Interactive map of World Debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2010/06/indebtedness_after_financial_crisis?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/debt

<comment><USER2> Due to adding together the various categories of debt, this is fairly tricky to interpret. Countries with large private-sector corporations and advanced financial sectors (like the U.S. and Western Europe) generally have more corporate debt, because leveraging up is almost ubiquitous--- even conservative companies often use leverage, they just don't do it to as high a multiple. Meanwhile, in countries with a lot of mom-and-pop businesses and small or heavily regulated finance sectors, business debt is quite low. The bottom three on the financial-sector debt, for example, are Russia, India, and China, three countries in which the financial sector is heavily state- controlled.

Not that that necessarily makes the debt good or ok, but to a large extent it seems it just correlates with "has a non-government-controlled financial sector".

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, check out Household debt. I'm not surprised to see Brittain, the United States and Canada top the list, but can anyone tell me what is going on with Switzerland?

I always thought the Swiss to be a wealthy, financially conservative lot.

<comment><USER4> My guess: expensive real estate, distorted tax rules that make it advantageous to hold a mortgage [1], and availability of very long term mortgages (up to 100 years). So people take a mortgage and never pay it off, even if they could afford to. Net household savings / debt statistics might tell a different story.

[1] Though IIUC the mortgage deduction and its counterpart of taxing the "income" of living in your own house rather than renting are going to be phased out. So this reason would not apply for much longer.

<comment><USER5> Actually taxing the income of living in your own house as similar to rent sounds reasonable to me. Making debt payments tax deductible is a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Investing cash will create new jobs, spending will preserve existing jobs and saving cash will destroy jobs & the economy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Somebody's savings is somebody else's debt. The whole world can't be a net saver, as nice as that would sound.

<comment><USER8> Sure the whole world can be a net saver. In fact it is, which is one of the reasons the whole world is getting wealthier.

The counterpart of debt is credit, not savings. Having savings is necessary to be a creditor, but it doesn't imply being a creditor.

<comment><USER9> Unless I am missing something, the only way the whole world can be a net saver would be for for all of us to start exporting goods and services off-planet. Anything else is simply a mirage that obscures currency inflation. :) Which, on a related note, goes eleventy-fold for anything remotely related to derivative instruments.

<comment><USER10> Bucky Fuller would disagree. Money stands for something—the real wealth of technology and information. As we continue to create and improve quality of life the real amount of capital in the world increases.

I always liked to imagine that, ideally, an inflating currency would proxy for this real wealth-generation, but that doesn't quite seem to be the case.

Anyway, the important thing is that we're not (simply) printing money. The world gets richer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Olivi is a new startup that brings the best Tunisian olive oil to California - <AUTHOR> http://olivi.co/ <comment><USER2> That intrusive 15% off (what I assume is a) Facebook like thing (which I can't properly see because of μBlock) is a very bad idea, and almost caused me to close the tab because I thought the site was spam.

Your site looks very good, however increase the size of the product, brighten it and enlarge it; and with the background, brighten it a tad and scale back on the vignetting a bit.

Also, you may want to consider either adding a lot of css shadow to the H1 text, or changing to black text and brightening the background a lot.

Your pricing, also has much to be desired: 8.4 ounces of olive oil for $10? Also, you should be using ounces for the American market, we have no clue what ml are.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks DiabloD3, very good feedback! I will integrate some of your recommendations. and I m going to work on the pictures as well....still a work in progress. how much would consider paying for that product?

<comment><USER2> I'd pay, at most, $4.99, and I'm not a fan of tins for such small sizes either. With sizes like that, I prefer glass bottles so I can just slap an OXO spout ( [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CDLL7U/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CDLL7U/) ) on it and use it straight up.

<comment><AUTHOR> The price always depends on what you are looking for in the olive oil. You will not find any finishing oil at that price. Regarding the packaging, i heard opposite opinions, so its only a question of taste which is relative to the person. best to you and thanks for the good feedback. Also send me your email, and i will send you a coupon code for you to try. moh.

<comment><USER2> See my HN profile for my email.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Frog Driven Development by spif - <AUTHOR> http://24waystostart.com/2010/frog-driven-development/

<comment><USER2> "We switched the project from an hourly rate to a fixed fee after seeing that the costs would be more than we budgeted. This would move some of the risk to Kev and be the right incentive to have him deliver both a working release and the source code."

I don't have a lot of experience contracting or being a contractor, but if it's clear that a project is going over budget, what contractor in their right mind would agree to a fixed fee contract? It sounds like that would be a situation with no upside for the contractor. Am I wrong about this?

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that the story of the frog and the boiling pot is an urban legend.

Apart from that, I like the analogy.

<comment><USER4> I thought about mentioning that it's debatable whether or not it's an urban legend but decided the analogy would hold in anycase.

If you can stomach frog torture then here's some more background: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog>

<comment><USER5> Time ago, I worked in a project where the customer's boss had a colorful version of the frog boiling story. He said that if you wake up, look yourself in the mirror and see four balls, you're not Superman, but someone is f __*ing you.

I believe the basic error is not recognizing the project as an integration task. There are many systems that fit nicely into some existing mature framework. There are others that require an additional effort to make two pieces of software work together, two pieces of software that weren't meant to play together in the first place.

A programmer that's able to do this kind of work needs a very wide knowledge, specific experience and being very stubborn. Outsourcing this work is, now you know, risky. But it's not just that. If you're working now with people in- house, I assume you're seeing that little quirks take more time than functionality development.

<comment><USER6> Having done a fair bit of integration work, I refer to the US Healthcare bills as an IT industry stimulus (integrating hundreds of HMOs / you gotta be kidding)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


From wooden storage pods to taking on Amazon S3 and winning - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/interviews/gleb-budman-backblaze/ <comment><AUTHOR> Great interview with Backblaze's CEO on how they went from building wooden storage pods in a one bedroom apartment to taking on Amazon S3 cloud storage and crushing them on price.</comment>


A Letter to the Strava Community - <AUTHOR> https://blog.strava.com/press/a-letter-to-the-strava-community/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised most of the coverage seems to be placing the blame on Strava, rather than OpSec on behalf of the folks working on these bases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apologizing to the military sounds like an attempt to frame the problem as narrowly as they can, to a specific problematic instance. Tactical spin or genuine disregard for privacy?

<comment><USER4> I really don't understand how this is Strava's fault.

If you're stupid enough to actively record and upload your GPS data from geographically sensitive locations, then maybe you shouldn't be allowed to work at those locations, or allowed to have devices that are capable of doing so.

Would you blame instagram/facebook if people were posting photos from inside Area 51?

<comment><USER5> If the user was not aware its location was being uploaded, then yes, it is Strava's fault. They should not be using your data, on the assumption that it is not sensitive, without explicit consent (preferably opt-in). They are only following the "industry standard" though. I bet the military would be surprised on how much location data leaks to Google location history, the only difference being it is not publicly available (yet).

<comment><USER6> The whole point of strava is to share your location online.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but publicly?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CRISPR Might Not Work in People Due to Natural Immunity - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609904/uh-oh-crispr-might-not-work-in-people/ <comment><USER2> This is the least problematic reason for CRISPR not working - the major one is getting the constructs into every cell you want to target.</comment>


Google claims Levandowski launched competing projects long before Otto - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/03/google-claims-levandowski-launched-competing-projects-long-before-otto/ <comment><USER2> > Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from > Google, the complaint says, "all while he was breaching his obligations to > Google and building a company that would compete with Google."

Uh.... that's a ridiculous amount of money to try and incentivize someone.

<comment><USER3> May be google or any other company should treat these new initiatives as a separate startup company to begin with, with seed money as the input. Engineers hired should have salaries/options just like founders/co-founders. If the company achieves its objectives, Google or any other company should buy them back at a certain price or let the highest bidder buy (like uber or any other company).No body loses. Giving 100 million dollars upfront without any sense of ownership/accountability to drive a startup like effort, looks silly to me.

<comment><USER4> They got the leading self driving car out of it. It's a lot to pay if it failed, it's a great investment of it suceeded

<comment><USER5> Leading a few years back.

We haven't heard anything else apart from a Waymo rebranding in multiple years.

My guess: The top people left, and the project lost momentum. I expect to see it grind on for a few years before being canned.

<comment><USER4> This seems like a troll, since in no way would this be true to anyone who is even remotely paid attention to the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most eye-catching part of the article was the fact that "Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from Google." Wow! I knew that competition was fierce but not hundreds of millions of dollars fierce.

That and his chunk of the $680MM acquisition price for Otto means his venture was well worth it as long as he can avoid jail time.

<comment><USER7> Even with jail time it will be worth it for him personally.

<comment><USER8> How so? If he's found guilty the 680 million, he and his investors, received from Uber is obviously going to be rescinded. The 120 million he received from Google may also be challenged considering his deception and the side businesses he was running.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's obvious either of those will happen, even if he admits to stealing all those documents.

There are both civil and criminal possibilities here, and various avenues where it might happen. What actually happens though? I don't think the HN crowd (myself included) knows.

I've tried to be an amateur lawyer before and guess outcomes. It works just about as well as amateur programming .

<comment><USER10> Well one things for certain, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on the opposite side from Google's lawyers, especially when it's something as big as self driving cars, a project they been investing on for almost a decade.

<comment><USER9> I agree, it looks grim. Actually losing half a billion+, though, depends on some hairball of laws, judges, juristictions, and so forth...around actual damages, punitive measures, forfeiture in a separate criminal case, etc. Handslaps aren't uncommon, and neither are the opposite...awards that seem too large. There's also the degree to which Uber is culpable (provably, legally) vs Levandowski personally.

Would be interested in hearing a prediction from an IP lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> $120M. Google basically paid this guy's lawyer fees and then some. They literally enabled and financed their own court case through this guy's salary. Since this is white collar crime this guy will not spend any time in jail, the lawyers will get rich, and either it will be settled or like Oracle case will be dragged out for a decade until Uber is out of business but since all the higher-ups are friends I'm guessing it will be settled.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every day we're finding out about new details of crazy things this guy did. Everyone's focusing on the $120M, but can we talk about the fact that he was connected to two other startups while working at Google, never disclosed it, and later basically acquired both of those?

<comment><USER11> How is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups and those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful one?

Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer does it? I think you too are focusing on the wrong things. The startup and VC ecosystem is all sorts of retarded. This case blowing up just gives you a small glimpse into the startup shell game.

<comment><USER12> > * How is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups > and those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful > one? Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer > does it?*

Well it certainly doesn't sound like he was rank and file, but regardless I'd imagine the difference is that he had a contract that said he wouldn't.

<comment><USER11> And I think board members are not supposed to have conflicts of interest through insider connections and yet the VC ecosystem mostly operates by insider connections.

I'm not condoning what this guy did but the reason he was able to do all of that is not because he was being shady (although from a specific perspective he was being shady I think it is a matter of degrees when it comes to this stuff). It is because the system is set up to enable exactly this kind of behavior and he just happened to overstep a few too many boundaries whereas the people that have been playing this game for a while have a much more measured approach.

So instead of jumping on the bandwagon and burning this guy maybe we should reflect on how the ecosystem operates as a whole and whether the rules are slightly rigged. He'll have his day in court but if the rest of us don't learn from the experience then not really sure if all the wasted bits on the matter are worth it in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While this is an extreme case, it seems to me that this highlights why aqui- hires may not be a good idea:

The founders of aqui-hired companies may get compensation which is completely out of line with what engineers originally at the hiring company earn. Furthermore, it gives them both the means and the motivation to only stay in their new job until they've earned out their incentive pay, and then repeat the quit /found startup/get aqui-hired cycle.

This basically teaches both the aqui-hired and the tenured engineers that the way to get ahead is to embark on a series of short term engagements. I'm sure that many consider this style of career the true magic of silicon valley, but to me it looks like companies are incentivizing disloyalty.

<comment><USER14> But it's either that or nothing. These people are not offering to sell their loyalty for more than a few years. The market has plenty of takers.

<comment><USER13> But is "that" truly a better deal than "nothing", once you factor in the effect on morale of your other employees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> if you're going to commit a crime, always make sure it's a $50MM+ crime. that way you can squirrel away the money and pay for lawyers.

<comment><USER16> Also those crimes seem to often have less jail time

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this story just keeps getting better and better. It would be really interesting to see if Levandowski was able to get Google's employee agreement litigated in a California court.

</comment><comment><USER18> Levandowski seems like one of those "Hustle" tv show characters who was able to collect money from everyone by using a sophisticated scheme and almost got away with it. Hope he will write a memoir one day called "if I did it" or something</comment>


Show HN: A SomaFM Desktop Player - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alfg/somafm <comment><AUTHOR> Just a small project I've been working on lately to listen to SomaFM, inspired by the Spotify UI. I wasn't a fan of the SomaFM web-player, so I built this.

Windows/OSX installers at: [https://github.com/alfg/somafm/releases](https://github.com/alfg/somafm/releases)

And yes, it's yet another Electron app. :)</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity for first employee? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
Was wondering if there are any rules of thumb for equity share of first employee(s).
Our specific scenario:

  Two founders with track record (sold companies in the past).
  Have great connections.
  Already raised seed money.
 The first employee is going to be tech and in charge of building the product. (one or two more to follow soon).
What would be a reasonable equity share ? (If employee also gets about 1/2 market salary). <comment><USER2> A friend of mine was actually in almost the _exact_ same situation recently. He was offered 8%, vested over four years, plus about a quarter salary with promise of full salary (or at least full-er salary) on a second funding around.

For the record, he turned the offer down. He'd been hoping for 20%, but also wouldn't have taken the position if he'd been offered 50% because he just wasn't passionate about the startup after a two-month trial period.</comment>


Show HN: Automatic Induction of Machine Code by Genetic Programming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/furunkel/awasm/ <comment><USER2> Very cool. Can it discover itself? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, if you wait long enough ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: First full-time job. Negotiating friendly NDA? - <AUTHOR>

I am accepting my first full-time job. However I have a bunch of side projects that are live which  I keep playing with. Nothing is super big and about to explode. We've agreed on the monetary terms of my offer. However the NDA is 9 pages long and seems overtly aggressive.
Any tips for negotiating a more friendly NDA so side projects unrelated to my full-time job done in my spare time at home remain my property?
The company is a tiny 5-10 person startup. The company and I are both based in NYC. <comment><USER2> Feel free to push back on any parts of the NDA you don't like. I've had success with this. Alternatively, just say "this NDA is too long and aggressive" and make them do the work of getting a friendlier one. Even an aggressive NDA, though, should include a way for your to explicitly exclude your existing projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Give them a 9-page "Prior Inventions" list to be excluded from the agreement.</comment>


Why the surprise over Android data usage? - <AUTHOR> http://fatmixx.com/2011/05/30/why-the-surprise-over-android-data-usage/

<comment> mike-cardwell FWIW, I use an app called Spare Parts on my Android phone. One of the things it tells me is how much bandwidth I've used on a per application basis since last time it was unplugged from the charger, last time it was booted, and since installation.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what the discrepancy is between the two averages. Whether it be a few gigs, or just a couple hundred megs.

<comment><USER3> 90 MB per month, according to:

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/30/nielsen-androids- lead...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/30/nielsen-androids-lead-over- ios-may-have-stopped-growing/)

<comment><USER4> Which is about 20%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides C2D existing, I have an exceedingly hard time believing that polling accounts for that much bandwidth.

<comment><USER6> Hey there - I said in my post that I think tethering is the big reason. I was just saying the polling is a big contributor too. I'll try to put some estimates together based on some real world examples.

Agree about C2D, but I don't think a lot of apps are using it. I actually don't think anything I have installed on my Evo use it... I'll check that out, too.

<comment><USER5> C2D is not something you install. If you have Froyo or later you have C2D .

<comment><USER6> yes, I get that - my point is, I don't think any of the apps i have installed are using it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why We're Underestimating the Risks to Human Civilization - <AUTHOR> https://eand.co/why-were-underestimating-the-risks-to-human-civilization-152ba742ad8e <comment><USER2> It got a bit rambling and repetitive, but I agree with the thesis. Politicians seem to just think of their short term (job-)survival rather than the planet, although arguably they think "I need to win because if my opponents got in power it will be a disaster.".

And I remember from this story [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich- quick-...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-quick- silicon-valley-startup-billionaire-techie) how the minds in Silicon Valley are just being paid VC money to write stupid apps e.g. "Uber for laundry".

The text ends with "It's our generation's challenge.". Pfft. I'm quite apathetic about it, I feel like we're on the Titanic and it's fatally sinking, and there's nothing left to do but enjoy the last moments of our lives. (Apparently this makes me analogous to the Christians who can't wait for the rapture to arrive).

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascists are in control of America? I wasn't notified. Too politically biased to be worthwhile.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if you removed that one sentence from the article and read it again. What would be your conclusion?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How you stop ransomware? - <AUTHOR> <comment> wu-ikkyu Regularly update and backup your systems. Educate your people on social engineering and basic security practices (i.e. how to spot phishing).</comment>


By 2030, You'll Be Living in a World That's Run by Google - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/by-2030-youll-be-living-in-a-world-thats-run-by-google/ <comment><USER2> The author of that article is seriously offending. In 2030, the thing I'll eat will be coming from the farmers around. The best book that will teach students important things will be written by author and still distributed as books. The water will come from the job of the water utilities. My electricity from a mix of nuclear plants and renewables detained by states. The resolution of international tension created by my lifestyle will be delegated to military forces ot detained by google. My car sure won't be repaired by Google. So please, Google is a champion of digital age, but it's not "my new insect overlords". Far from it.

Now as far as information fro consumers is related, yep, Google is scary- powerful.

<comment><USER3> You're forgetting about teleportation, the irrelevance of money, energy usage so efficient it's no longer a problem, the maturation (slowing) of population growth, etc.

Google is hot air embodied. They can't deliver and care much less than many realize. Even basic products from them end up sucking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook has a much better natural monopoly than Google. As does Amazon.

My guess is that in 2030, Google will be about as relevant as IBM or Microsoft is today. Not irrelevant, but not the big dog either.

<comment><USER5> I respectfully disagree.

<comment><USER4> To which sentence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope this article is still available in 2030 so we can snigger at it.

<comment><USER7> I hope I'm still available in 2030 so we can snigger at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW Nest is quietly being offered for sale so won't be a google product in 2030 if indeed Google still exists.

(less seriously: the rest of those products will have been canceled by then)

<comment><USER9> While I frown upon Google's frequent deprecation of products and services, I really really hope they don't discontinue the Nest thermostat, at least until someone reverse engineers the firmware so I can run my own server it can report to.

It's one of the few digital guilty pleasures I'd rather not part with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Calls to mind the National Lampoon Jan-Feb 1990 cover, when Honda was dominant:

[http://lampoon.rwinters.com/Lampoon1990.htm](http://lampoon.rwinters.com/Lampoon1990.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe in US, for sure not in Europe. Is Google company which can't pull of social network, payments or even such simple thing as messaging? This company should rule us? I doubt, besides their search and Photos, I don't have much use for their services, which doesn't sound like company which should rule the world and I know plenty other people who just use Gmail, search, maps and Photos, maybe translate, that doesn't sound very diverse to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Everything old is new. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nonsense. In 2030 the wealth gap will be even greater than today and even less people will be able to afford fancy ACs and Taxi rides.

<comment><USER14> The wealth gap can be larger while still more people being able to afford fancy ACs and taxi rides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You're already living in a world that's run by the top 10 companies/websites you visit.

There's nothing inherently different between the downsides of monopolies or oligopolistic cartels as far as the consumer is concerned.

In other words, what's the real difference if it's Google + Facebook or Google + Amazon or Facebook + Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER16> Just a few days ago, we were discussing how Google could collapse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14221587)

</comment><comment><USER7> Oddly enough I read another article, equally compelling that Google was all washed up... [https://medium.com/p/how-google- collapsed-b6ffa82198ee?sourc...](https://medium.com/p/how-google- collapsed-b6ffa82198ee?source=user_popover)

</comment><comment><USER17> *Or Amazon

<comment><USER18> Much more likely, I think. When online advertising crashes (<5 years, starting already), Google is going to struggle. Amazon is still going to be making a lot of money.

<comment><USER19> why do you think online advertising will crash?

I own a metalworking shop, and I have a monthly budget just for google... its the more effective way to bring customers...

<comment><USER18> Video advertising is starting to see a drop in CPM that's going to lead to a leaning of producers, which is going to have a cyclical effect on Google's revenue.

Banner ads have already bottomed out for the most part, but you can see with Google's most recent search changes that they're struggling to monetize. Compare how much ads stood out in search results ~5 years ago to the incredibly minor [ad] badge that appears on current search results. Google would not have done that if they didn't have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google won't make it that far. It's a company filled with passive-aggressive arrogant wannabes with a less than likeable vision for the future. They make many claims regarding what they are about, but at the end of the day there's nothing there.

If we do end up in a Google future, that would be unfortunate.

It's an almost-Google world today, given Android, search, GMail, etc, but them being everywhere is different from them running everything.

</comment><comment><USER20> Google Fuchsia will be the OS to finally beat out Windows.

</comment><comment><USER21> I quit reading at "because nest."</comment>


LLVM commit adding partial Swift support back in 2012. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/commit/eb1641d54a7eda7717304bc4d55d059208d8ebed#diff-d06f4313a5eda2b3903ca0e3e4618816R60

<comment><USER2> This is not the language Swift. This is Apple's ARM core they developed in 2012. It is the core in their A6 processor.</comment>


HTTP 451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451 <comment><USER2> There is 2 problems I see one of which is mentioned on link. What if the requested resource is subject to non disclosure that it was blocked?

The other is the increasing use of HTTPS, when a U.K. ISP blocks a site that's using https it just breaks the connection and you get a SSL error and not a http error code. If they served up a page the cert would be invalid unless they were able to supply a cert for the common name you requested.</comment>


Quantum Mechanics Group - <AUTHOR> http://functionspace.org/groups/quantummechanics

<comment><USER2> I visited the site couple of days back. Seems like they've revamped this section. Looks better. Looking forward to more content.</comment>


IP2Location Programming Contest 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://contest.ip2location.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

There is a Programming contest sponsored by IP2Location.

If you have a cool idea or have you been developing software solutions using IP2Proxy LITE database, you are welcome to join and stand a chance to win $500 in cash and IP2Proxy products worth $4,797!

The Last Submission Date: 30-Sep-2017 23:59:59 UTC

Read more at [http://contest.ip2location.com](http://contest.ip2location.com)</comment>


Google's Business Model: YOU Are the Product - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3801006/Googles-Business-Model-YOU-Are-the-Product.htm <comment><USER2> HN covered this idea a few days ago in this thread, when talking about the kid who got locked out of Gmail.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726630></comment>


Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/publish_in_wikipedia_or_perish.php <comment><USER2> This is actually an old idea from early in Wikipedia's history:

"It was hoped that scientists would sometimes drop by wikipedia, and start a stub or short article on something they had researched, prior to it being accepted in a peer reviewed journal. This would allowed a scientist to prove that they discovered something first."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning/Lost_functiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning/Lost_functionalities#Ability_to_establish_priority)

As that page also notes, the very strict interpretation of "No original research" of the modern Wikipedia community makes this very difficult.

Even pages in userspace pushing what is deemed OR are liable to get deleted, though not nearly as much as in articlespace.

</comment><comment><USER3> Couldn't the abstract dumbed down a little serve as the stub for wikipedia?

</comment><comment><USER4> "No original research."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I thought too at first but the journal instructions have it covered:

"At least one stub article (essentially an extended abstract) for the paper should be added to either an author's userspace at Wikipedia (preferred route) or added directly to the main Wikipedia space (be sure to add literature references to avoid speedy deletion)."</comment></comment>


A rant about some of the nice things in the NT kernel - <AUTHOR> https://neosmart.net/blog/2008/shipping-seven-is-a-fraud/comment-page-1/#comment-160264 <comment><USER2> In the time since that comment was written (just under 5 years), Linux replaced most graphics drivers with ones based on in-kernel modesetting and the DRI2 interface. This was done without breaking applications. So, the assertion that changing the video driver model would be disruptive is kind of disproven by reality. I guess Linux has a liberal bias.

That's not to say that NT doesn't have benefits. Linux is still catching up with implementing some features that Windows has had for some time (and multiple GPU support is actually a great example of that), but so far there's no real evidence that these disparities are because of architectural differences.

Really, a worthwhile comparative analysis requires someone who has a deep understanding of the kernels they're comparing. I'm pretty familiar with Linux but know almost nothing about NT, so I'm a bad choice. But "Take the recent Linux arguments about the HardLocks code that is giving Linux trouble with multi-processor granularity"? That's not someone who knows Linux, otherwise they'd be using words that I recognise. "You call BSD a kernel, it technically is a set of APIs"? That's not someone who knows BSD either. This isn't an in- depth analysis of benefits that one kernel has over another. It's a handwavy justification of some NT design decisions without any reasoned comparison to Linux design decisions in the same area.

I'd love to read an in-depth comparison of the benefits of NT over Linux. This isn't it. Is there one?

<comment><USER3> When I first started at Microsoft, I once told a coworker something like, "Hey, I've heard NT revolutionarily elegant, but so far, I've just seen features that, while fairly nicely implemented, are universal across operating systems." He replied by reminding me that other operating systems have caught up, while NT was pretty close to its present design even in the early 90s --- it was like a modern operating system had travelled through time back to 1992. It _was_ revolutionary.

(I spoke to someone else who was utterly amazed that NT allowed driver development without requiring that the whole kernel be relinked from object files.)

<comment><USER4> IDK, from what I've just read NT looks like someone took Minix (released in 1992) and worked on it to make it useful. Plus adding a subsystem layer.

Frankly, I'm still more impressed by a monolithic kernel that did it better, before: Plan 9 (released in 1991). What use is for NT to be object-oriented, if it can't share its objects through a network like Plan?

<comment><USER5> > IDK, from what I've just read NT looks like someone took Minix (released in > 1992) and worked on it to make it useful. Plus adding a subsystem layer.

VMS.

> Frankly, I'm still more impressed by a monolithic kernel that did it better, > before: Plan 9 (released in 1991). What use is for NT to be object-oriented, > if it can't share its objects through a network like Plan?

Sadly the UNIX crowd decided it was not worth it adopting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article (not the comment linked to, which was quite informative) also has this:

> Anyone that's ever manually compiled a Linux kernel knows this. You can't > strip ext3 support from the kernel after it's already built any more than > you can add Reiser4 support to the kernel without re-building it.

Even 5 years go (and at least 10 years ago) you could remove ext3 and add add another filesystem without rebuilding the kernel. I know Red Hat at least included a helpful Makefile for precisely this purpose.

Rebuilding entire kernels in order to compile a single kernel module is a well known habit of early Linux uses, following advice from pre 2.x kernel days when loadable modules didn't exist that seems to have stuck around in the collective mind of the Internet.

<comment><USER7> Before distributions switched to initramfs, you had to have at least one filesystem compiled in, for bootstrap reasons, so that the kernel could mount the initrd.

I don't remember exactly when did initramfs get introduced, but I remember it was a relatively long time before major distros switched to it. TFA is old enough so that might have been the case back then.

<comment><USER6> 10 years ago we still had mkinitrd in RH (source: I'm a programmer now, but in 2003 I was worked for Red Hat as an instructor for these topics). Initial RAM disks still had kernel modules in their gzipped filesystem and were rebuild able without rebuilding the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "Soma"

It's weird to me that the original blog post put Soma's name in "scare quotes." Soma is the Corporate VP of Developer Division at Microsoft, which means he's in charge of—among other things—Visual Studio, .NET Framework, ASP.NET, the now-dead Expression Studio, and I'm sure a few other things.

He goes by Soma because his full name is Sivaramakichenane Somasegar (really, I looked it up in Headtrax once and remember it, for whatever reason, seven years later). And, let's be honest, that is _really hard to spell._

<comment><USER3> I know a few mononymed developers myself. What's strange is that they're all _awesome_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From a developer's perspective, the main problem facing Windows is not the kernel itself -- despite common misconceptions to the contrary. For example, OS X is built on a BSD which has it's roots in 60's and 70's OS design, just like the VMS roots of WinNT.

OS X didn't change the world by bringing some great new underlying architecture to the table. In fact, their kernel and filesystem are arguably getting long in the tooth. The value that OS X brought to the table was the fantastic Carbon and Cocoa development platforms. And they have continued to execute and iterate on these platforms, providing the "Core" series of APIs (CoreGraphics, CoreAnimation, CoreAudio, etc.) to make certain HW services more accessible.

There's very little cool stuff to be gained in the windows world by developing a new kernel from scratch. A quantum leap would not solve MS's problem. The problem is the platform. What's really dead and bloated is the Win32 subsystem. The kernel doesn't need major tweaking. In fact, the NT kernel was designed from the beginning such that it could easily run the old busted Win32 subsystem alongside a new subsystem without needing to resort to expensive virtualization (as the original article mentions).

Unfortunately, the way Microsoft is built today it have a fatal organizational flaw that prevents creating the next great Windows platform. The platform/dev tools team and the OS team are in completely different business groups within the company. The platform team develops the wonderful .NET platform for small/medium applications and server apps while the OS team keeps crudging along with Win32. Managed languages have their place, but they have yet to gain traction for any top shelf large-scale windows client application vendors (Adobe, even Microsoft Office itself, etc.) Major client application development still relies on unmanaged APIs, and IMHO the Windows unmanaged APIs are arguably the worst (viable) development platform available today.

What Windows needs is a new subsystem/development platform to break with Win32, providing simplified, extensible unmanaged application development, with modern easy-to-use abstractions for hardware services such as graphics, data, audio and networking.

This is starting to come to fruition with WinRT, but the inertia in large scale apps is unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER10> The neosmart.net post was totally ignorant.

And he dismissed "Shipping Seven" with hysterical handwaving and BS pedantic arguments, that were even wrong. He could not understand what SKUs were, he thought Seven referred to Windows as merely a kernel, like what you build in Linux, and other BS, he made some BS comments that only apply to monolithic kernels and ONLY if you compile extensions instead of loading them as modules...

</comment><comment><USER11> Are there any old-schoolers around here who remember IBM's OS/2 and how it could have changed the PC world completely

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2>

Its design was supposedly far better than NT

(it initially came on 50 5.25" disks, that was "fun" to install)

I think UPS was the largest user/developer.

You know the company Parallels that made Virtuozzo (and OpenVZ) - well it was initially formed to make virtual environments to run OS/2.

<comment><USER12> I did a lot of development on OS/2 applications in the mid 90s, mostly on the Warp 3.0 version. Eventually we switched to Windows NT4 once it became clear that OS/2 had had its fifteen minutes.

I quite liked it at the time, but to be honest I think the wistful "could have changed the PC world completely" stuff I sometimes hear is just rose tinted nostalgia. It was a very good OS for its time; its main competition then was Windows 95, and there was certainly no contest there. But the NT kernel was a different matter, especially after it got a saner UI in NT4. There were no huge advantages to one or the other there (with one exception, see below). Compared to very different modern OSes such as OSX or Linux, OS/2 and NT4 were close siblings.

OS/2's one real Achilles heel, which gave us endless trouble, was the synchronous input queue, shared by all programs that had a GUI (including the OS desktop). The upshot of this was that, if a user-facing program crashed, it was very likely to freeze up the OS and require a hard reboot. When we switched to NT4, the vast improvement in reliable uptime was a breath of fresh air (if nothing to write home about by modern standards). I gather they partially fixed this in OS/2 4.0, but by then the writing was on the wall. OS/2 faded away before the rise of modern malware had really hit its stride, but I suspect the SIQ problem would also have led to all sorts of security issues. For example, look up "shatter attack"; that was bad enough on Windows, but I'm pretty sure OS/2 would have been even more vulnerable to that sort of technique.

While I certainly wouldn't claim that son-of-NT's victory over OS/2 had anything to do with its technical merits, I do think that, at least between those two lines of development, the (slightly) better OS won.

<comment><USER13> Former OS/2 developer here (I still have an OS/2 t-shirt around somewhere). While the single event queue was a problem, at the time the major competitor was Windows 3.x, which also had cooperative eventing for the UI. NT changed that for the better.

What OS/2 had was multi-threading. If you had to do some operation that might take longer than 1/10th of a second, the guidance from IBM was to put it on it's own thread. So by necessity, OS/2 developers became expert multi- threaders.

I think it was Stardock that had an excellent newsgroup reader for OS/2 -- it was multithreaded, so you could queue-up several requests for your newsgroups (alt.binaries.*, {ahem}) and the UI remained responsive and you could go do other things, like fire up GoldenCompass for your Compuserve fix. ;)

<comment><USER14> As a cs student, I must say that I'm very impressed. A dev kernel from the era where while(true); was absolutely forbidden cause of the lack of preemption in windows. Seems like a piece of History for me.

Would you accept to tell us more about what your team did, what were the goals and concerns about your system ?

<comment><USER13> Also - a book that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet is:

[http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows- Generati...](http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation- Microsoft/dp/0759285780/)

I haven't seen this edition, but if the comments are correct, try and find an original from 1994 (has a shiny cover with big red letters) to avoid the printing errors.

It's written for a general audience, but still has some technical details in it. It's more interesting from a business and personality standpoint - at that level of software development doing things like kicking holes in your office walls becomes a little more acceptable (that would have gotten me fired at any job I've held)

<comment><USER14> Thank's for the feedback and the book. I'll try to find an original one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "[M]ulti GPUs may not have existed when XP was released"

The NT kernel had been shipping for about 10 years by the time XP was released. Windows NT 3.5 and earlier didn't have any kernel-level graphics (though they did have kernel-level drivers); kernel-level GDI came in NT 4 (1995-1996) for performance.

Windows NT was also used by some graphics workstation vendors like Intergraph and SGI, whom I presume did support multiple GPUs like most workstation vendors did.

Macs also had actual GPUs (not just frame buffers, but real QuickDraw accelerators) and supported multiple GPUs in the late 1980s - on System 6!

All it really takes is a reasonable display abstraction model/API, and an ability for that to interface reasonably with hardware drivers. Seems Linux could've handled that too - and it wouldn't surprise me if it did, at least theoretically.

I didn't follow Linux's initial development as 386BSD had already come out. I do remember the first accelerated X11 for 386BSD supporting some card with a number like 911. I don't recall that it required explicit kernel support, other than perhaps a bunch of ioctl calls or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Given that the source code of the NT kernel is apparantly available for academic purposes, I wonder if there are university courses where the NT kernel is used as the subject, and students are exposed to this code. Does anyone have that experience?

<comment><USER3> At least one course uses NT.

[http://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~hamilton/courses/330/notes/memory...](http://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~hamilton/courses/330/notes/memory/page_replacement.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Anyone that's ever manually compiled a Linux kernel knows this. You can't strip ext3 support from the kernel after it's already built any more than you can add Reiser4 support to the kernel without re-building it."

Ummm.. Kernel modules anyone?

Or do I have something wrong here? Have I taken something out of context?

</comment><comment><USER18> This article is just wasted bytes since no one can work with the code or even see it. The author may as well be talking about a fictional kernel. Closed source isn't worthless because of its terrible code quality, closed source is worthless because it is closed.

<comment><USER19> The guy mentions that it's still possible for academics to get their hands on NT sources. I suppose, however, that it's forbidden to modify or compile them.

At some point in time, NT (3.1) was apparently shipped in source form: there was no binary distribution for the first 4 and 8 processors systems back then and you had to compile your kernel yourself on the target machine (after installing the vanilla NT first).

<comment><USER20> Xen 1.x development included a paravirtualized Windows XP using this program ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen#Microsoft_Windows_systems_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen#Microsoft_Windows_systems_as_guests)):

" _During the development of Xen 1.x, Microsoft Research, along with the University of Cambridge Operating System group, developed a port of Windows XP to Xen — made possible by Microsoft's Academic Licensing Program. The terms of this license do not allow the publication of this port, although documentation of the experience appears in the original Xen SOSP paper._ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > MinWin

MinWin (affecting Kernel32.dll) has nothing to do with the NT kernel.

<comment><USER3> You have no idea what you're talking about.

<comment><USER21> > You have no idea what you're talking about.

Care to elaborate why, instead of just accusing?

FYI, MinWin is completely a user-mode library change; it has nothing to do with the kernel. Even Wikipedia explains the misconception: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin#cite_ref-14>

On the other hand, there _is_ such a think called "MinKernel", which is related to the kernel itself: [http://cdn- static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/013290/minwinmin...](http://cdn- static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/013290/minwinminkernel-620x428.png)

<comment><USER3> I've already said too much. I just want to emphasize that the whole thing is quite subtle, and it's hard to make sense of it given only public information. What you should focus on is the documented ABI available on each OS and platform since that's the real place where what we do affects what you do.

<comment><USER21> > I just want to emphasize that the whole thing is quite subtle, and it's hard > to make sense of it given only public information.

Well, _I_ made sense of it using only public information, and yet you claimed "You have no idea what you're talking about".

Obviously that means _you_ must know better than me, so care to share where I made a mistake?

<comment><USER22> For starters, it's ntoskrnl.exe. Dig out the original Windows NT stuff from the early 90s and you can infer Dave Cutler and team's original vision. The fact that Microsoft made hundreds of billions of dollars off it, layering all sorts of legacy chaos atop it, obscures the jewel at the core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The NT kernel represents all strings as UTF-16 internally AND in the syscall API.

This single fact is enough to make it clear that it's a piece of shit.

<comment><USER24> There's nothing wrong with UTF-16.

<comment><USER25> Yes there is. It's variable width without being backwards compatible to ASCII. Even worse it's variable width but lets people assume it's fixed-width. UCS-2 was okay. UTF-16 is a hack.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S Startups hiring non-U.S citizens? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there,
I was wondering how common is it for U.S startups to hire immigrants from Canada, Europe or anywhere else? For example, a Canadian citizen can come to the U.S to work on an Employment Visa (TN For example) and I know it's common in larger corporations but how about the little startups?
As far as I know there isn't much paperwork apart from a letter of employment a company has to do for something like a TN Visa but is there any other hidden ramifications or reasons why a smaller U.S company wouldn't hire someone from outside of the U.S? <comment><USER2> TN visas are interesting times since for Canadians they are issued at the port of entry. Because of this some places are better for people to enter than others. Ask your Canuck friends if you plan to bring people down using this method.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I am Canadian myself, and the reason I posted this was to see how plausible it would be for me to work in a smaller environment when/if I made my attempt at getting a TN Visa.

I'm just curious if a smaller U.S employer would actually do this

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know a few startups that hire from Canada; but, just through telecommuting which then you need nothing. Just someone to do payroll in Canada.</comment>


My Last Day at Moz, My First Day at SparkToro - <AUTHOR> https://sparktoro.com/blog/last-day-moz-first-day-sparktoro/ <comment><USER2> I don't know how well known Rand or Moz are on here, but it's great to see this posted.

I feel like SEO has been an area that gets looked down upon from certain sectors. In the 10+ years that Rand built up the company, the industry changed a lot - and he's been a voice for consistently doing things authentically and in a way that makes the internet better.

You'd also be hard pressed to find anyone who has been so transparent in sharing everything they've learned along the way - a LOT of folks in digital marketing began learning from his blog posts and videos.

I'm pretty excited for all his next ventures, and looking forward to the book for his take on advice for startup founders.

Plus, the 'safer-events project' is in response to incidents that one would hope no one has to experience again.

(And despite some harder times, Moz seems to be on the up again; they have some top-class products, should have some interesting new tools over the coming year.)

Good luck to Rand and SparkToro!

</comment><comment><USER3> Rand has been an inspiration way before the topics of honesty and empathy were trendy.

He was the spark that ignited my interest towards getting out of the usual "let's not discuss difficult topics", and as usual his post is a fantastic example of how to be honest without being a jerk.

Aside from this, it's great to see him on a different journey, although I'm sure leaving Moz must've been hard.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I was at a company that one of the founders departed from a few years back, one of the generous gestures the remaining founder offered was to keep the departing founder's email address alive "forever" (I left a few years later, not sure how long that was).

A simple gesture that cost the company near nothing and acknowledged the long history of the departing founder.

I don't know if Rand asked, but it seems a simple item to offer.

<comment><USER5> This is actually pretty complicated and messy.

A founder's email address is still tied to a lot of accounts. Either as a login, or the contact email address, or the password reset email address. Sometimes you can't disassociate the email address with the account.

People who missed the memo about them leaving reach out to that email address looking for the founder/executive, and instead they reach someone who no longer works there.

If you're using something like Google Docs, a founder who retains their email address still has access to virtually all of the most important company documents - OR someone has to go through every document and manually remove them (but not even that will get them all).

If the founder leaves on good terms, it seems like not a big deal, but it ends up being a huge liability.

[I'm on the board of a non-profit who just switched executive directors, and we had to have a big discussion about this.]

<comment><USER4> Well, I spent a lot of time before the founder departed making sure that all accounts were tied to a generic alias (admin@... or something similar). This is good practice whether or not the account is kept open, because if you close the account and then the password reset email bounces, what then?

If you convert a google account to an alias, you can solve the google doc issue (delete the account, which lets you transfer all the docs to another google account, then set up the alias).

Good point about missing the memo, but that could happen even if there was no email setup.

But I appreciate the comment and it does shed some light on the complexities of this. I still think it'd be worth it.

I'm sure it is bittersweet/complex for the departing founder as well--they get to continue to have folks email them at the same address they've had for years, but every email they receive is a reminder of the company they've left.

<comment><USER5> "if you close the account and then the password reset email bounces, what then?"

You don't close the account - you have it forward all email to someone else.

"Good point about missing the memo, but that could happen even if there was no email setup."

You set up an auto-responder. "Hey! I'm no longer with XYZ. If you are trying to reach a founder/the CEO, hit up email@example.com. If you'd like to reach me for things unrelated to XYZ, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

Everyone has to make their own call, of course. I think the biggest factor is how long the organization has been around and (somewhat related) the complexity of the org.

Is it a 3 employee person shop that's been around for a year? Not as big of a deal. Is it a 40 person company that's been around for 10 years? Way more complex, way more things that could go wrong.

"I'm sure it is bittersweet/complex for the departing founder as well--they get to continue to have folks email them at the same address they've had for years, but every email they receive is a reminder of the company they've left."

You're also asking them to do free work. They now can't take a vacation from email without worrying they got an urgent email from a customer that was meant for the CEO... but went to them instead. If they're off email for a week, that could be catastrophic for a business relationship. By letting them keep their email, you're asking them to be on-call for you... forever. By taking their email away, you're relieving them of that responsibility and letting them move on with their life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Say what you will about Rand, but he is a terribly good writer - and man is that guy productive.

Honest question: How can you get basically fired [1] as an employee while still being the chairperson.

[1] The message is cryptic, but I read it that way. Here is the quote: "On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is "fired and escorted out of the building by security" and 10 is "left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms," my departure is around a 4. That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally. I have a lot of sadness, a heap of regrets, and a smattering of resentment too."

<comment><USER7> The chairperson doesn't have dictatorial powers over the company. They are just the leader of the board of directors.

Any employee still needs the support of their managers and colleagues in order to retain their role, and if that becomes lost beyond redemption (which it clearly has in this case), your role as an employee is over.

But influence over the board is still determined by the size of your shareholding, so as long as Rand has enough shares and support from other directors, he can remain as chairperson.

The board and executive may indeed want him to continue as chairperson long- term, as he's still the identifiable figurehead of the company and knows its history better than anyone. Being a director/chairperson vs being a manager in a growth-stage company require very different credentials and abilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rand has been a huge influence on thousands of people, and if you ever launched something on the web, at some point you must have used their tool for a reason or another. Personally I really loved the way he explained complex things with his whiteboard in those weekly videos. These are great starter points to understand the heavy cog of SEO world. I don't know how many times I directed people to their blog for self-study/research etc. I am sure their success wasn't due just to him, but also an incredible team of people with him, but he was the face of the company at Moz until now - I wish him well!

Weird that in his goodbye piece he says he did not leave entirely of his own accord: > "On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is "fired and escorted out of the building by security" and 10 is "left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms," my departure is around a 4..." That is something that the piece doesn't answer, probably something going on, but he still has major shares and influence in the company i am sure!

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but be curious of his leaving circumstances.

>>> On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is "fired and escorted out of the building by security" and 10 is "left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms," my departure is around a 4.

<comment><USER10> He's been on his way out for quite awhile, having stepped back from day to day operations in July '17\. He wasn't the most professional leader and was widely blamed for promoting and perpetuating a toxic culture within Moz. This included publicly attacking people in the industry, openly mocking and punishing customers for criticizing his product(s), and politicizing honest feedback. In addition, blew a ton of money on pie in the sky ideas that led nowhere while letting the core product stagnate, only having to lay off 30% of their workforce.

Never worked there, take this with a grain of salt, just the word on the street in startup land :)

<comment><USER11> I've been in the Seattle startup scene for ~12 years and haven't ever heard him blamed for "promoting and perpetuating a toxic culture within Moz", so "widely blamed" doesn't seem accurate. I've also never heard of the other stuff you mention. If he was openly mocking/punishing customers, maybe you can provide a link where he did that?

Moz did spend a bunch of $ on new stuff vs. core stuff-- but I think that was after Rand stepped away from the CEO chair. Certainly the layoffs were after that by several years. Not saying he bears ZERO responsibility, but hanging that on him seems pretty unfair. Here's his post about the strategic zigs/zags and layoffs: [https://sparktoro.com/blog/moz-returns-to- seo/](https://sparktoro.com/blog/moz-returns-to-seo/)

Here's a quote from the post:

"I'm also really thankful that I wasn't in a managerial position and didn't have to make what were, I'm sure, insanely tough calls about who stayed at Moz and who didn't. I feel guilty and awful for all who were in that position, and all those who are seeking jobs now. I remember what it was like when Geraldine and many of her coworkers were laid off and the feelings of doubt and fear, resentment and confusion that washed over us. My empathy and my heart are with everyone on both sides of this heart-wrenching process."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not 'Mozilla' before you get too far into reading this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pardon my ignorance, but who is this? I can't find a name anywhere in the article?!

<comment><USER14> Rand Fishkin according to this article [https://searchengineland.com/rand- fishkin-announces-new-comp...](https://searchengineland.com/rand-fishkin- announces-new-company-sparktoro-leaving-moz-company-co-founded-293204)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any links on how the company started?

I had no inkling of its origins till reading this article.

<comment><USER2> The company has been around since 1981, but you wouldn't recognize it as the same company before ~2004.

[https://moz.com/blog/the-history-of-seomoz](https://moz.com/blog/the-history- of-seomoz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Moz /= Mozilla was a click bait for me, if I'll be honest.

I know there's nothing that can be done. Tagging [Not Mozilla] would be stupid.</comment>


Bing--bad logo, over dramatic - <AUTHOR> http://www.sporkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bing2.png Why do they think we want a big, dramatic image as a background to our search page?
The logo is a good inasmuch as it departs from typical Microsoft logos, BUT it's still ugly.
Especially since it's not live, all we have are these 1st impressions.  And frankly the design choices are lame.  Will this have an impact on it's success? <comment><AUTHOR> Why do they think we want a big, dramatic image as a background to our search page?

The logo is a good inasmuch as it departs from typical Microsoft logos, BUT it's still ugly.

Especially since it's not live, all we have are these 1st impressions. And frankly the design choices are lame. Will this have an impact on it's success?

<comment><USER2> Well, I like it. My wife would use it as well. Perhaps they're not targeting the Hacker News demographic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, I don't get what you mean. How is the Bing logo "over dramatic"?

<comment><AUTHOR> The logo isn't over dramatic. The lame full-screen pictures behind the initial search screen.</comment></comment>


Let's Talk About Capacitor Failure - <AUTHOR> https://bytecellar.com/2019/04/07/lets-talk-about-capacitor-failure/ <comment><USER2> If you want your aluminum capacitors to fail less often:

\- If you are designing the PCB and not repairing, keep them as far away from heat sources as possible. If you're repairing a PCB and the caps are near heat sources, consider isolating them with thermal material

\- Use the highest temperature rating capacitor that you can find, if cost is not a concern.

\- Most caps now have a lifetime rating such as (4000 hrs in 85C). This lifetime also has built-in ripple current assumptions, but for a first order approximation, consider using the "longest rated at highest temperature" cap, if cost is not a concern.

\- Again, as a very rough guideline, use the highest voltage rated capacitor that you can find for your target rail. This is an approximation, because your second goal should be to generally keep the ESR (equivalent series resistance) low, and as the voltage rating increases, so does ESR. Commercial products tend to choose the voltage rating around 1.2x - 1.5x target voltage. Most industrial products that I've seen target a minimum of 2x.

<comment><USER3> >consider isolating them with thermal material

This only slows down the transfer of heat, both in and out. I'd be surprised if anything useful would come of this as eventually the cap is going to achieve equilibrium with the environment, or if you wrap it up in a small coat, it will take longer to transfer heat out of the cap than normal and run hot.

<comment><USER4> Think a linear wall of isolation, so the capacitor can still dissipate heat to the air.

A jacket around the capacitor would be a bad idea, especially since capacitors can generate heat internally, and heat is what we don't want!

<comment><USER5> Their lifetime is also non-linear with respect to ambient temperature. A 10 C reduction[1] in ambient temperature roughly doubles the lifetime.

So shielding the capacitor from heat can be very beneficial, even if it's just a few degrees.

[1]: www.rubycon.co.jp/en/products/alumi/pdf/life.pdf

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember many years ago a bad batch of dell small form factor machines that constantly failed to popped capacitors. It would always be near the power supply where the heat was greatest. I guess in that certain area the capacitors were outside of their operating range...

Nevertheless, as a bored 16 year old, I enjoyed ripping apart all the machines and calling the higher level support lines to order replacement motherboards.

As time went on, they took my word on if a machine had failed due to this specific issue. I really enjoyed the responsibility and trust. Since I could fix the machines faster than Dells support turnaround, I just asked them to send the parts.

After about the hundredth machine, I never wanted to seat a processor again. This was back when processors had hundreds of fragile pins too!

It's likely that those experiences really pushed me towards software development instead of IT. Good times...

<comment><USER7> > After about the hundredth machine, I never wanted to seat a processor again. > This was back when processors had hundreds of fragile pins too!

They still have hundreds of fragile pins. I just bent a few on an AMD Ryzen 7 that got popped out of its socket due to too weak a socket clamp while removing the fan.

You know the saying - 'The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.' Turns out, it applies to the past, too.

<comment><USER8> Intel went to LGA where we the pins are on the motherboard. In my experience they are much less likely to be damaged there as they get protection from the socket.

I'm not sure why AMD stuck with PGA.

<comment><USER9> Lower cost, and some people are really attached to it because it's easier to repair pins if they get bent. You can straighten out PGA pins with a razor blade or a mechanical pencil pretty easily, LGA pins are... "challenging". It can be done but it's not easy.

(also, to be blunt, AMD processors undergo such extreme depreciation that they're practically disposable. After two years, AMD's flagship 1800X processor has lost 2/3 of its value, a nice high-end mobo like a C6H is literally more valuable than the flagship processor you had put on it. So it makes sense to have the processor be the one with the easy-to-damage sacrificial part on it. Intel it's the other way around, the processors are expensive and your mobo is probably the cheaper part to replace if needed.)

<comment><USER8> WOW you aren't kidding. First gen Threadrippers are _cheap_ now.

<comment><USER9> I've seen the 1950X as low as $450 at Microcenter. TR4 motherboards are quite expensive, but right now the Taichi is around $260 after rebate at Newegg. Note that not all of the motherboards are designed to handle the higher-TDP 2970WX/2990WX, if you think that's an upgrade you'd make then look for one with a beefier VRM. Also, the cheaper ones lack 10 GbE or some other higher- end features.

You can also find the 1700 as low as $130 if you watch around. Needless to say, if you have any batch-processing type tasks that don't need AVX2, that's a hell of a deal too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)

A story of industrial espionage, betrayal and an incomplete electrolyte formula.

<comment><USER11> This page doesn't talk about it, but what I recall is that the stage was set for this by a move away from a fire retardant (containing bromine) that was linked to developmental disorders. To eliminate the fire retardant, they also moved to a new capacitor chemistry.

That would represent a pretty big spike in demand from manufacturers. New product, possibly new partnerships.

<comment><USER12> That would be interesting because it would represent a second case of a safety oriented change causing a significant reduction in product quality in as many years. The other being the switch to RoHS lead free solder that caused a great many BGA failures for companies like nVidia.

<comment><USER13> The failure in implementing lead-free strategies is really interesting, because the _sole reason_ lead was put into electronics solder was that it prevented the tin whisker growth pure tin solder or silver solder experienced.

So some odd-seventy-eighty years later people remove the lead and substitute it with "straight nothin'" and are subsequently surprised they get tin whiskers again?! WTF?

<comment> fake-name Lead is added to solder because it lowers the melting point. It forms a eutectic alloy.

Tin whiskers has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER14> _> Tin whiskers has nothing to do with it._

This is not accurate. Tin whiskers are a well-known problem resulting from pure tin coatings (although the mechanism is not well understood) and lead has historically been added to mitigate their growth (among other benefits).

From Wikipedia:

 _" Traditionally, lead was added to slow down whisker growth in tin-based solders."_ [0]

From NASA:

 _" No single mitigation technique provides effective protection against whisker formation except the addition of 3% or more of Pb by weight"_ [1]

 _" Suggestions for Reducing Risk of Tin Whisker Induced Failures...1. Avoid the use of PURE TIN plated components if possible...Alloys of tin and lead are generally considered to be acceptable where the alloy contains a minimum of 3% lead by weight...Although some experimenters have reported whisker growth from tin-lead alloys, such whiskers have also been reported to be dramatically smaller than those from pure tin plated surfaces and are believed to sufficiently small so as not to pose a significant risk for the geometries of today's microelectronics."_ [2]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_\(metallurgy\))

[1] [https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-kos...](https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-kostic- Pb-free.pdf)

[2] [https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm](https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As others has mentioned, an ESR is the way go for capacitor diagnosis. Usually you can find the capacitor by determining the symptoms. For instance, if the power indicator turns on then off, it's probably near the power supply and filter circuit. That being said, it can get super dangerous repairing old vintage machines since there can be a huge ass capacitor upstream you do not notice. Always discharge your capacitors before you work on them!!

<comment><USER16> The ESR meter is like magic!

I have fixed a ton of discarded electronics by replacing bad capacitors I found with my ESR meter. Several years back I bought a whole lot of broken test equipment dirt cheap and fixed about 75% of it and resold for a nice profit. Almost everything was fixed with new capacitors.

A few years back my oven died suddenly. I popped open the cover and went through all the electrolytics with my ESR meter and found a bad one. I had exactly that value in my parts bin, replaced it and the oven worked like new. The total cost of the repair was less than $1.

<comment><USER17> Any recommended ESR meters?

<comment><USER15> The blue ESR meter is pretty famous [1].

[1] [https://anatekinstruments.com/products/fully-assembled- anate...](https://anatekinstruments.com/products/fully-assembled-anatek-blue- esr-meter-besr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While the limited lifespan of electrolytics is well known, I'm very curious as to the lifespan of the humble yet ubiquitous 0.1uF ceramic disc capacitor. There must be billions of these little buggers in digital electronics, and I've never seen one go bad from age.

This site claims "For X7R and X5R the loss is calculated at -2.5% per decade hour and for Y5V it is -7% per decade hour." [https://www.johansondielectrics.com/ceramic-capacitor- aging-...](https://www.johansondielectrics.com/ceramic-capacitor-aging-made- simple) but that seems very pessimistic.

Interestingly, they also claim the ageing of ceramic caps can be reset by baking them at 150C for a couple of hours. Many electronics board could survive this, which seems to imply that a digital board which used exclusively ceramic caps could in theory last ~forever (> 1 human lifetime).

<comment><USER19> I can tell you that most vintage radio and audio guys generally don't bother replacing ceramic capacitors even on 70-80+ year old equipment, so my guess would be 'a long time'.

<comment><USER20> Most of the time the failure mode is excessive leakage. Which often doesn't cause problems. And ceramic and tantalum capacitors tend to heal if running at more than a few volts. I found a cap on battery backed up memory array that was sucking about 50uA. Putting 5V across it 'fixed it'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it true that japanese capacitors are the best?

Example ( [https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/how-to-identify-japanese- ele...](https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/how-to-identify-japanese-electrolytic- capacitors/) ):

> _Japanese capacitors are notoriously known by their above-the-average > quality (good electrolyte and good sealing),_

Last year I had to buy a new power supply for my PC and some producers mentioned explicitly that they were using japanese capacitors and I just passively accepted it in the same style as "swiss watch"/"french champagne"/"italian pasta"/"german car" (now excluding exhaust system, hehe) ,therefore intrinsecally referring to good quality, but I always wondered "why?".

And if it's true that the "best" capacitors are made in japan, is there any special reason (historical, social, because of source materials, etc...) for that or is it just semi-random (e.g. many japanese that were picky discovered that producing high-quality capacitors was just their perfect meaning of life and therefore covered a previously ignored slice of the market)?

Thx :)

<comment><USER15> Good quality is directly correlated to good QC (quality control). Manufacturing engineers spend a lot of time to define the process. There are different methods such as six sigma (and the associated continue process improvement) to control and detect the rejects. However, to get there requires a lot of upfront cost and manpower which is why it costs more for better quality parts.

<comment><USER21> Thx (didn't know about "six sigma")

Do you think that maybe the japanese mentality is more "fit" to achieve such precise/high-quality processes and QC than other people/nations/etc... in the area of capacitors?

EDIT:

> _Lean management and Six Sigma are two concepts which share similar > methodologies and tools. Both programs are Japanese-influenced,..._ ( > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma) > )

Puah, really, never heard about this stuff - but isn't japanese mgmt structure famous for being complicated (or is maybe just the "formality" of the mgmt being very complicated for europeans?)?

<comment><USER15> Where something is made definitely effects the quality. The cultural effect has a play in the equation but it's also the available resources. An assembly line tends to be similar to a clock. Any piece that breaks in the chain can cause the quality to suffer. Therefore, you need workers who can handle the system and also be "trainable" to grow a product.

As others has mentioned, a lot these techniques stem from Demings. Most agree that he had a huge role from transforming the quality of product manufactured in Japan (synonymous to China today) to the top tier quality they can produce now.

People study for years to be able to be good at root cause analysis and assembly process management. To get a good assembly line processing requires on honing in the details. For instance, the location of the workers relative to each other, where they hand off the parts in the line, and also the location and type of tools can easily effect your reject rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Part 2 re: Tantalum capacitors always being leaded parts isn't accurate, there are lots of SMT tantalum capacitors. Due to it's status as a conflict material, though, and it's unique extra-fiery failure mode when you exceed it's ratings, I tend to stick with other low-ESR chemistries like aluminum polymer electrolytic, ceramic or niobium oxide (much more stable - 95% less likely to catch fire and non-conflict, similar performance).

<comment><USER23> The commenters point is that even typical SMT tantalums have leads:

\- A/B/C/.. type cases have tiny leads going outwards

\- more modern cases have metal sheet like leads bent down and inwards.

The thing is that tantalums capacity density is hard to beat, specially if you are cost-restricted (those polymers are pricey).

There's also a lot of research from NASA about the safety of tantalums, and they actually think they're fairly safe provided you don't expose them to voltage ripple (so don't place them on SMPS)

<comment><USER13> > There's also a lot of research from NASA about the safety of tantalums, and > they actually think they're fairly safe provided you don't expose them to > voltage ripple (so don't place them on SMPS)

Besides even the shortest over-voltage incidents, Tantalums also don't like high current pulses. Low-ESR power sources with quick ramp ups are a no-no.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I read a lot about tantalums and their failure modes some years ago because we wanted to set some kind of use policy for our own products.

After a lot of research and testing we ended up forbidding the use of tantalums in our designs and taking the cost hit whenever density was an issue.

It's a drastic measure but I think it was the right call, our products were a perfect mixture of all the things that tantalums don't support well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have seen a few electrolytics fail with a bulged top in switching power supplies and valve amplifiers, and once on a graphics card.

If you want to see how your old cap is doing

1) learn the safe way to discharge them 2) use an ESR meter to test them in circuit. As to the correct ESR, compare a new cap to the one in circuit.

<comment><USER25> >learn the safe way to discharge them

According to one electronics professor (prefaced this with "do not do this at home") - all you have to do is short the leads with a screwdriver.

Or really use a resistor and some alligator clips. Of course a screwdriver is easier to handle without touching the leads than those tiny alligator clips...

<comment> 52-6F-62 Similar experience in film/tv industrial lighting ballasts and heads. Had old techs evangelize that kind of thing. A lot of wacky people in that field.

I wouldn't trust a screwdriver to be safe enough in many of those cases. Some of the caps in those things are _massive_ and hold a charge for ages.

I almost killed myself on one thinking there's no way there would be any charge left after years being stored in an old uninsulated tractor trailer outside. Boy was I wrong.

We were demoing some old ballasts—essentially crumpling them before recycling to prevent raiders from seizing the equipment (it happened).

Well one coincidentally-aligned swing of the sledge caved the steel chassis in just enough to short a monster cap. The thing exploded on contact. Thankfully those old steel ballasts were tanks and nothing happened. I was sure glad I was insulated at that moment.

Kids, am I right? ;P

Just want to second what others are saying: don't toy with those things, and don't make uninformed assumptions!

<comment><USER26> >don't toy with those things

on a much smaller scale - in about 3rd grade at one point we had that game that took off like epidemic in our school and fortunately subsided quickly too - shocking each other (today you'd call it "tazering":), in an open fight kind of like 2 scorpions or sneaking upon, with the capacitors, wall socket charged (220v in USSR) and if i remember correctly of 10-200mkF (like an 1in thick cylinder or a block up to half Rubik cube size). The shock was profound to say the least and according to some literature seems to be crossing into accidentally deadly territory in unfortunate circumstances. Fortunately no injuries/deaths happened. Happy childhood in USSR :) - many things from our childhood one just cant do today anywhere.

<comment><USER27> One thing that makes that capacitor prank significantly safer is that the terminals are so close together so the actual current path through the victim is very unlikely to send any significant current through their heart. Still possible if they touched one terminal to their hand and the other terminal landed on their body or if the victim got one terminal and the prankster accidentally touched the other.

<comment><USER26> yes. Never thought about it. Frequently there were wires attached so that the wires would stick out of your hand like 2-8in toward your opponent. Still usually both ends would touch about the same locality on the body.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Electrolytic capacitors, even high quality ones, will eventually dry out and fail. The older the capacitor, the more likely this is to happen....sometimes they will last longer even with lots of use but..........

<comment><USER18> > The older the capacitor, the more likely this is to happen

The funny thing is that due to this capacitor plague of the early 2000's, capacitors which are even older than this have a better survival rate. The plot of failure likelihood over time would be something like a line with a weird bulge in the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Only slightly relevant to the topic, there was a capacitor failure in Sydney in 2004 that stopped trains on 6 lines during the morning commute causing 100,000 passengers to be stranded and unable to get to work. Like all complex failures, there was more than one contributing factor, but if the capacitor didn't fail the trains wouldn't have stopped. [https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/two- capaci...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/two-capacitors- and-poor-software-design-cause-of-major-nsw-rail-outage-last-month)

</comment><comment><USER30> I recommend reading the massively informative comments section.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have seen an (anecdotal) large amount of capacitors failing in consumer televisions. I recently replaced one in a friend's TV. These capacitors are supposed to have rated lifetimes of roughly the lifetime of the TV, so why are they failing in normal use? Is there another Dell situation, where a big batch had slight issues?

<comment><USER32> >I have seen an (anecdotal) large amount of capacitors failing in consumer televisions. I recently replaced one in a friend's TV. These capacitors are supposed to have rated lifetimes of roughly the lifetime of the TV, so why are they failing in normal use?

The point IMHO revolves around "What is the expected lifetime of a TV (nowadays)?"

More anecdata, I own a "large" 32" Sony Trinitron that is incredibly heavy and that works just fine (touch wood) since 2002 or so.

I also had a smaller Mivar that lasted more than 30 years (if I recall correctly 32 years 1984-2016).

More recently (like 2013 or 2014) I procured for a friend's project a number (20) of (admittedly el-cheapo) Hi-Sense 32" LCD's, 3 or 4 failed in about 25 months (or one month beyond the 24 months covered by warranty) and 2 failed within warranty period (but the importer/assistance center closed before that anyway), of these most were capacitors related issues (one was simply a cold solder joint). But - besides the repaired ones - the remaining 13 or 14 still work just fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> My 50-inch Pioneer PDP-5060 plasma (720p) lasted from late 2005 to 2014. I felt that was a short lifespan. I replaced it with one of the last plasmas sold, a 51-inch Samsung, and after four years a vertical line appeared. Now there are two. It is failing. That seems short to me. (OP)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The weirdest capacitor failure i've experienced was after a single speck of dust ended up inside the control panel of one the CNC machines at work. It landed directly on a capacitor that was part of a circuit for the backup emergency stop system. The system refused to power on because it believed the emergency stop was tripped.

We ended up bypassing the circuit itself directly in electrical cabinet until we got an electrician in who found the problem capacitor. Luckily the actual e-stop still worked, this was a backup e-stop, I guess, I'm still not entirely sure. We ended up having to replace the entire CNC controller for the machine.

</comment><comment><USER34> I didn't see it in the article, but one way I'm used to finding bad electrolytic caps that don't "look bad" is to smell them. I imagine there's not a 100% correlation, but the ones I'm used to smell like fish when they leaked.

No replacement for real testing/troubleshooting, but it was a good quick/dirty test when I used to repair microwave transmitters for a living. Also got a lot of curious looks while sniffing suspect boards :)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure many factors go into the life span of a capacitor. The fix for old VW dashboard clocks (at least in our '81 Vanagon): replace the two capacitors. Now, our VW is 37 years old, but it seems to me a _clock_ should be a pretty low-stress environment. Or maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. Why are 40 year old computers still running on original caps, but a 12VDC clock fails in about the same timespan?

<comment><USER36> Auto power environments are actually very rough -- 30% (or more!) swings in V+ a nominal 12V system, noise injected by the points opening/closing and the 30,000V coil generating a spark, the old mechanical-switch voltage regulators causing a giant surge, etc. Honestly, it's kind of amazing anything lasts in that world.

I go through an in-dash CD player every few years.

(source: restored loads of aircooled VWs over the years.)

<comment><USER37> Don't forget temperatures that can esily go from -20 to 140f, condensation, dust, vibration, chemicals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Capacitors fail either open or short.

Failing open will pretty much always not damage any other circuitry.

Failing short will _usually_ not damage other circuitry, since usually a fuse will blow or the power supply refuse to start.

For the above reasons, I wouldn't preemptively change capacitors. From an effort point of view, changing them in the unlikely event of a failure is far less than changing them all 'just because'.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is one of the major reasons, where so many decent electronics are being consigned to the scrap-heap due to the most innocuous reasons and there are avenues available to bring them back to life.

[https://www.avforums.com/threads/yamaha-rxv1700-power- proble...](https://www.avforums.com/threads/yamaha-rxv1700-power- problem.1533016/)

<comment><USER40> Maybe. Personally, I try to replace caps, when possible, but oftent times I find that real failure is corrosion of the board, I can do nothing about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I thought this was well known, but maybe just a rumor. But my understanding is that at one point someone who worked for a capacitor company stole the formula for making electrolytic capacitors and started their own company. Unfortunately they didn't quite get it right, and they had what was called "capacitor plague."

</comment><comment><USER42> Only time I've seen capacitor failure impact a system is on an old (Win XP) motherboard I got recently, most of the aluminium caps near the RAM slots are leaking, and only 1 of 4 slots work.

Oh and there was also the 33uf capacitor I put in backwards across 12VDC. Venting failed, and now there's a dent in my ceiling.

</comment><comment><USER43> > _I can't say for sure that I have ever seen an example of a capacitor > failure utterly destroying a system._

I suspect the author has never encountered the imbalance failure mode of matched-pair capacitors used in high-power weapon systems.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sometimes, a capacitor's failure also cause invisible damage to other ICs, it's pretty annoying since some ICs can't just use volt-meter to check if it is still functional.

<comment><USER12> One of the things I hate most about electrolytic caps is the failure mode that drips corrosive liquid over your PCB. Not only does it fail, it makes sure to take the rest of the board with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a treasure hoard. So much accumulated experience on offer, just for the time it takes to read it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Tempest 3000 eh? I build Zarjaz Rotary controllers for that thing if you're interested. ;)

Funny story actually...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you saw my blog post elsewhere on the site about Tempest 3000, so you surely saw my rotary. I can't recall...do I have a Zarjaz? Maybe an Opal. Hmmmm. Nice game. Rotary or nothing!</comment></comment>


Pseudo-bandlimited pixel art filtering in 3D: A mathematical derivation - <AUTHOR> http://themaister.net/blog/2018/08/25/pseudo-bandlimited-pixel-art-filtering-in-3d-a-mathematical-derivation/ <comment><USER2> Very beautiful article!

I'm always infuriated by texture aliasing, and this is a very refreshing read of the basics. Notice that in this article the anisotropy is linearized, and near the horizon of the sampled plane this linearization breaks down. It is actually very difficult to render an infinite plane without aliasing nor blur near the horizon!

<comment><USER3> I don't think their is a 3rd option.

Picture zooming out from a repeating image. Eventually an entire picture takes a single pixel then multiple images per pixel. You can pick one pixel from a full image but that's going to get aliasing effects, or you can use multiple but that just means blur.

<comment><USER2> It is certainly possible. If your texture is defined by a simple formula (e.g., an infinite checkerboard), then you can compute explicitly the correct rendering without aliasing nor blur.

<comment><USER3> Suppose you have zoomed out enough so their are a grid of ~10^100 x ~10^100 black and white checkerboards under each pixel. Now, you could use some small set of random samples to pick black or white, but for any given screen and set of random points their is a way to lay that checkerboard so every sample is white.

Increase the # of samples to any finite number, and you get the same problem at a higher zoom level.

<comment><USER2> For the case of the checkerboard, the color of pixels near the horizon has to be gray. This does not mean that there is blur, it is just a realistic rendering model.

The problem is that it is very difficult to filter a generic texture so that it looks perfect near the horizon. For a particular simple texture such as the checkerboard you can compute the exact rendering explicitly. But I know of no method to do it in general.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I would call that blur, but I don't want to argue semantics. Anyway, that makes my original point moot as I misunderstood what you where looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is absolutely amazing! I've been looking for a filter like this for such a long time, that can display scaled pixel graphics as if it were anti-aliased quads. Great work and maths!

</comment><comment><USER5> > sin might be rather expensive on your GPU targets

Definitely depends on hardware, but I learned recently that on my NVIDIA GPU, the transcendentals are actually in a separate pipeline, so they are free as long as you don't do too many of them! The 3 term sin approximation in the article might be slower than calling sin(), on my GPU it'd crowd the arithmetic pipe.

> This is very similar to a smoothstep, which explains why smoothstep > techniques for this kind of filtering works so well.

Seems like most of the filtering I see in ShaderToy uses smoothstep(). I sort- of assumed it was a hack of convenience and availability, but it's nice to see there's some justification for using smoothstep! I'm tempted to try this pseudo-bandlimited filtering on ShaderToy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too bad he doesn't show examples of with and without his method applied.

<comment><USER5> What are you looking at? I see examples with and without: the first 6 pictures in the article. Are you referring to the anisotropic examples at the end of the article?

<comment><USER6> Maybe I'm struggling with reading comprehension but it's not clear which is the one he made.

Also the anisotropic pictures would be really nice to see with and without the algo applied.

<comment><USER5> He didn't call it out clearly; you have a good point. I think it did take me a second to realize the 3rd example was the new better method. The main clue is the text, where the first two are negative ("aliasing from hell" and "blurry mess") and the third one is positive ("smooth and sharp"). It certainly could have used a description that says "here's my new method".

It wouldn't hurt to show the anisotropic pics against the other two, but FWIW, the story is more complicated since he mixed in mip-mapping for that example. He'd have to mix mip-mapping with nearest neighbor and bilinear as well, which would look sorta weird, take extra work, and possibly confuse his main point a little rather than clarify. It wouldn't be much more illustrative than the first set of examples either. So, I'm just guessing, but I can see reasons why he might have chosen to skip the comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We need more games like Octopath Traveler.</comment>