Red Pill, Blue Pill: Is the Universe Just a Giant Computer Simulation? - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2012/12/13/red-pill-blue-pill-is-the-universe-just-a-giant-computer-simulation/ <comment><USER2> Put very well by Iain M. Banks in The Hydrogen Sonata,

"Most problems, even seemingly really tricky ones, could be handled by simulations which happily modelled slippery concepts like public opinion or the likely reactions of alien societies by the appropriate use of some especially cunning and devious algorithms… nothing more processor-hungry than the right set of equations…

But not always. Sometimes, if you were going to have any hope of getting useful answers, there really was no alternative to modelling the individuals themselves, at the sort of scale and level of complexity that mean they each had to exhibit some kind of discrete personality, and that was where the Problem kicked in.

Once you'd created your population of realistically reacting and – in a necessary sense – cogitating individuals, you had – also in a sense – created life. The particular parts of whatever computational substrate you'd devoted to the problem now held beings; virtual beings capable of reacting so much like the back-in-reality beings they were modelling – because how else were they to do so convincingly without also hoping, suffering, rejoicing, caring, living and dreaming?

By this reasoning, then, you couldn't just turn off your virtual environment and the living, thinking creatures it contained at the completion of a run or when a simulation had reached the end of its useful life; that amounted to genocide."

<comment><USER3> That is really nicely put, but by that same logic is who/whatever is responsible for simulating us somewhat responsible for genocide caused by humans since they, by necessity, gave us free will? What about the extinction of the dinosaurs, assuming the asteroid theory? Perhaps it was necessary to their simulation for a large asteroid/comet to be able to hit Earth, but are they somewhat responsible for wiping out life?

I guess these questions are very strongly parallel to those that can be asked about God, which is perhaps a better definition than computer for something that simulates our universe anyway.

<comment><USER4> Not parallel, identical. The Judeo-Christian God only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and he designed it.

The delightful thing about the simulation hypothesis is that it allows us to hope for some type of afterlife. Maybe we get to play a different level, or we get to play the same game again. Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible.

<comment><USER5> > Any fantasy we tell to children becomes possible.

It makes it nothing more than any other religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this question get so much more publicity than "Are you a brain in a vat?"? It's the _exact same question_!

<comment><USER7> The questions aren't exactly the same. For example, we can imagine characterising our whole universe as a set of physical laws plus some initial conditions, and maybe a pseudo-random number generator. If we're given such a characterisation, we can write a simulation trivially. In fact, a simulation is probably the simplest form of such a characterisation. Hence, all we need is a computer (for example, SK calculus) and this relatively-simple simulation program (so simple that it could be a Boltzmann fluctuation). We don't necessarily need time to run the computation, since that would imply some kind of "outside universe", when it might be the case that computation can exist all by itself. From a pure reductionist point of view, we've removed unnecessary complexity and are left with just computation, which is nice and Platonic.

The brain in a vat idea, on the other hand, requires brains, vats and all manner of other support structures (eg. energy, entropy, etc.) to exist _as well_ as the brain in a vat. In which case, we basically _require_ an "outside universe" which is very similar to the "inside universe", so reductionism says that we're adding complexity with such an argument, so it's unnecessary.

<comment><USER6> The questions are exactly the same. All they do is point out that if all your information is routed through an intermediary, you'll never be able to prove that the intermediary is telling you the truth.

Whether you describe that in terms of a meat brain being suspended in nutritive solution and hooked up to cables, or in terms of an electronic circuit receiving input from other electronic circuits, has no bearing on that.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't proposing that a computer running our universe is based on electronic circuits; rather, I was proposing that computation itself is all that's needed to simulate our universe. Since an 'outside' universe doesn't need to bear any relation to our 'inside' universe, it can be vastly simpler. Maybe it's a rule 110 cellular automaton; maybe it's a 2,3 turing machine; maybe its an iota evaluator; it could even be just some abstract computational essence, distinct from implementation. That's enough to run a simulation.

Now, the question is 'why simulate the universe when you could just simulate a brain'? This is basically the Boltzmann Brain argument. In terms of bits (see Kolmogorov complexity) the universe is simpler to describe (physics + initial conditions) than a whole brain (neurons, synapses, hormones, etc.). Basically, the universe can unfold from a tiny core (the big bang), whereas a single brain can't (it could unfold from a fertilised egg, but that's already huge, and requires all kinds of matter and physics to work which the big bang would have used anyway). In that case, a random program running on an 'outside' computer is much more likely to be a universe than a brain. By the anthropic principle, we could ask if our universe is the simplest which can support life, in terms of the number of bits required to encode the laws of physics as a program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've come to the conclusion that the universe probably is a simulation (via the axioms provided by the simulation hypothesis). But it really doesn't matter either way now then does it? Whether or not we live in the "root" universe or one of the underlying simulations is really quite irrelevant to our daily lives as it is to the lives of simulated characters in video games. We can't do anything about it. Furthermore, since we are probably unable to change the simulation, we might as well accept it to be reality. Some might reply to this with the "Allegory of the Cave":

> _Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the > wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch > shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind > them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato 's > Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. > He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from > the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up > reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the > mere shadows seen by the prisoners._

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

I rebut this by stating that if we do happen to live in a simulation, then it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to unchain ourselves from our shadow wall. Hence, we might as well go forward with the assumption that the shadow wall is in fact reality, because thinking otherwise would be a fairly pointless exercise (pragmatically).

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a cute argument, based on the number of universe simulations - if there are heaps of them, the odds are ours is one.

But this argument misses something - what about the number of _people_ being simulated? If there are many more than actual people, the same argument applies. You are likely simulated.

But, you may object, if you simulate a person, don't you need to simulate a universe? Well, yes, but only the bits the person can see. Like in a fps, it doesn't render the entire world from every possible perspective - just one. Much easier (and, dare I say it, more likely than simulating an entire universe). This is just Descartes systematically deceiving demon + how many there are.

A second objection is that it would be more efficient to share the same world across many simulated people. This might be true, but the underlying question remains: to determine how likely _you_ are simulated, we need to consider the simulated vs real people ratio, not the simulated vs real universes.

PS: If we're going all Vishnu's dream, all bets are off. Why should it in anyway be bound by the observations we have gathered? For example, why assume the simulation must be finite - any justification that we can generalise from our own observations is parochial and anthropocentric.

Of course, it is simpler to imagine (and probably, to do), if it's a simulation of the actual universe. So let's use the argument again: of all the simulated universes, how many will be of the true universe, and how many will be bizarre variations (which ours would be)? Of course, we cannot hope to estimate these probabilities for an arbitrarily different parent universe - even less so than to predict what that parent universe would be like! But it seems pointless to simulate an exact copy... for us, iteration-like variations, or of fiction seem more likely.

<comment><USER10> As soon as I saw the title, I knew Nick Bostrom would be involved. And therein lies chaos.

First, to clarify something from the article - Bostrom's "posthuman" civilization is not strictly about the singularity but about almost unbounded capabilities. Building computers out of planets would be within reach for such a civilization. Think Culture, not Neuromancer.

The ratio of simulated people vs people in the actual universe was "addressed" in one of Bostrom's subsequent papers but in a completely ad hoc if-you-do- this-then-you-prove-my-point way. Here's some arguments against it - [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Calculating...](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Calculating_the_Probability_of_Simulation_with_the_Bostrom_Equation)

All in all, the SimArg is a nice thought but it's so easy to poke holes without first becoming a posthuman civilization that it loses what little stability it might have had.

<comment><USER11> I feel like Bostrom uses his first 2 conditions to constrain probabilities until the 3rd seems likely. Is this insightful or a trick? I would argue it's a lot closer to a trick, since conditions 1 and 2 are futures we hope for (that we survive and become technologically advanced)--so we tend to overestimate their actual probability.

Think of it this way: the total probability that we are in a simulation should be the sum of all future states in which our descendents create adequate simulations, _divided by the total number of all possible future states_ \--which is nearly infinite. Therefore the probability that we are in a simulation now is actually nearly zero.

<comment><USER10> I think calling it a trick is unfair. It's not just P(C3), it's really P(C3 | !C1 && !C2), where C1 and C2 are really big events, so the fact they haven't occurred narrows the search space quite a bit.

Remember, he's not just talking about any conciousness simulations but a specific type - ancestor simulations, which allows him to pull more rabbits out of his hat than might normally be able to hide in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it makes as much sense for us to call a device capable of simulating the universe a "computer" as it would be to think of a being who could create a universe a "person."

<comment><USER7> "person" doesn't have a formal mathematical definition. "computer" does, and anything simulating our universe must be at least as powerful as a computer, since our universe contains computers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine)

<comment><USER12> _> "computer" does, and anything simulating our universe must be at least as powerful as a computer_

Yes, but that strikes me as about as useful as noting how many genes human beings have in common with yeast. (Useful in some contexts, but not all.)

<comment><USER7> Not at all. The point is _not_ how amazing such a universe simulator must be, the point is that a universe simulator _isn 't_ amazing. The point of the Church-Turing thesis is that everything that ever was, is or will be; every supernova, every human mind, every intergalactic alien empire, every technology that _ever can be_ , is no more complex than ENIAC (given sufficient memory).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's a simulation, why haven't we found any major bugs?

I mean there are some very deep things in physics that we cannot explain yet but outright bugs in logic?

So if it's a simulation, it's the best code ever or someone is patching the historical logs when a bug is fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you define a bug?

<comment><USER14> Maybe we are the bug. A while back this guy discovered that his Quake bots that had been running for 4 years found the perfect strategy to survival, which was to stop fighting. In contrast, look at what humanity is doing.

Assuming the purpose of life is not to self destruct then we most certainly have a bug in our system. Whoever wrote Quake wrote better code than "God".

<comment><USER15> > A while back this guy discovered that his Quake bots that had been running > for 4 years found the perfect strategy to survival, which was to stop > fighting.

That sounds fascinating but also a bit hard to believe. Can you give a link to that story?

<comment><USER16> You're right to be skeptical. It made the rounds last month, but it turned out to be a hoax:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/01/quake-3-arena- wor...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/01/quake-3-arena-world- peace_n_3529082.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the world a 3d hologram created by clustering of sub-microscopic, atomic units of matter perceived by translating photon transmission to electrical pulses?

YES.

</comment><comment><USER18> Quantum mechanics is a manifestation of lazy simulation. Decide states with a coin flip when necessary.

<comment><USER19> Dice rolls per Einstein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Given that this is a simulation, it would meant that it is based on an actual reality with physics that either match or are limited below our own. Given the technology it would take to simulate life, the Designers would have to live in a reality where they have harnessed some form of energy. The question is how much energy would it take to simulate nearly seven billion people? Even if you didn't have to process those that were sleeping, that's still a lot of energy being consumed by the simulation. Either the Designers are using massive amounts of energy to run the simulation or they have a completely different set of physics and are running a simulation to test alternative physics.

<comment><USER21> Or they are not simulating nearly seven billion people.

Or they are "cheating" a lot (most people aren't nearly as original as we like to think).

Or they are simulating it at a massively reduced speed.

Or all of the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's possible that our universe is a simulation being run by intelligent beings in a more complex universe.

It's not possible that our universe is a simulation of our universe by our descendents, because you cannot simulate a universe accurately within itself. It would be like saying that you can embed a 100k JPG losslessly within another, existing 100K JPG. You can't do it without discarding a lot of information.

And the information would be missed fairly quickly because chaos theory shows that even perfectly deterministic systems can vary wildly over time based on very very small differences in initial conditions.

<comment><USER22> Who says they're simulating it accurately?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where is the Universe's bug tracker. I have a few bugs I would like to report.

</comment><comment><USER23> The real kicker of this idea is that one you accept it is possible that we are in a simulation, then it is _much_ more likely that we actually are than that we are not.

<comment><USER24> How so? It's not so clear to me.

<comment><USER23> If it is possible to simulate a universe such as ours, and there definitely is a real universe somewhere (which is an entirely different can of philosophical worms) then it is most likely that there is more than one simulated universe being run in that real universe. In fact there could be a great many simulations running right now (either due to one civilisation at the relevant technological level running many simulations, many civilisations running one each, or many running many) and that multiplies up over the course of the real universe's remaining existence.

We are either in _the one_ real universe or _one of the many_ simulated ones, so it is more likely that we are in one of the latter.

Even if you consider the possibility of there being an infinite number of real universes this basic arithmetic still holds: for each real universe there is potentially a great many simulated ones.

To compound it further: if the simulation is so detailed that it is possible for the simulated life to perform its own simulations, then each simulated universe may contain many more simulated realities. Turtles! All the way down! There will be a limit to how far this can go of course as each simulation must logically be simpler than the parent reality (caveat: some might question if that logic is true or just a limitation of our current knowledge about information theory) so the complexity of the real universe(s) will dictate how may levels of virtualisation we could potentially find ourselves within.

<comment><USER21> I got into an argument with Kurzweil on his blog once years ago regarding the details.

The simulation does _not_ necessarily need to be simpler, subject to a few constraints: It needs to be possible to _represent_ the simulation in less space than its containing universe. It also needs to be possible to _execute_ the simulation in the available space/energy, but if acceptable it may be sufficient to be able to execute it at reduced speed which can substantially reduce the amount of matter/energy required at any one point as you'd be able to e.g. more aggressively apply compression etc. to the data.

The space requirement can be fairly small depending on the constraints on your simulation. E.g. are you simulating a whole universe? A planet? One person? Everything not directly observed by a simulation subject can be aggressively pruned as long as it can be reconstructed in a believable state (unless you are trying to accurately simulate the physics of everything), and even things that _are_ observed can be simplified dramatically. E.g. in almost all cases nobody would be able to tell a rough approximation of the physics and appearance of cloud formations from "the real thing", so you don't need to simulate them particle by particle. On the other hand, one such optimization/approximation then could be to fake the result of any attempt to run your own simulation.

One thing I find interesting is that Bostrom talks about "ancestor simulations" a lot, but there's no reason to assume that if we're in a simulation it has to be a simulation of the past of whomever runs the simulation - it could be a game, or someone simulating aliens (to them), or it could even be a civilization that decided to create themselves a nice simulation to live in, or a "theme park"/"zoo".

<comment><USER23> _> or a "theme park"/"zoo"_

Or it could have been created in their offices, to make the job of maintinain a guide to galactic hitch-hiking easier to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, and God is the developer and maintainer, who created this huge simulation program which contains bugs forcing him to kill processes constantly. That's why we do not have immortal life. He tried to fix bugs by using a debugger called Jesus but failed. He so desperately killed the debugger process and let the system keep running.

Why God create this huge simulation? He want to post ads in this universe and he is using a datacenter to simulate user behavior!

</comment><comment><USER26> Why does it matter if we are in a simulation or not?

<comment><USER23> It changes the whole "why do we exist at all" question completely. If we are inside a simulation we may never be able to see outside to the true nature of reality. Instead of being part of the an explanation for the big bang, black wholes could just be a bug. Inflation could simply be due to the people running the simulation wanting to skip that long drawn out expansion bit so they could study something else.

Of course for our day to day lives it doesn't matter a jot. I still have to work to earn money to pay the mortgage, even if my job, my money, my house and the bank don't _really_ exist in the real universe...

Of course you could consider the simulation and the life within it to be equally real: I think I am thinking, therefore I quite possibly may be. This makes it even less relevant to those of us who are not philosophers or theoretical physicists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> (podcast, about 15 minutes, from _Philosophy Bites_ )

Nick Bostrom on the simulation argument:

[http://philosophybites.com/2011/08/nick-bostrom-on-the- simul...](http://philosophybites.com/2011/08/nick-bostrom-on-the-simulation- argument.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Simulacra.. not simulacrums.. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation)

</comment><comment><USER29> So if our Universe is a computer simulation, this might imply that the advanced civilization that created this simulation consists mainly of computer programmers. I like!

</comment><comment><USER30> In case you ever wanted to read that article as a short story: [http://qntm.org/responsibility](http://qntm.org/responsibility)

</comment><comment><USER31> What happens when we, the simulation, become advanced enough to run our own simulations? Yo dawg, I heard you like simulations...

</comment><comment><USER32> I swallowed the bitter red pill, to realise we all exist in a simulation, written in javascript by some spotty 14 year old.

</comment><comment><USER33> As an impartial outsider, unaffected by the simulation, I say no. I mean yes.

</comment><comment><USER34> If the universe is a simulation, and I'm conscious, why would they want to simulate such a boring person (me)?</comment>


A Rotating Detonation Engine Would Revolutionize Rocket Launches - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31000649/rotating-detonation-engine/ <comment><AUTHOR> Principal researcher's brother here, but if there's enough interest I could get him to show up :) He enjoys talking about the math. PR-E paper[1] and 240000fps video of engine ignition and wave formation[2]

[1] [https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.0...](https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.013106)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXSsd7uXjt8&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXSsd7uXjt8&feature=youtu.be)</comment>


Pipes: Rewire the web - <AUTHOR> http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

<comment><USER2> Umm, pipes has been around for a while, like nearly 4 years...

</comment><comment><USER3> Must be a slow news day if this is making it to the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER4> In other news, there is this amazing new Javascript framework called JQuery!

<comment><USER5> The other day I was talking with a friend of a friend at a bar.

Him: "I do web design and computer science for major business X"

Me: (What kind of stuff do you do, etc., etc.)

Him: "It's really cool, I just found out about this new technology, A.J.A.X. (He actually spelled it out.) It lets you talk to your server without reloading your H.T.M.L. page!"

This is no lie.

In unrelated news, 90% of all business-to-business software sucks.

<comment><USER4> LOL... well, good to know the competition isn't too fierce at any rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's actually a marvel Pipes hasn't been shutdown yet. When that inevitably happens, it will be sorely missed.

<comment><USER7> maybe not!

Running Yahoo! Pipes on Google App Engine [http://www.wordloosed.com/running- yahoo-pipes-on-google-app-...](http://www.wordloosed.com/running-yahoo-pipes- on-google-app-engine)</comment></comment>


Why American Mothers are Superior - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/american-mothers-superior/

<comment><USER2> This article seems a bit behind the times, after it came out that the WSJ article was ripped and rather heavily edited from Chua's book, which is about her realization that her parenting style was failing her kids.[1] I'm okay with criticizing the wsj article, but Chua really didn't have much to do with it, by all accounts.

[1] [http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-09/books/27017338_1_chine...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-09/books/27017338_1_chinese- immigrants-chinese-parents-daughters)</comment>


The 4-Stages of Testing Your Web Product - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/02/19/aroxo/

<comment><USER2> Nice article.

I got to experience user testing through participation in testing gigs found on craigslist.

Great way to make a few bucks while learning something new :)</comment>


Spectrogram shows dialup modem handshake sounds - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2013/11/21/spectrogram-shows-dialup-modem-handshake-sounds/ <comment><USER2> Another representation, with explanations of the steps in the connection: [http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured...](http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured.html)</comment>


Markets for Information Goods (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Given issues concerning marketing and monetising information goods, including perverse effects of advertising and surveillance, and "emptent", a discussion of economic elements of the problem.

The author is Hal Varian, emeritus professor at UC Berkeley and currently Google's chief economist. His 1990s book, _Information Rules_ , on the power of lock-in in consumer and enterprise software is also highly recommended.</comment>


A Wearable That Lets You Charge Your Gadgets by Jerking Off - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/finally-a-wearable-that-lets-you-charge-your-gadgets-b-1688232359

<comment><USER2> Dude, forget jerking off, this thing will be awesome for dancers, so much of kinetic energy !!

</comment><comment><USER3> Man-power: Power is in your hand :)</comment>


What about something like FixThisBarack.com? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fixthisbarack.com/ think anyone would use it? <comment> patrickg-zill I will let another PG, Philip Greenspun, answer this far more elegantly than I can manage: [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/10/25/will-obama- be-...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/10/25/will-obama-be-a-friend- to-the-poor-once-in-office-would-you/)</comment>


Virtual Currency Is The Next Big Platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/virtual-currency-next-big-platform/ <comment><USER2> I have always been excited about virtual currency but then realize the federal government has a concern with currency being used to move money around illegally. I am curious what the law specifically states about virtual currency: when it is legal and when it is not, it's limitations etc.</comment>


Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls Demonstrates Smaltalk - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uknEhXyZgsg <comment><USER2> Some complements to the video:

xerox :: parc :: techReports :: The Smalltalk-76 Programming System Design and Implementation - [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xeroxparctalk76Program...](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xeroxparctalk76ProgrammingSystemDesignandImplement_1637358)

Emulating Smalltalk-76 on Alto on Windows - [http://croquetweak.blogspot.com/2017/11/emulating- smalltalk-...](http://croquetweak.blogspot.com/2017/11/emulating- smalltalk-76.html) or in the browser : [https://static.loomcom.com/contraltojs/](https://static.loomcom.com/contraltojs/)

Smalltalk 78 in browser - [https://lively- web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html](https://lively- web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html)</comment>


What's Inside Every iPhone, from Retina Displays to Cameras - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/apple-iphone-guts/ <comment><USER2> As I heard it, Apple boosted VLSI design smarts in the UK to get audio stuff in the iPod era, got really good FPGA and there was a one-two year boost in the british chip smarts IPR. Next cycle round, Apple went to the cheaper foundries and said "do this smart stuff cheaper" and undercut. So the apple model appears to me to be: get good design work, but don't depend on it, leverage scale to get cheaper.

Apple is still hugely exposed to the lack of diversity in touch screen and battery smarts. I expect to see something there, because it must hurt paying Samsung with one hand, while you are suing for a pound of flesh with the other.

<comment><USER3> Apple already uses OLED panels frpm LG in the Apple Watch, but LG hasn't got the capacity or the consistent quality on phone sized panels to rival Samsung. There are reports Apple put down $2.7bn on LG to help with capital investments to get them in the game, but volume shipments at iPhone scale wont be possible until 2019.

One problem is the ELVESS OLED camera tracking vapour deposition systems used in the manufacturing process are only made by Canon and only in very small quantities - about 10 a year.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/07/28/apple- invests-27b-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/07/28/apple- invests-27b-in-lgs-oled-production-for-future-iphones---report)

<comment><USER4> Apple only used OLED from LG in their first Apple Watch, all subsequent Apple Watch's OLED are from Samsung.

LG, has yet to prove themselves regarding Mobile OLED display panel. ( Look at the problems with V30, and soon the Pixel 2 ) I seriously doubt Apple are putting $2.7B on the Mobile OLED, ( or what LG called POLED, which is the same as Samsung's AMOLED ), they could have spend the same money on JDI.

<comment><USER5> Looks like some reports of uneven backlighting / quality issues.

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/lg-v30-hands-on- lgs-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/lg-v30-hands-on-lgs-oled- displays-still-have-quality-issues/)

<comment><USER4> God, Yes. Why did I not point that out LG 's OLED quality were no good. ( My hand and mind are always out of sync these days )

And one reason why I dont believe Apple will invest in an OLED production line for capacity and assume their quality standard will improve in the future. LG had the best Desktop > TV Size OLED Panel ( WOLED ), that is I think where Apple are heading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating that the battery of the original was the biggest until the 4 landed - it speaks for the power optimisation that they pursued for those first 4 iterations. Also amusing how it's literally a completely different purpose battery cobbled into a phone case to prove the concept before purpose- designed parts came into fruition.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes, you just gotta work with what you got.

Like today. What is the ubiquitous Energy Unit? There are flat batteries out to like 2500mAh, but for most applications, it's gotta be the 18650 cell.

And accordingly, ho-lee shit. 2600mAh is around what you can rely on a factory-fresh authorized 3.7V cell having. But let's look at Amazon. 3000mAh abound. 5800mAh and above are available as well! And ebay? 6,800-9,900Mah! Ten fucking amp-hours! 'Optimistic' is one word...'Advertising' is another.

Lying.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it would be interesting to see a graph of states versus actual capacity for the eBay batteries. I'd guess there would be an inverse correlation between stated and actual capacity.

<comment><USER9> Well, it turns out there is. Mooch has done some amazing testing and research in numerous form factors and chemistries. If you're interested you should check them out:

[https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list- of-b...](https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list-of-battery- tests.7436/)

<comment><USER10> Can someone explain to me what one would use 1800 mAh LiPOs for in an e-cigarrette? Or is it just a collection of battery tests unrelated to e-cigarettes?

<comment><USER8> For some reason they seem to be very interested in the peak current.

I guess the higher the current the better you vaporize the material?

<comment><USER9> Actually the most important figure is not just the peak current amp limit, but the actual continuous discharge amperage limit. While batteries are capable of higher peak discharge rates in very short bursts, you really do not want to push this and instead should stay below the continuous discharge amperage limit.

The higher this limit generally the "safer" the battery performs in high drain operations like actually vaping the ecig, and this means that not only can you go to higher power levels, but that lower ones will also generally not heat the battery as much, and reduce the risk of thermal runaway or venting.

Take a variable power mod using power regulation set at 50w (a relatively common power setting for enthusiast/higher end vapers but that can be a daily driver), with an atomizer at 0.18ohms resistance and a Sony VTC5 18650 as the battery with 2600mAh capacity and a sustained safe current amperage limit of 30A.

To get 50w you will need to apply 3.00V / 0.18ohms or 16.67 amps. If you for instance choose a poor battery re-wrap, like this Cylaid 3500mAh advertised at 10amp continuous discharge, which is actually just a "re-wrapped" battery which can only sustain 8 amps, you would be in dangerous territory where the battery would likely get much hotter than a quality one and have higher potential for thermal runaway/venting.

[https://www.e-cigarette- forum.com/forum/threads/cylaid-10a-3...](https://www.e-cigarette- forum.com/forum/threads/cylaid-10a-3500mah-18650-bench-test-results-a- rewrapped-8a-battery.801091/)

The most interesting thing you'll notice is an inverse relationship with capacity in mAh and continuous discharge in amperage. You can either have a higher capacity battery with lower continuous discharge current, or a lower capacity battery with higher continuous discharge current, not both.

<comment><USER11> On a regulated device, the coil resistance is irrelevant to battery amp draw. 50W will consume the same amount of current regardless of what it is being used for. The right way to figure it is 50W/3.7V = 13.5A. Add a bit more on that to account for regulator inefficiency. It also rises as the battery discharges down to cutoff voltage, which _is_ usually 3.0 or 3.2V.

This holds true even if the coil is 0.5Ω

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth a look, actually.

At first, I was thinking, "Surely they mean "current" and not "every." So, I clicked the link and, sure enough, they do actually mean every iPhone.

It's a bit more in-depth than I'd expect from Bloomberg and that's a pleasant surprise. Nice find, OP.

<comment><USER13> Except the short-lived plastic one (5C) and the SE (the 5 with upgraded guts).

Edit: and others that I missed as noted in other comments: 4S, 5S, and the Plus sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's crazy how the first iPhone is just ten ICs crammed together, vs now when they fab their own parts on one tiny board. Really shows how ahead of its time the first iPhone was.

<comment><USER15> Cramming ICs together was ahead of time? I don't understand your logical transition here.

<comment><USER16> If you look at what Apple could achieve by cramming ICs together Vs what anyone else could achieve with the same resources, the first iPhone is pretty remarkable.

I remember reading articles where folks from Blackberry were reminiscing on the iPhone being unveiled and there were a lot of people who just couldn't believe what Apple had done was actually possible, I think the line was, "it must just be a battery with a screen'.

<comment><USER17> Blackberry thought Apple was lying about battery life. It wasn't until they bought one and opened it that they discovered it was a battery with a screen.

When the iPad was announced, I read on some display-oriented tech site an analyst who was convinced Jobs was lying about its battery life and would have to retract the claims before it shipped. "I'm an expert, and no LED display that size can be powered that long" yada yada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I reading this correctly? The battery for the iPhone 7 costs 3.3USD only? Isn't it possible to have higher performance batteries which are more expensive? (like 5 times more expensive which is still cheap, around 15 bucks)

<comment><USER4> Same question i have asked everybody. ( In non tech circle )

Let say these tech for sure it wont be 5 times, but more like 10 times the cost. So for $30 battery, which offer double the energy capacity of the $3.3 unit at the same volume, an extra $26.7 BOM cost, which translate to roughly $70-$80 extra in Retail price. ( You have to add all the patents cost % etc, and then Apple's margin, this calculation is similar range to BOM cost and Final RSP )

Are you willing to paid extra $80 if the iPhone offer double the battery?

What was I expecting? I was expecting some crazy yes! For _only_ $80, you dont have to buy an $30 battery pack anymore with cable lying around. And it will surely last you the whole day.

But the results were a surprise, lots of No. These people think the battery are fine, it could do a little longer battery, but it is not worth $80.

My guess is that lots of geeks and tech enthusiast wanted bigger battery, but the majority are simply doing good with what is on offer.

<comment><USER19> 10x price won't get you 2x capacity in the same form factor.

Maybe you'll get some additional capacity, but probably not a lot. Quite possibly there isn't a higher capacity option that is acceptable for other reasons.

<comment><USER13> And with the Note 4 fiasco, I'd guess there's tremendous reputational value in playing it well on the safe side for a couple more years at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Missing the best model created. Where is the 4S?

<comment> gm-conspiracy I would contribute to a Kickstarter for 4S replacement boards a la the Nokia N900 'upgrade' project.

Replace the 30-pin connector with microUSB, upgrade the processor, modem, add more storage. Also, use a battery that can be easily acquired (and not just pulled from other phones).

Use the existing screen/digitizer, speakers, microphones, cameras, and antennas?

No forced reliance on iOS 11.

Anybody else?

<comment><USER21> This is an insanely difficult project. If you want to replace _any_ part from the logic board, your best bet is to replace _everything_.

Changing any one thing (SoC, connector, etc) isn't possible because you'd have to be really good as OS hacking to add support for it, especially when it is closed sourced.

<comment><USER20> I think the idea was to get away from iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 4.5G LTE or 3GPP Rel 13/14 along with 802.11ax WiFi + Bluetooth 5 Chip will likely be Apple's next target to bring them in house.

<comment><USER22> Reading into the Qualcomm dispute, I suspect it's not for performance reasons but instead shaving off features/paying licenses for hardware that they don't use.

Plus you probably don't want to be handing over large wads of cash to a SoC/baseband chip manufacturer that serves your competition in the phone space.

<comment><USER4> Yes, Qualcomm doesn't care where you buy your baseband, you still have to paid them LTE patents tax. And once anyone doing calculation that making baseband themselves is not worth the hassle when the resulting chips is inferior to Qualcomm offering.

So Apple wanted to make, my guess a LTE only 4G Baseband, no 2G, 3G attached, hence Apple wanted a better deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are the costs adjusted dollars? What I mean is with each iteration of, say phone camera, the older one's cost will way less than what it might cost back in 2008/2010\. So a camera might cost $5 but might have cost $15 back then.

</comment><comment><USER24> iPhone 8's modem:

> MDM9655 or XMM 7480 modem1 Likely Countries of Origin: U.S., Taiwan 2 Cost: > $11.50 3 Designers: Qualcomm, Intel

Bloomberg says iPhone 7's modem had a similar price.

But they've just written a story on how Apple is battling Qualcomm over an $18 modem [1]. So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple $18, and that's why Apple sued them. Basically, kind of like how Intel was charging OEMs more for the laptop CPU itself than they would for the CPU+GPU bundle (until they actually put them on the same die at least).

[1] - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple- and...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and-qualcomm- s-billion-dollar-war-over-an-18-part)

<comment><USER25> > So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem > - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple > $18, and that's why Apple sued them.

The article you've linked is clear: Apple's claim is that they have to pay Qualcomm royalties (independent of the price of the part itself) proportionally to the selling price of the device. When Apple sells a 500 USD and 1000 USD phones with the identical Qualcomm modem, Qualcomm gets twice as much royalties for the later, and Apple claims it's unfair, given that the modem is identical.

Tim Cook, January: "so we were in a situation where the more we innovated with unique features ... the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason."

Qualcomm would of course say that the 1000 USD phone without their modem wouldn't sell at all. But the patents for the standards are supposed to be fair. Is the deal fair? That's what the courts will decide... or as Qualcomm hopes, Apple will settle before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't know about the article because I cannot stand these "scroll a whole page down for 3 more words" style websites. Please make it easy to consume information.

<comment><USER27> Looking at the article, I can't understand what your complaint is.

There are three paragraphs of introductory information, and literally 100% of the remaining content is images of completely disassembled and knolled iPhone components, with a brief description next to the parts.

I'm not actually certain how you could represent this information any _better_ than they already have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have an idea why they would spend resources to do this? I have a feeling this has to do with the recent $18 modem article, but this is _every_ iPhone.

<comment><USER28> IHS tries to track market trends by looking at what devices are made of, how much they think items cost, etc. A large reason for this is for the financial world so investors can say "ok, the if the last iPhone sold x devices, the new one will sell y devices. It has a Bosch sensor that we think costs 10 cents so Bosch will effectively sell z million dollars of those sensors."

They don't do this with just iPhones fyi, they do it with a ton of different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Posted this same article 11 hours prior to this post, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028) somehow HN didn't prevent it from repost it again, hmm.

</comment><comment><USER30> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER31> The cost section is Interesting.

I see the iPhone 7 cost of materials is $237. No wonder Apple makes so much money!

<comment><USER32> Tim Cook says he's never read a bill of materials that was anywhere close to accurate. I believe it- the last time I got an iPhone replaced, I asked what they were doing with the old unit and the person said they were probably going to reuse the touch id sensor since that was one of the most valuable parts.

<comment><USER33> The Touch ID sensor value in the second hand market is not reflective of the cost to Apple... it's expensive because there are no third party replacements, so the supply is restricted to parts taken from broken phones.

<comment><USER34> ...Or newly manufactured ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Zuckerberg may lose majority voting control if he exits - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-proxyfiling-idUSKCN0YP08L <comment><USER2> And since he's got a majority now, this will happen only if he agrees (and votes "yes"), right?</comment>


Google changes its messaging strategy again: Goodbye to Allo, double down on RCS - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/google-changes-its-messaging-strategy-again-goodbye-to-allo-double-down-on-rcs/ <comment><USER2> Didn't Google have messaging figured out with Google Talk? Everyone was on Gmail all day (as many still are) and people actually used it.

Then they let it wither, came out with Hangouts, and it's been a downhill train wreck from there.

Google Talk had the potential of being one of the biggest messengers in the world...they own Gmail and Android (!!!!!). Are you kidding me? There's really no good reason for them NOT to be in a hugely dominant position here.

But instead they screwed it up & left a gaping hole in the marketplace.

<comment><USER3> It's a pretty simple explanation. Google talk was XMPP which is just not a good mobile protocol.

<comment><USER4> Could not they just replace the XMPP protocol with whatever better protocol, while keeping the GTalk alive.

<comment><USER5> They kinda did exactly that. GTalk became Hangouts which is no longer quite XMPP.

<comment><USER6> Well, not only did they change the protocol, they ruined the UI too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> RCS is an improvement to SMS but it does not address the core limitations: it is owned and controlled by carriers, so your ability to contact someone is entirely dependent on that user's carrier. It is tied to a single, physical device. WhatsApp shot to popularity because it was the opposite of SMS: an entirely over-the-top service that _everyone_ could use, on any platform, without the consent, extra billing or buggy implementation of their carrier. As an app, it could be installed on the widest imaginable array of devices - including the obsolete, crappy ones that most of the people on Earth use - without OS updates.

I don't need stickers or Google Assistant. Those things are nice, but they're not what I _need_. What I need is the ability to contact anyone, anywhere without having to wonder whether it's going to work when I hit 'send'. Hi Bob, did you get my photo? Sorry, it didn't go through, Bob's carrier in Bangladesh has set limits on photo size and mine was too big. I tried to send Raj a message, but he recently got an iPhone and my RCS message sent as SMS and his carrier blocks international SMS messages.

WhatsApp & FB Messenger (and to a lesser extent iMessage) are successful because they reduce the thousands of carriers and hundreds of countries in the world to a single, seamless service. RCS is taking us back to the days where a single obstructionist carrier (remember lots of carriers are owned or controlled by governments) can screw things up for all of their users. WhatsApp et al showcased the ability of the Internet to make the world a smaller place.

I don't Google understands how big or complex the world really is.

<comment><USER8> WhatsApp, nothing more than another internet messaging app that requires data, shot to popularity because it fooled users into thinking it was somehow an SMS client because it used phone number as account.

<comment><USER9> Here in Italy, it shot to popularity because it was "free unlimited SMS for everybody".

<comment><USER10> Also "can send images & shit for the same price".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The carriers are idiots. It's where innovation goes to die.

We had to pull them kicking and screaming into the smart phone and data era. (Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?)

Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms _at all_. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand.

The other issue is Apple. For as much as they claim "privacy is a human right", they have been jerks about making sure iMessage drags it's feet using secure technologies to communicate outside of their ecosystem. Apple wants to ride a white horse on encryption, but in reality they're having an opposite, negative, effect on the vast majority of the world's population.

<comment><USER12> > unreliable

Really? It's the only messaging format that works without a data connection and is an absolute godsend when I'm out camping, rural biking, or at large sporting events and the towers are absolutely swamped.

I'm in a situation at least once a month where the only reliable communication method is SMS.

<comment><USER13> Wow - infrastructure varies. Here in Eastern Oregon the pattern is pretty reliably that data and signal drop out at the same time, at least on Verizon which is the carrier with the best coverage.

I really thought the pattern that you describe, which I've seen plenty of in the past, had just died out over time and tower upgrades.

<comment><USER14> I routinely see SMSs fail to deliver, deliver multiple times, deliver weirdly out of order, or deliver at random times, hours or days after they were sent. And this is in a relatively well-served area fifty miles out of Boston.

<comment><USER15> I still have the issue where MMS seems to just sometimes not work for days or even weeks on end, then suddenly start working again. No OS updates and no APN settings changes in the meantime. Normally it's not an issue, since I don't really use SMS all that much anymore, but my mother and I tend to send pictures back and forth a lot and she still uses SMS.

SMS itself usually works fine, but MMS is particularly bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its shocking how Google is embarrassing itself with these incompatible chat apps released one after another and abandoned right after the release. GTalk Gmail Chat Google Voice Hangouts Android Messages Allo Duo for fucks sake Google, just copy Whatsapp but make it stored on cloud, not on the device, like FB Messenger. Enable account recovery using email in addition to sms and enable usernames or email in addition phone number to add contacts. Thats pretty much all you need to do to beat the competition thanks to your android influence

<comment><USER17> Google Voice and Duo are not messaging apps. GTalk, Hangouts, and GMail Chat are the same thing at different iterations and were therefore fully compatible with one another.

If you're going to criticize Google for this, at least be correct when doing it.

<comment><USER18> No, GTalk was XMPP-compatible and federated, Hangouts was siloed.

So non-google XMPP users could speak to GTalk users, but not Hangouts users.

<comment><USER19> This was frustrating to say the least, if they'd just done a clean break it would have been annoying, but at least we all (I was using a third party client at the time) would have known what was going on, but they more or less silently broke it, but ony some of the time, and then strung it out for ages. I suspect it was a deliberate strategy to try and make the blame fall on the shoulders of third party clients instead of them for cutting it off, but who knows. I wish they'd just shut down the interop cleanly when they moved to hangouts, it would have saved me a lot of pain and debugging early on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Long time ago, Google chat supported XMPP. Later on that support has been cut off.

How do they expect people to trust this statement: "We don't believe in taking the approach that Apple does. We are fundamentally an open ecosystem. We believe in working with partners. We believe in working with our OEMs to be able to deliver a great experience," ?

<comment><USER21> Because people want party parrots. And there isn't a standard to send party parrots through XMPP. /s

Okay, a little snarky, but it makes a point. Chat programs have a lot of proprietary features that won't translate through XMPP.

<comment><USER22> Pretty sure XMPP included extensions for sending arbitrary HTML and binary attachments. Now, support for janky mobile connections, that's another matter.

<comment><USER19> XMPPs actually been really good at this for quite some time; despite XML being a bit verbose, it compresses very well and it's had TCP like stream management at the application protocol layer for ages, among other things. It was pretty bad at low-bandwidth connections in the early 2000s, but now there are people running it over _extremely_ low bandwidth high frequency radio, so a janky phone connection is no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No end to end encryption = no interest.

If I use this to communicate with a business (or person!), the carrier can read every word. No thanks.

Hell. You can't even download the standards documents without giving GSMA a name and address and consenting to receive promotional material...

<comment><USER24> Oh. Thank you for pointing that out. I thought that Allo supports E2E so will chat, but that was my sloppy reading of The Verge article [1]:

> But, like SMS, Chat won't be end-to-end encrypted, and it will follow the > same legal intercept standards. In other words: it won't be as secure as > iMessage or Signal.

Dammit.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google- android-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android- messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am starting to believe that these "new chat projects from Google" are actually all the same one with a different name to keep, whatever work they are doing, alive.

I heard some time ago from the colleague who got an internship at Google that they have to release a new project almost every 3 months and then fight against other internal teams to do a public release. This way they — mostly interns — can justify a full-time contract. At the same time, because these projects also need a project manager, some high profile engineers help the interns in order to get bonuses and also to justify a change of responsibilities to, maybe, become full time engineering managers.

Whatever the story behind the chat re-brands is, many will agree with me that this is becoming irritating.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _Unlike Apple, RCS is designed to work with carriers who can develop their > own messaging apps that work with the protocol_

No no no please. We should be doing everything we can to relegate carriers to "dumb" data providers. They don't have he skills or expertise to provide anything beyond this, which they've demonstrated time and again.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't see a single reason to invest myself into Google messaging product once again. I was adamant gtalk/hangout user but you can only fuck me over so many times.

<comment><USER28> To be fair, the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth, and Hangouts still works.

Google gave up pushing Hangouts for consumers but I don't think it's going anywhere, as it's a big part of G-suite for corporate customers. Though with Slack and Discord I'm sure it's usage isn't as strong as it once was.

<comment><USER29> > the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth

I take it you never used google talk via xmpp.

<comment><USER28> I did actually. They kept the XMPP compat running for quite a while after, so for me Pidgin and my old blackberry GTalk app kept working.

Eventually they shut it down though, but in an uncharacteristic move they gave quite a bit of lead time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For me, nothing demonstrates how self defeating Google's internal structure is, than chat. They had a lot of adoption of their system in the early 2000's (and granted it became unmaintainable but that was an engineering issue not a technical issue) and they killed it. They had a great system they could have copied (iMessage) and they ignored it. They had a standards friendly system and they spurned it.

The combination of killing gchat and reader really struck me as "Wow, it feels this company has no idea what they are doing strategically."

</comment><comment><USER31> They don't get it. People don't want new apps, they want improved versions of the app they already have. It takes so much time to adopt and adapt to an app... nobody I know uses Allo. I have a google phone and I don't use it, because no one else uses. Allo has so many interesting features but I can't use them if no one else uses the damn app.

I don't have an iphone nor want one, but they got it right when it comes to building upon their core software. Same can be said to Windows/Microsoft. Yes, they are not perfect, yes sometimes behind everyone else when it comes to "the latest and greatest", but they have USERS! They know their audience and slowly improve their apps to keep them happy enough to keep using it.

I can't believe a company this big with so many resources doesn't have an attention spam greater than 6 months.

<comment><USER32> By that definition, they do get it. Because RCS is an improved version of the Messages inbox already in the phone. No need to take any time to adopt and adapt to any new program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great example of how expensive it becomes over time to name (almost) every product you create "Brand" \+ x.

Google is eroding trust in its product offering & regularly adding an adoption handicap to their whole product portfolio.

P&G, Unilever et al know this. I'd expect the software companies to learn from the challenges of the "supermarket"-era brands.

<comment><USER34> The tradeoff:

\- Add "Google" before the name any product announcement, and it's sure to be front page news[1].

\- Shutdown any product with "Google" before the name, and it's sure to be front page news.

[1]You can especially see this effect when a random Googler publishes a random project, but it's under github.com/google/ because it was done at work. Even if it's not "a Google product", it'll shoot up to the top of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> RCS is shit. It's a good idea in theory, but in practice it's a crappy, over- engineered clone of iMessage or WhatsApp without any of the good parts like end to end encryption or spam protections.

It relies on the carriers to keep it functional and we all know this won't end well... given the robocall and SMS spam situation do you really think RCS will be any different? But at least robocalls and SMS spam cant carry anything besides plain text, while RCS could contain HTML and a lot more "active" stuff which no doubt will exploit some bugs in the phone's implementation to install malware.

<comment><USER36> This is absolutely true.

And as has been said in other threads, Google Talk was the only sane strategy for Google and it was lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sometimes it's hard to believe that Google's course of action and decision making to messaging isn't satire. I can't imagine what a dumpster fire must be going on somewhere within, eventually I hope we get to hear the stories behind their calamity of multifarious messaging products.

I'm not even being facetious when I say that they should include an estimated date of when they expect to cease supporting said product (2 years seems to be about right)

</comment><comment><USER38> If I was to summarize the problem of Google is this: Google does not hire entrepreneurs.

They're great at hiring engineers. They're great at hiring MBAs from top business schools. But their hiring process does not leave room for unusual rouge entrepreneurial people.

I mentioned this to a person whose company was bought by FB and later became an investor. He agreed and he said, he was interviewed by google but they didn't hire him. So he started his company and a few years later sold it to FB. I know this in anecdotal. But I think Google just lacks the entrepreneurial blood. Someone to hustle a product with a cohesive strategy and vision and finding the way to build it up and turn it into a massive success.

<comment><USER39> I think the issue is they want too hard to be seen as entrepreneurs. They are always reinventing the same products rather than just improving what they have.

I'd go so far as to say, Google would benefit from a two-year ban on any new product releases. Engineers should spend that time focused on adding value to their current products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Not only do they keep cancelling chat projects but this one isn't even end to end encrypted. What's the point. Either release a superior product or just let it go.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can anyone explain why I should be interested in RCS, though? It seems like it's more designed to let carriers try and stem the flow of customers switching to other options, and I don't really see what benefits it offers me.

<comment><USER21> Years ago 1998ish(?), there was a fight to open up chat applications AIM, ICQ, YIM, etc. We had to have 20 apps to chat with each other.

Fast forward 20 years, and here we are again, FB Messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, Allo, Signal, Telegram, SMS, Slack, etc.

At least this appears to be a "standard" that everyone can use again.

<comment><USER42> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/) Relevant xkcd.

<comment><USER43> I'm a bit tired of people pulling out this comic each time a new standard appears.

Whatsapp, Telegram, FB, iMessages are NOT standards. They're closed systems controlled by a single company.

XMPP is a standard from the days of ICQ, AIM, MSN, etc. Unfortunately it failed.

SMS is a standard for mobile phone text communications. It's too limited now.

RCS is the evolution of SMS.

I don't think RCS is a redundant standard, it's a necessary evolution of SMS. It's a standard for a decentralized system. I know Americans hate their carriers to the point they'd rather have everyone's data in a single SV company, but the solution is to fix your carriers. Not to give all your data to a company (Facebook) that had been proved to be less than trustable about it.

<comment><USER21> > Whatsapp, Telegram, FB, iMessages are NOT standards. They're closed systems > controlled by a single company.

That's what the term "Defacto Standard" is for.

<comment><USER44> Not really. A de-facto standard is when multiple implementations from multiple parties agree on some behavior without it being described in a formal specification. Whatsapp does not have multiple implementations from multiple parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> In my opinion, the strategy behind _this particular_ change is actually a lot more clear than some of their past ones [1].

Allo didn't gain significant ground and failed to displace WhatsApp, so they can't fight Facebook on that front. Instead, they've conceded the phonenumber- as-indentity over-the-top-messenger market, and have pivoted to something more fundamental: the humble SMS app, and SMS itself.

They're baking all their Google Assistant hooks into the default Android SMS app, which will make it harder to avoid -- something Google definitely wants. This way, they don't have to fight Facebook and WeChat and Viber and Telegram on their competencies, because they've sidestepped them with the power of defaults for some amount of users, which will be a problem for the competition later on.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483)

</comment><comment><USER46> Every time there is a choice to make for Google on messaging they predictably make the wrong one.

How on earth can you control the most widely used OS on the planet and not be able to capture some market share without handing more power to operators?

<comment><USER47> The (not-so-)secret is, they don't control it.

<comment><USER46> What exactly does Google not control that prevents them from pushing one high quality messaging app that is independent of network operators?

What control do network operators have over Android?

Device and SOC makers do indeed have some control over Android. But that is unrelated to Google's messaging mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So Google wants SMS to go the Gmail way... how about leaving existing, working standards alone, google? You're already breaking email, which is bad enough.

<comment><USER49> An article from the verge mentioned that people were moving away from texting and are instead using services like imessage and fb messenger that restricted carriers from controlling text messaging. Carriers could either change or they could watch their control of texting slip away. This option satisfies the desire of carriers to keep their control and google's desire to fix the messaging experience on Android

<comment><USER50> ... and nary a mention of users. I do think this is Google's biggest weakness. They don't see the end-users of any of their products as their customers and they don't seem to have developed the corporate infrastructure to start doing that any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I hope that this approach fails dramatically! Building such an infrastructure without end-to-end encryption is a crime.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think RCS is a great idea and Google should be pushing it. In fact, I would argue that few other companies could make it happen in a way that Google can. RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does.

<comment><USER53> > RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does.

How so? It's carrier-specific and thus limited to phones on carriers that support it. What about international messaging, etc.?

One of the huge benefits of Hangouts is that I can chat with anyone anywhere, phone or computer, America or Japan.

<comment><USER54> I can send SMSs internationally, why not RCS? And you can send & receive SMSs on a computer.

The real problem, in my opinion, is cost; Hangouts is free, SMSs aren't. And it seems RCS is designed to be billed per-unit, following the model of the latter.

<comment><USER43> In France all carriers give unlimited free SMS. Is it not the case in other countries?

<comment><USER55> Not on pay-as-you-go in the UK, where you still pay for every message. 3p each for my plan which doesn't seem much but I easily send over 100 e-mails and IMs every day.

<comment><USER56> Consider changing your plan. I am not paying SMS for a few years already. (in the UK)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Hell no, Its like google has absolutely NO CLUE. The carriers are EVIL. You do NOT want them to have visibility of your messaging data. I really cant believe we are even discussing this in 2018. EVERY SINGLE MESSAGING PROVIDER WITH ANY CLUE IS END TO END. Google 2018 -- hey lets get the carriers to implement a clear text messaging protocol, surely after 30 years of abuse they wont mess up this time. Pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER58> Let me start by stating that i'm biased in favor of the matrix protocol...I don't see why google doesn't simply adopt matrix as its protocol and build a messaging client on top of that? Here are the benefits as i see them:

* The foundations of the basic matrix protocol are already built - so google can simply augment existing efforts and contribute to the project. And, they don't have to wrestle with carriers. (Any help for the matrix team seems to be good thing to me!)

* While, yes, most users wouldn't want to pay for such a chat service, google could tie this new chat service into their free gmail offering. I'm disgusted by my next statement, but i guess they could subsidize this for free users by displaying small text ads - just like in gmail - within the context of whatever matrix-compatible chat client they build.

* Plus, they can tie it into their Google Apps for business - or is it now called G suite? - and companies who DO pay for the greater G suite service will simply gain an additional enterprise messaging service which is similar conceptually to slack, and be available for enterprises as private server instances. Google could monetize this by adding a few cents to the monthly fees GSuite users already pay.

* By virtue of leveraging a decentralized/federated protocol like matrix - the users of google's matrix instances - either from the free or paid GSuite services - can STILL chat with users from other matrix server instances....not so differently in concept to gmail users emailing with non-gmail users. The cool thing about gchat back in the day was its support of xmpp, which i imagined help gchat's network effect...matrix could do the same here and now.

Maybe I'm missing something...but as smart as the people at google seem to be, I'm constantly dumbfounded by their chat/messaging strategies. Ah, well.

</comment><comment><USER59> I would really love that we all start using some open chat standard (Like XMPP) so WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. could talk to each other.

Or something like email, you could have email@example.com or email@example.com and that would be your 'chat address' and all clients could talk to each other

<comment><USER19> Even if it weren't federated (though I do miss Google Talk), there would still be some value in using an open standard. If I can only afford a feature phone, there are XMPP clients for it (or they can be developed relatively easily), even if I don't get all the features. Using open standards, even if you don't make the service open, still makes you more inclusive and helps a lot of people who would otherwise be shut out of your service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> My cynical take. Phones are tied to identies and using google chat means that real people are linked to all their google activity. That is a extremely valuable for Google. So IM tied to phones is great for them.

GoogleTalk and chat that allows internet only is not very valuable to Google.

Since it's trivial to have a chat protocol work well with carriers and browsers and everything else, Occum's Razor says Google did it for money. By allowing anonymous accounts like gtalk and jabber and such, it makes their ad pool worse. They could go freemium and just ignore those less valuable accounts that aren't tied to a phone. But instead save the 1000 engineer hours or whatever to not have to support non-phone based chat.

</comment><comment><USER61> So, after all this time, the best approach to interoperable messaging is still XMPP. Google, carriers, etc. should just drop ALL of this non-standardized crapola, bundle an (optimized, efficient, well-written) XMPP client with Android and call it a day.

</comment><comment><USER62> But I just convinced my wife to start using Allo...

</comment><comment><USER63> SMS works because it is universal. RCS is just another network operator based messaging service with some new features. Who the fuck wants that?!

What I want is a chat system that does _not_ rely on a mobile operator to "enable" it and that works like e-mail (in that I can pick any own service provider to store my messages, deliver them, etc.) and offers E2EE, etc.

It is 2018, we shouldn't be dealing with phone numbers for messaging when everyone has a much easier to remember email address. Honestly iMessage would be god damn perfect if it were open and you could use your own provider (or run your own).

</comment><comment><USER64> > WhatsApp benefitted from being a first mover — all the other early leaders > in Western markets are nowhere to be seen today

Has Signal ever released numbers on active users? My anecdata on this is that ALL of my friends use Signal--and not because I use it or because as their tech-savvy friend I told them they should use it. I just started seeing them show up in Signal over the last year.

I get the feeling that Signal may have a massive user base nobody really knows about, because they don't publish these numbers. Anybody know?

<comment><USER65> any chance most of your friends are males interested in IT?

though i was surprised or building manager and guy fixing my plumbing are on Signal, only two other people besides those i convinced and one three friends working in IT

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Why isn't Google doubling down on marketing Allo on Android?

They already have a huge ecosystem in Android, which no other company other than Apple has.

<comment><USER67> What has Google ever really marketed?

Google's basic strategy seems to be to throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.

<comment><USER68> Google+ was heavily marketed though.

<comment><USER69> And it didn't work. What makes you think it'll work this time?

<comment><USER44> Chrome was also heavily marketed, and that worked just fine.

<comment><USER70> Because it's good. When firefox started slowly killing xul and the clusterfuck called IE stopped being the top (rabid) dog, a new kid had to come along.

Google+ seemed like an afterthought, a way to create a facebook clone without creating a facebook clone.

<comment><USER68> Google+ was given the most importance of any project within Google as far as I know.

<comment><USER71> Politically, it's given importance, but users didn't see it that way, unlike chrome.

It just goes to show that an exec pushing a project doesn't mean much when it's a shit project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> That's it. I'm giving up on Google chat products. I tried hard to use Allo and get my friends to use but enough. We need a new XMPP like protocol that prioritizes privacy, end-to-end encryption and supports all the fancy features like stickers and video calls to make it easier to adopt. Does anything like this exist?

<comment><USER73> iMessage

<comment><USER72> Is iMessage XMPP like open protocol?

<comment><USER19> iMessage _is_ XMPP isn't it (although a somewhat outdated version of the protocol)? It was the last time I checked, but I don't have a device capable of running it so that was a while ago. If it's not anymore I'd be curious to know what they replaced it with.

<comment><USER72> I did not know that. I thought it was a locked down messaging network on Apple devices could get on (plus some SMS). Does that mean another service speaking XMPP can exchange messages with an iMessage user?

Edit: According to Wikipedia, it's based on APNs. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> If it is RCS, it will be interoperable messaging, which is something the world needs. But I rely on Hangouts and the fact that I can have calls to my Google Voice number ring as a Hangouts voice call. I hope there is a reasonable migration path that does not force me to give up important capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER75> > Microsoft is among the OEM supporters, which raises the possibility it could > bring support to Windows 10, but the company was non-committal when The > Verge pressed it on that possibility.

If windows phone is dead I suppose this would "just" enabled some kind of SMS messaging on a win10 desktop ?

<comment><USER34> Microsoft's been pushing Always Connected PCs, which, as far as I'm aware, have SMS/MMS capabilities. But the rumored Surface Phone is also still on the horizon with Windows on ARM, the whole foldable phone thing, etc.

Microsoft is not going to just give up on mobile, but they realized their existing strategy wasn't working. (I think abandoning the share they did have was a mistake, mind you, just like Google repeatedly dumping chat products.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> The problem with Allo and Duo and other "chat" tools google provided never felt feature complete. If I'm on my mobile phone, I want one app to get messages regardless if it comes from the carrier or my peeps on google. Hangouts is the closest thing we have to this. Even hangouts doesnt fully integrate. I'm a Fi user and when use apps that send text to verify, the autoverify doesnt work with Hangouts as my default messaging app. It only seems to work with Android Messaging app. These kind of half baked reasons are why none of the google messaging apps really have taken off. I agree with the past comment that Google had the opp to just improve on Google Talk and build on it rather than create 6 different messaging apps.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'd love for this to get widely adopted if it can remove the pain points around sending images through SMS/MMS. I have no confidence that recipients ever actually receive the images I text them.

</comment><comment><USER78> This is weird but I have to assume it's a political sop to the carriers to get something from them. The PR is disingenuous of course, but I'm more disappointed in the reporter for failing to mention a big advantage of iMessage and a reason lots of people choose WhatsApp are because not only do they provide a better experience than SMS but they are (at least they attempt to be) secure. No federated messaging system that involves the carriers will be end-to-end secure or provide easy syncing across clients.

</comment><comment><USER79> Google is sick of missing out on all that data mining it can do in the private messenger space.

When the worlds largest spyware company supports something you have to look at why.

</comment><comment><USER80> I miss google talk so much. Stupid fast and very clean UI.

</comment><comment><USER81> Will this now now third party services will be able to send rich messages to a phone number? This could be a good or a bad thing. I occasionally get random messages from my carrier or ad spammers, not looking forward to them including images or media in those.

On the flip side, if you are a startup, you would be able to send rich messages to your clients without having to integrate Facebook messenger, Whatsapp etc etc

</comment><comment><USER82> SMTP is my bet, let's dust off the old spam can!

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google- android-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android- messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting)

</comment><comment><USER83> but does it use encryption?

<comment><USER84> The verge puff piece about RCS specifically called out that messages are _not_ end to end encrypted.

<comment><USER85> without end to end encryption. this is doa

<comment><USER44> Except for 99% of users who sadly don't give a shit about E2E.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Check out this video by The Verge:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh- qRYMAKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh-qRYMAKk)

</comment><comment><USER87> Calling this a strategy is a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER88> Are there any chat/messaging alternatives in the dat/ipfs/beakerbrowser space?

</comment><comment><USER89> Don't think doing something different every month counts as a "strategy".

</comment><comment><USER90> I'm trying to be blunt here, thus the throwaway account. This has nothing to do with Google's messenger strategy (they have none, or actually, they don't really care), it's all about employees seeking promotions by releasing a "influential" project with "impacts" to get promotions. Now all the promotions are done, what's the incentive to keep it? Here's an idea, how about automatic revocation of all promotions if your project is nixed within a year?

</comment><comment><USER91> Will having a new standard kill companies like Twilio? How will it affect them?

<comment><USER91> Twilio makes probably about half of their revenue from SMS

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I'm disappointed but not surprised by this development.

</comment><comment><USER93> Not git? That's so off trend.

</comment><comment><USER94> Was it their 12th attempt? I think they have to think about finally changing their product manager.

<comment><USER95> Perhaps the problem is that they are _constantly_ changing their product managers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to look for a new job when you in a major project - <AUTHOR> I really want to move on from my current job (both for salary reasons and wanting to move to a different geographical locale). However, I'm in the midst of a major website redesign, which is due to be deployed this summer. So, two questions: 1. Is it ethical to leave my company in the meantime, as the main developer on this project? 2. Is there a way to look for a new job so that my current job doesn't know about this? <comment><USER2> There'll always be something going on to keep you where you are.

Pursue what's in your own best interest. Some companies try to hang-on after you've given notice by trying to keep some level of commitment ... either part-time, or remote. I'd recommend against this as-well. Find your new place of employment, give notice, and have a clean-break at the end of your notice- period.

<comment><USER3> > Some companies try to hang-on after you've given notice by trying to keep > some level of commitment ... either part-time, or remote.

I actually had the opposite experience both times I left FTE to consult. It was really great to have a first client that I didn't have to sell and who was ready to start using my services immediately.

However, if you are moving from one w2 job to another, I would follow uptown's advice and refuse to work for your prior employer. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying "sure, go ahead and ping me if you have the occasional question" because that is showing that you care for the employees still remaining, but don't take money for that. Not taking money means you can easily set boundaries and focus on your new work environment (where the first 90 days can make or break your experience).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen many "main developers" terminated due to layoffs, restructuring, etc. Don't let the your importance to a project prevent you from restructuring your own life.

</comment><comment><USER5> > 1\. Is it ethical to leave my company in the meantime...

Assuming you don't have a specific contractual obligation to deliver a project, yes. A good professional practice is to give proper notice (up to 1 month). And a detailed, written transition plan handing-off your work off to colleagues. Plus, an offer to consult/assist after your departure.

> 2\. Is there a way to look for a new job so that my current job doesn't know > about this?

Handle any interview phone calls/emails off-premises, only on your personal device, and best done outside of normal business hours. Your lunch hour is fine.

Plan PTO in advance for in-person interviews/meetings. Try scheduling on Thursdays/Fridays and call it an extended weekend getaway mini-break.

<comment><USER6> This is sound advice.

Also, I would recommend that you take your time and be picky about your next job. It may well take you into the summer and completion of your current project.

When I left my last job, I knew I was ready for probably a year beforehand. On the job, I wrapped up big projects, ensured my colleagues could work on everything that I had built, and mostly stuck to smaller projects and bugfix/maintenance sort of work. (It helped that I had a lot of antonomy in choosing my work.)

On the side, I spent time rebuilding my personal website/portfolio and creating/contributing to a few open source projects in areas I wanted to pursue. I applied to a few specific companies, but my next job actually came from an in-house recruiter who was impressed with my portfolio. I've been very happy so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Assuming that you're in the US, you're probably an at-will employee. This means that the company can fire you at any time, without any notice. Remember this, and treat the company the same way. If the company actually _needs_ you, they can easily create a contract requiring you to stay and complete the project - for which you'd get something in return. They chose not to, so it's their problem, they should have planned for this.

You can often do phone interviews by pretending to have a doctor's appointment in the morning and doing them from home. If you can't get all the way to a job offer remotely, you'll probably end up taking days off for on-site interviews, since you'd need to travel to the other geographic locale.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Yes.

2\. Yes. Keep it quiet and on personal time/email.</comment>


220,000 cores and counting: largest ever public cloud job - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/04/220000-cores-and-counting-MIT-math-professor-breaks-record-for-largest-ever-Compute-Engine-job.html <comment><USER2> We recently developed Sienna ([http://sienna.gistnoesis.net/](http://sienna.gistnoesis.net/)) as an experiment for easter (which went rather unnoticed by HN) to distribute computation. It allows to ML researchers to build cluster over peerjs rapidly by asking their friends to visit a webpage, so they can share their unused resources. We are not yet to 220,000 cores but we can keep dreaming :)

<comment><USER3> Cool! If you wanted you could accept donations and run on Preemptible to supplement spare desktops ;). I do love the SETI@Home vibe though. Especially since nothing beats free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain Google Preamble Instances vs Amazon Spot Instances?

The author says Sutherland was dissuaded by having to specify a spot price upfront on AWS but I don't see how that is any different than what Google is doing.

<comment><USER5> AWS Spot Instances are under bid. The highest bidder takes the instances, the price changes all the time.

Google Spot Instances (preemptibles) are 80% off and that's it. It's simple.

<comment><USER6> Can't you just bid for 20% of the original price and get the same behavior?

In AWS you simply tell how much you're willing to pay to keep the instance uninterrupted. If there's someone who is willing to pay more, they will get the instance from you and yours will be shut down.

<comment><USER3> With Spot, if the market price goes above .2x retail, and your job runs long enough then you _never_ succeed with Spot.

By comparison, if you are able to create a preemptible VM you are _guaranteed_ to pay .2x retail and then _likely_ (but not guaranteed) to have 24h to do your work.

tl;dr: A maximum bid of .2x retail isn't equivalent to preemptible. There's almost certainly a bid for a given instance for a given runtime that would result in the same price, but it varies over time, space, runtime and instances shape.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and launched preemptible VMs)

<comment><USER7> > likely (but not guaranteed)

In my several years experience using GCE it is indeed __extremely __likely. Two years ago it wasn 't very likely, but it became very likely about a year ago. Incidentally, I'm the guy that convinced Drew Sutherland of this article to use GCE in the first place :-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does any of this math get used?

[http://www.lmfdb.org/Genus2Curve/Q/11664/a/11664/1](http://www.lmfdb.org/Genus2Curve/Q/11664/a/11664/1)

<comment><USER9> I'd like to know, too. Not intending to sound irreverent, but does any of that math matter? (I'm not rude, I'm ignorant:)

<comment><USER10> There is always the existential "Does anything really matter, everybody dies in the end?". This could have direct application, or as with many math concepts, in 50-100 years we could find an application for it. Despite all of that it doesn't have to matter, the process of exploration can have value in and of itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Possibly a dumb question, but if it's this embarrassingly parallel, wouldn't this be a workload more suited for calculation on a GPU? I'm assuming there's a good reason he's not using one, so could someone who understands this a little better explain it?

<comment><USER12> > _if it 's this embarrassingly parallel, wouldn't this be a workload more > suited for calculation on a GPU?_

Maybe, but one does not necessarily follow from the other. Consider the task of compiling 1 million separate C++ projects. That is obviously embarrassingly parallel, but not well suited for a GPU. It's trivial to do many compilations at once, but compiling itself is not easy to parallelize.

That example is obviously contrived, but I think it demonstrates the principle that it's the computational profile of the core problem that will determine if you can use a GPU. If the core problem requires 10s of GB of RAM, or it's excessively branchy code, it may not be well suited for a GPU.

<comment><USER13> A great paper which delves into different approaches for parallel computing is "Three layer cake for shared-memory programming" [0]. They characterize parallel programming into three broad strategies:

1\. SIMD (parallel lines)

2\. Fork-Join (a directed acyclic graph of operations)

3\. Message-Passing (a graph of operations)

GPUs are great at SIMD, but bad at the other sorts of parallelism.

[0] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228683178_Three_lay...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228683178_Three_layer_cake_for_shared- memory_programming)

<comment><USER12> This is a good paper, but not quite how I think about it. I use the terms data-parallel (for SIMD), task-parallel (for fork-join; kinda) and message passing. GPUs are basically data-parallel machines, but over the years, GPUs have been getting more and more capable, so I imagine some people out there are using them for task-parallel workloads.

<comment><USER14> Would tensorflow (or similar) count as task-parallel because the computation graph is a DAG? If so, there's a pretty popular example of task-parallelism running on GPU's.

<comment><USER15> I would say TensorFlow is a hybrid of two strategies: SIMD and dataflow/DAG. (I wouldn't say fork-join and dataflow/DAG are synonymous; rather they are related but different models/APIs).

At the level of a single node, TensorFlow uses Eigen [1]. Eigen is like BLAS, but it's a C++ template library rather than Fortran. It compiles to various flavors of SIMD. Nvidia's proprietary CUDA is the SIMD flavor most commonly used by TensorFlow programs.

At the level of multiple nodes, TensorFlow derives a program graph from your Python source code, using high level "ops", in the style of NumPy. Then it distributes the ops across a cluster using a scheduler:

Quote: _Its dataflow scheduler, which is the component that chooses the next node to execute, uses the same basic algorithm as Dryad, Flume, CIEL, and Spark._ [2]

Python is the "control plane" and not the "data plane" \-- it describes the logic and dataflow of the program, but doesn't touch the actual data. When you use NumPy, the C code and BLAS code are the data plane. When you use TensorFlow, the Eigen and GRPC/protobuf distribution layer are the data plane.

So you can have a big data dataflow system WITHOUT SIMD, like the four systems mentioned in the quote. And you can have SIMD without dataflow, i.e. if you are doing it in pure Eigen or procedural/functional R/Matlab/Julia on a single machine. Languages like R and Julia may have dataflow extensions, but they're single-threaded/procedural by default as far as I know.

A mathematical way to think of the DAG model is where you program uses a partial order on computations rather than a total order (the procedural model) -- this is what give gives you parallelism.

So TensorFlow uses both SIMD and dataflow.

[1] [http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

[2] [http://download.tensorflow.org/paper/whitepaper2015.pdf](http://download.tensorflow.org/paper/whitepaper2015.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.

<comment><USER17> /. lives

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow I'd be interested to see the code for this. Is it just a tiny amount of C running on a huge number of machines, or is it a big stack of mathematical libraries?

I guess since it's discrete math it probably doesn't use Fortran/BLAS?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, and folks used to calculate the trajectories that put men on the moon with just pencil and paper :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sadly no note on how much that cost.

<comment><USER3> 220,000 cores of preemptible was about $2200/hr (I believe Drew is using n1-highcpu-32s).

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud, launched Preemptible (and approved Drew's quota requests!)

<comment><USER20> The fuel bill per hour for the 737 going over my house right now is easily double $2200. I can visualise what is going on with a plane burning through fuel/money but with 220000 CPU cores it is all imaginary.

How big a house would be needed for such an array of 'cores'? How much electricity is required, and again can that be compared to aeroplanes, Teslas or even toasters?

<comment><USER21> Let's say you're using 2x 10 core CPUs per 1U PC, in a 42U rack. That's 840 cores per rack, 262 racks. You won't fit that in a house, you need a moderately large datacenter.

At 100W per CPU that's 22kW, which feels low; about a tenth of a Tesla and a fraction of a plane. That doesn't account for the cooling you'll need!

(You can probably do a _lot_ better, but that's my piano tuners estimate)

<comment><USER22> If it were 10 cores/CPU then 220,000 cores is 22,000 CPUs. At 100W per CPU that's 2,200,000W = 2.2MW. So more like a train than a Tesla!

<comment><USER23> Yes, and based on the $0.15/kWh comment, about $450/hour of electricity.

This is more in line with what I would have guessed for 220k cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess, It must have heat up the environment little bit in the respective data centre. All servers in all racks running at full CPU utilisation out to be probabilistically rare.

</comment><comment><USER25> So that's why my preemption rates are so high lately.

<comment><USER3> Nope.

First, preemptible VMs don't preempt each other. So if you got shot it wasn't Drew directly.

However, when we're full and someone needs to get shot that can be you or it could be someone else. Drew being there actually makes it more likely that _he_ would take the heat. But Drew runs all out well off peak (weekend mornings like our docs encourage!) so unless you had a bad weekend it wasn't him :).

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and have gone back and forth with Drew over email).

<comment><USER26> Do you get refunded if you get preempted?

<comment><USER3> You do if you get shot in the first 10 minutes. Otherwise, no. We happen to preferentially "shoot the young" to minimize work lost:

[https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible#...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible#preemption_selection)

<comment><USER27> Oh I can see the headlines now...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, nobody likes that I phrase it this way ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is really cool!

</comment><comment><USER29> How much? :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Do you always disclose customer information?

<comment><USER19> There was an article written about him, which he obviously had to approve. How is disclosing what product he used "customer information"?

<comment><USER31> Not the mention the article already says the machine he started with was these n1-highcpu-32s, so it's a pretty safe bet that he continued using it for this.

<comment><USER32> For those that don't know google's list of instance types, this is the largest high-cpu instance that's not in beta.

<comment><USER3> I should clarify: one of the reasons Drew stuck with those instead of larger (I had recommended customs with 48s at one point) is so that he can use the same config in all regions. We have some older zones still with Ivy Bridges and such that won't do >32.

I fully expect that Drew will add a simple override map to say "use 64 threads here, 48 here, 32 here and so on" but with a goal to minimize _preemptions_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've done bigger on aws</comment>


Cobol: Letters that if put on CV would ensure stable income for greybeard coder - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/16/cobol_at_60/ <comment><USER2> > Longtime maintainer Micro Focus has cannily been promoting the language as a > standard that can integrate with other

Sigh, this is just Micro Focus astroturfing. Their secret is that they don't want COBOL to die, because they know they can't keep selling their stuff when it does.

I worked on a COBOL project for a year. Dealing with the Micro Focus sales person sucked because it was clear they were sizing me up and trying to figure out how to get the most money. They ended up extracting $3000 from me for a slow compiler that ran on Solaris and was saddled with invasive "license management" crap. It wouldn't even install cleanly - I had to be in contact with their support people just to get it going.

COBOL the language is also terrible. It was designed by a committee, and it shows. You can't really declare local variables!

So I think Micro Focus is doing us all a disservice. If you have legacy COBOL software, just rewrite it already. I know this is painful, and some organizations think they can't. But that's just a mirage. Rip the band-aid off, because it will be cheaper and more maintainable in the long run if you do.</comment>