Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet – One Billionaire Changed That - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-internetone-billionaire-changed-all-that-1536159916 <comment><USER2> I live in USA but I am of Indian origin. My parents' apartment in India now has Fiber Internet with 80Mbps at 1000INR (15USD)/month. On my recent travel (Aug 2018), I had Jio and was working remotely. It is so cheap to get Jio. I had 0 issues and I was praising the Internet situation in India for the first time in the last decade. Seriously, good changes in Internet situation.

The top challenges for me right now to move back there are 1. Rampant corruption in state government offices (especially with land registrations, legal heir certificates) 2. Extreme levels of sanitation/drainage issues even in metros 3. Personal indiscipline of the people. There is now some transparency because of digital transformation/e-governance. I think in a decade, (1) and (2) will be addressed. It will take miracles to fix (3). Jio pretty much stepped up the competition and other providers are fighting hard to give good speeds. I am happy about indirect benefits of technology.

<comment><USER3> Jio has enabled a digital revolution, just like Reliance Infocomm did by making all incoming calls free back in 2005 I think.

Jio has also made sure that my youtube homepage is filled with soft porn. It is an absolute scourge.

WhatsApp rumour mongering has increased a lot with lynchings happening based on the fact that law and order can't keep up pace with technology.

I also see that lots of unemployed people now are just engrossed in WhatsApp videos nearly all day. It should have made job searching easier, but wages are depressed to such a degree that people just lose all hope and find solace in the mindless videos. Indirect consequences of the technology too.

<comment><USER4> Can you back up that lynching/WhatsApp with some numbers or statistics? Riots used to happen left and right in India for before 90's. A famous politician or actor died, a politician resigned or doing protest, religious demonstrations etc. Lot of the city will be closed. This situation got a lot better after economic liberalization and what followed. Is there a reversal to this trend that you are talking about?

[https://twitter.com/ShamikaRavi/status/1034116009794392066](https://twitter.com/ShamikaRavi/status/1034116009794392066)

<comment><USER3> First, regarding the tweet you posted: It ignores the recent years. There are still local maximas in that graph. Second, it only concerns riots and leaves out any other type of violence. But that will be more clear upon how the author interprets 'riots'. It is just a graph without any explanation. Third, I could not find source of the data myself, as the graph is not from a peer reviewed journal so it can be easily discarded. Fourth, tweet is from a person who serves in the current government aka it is like Sarah Sanders, a vested interest always defending the government.

Communal violence under Modi has increased, even if it is a local maxima but their rhetoric is acerbic towards minorities and it shows. Now onto the communal violence sources:-

1\. [http://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/07/27/the-rising-tide- of...](http://ksr.hkspublications.org/2016/07/27/the-rising-tide-of- intolerance-in-narendra-modis-india/)

2\. [https://www.business-standard.com/article/current- affairs/co...](https://www.business-standard.com/article/current- affairs/communal-violence-increases-28-under-modi-govt-yet-short-of-upa- high-118020900128_1.html)

3\. [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and- natio...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and- nation/marginal-rise-in-communal-violence-since-narendra-modi-government-took- over/articleshow/50113484.cms)

WhatsApp specific lynchings:

1\. [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/16/asia/india-whatsapp- lynch...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/16/asia/india-whatsapp-lynching- intl/index.html)

2\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-18/lynch- mob...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-18/lynch-mobs-are- india-s-problem-not-whatsapp-s)

3\. [https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-dont- bla...](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-dont-blame- whatsapp-lynch-mobs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm on Jio and paying $5 for 84 days. I get

1\. Free voice calls

2\. 100 SMS/ day

3\. 1.5GB High speed data/ day (20+ MBPS)- Post which unlimited @ 64 Kbps

4\. Subscription to Jio apps like Music/ Movies/ News

The page shows pricing at $5.7, everyone I know has always received a discount voucher for Rs 50. [https://www.jio.com/en- in/4g-plans](https://www.jio.com/en-in/4g-plans)

<comment><USER6> Had to re-read to see 1.5 GB _per day_. Wow. I used to think we had it good in Austria (10GB for €10 _per month_ ). But that is fantastic.

<comment><USER7> In Europe, the wired broadbands are cheap and fast. In India, there is no hope for cheap and fast wired broadband due to poor planning. Hence the craze for 4G. Also, the rates are marginal. For a long time, the rates induced loss for companies.

<comment><USER8> That's incorrect. Jio has already come out with high speed wired broadband called JioGigaFiber: [https://jiofiber.co.in/](https://jiofiber.co.in/). Poles have been erected in my locality and pretty much the entire city. It's way cheaper than the current broadband I'm using (Hathway) and I'll be shifting to it once it launches. Currently it's being rolled out in phases across the country: [https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/jio- gigafiber-c...](https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/jio-gigafiber- claims-good-response-people-900-cities-experience-high-speed-broadband- report/)

"JIO GIGA FIBER will be the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout anywhere in the world, with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India simultaneously"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> About 5 months or so ago, one of my cousins called me ( video call on whatsapp ) from one of the snow covered mountains in the himalayan range. I know its not the top of mount everest and the place does see a decent tourist traffic, but still I was surprised by the fact that he could do a clear video call from that location. THIS, compared to me, sitting on a train ( not underground! ) just 10 miles away from London and no internet ( or network ) feels very very strange.

That is when I really understood how gamechanging Jio is to India. There is nothing even closely comparable to it anywhere in UK atleast and I believe the same is true for most developed countries.

<comment><USER10> This reminds me of how a friend from SF texted me saying he missed 4G speeds in India. I genuinely thought he was being sarcastic at first.

Another thing hard to ignore is the cost disparity between data in India and the developed nations; data in India is cheaper by at least a few times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We should be very thankful with current Net Neutrality situation in India thanks to Facebook's ill conceived plan of Free Basics which led to Strict Net Neutrality Laws in India. This had prevented Platform lock for Jio's chat , movies etc platforms, which ironically is very beneficial to FB Messenger and Whatspp's growth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_India)

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, he _is_ the game changer when it comes to bringing fast and cheap internet in India (along with unlimited calls, data, 'national roaming' etc.). Unlike some countries like US, national roaming wasn't really free in India until Jio happened. So much that it forced _every other telecom company_ in India to have similar plans (at least close to that) even if that meant huge downfall in their profit. Such is the power of Mukesh Ambani.

But, if someone is thinking the reason behind it is his philanthropy or something, forget about it. He's the biggest businessman in India, and just wants to capture all the market and all of its 'data'. Ambani wants his company to become India's Google.

That being said, thanks to him, literally (almost) everyone in India is on the internet these days.

<comment><USER13> Hi Piyush. Great points but would like to say that not even half of India has access to internet just yet. While Jio is certainly expediting this growth, we have a long way to go.

You can find my reference here: [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/number-indian-internet-users-will-reach-500-million-by- june-2018-iamai-says/articleshow/62998642.cms)

<comment><USER14> One reason could be lack of very cheap Smartphones. I mean like good sub 1000 rupees phones.

India has a great Android phone ecosystem and the sub 10,000 rupee phones are really good. But 10,000 rupees is still quite a bit of cash for many people.

<comment><USER12> In my personal experience, poor population actually doesn't care about 'smartphone', though they care about 'Whatsapp'. Thankfully, Jio is bringing around 2000 INR (~28 USD) feature phones too, that will still run Whatsapp and Facebook etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> However, there are downsides to this. To compete with Jio. All the carriers have massively decreased the prices to match Jio. This has increased congestion in all metro areas.

Things don't work when I most need it. I cannot book an Uber in the middle of the city. The uber drivers struggle to get the navigation right. I sometimes hear "All channels occupied" error when I'm calling. I never knew such an error existed.

I had tried Jio in the initial days. The coverage was spotty at best. No one I know use Jio as a primary connection. Most people use a dual SIM phone, which I don't have.

Even if the access of internet has increased, the overall quality of cell service has decreased at lot, no matter what the carrier.

Edit: Bypass the paywall - [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/two- years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap-internetone-billionaire-changed-all- that-1536159916)

<comment><USER16> That's the sad truth about unlimited plans. You can't beat physics. Sadly most people don't understand this and think ISPs are being greedy.

<comment><USER17> People aren't the ones claiming the plan is unlimited, whatever that means. Are the ISPs confused?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the worlds largest IPv6 network. We've been tracking it for APNIC since day one. It took India to over 40% of the worlds visible IPv6 users.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Reliance has said little publicly about Jio, and even less about the > potential for wide-scale data mining in a country where consumers have not, > to date, made a big deal about online privacy. But top executives are clear > on the opportunity.

> "It's called Deep Packet Inspection, and what you can do with the analytics > of that is mind-boggling," said a senior Reliance executive, referring to a > practice that digs into 'packets' of data created by computers for > efficiency, mining them for information.

[https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio- idINKCN...](https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio- idINKCN11611V)

<comment><USER11> This is why it very important to have HTTPS everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a US Citizen of Indian origin, I can confirm this. For the past couple of years, whenever I travel to India, I don't even feel a difference in terms of Internet access. JIO specially has been a game changer. Indian telecommunication system is one of the best in the world and I would argue it beats mature markets like USA with its size and coverage for 1.2 billion people. Long way to go with many other basic necessities but when it comes to Internet/Telecom, I am super impressed.

</comment><comment><USER21> From Steve Blank's recent blog post: [today's theory is that] "massive capital infusion owns the entire market." This is yet another example.

Question is: What strategies can competitors adopt when faced with a market participant like this?

<comment><USER5> The Indian telecom industry had another major shock back in 2009, when a new firm - DoCoMo - introduced a 'Per-second' billing.

Today, Tata DoCoMo barely exists. Some competitors introduced a similar version of billing, others just waited them out.

[https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/biggest- in...](https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/biggest-indian- innovation---tata-docomo/story/205825.html)

<comment><USER22> Is DoCoMo still big in Japan? They've got an interesting history with various projects there. They were originally the ones who hosted the "mobile" side for Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal in Japan.

Connecting a Gameboy Color to a cellular phone and having it make HTTP-type requests to Nintendo servers for data, way back in 1999 or so

<comment><USER23> NTT - DoCoMo is one of the major providers here in Japan. The others being AU and Softbank. Having said that there are lots of new entrants who offer cheaper rates than the incumbents. They ride on the signal of the major players. I guess its kind of win-win for all. But the rates I pay is close to $10/GB. Unlimited rate for those who are ready to pay $50 or more per month ( not sure about the current rates. Could be a bit outdated)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The Arnold Carnegie of India. Mr Carnegie funded hundreds of public libraries around the USA in the 1800s. He was a rags to riches 19th century steel billionaire in modern valuations.I have read dozens of testimonials of how small town middle class children use their libraries to enter ivy league universities and onto fantastic careers. I am one of these people.

<comment><USER25> Andrew Carnegie would be worth US$372 billion in 2014 dollar. Yes, with a B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> THIS. For mere $6 I can have 1.5GB of data everyday for 84 days. Not to mention unlimited calls and 100 messages/day.

Edit: Also, they have free services like Cinema, TV, Music, Cloud, etc all included with that $6 plan.

<comment><USER27> It's not 'free' it's being subsidized by someone somewhere.

<comment><USER28> Almost everything that is "free" is actually subsidized, so there would be no point in even having the word "free" if subsidization disqualified things from being "free".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This highlights how far the US is lagging behind in terms of Internet access and cost. Paying 60$/month or more for mediocre speeds is common even in major urban areas, due to the lack of competition. I live in the heart of Boston and only have one ISP I can buy service from. And there is no mobile alternative that offers (truly) unlimited, fast, and affordable data.

<comment><USER30> My gut says Google is eyeing an isp play . That would be a godsend for consumers, although dont know if telecom regulators like the FCC and anti monopoly regulators a would clear such a proposal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is fascinating is that many Indians are discovering the mobile internet having never been on a desktop, or having never even had a land line. We are talking of 100s of millions of people here. Nearly 80% of internet access in India is via mobile.

It would be fascinating to see how their behaviour differs from those who have come to the internet via the normal route.

Besides the rates etc, what Jio has been able to do also is leapfrog straightaway to a pure LTE network, with no GSM at all, with VoLTE. Other providers have to maintain a legacy GSM network and also support LTE. They have gone from 0 to 215 million subscribers in just 2 years, which is incredible.

A lot of people have mentioned that Mukesh Ambani is doing this the second time - even the first launch had a major impact. At that time India had incredible high cellular rates, and the launch of Reliance Communications in early 2000s really changed the game for mobile connectivity in India. So this is the second time he has upset the apple cart.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone is comparing Data Price in India to that of west/south. Considering it's so much cheaper in India, It's an irony that Indian's egress charges are 200% of the USA egress charges. [1]

Ex:

CloudFront egress for India: $0.170/GB.[Jio gives to user : $0.044/GB under ideal daily max consumption].

CloudFront egress for USA: $0.085/GB .... This is HALF of Indian rates.

[https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/)

<comment><USER33> CloudFront isn't exactly the cheapest CDN. BunnyCDN is .01/US for their premium and half that for their volume service. India would only be .03/US (granted with only one datacenter in the South).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The average quota is 1.5GB/day (for the latest recharge, they provided 3gb/day). That's a lot !

Some side effects of Jio have been : 1\. average media consumption per user, specifically video(youtube, netflix, amazon prime) has gone up drastically 2\. voip calls(audio & video calls on whatsapp, telegram) have gone up drastically ! 3\. A lot of users, especially youngsters i know, dont download content anymore, they stream it ! Its an interesting usage behaviour shift !

I think Jio's end game is content - getting Indian users to pay for content will be tricky though !(there have been very few successes - unlike the us, the average indian user doesnt like paying for digital subscription content , paid tech news and analysis site, [https://the-ken.com/](https://the-ken.com/) is an exception)

<comment><USER34> The real intention is to earn by selling data centre bandwidth to internet applications provider such as Google and Facebook when India government make it compulsory for them to have indian user data inside Indian border, this is the direction where both Jio and government are slowly moving, if you read recent news on indian news sites and read between the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Jio's dominance has also forced broadband providers to up their game. Airtel used to dominate in my part of the city, offering mediocre speeds and expensive plans.

About 1.5 years ago, my broadband bill was about $30 at 16mbps capped at 80GB/month from Airtel.

Now Airtel is offering me 100mbps at ~$13 capped at 250GB/month

<comment><USER5> +1

I'm paying $15/ month for 100mbps with FUP at 750GB/ month

[https://www.actcorp.in/personal/fibernet/plans/hyderabad](https://www.actcorp.in/personal/fibernet/plans/hyderabad)

<comment><USER35> I recently switched to a local internet provider. INR 850/month (~$12) for 50mbps with no download limit.

Internet in India has suddenly become really good. Made my work so much easier

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm not a fan of Jio for multiple reasons.

Firstly, it used to insist on Aadhaar (the resident ID linked with biometrics) to provide a connection. I'm not sure if that has changed in the recent times and if it accepts other documents.

Secondly, as someone else pointed out here, Jio is an unsustainable model. While the prices charged by other telecoms/ISPs could go down a bit, what Jio is doing is creating a bloodbath where everyone sinks, including Jio. Jio already has huge debts. I don't think that bodes well for consumers, and would negatively affect how much things can improve in the coming years. This could result in a deep and long stagnation once all companies have no money and have huge debts. After all, telecom is a capital intensive business, combined with the operational expenses that are more specific to the Indian scenario (and not applicable in some developed economies) — like a competitor cutting the cables of another provider in a area and creating a mass outage, roads being dug without warning or planning to lay cables and not repaired later (sometimes resulting in fines to the company), etc.

Lastly, Jio is from Reliance, a big conglomerate that has a reputation of being unethical in many ways. [1] This may be considered as being compensated by some of the good that has been done by the company, but it still cannot be completely ignored. The 2007 Hindi movie "Guru" [2] is a fictionalized depiction of the beginnings of Reliance and about Dhirubhai Ambani (the founder).

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Industries#Scams)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_(2007_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_\(2007_film\))

</comment><comment><USER37> Jio is huge in India. Jio is specifically targeting rural areas. Areas which would have taken years for internet cable to reach. They have strong presence by maintaining cellular signal, Jio shops etc in these areas. Maybe that is the reason why India leads in number of people who first accessed Facebook on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER38> When vodafone bought Hutch a few years back (so they could enter the Indian market), I saw an interview with the Vodafone ceo. He made a interesting comment. He said one of the things that would come from the deal is Hutch would should Vodafone how to offer services so cheaply. At the time the average monthly spend per subscriber in india was about $2. A fraction of what it was in the UK. So India was always ahead of the developed world in terms of pricing. But Jiro has definitely taking it to another level by offering crazy amounts of data with accompanying fast speeds for a price many Indians can afford.

</comment><comment><USER13> India is quite well known for its price sensitive consumers. Jio has recognized and tackled that exceptionally well. Only today, on its 2nd anniversary, it announced even more free offers for its subscribers.

Full article here: [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/teleco...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom- news/reliance-jio-has-a-surprise-for-you-on-its-2nd- anniversary/articleshow/65718799.cms)

</comment><comment><USER39> Still there is no cheap and fast wired broadband in some areas of major cities in India. We tried multiple ISP from our area(one of the major city in India) and they all are bad. Sometimes our wifi does not work for multiple days or its too slow. Finally we decided to use only Jio mobile internet.We face the same issue at our office.

I hope Jio fiber change this situation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interestingly, Jio needs 4G supported phone and it won't work with 3G handset. So other (ex: airtel,vodafone etc) telecom operators still keep higher prices for 3G handset!

3g Data Mobile Recharge Plans: Rs. 298 - 28 days - 1 GB 3G Data. Thats $5 for 1GB of data with 28 day validity.

But If you look at their 4G data plan it will be completely different thanks to Jio.

</comment><comment><USER41> The impact of Jio is enormous. I travelled to certain villages where there are no roads.. there are not even proper bus facilities but inside the "huts" folks have 4G internet and wifi hot spots and i streamed netflix. I couldn't believe myself.

</comment><comment><USER42> Well that billionaire raised a loan of $14 Billion from the Indian Banks to start Jio and recently he again raised additional $500 Million, such huge investments rarely recover if at all. Previous 5 quarters are showing a loss.

<comment><USER14> Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon either.

Please note this isn't first time Mukesh Ambani is dipping his feet into telecommunications. He did before too, but he lost that business to Anil Ambani.

Apparently Jio is like his dream project.

<comment><USER43> > Jio was never profitable from start. It won't be profitable anytime soon > either.

I don't get this. Jio has been posting profits for a while[1].

1\. [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/rel...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/reliance- jio-infocomm-posts-third-straight-quarterly-profit/articleshow/65172420.cms)

<comment><USER14> Its profit if you completely discount away the debt they have :) Or if you think they started at 0 investment. Or if you thinking on lines of completely discounting their initial capital 'investment' by not calling it Debt.

It is debt nevertheless.

Its like say took like a crore to start a business, and you are making like a profit of 50000 a month. Its profit, but it isn't exactly profit in an absolute sense, given you have to pay back 1 cr.

The thing about companies like Reliance is they can afford to do this. They have debt of $37 billion([https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cash- rich-...](https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cash-rich- reliance-looks-to-raise-3-billion-as-13-billion-debt-matures/64542402)) and they want to raise another $3 billion.

So yes, they post profits. Based on what your definition of profit is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> In 2016 I used to pay Rs 98 for a GB OF data. Now Airtel, after following the lead of Jio, or getting forced to, offers 1.4GB data every day for Rs 300 for 70 days

</comment><comment><USER45> Italy here: I'm paying 10€ per unlimited calls and 60gb/months. Looks like we are cheaper than India!

<comment><USER46> That's not cheaper. Jio can give that at half the price for thrice the duration

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> [http://archive.is/Q4HrI](http://archive.is/Q4HrI)

<comment><USER48> I'm getting a Cloudflare error message from that link.

<comment><USER49> This is because you're using cloudflare DNS.

Archive.is/fo/li blocks cloudflare DNS.

<comment><USER50> Do you know why that is?

<comment><USER51> Apparently because archive.is wants cloudflare to pass on (most of) _your IP address_ to them for DNS resolution, and cloudflare won't play ball...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743154)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> why is this article behind a wsj paywall ?

<comment><USER52> try this bookmarklet

        javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

<comment><USER30> thanks a ton ! this is so neat !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Once upon a time, the USA had fast, cheap Internet. One billionaire changed that.

</comment><comment><USER54> What a crap title and article, which spends half its time bootlicking Mukesh Ambani and how he's so rich, when the second paragraph says:

> has shelled out $35 billion of the _company's money_

I'm also tired of all these publications that brainlessly give credit for achievements to the CEO like those that suck Elon Musk off for things his engineers have done. Not that I should expect anything better than a journal named after Wall Street.

<comment><USER55> It really doesn't bother me because he is the chairman, managing director and largest shareholder of the company in question. Leaders get credit for the things they ask their followers to do all the time. No one can actually accomplish anything significant without lots of help from other people.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your favourite YouTube channels? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Lessons from the Screenplay: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw)

</comment><comment><USER3> kurzgesagt puts out great content</comment>


Earth's continental plate movement can cause problems for GPS (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/australia-moves-gps-coordinates-adjusted-continental-drift/ <comment><USER2> Seems GPS is a great way to confirm the usefulness of theories that were once controversial. You need an understanding of relativity to make it work and now continental drift also plays a role.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188144) (53 comments)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how fast a continent would have to move before you could practically extract power from its motion?

<comment><USER5> Probably a lot faster...

In a panel that discussed ideas on how to store energy there was a peculiar idea: Cap a large mountain and elevate its top by pumping liquid into it. If you need the energy again, just extract the fluid an generate the needed energy.

It was probably not feasible because we are lacking efficient and low- maintenance pumps, but it convinced me. Hope to have my own battery mountain one day...

But a similar fluid/pressure approach might indeed allow us to extract energy from continental drift.

<comment><USER6> Lifting blocks. Filling reservoirs. Moving loaded train cars uphill.

These all store energy be resisting gravity until recovering the energy by allowing gravity to do its work. Some are more practical than other. I'd have to say this mountain capping plan is the least practical I've ever seen.

<comment><USER7> At that huge scale and tiny speed the structural material being compressed would prevent any useful power transfer. It seems like there are lots of ideas like this from engineers who partially understand other disciplines, a little nugget of a good idea but with knowledge gap issues that prevent feasibility. I still think they're a good thing because eventually someone will float an idea with potential. There's no harm in throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's pretty crazy, but we're all just riding ships of bedrock that float on oceans of magma

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is from 2016. Edit: They fixed the title.

<comment><USER4> Should really be (20.5cm) though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> so much nonsense/editorializing in the article & headline.

how does this float to page 1? (pardon the pun)

<comment><USER11> Are you in the right thread? I don't see any editorializing in this article.

<comment><USER10> > "Australia Is Drifting So Fast GPS Can't Keep Up"

it's not GPS that can't keep up, it's people who who decided that this data was more immutable than it actually was, and now they're stuck with firmware that's difficult to update.

> A significant correction must be made by the end of the year for navigation > technology to keep working smoothly.

4.9 ft is not significant for navtech to work smoothly. there are still people involved. because GPS is not something that is accessible everywhere at all times. 5ft is a correction that a human can reasonably make. although if you wanted to snipe an individual from orbit without human involvement, then 5ft is a big problem.

> The last adjustment there, in 1994, was about 656 feet.

now, that was significant.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask: why are there are no file sharing startups? - <AUTHOR>

If you genuinely want to make something people want, observe that file sharing clients like eMule and uTorrent have tens or even hundreds of millions of downloads. They actually make even the biggest Web 2.0 services like Flickr look small in comparison.
People will put up with bad interfaces and installing desktop software if it gets them what they want in a new, faster way. This has been proved several times since Napster arrived.
So why not make a better BitTorrent or something?
Oh, and I know Bram Cohen's company took money, and there are online services for transferring large files around, but as far as I know that's about it. <comment><USER2> copywrite,riaa,mpaa,mafiaa

If you think about most content out how much is owned by the creators?

I say you should make the next bittorrent, if it becomes successful you'll have armies of lawyers saying your the pirate even though you just created a way to file transfer.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there were dozens of companies like you describe in the wake of Napster. The lawyers laid waste to the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're working on an open-source distributed storage system that can also be used to easily share files. It also has p2p streaming download which is kind of fun to use. <http://allmydata.org>

<comment><USER4> I should add that we are not focusing on file-sharing. Our commercial model (.com) is based upon managed backup services. When we looked at the possibility of file-sharing as a service, we were quickly dissuaded by the amount of potential litigation we could face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FilePhile is one.

<http://www.filephile.net/>

</comment><comment><USER6> SpiderOak <http://spideroak.com> isn't specifically a filesharing system, but you can share your backed up files.

</comment><comment><USER7> Miro is debatably a startup working in file sharing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wasn't there one that was putting in a PPP client as a firefox extension?

What ever happened to them?

<comment><USER9> All Peers (<http://www.allpeers.com/>) is probably the FF extension you're thinking about.

<comment><USER5> AllPeers has folded, sadly:

[http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-alack-of- peers...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-alack-of-peers-leads- allpeers-to-close-up-shop.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.pando.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Might wanna keep an eye on Reble.fm

</comment><comment><USER12> Joost?

</comment><comment><USER13> file.io ?</comment>


Linux: How to Make Startup Suck Less (Also Reduce Memory Usage) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/04/05/linux-how-to-make-startup-suck-less-and-reduce-memory-usage/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't say how startup is measured. Does Firefox take 2.3s to get to main() or 2.3s to show a window on the screen?

</comment><comment><USER3> Should read: "How to Make Firefox Startup Suck less..."

PG: Any chance we could get the source URL in the RSS headlines?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe. I thought about changing the title, but the techniques apply to any large program on Linux.</comment></comment>


Taking Pictures with a DRAM Chip - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kurzschluss.com%2Fkuckuck%2Fkuckuck.html&edit-text= <comment><USER2> I am the original author of this writeup.

Did this hack together with my brother twenty years ago (look at the file dates)!

Strange to see my 1994 hack at #1 on hacker news twenty years later..

It was done with 64kBit DRAMs in a ceramic package. Descrambling the physical chip layout was a pain..

<comment><USER3> This is very cool. The kind of thing I expected to find on Hacker News. DO you still get much chance to play around now days? I wish I had done a little more playing 20 years ago, but I am trying to make up now. Nitinol,Rare earth magnets, Bismuth.....There are just so many toys available, and so little time..

<comment><USER2> I think nowadays you have even more possibilities to play around then 20 years ago. You can use a Raspberry Pi for example and do some even more impressing things with just a few lines code of your own - building on a lot of open source software!

I have about four RasPis lying around doing doing things which where very much unaccessible for a hobbyist then. Just look at my current blog at [http://µc.net](http://µc.net) to see a few (it's in german alas, maybe google translate can help here too..).

<comment><USER3> Ha, 94-99 I worked at Siemens in Boca. RIght near the end I stared listening to German on tapes, but alas... I am still mon-lingual. I have two beagle bone blacks, and a multitude of Microchip PIC boards. My current job we designed in a dspic33fj256710. OF course I have a bunch of the prototype boards waiting for the right project... I will be off to checkout your site now..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow that brings back the memories. DRAM cameras, or "Rameras" were popular with robotics experimenters in the 80's and 90's. From "Android Design" by Martin Bradley Weinstein:

 _" The ramera was first developed by the Robotics group at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio, in 1978."_

Apparently they wrote up their work in the Sensor Group Journal. They had used a 4008 which was only 64 x 64 pixels.

Not surprisingly this work was the basis for early optical mice which use what is a DRAM circuit as an imager to detect motion of the mouse in two directions without using a rolling ball. This led to a number of roboticists hacking their optical mice into simple cameras (which was much easier than popping the lid on an increasingly hard to find DRAM chip). That practice was then replaced by using CMOS imagers that had been pretty cheap by the early 2000's and of course these days you can get a camera module for a phone very inexpensively (see the PiCAM for $29 for example)

</comment><comment><USER5> Almost all DRAM has some amount of address scrambling--logically adjacent cells are not physically adjacent. It can get quite complicated. Here's a PDF that describes some of the why and how: [http://ce- publications.et.tudelft.nl/publications/1162_addre...](http://ce- publications.et.tudelft.nl/publications/1162_address_and_data_scrambling_causes_and_impact_on_memory_te.pdf)

I have been told that a quick way to reverse engineer the scrambling is to shine a circular pattern onto the physical dram, then read out the data and test common scramblings until the logical data shows the same circle.

<comment><USER6> Yea, I found out about the OpticRAM while doing research on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was an amusing read. I'd not heard of using DRAMs as image sensors, but I had discovered that EPROMs sort-of worked as image sensors. Back in the 80s I was writing video poker machine games. 6502 running at 700KHz clock rate, very simple boards using interleaved video/CPU memory access, and all graphics done via 8x8pixel sprites, that were programmed in EPROMs. One day I noticed that bright sunlight on a sprite EPROM (no cover label) produced on-screen garbage. With a bit of experimenting, I found I could get a fairly decent image into the screen. Wrote a program to generate an index mapping into the game screen RAM, so the sprite EPROM was mapping to the screen 'about right', then found that by programming all 1 (or 0, I forget now) into the EPROM then partially erasing it, I could get it quite sensitive to light. I only tried hand holding assorted crappy lenses in front of the EPROM window, and there were all sorts of optical and electrical and geometrical artifacts. But it kind of worked. Pity I have no photographs of those experiments. Didn't consider it anything more than a silly amusement. Especially since I already had a nice B&W PAL video camera.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of my teachers did this in the 1980s with eproms. You could get a reasonable 1bpp silhouette out of a 2716 and a couple of lenses out of a broken pair of binoculars. You had to program it first then use the sun to erase the picture onto it which meant exposure times in the order of 20 mins on a sunny day to flip enough bits plus some figuring out of how the cells were organised. He had one wired to a BBC micro user port with a couple of shift registers and a BASIC program that copied the current state into video memory. I think this was around 1986 and was probably the coolest thing I'd ever seen at the time.

Edit: just remembered - he worked out that if you used a high power camera flash and fired it 20-30 times it had the same effect.

</comment><comment><USER9> From what it looks like, if anyone wants to build one they'll need:

\- An IC (the one he used seems to be [http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Rare-Vintage- GOLD-NEC-044-D4164D-4...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Rare-Vintage-GOLD- NEC-044-D4164D-4164-64k-DRAM-RAM-16-Pin-IC-Cer-DIPs-Japan-/331025114689))

\- A small lens to place over the IC ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/MTV-6MM-CCTV- IR-Lens-For-Security-IP...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/MTV-6MM-CCTV-IR-Lens-For- Security-IP- Camera-/170701642765?pt=US_Surveillance_Accessories&hash=item27be9c5c0d))

\- A parallel to USB cord if you don't have a computer with a parallel port ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-to-PRINTER-DB25-25-Pin- Parallel-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-to-PRINTER-DB25-25-Pin-Parallel- Port-Cable- Adapter-/190385076507?pt=US_Parallel_Serial_PS_2_Cables_Adapters&hash=item2c53d5b91b))

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of these parts - I haven't tried to build one myself.

Here's my rudimentary understanding of the pin connection: (to connect it yourself, use [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Pin_numb...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Pin_numbering_01_Pengo.svg), [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Parallel...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Parallel_port_pinouts.svg), and [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/25_Pin_D...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/25_Pin_D- sub_pinout.svg) as guides)

IC-Parallel

2-1

3-14

4-16

5-8

6-4

7-3

8-18

9-9

10-7

11-6

12-5

13-2

14-12

15-17

16-25

<comment><USER10> > parallel to USB

Last time I looked at the spec for those, it supported send-byte-to-printer- with-IEEE-1284-handshaking as a primitive (the USB interface saw data bytes, not instructions to set, clear, and read control lines). The parallel ports that attached to ISA (or inside PCI multi-I/O chips) connect each pin to a bit of an I/O address in compatibility mode[ _], which connect-a-chip-to-parallel- port hacks tend to use.

[_] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port#Pinouts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port#Pinouts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Watch out - the source and binary file ([http://www.kurzschluss.com/kuckuck/kuckuck.zip](http://www.kurzschluss.com/kuckuck/kuckuck.zip)) is a tarbomb.

<comment><USER11> It's so bad UX that we even need to worry one second about this when exploring downloaded archives. I've pondered writing a wrapper around tar/unzip/whatever that will automatically extract the archive to a suitable directory, even if there is none in the archive itself. Any day now…

<comment><USER12> dtrx (Do The Right Extraction): [http://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/](http://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/)

"Modern" gui usually provide this too - For example in KDE I have a nice "extract > extract here, autodetect subfolder" menu in Dolphin (the file manager)

<comment><USER11> This is the kind of task I prefer to do in the terminal. dtrx looks good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course these days there are only few 4164 with the metal cap remaining, and they can be as expensive as a cheap webcam: [http://www.ebay.com/bhp/4164-ram](http://www.ebay.com/bhp/4164-ram)

<comment><USER14> Cheap china USB webcams are ridiculously cheap by now. I think it starts at about $2 on Ebay.

<comment><USER15> I wonder what sort of interesting things you could do with a large number of cheap webcams?

<comment><USER14> Ha ha, there is probably some potential for a crazy project, however, the problem is that USB hubs and extension cords are comparatively expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found the main claim page: [http://dramclaims.com](http://dramclaims.com)

"You are included in the Settlements if:

You are a person or business that purchased DRAM or a device containing DRAM;Your purchase was made anytime from January 1, 1998 through December 31, 2002;Your purchase was made in the United States including Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the territories or from a seller located in the United States, including Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the territories and;Your DRAM purchase was not made directly from any of the DRAM manufacturers."

Guess this is the reason some of you mentioned why the price was so high? well I'll be damned, submit your claims!

</comment><comment><USER16> Small, cheap, and high-volume eats the world, and it's hard to beat DRAM. For any silicon hacker, this is disruption-in-waiting: make DRAM compute. Doesn't matter how, just do it well. Whether it be naive CMOS sensor substitutes like this, Micron's Automata processor - [http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata- processing](http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-processing) \- (their IEEE paper is surprisingly good), or whatever you find fit, once you hit volume production you've probably won. It's hard for standard logic processes to hit cost-parity with this beast.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm also impressed by google translator!

</comment><comment><USER18> The technique described takes a low quality sensor (a DRAM chip with an open window onto it) and uses it to produce reasonable quality grayscale images.

Interesting to look at the sourcecode of the Kuckoo program (before the widespread adoption of UTF-8!) and how it uses High Dynamic Range tricks to read off the image at different exposures.

With much faster RAM and smaller cells nowadays maybe one could do something cool with very fast photography, but of course the faster/smaller the RAM the more trouble interfacing with it and calibrating the light intake.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> so I just googled 'DRAM chip' and this class action lawsuit popped up if anyone is interested: [http://blog.seattlepi.com/boomerconsumer/2014/03/04/dram- chi...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/boomerconsumer/2014/03/04/dram-chip- settlement-consumer-claims-being-accepted-for-computers-printers-dvd-players- purchased-between-1998-2002/)

" DRAM is a widely used form of computer memory that is found in many products including personal computers, servers, and MP3 players. Regardless of the brand name, most of these types of products produced between 1998 and 2002 contained DRAM chips.

"This price-fixing wrongly forced consumers and state agencies to pay more for computers and other high-tech products containing DRAM chips," Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Tuesday. "This settlement will provide some monetary relief for affected consumers."

The total multi-state settlement is $310 million. The amount of money returned to Washington state consumers depends on how many claims are filed and the types of products they purchased, Ferguson said."

price fixing?! interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was going to comment that Steve Ciarcia did this in the 80s, and then I see he is credited on the page.

Byte September / October 1983 Steve Ciarcia: "Build the Micro D-Cam Solid- State Video Camera"

ftp://22.214.171.124/pub/electronics/circuit_cellar/BYTE_Projects/D-Cam2.pdf

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like its US Patent No. 4441125

[https://www.google.com/patents/US4441125](https://www.google.com/patents/US4441125)</comment>


Who is the Villain in this Disruption Story? - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/who-is-the-villain-in-this-disruption-story/ <comment><USER2> I always understood the reason for rental cars costing so much on-airport was to pay for the high-density construction on prime real estate to accommodate them within a reasonable hike of the airport gates. SFO's train system (10 minutes to the rental car center!) cost a lot to build and costs a lot to maintain, so it's fair for brand name rental agencies to shoulder that cost.

FlightCar, and to a lesser extent the other off-airport rental companies (who still run shuttles from the rental car center), don't burden the airport with space in the multistory garage on the airport property. As such, they shouldn't be subject to taxation by the airport.

SFO's an interesting case because it exists completely beyond the boundaries of the city and county of San Francisco, with FlightCar's property even further afield in Burlingame. I fail to see how they could even have standing.

<comment><USER3> They do burden the airport to some degree though. The airport allows off- airport rental agencies to drive their giant billboard buses onto the premises, and also provides a curbside for them to load and unload passengers.

Clearly FlightCar doesn't burden an airport in the same way, however they do to some extent. Maybe if the airport worked with them and provided some portion of short term parking for their customers for a cut of the price it could be beneficial to both parties?

<comment><USER4> The degree of "burden" that FlightCar imposes on SFO is irrelevant to SFO's ability to charge a fee to FlightCar. SFO owns a platform and nobody is entitled to use it without paying, even if such use costs SFO nothing. (Which is not the case here, since FlightCar rentals are displacing car rentals that would otherwise pay a fee to SFO.)

<comment><USER5> Can you explain to me how SFO can prohibit FlightCar from picking up or dropping off passengers at SFO anymore than they can prohibit my friend from dropping me off or picking me up there? Since when you prohibit someone from the roads at a public facility when they're conforming to the law?

<comment><USER4> FlightCar is a business that uses another entity's property and services without permission and for profit,but without remuneration. This is not at all comparable to a private individual doing a friend a favor for free. I would imagine that the airport would start with a cease-and-desist letter, perhaps along with an offer to come to to some sort of revenue-sharing agreement for continued access. Failing a voluntary resolution, a lawsuit might follow.

To address your last point, let's use another example. Football stadiums are public facilities often owned by local municipalities. But that doesn't mean I can go in and start selling hot dogs.

<comment><USER5> But you can deliver hot dogs to stadium patrons on public roadways at the stadium. The airport can C&D all it wants. Fine. Cat and mouse. FlightCar will simply match the letter of the law. Good luck.

Disclaimer: I have had pizza delivered right up to Solider Field in Chicago before a game. Using a public road.

<comment><USER6> Are the roads _inside_ an airport still public? I imagine they aren't, even the airport is publicly owned, the roads inside the airport complex fall under the airports jurisdiction in the same way a business compounds front gate marks the end of public road presence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disruption is not a TV drama. That there is no obvious villain, is not an argument in support of the status quo. The issue is inefficiency. Why take two cars into the airport when I can just fly-and-go? The inefficiency of storing empty vehicles for longish periods of time increases costs on market participants and on the public. How the burden of disruption will be distributed amongst incumbents and new players is surely an important question. But the article appears not to care that efficiency improvements may be held hostage to such negotiations. Conflating whether to allow FlightCar with how best to allow FlightCar and its ilk.

<comment><USER8> The efficiency argument actually has very little to do with the story. I doubt anyone (including the airport) disputes the benefit of increased ride sharing.

The point is that FlightCar is offering the same or competing services as an Airport rental car agency without paying the same use fees as a rental car agency. This has less to do with efficiency and more to do with them exploiting loopholes to avoid paying the same costs as more established rental companies. They benefit from the increased rental demand, cab stands, and private roads produced by the airport, but don't pay for it.

If their entire business model is dependent on not paying the airport fees, it's probably not as disruptive as they claim.

<comment><USER7> I am not familiar with this story in detail. Yet on the face of it, these services are not directly equivalent. Without knowing details of their implementation, it is clear that in principle, FlightCar has the potential to be disruptive, by the usual definition of the term. This is because it utilises assets more efficiently: land, labour and vehicles. The airport's existing financial arrangement is not really relevant since FlightCar could, presumably with some operational difficulty, operate outside of the boundaries of the airport. What you see as a loophole, I view as an indicator of a business model which became broken by technology and a trend toward more responsible use of scarce resources. You may not like it, and public opinion may even be with you, but I don't see how this is not classic disruption.

<comment><USER8> I actually agree with you. They could operate completely outside the boundaries of the airport, in which case they would not have to pay the use fees to the airport.

The problem is that part of their value prop to customers is that they offer airport pickup (they send a black car to bring you from the airport to the rental agency). This puts them in a position where the airport has a right to demand use fees, since they are using the same roads and infrastructure as any other rental car service.

Reducing costs by not using the infrastructure, and therefore completely circumventing the need to pay the use fees, would be disruptive. Using the infrastructure but refusing to pay is not disruption. They are not doing anything more efficiently, they are just refusing to pay.

This issue should be understood as completely distinct from their core car- sharing business model, which _is_ disruptive to the rental car industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't you replace the word "Airports" with pretty much any other business?

[Entertainment companies] are less fearing change than trying to maintain their funding system.

[Cell phone companies] are less fearing change than trying to maintain their funding system.

[Game companies] are less fearing change than trying to maintain their funding system.

Isn't that what holds back a lot of companies--why change if they're making enough money as it is. In some ways, I feel like that's the big thing that held Sony back and let Apple dominate the MP3 player market.

EDIT: This is just a comment on the headline, not anything in the article -- just to be clear!

<comment> lhc- You can, but the difference is that those are all private companies, so if they have to find new funding, its their own responsibility to do so or fail. Airports are part of our public transportation infrastructure, and any new source of funding they find will result in higher costs for everyone except FlightCar users, because all the costs from rental companies will get spread out elsewhere. A public company like that has much different pressures (for example, they likely would not be allowed to fail if they have trouble finding a revenue source people like, and can always fall back to taxes) than a private company which is on its own.

<comment><USER10> >Airports are part of our public transportation infrastructure, and any new source of funding they find will result in higher costs for everyone except FlightCar users, because all the costs from rental companies will get spread out elsewhere

Alright, pass those costs on. What's the alternative? We live with a less efficient system because we're used to car renters subsidizing everyone else?

<comment><USER8> >>Alright, pass those costs on.

It seems rather silly and inefficient that people have to pay more for their airport coffee or airplane tickets just because rental car companies decide stop paying their fees.

>> What's the alternative? We live with a less efficient system because we're used to car renters subsidizing everyone else?

Car renters aren't "subsidizing" everyone else. The article makes clear that rentals are just one of a variety of revenue sources for airports. Looked at another way: why should public transit riders pay for the infrastructure to support rental car agencies and shuttles?

Also, assuming FlightCar is truly disruptive, they should be able to provide a more efficient and cost-effective service despite paying the airports an appropriate use fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Regardless, if FlightCar does succeed in disrupting the rental business at airports, then the money that airports once derived from rental companies will need to be replaced. Nationwide, car rental fees account for about 14% of airports' revenues - a figure that is higher in small airports with less retail and ground transportation options. SFO took in $94 million from car rentals in the last fiscal year."

</comment><comment><USER12> _"...Unlike the story of ride sharing apps and the taxi industry, this story doesn't seem to have an easy villain..."_

I'm getting lost in the premise here. Does every story of disruption have to have a hero and a villain? This seems to be a rule of how these things work in the author's eyes? Why the heck is that?

I own a car. I park the car. If I allow other people to use the car, the location the car is parked has nothing to do with anything. If it did, would we start allowing different fees depending on where my car was when I loaned it to somebody? That's crazy.

There's not a villain. There's a broken revenue model for airports that doesn't work anymore. That's good -- things keep changing and we wouldn't expect everything to remain stable forever. Airports need to change like everything else. Creative change that gives us all more of what we want more efficiently is a good thing. We need lots more of it. It doesn't have to fit into a good-guy/bad-guy narrative.

Like I said, I have no idea what the point the author is trying to make here.

</comment><comment><USER13> Keep in mind that many localities utilize car rental taxes at airports to subsidize public bonds unrelated to the airport. This a particularly good way of paying for publicly financed stadiums. Airport Car rental taxes are popular with local voters because they don't actually tax local voters. Hotel taxes are also popular for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was thinking about this business from a traveler's point of view. If I drop my car off and it has a built-in GPS, doesn't that just give the renter a map to an empty house to rob? I realize not all cars have built-in GPSs yet, but it won't be long before they all do.

<comment><USER6> You can find someones house without needing their cars GPS. If Flightcar lists a persons name anywhere, you know then if they are on a flight and probably not at home.

Though it could make sense to recommend wiping your gps before loaning your car if it does keep a memory of recent trips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't feel sympathetic at all to the idea that this car rental company should somehow avoid these fees.

This is not a story of potentially overbearing or obsolete regulation such as that faced by companies like Uber and Airbnb. This is simply a property owner controlling activity _on their own property_. The fact that airports are usually owned my governments is completely incidental here. You'd no doubt find the same sort of fees at a privately-owned airport. If you want to do business on somebody else's property, you play by the owner's rules, end of story.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think this is a great idea, but they should pay the damned airport fees. They derive exactly the same benefits from the airports being there that traditional car rental companies do, so they should shut up and pay the piper.

<comment><USER17> Actually, they don't derive the same benefits. They have no cars or counter on-site.

Also, it's likely a majority of their drop-offs and pick-ups _aren 't even people renting cars_! Instead, they're locals, who've dropped off their car at a remote lot for _maybe_ -renting. Why should such a person be routed out through the remote rental-counter-center, when they're not a car-renter? They're most like any other local arriving via cab or limo, so that's the airport-usage-fee that should apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> SFO should charge based on actual passenger or vehicle impact, not business model. Charge every dropoff or pickup equally, if need be.

<comment><USER6> How do you charge people to stop at the terminal without severely crippling an already saturated people drop off / pick up pipeline?

What would probably work better is a toll ticket just to enter the airport complex via the main gate. Airports (almost always) have front gates to lock the entire compound if necessary, add a toll booth.

<comment><USER17> You answered your own question.

The visit toll could be collected electronically, via transponder or a bill mailed to the car's registered owner, to require no slowing or stopping of traffic.

They could also allow free or cheaper visits at the far end of the SFO 'airtram' (where the existing rental car center is located).... the differential could even vary with congestion.

If they want to throw a bone to occasional, casual flyers and friends on pickup/dropoff duty, let each license plate have 1 free visit each N days. (Though, the logic and fairness of charging every visit equally based on its congestion impact is strong.)

There are better ways to meet any legitimate concerns of SFO than to force new services into the old rental-agency cookie-mold.

<comment><USER15> SFO's "legitimate concerns" are that they can control activity on their property. If they want to charge rental car companies extra, that's their right. This isn't society-wide regulation, it's a business entity (one that happens to be owned by a government) deciding what to do with their own property.

<comment><USER17> A regular business could not issue the tickets SFO is issuing. A regular business would also be subject to additional antitrust and fair-business- practice constraints.

So if you're suggesting the airport be privatized, and then offering services like any other "business entity… deciding what to do with its own property", I think that'd be a great plan.

But SFO is a public entity, using state power to enforce extra monopoly privileges. It doesn't get to just say "because we want to do it this way with 'our' property", even if it's silly. It's the city of San Francisco's property, and their actions should be serving the public interest.

An equitable regime of charging based on actual visit impact achieves that. On the other hand, enforcing the old formulas out of tradition is lazy and destructive - and suspiciously protective of SFO's longtime partners among the incumbent rental agencies.

<comment><USER6> > and their actions should be serving the public interest.

We still have state owned toll roads across the country. There is an established habit of limiting road traffic via tolling even on public roads.

<comment><USER17> Exactly! As proposed upthread, the airport should charge a toll per visit based on impact, not based on old business model patterns.

Toll roads (state owned or private) charge by use, which is fairly reasonable and efficient, not by a deep inspection of your gross revenues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The key point I think here is the transportation of people from the airport to the car lot. An airport should absolutely be able to put a fee on this. If customers were able to make their own way to an offsite lot I don't see what the grounds for a fee would be though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Key paragraphs =>

"This week, Forbes reports that "Airports are the next big battleground in the sharing economy" as the startup FlightCar, which competes with the car rental industry at airports, faces a legal challenge.

The city and county of San Francisco has sued FlightCar for running a rental car company without certification from the airport. "</comment>


Ask HN: How do you conceptualize the internet? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently sitting in a class discussion at my university discussing the relationship between the internet and privacy/IP law.
Everyone here are law students and the most common view of the internet as a physical place - the lecturer recently wrote an article asking whether the internet should be seen as a meadow or a series of rooms.
My answer is neither. I don't think that using physical metaphors are going to accurately represent what the internet is and how it works. I think it's actually a bit dangerous once we start making laws off this assumption too.
So my question is, how do you all see the internet? What's the fairest way to conceptualise data, how it's made and who can use it?
I can't help but think that asking here is going to be better than asking the law faculty :-/
TL;DR: How should we think of the internet? Should it be treated as a physical 'place' or is this wrong? How do we explain it to people without a tech background (lawyers, young children etc.)? <comment><USER2> I think that seeing it as a physical place helps conceptualize a virtual world.

I'm neither a programmer or a developer.

When I go online, it's like I'm out on the street. I'm exposed to others. I can interact with others. I can walk into a shop or a bank and conduct business. I can walk into a theater or an arcade. I can walk into someone's place, an open house or a private house. But it's not physical, it's all virtual, it's all built with code, data and information.</comment>


Linux 4.10 is out - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/714943/ <comment><USER2> This kernel brings nearly full support (excluding Mali support) for Allwinner H3 based boards, and adds A64 support. I compiled 4.10-rc6 for my OrangePi a few days ago, and HDMI, audio, NAND flash, gigabit, wifi and everything else I tested worked well.

Finally got a super cheap version of a BeagleBone Black with the OrangePi Zero ($7), and with the OrangePi PC+ you get a board with a gig of ram and 8GB of fast eMMC for under $20.

Hopefully the H5 based boards and Arm64 in general will get better support, been having trouble getting NodeJS 6 or 7 running on aarch64 short of compiling it myself :(

Edit: Also FriendlyARM has a couple fun H3 based boards with the Nanopi Neo and a few others, might wanna look at those too!

<comment><USER3> Nice to see Orange Pi PC being mentioned. It really is such a nice board. BTW, Armbian has experimental "mainline+patches" support for Orange Pi PC2, have you tried that?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I have a few OrangePi PC2 boards that I built a kernel 4.10-rc6 image for, they seem to work fine (tho no working HDMI in my build) though I need to test them more. I'm planning to use them for a Ceph cluster, with four JMS567 USB 3.0 to SATA bridges ($2ea) on each SBC.

I figure with 160MB/s of I/O and gigabit ethernet, it'll be able to push files at a decent clip, dunno if it will max out my gig internet though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> KernelNewbies change summary: [https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.10](https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.10)

<comment><USER4> What I want to know is how this is completed, but the page for the 4.9 kernel is not done yet.

I thought they normally waited for all the stable releases to be completed before finishing the page.

<comment><USER5> > What I want to know is how this is completed, but the page for the 4.9 > kernel is not done yet

From the original post:

> On the whole, 4.10 didn't end up as small as it initially looked. After the > huge release that was 4.9

4.9 was "huge". I guess volunteers trying to cook up a quick summary may have given up on it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully the improved writeback management will mean my music doesn't start cutting out while I copy a huge file.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I wonder how much of an improvement it will be on small, cheap, low I/O devices, any insight if you can prioritize some I/O over other I/O (like user interactive stuff vs Nautilus or cp duplicating a file)?

<comment><USER7> Use or compile a kernel with BFQ and that kind of stuff takes care of itself without manually having to prioritize I/O. I don't get why BFQ hasn't been mainlined yet, it has the most sane I/O behavior for desktop use and stops all the issues you can have on linux of the desktop slowing to a crawl or music stuttering because you're compressing a 40gb folder or copying files.

Here's the page on the BFQ I/O scheduler: [http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/](http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/)

Here's a list of precompiled kernels that have been patched with BFQ (and often some more desktop-use tuning): [https://liquorix.net/#install](https://liquorix.net/#install) for ubuntu and debian

[https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/linux- zen/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/linux-zen/) for archlinux

[http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tiwai:/bfq/](http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tiwai:/bfq/) for opensuse, BFQ as a kernel module

If you're wary of installing things outside of official repositories or compiling your own kernel, then archlinux is the only distro with a kernel option that has BFQ.

<comment><USER8> > I don't get why BFQ hasn't been mainlined yet

BFQ hasn't been mainlined because it is written for the legacy block layer in the Linux kernel, which will be replaced entirely with the new block multiqueue implementation. It doesn't make much sense to replace CFQ or add a brand new scheduler only to rip it out in a few releases. Linux 4.11 will have support for I/O scheduling for blk-mq. BFQ is currently being ported to blk- mq; that work is the first big hurdle to getting it merged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The virtual gpu stuff is really interesting.

<comment><USER2> It is exciting, with virtual GPUs I think we'll see more lowend hosts (like those on LowEndTalk) offer a portion of a GPU for a few bucks a month.

<comment><USER10> I would watch OVH for that. They already do a fair amount of cheap VPS. And, they already offer a server with 2 nice GPUs for $159/month: [https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated- servers/gpu/](https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/gpu/)

So, they should be positioned to sell virtual GPU, since they already understand both demographics.

<comment><USER2> They just launched cloud desktops for about $78 USD a month, but those are Win10 boxes on VMWare with a dedicated AMD FirePro GPU, which is way overkill for most GPU accelerated needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two nice improvements: UID routing and ability to only keep conntrack tables for net namespaces that need them.

I'm working on a project right now using net namespaces. They provide very efficient ways of routing multitenant packets without cluttering up the init namespace.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome! I'm very excited for native Linux support on the Pine64 boards with this release.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm new to using a Linux-based OS as my primary - do you all generally stay on the latest and greatest? I setup 4.9.9 recently on my XPS DE. Is it risky at times to upgrade?

<comment><USER14> Just leave it to your distro. Don't bother with it yourself.

<comment><USER13> I did it myself for the power improvements for battery life. I'm on 16.04. Is it risky to have a newer kernel than what the distro provides?

<comment><USER14> It's not really riskier, just more effort than it's worth IMO. Note that there will (or soon should) be some newer HWE kernels for 16.04 out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Better support for ARM devices .. such as Nexus 5X (Bullhead).

Does this mean that one day, some beautiful day in the future, we can expect Android devices to ship with a modern kernel?

<comment><USER2> They'll ship with a 4.x kernel eventually, but probably not until the specific release is aged :P

The main issue with Android devices running a mainline kernel is device drivers, these Qualcomm chips have a board support package which adds half baked support for their chip to some year or two old kernel, then a device vendor picks that chip and modifies android more, and then you end up with an ancient kernel on a brand new device. The only fix is for Qualcomm to mainline their device drivers.

<comment><USER15> Or for the Linux kernel to settle down and have a stable ABI finally.

<comment><USER16> Linux will (thankfully) never do that because that would be an example of compromising technical quality for political reasons (mediating the problem that hardware makers are not publishing source).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like I'll finally be able to use the Type Cover 4 with my surface, (support for type cover 3 was added in 4.8, but 4 is way better to type on).

<comment><USER18> Do those use bespoke protocols instead of just using USB HID classes?!

<comment><USER19> It is USB HID, but it seems there's a few quirks to adjust for. If you look through the linux HID code, that doesn't seem to be uncommon -- there's a lot of tweaking going on here. I'm sure the hardware was only tested against Microsoft's HID driver.

I'm not super knowledgeable of HID, but it seems like you can't query the device for HID Reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like that.

      Mart van Santen (1):
          xen-netback: vif counters from int/long to u64

[https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/726528/](https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/726528/)

Having related counters overflow at different times made it difficult to run calculations around network statistics.

</comment><comment><USER5> Let's hope this release doesn't contain "buggy crap" :)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/05/linus_torvalds_admit...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/05/linus_torvalds_admits_buggy_crap_made_it_into_linux_48/)

</comment><comment><USER21> KVMGT sounds really nice.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, it's convenient that Xen won't be required for this any more.

<comment><USER2> It opens the door for a lot of lowend providers to offer cheap GPU compute, since most are on kvm or OpenVZ. Excited for some $30/yr GPU assisted offers over on LowEndTalk :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the kernel that is likely to be included in many distros as the de facto "LTS" kernel. For example, Debian Stretch:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel- announce/2016/03/msg00...](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel- announce/2016/03/msg00000.html)

<comment><USER24> I think that is out of date. 4.9 is the LTS series not 4.10; that email was a year ago when it was not clear.

<comment><USER23> Yes, seems like you're right. I wasn't aware things had changed, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> OBVIOUSLY!</comment>


High Sierra's Disk Utility does not recognize unformatted disks - <AUTHOR> https://tinyapps.org/blog/mac/201710010700_high_sierra_disk_utility.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why we had to lose the old disk utility GUI. The new one is so underpowered and buggy that you need to use shell commands to get anything done. Things like this erode the benefits of MacOS as a lovely GUI environment over a strong UNIX backbone and make me tempted to just switch to some Linux distro.

<comment><USER3> I still have a copy of the old AirPort utility as well so I can make adjustments that the new utility can't.

I thought they were going to slowly improve the new one to have feature key coverage, but so far nada.

<comment><USER4> Option-clicking on most UI elements in the new Airport Utility gives you the more complex dialog boxes from the old version, not the new wizard/walkthrough ones.

Lots of debug/admin related stuff is hidden behind the Option key in macOS. Try clicking on the volume or wifi menu extras to see some examples of this.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I feel like I am playing "Where's Wally", randomly Option-key clicking various different things to see what I can do. I guess that's fun for some people, but in my opinion a Menu, is supposed to layout all the options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is two bugs:

1\. By default Disk Utility shows only volumes. Click the view toolbar button and select Show All Devices

2\. The Show All Devices setting doesn't properly take effect until you quit and re-open Disk Utility.

If you leave Disk Utility in "Show All Devices" mode then you shouldn't run into this problem.

<comment><USER7> In a related bug, if you've just enabled the "Show all devices" setting then trying to format the disk will give an error saying it's unable to unmount the device. (Temporarily switching off "Show all devices" is another way around this if you don't want to restart)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a little "view" dropdown in the upper left corner that toggles between "Show Only Volumes" and "Show All Devices".

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried that - raw disks still do not appear. Tested on three different Macs. Will update the animated GIF to show clicking on View > Show All Devices.

UPDATE: Just posted a new animated GIF here showing the problem persisting after clicking View > Show All Devices: [https://tinyapps.org/screenshots/high_sierra_disk_utility.gi...](https://tinyapps.org/screenshots/high_sierra_disk_utility.gif)

(Had to clear my browser cache to see the new image.)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for checking. I didn't have time to wipe a spare disk and check myself, but I knew that feature was very subtle. This definitely diminishes the utility of Disk Utility.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure!

But please see xenadu02's comment[0], which explains that one needs to quit and relaunch Disk Utility after selecting View > Show All Devices for it to take effect.

Sorry to have missed that; I ran into the problem on three different Macs while installing High Sierra and unfortunately went straight to the command line rather than testing more extensively. My apologies.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15386547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15386547)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe they'll fix it in 2-3 years. This generation of OSes and developer tools is considerably lower in quality. But let's release 5 new iPhones next year like clockwork—clearly the software teams can handle it.

And cue in the Apple apologists that will tell you how OS X Snow Leopard also had that one famous bug, so it's not all bad. Please.

</comment><comment><USER10> I tried formatting an external SSD as APFS and the gui disk utility was extraordinarily buggy. It certainly appears that nobody tested this before High Sierra was released.

<comment><USER11> I filed a bug with apple on how broken Disk Utility was in Sierra; I included a screen capture giving a complete movie showing how deliriously broken it was. Apple closed the bug with "not enough information."

<comment><USER12> Submitting Radar reports now is a complete waste of time, they go straight to the trash. Maybe if you're a recognizable name you'd get an engineer involved, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER13> Sad that I hear something complained about on certain Apple podcasts and that little qualm of that host is fixed magically a release or two later while real users are ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is High Sierra in early beta or something? With everything I've heard, it seems to be getting close to Vista levels of bad.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ran into this the other day when trying to replace a bad hard drive. Was planning on starting from scratch, wasn't able to do network recovery, had to do network recovery of lion to reformat the hard drive and then restart the high Sierra network recovery.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think we'll see a few bumps as we transition to APFS. I ran into quite a few edge cases trying to rebuild from a bootable backup after having my laptop serviced. All is well now, but I definitely got my cursing in for the next few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand how Microsoft and Apple are so _bad_ at partitioning.

I've _never_ used a partitioning tool as stable, easy to use, _or_ featureful as GParted; not for lack of trying. A long time ago, I concluded that a simple live cd with GParted is the only sane way to do any partitioning, and I have yet to find any evidence to the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found this out the other day while trying to format a floppy! For way too long I thought it was just the drive misbehaving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cannot tell if joking or serious, but mad props to you either way! If you really are still using floppies, would you mind sharing how and why?

<comment><USER18> I am serious, though I was just going through a stack of old floppies to see what was on them. I just decided to try to format one for fun!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I ran into this adding an external disk. You just need to initialize with the prompt, and then close and reopen the disk utility, it will show up.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can somebody test if disk encrypted Truecrypt (I use NTFS) are not working anymore on High Sierra? Or is this only affecting Disk Utility??</comment>


Who Hacked Ashley Madison? - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/who-hacked-ashley-madison/

<comment><USER2> Ongoing discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10124152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10124152)</comment>


Show HN: Effe-tool, management of effe: open source alternative to AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/siscia/effe-tool <comment><USER2> perhaps I don't get it, but this seems as self-hosted solution. the key thing about AWS lambda is zero admin, not having to think about scaling and throughput, so I don't see how this is an 'alternative'. what am I missing here?

<comment><AUTHOR> The zero admin is coming :)

However being everything simple and open you can write your own implementation and not be locked inside any infrastructure

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any chance of getting a JS version in the future? I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> To run JS is necessary a way more complex architecture, I am working first on a deploying system.</comment></comment>


Ethdirect.io – The simplest way to waste your Ether - <AUTHOR> http://ethdirect.io <comment><USER2> ah sadly it didn't tell a story about planting a seed like those Telepastors under karma, but otherwise that website is hilarious

<comment><AUTHOR> Planting a seed takes time. We really wanted to make this all as easy as possible. And raise awareness about how absurd ICOs are getting and how awful NY's BitLicense law is. But mostly make it easy for people to send us Ether.</comment></comment>


Show HN: NotCRUD – Best of India's software thinking - <AUTHOR> http://notcrud.com/

<comment><USER2> Indian software industry has changed drastically in past 5 years. People are building good software products in India specially people just coming out of colleges. But the biggest problem that I have seen is that people generally don't get good beta testers who are interested in improving the product. And it's not just about beta testers, users of an enterprise saas are also limited.

In such a scenario there is a disconnect between the creator and users. Only if NotCrud can get both these communities together, I think it can gain much attention. And not just attention it will be able to create a credible platform, just like HN and not HackerStreet, which will be used by both Users and Creators. Because showing off is not enough. In the end you want to improve your product.

Btw notCrud is a very good initiative. I am glad you are taking it.</comment>


Lattice – Deploy, Scale and Manage Containerized Microservices - <AUTHOR> http://lattice.cf/

<comment><USER2> > A scalable cluster deployment of Lattice can be launched with Terraform. We > currently support AWS, DigitalOcean, and Google Cloud

There are so many fucking ways to deploy, scale and manage Containers in cloud workloads, why should some ever wants to use this if we could have some more enterprise workloads coming from Google, RedHat, Amazon, Mesos and thousands of other companies?

Why don't you push something more into Local Distribution? I mean there are thousands of solutions like yours, but none is really great on premise. (oh and vagrant doesn't count as a "local" distribution practice)..

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, I never understood this specific flavor of negativity. There's hundreds of foods that are delicious, how dare you introduce another delicious food!

To your point of why use lattice instead of "more enterprise workloads", well, this is coming from Pivotal / Cloud Foundry who are huge players in the field and work with companies like SAP, Rakuten and Cisco.

> Why don't you push something more into Local Distribution?

I don't understand what you mean by Local Distribution. Anyways Lattice is specifically targeted at spinning up __many__ containers that work together over networks while performing routing and healthchecks (amongst other functionality) so it's probably not what you're looking for if you want a local container spinner-upper tool. I'd just use straight docker myself.

<comment><USER2> Currently Lattice is only supported in:

> We currently support AWS, DigitalOcean, and Google Cloud

That's what I mean by Local Distribution. They don't have Support for OpenStack yet. etc.. I mean AWS and Google Cloud have their Container Tool for spinning more than many containers with networking, etc... AWS ECS and Kubernetes coming with a default scheduler, that will spin up new containers if some containers fail.

As already said Pivotal is a good company I know that. They own Spring, which is really great. But they are also one of these guys that are telling us, "start out small". Cool, but how could I start out small on premise when there is zero tooling?? I mean I could sping up EVERYTHING on AWS / Google Cloud and scale to dozens of machines and containers since I have a shitload of tooling, I could choose what provider I will use for that. I even could use different Cloud enabled Operating Systems or I could just use Mesos for doing this stuff, it's really easy when working on top of cloud providers.

But if some of these companies like pivotal would help people more on their own stuff we wouldn't have this fancy with everything needs to be in the cloud.

I mean Cloud Foundry also dropped support for Micro Cloud Foundry, I really don't know why. As already said I don't need another "cloud enabled platform" I have a lot of them, and they are running fine, even with 1.000 containers.. But still I never get it why nobody targets a better solution than OpenStack (or any other private Cloud) behind a firewall.. Like a tool where I could start with something like 3-6 boxes and scale to a thousand, with or without docker. Where I don't need to care that much of my underlying system.

<comment><USER3> Supporting local distrbutions of Lattice/Cloud Foundry on OpenStack or vSphere is what Pivotal makes its money from.

Lattice is, among other things, about "taking out" things from Cloud Foundry to make it simpler. Hence the delegating to Vagrant or Terraform.

Supporting OpenStack or vSphere is not simple. (IOW, Terraform doesn't support either yet). That's what BOSH does, but I suspect Lattice exists with a "no BOSH required" constraint, because some have a hard time with BOSH.

As for Micro Cloud Foundry, bosh-lite is the replacement, where you can run a full CF deployment in a 6 GB VM. CF proper already can deploy on OpenStack (I hear some have deployed it on their laptop) or vSphere (this needs 64 GB RAM, thus more than a laptop).

<comment><USER2> 64 gb memory for a vsphere deployment is what you would call small? Also I have had a hard time with bosh (and bosh-lite) I liked the lattice approach, but still no proper support for vsphere and openstack. As already said its simple to do something on aws and gcloud. We run a lot of things in the cloud especially software for updating our customer software and it is really straight to deal with that. However we still have some problems in our on- premise software, its really hard to manage that. as you said support for non- cloud or own-cloud environments is hard and thats where our toolset struggles, where everyones toolset struggles.

<comment><USER3> Yes, 64 GB for vsphere is "small", mainly because of VM overhead for various pieces. Bosh-lite shrinks that down a lot by using Linux containers. Lattice shrinks it more.

Lattice is nice because it strips out the security layer, multi tenant controller, and BOSH ...but no other configuration framework has a rich Vmware/Openstack support. It suppose it's possible to whip up some Chef recipes / Ansible play books with Fog scripts, as BOSH really is a wrapper around Fog.

I found BOSH hard to learn at first but now I love it, it's my favorite config framework AND supports Vsphere/Openstack. The Pivotal version of CF wraps BOSH with a web GUI to make it easy (no bosh-lite sadly), barring that I'd suggest looking at some of Dr. Nic Williams' blog posts and github repos for learning: [https://github.com/drnic/bosh-getting- started/blob/master/RE...](https://github.com/drnic/bosh-getting- started/blob/master/README.md)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Linux Laptop Options for 2020? - <AUTHOR> I have a 2014 MacBook Pro 15". It's starting to show signs of internal problems (WiFi keeps failing to see my iPhone when other devices don't; the keyboard stops working when I plugin a USB device, but randomly and not in a consistent manner... software problems have been ruled out) and so I want to replace it.
I could just buy a MBP 16" but honestly, I think if I can get comparable (or beyond) hardware I'd prefer a Linux system.
Key requirements: excellent keyboard; 4+ fast cores; 32GB of RAM; 15" screen that's very high quality, if not exdeeds what I can get on a MBP; 1TB SSD NVMe
Use cases include: DevOps/CloudOps daily; Go and Python programming; lots of VMs, Docker containers, a K8s "cluster"; travel/Conference use.
I'm very familiar with Linux but I'd likely just throw Ubuntu on it for the sake of ease of use.
What options would you recommend? What are you currently using? <comment><USER2> I run Linux on a ThinkPad P51: powerful hardware, good 4K screen, excellent keyboard, all the ports. Not small. You could also just put Linux on a Mac, alright you'd be paying the Mac premium for sort of not a Mac, and you'd be stuck in dongle land.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never found 4K screens to be all that good/useful. Maybe my experience of them is aged, but even Windows 10 fails to scale the UI all that well on a 4K screen.

Ideally I'd want the a 1440p screen.

<comment><USER3> IMHO On a laptop there isn't' much benefit . But on a monitor >= 32 inch it's great

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm running 1440p on a 27". That works so beautifully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was in a similar place in December 2019. Two main options before me: Dell XPS or the Thinkpad X1 Extreme

Both are great machines, but I went for the Thinkpad.

Reasons:

1\. The near zero bezels of the Dell XPS look great, but I use an external monitor most of the time.

2\. Thinkpad keyboards. Enough said. Best in breed.

3\. Upgradability. Thinkpads are still one of the most upgradable laptops. Almost every part can be upgraded.

4\. Thinkpad aesthetics and military grade hardware testing.

5\. I find the build quality of the Thinkpad's better than Dell XPS.

Downsides of the Thinkpad is battery life, especially if you go for the 4k version of the screen. With that I get 4 to 6 hours depending on type of usages. Doesn't really bother me though. I find that enough. I'm not a sit in a cafe all day unplugged kind of users. I need my multiple external monitors.

Here's an affiliate link to the Thinkpad X1 Extreme: [https://amzn.to/2VJr5fr](https://amzn.to/2VJr5fr) Non affiliate link: [https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-...](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-Extreme- Gen-2/p/22TP2TXX1E2)

Linux support you ask?

I have a dual boot with Windows 10. The Linux setup is Debian based XFCE desktop. Everything works fine. Bluetooth, HDMI, you name it. Even the Nvidia 1650 works perfect.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in a similar position with my 2018 13" MacBook Pro. I want a working keyboard again and I have no interest in a 16" (13" is the perfect size for me) but that doesn't seem to be possible.

I'm also a little more out of luck because I'm looking at switching over full time to BSD which I've used on-and-off over the years for a desktop and consistently on servers.

Thinkpads seem to consistently be the go-to and currently that's where I'm at, looking at a few different models. Also came across System76 and Purism and haven't totally ruled them out yet but probably won't go with those for different reasons.

<comment><USER6> Just so you know, a 14" version—which is basically your 13.3" with more screen instead of bezel—should be on its way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought a Thinkpad P52S last year and installed Pop_OS. It's built on top of Ubuntu and I highly recommend it over Ubuntu. I used a macbook for ~7 years before this, and then Ubuntu for a ~1 year. Pop_OS is much more similar to macOS that anything else I've tried.

With the Ubuntu Tweaks tool, it's been a dream to run. Required very little configuration, shortcuts to switching

I primarly use it for Python (virtualenvs) and a little docker.

I bought the P52S because it had all the hardware ports (Ethernet couple of USBs, a SIM card slot and a proper HDMI port. If those aren't important to you, you could get by with a lighter Carbon.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please note - Most Linux laptops are being throttled due to low cTDP bug. It impacts almost all new laptops, including Lenovo.

You can read more about this -> [https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux- Discussions/X1C6-T4...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux- Discussions/X1C6-T480s-low-cTDP-and-trip-temperature-in- Linux/m-p/4028489?page=1)

If you are planning to buy Lenovo, go for higher end (T/P series models) as Lenovo will provide Bios updates to resolve this issue.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you have MBP money and want "4+ fast cores; 32GB of RAM; 15" screen that's very high quality, if not exceeds what I can get on a MBP; 1TB SSD NVM" you could go with the System76 Adder, which has a 4k screen at 15.6 inches. [0]

I have no affiliation with System76 and have never bought one of their products, but I almost bought that one late last year when I was purchasing a laptop.

[0] [https://system76.com/laptops/adder](https://system76.com/laptops/adder)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a 15.6" LG Gram running Mint 19 and I love it. It's lighter than a 13" MacBook Air and I usually get ~10 hours of battery life. My only complaints are the very high-gloss screen and the flimsy, proprietary power connector (edit: it looks like current versions use Thunderbolt instead). Also, I like the keyboard, but I'm not picky about keyboards so you may not want to trust my judgment on that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I got myself Thinkpad X1 Extreme last year with 16 GB RAM, 256 GB NVME SSD, 8th gen i7 running Linux, so far I'm very satisfied. It can be upgraded fairly easily, I already installed additional 1 TB SSD, and will probably upgrade RAM down the road.

On Linux apart from switching between dedicated Nvidia GPU and integrated, everything worked out of the box for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only comparable machines in quality and spec are probably the Dell XPS 15 / Precision whatever or the Thinkpad X1 Extreme series.

And these are only "comparable" in quality if you're being generous. Keyboard preference is subjective but nobody would argue the rest if they used these side by side with a 16" MBP.

</comment><comment><USER13> System 76 seems like the best option to me if you've got the dough.

If you like mac, there's a great site called Backmarket.com

</comment><comment><USER14> Welcome to the club!

I've been very happy with my XPS dev edition running Xubuntu. It's a 13", as I prefer smaller and lighter for travel. The laptop it replaced was also a 13" XPS with Xubuntu (slightly older), and when it comes time to upgrade, I'll almost certainly get another.

</comment><comment><USER15> Been using an X1 Extreme gen 1 for over a year now for work with Pop os. Love it, works great, besides fingerprint reader.

I have not interest in switching back to a Mac anytime soon for work or a personal computer (x1c6).

</comment><comment><USER16> Consider using Windows 10 with WSL - Surface Book 2 could be your option then (as I'm not sure how it works on pure linux, but I use it with WSL since 1.5 year without any troubles)

</comment><comment><USER17> ThinkPad, namely the P53s or X1 Extreme. You could go with the P1 if don't mind something a little heftier.

I'm still using second-hand a T450S since you can buy them all day long on eBay for $150.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do not buy the Thinkpad X1 carbon 7th gen. There is a battery issue, Lenovo upgraded the bios 2 times by now trying to solve the problem but seems to be a hardware problem.

<comment><USER19> same for the a475

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very very happy with my ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen). Installing Linux was a breeze, and everything works fine out of the box with no tinkering.

</comment><comment><USER21> What about the XPS 15 or its enterprise counterpart (Precision 5500 series)? I ran Ubuntu on an older XPS 15 for years with few issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> The XPS 15 is probably the better of all the options, except for the System76 stuff which has way better hardware options and is cheaper - but what's the quality like? I'd have to see/try one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't recommend the XPS series less.</comment>


Police Leaders Join Call to Cut Prison Rosters - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/us/police-leaders-join-call-to-cut-prison-rosters.html <comment><USER2> It looks like the push for social awareness of prison populations is working. Keep pushing! This is how change happens.

</comment><comment><USER3> At this point, anyone "joining the call" are simply attempting to hop onto the right side of history. This problem is so egregious that taking any other position is simply absurd.

Or just f-ing evil. [0]

[0] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto)

Edit: what, did I piss off some people that like imprisoning an unbelievably disproportionate percentage of citizens, especially minorities, for crimes as mundane as an unpaid parking ticket? Well, you do you, I guess...

<comment><USER4> I think people may be reacting to your dismissal of support for a cause you seem to believe in, because these new supporters weren't on board soon enough for you. If you support this cause, why would you denigrate new supporters in this way? It's counterproductive.</comment></comment>