd like for register files (otherwise I expect one of the block RAMs would be used for the register file, and ideally you wouldn't want that to happen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When getting into a project, I usually work with someone in the hardware design space (I can do larger electronics myself and thus prototypes, but I'm hired for very small circuit projects) and after creating a prototype, we usually start searching for the the cheapest MCU (and other components) that fit the project. Spending a lot of time doing assembly and making it fit the constrained memory _will_ pay off when doing million factory runs. A lot of MCU's I work with are faster (or only marginally slower) than my beloved Z80 I grew up with an programmed many years, but usually have less (sometimes far less) memory. I have not worked with kilohertz since the early 80s but he, if it fits (it almost never does) I am all for the lowest priced and power friendly MCUs I can find.

<comment><USER15> It's funny but I've been driving a Z80 with an arduino-mega recently, and I actually timed it for the first time a couple of days ago. I'm getting 6000 clock-cycles a second. 6Khz, rather than that 6Mhz it would be cable of running standalone.

<comment><USER16> Why is it so slow?

<comment><USER15> Mostly because I'm doing a lot of manual work reading/writing to the address/data-bus and there is some overhead in the code I've got for emulating RAM & I/O code.

It should be faster, and could be if I reworked it. But I'm mostly using the arduino as a crutch right now until I get hooked up to real driving circuitry so I'm not overly concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Around the year 2000, a PIC 12C508A was about 1 Dutch guilder @ 5000 pcs.

Today, Mouser lists 1 pcs @ € 0,908, 100 pcs @ € 0,863.

The guilder/€ is 2,20371 ( muscle memory ).

The MCUs in the article are 12C508A class, one is an actual clone.

So for ~ € 0,80 at quantity, the 12C508A currently costs about 1.75 guilder. 20 years later.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how much of Microchip revenue is from old chips at very profitable prices.

I did a Digikey comparison once, and Microchip alone provided roughly 30% of all MCUs on digikey. It has, for example, an incredible 175 MCU models with exactly 64B of RAM, 1.75KB of ROM and just 5 I/Os.

<comment><USER17> That is just combinatorial explosion of fairly small number of features. I took a peek at the example you provided, and drilling down there seems to be for example 39 SKUs for PIC12x615 chip:

* Two voltage options (although why on earth do they need 2-5.5 and 2-5 separately?)

* Two main packaging options: tape and tube, and tape is furthermore available as full reel, digireel, and cut tape

* Three different temperature ratings

* Five different device packages from tiny 3x3mm DFN to full-sized DIP

So already from these fairly simple options you get total of 2x4x3x5 = 120 different combinations for essentially the same chip. So they don't quite have all the combinations, but there are few outlier options and overall the combination coverage is pretty wide which explains the inflated SKU count. I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this exercise besides that Microchip seem to be willing to provide their chips exactly as customer wants them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > They address a specific category of low-cost, high volume, non-serviceable > products with limited functionality. You need to wait for the push of a > button and then let an LED flash exactly five times? You need to control a > battery-operated night light? The sub $0.10 MCU is your friend to reduce BOM > and shorten development time.

If you're allergic to 555s, I guess?

<comment><USER19> These are cheaper than 555s, more easily available in various footprints, need almost no supporting passive circuity or glue logic, lower power usage, and more flexible to boot.

Popularity of the 555 waned a long, long time ago.

<comment><USER20> More accurate timers, too. It's bizarre to think that "program a microcontroller" is actually cheaper - even in small quantity - than the 555 designs I remember building as a kid.

(In single quantities from LCSC the cheapest 555 is $0.07 and the cheapest Paduak microcontroller is $0.04 - in quantity the 555 is $0.04 and the Paduak is $0.025. Plus fewer support passives with the Paduak.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Due to lack of programming tools and evaluation boards I was only able to review most devices by datasheet

hmm. Well I don't blame the author but that kinda killed my interest

<comment><USER22> I wonder what the lowest-priced chip you can pick up with a reasonable toolchain that is accessible to hobbyists?

<comment><USER23> PIC10F200 in 8 pin DIP is about 41 pence (~50 cents) in 1-off here in the UK; great for quick hacks (e.g. I just used one as a 60KHz clock generator). The IDE is free, works on Windows/Linux/Mac and there's an online version too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You would be surprised by the places sub-$1 mcus appear, even down to a dime. Car manufactures use them all over the place, even ECUs(at least until recently; I'm no longer "in the biz"). Yes, shaving a few pennies from the BOM of a $30K device is still worth doing when you produce them in huge volume.

</comment><comment><USER17> The top end padauk ("PFS173") actually seems pretty reasonable chip, comparable to bottom end attinys with only quarter of the price.

<comment><USER25> After I got over being spoiled by ARMs I fell for Padauk's stuff which I now think are awesome and makes almost everything that leaves the building a candidate for a micro. It breaks the old rules where you had to have a certain level of complexity in the product to justify using a processor. Their stuff are economical replacements for discrete logic and a no brainer for the ubiquitous ADC->serial use cases.

My hardware guy came on really heavy against the Padauk stuff because it was put to me that the temperature range wasn't wide enough particularly at the high end where supposedly we had to operate at 125C. I actually think attinys made it in the design instead of the Padauks just because of personal preference and an unwillingness to share the project rather than unavailability in automotive temp range.

So the tubes of Padauks and a pair of ICEs I brought in so it would be very easy to play with sit unused and I am now at a different place that places more emphasis on what all of the engineers think rather than just whoever happened to draw the long straw for the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wrote code for a MCU that did power sequencing on a consumer product. 4K of code, 2K of RAM, some EEPROM, a 16Mhz clock . . . 18 cents.

It was a fun little project: [http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1911](http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1911)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like the size where forth code might be used. Anyone done that?</comment>


The First image clicked on by a browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.oobject.com/first-images-from-atoms-to-the-universe/lhc-the-first-image-clicked-on-by-a-browser/7566/

<comment><USER2> Yow! It makes me really happy that the first image on the web was a girl band, and not just any girl band, but french-speaking scientist girls. We should have seen youtube coming far earlier than we did, apparently..</comment>


Google bans 'explicit' adult content from Blogger blogs - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-content-from-blogger-blogs/

<comment><USER2> Do you think they'll stop at Blogger or will they ban adult content from YouTube too?

<comment><USER3> YouTube never allowed porn.

Notice that "adult content" here means explicit sex, not things like artistic nudity that will continue to be allowed with an interstitial.</comment></comment>


The Binoculars of Jah - <AUTHOR> https://granta.com/the-binoculars-of-jah/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat tangential. I went to Jamaica with my pregnant wife in 2012. At the time of our arrival I did not realize that we were visiting a country with omnipresent violent crime. During our visit, we had (very luckily) a small taste of this crime, but consequently also were given a chance to understand the situation.

We casually strolled through the crowds in Ocho Rios and enjoyed the beach and the novel sites. For example, a dreadlocked older gentleman with a grocery bag chock full of ganja openly selling such in the central town square.

We were staying in a very nice hotel, and one side of our room was on land, the other was cantilevered over the ocean. On day five of our visit, this vista turned out to be a liability. While we are at dinner, marauders arrived in a boat, climbed into our room, and fleeced everything that was easily accessible. We are careful travelers and so stored most valuables in the safe (which also stunk like ganja). The total damage was around $150, but mentally we were afraid.

As part of the investigation, an extraordinarily kind local policeman was sent by to take our statement. He spent 15 minutes on the crime, and then another 2 hours chatting with us. He was erudite and well spoken, and gave us his take in detail of why the country was the way it was. He conjectured that extreme disparity between rich and poor, a history of colonial violence, and lack of accessible quality education had set them up for failure.

I was born in India, and have spent about 1/4 of my life there (as a member of the upper middle class). My grandparents view of the British Raj was very benign and shared by their peers. I wonder what it is that led to one perception in India and another in Jamaica, both poor countries, but one which lives in fear of violence.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure not everyone in Indian regards the Raj as favorably as your parents. Some people in Jamaica do think the way your parents do, about the British. This is more than colonialism though. This poverty has a lot to do with cold war politics and meddling by world powers. It's surprising, such as small island, why even bother? But this happened in the 70s and 80s. It's well documented, you can read about it.

Education and opportunity would help to eradicate a lot of the crime in Jamaica. First, the younger people needs to see successful Jamaicans in good positions and understand that they got there through education. A lot of kids aspire to be Reggae stars, because they're influenced by the success of Reggae icons. Not many such influences are apparent with well educated Jamaicans. They're not 'stars'.

I think India does well because they put a premium on education and kids that do well are rewarded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though I somewhat enjoyed the article it reeks of the kind of nonsense about Caribbean culture that those JCBs("just come back") like to perpetuate. They seem to have the most incite about the Caribbean though their only real contact with the culture is through parents and grandparents who left the islands decades ago. They believe that their summer vacations count as real experience and are the ones that people not from the islands get to hear about.

"Obeah" for instance is not a Jamican thing. It's an Afro-Caribbean thing with direct roots to Benin in Africa, the birthplace of what popular media calls Vodoo. Arguably it's practiced more in the southern Caribbean and Guyana than in Jamaica. Not to mention Haiti.

All this to say is that these know it all "foreigners" really paint a picture of the Caribbean that is thoroughly inaccurate. But I suppose they are the ones with access to running water and flushing toilets so maybe people like me who actually live here are not healthy enough to express our own experiences as eloquently as they can after coming on vacation.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is always amazing to me how much power supernatural nonsense has over some people.

I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in a no-nonsense environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, memories. Peter Tosh made the most impression my memory of those times (Birmingham resident, not part of the culture).</comment>


Show HN: Across – one-click Slack integrations across your stack - <AUTHOR> https://acrossapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The first question people ask is "how is this different than native Slack integrations with Zendesk, Intercom, etc?". The answer is that we've increased the functionality in these integrations significantly, and made all of them 2-way!

For example, if you use shared channels with your customers, you can create a Zendesk ticket from Slack, and then reply directly from a ticket in Zendesk and we find the right channel and thread to reply to.</comment>


Ask HN: CA Taxes for a DE C corporation? - <AUTHOR>

If my company is incorporated in DE, but I live in CA, yet I only sell iPhone apps,<p>do I have to pay CA corporate taxes?<p>[Does selling iPhone apps count as doing business i CA?] <comment><USER2> As always you should probably seek more authoritative advice, but my understanding is that you'd only pay CA corporate taxes, and _not_ DE corporate taxes. Most states tax corporations on the business they do in the state, and it sounds like you do all your business in CA, so you have to pay CA taxes. But you don't have to pay DE taxes, because DE has a special exemption for DE-registered corporations that do all their business out of the state.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know for sure, but I would guess that you pay corporate taxes where the company is incorporated, and the location of your employees (i.e. you) doesn't matter. That said, it may be that CA law prohibits residents from incorporating as sole-person companies in other states.

Are you going to take HN responses as authoritative? I really wouldn't. Go see a professional tax adviser.</comment>


Ask HN: What is going on with Captchas ? - <AUTHOR>

Am I the only one going insane ? Today I decided to try the app developed by a fellow HN member. After failing 3 times to enter the captcha, I gave up.
And this is not the first time this happens. If I am having trouble, how many other users are stopped by the gate ?
Can anyone recommend a good (as in readable) free-captcha generator ?
Or maybe its just me (http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg) ? <comment><USER2> [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion- rat...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rates)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a very serious study. If he allowed forms to be processed even if captcha failed, he could of known how many of the failures were indeed legit clients. This way, it might of just been bots and the 2-3% change just a normal deviation.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The captcha that blocked me: <http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg>

<comment><USER3> Part of the problem there is that in some fonts there's very little difference between a "q" and a "9". So that's either "qA726F" of "9A726F". Either way, I didn't find that one very difficult, and if the others were similar, I wouldn't've expected a problem. A side point is, of course, that most CAPTCHAs of this style don't actually need to be that complicated.

That fact that you had a problem does show that this style of CAPTCHA has to be deprecated.

People are reporting that hidden fields with names that suggest they are necessary - and hence get completed by robots - are very effective, as are simple questions in natural language. Point is, currently they're not common, so spammers haven't yet had the motivation to crack them.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:Becoming a application developer from a scientific programming background? - <AUTHOR>

I have a graduate and under-graduate degrees in  engineering with a good amount of experience in scientific programming in C++ and python. I have ideas for a few web and stand alone apps that I would like to implement. But I am not sure whether I have the necessary skills to go ahead with them.  For example I have no idea about Operations System theory or concepts like continuous integration. If  you can point out to a list of subjects and concepts/topics that one need to know before jumping into full-fledged projects, I think it would be helpful to me and others who are in a similar situation. <comment><USER2> I was exactly in the same position few years back. I was a non computer science grad, but i had decent amount of coding experience and algorithm design, but only that. No theory courses in Networking, Operating System or even DBMS. I wanted to make web apps, and wanted it hard. So the few things i learnt were: you need to know basic HTML, CSS. Server Side Scripting: PHP/Python/Ruby Client Side Scripting: Javascript(jQuery is the new JavaScript) You should also know the terms like DNS, CNAME etc. so that you can put your content on a web server to start of with a shared hosting from any provider would be good.

But the above will only let you make very basic apps. If you want to make slightly more complex things, there are Content Management Solutions like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. (these are amongst the most popular ones, they have readymade plugins so if your only motive is to get a site up and running, they will serve the purpose.)

If you want more customization you might have to learn MVC frameworks. Here([http://blog.fruiapps.com/2012/04/Understanding-MVC- Architect...](http://blog.fruiapps.com/2012/04/Understanding-MVC-Architecture- with-a-simple-example)) i have written a basic tutorial on MVC. The popular frameworks are Ruby on Rails Django (Python) CodeIgnitor(PHP) BackBone (JS) My rule of thumb for deciding is: Get a hang of a server side scripting language(PHP/Python/Ruby), choose the framework in that particular language.

Another most important rule that you should keep in mind is: All that you want to do has been done, you need to assemble it your way!! Learn to copy, modify and paste to suit your needs. Don't be afraid of any implementation it will be out somewhere there. Thats it, hope it helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your detailed, response. I will really look into the things that you have mentioned. Of all the different languages you have mentioned, python is my natural choice. What I have heard about python is that higher execution time makes it not suitable for bigger applications, but I know reddit, dropbox ,.etc are using python. How do you see it from your experience?

<comment><USER3> Python is fine.

Go with what you know already. Just add the client-side bits you need (html, etc.).

Django could be a good choice, but don't limit yourself to one language/framework.

Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I learnt web programming, web application development on my own during college days started with PHP, settled with Python and tried ruby.

How did I learn?

I started with PHP first, writing small scripts and spending time IRC and reading official docs. I attended PHP conference which had prominent minds like creator framwework, Drupal Users etc ...

I created Mini ERP for schools as startup and never launched it.

Then I tried Ruby on Rails and cloned a open source project and modified the source code and fixed bugs (never bothered to submit).

Then I tried Django but wasn't impressed, then I tried Flask and I liked it very much and tried Pylons. Now I am settled with Flask and hacking brubeck occasionally.

Sites I have built: 1\. www.sachintweets.in 2\. www.iplsaga.in 2\. www.pylive.codespeaks.in(currently down)

Web Apps: 1\. Gummi - multi user chat room with Flask + Redis 2\. Blaze - Static file generator

Source code: <https://github.com/kracekumar>

Takeaway 1\. Choose a language and start researching on available web frameworks 2\. Attend Conferences. 3\. Follow hackers in twitters 4\. Subscribe to subreddit 5\. Join Mailing list. 6\. Use Github and bitbucket.

By creating stuffs which interests you, will answer the question.

</comment><comment><USER5> You need to be hellbent upon learning. This is how I started a few years ago. I was into C/C++ programming, but knew nothing of javascript/java/php/ etc. I didn't even know if there was any difference between java and javascript as these were not my domain. And then I just had to make this website for myself. I spend nights to learn and code (started using GWT as it was the easiest for me to pick up coming from C++ background). But later I realized it could be easier to code using jquery where I can use the object oriented programming concepts. So here is my list to get up to speed: 1\. Start learning javascript (codeacademy.com is a good place to start with) and then you can go on to learn jquery. 2\. PHP. 3\. Read about MVC/MPV architecture. 4\. HTML/CSS 5\. Install WAMP/MAMP or any other such server on your computer and play with it. 6\. Google any problem where you get stuck. I realized there is absolutely no problem that you can't solve. Some will be easy to solve, and some will take all the energy out of you. But the key is patience. Have patience and be persistent, you will get all the solutions you need. Same is for learning. Have patience and be persistent.

</comment><comment><USER6> It may be worth finding a company you admire and working there for a year to get a feel for things like source control, the dynamics of many people working on one code base, design patterns, why people make the architectural decisions that they do, how systems scale, what makes a team work well together, etc.

None of this stuff is as easy to pick up on your own. Then, after you get a feel for how others do things, you can make informed decisions about how to run your own projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> You'll be fine, it's really very simple.

I'd say pick a stack (JavaScript, Python, Ruby or whatever) and jump right into it.</comment>


MacOS Mojave Update Bricked My 2018 MBP - <AUTHOR> Anyone else have this issue?  It's just hanging on the "iCloud - Setting up accoubt" window.  Every so often it loads an error message saying to try again later.  Can't get past this screen.<p>https://ibb.co/ht93HU <comment><USER2> If you can get into Safe Boot try deleting ~/Library/Keychains (or just moving the directory somewhere else) and then reboot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Frustrating to have to do this. Nothing like paying $4500 for a laptop only to have it be a pain to upgrade 2 weeks in...

I'll have to force power off... little hesitant to do that mid-upgrade but seems like the install is done and just it jacked up my account settings.

<comment><USER2> I've had issues logging into iCloud in the past and this always seems to fix them. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly, didn't fix it.

I was asked for my Apple password again, but then it put me back in the same spot where I'm just stuck on the iCloud window. Ugh.</comment></comment></comment></comment>