Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/report_apple_orders_380k_sandy_bridge_macbook_airs/ <comment><USER3> As a longtime user of Dell Latitudes and HP Pavilions, I promise you that the MBAir will blow you away. I always pooh poohed "Light and Thin" - until I had a light and thin laptop, with SSDs, and a 1440x900 13.3" display, with Terminal.App (which is 50%+ of the reason I love OS X) and insanely addictive (and useful) touch pad).

The only major downside of the MBAir is that it is so competitive a form factor for an iPad, it becomes hard(er) to justify getting the iPad - <USER2> MBair does 90% of the stuff that I use my iPad for, resulting in much less usage of the iPad, therefore, to some degree, you can say that purchasing a MBair will result in those people who own an iPad from getting less value from that iPad.

Back handed compliment I guess.

<comment><USER4> The touchpad on my Mac laptops are the reason I'll never buy another non-Mac laptop again. Best tactile surface I've ever felt.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I won't even consider a Windows laptop because of this.

Though it is a shame that Apple has a gimped touchpad driver in Windows. The touchpad in OS X and Windows isn't even comparable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am likely going to fall for a larger MB Air... if they sell a 15" model, I'll be the first in line.

However, I'm still not sure if I like the non-discrete video. Anyone with an MBP'11 that only has Intel HD video care to tell me if it's any good for gaming?

At least the current MB Air has discrete video.

<comment><USER7> Depends on what kind of gaming you want to do, playing some passive wow (I hear raids take up a lot) would probably do ok, or most of the simpler games out there. But even something like hl2 will still have trouble with intel graphics, not really for gamers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am genuinely intrigued by the MBA, but I can't seem to get my head around getting that instead of a MBP 13" (I would be getting a MBA 13", 11" is too small for me).

Aside from weight, which isn't a real concern for me in a MBP 13", if I decked out a MBP 13" w/ an SSD, is there a compelling reason to still go with an MBA? One of my main concerns is that the MBA can only go to 4GB of ram while the MBP can theoretically go to 16GB. Seems more future proofing etc.

Just so you know, I do mostly iOS, Android, and Web dev (Ruby, Python, JS and Erlang).

I also have several Ubuntu instances up at all times if I'm doing iOS or I run Ubuntu the majority of the time if I'm doing other stuff (Ubuntu is still a better dev environment, IMO, but that is for a different post :) )

<comment><USER9> my main machine is a 4gb 13" MBA, I do heavy web development with music playing and photoshop open all day long, along with skype, and the thing never skips a beat. 6 hours of battery even after 9 months, weighs less than 3 pounds.

It's the best computer I've ever owned. And it's my first Mac, I'm not much of a fanboy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user.

Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take advantage of all of the power saving features, and so doesn't last as long? And if so, how big is the difference?

<comment><USER11> Paul Thurrott did a review of running Windows on a Macbook Air and seems to indicate that the battery life is in the same general time as Apple estimates for OS X.

[http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air- wi...](http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air- windows-7-part-imperfect-storm-135952)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been waiting for this - my MBP15 is long in the tooth and desperately needs a refresh. I don't need nearly the same amount of raw power I used to, so a MBA is going to be a blessing on my back!

<comment><USER13> You may not need the power, but you're going to get it. :) The new MBA will be much faster than your old MBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A nicely integrated GSM SIM-port would be appriciated

</comment><comment><USER15> Sweet built-in DRM!

<comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Other_details> Sounds like quite a big turn off, I wonder how bad this will be in practice

<comment><USER17> Why? I don't mind Netflix securing their content that they deliver to my device. It doesn't force me to use it by any means. As for the "vPro" technology, that has been available in many modern Intel computers and is obviously only used if intentionally utilized by a corporate IT environment.

I don't see anything there that would prevent me from easily choose Sandy Bridge, despite not really liking the idea of DRM.

I don't know why people are surprised by this. I try to explain how the DRM components of Netflix work and why they're able to be used in Linux devices with hardware security. Android has DRM providers that are backed all the way to hardware, I'm assuming this Netflix Chrome extension will leverage some new DRM framework that will be part of Chrome (maybe, maybe not Chromium). And really, in terms of everything, I think it's reasonable.

<comment><USER18> "Why? I don't mind Netflix securing their content that they deliver to my device."

DRM is like those websites which forbid you from right clicking on a picture, and incidentally break tabbed browsing. It's a stupid idea in principle to give someone else control over my computer so they can forbid me from doing something.

I understand why _they_ want it, I don't understand why _I_ want it.

Consider the present: text arrives on your computer, you can copy it, paste it, edit it. Unless you have Microsoft Office DRM modules, then the document author decides what you can do with it and to whom you can email it. Consider the future: Every email, document, website, video stream becomes an extension of the sender or author and your computer is reduced to a dumb view-only device.

Also, there's the argument that the current state is (people who pay, who are hassled by DRM) and (people who don't pay, who avoid the DRM hassles).Criminals get the better experience, people who pay get things they practically can't backup and use on other devices or sample to quote, even in jurisdictions where they have those rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of those will me mine. I've never purchased a computer or laptop from Apple before but I can't resist the temptation any more.</comment>


How to hide Ryanair - <AUTHOR> http://liveatthewitchtrials.blogspot.com/2011/03/search-engine-deoptimization.html

<comment><USER2> Please excuse my ignorance if these guys are now owned by Ryanair, a quick Google suggests they are not, but it looks like Jetbird (an executive jet company) did a straight copy and paste of this for term 2.v.

"(v) You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair. Such consent may be withdrawn at any time at JetBird own discretion."

<http://www.flyjetbird.com/en/fns/Terms-of-Use.aspx>

I wonder if Ryanair knows one of their competitors are using their T&C's. On the other hand, I wonder if Jetbird know they are listing one of their competitors on their website.

Very amusing to see this! Makes you wonder how many companies Ctrl+C Ctrl+V their T&C's and Privacy Policies from other websites.

<comment><USER3> You haven't met many lawyers, have you? ;)

<comment><USER2> Not many no, but the company name of who I'm stealing from would be the first thing I Ctrl+F!

<comment><USER4> When I hear _lawyers_ and _computers_ being talked about together, the first thing that comes to mind is that they tend to use WordPerfect. So, not only is it not safe to assume any level of computer savvyness, I'm not even sure that ctrl-f would be the right shortcut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google should, for giggles, just drop a good number of sites with these terms one day.

<comment><USER6> Google probably would get the permission to link to Ryanair, though. And Google has to look good in the eye of searchers. They want to find what they are looking for and don't really care about the reasons for some results to be not available.

<comment><USER7> But Google is in a unique position to quickly correct a lot of bad T&C behaviors simply by implying that having those terms may hurt the SEO of offending sites. If SEOs suspected that was part of Google's ranking process then we'd see a lot of bad T&C clauses suddenly dropped.

<comment><USER8> The phrase "Google is in a unique position to quickly correct a lot of bad [...] behaviors" sends chills down my spine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The perverse thing about terms forbidding deep linking into a website is that it is so easy to prevent deep linking by technical means. (In fact, it's so easy that even mentioning it seems like a cliche.) On each HTTP request, examine the Referer: header and, if you don't like it, redirect to your homepage. Is there any reason why companies like Ryanair don't just do this?

<comment><USER10> Because circumventing that filter is even easier than installing the filter in the first place?

<comment><USER11> Circumventing that filter is easy for the user, but I don't see how it's easy for the referring website.

<comment><USER12> A referrer is not sent when following a link from a secure website (https) to a non-secure website.

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3>

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the information. I had not realised that. There are still plenty of other measure that Ryanair could use, of course, in the case where there was no Referer: header, such putting some unique (and constantly changing) id into a cookie such that links from another site wouldn't have the correct id. As other have suggested, perhaps they are perfectly happy with _most_ deep links into their site, just not from certain sites such as price comparison sites. Far be it from me to speculate about such things, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I assume that provided I never visit their website I'm not bound by their T&Cs and can therefore link to ryanair.com to my heart's content, right? :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Funny how the page containing the terms of service for ryanair is titled 'copywrite' :)

</comment><comment><USER15> A part of me would love to do this - just to teach them a lesson....Maybe I will save it for Dr Evil day!

<comment><USER16> What lesson are you trying to teach them?

<comment><USER17> That they should think through the consequences of their terms and conditions.

<comment><USER18> They do. Its just like signing a lease which indicates "no pets allowed" when everyone and their mother in the building has one, and the landlord knows. Its because if the clause is not in there and your dog is howling all night long they can do nothing. They may want content farms not linking, or perhaps other unknown super secret spy stuff?

<comment><USER19> It's more like walking into a store that has a tiny book on the floor _inside_ the door that, if you open and read it, tells you that by having already entered the store you've agreed to be prohibited from telling anybody about anything you've seen inside without written consent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since this is Ryanair we are talking about... I hope someone actually does this.

</comment><comment><USER21> How exactly would deoptimizing Ryanair hurt them financially? Do Ryanair customers search Google for anything but "Ryanair" when they want to get to ryanair.com?

<comment><USER22> Ryanair have such a well known airline brand that it's unlikely they are relying on organic search results.

<comment><USER23> A lot of non-tech people don't type any URL, they just type "Ryanair" in Google and click on the first link.

<comment><USER24> I do that (searching from the address bar) a lot, especially with non-US sites (like Ryanair) where you're not sure if it's .com or .co.uk or what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do companies even have this clause in their T&C? What's the benefit?

<comment><USER25> Too many lawyers who want to look useful.

I actually remember my boss telling me to put bullshit clauses in contract drafts so that those people have something to chew at and refrain from messing with the actual matter of the contract.

<comment><USER26> This is a well known tactic, and it works. When discussing a list of points in a meeting, the secret is to have a big controversial question come up first (that you don't actually care about): dealing with this first question eats up time, but what's better, it exhausts everyone. Then all the following points are much easier to sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> While we're at it, Dustin Curtis should suggest a site re-design for Ryanair and blog about it to feel the full effect. ;)

A bit off-topic, but I just visited American Airlines site and realized that they have updated it. In reference to <http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html>.

</comment><comment><USER28> _"You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair. Such consent may be withdrawn at any time at Ryanair's own discretion."_

I wonder if Google have got written consent to link to Ryanair from their search results...

</comment><comment><USER29> Suppose someone is found liable in civil court for deep linking to a website that prohibits it. What kind of damages could the website possibly be entitled to collect? I'm at a loss.

</comment><comment><USER30> websites that forbid linking to them didn't get the memo on how the web works</comment>


Ask HN: What do you actually care about in a web host? - <AUTHOR> I've seen tons of review sites for web hosting, and most of them are just filled with affiliate spam touting that some shared host is the best due to their ping.<p>I was curious what features other people actually look for in a quality hosting provider? Is there anything you can't live without? <comment><USER2> Been able to talk with a real person if I need too, I've spoken with some 'tech support' that didn't even know what a server was much less how to turn one on!</comment>


College Degree Required. But Why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/college-degree-required-but-why.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps student debt feels good for employers because desperate graduates will accept any kind of treatment?

Please correct me if I'm beside the mark.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think you might have something there. Key quote from the NYT:

"College graduates are just more career-oriented," said Adam Slipakoff, the firm's managing partner. "Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures."

From the comments: "This "degree inflation" seems like a new system of debt peonage. The individual borrows a fortune simply to get the "credentials" for a low-paying job and spends the rest of his life trying to pay off his student loans. That's almost a guarantee that the citizen will not get politically active or in any way threaten the status quo."

A workforce that is deeply in debt to non-dischargeable loans is a workforce that has limited options, is more docile, and more easily manipulated.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree- re...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree-required-by- increasing-number-of- companies.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1361628641-UtIqcfoeoIFUVg0wLFg49g&);

<comment><USER4> No, he's not "on to something" because a random commenter on a NYT article shares the same conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for pointing this out.

This is the reason why I would hire educated (Academic education that is) people over people who are more practical. When you have had an academic education you also (should) learn to think critically about your sources, the way you reason and alternative strategies.

The main difference I have noticed around me between people of applied sciences degrees and academic degrees (a difference that contrasted much more in my country) is that the former will accept any source; Wikipedia, any newspaper, some guy's blog, a comment on some thread from a conspiracy theorist. The latter, the academic, will (should) only use proper sources i.e. academic research or, in the case of less important things (like HN), at least some form of respectable medium.

When reading up on important subjects, something that isn't researched and then published through reputable scientific journals, simply does not exist. Otherwise we'd waste time discussing whether we went to the moon, etc.

<comment><USER6> In other words, here's a link to a peer reviewed journal article about farting on airplanes: <http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/abstract.php?id=5532>

Or when a reputable mathematical journal accepted a nonsense paper generated by Mathgen: [http://boingboing.net/2012/10/19/math-journal-accepts- comput...](http://boingboing.net/2012/10/19/math-journal-accepts- computer.html)

Don't get me wrong, I have certainly noticed becoming more critical of sources in the 5 years of going through an academic university (despite not quite finishing), but even scientific papers can often be proven silly by just a quick look at some common sense.

Also, wikipedia is a magnificent source on most topics. Very good overview/introductory material and a way to look for "proper" sources.

I am also still of the firm opinion that wikipedia gets more peer review than the average peer reviewed paper.

<comment><USER5> There is a difference between silly and trustworthiness of course. But yes, not all academia is good or even worth while, but still is more (potentially) useful than some blog. This does not mean that it can't be true what someone is saying, but there is no reason to trust it.

As for Wikipedia; yes I a agree. Wikipedia is great, I have donated several times to the organisation. That does not mean however that it is academically useful beyond the point of exploring a subject on a very high level. For day to day things there is nothing that can beat it. Apart from Stack Overflow for us programmers that is.

The trustworthiness of opinions comes into play again with the last thing you say. It is like with Homeopathic medicine, as soon as it is scientifically proven to be true/working, it becomes 'real' medicine. Also, even if it were true, does 'more' peer review mean 'better' peer review. Also, with some subjects I would think that 'peer' is somewhat far fetched; conspiracy theorists are not the peers of astronomers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Q: "But Why?" A: "Because they can."

As long as I can get someone with a degree for the same price as someone without it - Why on earth would I choose the one that _might_ be as good as the one with the degree?

There are many qualities an educated person has. Not limited to responsibility, commitment, knowledge and discipline. These are key to even graduating.

I'm not saying these qualities are impossible to find in someone without a degree. I'm saying they are guaranteed in a educated person. So again: Why on earth would I choose the one that _might_ be as good as the one with the degree?

</comment><comment><USER8> A whole bunch of the comments mention that employers who are insisting on college degrees as a hiring criterion are basically attempting to use the degree requirement as a proxy for a requirement that would be more plainly illegal under current United States law. That's regrettable on two levels: degree requirements are demonstrably, by replicated research, poor criteria for hiring for almost any kind of job, and if the company is trying to find a work-around to practice illegal discrimination, the company should be just as liable for the degree requirement as for other illegal requirements. There is a research base on what hiring procedures work best (short answer: work-sample tests and general mental ability, a.k.a. IQ, tests) for finding good workers for most kinds of jobs. No hiring procedure is perfect, as all hiring procedures produce false positives (applicants who are hired even though they end up being lousy workers) and false negatives (applicants who don't get hired, even though they end up being great workers for some other employer). But if you want to be scientific about hiring and improve your odds of getting a good worker, you had better build work-sample tests into your hiring procedures.

In the United States, IQ-type tests were held by the Supreme Court to be illegal (UNLESS specifically validated for the job in question) under the federal equal employment opportunity statute in a case that found that IQ tests have a disparate impact on applicants from some "race" groups. The facts on the ground are changing (the "race" gap in IQ scores is not nearly as large as it used to be, and appears still to be closing) and that rationale, properly thought through, would apply equally well to show that other hiring criteria might be just as illegal. Possessing a college degree is a much stronger signal of family wealth than of job-applicant intelligence, really,

[http://www.jkcf.org/news-knowledge/media-coverage/no- child-l...](http://www.jkcf.org/news-knowledge/media-coverage/no-child-left- behind/)

but many companies these days insist on college degrees from applicants for jobs for which a college degree is no preparation at all. That just tends to turn many lower-tier colleges into expensive diploma mills.

See

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923>

for the most recent posting of my full-length FAQ on company hiring procedures, written specially for HN discussions.

</comment><comment><USER9> College Degrees are required for many jobs they shouldn't be required for because if employers...

1\. Perform criminal background checks. 2\. Perform their own aptitude tests.

They could be liable for disparate impact racial discrimination suits.

<comment><USER10> I had to google "Disparate Impact" which I discovered means " _not discriminatory at its face, but in its application_ " (paraphrasing wikipedia)

So if a college education is just a proxy for those other indicators, wouldn't college also have the same disparate impact? If it didn't, then it wouldn't be a good proxy. I might be missing something key here.

Can you elaborate a little?

<comment><USER11> A college degree is considered an independent, standardized proof of aptitude; unlike a test performed by a recruiter which could possibly be a masquerade to exclude people of some race or gender etc. Even <http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72> is not a strong argument--for one thing it's not the employer's fault that our society is still unequal.

A college degree is not evidence of no criminal record, only a very good positive signal (as the % of felons with a college degree is very small, I suppose). Claiming that an employer requires a degree as a proxy for criminal background check would get you nowhere in a discrimination lawsuit, unless you have solid evidence (recordings, documents, confession).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article looses a lot by being so vague about which jobs could easily have been held by high school grads that instead requires college degrees.

One reason I could think of is that as college education become more readily available for still more people, deciding not to go (gut feeling, isn't it really more often a decision _not_ to go, rather than to go?) is a progressively more meaningful filter.

I'm sure a similar shift happened as high school became ubiquitous - then high school became a requirement for some jobs that were previously held by those with no high school.

This is generally a good thing, it's an artifact of society as a whole becoming better educated. The main problem with college is that it hasn't really caught up to it's new status as "general" education, rather than "elite" education. That said (I'm not american so not intimately familiar with the system), isn't it entirely possible to get a decent education (although with little "elite" signalling value, it would "tick the box" for college degree on the types of jobs the article refers to) from a state or community college and _not_ have a lifetime of debt to deal with afterward?

<comment> mkr-hn I went to a state-run community college on Georgia's HOPE scholarship. I went in to learn network administration, but it ended up patching all the holes left by a K-12 system that was broken long before immigration in the '90s stretched it to the breaking point.

It's popular to joke about how easy it is to get a college education in this state, but I don't think Georgia's $400+ billion GDP amid the century-long economic turmoil of this region is a coincidence. PINES[1] probably helps, but I think Georgia's focus on getting everyone into some sort of college is key.

[1] <http://www.georgialibraries.org/public/pines.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Given two equally capable candidates, the one with the degree is better. That's the idea. It's not true of course. Being over qualified can be just as bad as being under qualified. Labor is the most expensive part of a business. A qualification mismatch will result in a high turn over rate. Depending on your business, that could be costly. That's why you can be, e.g. too smart to be a police officer. You'll get bored and leave.

<http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95836>

<comment><USER13> > Given two equally capable candidates, the one with the degree is better.

This doesn't have to be "true" to be useful. A positive correlation is a valuable tool as well.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately I presume research could be done on (bonus if someone knows of and can reference) the measure of a qualified candidate decreasing as more candidates enter the 'have a degree' pool. It may have previously been a stronger correlation, but I'd imagine that correlation is weakening, and if current trends continue of colleges accepting lower and lower qualified candidates, and the lines blurring between different colleges and the level of graduates they're pumping out -- it will eventually be meaningless, as they'll hand degrees to anyone who will pay (or more likely indebt themselves).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If we were talking about footballers, a candidate with a college degree is likely to be seen as having a higher ceiling.

Companies often prefer candidates with college degrees because their career ceiling is likely to be higher - e.g. a receptionist with a college degree is more likely suited for advancement to management or sales than one without. Partially this is educational - he is closer to an MBA - partially it is socio-economic - he may have a more similar background to existing management and customers.

In addition as a practical matter, adding a college degree requirement allows the hiring manager to disqualify potential candidates faster and uses an objective standard to do so. The perceived value of making one's job easier should never be discounted.

</comment><comment><USER16> Intelligence is a good indicator of potential job performance when screening candidates, a degree is positively correlated to intelligence and it is illegal in some countries/states to test for intelligence, so it can be used to sort out applicants on that basis.

</comment><comment><USER17> I former client of mine said that employees with and without college degrees would perform equally at his company, but the big difference was the ability to adapt to changes (e.g. changes in technology or changes in assigned responsibility). Once there was a big enough shift in the assigned activities for some reason, the people with college degrees was able to quickly adapt, while the others were lagging behind.

From my point of view, that makes sense. Isn't the primary goal of a college education to learn the ability to learn?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've always been surprised how little disruption there has been in the field of corporate hiring.

As other people have mentioned, many employers use a college degree as a rough proxy for intelligence and/or work ethic, but how good is it really? Can't we do better?

"Moneyball" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball>) is a great book about the statistical revolution that took place in major league baseball, and shows us how advanced analytics enabled one team to go beyond rough proxies and subjective judgments to successfully sign players who were highly productive but undervalued by other teams.

Assuming sports is just a simplified version of real life, why hasn't a similar data-driven revolution happened yet in business hiring? Or does the status quo work "well enough"?

While we're at it, I guess we could also pose the question of how favorably (or not) YC's own application process compares to that of most colleges and corporations.

<comment><USER19> I like this idea, but I don't think you can Moneyball corporate hiring very easily.

Professional athleticism is a direct meritocracy. If you hire better players, you win more games and make more money, and you see the effects immediately. In the corporate arena, there's no direct feedback and the meritocracy, to the degree that it exists, is much murkier. It takes years before you learn that you've hired an incompetent executive and, by that time, the damage is done.

For a concrete example: the owner of a baseball team would almost never put his 300-pound, incapable cousin on the team as a personal favor. It would ruin the performance of the team and destroy his business. Yet VC-funded startups are frequently pressured to hire the VC's underachieving friends into executive roles. The people who are in authority to allocate executive positions have learned that there's more personal benefit in treating these positions as favors to be traded than by filling them with the most qualified people, so they choose the former (and always will).

With Moneyball, we're talking about direct-production roles where performance is visible and it matters. The problem with executive hiring is that those are value-capturing roles that occasionally involve production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some people claim college is the new HS, a new baseline that everybody is reaching. Why shouldn't hiring managers work with that baseline?

<comment><USER21> Because it marginalizes anyone who doesn't want / cannot afford to take on about $100k in debt?

<comment><USER22> I think that's pretty grossly unfair. I graduated from undergrad from a good-- not great, but good--state school with $17K in debt. My scholarships paid for about $9K. My parents and I (summer jobs, Google Summer of Code, etc.) chipped in about $26K.

No, you're not going to Stanford on that, but you can still go to a good school with a respectable reputation for teaching, if not research.

<comment><USER23> Question from a European: what's the cheapest way to get a college degree in the US? In Austria you pay 363.36 Euros per semester, plus a ÖH-fee of 15 Euros. Some federal states pay the 363.36 Euros for you. If you're not from the European Union, you pay twice as much, if I remember correctly.

I know there's a thing called community college. Does it cost money? Is a degree from one of those worth so much less than one from MIT/Stanford/Harvard/Yale/Caltech/etc?

<comment><USER24> Community colleges cost money, but they cost less money. In my county in Pennsylvania, the community college charges $7,140/yr for tuition and fees. Unfortunately, they issue 2-year Associates degrees that have relatively little market value. To earn a Bachelors degree, the student needs two more years at another university. My local state university, Penn State, is charging $17,824/yr.

Add in the cost of books, and the total cost of a "budget" college education in Pennsylvania is roughly $55,0000.

As a counterpoint, a private engineering school like Drexel University (also in Pennsylvania) currently costs $51,405/yr, plus books, for a five year program, for a total in the $250-275,000 neighborhood.

<comment><USER22> My degree program was something like $14K a year, in that ballpark. I don't remember, because at UMaine at least, nobody pays sticker price. Pretty much anyone with a pulse and a not-horrible high school transcript will get at least a few thousand dollars chopped off the per-year price; I think the _total_ cost of my four years at a state university, including room and board, was under $60K.

(Also, many private institutions, namely the ones with pretty nice endowments, have gone the route of covering most, if not all, of their students' tuition expenses.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I deeply regret having a degree, it only set back my life by 5 years and made me have crazy debts that mean almost half of my income ( I am avoiding taxes to not die of hunger or default debts, taxes are usually around 35% of income here... )

</comment><comment><USER26> why not?

<comment><USER21> Not everyone needs to go to college.

I stopped going to community college after my first year; I had the choice between signing up for another semester or working full-time at a new job that I just received an offer for. It was a small hosting company that paid enough for me to live comfortably with my barista girlfriend. It also allowed me to move out of my parents' house, which was kind of a big deal when I was 19.

Now I'm 24 and I've since moved out to silicon valley (when I was 23). I now have 6 years in this industry (plus another 5 or so doing odd IT jobs here and there before I got a "real" job). I'm very happy that I didn't stay back in Michigan to finish college. I have many friends who are just now graduating (and a few still in school) with tons of debt and not many good jobs to hope for.

One of my friends actually hitch-hiked out to San Francisco. She's currently in her last semester of a well-known design school and she can't find any work.

I get offers all the time to interview at Fortune 500s for positions like "senior dev/ops", "cloud architect", etc. I currently work at a Fortune top 1000 company, and I was previously a linux sysadmin at an INC 5000 company.

I regret nothing and I don't see how college could have possibly made my situation any better. I wouldn't describe myself as a "go getter" or particularly motivated; I simply rejected the notion that college is necessary and found employers who were willing to look at my skills rather than pieces of paper which anyone with enough cash can now attain.

<comment><USER26> >> I regret nothing and I don't see how college could have possibly made my situation any better.

Yes that was your situation then and that doesn't apply to others.

>> I simply rejected the notion that college is necessary and found employers who were willing to look at my skills rather than pieces of paper which anyone with enough cash can now attain.

Can you say the same to accountants, doctors, etc.?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to chalk this up to future shock and humanity's increasing inability to handle the now rapid rate of change. The economic role of college (before that, an aristocratic pursuit) is something society invented to tolerate the industrial rate of change, that fails at the current technological rate of change.

Pre-industrial economies: you did what your same-sex parent did. A man whose father was a carpenter became a carpenter. A woman whose mother worked the fields would also work in the fields. The needs of the economy didn't change very fast. Your childhood was spent planning to move into the role.

Industrial economy: society changes too fast for people to plan, in advance, for a specific job. That job may not exist. Jobs that don't exist now will be needed in 40 years. General education is required.

Technological economy: even faster rate of change. This is the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) economy in which every contribution should, ideally, be different. We still don't know what kind of educational process this type of economy mandates. It's all too new for us.

General education grew up in the industrial economy, and its purpose was to vouch that a person had sufficient intelligence to deserve specific mentoring that could be done as-needed at a later time. You got the college degree to _prove_ that if you were put into management training for 2-3 years, you would learn enough to oversee a group of people doing industrial labor-- you didn't need to be an expert in that type of labor, which may not have existed when you got the degree. The college degree is insurance against economic change. You don't need to know in advance what industries will be in high demand in 30 years (that's impossible). You have proof on paper that you are adaptable enough that employers should invest in you.

The purpose of the college degree was to grant mobility by encouraging firms to invest. You can point to the fact that you successfully completed a 4-year, intellectually rigorous training process oriented toward general knowledge. The employer sees this and realizes it won't be a loss to put you in the 2-year rotational program it uses to bring up executives.

Lifelong employment at large corporations almost never exists in this technological economy, which leaves these concepts being a bit out-of-date. The industrial-era purpose of the degree was to convince employers to invest in you, and to learn general-purpose skills (management) that were unlikely to become obsolete due to industrial or mechanical changes.

In the technological era, most firms just don't invest in their employees _at all_ on the assumption that, if they do so, people will take that capital and leave. In the industrial era, they "groomed" future leaders from within. In the technological era, they call executive headhunters. You might find a mentor by individually networking and building relationships, but the employer isn't going to make this happen and, if you're not someone's protege after 2 years, it makes the most sense to move on. The idea of corporate "loyalty" is gone on both sides and hopelessly anachronistic, and it won't come back any time soon.

The result of this is that (a) the economic return of the college degree has diminished to the point that it's becoming a terrible trade, but (b) people (college graduates or not) are ill-equipped to compete on the new, more fluid economy, and this lack of knowledge or capacity is causing people to cling to old, industrial-era patterns (such as the college degree immediately after high school) out of fear. The result is a system that's the worst of both worlds. Employers don't trust college degrees enough for them to serve their original purpose, so the positive validation of the degree is gone. What's now in play is that not having a college degree is a negative validation. People who didn't complete one are assumed, reflexively, to be lacking.

<comment><USER27> Regarding corporate loyalty and "grooming" leaders from within: Continues to be true in Germany. Especially at successful midsize enterprises ("hidden champions"). Degrees (biz and STEM) are of value also.

This headhunting thing and loss of degree value is more of an Anglo-Saxon issue.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to get ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I am confident that I have no problems to execute any idea.  I have a team that is very engineering oriented and very responsive, and I'm engineer-made-to-product guy myself.  I have a good enough networking to take of.  However, I feel I lack ideas to work on right away.  I should acknowledge that I'm picky about ideas.  I'm looking for B2C with millions of users.  (I'm not sure if this means picky or not, though. :)
I heard that ideas worths nothing or very little, however, I tend to believe that idea is at least 30% of success.
Any thoughts?  Thanks. <comment><USER2> Ideas are not 30% of success. The reason ideas are worthless is because literally any idea you have come up with many other people have come up with too. Almost nobody bothers to execute. My recommendation would be to pick something you are excited about.

Here is one, real time product insertion into uploaded videos (or even network TV/movies). Let people make their videos with blue screened objects or backgrounds and then have technology that lets advertisers insert real time advertising into the videos (meaning the advertising is not permanent but changes each time). One time the person is holding a can of coke, another time pepsi. One time the background says macys the next time it says bloomingdales

Another one that some people have started on is real time traffic mapping. Work with onstar (others are using the GPS in phones) to write software that maps the speed on every road 24/7 where there is an onstar vehicle.

something like craigslist but using a hackernews style rating system

facial recognition that can go through my whole library of pictures and tag every person. Read the techstars book to find out who has the technology to make it happen

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me put it this way - a good idea is 30%. A bad one - is none. That's why there are a lot of crappy ideas, and people are constantly looking for something good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Scratch your own itch"

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Whats_Your_Problem.php>

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask rich people what problems they have. Ask business people what problems they have. Ask business owners what problems they have.

</comment><comment><USER5> Make a text file and just dump notes, everyday or every other day, on anything that frustrates you (or others) that you can vaguely imagine being a successful startup. Keeping count with each note of how many times you get that "Ugh, I wish someone had solved this problem!" feeling can also help narrow down things when you're looking to build something.

</comment><comment><USER6> Take a look at things that exist today. What do you wish was significantly better?

What's broken that you have the skills to fix, or to at least investigate further?

In general, I think people should start by building things for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&pws=0&sa...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&pws=0&safe=off&output=search&q=list%20of%20ideas%20site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> Alex, I checked out your profile and your sites. I think we might be a good fit. I'm Chris Norstrom (<http://www.chrisnorstrom.com>) and basically I'm up to my ass in ideas. I've only posted a fraction of my creations online, my startup ideas I keep offline.

I'd love to chat with you on Skype if you can, I'm in St. Louis, Missouri but am planning on moving to the Bay Area soon.</comment>


An ORM for C? - <AUTHOR> http://isti.bitbucket.org/2012/05/16/orm-for-c.html

<comment><USER2> While usually used via language bindings, Midgard is an ORM for C, and has been available for years.

[http://www.midgard-project.org/api- docs/midgard/core/ratatos...](http://www.midgard-project.org/api- docs/midgard/core/ratatoskr/)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, thanks! i will look at that. could save me a lot of effort.</comment></comment>


Tom Williams: Hired by Apple at 14. His full story. - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/tom-williams <comment><USER3> I met this guy in 2004.

He talked about himself for 20 or 30 minutes before I got a word in.

He had a couple of ideas at the time, some about charitable giving, and others were about fighting spam with the technique of charging strangers to receive their email. (This is such an oft-repeated idea it's listed in the "You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook" page). I told him that there were a few things wrong with his approach, and he clapped his hand on my shoulder and said that he could just get someone else to do this.

Overall I felt a bit sorry for him. He was a pretty interesting guy who had great talents and great ambitions. He wasn't limited by a lack of confidence. Unfortunately he has had a lot of early validation that he was a genius, and such overconfidence can be just as crippling.

<comment><USER4> I do feel obligated to remind myself that your impression is limited in the fact that the scope is narrow, just one experience with him seemed to form the impression.

That being said, this makes me even more curious about his story as it is a representation of many similar stories, countless young people (my role models) persisting and working their ass off, being rewarded as a result, but then after they seem to just feed off of the initial success or seem to fall short of the "initial promise". ie: Farrah Gray.

What sets those that persist only early on apart from those that continue to challenge themselves? When I start doing really successful things, I don't want that to spoil me and turn me lazy.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, the thing that sets true genius apart from the contentious kind, is the willingness to listen. If you don't have that, then you're not really as smart as you - or others - think you are.

The capability a person has for listening to other people is a skill that very rarely gets acknowledged as a particularly genius trait. However, there is really nothing that can be done in this world if you aren't willing to listen at least as well as you talk.

<comment><USER6> Wholly agree with that.

The guy who blusters about and talks a lot might well be pretty smart. His charisma opens doors.

But I for one would be keeping an eye on the guy by the door who hasnt spoken yet. Because usually, just as it is "all decided" he can chime in with the most insight of the day :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good story and read, but he blows his role out of proportion at times in comparison to what it really was. I mean he described himself as: "They just thought I would be a great guy to have around. We kind of had to figure out what my role was." And then goes on to talk like he was mini-Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER5> Personality: its infectious. There is such a thing as contagious psychology. Hang around at Apple long enough and you, too, will start to appear Guru'ified.

Hell, Apple have made a fortune on this fact alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > However, I wasn't the youngest. It was Steve Espinosa, who was actually > employee number seven at Apple.

I assume the author is thinking of _Chris_ Espinosa, employee number eight, who also joined the company at the age of 14. Chris was one of the early guys on the Macintosh team -- pretty fascinating as well.

[http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&...](http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&characters=Chris%20Espinosa)

</comment><comment><USER9> A great story about a non-conformist who, at a young age, found his way into one of the most rebel-minded mega-companies ever.

Very cool stuff. I think a major lesson here is that it all began for him through his networking. That's how he got his shot with the CEO, and he picked a topical conversation point on which he had some (apparently) insightful feedback to present himself with.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Elbow-Grease and Gumption: The Secret That Self-Help Books _Don't Want You To Know_ "

<comment><USER11> Seriously. As I get older I'm realizing that there are very easy ways to get smarter, more successful, more in shape, more active, etc., but I still find it hard to fully admit that a little hard work helps everything. It's made the "get-X-quick" industry a little irritating to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just read this and realized that maybe there is hope for my son after all, the first 10 paragraphs or so could be about him...

<comment><USER13> You have hopes for your son to be hired by Apple? :)

-m

<comment><USER12> hehe, no, I have hope that he's going to find his 'groove' in life, right now just about everything seems to be against him. Most of the stuff there applies word-for-word to him.

I'm not hoping for him to get hired by anybody any time soon, but at least it seems there are alternative paths other than the regular ones.

<comment><USER11> I wish kids were taught this at a young age. I learned it at seventeen; two years later, I'm still struggling with a lot of the things I've needed to unlearn. I have friends my age who still don't believe this, who are forcing themselves on generic career paths because they don't think anything else is an option. I worry for them pretty often.

<comment><USER12> Well, the funny thing here is my own career path was not exactly textbook either, and still I worry about my son.

As for yourself keep an open mind, definitely not everything about 'regular' education is bad, but some people have a hard time adapting to the system and the system definitely won't adapt to them, if you are one of these then go ahead and carve your own path, I'm sure we'll be hearing great things about you one of these days.

<comment><USER11> I'd love to hear your story when you've got time. WW isn't a site we hear a lot about on HN, and I've always been a little curious.

<comment><USER12> here you go:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom- camara...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Derek, I love your blog and book reviews. Don't usually come across such consistently high quality of content.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I don't know who you are, but I've seen this blog four or five times in the last week and I've liked almost everything I read.

<comment><USER15> "1997: Founded CD Baby as a favor to friends ... "

<http://sivers.org/about>

Whee.

<comment><USER11> Holy fucking shit, the guy who made _CD Baby_ wrote this? That blows my mind. Just today I was looking into CD Baby as a means of music publication - <USER2> thought the guy who made that would keep a blog, or read Hacker News.

I love this community a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A long but rewarding read. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll chime in. I won't say how I'm involved with Tom, but we've been associated in the past. Let's just say that the impression I had upon meeting him was that he's basically a tax-dodging former child star with an ongoing microfinance scandal (covered by apparent nemesis David Baines):

[http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id...](http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=b76ff000-c8e8-4789-9ed8-806df2c2945a) [http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html...](http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=7c506725-ef5d-429f-a6ae-8a4cb8b60dc4) [http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html...](http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=70700a18-9a1f-4949-ac63-83d208c75b7e) [http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id...](http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=8802e811-b642-4d3b-bd0a-090046c60f20)

I wouldn't go as far as Baines (he gets petty and tedious after a while) but I do think he's got some validity to his arguments about accountability and trust. Specifically the lack thereof as regards Tom.

Let's recap the story: a 14 year old kid's paid summer internship was deemed to be good PR for Apple. That paid off in mediocre terms (as you can see via his QuickTime/Kid story, Apple divested itself of its drudgeons after PepsiCo's frontman took the hit for Apple almost dying) but, in the process, it created the modern Tom Williams who, after imagining that 50 year old men were being anything other than patronizing toward a teen, had no incentive to grow up.

Youthfully ignorant entrepreneurial drive win, personal growth and development fail. His wife's hot, though.

<comment><USER18> looks like tom decided to respond on his own blog:

<http://givemeaning.blogspot.com/search/label/david%20baines>

man, this is ugly.

<comment><USER6> It is indeed. I took a look into David Baines and have to say, Im not seeing him as a bad guy here..

Yeh he's a bulldog and yaps about a hell of a lot - but when he calls Bullshit hye usually appears to be correct (though sometimes takes it a bit far by extension).

(edit: some background -> [http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top- stories/2005/07/01/mo...](http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top- stories/2005/07/01/most-hated-man-business))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> so...what did he create? I didn't see anything about him actually creating anything.

</comment><comment><USER20> some really great advice at the end of the article, if people like you at work, you'll get supported when you're down and lifted up when you're up. very nice. thanks for the link.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great story. Thanks, sivers. Love the content that's coming from your blog; please keep it coming!

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazing, uplifting story! Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Grindr has faced a federal investigation, layoffs, mismanagement, and turmoil - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/grindr-chinese-owner-company-chaos <comment><USER2> > Despite the app's success, some executives worried that it wasn't > sustainable and that the company needed to diversify by creating LGBTQ > content to diversify beyond hookups and one-night stands.

Men wanting to fuck is not sustainable?? TBH, this whole article strikes me as after-the-fact hand-wringing and blame-gaming about how Grindr "never achieved its vision", a vision I guarantee 99% of its users couldn't care less about. Grindr was always about men finding other men to fuck (and sure, sometimes to go out on a date with or hang out and chat with), but the idea given in the article of it morphing into some sort of "queer Atlantic" has all the hallmarks of a completely out-of-touch and delirious exec.

<comment><USER3> Many websites now want to play at social engineering the populace. They forget what their users want, try socially engineering those users which a great number of them reject and users move elsewhere when something better turns up.

<comment><USER4> I think it is less about wanting to social engineer, as it is becoming indebted to early investors who invest not in a small, simple and useful service but in the vision of this service being a huge profitable thing. I'd wager that many of the worst 'social engineering' pivots by websites/apps are either because they're struggling to keep up with early investor expectations, or because they've gone big and are struggling to keep up with growth and profitability at scale. Facebook didn't just wake up one day and let foreign governments undermine elections with advertisements, but, profitability is undoubtedly why they got there.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't fit in with what we have seen. Many sites start socially engineering when they think they are big enough to dominate. I am not an expert on dating apps (especially ones for homosexuals), however the language quoted about "creating a better place" etc. Is exactly the same language I've seen by other sites that want to socially engineer. It cannot be a coincidence that many of the companies use a lot of the same phrases and language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not that I'd ever admit to using Grindr…but I've used Grindr and Scruff, for exactly what you'd think.

The article goes on and on about creating a kind queer space and the new owners not understanding the community. Except, having actually used Grindr, this is a perfect summary of the experience.

 _"Scott openly mocked Kindr," a former employee recalled. "He didn't understand why we wanted to celebrate what he saw as 'fat people.'"_

That is, in fact, Grindr in a nutshell. It's for anonymous torsos looking for action while their boyfriend/wife/roommate is gone. There is no kind community on Grindr. Scruff, maybe. But Grindr is just lust and body negativity laid bare.

<comment><USER6> Which is exactly what many people want!

<comment><USER5> I mean, honestly, if I'm using Grindr, it's what I want. I am a bad cisgender gay male who sometimes doesn't need to see full-screen ads about genderqueer art while cruising at 2am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Grindr is a quintessential example of first-mover advantage. Countless follow- up competitors have failed to challenge Grindr's market dominance, despite these competitor apps being vastly better designed and more feature rich. The app itself remained practically stagnant (because the first-mover advantage was so immense there was no real need to improve the product) for years until it was bought by Kunlun Tech who actually employed enough people to work on releasing new features. Multiple profile photos weren't supported until this year, while most of its competitors have had the same feature for years or even close to a decade (e.g. Jack'd).

The world has been better for queer people living in many civilized & tolerant countries compared to 10 years ago when Grindr was first released. How much role Grindr had to play in this is extremely doubtful.

<comment><USER5> Bingo. Grindr was a terrible app. Inconsistent push notifications, lots of lost chats, and it took forever to support new phones. _(I was using it back during the iPhone 5 era, and it was apparently a 6-month technical slog to update a simple collection view to target that SDK.)_

But it was first, and the network effects were obvious. You had other apps in use in large gay cities in the States, but while traveling, and you want that fun hotel action, you pretty much had to go with Grindr.

<comment><USER8> By fun hotel action, you mean sex right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Worth reading the article. It's very little about the details of gay men's sexuality and mostly about the disaster of a Chinese acquisition and completely the wrong CEO. The LGBT community suffers as a consequence, not the cause.

</comment><comment><USER10> It made mine better, met my partner there 6 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> Surprised Match hadn't bought Grindr long ago.

<comment><USER12> They were bought by a Chinese bank. I don't understand how that was allowed to happen in the first place... The security implications are mind boggling

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disclaimer: It's been over 2 years since I used Grindr/Scruff/etc.

Grindr is a truly terrible app. Not because it allows men to hookup with other men but because it is just a very badly designed app. It would go for YEARS with barely a change at all then they would add some stupid useless feature that was a direct copy from Scruff (and friends).

It was impossible to manage your conversations, there was a constant stream of new messages and if you deleted a message thread you lost ALL the history. This means you could either delete threads of people you weren't interested in so you could keep track of the ones you were but then if you got messaged again by someone you deleted it was impossible to know if you had talked to them before. It was extremely frustrating to use.

I didn't like to delete messages because often a profile picture would be blank or a (misleading) torso/other. Then in the thread the person would send me pictures and I would know that I had talked to them and wasn't interested. The number of people who signed on, created an account, "got off", deleted the app, then created a new account the next time they logged on was STAGGERING.

The problem was that if I wasn't interesting in them and deleted the message then the next time they messaged me I wouldn't have any of those pictures/chats to remember who they were. It was a catch-22, either clean up your message threads and risk have the SAME conversation over and over again OR keep all your message threads and make it impossible to find the threads of people you wanted to talk to.

Also IIRC, Grindr would SCROLL TO THE TOP of your messages when you backed out of a thread. This meant if you were searching for someone with a non- obvious/blank profile picture you would scroll down, click on one, see the chats and know it's the wrong person, then have to remember how far you had scrolled down so you could go that far then keep looking. It was infuriating to use the app.

Couple all of that with the spam, harassment, new account creation to evade blocks, pissed off people because you weren't interested in fucking them, confusing UI/UX, inconsistent push notifications for paid accounts, and more.... I fucking hate Grindr. At least Scruff had a nice UI and tools/features that I actually liked using but the user-base.... Grindr DWARFED Scruff's user-base, it's why on Scruff you would stay "on the grid" for like 24 hours after opening the app while on Grindr it would be like 1hr. They had to make it seem like there were more people than there were.

I sincerely hope that my days of gay hookup apps are 100% behind me. It's a a cesspool that I never want to set foot in again. That said... If I ever become single again I'll probably be back. For all it's failings it's where I met my BF.

<comment><USER14> I couldn't agree more. Just to add to the list anyone can create an account with an invalid email address. Just enter any gibberish in the email field you can still register. You don't even need a throwaway email address.

And the spam and phishing accounts have become rampant.

Their APIs are still open for anyone to access and get location information of all the Grindr users and spam them. There is nothing stopping anyone. Which is the reason for rise in spam.

<comment><USER13> Yeah using some code I found on github I was able to triangulate anyone's location. Ended up using it to help confirm the identity of someone stalking a friend of mine (we were pretty sure we knew who it was and pinpointing them to the same location we knew he lived confirmed it). That was cool to play with but freaky to see "the grid" on a map laid out bare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dont the chinese own grindr now? is it fully legal to use in china?

<comment><USER16> Read the article to find out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its great for selling drugs at least.

</comment><comment><USER18> Scott Chen should've been fired a long time ago.

Given his actions on these issues _that we know about_ , what about all the stuff we _don 't_ know about?

For all we know, they've had tons of data breaches and covered them up. I wouldn't put it past this guy.

Is it okay for a CTO to give HIV data, photos — probably explicit photos given the nature of the platform — to China's government, without permission of the user? I don't think so.

<comment><USER19> Please don't complain about downvotes in HN comments. It just invites more downvotes, this time for the legit reason that it breaks the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When was Grindr ever for queer people in any way? Gay people, yes. But us queers?

<comment><USER21> Gay people are queer. Queer means everyone who is not straight.

<comment><USER22> On paper maybe but only a fraction of the gay population identifies as queer. Visit any gay bar and ask around. You'll quickly see that not everyone identifies to that label.

If Queer was a fully synonymous with gay, the acronym wouldn't be "LGBTQ+" but simply "LGBT+".

<comment><USER21> For classification purposes, queer is accurate. It's so we can avoid a thousand-letter acronym.

<comment><USER23> There are two different usages here: queer as umbrella term inclusive of LGBT etc, and queer as a specific identity. The usage as identity of its own is intentionally ambiguous/expansive but frequently implies some form of gender fluidity.

The term can also ambiguously imply a particular political stance with regard to the role of gender in society, or more strongly a particular leftist philosophy.

I am gay man, I do not identify as queer, I think that is pretty common. I'm fine mostly with the umbrella term, but also don't identify with enough parts of that politics that I wouldn't use the term myself ever.

The original commenter is right that the apps don't necessarily seem welcoming to the specifically queer identified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> buzzfeed is cancer.

<comment><USER19> Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The trademark "Grindr" does not exactly resonate that goal. Sexual Lexis defines "Grinder" as #4. A man in the act of copulation.

[http://www.sex-lexis.com/Sex-Dictionary/grinder](http://www.sex- lexis.com/Sex-Dictionary/grinder)

<comment><USER26> It used to mean something better than that - a "grinder" was someone in old- school parlance a "wirehead".

That is, they were someone who uses or tries to use technical and/or electronic means to "hack" their brains, for stimulation, improvement (memory or other cognitive function), etc.

A mild version would be something like using a tDCS system (especially if home-brewed). A hardcore version (I do not know of any real-world examples) would be some kind of homebrew brain implant.

Note: Such individuals are not the same as those who implant things like magnets or id chips under their skin for various purposes - though there is overlap of the two communities.

I'm not sure what - if anything - "grinders" call themselves today, or if there isn't any issue at all (part of me suspects the latter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How to make millions: Identify an interesting problem, make a totally random solution and conflate that as being intrinsically linked to your perceptive capabilities of identifying the problem.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you give thoughtful reviews on code you've never seen before? - <AUTHOR> I am frequently tagged on code reviews for large (2000+ lines) changesets to portions of a large, complex codebase that I haven't even seen before, just because it's "frontend" and I am one of the frontend developers, and am supposedly therefore qualified by default to critique the code.
I find this very challenging, and sometimes spend long periods trying to figure out what the context is, what the existing code did, what the goals of the changes were, and how the author went about implementing those goals. This can easily take 3-4 hours or more depending on the code, if I'm saying anything more than "missed a semi-colon there." And often can result in a simple "looks good to me!," leaving me feeling like I wasted an afternoon.
How do you (or your company as a whole) deal with this problem? <comment><USER2> To me, three or four (or sixteen) hours on 2000 lines of code seems like a good business investment because:

1\. A bug can easily consume that many staff hours and create orders of magnitude more losses than the cost of the staff time...and that's just if it is a bug rather than a vulnerability.

2\. The reviewer learns the existing code base.

3\. The reviewer learns the new code.

4\. Peer review is part and parcel of sound engineering practice.

To me, 2000 lines sounds like a large change set and reducing the size and scope of the change set and increasing the frequency of changes might help and is consistent with current industry trends toward process improvement.

My random internet advice is to reframe 'looks good' as evidence that the process of code review is doing what is supposed to do. Not that I particularly like sports analogies, but the sign of a good team defense is what doesn't happen. One of the things that doesn't happen is 'its your fault not mine' when something bad happens.

Good luck.</comment>


Pumped Heat Energy Storage (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/electricity-storage <comment><USER2> This looks cool but I'm a software weenie, not my area. Can anyone who is an expert comment? Any idea of cost?

I'd love a home version of one of these, I'd put in solar and cut the cord to PG&E in a heartbeat.</comment>


Becoming a civic hacker - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rY2jsNAfKc

<comment><USER2> Good presentation. TLDR notes:

Civic Hacking examples:

Aaron Schwartz (reddit cofounder) helped liberate millions of docs from federal court system two years ago. PACER is a database olf all Federal court decisions, which by law are all public domain. However, locked up in PACER, stored in PDF only, and cost $.08/page download. Tried an experiment where they gave free access for two weeks at public libraries. Aaron went to a library, and put a script on a lib computer that downloaded 20 million docs to his own server. PACER folks discovered it, panicked, and sent FBI after Aaron, but he was cleared.

More examples, list of links:

* Sunlightlabs.com - all public domain govt data should be available online, realtime, machine-readable. Open Source + Open Data = Better Govt. We reuse govt data, allow govt to reuse our open source code.

* OpenCongress.org - Rails app, what Congress.gov _should_ be

* FlyOnTime.us - uses historical FAA data to predict flight delays

* QuakeSpotter.org - realtime USGS data to map and anticipate global earthquakes

* StumbleSafely.com - uses DC crime stats to tell which streets to avoid when stumbling home at night from the bar

* Wayfinder.com - augmented reality Android app that points you to nearest NYC subway station

* NationalDataCatalog.com - catalogs all govt datasets and api's

* CodeForAmerica.com - modelled after Teach for America, recruiting devs to work in 5 cities across the country to make open source software using govt data/api

* intridea.com - Creole->English translation app for Haiti relief workers, oil reporting crowdsourcing app for gulf spill

<comment><USER3> FYI, I think you mean <http://www.wayfindermobile.com/> instead of wayfinder.com.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Type-Checker – Type Check Python Values and Complex Data Structures - <AUTHOR> https://robjampar.gitlab.io/type-checker/ <comment><AUTHOR> Published this today, it's the first Python package that I have released.

Could be useful for type checking Python Values that come from decoded JSON requests (for example web API request format validation)

<comment><USER2> I've been using TypeScript type checking in JS recently, and I went back to python and was wanting type checking. It was a weird feeling.

Would there be a way to build this into a plugin for Atom or VS code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you seen/are you using type hinting (available in python 3.5+) Most IDEs have support for type hinting.

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/)

<comment><USER2> I have not! Thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The strange phenomenon of stockpiling 'toilet paper' - <AUTHOR> Are people afraid that they will shit themselves to death? In that case, shouldn't they be buying meds rather than stockpiling for untreated diarrhea? Is this a first world problem? <comment><USER2> I will be camping later this year for 3 months into places where shopping will be impossible. I'm not planning on taking anywhere near what people have been hoarding. Whatever the reason I hope they plan on eating food as well.

A few reasons why some people use a lot of toilet paper: poor diet, food contamination, lack of fiber, lack of exercise and just being overweight. The overall process requires hydration to flow, physical movement and general ability to digest. Even regular walking helps with later bowel movement.

Perhaps these people are revealing more about themselves than they realise?

</comment><comment><USER3> When the SHTF (pun intended) things to be shipped will be ranked in priority according to the cost-effectiveness of its transport.

Obviously, scarce transport will be used to ship high-value, low-physical- volume things rather than low-value, high-physical-volume things.

Gold is the definitive high-value, low-physical-volume item.

Toilet paper is the definitive low-value, high-physical-volume thing. As such it sits very low in the scale of transport priority. Consequently, it becomes one of the first items to run-out when a crisis hits.

However, most families would normally keep several weeks' worth of toilet- paper on hand. So the current run on toilet-paper is, in my humble opinion, a waste of time, angst and money.

</comment><comment><USER4> People fear being stuck at home for weeks, in which case toilet paper may come in handy...

As in the case for all panics, there is a snowball/contagion effect. People see others panic-buying and empty shelves so they also start to buy for fear of lacking.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think people are reading into it deeper than they need to. When the news says things like "people are stockpiling X" then a lot of other people who otherwise don't wear tinfoil hats might be more inclined to stockpile some X for themselves to avoid needing it when the stores have already run out. It's not that they are worried that coronavirus will suddenly make them need so much toilet paper, but that the apparent toilet paper hoarding forces people to stock up before they run out.

In that regard, I see it as a cyclical sheeple problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was literally out of toilet paper, paper towels, and hand soap but couldn't bother buying them since I was exhausted from working 50-60hour weeks. The Coronavirus caused our management to be concerned for our health and this gave us a break to go shopping. So naturally I buy whatever I need or have run out of.

This makes me wonder how many other people in the world are also tired and exhausted.

Thank god for time off.

</comment><comment><USER7> As we say in backpacking, "you pack your fears".

</comment><comment><USER8> Fear of missing out, and by getting items such as toilet roll, pasta and cleaning products people feel like they have some control over the situation.

</comment><comment><USER9> People are just worried it's going to sell out and they'll be left without any. After shelter, water, food, and critical prescriptions, TP is the item that most people anticipate being most miserable without.

Also, the young single men who populate this site often forget that women (who are half the population, remember) need toilet paper _every_ time they go to the bathroom, not just for "number 2".

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a quality of life thing. People think you only need to stockpile food. Obviously, it's better to have food than to starve. But there are also important psychological aspects: if the Internet goes out, what are you going to do all day?

Thus, it's important to stockpile "luxuries": board games, toilet paper, candy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's something that will get used eventually even if they don't need it, so they can justify hoarding it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you sync/put files with/on your Android Device? - <AUTHOR>

It's been a question for a longer time now for me what's the easiest and/or most elegant way to synchronize files with my Android Devices.
For smaller files (and up to 50mb) which I need on my Smartphone as well as on my Tablet, I use dropbox, since it's "fast" (in the meaning that I only need c&p files into my dropbox on pc) and comfortable. The downside is that I'm not the cloud-guy, I'd rather keep my files secret. I also don't like the delay (first upload it, then sync my mobile dropbox, then save it on sdcard).
For bigger files or stuff which I only need on one device, I use FTP Server/Client apps. It's a very fast transmission and things are right in their place on sd card. The downside is that I have to make several steps before: check if my devices are in my wifi network (I usually turn wifi off), open ftp app, activate ftp, open ftp app on pc, drag&drop  files.
I'm still looking for an easier way, i.e. syncing folders/single files on my pc with one of my Android devices (supposing they're in my network already) with less steps.
What's your way, HN? <comment><USER2> I'm always doing it over USB since I find it faster and easier to just plug it. There are tools out there made to synchronize a local folder with a USB folder (for windows there is SyncToy : [http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylan...](http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15155) ) so if you don't mind plugging your phone to sync it this could be a very easy way to sync multiple folders on your device.

</comment><comment><USER3> I send them to myself via email. If the file is to big, I use a cable or sth like dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER4> isn't there wifi-direct for doing this?</comment>


NSA built a NoSQL database - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/AccumuloProposal <comment><USER2> " The core codebase consists of 200,000 lines of code (mainly Java) and 100s of pages of documentation."

100s of pages of documentation is a promising start for any open source project.

<comment><USER3> It depends on what the documentation is. If it's 100 pages of "AbstractClassFactoryClassFactoryFactory is a class that builds AbstractClassFactoryClassFactory objects", then that's useless.

Also explains why it's 200,000 lines of code, for something that should be an order of magnitude smaller.

<comment> contol-m Why do you say that has to be order of magnitude smaller? Other BigTable clones like HBase are atleast 100K lines of code, if not more.

<comment><USER4> A project I'm working on with a similar level of intricacy as BigTable has way less than 100K, and that's in a language more verbose than Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some time ago I met some people from the .gov cyber security, NSA and other offices. The head of the .gov office on cyber security was really nice and invited me to go to dinner with them.

The guy from the NSA was hands down the biggest evil piece of shit I have ever experienced in my life. The way he talked, what he said, and the fact that he was given free reign to commit crimes in his training, which he openly bragged about, made me want to murder the guy right then and there.

I lost any and all respect for what the government and the NSA do.

<comment><USER6> ...because of _one_ guy, who may have been lying through his teeth in an attempt to impress the other people at dinner?

I'm not trying to defend this guy, certainly it's a big problem if he did what he said, but you can't fix something when you paint the whole fucking thing with a brush you picked up looking at one of the uglier parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like Oracle's Label security applied to Hadoop.

It'll be a challenge because Label security slows things down quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Prediction: There will be a backdoor.

<comment><USER9> C'mon Zed, really?

a) The code will be open source - the community can verify the code for anything untoward

b) Given the nature of the product, most implementations are going to be behind a firewall anyway, with the storage layer talking to business logic. Even if there was a backdoor, and I'm sure there isn't, not sure how NSA could get in.

Do you think there's a backdoor in NSA's open-source algorithm for SHA-1 too?

I applaud the government for putting tax dollars back into open source. My only gripe is the lack of transparency as to what this is primarily used for within the NSA ( _to be expected I guess_ ). I generally like to know what I'm helping commit code to go do - although granted you have no idea what other open source projects are used for regardless of whether the lead sponsor is government or private company.

<comment><USER10> If there are plenty of good uses for the code, I'd still want to improve it, even if I find out it's used by the Kitten Krusher 3000.

Unless a "please don't use this code for evil" license is legally binding, that's just the nature of open source.

<comment><USER11> A "please don't use this code for evil" license would, by definition, not be open-source. (Also, such a license would almost certainly be ignored by evildoers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Given that the charter of given agency is certainly not to produce FLOSS, and most certainly not for the pleasure of a foundation which has its worst adversaries as founders (hint: Ben Laurie).

It would be most plausible to have direct access to the build infrastructure, which in turn would give access to ... without the hoops of going through Oracle and IBM or whatever corporate projects.

And if you read the spiegel article (which has to do) with Ben's past-present, it is clear, that the USA is on the "offensive". The surest way to discredit any anonymity provider for whistle-blowers is to discredit the providers. Which has just happened in the last few days (note, that the contents of the 7z itself was already past 0-day, and therefore valueless, as a USA Official noted in the article).

</comment><comment><USER13>
        svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/accumulo

doesn't seem to work

<comment><USER14> It's just a proposal atm. The svn-repo is one of the items they are requesting from ASF

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now we know how they store the data gleaned from wiretaps!

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems that the tags for cells seems to be an important feature of this database, and they also mention it is appropriate for places where "privacy is important". Can someone explain the connection between these two? If I'm understanding right, the labeling makes it easy to address individual cells, but I'm not sure how that enhances privacy.

<comment><USER17> I would imagine that this is similar to other ACL products in which the NSA has previously expressed interest, like SELinux. The "labeling" probably means setting permission levels.

<comment><USER18> "There is a risk that Accumulo will be criticized for not providing adequate security. The access labels in Accumulo do not in themselves provide a complete security solution, but are a mechanism for labeling each piece of data with the authorizations that are necessary to see it."

<comment><USER19> I'm guessing that the idea is to make it easy to enforce permissions at the application layer. You give permissions, and you get only cells that the current query-er is allowed to see. With HBase, it would be pretty easy to put permissions by the row (add a permission column, or column family if it's complicated enough), but if you want some columns in a row to have some permissions and some to have different ones, it would get unpleasant and inefficient fast.

And regardless, all of the filtering would have to occur at the application layer, meaning you'd have to wrap every get/scan to have it do the filtering for you. The Accumulo way also gets you some efficiency because it never even has to transfer the cells that get filtered by the permissions (or even fully read their content from disk, possibly).

Even though each cell isn't separately encrypted to get you true security at the cell level (which would destroy your performance, I'd guess), this seems like a huge win if you want to have permissions at the cell level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Awesome NSA...

So NoSQL approach makes all those skiddies SQLi attacks moot.

Still 200k lines of code = ~2000 bugs...

So, opening it to the public will expose (some) of those, and fixes will be created. and Now, when are you going to show off that really kool advanced A.I. you guys are sitting on!</comment>


Show HN: MightyDash: Create hundreds of personalized sales emails automatically - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
Wanted to share MightyDash - http://mightydash.com
We create AI personalized sales emails for every prospect, allowing you to create hundreds of personalized high-converting emails with a single click. We scrape news articles, linkedin, and other data sources to create these emails. We built this product after spending hours every day sending cold emails :)
Please let me know your thoughts! <comment><USER2> straight to my junk folder even if you really have a pot of gold to give me</comment>


Thousands protest in Berlin against coronavirus restrictions - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/ef70c1af702b89c23e71fcd843e63293 <comment><USER2> And two weeks later .......</comment>


Why are there no STL algorithms that work on whole containers? - <AUTHOR> http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/07/why-no-container-based-algorithms/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised he didn't give an even simpler reason, which is that algorithms were designed to work with pointers as well as objects.

You can't call begin() or end() on a pointer. And although you can figure out the end of a stack-allocated C array, you can't do it for a heap-based array. For example, with "x = new int[30]" and a call like "sort(x, ...)", you may know the size of "x" but the algorithm can't know. The solution is to make algorithms accept a form like "sort(x, x + 30, ...)".

Of course now, with things like std::array in the standard, there are fewer reasons to care about pointers than before.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I haven't used STL algorithms on raw pointers in quite a while, that I didn't think of that reason at all.</comment>


The Turris open router project - <AUTHOR> https://www.turris.cz/en/ <comment><USER2> "When the Turris router detects suspicious traffic, it sends its fingerprint into the project Turris central."

No-profit or not, I'm not sure how many people would like this feature.

<comment><USER3> True, but if source code is available and is open, presumably you could configure it send the finger print to any place you want, right?

<comment><USER2> It is but it seems that all of the security features of their software rely on their "Distributed Adaptive Firewall" which can collect data and push automatic updates to the router, they also can remotely modify the rule set of the FW which runs on the router trough those updates (works like a signature update for any AV or IPS/IDS appliance)

Neither in their site nor in what documentation they have does it appear to say how can you disable data collection and or updates so it seems that to get the designed functionality of this router you have to use their software which collects data and allows them some level of remote access that can manipulate the configuration of the device.

Now I'm not saying that they have any nefarious intentions this isn't any different than a signature update for your AV, or system updates but it just doesn't sound like it's the best approach for a device that is supposed to be an "open" platform which operates like entry-level enterprise grade edge network appliances.

Automatic updates and collection should be on an explicit opt-in premise and not implicitly enabled on all devices, I understand that they need to collect traffic in order to identify new attacks but as far as threats to SOHO/SMB/SME users go that might use their software and are unlikely to be targeted by an overly sophisticated attack (which most likely will not be detected in the first place) running even a small scale traffic collection operation using local chapters of organizations like OWASP and IEEE, academic institutions and willing participants should be more than sufficient.

<comment><USER4> > "Neither in their site nor in what documentation they have does it appear to > say how can you disable data collection"

From the homepage...

"the user is required to commit to using the Turris router as the main internet gateway for his network for a specified period of time, and not to intervene in collection of data."

Doesn't look like they will give you the option to disable data collection.

<comment><USER5> Thats the main feature. Router is designed by non profit organization [https://www.nic.cz/](https://www.nic.cz/) for collecting research data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are some benefits to what the Turris team is promoting, particularly when it comes to guarding against DDoS attacks, but the approach is totally wrong.

Users should be in control of the data that leaves their router. I'd much rather see a 'Turris app' being built for OpenWRT routers, that would allow users could control what information gets sent through it. OpenWRT is effectively just a specialist Linux distro so from a software perspective it wouldn't be too hard to build a distributed firewall app for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Solid hardware specs. Replace the Wifi card with an ac-compatible one and I'll buy it.

Also, a SIM card slot? Me gusta, if it has LTE support - unfortunately it ain't mentioned in the specs.

<comment><USER2> many "enthusiast" home routers have support for cellular USB modems I got a 4G stick plugged into my ASUS AC-97 which provides a WAN fallback if the main WAN connection goes down.

It works pretty damn well and it's seamless as long as you can get a true IPv4 address over your cellular connection and not some piss poor NAT.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, of course, but dongles usually have craptennas which cease working once inside a building...

<comment><USER2> This one wont have any better, pretty much every router I've seen (good ones) with a cellular interface will have a PCB fractal antenna, these work fine for any residential environment if you get a good enough reception on your phone to get LTE bandwidth the dongle will work just fine.

The only routers I've seen with an external antenna are those that are designed to be put in data centers (you coax it to an external source just like you would for GPS antennas for DC grade NTP appliances) or hardened routers mostly for military or heavy industrial use that might be put in a mobile data center (tricked out shipping containers and the like) which is either shielded by design or by circumstance.

The dongle i have gets about 60mbits, my phone gets a bit under 50, and BTW it technically has an external antenna connector (most dongles do btw, it's a trade secret ;) shh) with a micro BNC connector they often used for testing some dongles have it as a feature but virtually all of them (I have yet to see one, I've seen one with unpupulated BNC slot but others from the same make and model had it so i think it was a production goof than a design choice) will either have them built-in on the PCB or an unpopulated slot for one.

Here is an example of an off the shelf 3G dongle go down to the PCB layout you can see the mini/micro BNC connector in the right image in the top left corner.

[http://www.3g-modem- wiki.com/page/ZTE+K3565-Z+(Vodafone)](http://www.3g-modem- wiki.com/page/ZTE+K3565-Z+\(Vodafone\))

So get a dongle strip it out of the casing find the BNC port, get one of these [http://i47.tinypic.com/2rr9av8.jpg](http://i47.tinypic.com/2rr9av8.jpg) and you're golden, if you want to work for your gold star then either cut/mill or my favorite use that soldering iron and carve a hole/slot for you to push the cable through or if you really want to make it skookum 3D print your own casing and you got your external antenna.

P.S. Feel free to name your 1st born after me.

<comment><USER6> I'm thinking about a DLink DWR 512 or similar, but this one is 3G and honestly I don't trust "brand names" any more, all these cheap routers usually come with broken/buggy/backdoored software and next to no documentation, source code etc. and the CPUs tend to be described best by "just enough horsepower to implement a router", but not anything near the requirements for a solid VPN router, or God forbid, a performant media server. Even AVM, a notable exception on the plastic-router front, ships their flagship 7490 with a CPU that isn't capable on delivering more than 10 MByte/s read throughput on the USB3.0 (!) port.

This project at least has open-ness from the beginning, it might shift the market a bit if they ever sell their routers public.

<comment><USER2> Well el-cheapo purpose built cellular routers can have them, it's not common tho the DLINK also don't use a standard BNC connector if i can remember.

If you want to spend 1000$ or so you can build your own dedicated PFsense router, for a bit less you can build an x86 OpenWRT machine or go for one of the oWRT / DD-WRT boards but they aren't cheap either.

If you want to get rid of the software well then find a router with OpenWRT/DD-WRT support many SOHO/CPE routers are supported, it won't help you against bugs or broken software but at least it as backdoor free as it can be.

I actually found that many home routers come with pretty much over kill CPU's these days, their choice of the wireless BBP is often questionable and if it doesn't come on a mini-PCIe or a SODIMM type interface then you are stuck with them.

FRITZ!Box btw has always shit (also crappy/backdoored through their own choice of software) and the USB thing isn't unheard off many USB ports on routers are slow not because of the CPU but because of the USB controller they are using, heck new phones still come with USB 2.0 speeds as far as OTG/PC connection goes even if they come with nifty USB Type C connectors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the look of that DSL modem. It is really hard to find a decent small DSL modem. I use routers (no modem) with OpenWRT on them, so I have to bridge a DSL modem. I could not find a good small cheap DSL modem that offered no extras when I had to replace my modem recently.

<comment><USER2> Look at Actiontec modems, they got a small factor single port DSL modem/router (router part cam be disabled, will support PPOE over the "LAN" port), ZyXEL's "Prestige" line has a few tiny modems as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They are also building a powerful Open Hardware ARM-based router with WiFi and NAS capabilities: [https://omnia.turris.cz/en/](https://omnia.turris.cz/en/)</comment>


Ask HN: How many channels do you need in order to learn like in the Matrix? - <AUTHOR> I just watched Neuralink Progress Update (S2020) and I wondered about the 1024 channels future potential. How many ones do you think you will need (theoretically) in order to learn like in the Matrix? <comment><USER2> It's hard to say. I resonated with at least a couple of things that were said. That Neuralink's biggest challenge is clearly materials science and that a very distant future iteration of this device could be biological instead of digital. (Then again, given the scientific progress maybe in the future there won't be any difference.)

I predict one of the medium-term iterations of this device could be a sensor mesh covering as much of the brain as possible.

I do remain a bit skeptical about its safety for the average human.

Still, I believe Neuralink's efforts are worth it. And at the end of the day, even if nothing large scale comes out of it, at least it has helped thousands of people with various sorts of brain or spinal cord problems.</comment>