New AMD side channel attacks discovered, impacts Zen architecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/new-amd-side-channel-attacks-discovered-impacts-zen-architecture <comment><USER2> I just wanted to say this about Intel vs AMD. Back when Intel was the "underdog" it couldn't compete with Athlon/Opeteron CPUs from AMD with its Pentium IV line, fan boys from both sides continually escalated the armchair warfare on Slashdot and Anandtech forums when Intel finally came out with the Conroe architecture that blew the competition away. I've seen this pendulum swing from one side to the other and back. Putting Intel marketing (awful) and AMD's marketing (awful again...), and their fan bases (toxic) aside, can we acknowledge the fact that working on a computer architecture is an extraordinarily complex task and that requires brilliant people all working together? I'll defer this fascinating topic, which most software engineers and tech enthusiasts are completely and utterly unaware of, to this talk by the legendary chip designer (x86 spec coauthor, A4/A5/Zen/Tesla AI ASIC architect) - Jim Keller and his interview with Lex Fridman: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA)

Designing & manufacturing computer chips is hard af, having worked in semiconductor manufacturing for over 12 years (primarily on the backend side of the Fab).

Edit: Redacting some specifics

<comment><USER3> I think people also need to accept the fact we're never going to engineer a solution to human stupidity. If our society doesn't raise people to be good users, no amount of hardening will stop systems from being compromised.

<comment><USER4> Like what?

I've written in-depth about why "don't click untrusted links" is unhelpful: see [https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22](https://xmppwocky.net/blog.py?page=22)

<comment><USER5> That domain isn't resolving.

<comment><USER6> It is also and untusted link, so I feel could only be preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER5> Right. Heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AMD responds here [https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/product- security](https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/product-security)

> We are aware of a new white paper that claims potential security exploits in > AMD CPUs, whereby a malicious actor could manipulate a cache-related feature > to potentially transmit user data in an unintended way. The researchers then > pair this data path with known and mitigated software or speculative > execution side channel vulnerabilities. AMD believes these are not new > speculation-based attacks.

> AMD continues to recommend the following best practices to help mitigate > against side-channel issues:

> Keeping your operating system up-to-date by operating at the latest version > revisions of platform software and firmware, which include existing > mitigations for speculation-based vulnerabilities > Following secure coding > methodologies Implementing the latest patched versions of critical > libraries, including those susceptible to side channel attacks Utilizing > safe computer practices and running antivirus software

<comment><USER8> This is legal/PR mumbo jumbo. Nowhere in that statement does AMD say they have patched this. instead, the make vague reference to previously-patched vulnerabilities that are NOT the vuln in question.

Also, they say they 'believe' it isn't new, and that word is used for a reason - it isn't legally binding. It is a lot different than saying "It isn't new."

Finally, the advice they give is akin to giving general advice for a Ford vehicle: "Change the oil every 3500 miles."

Generalized statements that mean nothing.

This looks to be an intentionally obfuscated response.

<comment><USER9> AMD does not "patch" Spectre. Spectre has to be patched by developers, who execute untrusted code within the trusted address space (e.g. browser and OS developers). I am taking AMD press release to mean, that this "attack" — note how researchers consistently use this word instead of "vulnerability" — is simply proof-of-concept for well known Spectre flaws or possibly even expected behavior of the CPU cache (in non-SMT case).

Many Spectre-type flaws are essentially about an OS process reading/writing it's own memory — which it is naturally expected to have access to. Of course, browser developers weren't prepared for that, but they also were not prepared for gzip-bombs...

I assume, that mitigations [1] suggested by AMD in 2018 are sufficient to protect against this (and all other) Spectre flavors on AMD CPUs, in which case there is really nothing new going on here.

1: [https://developer.amd.com/wp- content/resources/90343-B_Softw...](https://developer.amd.com/wp- content/resources/90343-B_SoftwareTechniquesforManagingSpeculation_WP_7-18Update_FNL.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure the issue with Spectre/Meltdown is about an OS process reading _other_ processes' (or kernel) memory. These are fundamentally chip issues, not developer issues.

See [https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/02/escaping- chro...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/02/escaping-chrome- sandbox-with-ridl.html).

<comment><USER9> No, Spectre is always about reading your own memory. Your link is about exploiting MDS aka Zombieload — a separate hyper-threading vulnerability, specific to Intel CPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The timing of this vulnerability release is hilarious. AMD had their financial analyst conference on Thursday afternoon. The stock rallied after market hours and ended positive on Friday while everything else tanked along with the US economy. That's how good of a bet AMD is right now.

These news are Intel sponsored. [https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/12360799707298652...](https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/1236079970729865216)

Also the release does not quality as a new vulnerability vector like Spectre, just a new attack against a previously mitigated vulnerability. It honestly looks to me like anattempt to stop the AMD momentum.

FD: The fastest processor I own is a 16 core Xeon, and is great. However, I have invested in AMD stock over the last year. I have a lot of respect for Intel engineering, but the AMD roadmap just looks stronger between now and 2022.

<comment><USER12> Someone from the research group says they've been funded by Intel for 2 years, and have also published papers involving 10 Intel vulnerabilities during that time.

[https://twitter.com/lavados/status/1236088594584014848?s=19](https://twitter.com/lavados/status/1236088594584014848?s=19)

<comment><USER11> Fair enough. The timing is still just perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The researchers also noted that unlike the Spectre and Meltdown > vulnerabilities, the Take A Way exploits only leak a "few bits of metadata," > as opposed to providing full access to data (example of Meltdown exploit > here).

Not good and leaked information about the manner in which a process is accessing memory is probably useful to some attacker out there, but thankfully it's not even in the same class as the actual memory content disclosure vulnerabilities..

</comment><comment><USER14> Different thread, about the paper: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22514099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22514099)

</comment><comment><USER15> quick link [https://mlq.me/download/takeaway.pdf](https://mlq.me/download/takeaway.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> It goes as I expected. As AMD gains more popularity and spotlight, more researchers will probe their chips and more bugs will be uncovered. The only reason Intel got so many vulnerabilities is their market position.

<comment><USER17> Do you have anything concrete to back up such a soft claim?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting that the hundreds of AMD fans that seem to appear and gloat in every similar Intel thread aren't present.

<comment><USER19> Lol, "fans". This is computer architecture design, not the NFL. We judge the quality of the product, not jump on bandwagons (or we SHOULD). Both Intel and AMD do amazing, extraordinarily complicated and difficult work, and we all benefit from it, at the price of making those companies wealthy. I'm very glad those two companies have different products, different approaches to computer design. It gives us room to maneuver and compare. For a time, Intel did better work. Now AMD is pushing the boundaries. Being a fanperson about them is just ridiculous. They make each other better by having differing approaches. Please don't encourage bandwagonism, or introduce it as a topic. It makes us all look just a little bit dumber, and it's an overused rhetorical tactic.

<comment><USER20> I think confirmation bias has a lot to do with it. Some people stress that they have invested in the "right" product.

They need to feel justified in their choice and it drives these crazy positions on CPU/GPU/Motherboard vendor.

I'm just glad we still have multiple viable vendors to choose from.

<comment><USER21> FYI that's choice-supportive bias, not confirmation bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried to read this 4 times. I really did.

But I couldn't get past "Take A Way".

Take... A... Way... Take a way. Take exactly one way. A way to take. I have three ways, you get to take one. Need a way? Take a way! Feel free to take a way from the way jar. Life finds a way... and then takes it.

<comment><USER23> It's British for takeout, carry-out, or whatever you want to call restaurant food you pick up yourself.

<comment><USER12> Not quite - it's "take away", not "take a way" as used in the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Trouble sleeping? Maybe it's your iPad  - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/13/sleep.gadgets.ipad/index.html?hpt=C1 <comment><USER2> For your desktop/laptop, F.lux adjusts your screen color in the evening: <http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>

(added bonus: gets rid of the eerie blue glow when you Skype at night)

<comment><USER3> I started using this at the recommendation of HN. It has literally been lifechanging for me. I now get up willingly and into productive mode before 9 AM better than 3 days a week, which is approximately how many days I willingly accomplished that between middle school and this summer.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your comment Patrick! I know from your comments here that you wouldn't take any product and recommend it lightly so I took your word for it and just installed it.

Well, this is a weird transition for now! My screen is all yellow-ish and it doesn't feel quite right. I'll get used to it but at first, this is surprising.

edit: I should add that, though it does look and feel odd for now, it looks softer on the eyes already. It also seems to accentuate the difference of brightness depending on the angle of the screen on my MacBook. So if I type on my lap, my laptop bounces a bit and the variation in brightness is more noticeable.

<comment><USER3> I literally cannot tell it is running anymore, particularly for days where I am on the computer continuously. Sometimes if I turn on the machine for the first time late the flash of yellow reminds me this was not the way it always worked, but that is about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems to me this was a rather unscientific experiment. If I turned off everything that makes light in my house, of course I'm going to go to sleep at 9 because there isn't anything to do except sleep. I also find it funny that the result was him being in a better mood as apposed to when he stayed up late and didn't sleep as much. du.

<comment><USER6> At the same time though, theres so much I could get done from getting home till bed time that someone who turns everything else won't be able to.

I find morning people struggle with the idea sometimes that you can naturally wake up around midday or in the afternoon and be even more productive that someone rising with the sun. In the end we all need sleep, when we get it though isn't as important to productivity as some think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article is from May 2010. It mentions the iPad because it was brand new at that point in time.

</comment><comment><USER8> I covered this recently on my blog:

Become a morning person. How to end insomnia for $520.99 <http://bit.ly/9PjsHW>

LowBlueLights.com just made an ipad filter that fits over the ipad screen and blocks the blue light. <http://bit.ly/b63zGi>

Remember, you have to both block blue light at night and get bright light in the morning.

My new favorite product for getting bright light in the morning is the Phillips goLITE blu. <http://bit.ly/9NXfeX>

It's good to travel with and can be set to turn on before the audible alarm goes on, thus allowing you to wake up more naturally.

<comment><USER9> Can you unshorten those links so people can see the ultimate destinations (and affiliate links) before clicking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to wonder to what degree this sort of thing mistakes specific people's learned adaptation to specific light patterns rather than innate human traits.

As someone who has been spending time on computers into various hours of the morning since he was in middle school, staring into an LCD just before bed is the most natural thing in the world, and I sleep a solid 8 hours a night.

<comment><USER11> I sleep a solid 8-9 hours a night, but I have a lot of trouble with when that sleep happens. I've been desperately trying to get my schedule on a more normal natural light schedule... without much luck really.

There is at least some evidence that melatonin issues with my 2AM-10AM sleep schedule affect energy and overall health in a pretty significant way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> F.lux was written by a friend of mine from school, who is an awesome hacker and was one of the cofounders of Picasa (acquired by google)

</comment><comment><USER13> The article needs to be a little clearer. It's not just any light- it's blue light, specifically.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a F.lux user, it dramatically improved my life.

With that frame of reference, I've had no sleep issues from my iPad, which I use to read before bed most nights. In fact, I read in lower light using the ipad than with a conventional book and lamp on the nightstand.

The two main apps I use are iBooks and the Kindle app. Both apps have controls for turning text white-on-black, and controlling the brightness. At night, I read exclusively white-on-black at low brightness.

Additionally, for apps that don't support inverted text, you can bind hitting home three times to invert the colors. Its at Settings -> General -> Triple- click home.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's an interesting TED Talk about sleep cycles, and the impact of sleep on waking alertness.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/jessa_gamble_how_to_sleep.html>

<comment><USER16> I watched this the other day and wished that her talk was WAY longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought yellow filter that clips to my glasses since I find it kind of hard to get individual filters for all possible devices. Also, melatonin helps.

Once I started exercising regularly, my sleep improved dramatically, so I rarely use filter or melatonin anymore.

</comment><comment><USER18> What effect does a regular CFC-powered lamp have? Is it all light?

<comment><USER13> Find out what the spectral components are. Blue light is the real offender at work.

I suspect CFC's are worse than incandescents though. CFC light is a much harsher white, and I'm pretty sure that's a sign of significant blue components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Remember, the bed is for sleep and sex only. Don't read in bed!

<comment><USER20> Why is sex special?

<comment><USER19> It's just a phrase that doctors tend to say in relation to good sleep habits and avoiding insomnia. I think the point is to do with not conditioning your brain to stay awake and focused once you get into bed (as reading or watching TV might do). Also I don't imagine a doctor is going to tell you not to have sex in a bed.</comment></comment></comment>


Why does HTML think "chucknorris" is a color? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911/why-does-html-think-chucknorris-is-a-color

<comment><USER2> Because Chuck Norris invented the entire spectrum of visible light. Except pink. The color value "tomcruise" produces a particularly girly shade of pink.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, so is this a browser easter egg or just a result of parsing out non-hex characters?

<comment><USER4> non-hex. #chuckn falls back to #c00c00

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chuck->angry->blood->red. Not sure why this was even a question.</comment>


Too much finance is bad for the economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/finance-sector-and-growth <comment><USER2> Summary:

> In short, the finance sector lures away high-skilled workers from other > industries. The finance sector then lends the money to businesses, but tends > to favour those firms that have collateral they can pledge against the loan. > This usually means builders and property developers. Businessmen are lured > into this sector rather than into riskier projects that require high R&D > spending and have less collateral to pledge.

> A property boom then develops. But property is not a sector marked by high > productivity growth; it can lead to the misallocation of capital in the form > of empty Miami condos or Spanish apartments.

> R&D-intensive industries - aircraft, computing and the like - will be > disproportionately harmed when the financial sector grows quickly. By > contrast, industries such as textiles or iron and steel, which have low R&D > intensity, should not be adversely affected

<comment><USER3> _In short, the finance sector lures away high-skilled workers from other industries_

LOL. When other industries aren't run by chinless public schoolboys where engineers are second class citizens, call me.

<comment><USER4> What is meant by "public schoolboys" exactly? I'm struggling to grok the intended message.

<comment><USER5> I believe he is saying it's run by people of weak moral fiber and character.

<comment><USER6> In England Public School is where the "upper class" send their children for a private education. Chinless wonders is a derogatory term for less than intelligent children from those schools (in-breeding amounget limited aristocratic gene pool lead UK to have royalty with unusually small jaw lines for a while) And jobs in finance were considered till mid century to be available only to those people who knew each other, went to the same schools and used same networks.

In short - an industry run by in-bred, unintelligent, privately educated with a small and elite job network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of a story.

One of my local universities (top 3 in the country) had a chemistry lab competition and invited high schools from local cities to participate. My younger sister was selected to be part of her school's team.

So she went and won the competition. The deen of science was so impressed by her performance that after the reward ceremony he invited her to enrol in the science program. She replied no and that she was already accepted into the university's school of business (like most of her overachieving classmates).

According to my sister, the deen was both taken aback and looked sad at the same time. So here's an anecdote to you.

<comment><USER8> In a somewhat related issue, many of these financial firms will recruit top science & engineering talent at competitive universities. In some sense, it would have been better if these people had just studied finance to begin with since that would have opened a spot for someone who really wanted to practice science and engineering as a profession.

<comment><USER9> While what you say is true, I would draw a different conclusion. It seems more likely that the students would prefer working in a field closer to what they studied, but the lack of positions means they had to look elsewhere. Finance knows they can find people with highly transferable skills in sci/engineering at competitive schools, so the brain drain is really the fault of the job market in the sciences and engineering.

Of course you can still look at it as finance not investing in long-term R&D such as in science and engineering directly causing this brain-exodus (as opposed to brain drain), so it's still finance's fault!

<comment><USER10> That's like a friend of mine with a math degree. He didn't want to work in finance, but despite his best efforts he could not find anyone offering him a job where he would get to use his degree. So he ended up in finance after all and gets paid lots of money and works on interesting math problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm an engineer. I could go into a high-risk career trying to cure cancer, or I could flip houses.

By my (admittedly rough and speculative) math, I'd make more money doing the second.

This has nothing to do with finance and everything to do with how capitalism privileges owners. Just because I _can_ do something (e.g. cure cancer) doesn't mean I _should_ do it out of some regard for the "public good", requiring great sacrifice, work, stress, and low pay, on my part. I might think differently if I got paid 1 cent for everyone who used my cancer drug, but that's just not how things work today.

<comment><USER12> I hate it when people complain about bright kids going into finance instead of STEM. My brother went to an Ivy and majored in physics. He asked me sometime junior year what he should do with his life. He'd already worked in research labs on nanotech, and was seriously considering getting a PhD. I told him to apply for finance and consulting jobs instead. He's glad he went into finance. He gets a ton of responsibility and respect at work, instead of getting dumped on by the hierarchy of a research lab or academic department. And he makes more two years out than PhDs at the peak of their career.

Our society rewards those who own or help manage capital, and reserves the best healthcare, education, and housing for those with the most money. At the same time, our industries are structured so that scientists and engineers give up control of the technologies that create the capital in the first place. Entrepreneurship as practiced in Silicon Valley offers a little bit of reprieve from this, but just a little, and who knows how long it will last. In light of all this, I view telling kids to go into science or engineering similarly to telling kids to go pursue theater or art. If it's your burning passion, go ahead, but I don't consider it the most rational choice.

<comment><USER13> The complaints are not necessarily directed at individual people who rationally choose careers in finance over other vocations, given the system they live in. The complaints are to a large extent over the fact that our society has been set up this way, with the goal of perhaps trying to change that so that people would feel less incentive/need to abandon science, mathematics, etc., for finance (in multiple senses!).

<comment><USER14> It hasn't really been _set up_ this way. It didn't even evolve to be this way. It's ultimately a law of nature: ownership of capital yields exponential growth. The more you start with, the faster you grow. Most other sorts of vocations yield linear growth.

<comment><USER15> A law of nature? Are you joking?

It absolutely _has_ been set up this way, after having been set up in the _opposite_ way for quite a while.

 _> Historically, some cultures (e.g., Christianity in much of Medieval Europe, and Islam in many parts of the world today) have regarded charging any interest for loans as sinful._

 _> The pivotal change in the English-speaking world seems to have come with lawful rights to charge interest on lent money,particularly the 1545 Act, "An Act Against Usurie" (37 H. viii 9) of King Henry VIII of England._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury)

<comment><USER14> Usury and debtor's prisons, like slavery, died out not because they were morally reprehensible but because they gave way to more efficient means of achieving growth. Don't kid yourself.

<comment><USER15> _> Usury and debtor's prisons, like slavery, died out not because they were morally reprehensible but because they gave way to more efficient means of achieving growth. Don't kid yourself._

The word "usury" means either the practice of making unethical loans, or simply charging any interest for loans. It should be clear that neither form of usury has died out — even if you consider regular loans ethical, surely you've heard of "payday loans"?

<comment><USER14> Neither has slavery but both ills are greatly diminished from their peak. It is now more profitable to do other things (lend at reasonable rates, pay wages) due to a variety of factors (mostly technology).

<comment><USER15> You objected to the assertion that society has been set up to reward ownership of capital. You somehow fail to acknowledge that when lending at interest is disallowed, owning capital does not automatically lead to accumulating more capital — a process which you called "a law of nature", and which is clearly anything but.

The question is not whether reasonable interest rates are more profitable than others, but rather — whether society would be better off if lending at interest was disallowed altogether. I submit that it would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A huge part of the problem is where modern finance goes, i.e. what it finances, and why.

The traditional definition of a bank as a middleman between savers and businesses is very, very wrong.

Almost all bank financing is directed at existing assets, mainly real estate, and that financing is unconstrained by deposits.

Therefore it is mainly speculative and parasitic, rather than investment- oriented and productive. It is also self-reinforcing in that finance drives up prices which become collateral for more finance... and so on.

Hence... inequality, stagnation, and the rest.

Adair Turner gives a good overview here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVQdeb0EdWA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVQdeb0EdWA)

</comment><comment><USER17> Basically bankers are like lawyers, gardeners, cooks, doctors, pool cleaners etc: service jobs to help other people get things done. When you elevate the sector to have implicit value you get a terrible distortion.

<comment><USER2> I agree with a caveat. In the grand scheme of things everything is a service to help others get things done (there is no final all important job) and there needs to be a balance.

<comment><USER18> Isn't there a sense in which the jobs that serve the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy _are_ the final all-important ones.

If we don't have food production, heat production and shelter production, the lack of financiers or telephone sanitizers is going to pale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The US finance industry uses self-generated work which generates commissions.

One of the drivers behind this is the tax preference for debt over dividends. There's been a trillion dollars worth of stock buybacks since 2008, an action taken mostly to reduce taxes. That generates work for Wall Street, and wealth for those "near the money", working on various deals.

Then there are "hedge funds". Hedge funds, as a class, underperform the market, partly because of their excessive fees. The traditional hedge fund fee is "2 and 20", or 2% of the amount invested each year plus 20% of gains. This, too, is self-generated activity of Wall Street.

Then there are Exchange Traded Funds. Regular mutual funds are priced once a day, after the market closes. ETFs are constantly traded, generating commissions. ETFs have some tax advantages over regular mutual funds, and are thus another exploit of a flaw in tax policy. They can also be shorted and optioned, which are zero-sum operations which do nothing for the economy.

Then there's high-frequency trading, which is a form of front-running. This skims a tiny percentage off of other transactions.

None of this contributes to capital formation, and most of it was illegal a few decades ago.

<comment><USER20> I think you're taking an overly pessimistic view on a number of things. Both volatility and bid-ask spreads are down considerably since the growth of high- frequency trading.

Buybacks in general are bad for everyone involved because they're often done when valuations are high, however, they can be beneficial to shareholders when valuations are low.

Shorting helps facilitate price discovery and options are used to protect against large downside risks.

> Hedge funds, as a class, underperform the market, partly because of their > excessive fees.

You're thinking of mutual funds. Hedge funds as a class do outperform the market, even after fees.

<comment><USER21> Hedge funds do indeed underperform the market: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-13/hedge-funds- underpe...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-13/hedge-funds-underperform- sp-5th-year-row)

Same with mutual funds. With both mutual funds and hedge funds, investors are paying a ton of money for nonexistent skill.

<comment><USER20> You chose a five year period of underperformance when the markets are doing extraordinarily well. On the whole HF returns are higher than the market by about 6%. And in particular during the financial crisis hedge funds did better than the market as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No paywall via Google: [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Warning:+too+much+finance...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Warning:+too+much+finance+is+bad+for+the+economy%22)

<comment><USER23> Don't you mean [https://www.bis.org/publ/work490.htm](https://www.bis.org/publ/work490.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The economist article makes it seem like there's a lot of rigorous empirical evidence behind this result, but it is a fundamentally theoretical result.

Basically, the authors come up with a toy model that, given a long list of assumptions, produces the reported result.

They then test these results by running a simple cross-country regression with no time dimension and a sample size of around 300.

I don't place much stock in these kinds of studies. Empirically speaking, there are just too many confounds in cross-country studies for them to be convincing. Theoretically speaking, the assumptions are highly unrealistic for all the reasons that have been said before. With a little bit of ingenuity, these models can be made to say just about anything.

<comment><USER25> I have only looked at a specific field, but I have noticed similar issues with all the model-based studies I've seen. I don't even bother considering papers that don't involve empirical data and analysis, because at least then they have some solid tie to reality. (Assuming their data, assumptions and hypotheses are reasonable, of course.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> No, a large financial sector is an _indicator_ of inefficiencies elsewhere. Else, there wouldn't be a reason to pay middlemen to solve said inefficiencies.

<comment><USER27> The financial sector does a lot more than play middle man (in fact arbitrage is so quickly found these days its a hard to make much money doing this anymore)

Primarily, they invest. Putting money into places that need capital and will likely grow.

<comment><USER28> Holding a position for a few days, hours, minutes, or seconds is not investing. It's gambling.

<comment><USER27> The financial sector holds things on many different timescales, not just minutes or hours. Sometimes for decades if its profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> True story coming up.

I did my undergrad/master's at Oxford. The course title was "Engineering, Economics, and Management". Supposedly it was roughly 2/3rds of the Engineering course, and 2/3 of the "Economics and Management" course, but when you put it all together it seemed like 3/4 Engineering.

In the last year, there was a 6-month placement, which you were to use as experience to write a thesis. You could choose from anything that fit under any of the three rubrics (Eng, Econ, Mgt), and someone would find you an appropriate advisor, ie a prof from the Engineering School, the Econ department, or the Business school.

The kind of companies we got to show up were mainly banks. There was the occasional engineering company as well as a few household industrials.

I didn't get any of the coveted bank jobs. I did manage to show up very late (thank you Great Western railways) to an engineering interview, and got offered the job anyway. The money on offer was £11K/year, which didn't seem enticing at all, even for an internship. I ended up taking a marketing job at a major chip manufacturer, which was happy to pay 15K. So I rented a place in this little industrial town and got to work on powerpoint for half a year. (I should say I had a great social life, and I know friends who are still there 13 years later.)

So of course one day, I go to visit a coursemate who did manage to get a bank job, at a place that would later be called the giant vampire squid (not sure I agree with the epithet). So, what does he get? £26K a year. Free apartment within walking distance of work, on the South Bank. Gym and pool included. That one bedroom apartment, at that time, was probably 250/week. So basically he's making £38/year.

It's little wonder people want to work in finance when the numbers are that skewed.

How many of my ~30 EEM coursemates went into engineering? I can think of one. Just about everyone else went into finance.

I remember meeting a guy early on who'd started in Engineering. I asked him why he'd quit. He said "One day, I accidentally saw what my manager was making".

Is it a brain drain? Quite possibly. A lot of the brains in finance are fighting a zero sum game with each other. How can I price this derivative a little more smartly than the next guy? How do I grab the arb before another guy does it? How do I get a guy to trade with me and not someone else? How do I get my firm's name on this tombstone?

<comment><USER30> Interesting you mention the squid, things aren't what they used to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a good place if you are rich and well-connected already, and if you join the front office, you will probably fit right in. But if you are a programmer, well, they are building the biggest single office in India of any American company with space for 9,000 people. Your job will probably be next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > In short, the finance sector lures away high-skilled workers from other > industries. The finance sector then lends the money to businesses, but tends > to favour those firms that have collateral they can pledge against the loan. > This usually means builders and property developers. Businessmen are lured > into this sector rather than into riskier projects that require high R&D > spending and have less collateral to pledge.

The article doesn't explain the linkage. Why would poaching of high-skilled workers lead to investment in companies with collateral? Or, are they just saying that whenever finance becomes prominent it attempts to drive out risk ruthlessly?

<comment><USER32> I don't think they are saying that luring skilled workers _leads_ to lending to easily collateralizable businesses. Just positing that those two separate statements are true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's probably a crossover point when the finance sector's focus shifts from efficiently allocating capital to extracting economic rent from financial activity

</comment><comment><USER34> Its subsidizing the risks that are bad for the economy.

If you're taking a lot of risk and it blows up in your face, you SHOULD lose your shirt.

The people who are NOT involved in your decision should NOT be made to pay.

People can only learn from mistakes if behavior and outcomes are tightly coupled, not if all the outcomes happen to other people and you start getting all your bonuses next year like nothing ever happened.

</comment><comment><USER35> Talking about thresholds like:

>The 2012 paper suggests that when private sector debt passes 100% of GDP, that point is reached. Another way of looking at the same topic is the proportion of workers employed by the finance sector. Once that proportion passes 3.9%, the effect on productivity growth turns negative.

Does not make any sense. Each economy is different, and the available data is probably not enough to give such accurate numbers.

>Ireland and Spain are cases in point. During the five years beginning 2005, Irish and Spanish financial sector employment grew at an average annual rate of 4.1% and 1.4% respectively; output per worker fell by 2.7% and 1.4% a year over the same period.

Using Spain as an example for "output per worker" is not a very good idea, they somehow broke productivity growth in 1994 and it's been stucked since then [1].

Productivity is affected by many factors, so conducting a ceteris paribus analysis is very complicated if not impossible. There is a really interesting book written by a journalist about productivity: The power of productivity [2]

[1] [http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...](http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2006$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=rcTO3doih5lvJCjgLSvlajA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=536;dataMax=64150$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=i211_t001980,,,,;i105_t001980,,,),

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Productivity-Poverty- Stabili...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Productivity-Poverty- Stability/dp/0226476987)

</comment><comment><USER36> The result can be seen in Great Britain:

Former British prime minister Thatcher ("Iron Lady") decided, that the future is in the service sector. Also the most lucrative service sector was the finance sector. So it was fostered to a big extend and the finance sector of London is one of if not the biggest industries of GB.

In fact, it is all that is left of the former Empire. All other industries of GB are not competitive any more. Car industry is not and many of the well known car brands are already sold to other car corporations. Mini belongs to BMW, so does the renowned "Rolls-Royce" brand, Rover was sold and sold again, now belonging to Tata.

The concentration to the finance sector did the other industries of the British isle not well. All what is left, is finance and so Britain is struggling and fighting every time, when the EU wants to regulate the finance sector.

They are captives of their own system.

</comment><comment><USER37> The lack of regulation is more of a concern than the human resource allocation or event the debt to GDP ratio.

The derivatives market is valued over $700 trillion dollars (forbes, 2013 est.), while the GDP of the world is S$74.31 trillion (2013). There's also options and swaps markets. While their benefit is dubious, deregulation has allowed these markets to ballon to ridiculous levels.

These markets keep investment capital away from more beneficial investments, such as tech firms, infrastructure and research and development. These are things we desperately need investment in. At the same time the property market doesn't need more investment, and is devastating if speculation is allowed to occur.

<comment><USER38> The derivatives market IS NOT valued at over $700T. That represents the gross notional of all derivatives, but most of those trades have equivalent offsetting positions. Gross notionals are virtually meaningless.

<comment><USER39> Until there is a flaw in the offsetting positions and everything collapses in a heap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > ONE of the biggest political issues in recent years has been that Wall > Street has done better than Main Street. That is not just a populist slogan.

The economist behind a paywall is like an irony overload for me lately. This time using a populist title and introduction paragraph is all I see.

</comment><comment><USER41> Would love to see the numbers on brain drain from the technical fields to finance. Any takers?

<comment><USER20> I'd be interested in this as well. My impression is that it isn't as severe as many believe and the phenomena is equally prevalent in tech as well (i.e. people doing startups who would otherwise do something more productive).

From what I've observed the people going into finance are a separate class of people from those who want to be doing research.

A further issue is that the quality of life for PhDs is low. Something like 1% of PhDs end up with tenure track positions and many are stuck doing years of postdoc work. It's easy to blame finance, but there are problems with other parts of our society that are driving peoples actions as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [http://www.lietaer.com/2010/03/the-worgl- experiment/](http://www.lietaer.com/2010/03/the-worgl-experiment/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Here's an alternative theory: Lower productivity in an economy causes a larger finance industry, not the other way around.

The financial industry is the "marketplace" where people (supposedly) figure out the best places to deploy capital when the decision is not otherwise clear, or access to such investments is difficult, or the capital holder does not have expertise or want to learn to expertise to deploy the total amount successfully. If that's true (and I'm not sure it is but that's the sales pitch anyways), the finance sector grows as productivity in other industries decreases, because then (a) the decision to put capital into other industries becomes less and less clear and (b) the financial services therefore become more valuable.

(If you want to change this, you need to modify the incentives to either (a) make the finance sector less appealing, (b) make other industries more appealing or (c) both - but that's another issue altogether)

(The biggest problem with the theory above is of course that prices and returns are often a function of things other than actual productivity and instead rely on future potential productivity, which is another word for speculation, and so there's a huge opportunity to manipulate the markets which happens all that time, resulting in people making $$ without actually being more productive)

For the HN audience, the good/interesting thing is that we are currently in a market where tech is one of the industries with (relatively) high productivity (for extreme example, see WhatsApp, Instagram, etc., where very few individuals created very much value), and therefore you see interesting trends: more institutional money is pouring into the market which leads to more money competing for fewer start-ups which leads to higher valuations.

See: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/venture-capital-fundraising- jump...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/venture-capital-fundraising- jumped-62-in-2014-1421039104)

On a human capital level, talent is also moving (relative to historical trends) from finance to tech, and on an anecdotal level, the number of former bankers turned MBAs turned Product Managers has been pretty astounding to me - fair amount of press addressing the issue as well:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mbas-abandon-wall-street- for-s...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mbas-abandon-wall-street-for-silicon- valley-140238593.html) [http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/22/investing/wall-street- silico...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/22/investing/wall-street-silicon- valley-talent/)

<comment><USER43> (Another theory as to why financial services become larger as economies develop: as markets advance and become more and more sophisticated and fluid, capital gets rapidly deployed in industries where productivity is high such that the prices in such industries get driven up quickly and the ROI lowers, rendering the productivity less financially rewarding, UNLESS you are the first one there, which is another selling point of the finance industry (aka. finance will find the deal and get their first) - really another topic though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The problem economists face is the delusion that the economy would be better off if they were put in charge of it. -- my father (an economist)

</comment><comment><USER45> Industry brain drain. 3.9% vampirism is survivable. More than that and we start to play risk-mania games with the point of no return.

</comment><comment><USER46> Meh. What do we need economic growth for anyway? Producing and throwing away another hundred million tons of food every year? New phones every six months or once a quarter? A third car? More shoes? We have enough of everything and much more, there is absolutely no need to grow western economies any further.

<comment><USER47> Why is the current standard of living the ideal? Why not 10 years ago, or 10 years into the future? How about 20? 30?

<comment><USER46> I don't think that the current standard of living is ideal and I really hope it will improve a lot. But I don't see that improving the standard of living requires economic growth, I think change will do.

<comment><USER48> This is a common misconception about economic growth. Economic growth often means more physical stuff, but there is by no means a fixed link between the two. Higher quality products built out of the same amount of physical stuff have a higher price, for example, so if we somehow transitioned the economy in that direction, there would be economic growth - and a corresponding increase in the standard of living - without pushing environmental concerns, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It works just fine. Well until there is a loss of confidence anyway.

</comment><comment><USER50> there is also the interesting coordination game by which systemic risk is ignored.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Too much finance is bad for the economy. Please pay us to hear our reasoning."

<comment><USER52> "Or, don't pay us and get used to getting your news/op-eds in GIF form through Buzzfeed"

What would you rather have?

<comment><USER53> It's never quite that extreme. I've yet to see a respected publisher devolve into GIF-delivered content out of financial constraints.

That said, there are plenty of free publications with quality writing. Paying for an article hardly correlates with its excellence.

<comment><USER10> _I 've yet to see a respected publisher devolve into GIF-delivered content out of financial constraints._

Check in with The New Republic in a year or so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Love - A Proceduraly Generated 1 Man Made MMO - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1164

<comment><USER2> Recent games with large amounts of procedurally generated content (like GTA: San Andreas and Just Cause) generally have actual established locations where important action takes place (missions and so forth), and that's pretty much all you remember from the game. Those are the parts where the human effort goes into and you notice it. The procedurally generated stuff feels like the game equivalent of flyover country. Just Cause is so big that you literally fly over it and don't notice it.

Of course, in sandbox games where you have weapons, running around blowing random stuff up is fun for quite a while.

I hope this guy's game feels like a game (a product) rather than a tech demo.

<comment><USER3> Obvious fix: procedurally generated plotlines to match the procedurally generated terrain. Bit hard (generate races with mutations and factions and famous individuals of those factions and historical events involving those individuals and factions, then breed some family lines and run the economics to force feudalism, industrialism, capitalism and so on to spread across the world as it's explored and make some stereotypes of how each part of the world sees each other part, then create some famous bits of media using a combination of the Hero's Journey framework or some soap opera cliches and said stereotypes &c &c &ccc) but only on the level that, say, Spore is hard. Once it's done it could probably be used with just minor tweaks in thousands of games, though; perhaps even changing the writing profession to be a sort of make-up artist for such story skeletons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting how he wants to grow the player base organically rather than seek a publisher. Something tells me that in the end he will go for the latter.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do for DQM? - <AUTHOR> Hey folks,
Curious to know how/what everyone does for data quality management if at all? e.g. we are doing streamed and batched data through multiple systems and databases and data quality is now becoming a concern. The only product I could seem to find is https://github.com/apache/griffin/
Could anyone offer me any insights? Thank you <comment><USER2> I think a first step is determining what "quality" means for you.</comment>


Lost in Space: Half of All Stars Are Rogues Between Galaxies - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/27682-rogue-stars-between-galaxies.html

<comment><USER2> The article didn't mention it, but could something like this be an alternative explanation to the hypothesized "dark matter"?

Maybe we have simply underestimated the amount of "normal" matter in and around a galaxy? No need for inventing dark matter after all?

</comment><comment><USER3> It would seem that our standard model of physics is wrong. Only about half the stars attached to the galaxies and not all of them.

The space between galaxies is not dark matter and dark energy webs but rogue stars that didn't attach to galaxies.

Of course if you design some way to get from one galaxy to another, you could plot hyperspace or jumpspace jumps to these rogue stars along the way, find a gas giant to skim hydrogen from it for fuel, and then jump to the next rogue star to refill again. That is if hyperspace or jumpsace drives can be invented and run on hydrogen for fuel. I doubt we can go faster than the speed of light, but if we discover how to get into a higher dimension to fold space to make the distance to get there shorter, it might be the only way to do it.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to find great designers? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
My company(startup) is seeking a great in-house web designer to join our team. The problem is where do you find talented designers?
Finding good programmers is quite easy. You know they'd frequent local hacker meetups, picking up the esoteric languages and doing cool hobby projects. Great programmers have such characteristics. Are there similar ways to seek great designers out? Where do they usually hang out? And how to tell if they're great? We don't want to use job boards because a lot of noise resumes will come in. <comment><USER2> You should browse CSS top sites and try and look up the designers behind the sites.

Are you open to remote work arrangements? If you want to get in touch with me I'm happy to refer some guys I know who are _really_ good. Rates may be a bit high, but you tend to get what you pay for. More than anything, I've found referrals of both programmers and designers to be the most effective route of finding talent.

As for your other question about characteristics. Check their portfolio first. Just ask them what their whole belief on design is, and they should be able to go on and on about it. If they start sounding like they wrote portions of Keeping It Real (37 signals), you have a winner. Any smart designer knows design is never about making something pretty, it's always about creating something that any normal human being can use without any pain and minimal thinking involved.

<comment><USER3> <http://commandshift3.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Checkout 99Designs - <http://99designs.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> authenticjobs.com jobs.37signals.com/categories/1/jobs programmermeetdesigner.com krop.com</comment>


Google's Orkut Revamped. - <AUTHOR> http://www.orkut.com

<comment><USER2> That was a little too big brotherish. It talked to me with my gmail name. I have never logged into Orkut. Spooky.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL, all google ids are integrated :)

<comment><USER2> too integrated.</comment></comment></comment>


Future generations will laugh in horror and derision at the folly of facadism - <AUTHOR> https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/outrage/outrage-future-generations-will-laugh-in-horror-and-derision-at-the-folly-of-facadism/10026645.article <comment><USER2> One reason old buildings seem generally better than new buildings is survivorship bias. We only see the exceptional old buildings that were worth preserving. The franken-buildings in the article won't survive many generations to be laughed at.

In general, the prediction "future generations will laugh at X" rarely comes to pass. Better laugh while you can.

<comment><USER3> I think there is more than that.

First, architecture followed the same trend as modern art where taste and beauty have given way to being original and conceptual. This results in very mediocre constructions. Paris attracts millions of tourists who come to admire its palaces and tasteful haussmanian style. No such enthusiasm for the modern buildings of Frankfurt. Not to mention the concrete-made brutalist horrors and other modern architectural "creations".

Second, apart from the said brutalist bunkers, all modern constructions are designed for a very limited life (even infrastructures like bridges). I was visiting the Pantheon in Rome last week, a 2000 years old building which interior made of marble and stone looks almost new (after many renovations I am sure). What will be left of our glass and steel buildings? They are merely more durable than a mongol tent. The only trace historians will have of our civilisation is the selfies we publish on Facebook really.

<comment><USER4> People do flock to modern constructions, of course. Getty Center, Bauhaus museum in Berlin, Guggenheim museum, Gropius House, Sydney opera house, Oslo opera house — too many to mention! Not all modern architecture is worth admiring, but I for one consider many "brutalist bunkers" to be very beautiful, more so than the Pantheon.

There's lots of old architecture that was, once, "original and conceptual" (in the derogatory sense that I think you meant). It's just that these styles are so established that we don't recognize them as innovations anymore, and they're therefore not "weird modernisms".

<comment><USER5> All of the modern buildings you mention had an immense budget and were intended to be great buildings for generations. This doesn't always work but most of the time it isn't even attempted. The facades in the article front buildings that would never and could never be in that class.

"We have a street frontage, people like the look of it, keep it." Seems reasonable to me when the alternative is "Can an architect with a cost-minded budget do something people will like better?" Because that answer is usually no. (Why? Is a good question to ask.) If people don't like the street frontage, bring it down, have a go!

There is rather a lot of preciousness in architecture and it would seem a contempt for what people actually like is in evidence more often than it should be. UX testing on architecture, is that even a thing?

<comment><USER6> > All of the modern buildings you mention had an immense budget and were > intended to be great buildings for generations.

So was the Pantheon. Survivor bias invites us to compare the great, high- budget buildings of previous centuries with the average, lowest-bidder constructions of our own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The writer of this is the pseudonymous Gentle Author, who writes the Spitalfields Life blog:

[http://spitalfieldslife.com/](http://spitalfieldslife.com/)

He's definitely more concerned with preserving the old ways from being abused than he is with protecting the new ways for me and for you.

My favourite bit of facadism in London is the Lloyd's building. In 1928 Lloyd's of London built a big wedding cake sort of thing for their headquarters:

[http://archiseek.com/2013/lloyds-leadenhall-st- london/](http://archiseek.com/2013/lloyds-leadenhall-st-london/)

Then in 1978 smashed it down and built a giant oil rig, thus summoning Margaret Thatcher to our dimension:

[https://www.rsh-p.com/projects/lloyds-of- london/](https://www.rsh-p.com/projects/lloyds-of-london/)

But the wedding cake had a nice bit on the front, so they kept that:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/maggiejones/5738790055](https://www.flickr.com/photos/maggiejones/5738790055)

If you walk along Leadenhall Street from the west, on the south side, you're walking past a number of fairly low-rise buildings of various ages, and you don't really see the modern bit. Until you walk past the Lloyd's facade, and look through the front door, and instead of there being an atrium, receptionist, etc, there's a yard with an oil rig in it.

<comment><USER8> Lloyds is not at all a good example of postmodern facadism. It's to the contrary of one the worlds greatest examples of modern architecture. This tiny "wedding cake" front has nothing to do with the building itself. It's separated, everyone can see that. This is a pure example of wrongly understood city planning and preservation. But they let it build which is the most important point. He is one of the architects of the Centre Pompidou in Paris btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One funny note is that a similar thing happens all the time in Southern California for a totally different reason - building permit and tax regulations.

In some areas if you leave even the tiniest sliver of the facade (or any wall) in place, the project is considered a "remodel" instead of "new construction". This comes with much cheaper permits and possibly lower taxes.

It's not uncommon to walk past a building site that is entirely dirt except one poor little old wall being propped up desperately waiting for a new building to be constructed around it. I've seen tiny block buildings torn down except for one wall and rebuilt into ultra-trendy indoor/outdoor cafes that managed to hide that original wall somewhere in the new structure.

<comment><USER10> If the regulatory environment is anything like in SF, it's less about cheaper permits and more about not getting into a years-long battle with the planning commission and NIMBYs. Many people simply give up.

Realistically your only choices are to hack the system or don't touch the property. The only winning move is to not play the game.

<comment><USER11> Planning has been making noise about cracking down on these "tantamount to demolition" projects. I wouldn't expect the loophole to be particularly durable.

<comment><USER10> They have in SF, too. It's because of pressure by NIMBYs. But it's not like this loophole is new. The trick has been used for decades and it's almost standard operating procedure for low-budget "new" construction.

It's a polite fiction that has persisted because planning commissions aren't oblivious to the problems. But they're beholden to the political power of NIMBYs. The hack operated as a safety value that gave commissions plausible deniability when NIMBYs bring their pitchforks and torches. Once its gone it'll push the cost of newer development further beyond the reach of small- time developers and homeowners, and there'll be even less of the so-called missing middle housing coming online. It'll hasten the trend to large, more upscale developments.

That said, I'm dubious the loophole will go away anytime soon. The entire system would seize up and so I expect municipalities to keep deflecting as long as they can.

I'm not defending the practice. But such absurdities are inevitable when communities push for policies completely at odds with economic realities.

<comment><USER12> I was wondering why there's a building site in downtown Palo Alto that's a dirt lot with a single short wall held up by a lot of props!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think the article makes any sort of objective point.

The author essentially says "I don't like it, it's cheesy."

Well, I can just as easily say "I like some of these facadist buildings." And I do.

If the author spoke with some more concrete reasoning about why these buildings are such abominations, perhaps I could be convinced. Until then, it's hard not to consider this just another example of every design feature having good and bad executions.

There are timeless Brutalist, Modernist, Classical, and Contemporary buildings just like there are ugly, unremarkable, bad examples. The same is probably true of Facadism.

I think the only argument that comes close (which the author didn't get into enough) might be the destruction of historic buildings as an alternative to full restoration. I wish more effort was taken to quantify this concept. In other words, present a particular example of a building project and demonstrate to the reader with real data why it would have worked better as a restoration project, complete tear-down, or otherwise handle the project differently.

There must often be a functional desire to build a modern building, perhaps one that provides more comfort, natural light, safety, accessibility, flexibility, square footage, etc.

Finally, it should be mentioned that buildings are owned by private companies and individuals, who generally have a right to do whatever they want to them!

<comment><USER14> > Finally, it should be mentioned that buildings are owned by private > companies and individuals, who generally have a right to do whatever they > want to them!

Err, no. A city can and should decide what the "overall look and feel" is. London fails at that spectacularly. Pretty much all cities that are considered beautiful have building guidelines in place that support that. Like: you can build only to the height of neighboring buildings, windows need to line up, specific styles and mandatory balconies to fit into the environment. Think of Amsterdam or Barcelona.

The overall look of a city is part of the quality of life of its citizens. If you leave it to property developers, well, you get something like London.

EDIT: "The school of Life" made a video that explains that pretty well. [1]

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c)

<comment><USER15> > A city can and should decide what the "overall look and feel" is. London > fails at that spectacularly.

London's skyline is one of the most iconic skylines in the world. The more recent additions like the London Eye (or whatever it's called these days), the "walkie talkie" and the Shard just add to its unique character IMO.

<comment><USER14> An iconic skyline sure. But unless you are one of the few who can afford renting/buying and apartment higher up you mostly notice how much shadow a cluster of high rise buildings casts onto the street level.

Walking from the tube to my office I noticed 3 story buildings next to 10, then 5 then 3 again. Old brick buildings next to soviet style apartment blocks. Even for the pavement they used 6 different materials or styles from the station to the office, around 400m.

It is not that hard nor expensive to make an attractive looking city. You just need the political will for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This kind of tasteless fakery is all over cookie cutter USA suburbia—basically anything builtbafter 2000 or so is totally phony. Faux brick siding in front (look around the sides and back and you'll see the cheap aluminum siding). Huge, ridiculous arches that don't structurally support anything. 20 gables on one roof. Tons of Windows in front, with nothing (or oddly placed/sized ones) on the sides and back. Non functional shutters and chimneys. Over optimizing for curb appeal and house flipping.

<comment><USER17> You might enjoy reading McMansion Hell [0].

[0] [http://mcmansionhell.com](http://mcmansionhell.com)

<comment><USER8> Or the modernist manifest of all manifests "Ornament und Verbrechen", Adolf Loos [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime)

Fulltext (english) at [https://web.archive.org/web/20141108111449/http://www2.gwu.e...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141108111449/http://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aesthetically, people love old buildings. However, people also love modern building code that keeps us safe in things like earthquakes.

Also, preservation laws are wild [1]. If you own an old building, you usually have to agree to the preservation laws that came with it. They usually state you can't mess much with the exterior, but go nuts on in the inside.

In face of all these barriers, facadism is the loophole.

[https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/hpg/](https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/hpg/)

<comment><USER19> These buildings are in London. There aren't any earthquakes.

<comment><USER20> Earthquakes can occur anywhere: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraplate_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraplate_earthquake). I don't know what kinds of regulations London has around earthquake safety, presumably it is laxer than in Japan, but they are still important.

There are other safety reasons to prefer new buildings too. Fire safety, perhaps? Particularly topical in London at the moment!

<comment><USER15> > There are other safety reasons to prefer new buildings too. Fire safety, > perhaps? Particularly topical in London at the moment!

Ironically in the case of Grenfell it was the new additions (the cladding) that allowed the whole building to burn when the original design would have kept the fire contained.

<comment><USER21> A bit more info for those wondering: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/may/17/hackitt-revi...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/may/17/hackitt-review-grenfell-style-cladding-building-regulations)

"[...] council building inspectors approved the use of cut-price combustible cladding and insulation on the 24-storey block after 16 inspections."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh whatever. Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood's cast iron facades are beautiful and historical in their precursorship to the island's pioneering of the skyscraper. When they were erected, they were called out as cheap imitations of stone frontage. Now they're revered.

Another reputable facade job is the Puck Building [1], which had its ass cut off by when Elm Place was widened into Lafayette. Also, I'm not sure if the Hearst Building [2] counts as a facade, but I personally think it's a neat union of old and new.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower_(Manhattan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower_\(Manhattan\))

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but "facadism," as described in the article, is essentially hollowing out some old, architecturally significant building, and making a different, mismatched building inside the remains.

<comment><USER24> Facadism happens due to economics.

The historic building is far too small for what's needed in the location now. The building can't be brought up to modern standards with any sort of rational budget. So we have adaptive reuse - wildly popular in many areas such as the historic docks and warehouses in London, disused steel mills, etc

Facadism allows you to keep a great street level architecture while dramatically increasing the density and utility of the area. Useful in London, where you couldn't build up until very recently, but especially in North American cities where there are very few old buildings since they aren't that old and the cities were dramatically smaller than they are today.

So accept facadism or widespread annihilation of historic fabric.

<comment><USER23> > So accept facadism or widespread annihilation of historic fabric.

Look at these examples. The historical fabric has already been annihilated and keeping the facade around is making a mockery of it.

<comment><USER25> > historical fabric

I don't get it; why can't we just write some textbooks and then be done with it?

<comment><USER23> Well, that seems like a grim world to live in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why wait for future generations? Some of these seem pretty horrific and worthy of derision in the here and now.

I think the biggest problem I see in looking at this trend is the utter inauthenticity of the resulting building. It fails to preserve the original building and it doesn't allow a new building to express itself.

I see value in preserving or renovating the old, I see value in creating something new. I even think a real fusion of old and new could be great. But from what I see this does none of those things. This seems more akin to putting lipstick on a pig.

But perhaps future generations will come to love the charm of this juxtaposition. Perhaps new construction will create new freestanding facades so that the real building can be swapped out easily without changing the frontage. And at the very least I can find amusement in the building of these abominations.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've never understood the point of this. Why keep the often beautiful Edwardian or Victorian facade if what you construct behind it doesn't respect anything of the original you went to such lengths to keep? Bolt a standard office or apartment complex to the back and pay so little regard that the floors don't even line up with the old frontage or match in any major respect. Just build a cheap office block and be done. At least that's honest.

Then again I suppose that would reveal the Emperor's New Clothes. Modern architecture simply can't do public buildings, balance, aesthetics or anything that isn't either a standard curtain wall box or a £15bn signature tower block.

We didn't learn from all the Victorian buildings pulled down in the sixties that many now regret losing.

<comment><USER28> > Why... ? Just build a cheap office block and be done.

Because those are ugly and boring.

<comment><USER27> So is the result of just about every facade preservation.

Some fine examples here: [https://inspiringcity.com/2016/02/14/facadism-the- laziest-an...](https://inspiringcity.com/2016/02/14/facadism-the-laziest-and- most-unsatisfying-form-of-preservation-is-causing-irreparable-damage-to- spitalfields-and-to-london/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "Future generations will laugh in horror and derision..."

Is there anything in the past that we laugh at in horror and derision? Future generations will probably understand why we did it, or just tear it down. There is not much reason to mock the architects.

<comment><USER30> I laugh at the 70s deco look with pink refrigerators, green counter tops, and shag carpet.

<comment><USER31> That is coming back into style and I kind of like it! (I can't track it down, but someone released a phone recently that was black and white with one pastel colored button)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is happening all over the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. I don't know if it's worse to knock down an interesting building and replace it with a giant soulless cookie-cutter apartment building, or to leave the façade of the original stuck to the outside like a cruel joke...

<comment><USER33> I like the trend in Seattle personally. We are in a major building boom right now and if everything was entirely new construction it would be jarring in the future. The facadism in SLU particularly prevents the entire neighborhood from being cooike cutter glass boxes and gives some visual variety that maintains the (idealized) historical style of the city.

Go look at Bellevue and Redmond, the cities were obviously built in a series of booms that had very little variety. It's all very stale and boring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is hilariously short-sighted. They are kinda ugly, but future generations will definitely not have the context to "wither in horror". More likely, it'll be like the Louvre and architects will bitch and moan until they get old and die, and literally everyone else will either not notice or just think "cool glass pyramid".

</comment><comment><USER35> In Bucharest there is this building:

[https://i.imgur.com/f6PFnAN.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/f6PFnAN.jpg)

It's the office of the romanian architects guild.

<comment><USER36> That looks like a humorous photoshop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I always thought the entire point of architecture was to create a building/structure/space that looks like it was actually there all along.

You choose readily available materials to build it out of, you try to match the "style" of structure to the environment and culture of the space.

Has modern architecture just thrown Vitruvius out the window?

<comment><USER38> Yes.

Only utility remains of his three principles of architecture.

Beauty has bastardized into branding. The building is a sculpture that needs to project the values of the patron. That's why most modern buildings look futuristic, because most institutions regard themselves as forward thinking. Or buildings look "fun" or "interesting" or "special", or whatever trait the patron thinks defines his identity.

Robustness isn't required anymore either, since building cost is amortized over the duration during which the typical investor expects a ROI, a generation or so. The practical result is new buildings that are no longer build to last indefinitely.

<comment><USER37> Welp...

'Scuse me while I go drink away that sorrow... Truly, modernity is a hell I can't seem to wake up from.

Funny how everything we praise about the old ways has a habit of getting thrown out with the bathwater in the name of economic "profitability". I liked humanity better when we built stuff to honor things other than our checkbooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As with post-modernism (which this is simply a late stage manifestation of) you shouldn't blame the superficial reaction, you should blame the initial problem, which was architectural modernism and an obsession with discarding all the lessons of the past in the name of innovation, so called. Tom Wolf nailed it in "From Bauhaus to Our House":

[https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom- Wolfe/dp/031242...](https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom- Wolfe/dp/0312429142)

As badly as these buildings suck, they at least make a gesture at a humane world.

Christopher Alexander tried to warn us.

</comment><comment><USER40> I had no idea this was even a thing, but all the examples look pretty tacky. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facadism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facadism)

</comment><comment><USER41> To be honest the current White Hart is better than the previous façade which had a mix of shops underneath (I used to work nearby).

Even then it looked nothing like this view from 1827 [https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view- item?i=1311](https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?i=1311) so it's always been an issue.

In this particular area of London I'd rather they knocked down the façade than try to keep it, unless it has particular merit (although there are less listed buildings (600) than I would have thought in the City).

<comment><USER42> You might find this animation interesting, it shows how few genuinely old buildings remain in London:

[https://youtu.be/NB5Oz9b84jM](https://youtu.be/NB5Oz9b84jM)

<comment><USER41> Thanks for that its interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The following isn't facadism, but a different turn on a similar theme: [https://goo.gl/maps/doYSK7sUdSR2](https://goo.gl/maps/doYSK7sUdSR2) (turn the camera to the left to see the giant Shepard Fairey mural, which is probably destined for demolishment or painting over by the look of the scaffolding attached to it)

Everywhere in gentrifying Northeast Philadelphia, there are these _horrendous_ modern buildings going up next to traditional brick and stone rowhomes. They look like a modernist disease attacked a normal building. And they're going for a mil and a half.

View here: [https://goo.gl/maps/uxrVykuDmDy](https://goo.gl/maps/uxrVykuDmDy) and then move forward in the street one inch, and you'll see the earlier plywood skeleton of the modern building on the right. It's so sad. (these are actually the attractive examples)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd rather have a neoclassical or neogothic or Art Deco facade with a standard building behind it than totally surrender to the soulless garbage that passes for "modern" architecture in cities.

I have read somewhere that the general public actually prefers the older styles, but that architects prefer modern styles. I'll see if I can find the source.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why does this happen? Economy explains most phenomena.

a) Developers want to maximise profit: generally more area means more profit and optimizing the height of the building is the way to get it.

b) City Halls will evoke (sometimes dubious) historical value to block the old building.

c) Developers will finally apply for an extension of the existent. City Hall has a tougher job to justify blocking the extension. After some delays, developers eventually will build it.

Other fact to mix: extensions are probably the most demanding projects. Pragmatic architects (the ones that usually get large projects) are not suitable for it, they will not spend more time than the strictly necessary.

</comment><comment><USER8> We already are the future generations that have to laugh at the old "facadism" sins. Great word BTW!

Baroque is the old Post-Modernism. You cannot really blame Rem Koolhaas and all the fancy new movie and stage-design loving post-modern architects. You have to blame education. Modernism is not taught properly in schools. That's why those reactionary and cheap movements always came along after every modern epoche, which invented new technology and optimized architecture. Just look into every single art school, there are postmodernists all over the places.

</comment><comment><USER46> Future generations are going to laugh/shudder in "horror and derision" at many, many, many things in our present day before they get to architectural facades.

</comment><comment><USER47> This sort of thing goes on everywhere, though those are some extremely bad examples. In my own neighborhood right now a block of older buildings is being knocked down. Most of them were fairly nondescript, but on the corner there was a particularly nice old granite bank building, so the facade is being saved, which will probably end up as the entryway for some new block of flats. Designed, of course, in some completely different style.

<comment><USER48> Welcome to Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. Just round the corner someone has kept the most ludicrous, skinniest piece of brick facade; meanwhile an acre of land is being cleared behind it for what will presumably be an ugly behemoth of tiny units that everyone hates.

I'd love to know how much keeping that facade cost. It's shored up with a couple of tonnes of steel girder.

<comment><USER49> The only thing they hate more is housing they can't afford at all.

Facadism isn't particularly new though. I remember somebody saying the same thing back in the 1980s, that in the future it would be considered ridiculous. Now here we are in a "future generation" and it's still going strong.

I think the best thing would be to document the old buildings and then demolish them, so that they can enter history gracefully. Nothing lasts forever, and modern cities need new buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't really mind these buildings - juxtaposition is always a legitimate form of artistic expression, I don't think that goes away in architecture. Would it perhaps be better to commit one way or the other? Maybe, but it makes sense for a country with as much history as England (while wanting to be progressive as well) to make trade offs, and seeing how styles change is kind of interesting.

</comment><comment><USER51> Surely there are examples that aren't comical? It must be like every other category of anything 90% is shit and 10% is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER52> Adding a rain screen facade with an air barrier to buildings reduces the energy consumption. And why not have some fun with the design. I don't think anyone's going to be laughing, its just going to become the norm.

</comment><comment><USER53> This reminds me of the Potempkin Village [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)

</comment><comment><USER54> It brings something philosophical to mind, if something is truly preserved if you leave only the facade. Surely in buildings and other things alike, the whole influences the surface.

The empty facade is a dead husk.

</comment><comment><USER55> Many beautiful San Francisco buildings are simple boxes with a Italianate facade. Many generations later, people still seem to admire them.

</comment><comment><USER56> I thought this was going to be about information hiding in OOP leading to too many different peer-level abstractions.

</comment><comment><USER57> How do English speakers know to read "fah-sah-dism" and not "fah-kah-dism"?

<comment><USER58> Like a lot of things in English, you just learn it, doesn't always make sense. It's similar to facial.

<comment><USER59> or facade

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Historical preservationists may be the worst people. Almost no buildings are worth cementing history in place and destroying the natural cycle of destruction and renewal.

<comment><USER8> There are plenty, that's why there exists an expert in almost every European country who decides on such aesthetic and preservational issues. Either in bigger cities or by country.

Even in the US with its very short history there would be architectonical landmarks worth preserving. But that's a cultural issue over there, in Europe people love their history, and in many cases this expert has to demand improvements on the plan (which makes it more expensive), denies it at all, or accepts a new better architecture than the old one.

Facadism would never pass such experts, that's why its so ridiculous. In these cases it's only the mayor vs some citizens or newspapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Myself I'm more plagued by the horror of _fә KAHD ism_ caused by leaving out the _cedille_ (ç). Or maybe it's _FACK ә dism_.

</comment><comment><USER62> They look like spaghetti western sets!

</comment><comment><USER63> has there been any generation that laughed in horror and derision at anything in history till now?</comment>


"The Circle" – Click if you're being watched - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/movies/the-circle-review-emma-watson-tom-hanks.html?_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Just saw this. It's a cross between "1984" and "Silicon Valley". The book version has a better plot.

<comment><USER2> I watched it yesterday and was very bitterly disappointed by how they simplified the whole plot and totally warped the ending into a classical feel- good Hollywood ending. I dragged my girlfriend because I thought it would drive home a point I had been trying to make about what you can do once you are a central hub of information, I walked out deeply annoyed because the film supported her "anybody can make a difference and turn things around" point of view.</comment></comment>


The new plan to remove a trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/12/new-plan-remove-trillion-tons-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-bury-it/ <comment><USER2> I think that this general approach to stemming the buildup of CO2 has amazing promise and makes me more hopeful regarding the future of this plant.

If this reflects the experience of most farmers:

"Hedrick says that in 2018, an American farmer on average lost about $60 per acre before subsidies, and made just $20 per acre after federal subsidies. So, if a farmer can put a ton and a half of carbon in each acre of soil and get paid by Indigo, they could double their profits."

Then it seems that the government could make a big difference with a 25% increase to its subsidy regime, tied to better practices.

That seems cheap compared to a sea wall!</comment>


Oberon System Implemented on a Low-Cost FPGA Board (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2c11/7c1456eb96bbea19aa3c8b018de4fc9387bc.pdf <comment><USER2> Niklaus Wirth is one of those unsung geniuses of computer science. He invented Pascal, the Modulas, Oberon ...

Then he woke up one morning wanting to reboot his life's work for his class and, undeterred by the fact the original targeted processor did not exist anymore, settled to write his own computer architecture on a Xilinx Spartan.

He then successfully ported the Oberon system and compiler to this architecture to demonstrate to his students.

Just wow.

<comment><USER3> Unsung? He won a Turing award.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but most people don't know him for much more than Pascal.

I am aware of Oberon and Modula, but had never got a chance to touch them. And that's much more of his work than Pascal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oberon is interesting, as is Blackbox/Component Pascal ([http://blackboxframework.org/](http://blackboxframework.org/))

But it's so niche and windows-centered as to be almost useless. And the community is microscopic.

<comment><USER6> As for the OS, I assembled some links here:

[https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html](https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/46523.html)

This is a good overview:

[http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/)

Oberon, a tiny text-oriented OS, evolved into A2, a graphical OS with a zooming UI called Bluebottle. There's some info about A2/Bluebottle here:

[http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0](http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0)

Here is the OS on GitHub:

[https://github.com/btreut/a2](https://github.com/btreut/a2)

There are bare-metal versions for x86 -- I am running it on a Thinkpad X200 as well as under VirtualBox -- and also versions that run hosted on Windows, 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and Mac OS X.

<comment><USER7> My website has a long article with A2 running and screenshots for all delivered apps.

Also wort mentioning that Active Oberon has the language features that Oberon lacked for manual memory management in unsafe code and co-routines in the form of active objects, hence its name.

Paco (Active Oberon's compiler) is probably one of the first compilers with parallel phases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW there's also a Python emulator for the Wirth RISC. _It 's slow._ It's written to be easy to inspect and trace in a debugger so it does a lot of extra work to "spell out" events in the chip logic. (But if you want speed there's the C emulator, or FPGA!) In any case, the Python emulator will load the disk image and, if you have Pygame installed, it will open a screen window and paint the Oberon Desktop, etc... (It paints it so slowly that you can see the characters fill in as they are drawn!)

[https://github.com/PhoenixBureau/PythonOberon](https://github.com/PhoenixBureau/PythonOberon)

</comment><comment><USER9> The missing link: [http://www.projectoberon.com/](http://www.projectoberon.com/)

<comment><USER10> There is a clickable link to the project website in the linked PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author states:

>"It is indeed a healthy design paradigm to stick to synchronous circuits in general, if possible. Then, quite obviously, all elements of a circuit operate concurrently, literally at the same time. Every variable and register is defined by one and only one expression combinational circuit). Multiple assignments do not make sense."

I am not quite grokking this and hope someone can explain this to me.

He starts by extolling the merits of sequential logic circuits but then goes on to say that every variable and register need only be a combinatorial circuits. Since these are the two fundamental circuit types, does this point not contradict the earlier one? What am I missing?

<comment><USER12> He said "synchronous" (synchronized by a clock), not "sequential."

<comment><USER11> "Synchronous" is a type of sequential circuit. The "synchrony" or sequencing is derived from the clock signal.

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

<comment><USER12> Yes, you're right of course.

Looking at it again, I'm reading Wirth's statement as pretty much a bog- standard endorsement of synchronous circuit design.

<comment><USER11> Yeah it's the "Every variable and register is defined by one and only one expression combinational circuit)" part that confuses me, since he seems to use that to support the endorsement of synchronous design. But maybe I'm just reading it wrong though.

<comment><USER13> There are two parts to a synchronous design - the combinatorial bits, and the flip-flops.

      /----\    |-----|
     /      \   |    Q|
     | COMB |---|D    |
     \      /   |>CLK |
      \----/    |-----|

I think what he's getting at is that any combinational logic that goes in a register is defined in one place - he's not doing complex statements.

It sounds like he's doing a very (terse) RTL style. This makes it very clear what your synthesizer will do with it - he isn't trying to be clever on the RTL front.

We should email him and ask!

<comment><USER11> Thanks for channeling your "inner Wirth" :)

Also thanks for the ascii diagram.

In re-reading that passage this all makes good sense now.

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He calls it RISC5, one might assume but does anyone know if it is using the RISC-V ISA?

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure that there is no relationship. The instruction set is 20 instructions total.

<comment><USER13> Correct, there is zero relationship.

This is not RISCV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any fans of inferno / plan9 here?

<comment><USER7> Inferno and Limbo.

I don't share the joy of others for Plan 9, because for me Inferno is the actual end of the road, Plan 9's architecture with a sane userspace.

<comment><USER17> Interesting. I have never tried Inferno. Are you running it bare metal? What do you use it for?

<comment><USER7> I just devoured all the available documentation related to it.

[http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/](http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/)

[http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/](http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/)

Papers and books read cover to cover during business travels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really impressive! I'm gonna look more into it after work.</comment>


The Return of Tiny Basic (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/the-return-of-tiny-basic/184406381 <comment><USER2> The section about speed had some interesting claims:

> The direct interpretation technology chosen for Tiny Basic sacrifices up to > an order of magnitude execution speed, but the speed of modern computers > reduces the impact. Moreover, the memory bus bandwidth limits in modern > computers can completely cancel the speed advantage of native code over > interpretation.

I decided to verify how much TinyBasic really achieves. Downloading

[http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/IttyBitty/TinyBasic/TinyBa...](http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/IttyBitty/TinyBasic/TinyBasic.c)

compiling it with VC -O2, and running the program to count to 10 million (for which it seems a loop in loop is needed as TinyBasic variables are 16 bit). The result: around 20 seconds needed to count to 10 million. The inside loop is:

        10 a = 0
        20 if a > 9999 then goto 50
        30 a = a + 1
        40 goto 20

It's far from the optimal modern interpreter speed. I've repeated the same procedure with Python, which used 14 seconds for the 10 times bigger count. Lua 5.1 needed 4.4 seconds for the same loops as Python.

Finally, to compare with the compiler which is intentionally controlled not to overoptimize, I've made a loop in loop in C too, declaring both variables as volatile to avoid optimizing the loops out or doing too much at once, giving the inner loop:

        $LL3@main:
            add	DWORD PTR _a$[esp+8], eax
            mov	edx, DWORD PTR _a$[esp+8]
            cmp	edx, 100000
            jl	SHORT $LL3@main

The VC for 32 bits needed 7.8 second to count to 1 billion, and assuming the "3 equivalent lines of the inside loop" (assuming the last two are the equivalent to "if") that gives 385 M "equivalent lines" per second. Moving to the even higher optimizations, the equivalent Javascript in Firefox needed 3 seconds to count to 1 billion, and the C code without "volatile" optimizes the loops away completely, needing 0 seconds.

The relative speedup vs TinyBasic:

          1 TinyBasic
         14 Python 2.7 (Interpreter)
         45 Lua 5.1 (Interpreter)
        256 Visual C (volatile vars)
        667 Javascript in Firefox 59
        inf Visual C (loops optimized away)

<comment><USER3> > Although Tiny Basic is tiny, if the IL interpreter generally fits into the > primary CPU cache with its IL, while the much larger native code does not, > the IL code will execute at native CPU speed while the native code thrashes > much slower.

Caches are larger today than in 2006.

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M)

Pentium M, introduced 2003, 1 MB L2. Since 2004: 2 MB L2.

I'm quite sure the TinyBasic was slower than the "properly written" interpreter even in 2006, even comparing on the 256 MB L2 cache CPU. Lua language exists since 1993, it was actually tiny enough and fast from the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tom Pittman, the author of this article, is still extant at [1], or at least, he wrote a blog post [2] in May 2018. However it is not clear to me why this old article should be reposted. Is Tiny Basic [3] of any current interest?

[1] [http://ittybittycomputers.com/Bio.html](http://ittybittycomputers.com/Bio.html)

[2] [http://ittybittycomputers.com/WebLogs/WebLog18a.htm](http://ittybittycomputers.com/WebLogs/WebLog18a.htm)

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

</comment><comment><USER5> and here I thought it had returned again.</comment>