The iPhone's new chip should worry Intel - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/16/12939310/iphone-7-a10-fusion-processor-apple-intel-future <comment><USER3> That would be a huge distraction for Apple. The phone is where the action is and they need to compete as hard as they can.

Shifting any engineering talent towards laptop/desktop chips is fighting last decade's war, for a shrinking (relatively) pie.

The only reason to do that would be if it gave them some research edge that they could use elsewhere. Like cloud servers or something.

As the article says, already more iphones than PC's. Why bother.

The way to use this power is to keep pushing where they have the advantage (mobile) and hammer PC's until you have all the power you need in your phone/tablet. Software will grow up around the ecosystem until it eats PC's, and Apple can ignore the PC market entirely. Forget about PC's, focus on beating Android and they'll beat PC's as a bonus.

<comment><USER4> As sidenote I should mention after reading your comment (which I agree completely) I felt sad for Microsoft, they are really in bad position, they lost mobile war and their most important income (PC sector) shrinking.They are late, and they are losing already.(I know MSFT is strong in enterprise sector)

<comment><USER5> Yeah I think you're losing perspective that outside of startup hipster tech bubbles, Windows is still the most popular desktop computing platform.

Mobile/tablet devices have struggled heavily at overcoming the one thing that's preventing their full adoption: making them great for content creation, not just content consumption.

<comment><USER6> Is Google still a startup? How many .Net devs do they employ? Netflix? Facebook? All hipster startups?

<comment><USER7> A lot of big tech companies aren't building their products on .NET, for a variety of reasons that mostly boil down to it not being the right tool for the job. Recently the .NET web dev situation has improved. (Whether it has improved relative to the alternatives is arguable.) But when those companies were getting started the original iteration of ASP.NET was the only game in town, and it was very much _not_ something you'd want to use for what any of those companies do. Nor was it intended to be.

.NET's always been more of a player on the in-house enterprise dev front, and probably always will be. (That might change with .NET Core, but it also might not.) Which means that you're not going to see much about .NET on TechCrunch. Inventory & financial management for Fortune 500 companies might be the silent majority for software development work, but it's rarely newsworthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BTW, there is a strange new CPU architecture in macOS kernel header (mach/machine.h) : CPUFAMILY_ARM_HURRICANE

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Gen...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/General/APIDiffsMacOS10_12/Objective-C/Kernel.html)

<comment><USER9> Doesn't a lot of software depend on Intel's architecture? I think macs are stuck, for better or for worse.

<comment><USER10> They did it before in the PowerPC to Intel change. Migration was helped by:

\- Fat binaries (Mach-O binaries can support multiple platforms).

\- A PowerPC emulator for applications that are not ported.

I think they are even better positioned for an architecture change than during PowerPC -> Intel. They now have the app store where they can impose certain requirements (like supporting two architectures). And they now have their own compiler backend, which opens the possibility of supporting architecture- independent IR (along the lines of bitcode).

<comment><USER11> And Apple could transition even easier now thanks to it controlling most Mac apps through the Mac Store. All Apple needs to do is announce they're going to enforce ARM support in the Mac Store a year or two before doing it, and that's it.

Also, isn't Apple already encouraging the use of some intermediary bitcode for iOS (and macOS?) apps? Wouldn't that already made apps architecture-agnostic?

<comment><USER12> > controlling most Mac apps through the Mac Store

You're not being serious are you? MAS holds such an insignificant role in Mac App development that any requirements it sets around the transition would weaken its cause.

Also mo, bitcode would not be able to be used to facilitate an Intel to ARM transition - bitcode is still fairly processor-specific. Bitcode is more for being able to adapt to minor changes in instructions in the same arch

<comment><USER13> Hypothetically, how do you think the market would respond if Apple said that apps could only be sold through the store?

<comment><USER12> With the restrictions it currently imposes (sandboxing), I think we would see a significant withdrawal from the Mac platform. Many developers would stop making apps (especially those that are for power users, which when turn more devs away from macs). I doubt Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop) would be technically possible with sandboxing, so Adobe would withdraw from Mac. MS Office would probably be gone as well. Parallels and other virtualisation software would find it extreme difficult to run.

Valve would have to pull Steam because you can be as sure as hell they aren't going to give Apple a 30% cut of Steam sales. There goes Skype as well.

Without special deals with lots of developers, I doubt we would see many more apps on the App Store and instead we'll see the Mac be an unsuitable platform for many/most people. It would turn into a glorified Chromebook.

<comment><USER14> Except that all the real desktop alternatives are adopting the same sandbox models.

So, just like any technology adoption that comes from above those developers would just shut up and follow along.

Or do you think they would earn any money selling to GNU/Linux users?

<comment><USER12> In this hypothetical situation Microsoft doesnt make the stupid move of requiring all apps go through their store which imposes its own limitations (like sandboxing).

Mind you, it would be a completely insane move for Apple (or Microsoft) and I can't see them doing this any time soon. It would be absolute suicide.

<comment><USER14> Except there are no alternatives for those that sell software, as I mentioned on my comment FOSS users don't pay for desktop software.

<comment><USER12> There's all the ways people sell software on Microsoft platforms.

Adobe has managed to get thousands from users without any 'help' from Microsoft.

<comment><USER14> How is Adobe going to do it when Windows follows the same footsteps than Mac OS X?

The only way will be the store, or why do you think Microsoft is making it easy to port Win32/WPF (legacy) applications to the store model?

When the applications that matter like Adobe are on the store, and Apple has proven the "my way or the highway" works, they will slowly disable the "legacy" model.

I have been through enough computing changes to believe this will indeed happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My prediction is that we will see a new MacBook (Air) next year (probably October-November), with an ARM CPU running MacOS 11. Apple with bump MacOS (nee OSX) a major version number and keep it in parity with iOS, which will also be version 11 next year. Essentially iOS and MacOS becoming front ends to the same OS (which they almost are).

They will start with the ARM CPU on a single MacBook (an entry level one) for a few years before pushing it our across the whole range once app compatibility has been achieved.

<comment><USER16> The shift to Intel was a move of necessity, a huge risk, and ultimately a major pain for Apple's customers not talk about third party developers. Apple took a huge hit to their goodwill. That was predictable, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Why? Because they had to. PowerPC was falling further and further behind. It was alright for Macs to be more expensive than PCs, but more expensive _and_ slower? Furthermore, PowerPC was holding Apple back from taking the Mac where they wanted it to go (ultralight laptops).

None of the issues that caused the Intel transition apply to Apple now. Intel is not holding Apple back, because Apple already uses its own chips in what it considers the future of computing: iOS devices. At the same time Macs use exactly the same chips as PCs, which means there is no risk that PCs will suddenly leapfrog the Macs. There is in other word no major _need_ to make a shift. But the risks in doing so would be the same. Apple would once again be pissing of its customers and 3rd party developers. And for what? A marginal improvement in battery life? To save a fragment on bill of materials on a product line which already enjoys healthy margins, but which also is a tiny fragment of their overall business?

<comment><USER17> Last time I checked, PC desktop were dominated by Windows by about 90% market share and that market, while shifting to mobile, isn't tiny either. If they could come up with a desktop that is as small as Apple TV while providing enough performance of a large box desktop or shaves off 300g off of laptop without compromise or doubles battery power, that would be shocking even to average consumers. As I have been losing interest on Apple products for the past 5 years not seeing much of innovations, I think it's time they take the risk while they can. It's a shocking news if x86 drags Intel (and to some extent Windows) to secondary position, if Apple does it right.

<comment><USER18> I think you vastly overestimate how much average consumers and businesses know or care about any of those issues. Apple could release a chip that was 500% faster than the equivalent Intel chip while only consuming 75% of the power and it wouldn't move the needle on the distribution of Mac vs. Windows purchases. The vast majority of people and businesses who buy Windows buy in for the ecosystem and nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm pretty skeptical of the notion that iOS could replace macOS any time soon. Here's an experiment if you don't believe me: grab a mac, run the iOS emulator on it full-screen and try to do all your normal tasks in the emulator, without jumping out to the desktop. Let me know how that feels after a few hours.

You could argue that with some engineering time they can add some affordances to the iOS interface to make it more pleasant on desktop. Sure. But every app is also going to need to adapt for this -- they need to drag along the entire ecosystem. Honestly it would be way easier to make macOS run on ARM than it would be to make iOS run on desktop. They already did this whole processor shift thing once and it worked out just fine. Just package things in universal binaries and emulate the old CPU for legacy software. Not to mention with something like LLVM it's not crazy to imagine distributing applications in a near-native bytecode that gets JIT'd to the target machine.

I know microsoft has gotten pretty close to accomplishing the entire one-os- for-everything model, but look how much time and money it's taken them, and the amount of good will they burned through getting there.

<comment><USER20> What does this have to do with anything? Mac OS is totally portable (at one point. OpenStep provided transparent support for four CPU architectures), and server-side software even more so. Similarly, Apple could presumably port whatever subsets of Mac OS are needed as the mood takes them.

<comment><USER19> I never said macOS wasn't portable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at? My point is that iOS would suck on desktop without a lot of work, and a lot of that work would fall on app developers, not just apple.

<comment><USER21> overgard's point is that you wouldn't run iOS on the desktop, you'd run macOS there, but on chips designed for mobiles (A*).

<comment><USER19> seems like a likely point for that overgard fellow

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Both the iPhone 7 and the next next iPad Pro will be significantly faster than the current Macbook (and Macbook Air) and that's probably also the case for the next iteration, if it sticks with Intel. That alone is reason to switch to ARM. Compiling to ARM will be relatively easy, but still emulation will be needed for many applications, and that might be harder than emulating PowerPC.

I wonder where the performance ceiling is going to be for the Apple processor line. Looking at Intel, I'd have expected them to have hit it already, but given the huge increases in single threaded performance so far year on year, it's hard to believe that it'll peter down to <15% per year from now on.

If performance is going to keep improving at the current rate, then the A11X will be significantly faster than Intel's 2017 Cannonlake mobile lineup. Switching away from Intel would give Macs another big leg-up relative to Windows laptops.

Macs will never switch to iOS though. Processes on macOS have a freedom that's incomparable to that on iOS, and once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in again. But Apple will keep working to make iOS sufficient for increasingly more people, and Macs will keep getting more niche. Apple could even introduce a laptop-like form factor like the Surface Book with iOS on it (the iBook Pro?).

Interesting times...

<comment><USER23> I doubt we will ever see a laptop running iOS. iOS was designed solely for a touch interface. At the same time, apple has been outspoken about not wanting touch screens on laptops because of ergonomic issues and other things.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/15/9738504/tim-cook-says- app...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/15/9738504/tim-cook-says-apple-wont- combine-a-macbook-and-ipad)

<comment><USER24> They will however happily sell you a $170 keyboard for your ipad...

But snark aside, apple is always outspoken against things... until they release their own version of it. That's not some apple specific trait of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The iPhone 7/7 Plus single-core score is 3,450 and the multi-core score is 5,630.

The current top intel chip (i7-6700K) single-core score is 5326 and that same chip multi-core score is 17003 and the i7-6950X multi-core score is 29877. [http://browser.primatelabs.com/processor- benchmarks](http://browser.primatelabs.com/processor-benchmarks)

That's still a pretty good lead. Now perhaps with the added room of a laptop they could make an arm chip that was closer in performance but would it be worth it?

<comment><USER26> The i7-6700K is a 91 watt chip. Remove that and they are fairly close, worse the A10 line has been improving much faster than Intel's chips over the last five years.

Also, don't forget it's really the mid range chips that matter and the A10 is very much a mid range chip without the benefit of excessive binning.

<comment><USER27> What's the power consumption of the last AX CPUs btw ? I just laughed thinking about the iPhone 7 main "board" that fits under the space key. An A10f laptop would be a the board + 4 batteries and a IO hub... how long would that last ?

<comment><USER26> The AX line is really a system on a chip, but the CPU is something like 0.1 to 0.2 watts. Remember these get ~1/3 of a ~2,0000 mAh battery and can last for several hours.

<comment><USER28> Only if it's asleep the whole time. The TDP is closer to 4-5 watts.

<comment><USER26> iPhone 6 has a 1810 mAh battery at 3.82volts = just under 7 watt hours. If the phone including display, cellphone chips, wifi, Bluetooth, Ram, and COU etc add up to 4 watts you would not get 2 hours of use from the phone.

<comment><USER28> You can indeed chew through the battery in about 2.5 hours at high load: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple- iphone-6s-and-i...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple- iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review/8). And the iPhone can't actually sustain maximum performance (and thus maximum power consumption) because of thermal limits: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the- ip...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the- iphone-6s-and-6s-plus-reviewed/4). On the 6s, the CPU clockspeed drops from about 1.8 GHz to 1.4 GHz after 30 minutes of sustained load.

To the extent you're comparing A10 power usage to Intel's published numbers, keep in mind that Intel's TDP is what the processor uses to operate at the rated clock speed at full load indefinitely. In typical usage (where the CPU operates in short bursts and sleeps the rest of the time), the average power consumption will be a lot lower.

<comment><USER26> 7 / 2.5 is still under 3w for the total prone draw.

All of which suggests in a laptop with active cooling and higher energy budget say 20W you could sustain 2+ ghz x6 cores or 20,000 to 24,000 with minor adjustments. Which is in the ballpark of Intel's high end desktop performance and faster than their mobile chips.

The real issue is Intel is dealing with a well funded competitor who does not care about x86. And the computer history has a long line of companies who where eaten from below as people where happy to pay a lot less for fewer features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Pretty bad article. Why recommend the move to iOS on laptops instead of simply recompiling MacOS to the ARM architecture. Not an issue in the Linux world, dont see why Apple would have any issue with that if they really wanted to.

<comment><USER30> As some commenters pointed out, Apple already has a big part of the OS ported to ARM. iOS shares stuff with macOS - XNU Kernel and Foundation libraries. To have a complete port they would need to port the drivers, AppKit and their applications. And it seems it wouldn't be very hard for them because they already did that once (from PowerPC) so they have some experience with that.

<comment><USER31> I'm sure there already _is_ a complete, working port of MacOS on ARM. Application compatibility is the real sticker.

<comment><USER32> Much easier this time around given that Carbon is no longer in the picture. There will be holdouts like Adobe and Microsoft, but those companies are not the powerhouses they used to be on the Mac.

The switch to ARM is largely a matter of 'when' not 'if' at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Given that Apple control their own CPU designs, how hard would it be for them to add a hardware x86 ISA emulation layer over their ARM CPU for use with MacOS? That way the OS and newer software could be compiled for ARM, and legacy software could be run in x86 mode with reasonable performance without the need for rosetta-style emulation.

<comment> vertex-four So many patents involved in implementing x86 efficiently, that Intel have no interest in sharing at prices that would make this make any sense.

<comment><USER34> They don't need to work with Intel. Apple could just buy Parallels.

<comment><USER35> Parallels is performant because it isn't emulating the entire processor. Most instructions are passed through to the underlying hardware without translation.

<comment><USER36> Current Parallels is an x86 virtualisation product, yes.

But it used to be an x86 emulation product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is one reason I quit the whole CPU commentating thing. People kept rewriting the same article (with the same comments thread attached!), and I kept rewriting the same responses.

<comment><USER38> I think there is something satisfying about the topic, that we enjoy rehashing. And to opine on what's new since last time, hoping for exciting new developments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think the future is very powerful mobile devices that have a very smooth docking experience. In business environments this is good because knowledge workers don't have to lug around laptops. Instead, walk into a conference room, sit where there is a monitor/mouse/keyboard and your work environment is right there on you phone. Sort of like Google's multitude of mini-conference rooms with audio/visual setups, but augmented with shared peripherals.

<comment><USER40> I'm still hopeful this will be the case -- that all this multi-device cloud syncing nonsense today is just a fad and we'll all be carrying around phones with terrabytes of storage and desktop grade performance. Not holding my breath, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> While technically it would be fascinating to have an ARM based MacBook - <USER2> imagine what Apple could do with more power/thermal budget - the big deal breaker will be the compatibility with x86 baseded code. Currently Macs are very popular because they can run (partially via VMs) basically any program written in the last decade. This is not easy to give up, especially on the MacBook Pros. There could of course be an entry level ARM MacBook. Unless of course, they make some processor which can run both ARM and Intel code, but that sounds a bit far fetched.

<comment><USER42> They could start requiring bitcode for Mac App Store submissions, and compile things to ARM and x86 as long as they have to support both platforms. Or they could just bring iOS to their desktop class computers. Also, why not emulate x86 apps on ARM? Sure, that would be terrible for games, but might work well for most productivity apps.

<comment><USER41> The operation system is not the problem. They for sure have a full macOS for ARM working. Its the applications. Most desktop apps are not sold via the App Store, and there are the VMs (Windows, Linux) to think about. For my work for example, I need to be able to run x86 binaries at full speed. So an ARM based Mac would not work for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> From what I read geekbench is basically comparing hardware acceleration for encryption. Not very useful for general purpose computing.

[http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curposti...](http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpostid=136666)

<comment><USER44> That link is referencing Geekbench 3, not Geekbench 4.

I did some searching and found the following quote concerning the Geekbench 4 benchmark:

"These updated workloads include several well-known codebases that are used every day on mobile devices, such as LLVM, SQLite, and PDFium. These updated workloads model real-world tasks and applications, and provide an objective measure of the performance of the CPU in your phone or laptop."

That sounds like it is testing a lot more than hardware accelerated encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am not sure how good of a benchmark geekbench is, but ever since AMD stopped pushing Intel, they have been a little complacent. When AMD introduced Athlon 64 it really forced Intel to step its game up. The core 2 duo was pretty impressive. AMD hasn't had a competitive product in years and Intel has just been providing some incremental improvements here and there.

With shrinking transistor sizes they can shorten their pipeline maybe add a few more front end decoders, add even more cache. If you have a shorter pipeline the branch misses aren't as bad. There is a lot of stuff they could do which they probably aren't since they haven't had a real incentive to do so.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think sometime next year when the A10X is released the question of MacBook Pro or iPad Pro will come down to the following:

"What device of, which both have the same performance and storage, do I choose? The one with the USB ports, the inflexible keyboard, bloated software and costs 600$ more, or the other one with a touchscreen, optional keyboard, and much much simpler software?"

Also I think that Apple won't do any ARM MacBook at all. If we consider a RICE scheme for gauging priorization for such a feature like ARM CPUs in MacBooks:

Reach: Modest, there aren't that many Mac users compared to iOS

Impact: Positive impact on Mac users is limited. Performance won't be that better, mostly equal. Software availability could be limited for a while during a transition.

Confidence: Apple has made a couple architecture transitions on the Mac before, so they know how it works. But they don't know how app developers will react. Will Adobe, Microsoft etc. get onboard, or jump ship?

Effort: Rather high. It's one of the things where 10% of the implementation will need 90% of the effort. Mostly it's just a recompile to run. But optimizing software for x86 is different than for ARM. The performance critical parts of many system frameworks which have no existing iOS port have to be rewritten to be efficient on the new architecture.

</comment><comment><USER47> A few big problems with the article:

\- Comparing the brand new A10 to a 2013-era Intel.

\- Asserting iOS for workstations.

While many people could probably get by on iOS, it is particularly crippled for people that need to do technical work. However, I found the idea intriguing, of having a workstation with multiple ARM or Apple chips in it with a proper OS. I know they exist already, but having Apple behind them would make a big difference.

<comment><USER48> Could you elaborate on the last bit - the fact that such workstations exist already. Can you share any pointers?

<comment><USER47> I couldn't find much:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813190...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813190006)

and there is Raspberry Pi for micro apps, perhaps they aren't as developed as I'd heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is there a reason no one publishes SPECint results for the A9/A10?

<comment><USER50> Here are SPECint results for the A9X:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro- review...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-review/4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Would have been nice to read a bit more about the chip!

</comment><comment><USER52> I sometimes wonder if iOS and OSX will end up merging and Apple notebook, iPhone and iPad hardware becoming more of the same thing, all running on Apple chips and the same appstore.

<comment><USER53> After I saw the benchmarks of Apple's A10 Fusion chip and it was clear they continued focusing on desktop class performance in phones, my thoughts were:

1\. Apple is working hard to make the switch from Intel to their own ARM chips and in a few short years we will see MacBooks and MacBook Pros with ARM architecture.

2\. The iPhone becomes the new ultra portable desktop computing device. You plug it into a dock (maybe backside of an Apple 27" monitor) and boot up an ARM version of macOS from your iPhone.

<comment><USER54> > 2\. The iPhone becomes the new ultra portable desktop computing device. You > plug it into a dock (maybe backside of an Apple 27" monitor) and boot up an > ARM version of macOS from your iPhone.

Why would they do that - Apple is very profit oriented and if they can sell you Apple monitor, Apple iMac, Apple iPhone and all the dongles to connect them together, that maximizes their profit.

Plugin your iPhone into a monitor is not a good way to extract maximum profit - well maybe if it'll only work with Apple monitor and nothing else.

<comment><USER55> Apple does not work in a vacuum: PCs still exist, Android still exists, and things like ChromeOS are competing in certain spaces. Apple is also different from most competitors because they also make money after the device purchase from purchases of app, music, video, ebook, etc.

If the question was just "iPhone or iPhone + MacBook?" there's no doubt they'd prefer the latter but if the question is instead "iPhone or iPhone + Windows PC" I have no doubt they'd throw the Mac under the proverbial bus if it would keep your money from going to a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is there a future where magic leap provides the screen real estate and your iPhone can project a laser keypad?

Sadly I don't think so.

What about a thin foldable screen rather than a headset? ([http://www.sciencealert.com/lg-unveils-its-new-flexible- pape...](http://www.sciencealert.com/lg-unveils-its-new-flexible-paper-thin- tv))

Bottom line is if your phone is as powerful as your laptop how can you interact with it naturally on the go?

</comment><comment><USER57> I guess that Apple would be already able to produce laptop SoCs running at 5-15W TDP, with e.g. 4 to 6 CPU cores at 2-3GHz, outperforming newest Core i7 chips for laptops.

That could allow to maintain, or even increase, profit margings, with margin for lowering product price. Running that path, in my opinion, Apple could take 50% of laptop market. E.g. high quality laptops with BOM (bill of materials) of 150 USD selling for 400-600 USD. Or even less.

<comment><USER58> Yes, Apple could potentially save between $100-$250 BOM cost. But it is likely Apple would also want their Mac range to be completely Retina.

Basically Apple will still be selling at a similar price range and not entering the low end market. But they just offer much better value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Somebody mentioned on here a few days ago that it's possible Apple would kill their laptop line entirely. I scoffed at the time, but this article has made me wonder. If the iPad offered the same screen, had better battery life, was just as fast if not faster and had a more stable OS... why wouldn't they kill their laptops entirely? Their laptop sales are a small and shrinking portion of their business.

<comment><USER60> because tablet is not a laptop, relevant story which also mentions laptops: [http://www.cio.com/article/3058715/ios/why-i-ditched-the- ipa...](http://www.cio.com/article/3058715/ios/why-i-ditched-the-ipad- pro-129-for-the-ipad-pro-97.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Even if Apple doesn't pursue this for it's MacBook (I'm assuming they wouldn't for the Pro), I think it's a good indicator for where ARM is headed in general. As these things get faster than low power Intel chips and Google continues to add functionality to Chrome OS, like Android app support, it's likely to have a significant impact on Intels share of the PC market.

</comment><comment><USER62> Nah, the only things that will hurt Intel are "good enough" SoCs out of Asia and possibly ARM in bulk in the server racks.

Apple's "special sauce" only remains special as long as it remains an Apple exclusive, and in no way will that be a Intel threat no matter how much the SV goes round the infinite loop...

</comment><comment><USER41> As crazy as it might sound, perhaps the easiest way to gain a larger market would be some Xserve style server hardware with ARM chips. The typical (web-) serving software gets rebuilt quite often, so legacy code is a minor importance, and having lots of efficient processors is really a huge thing.

</comment><comment><USER63> What a bunch of blown up garbage. I don't trust The Verge on anything Apple related anymore.

<comment><USER64> exactly my thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Surely the iPhone's new chip should worry professional and creative Mac users even more. The Mac Pro is now so outdated that the iPhone is catching up to it in single-threaded performance, and one wonders if macOS is much longer for this world.

<comment><USER40> I'm not worrying about that until Apple announces XCode for iPad.

<comment><USER36> Swift Playgrounds is the first step.

<comment><USER6> Thank God we still have Windows, I say seriously.

<comment><USER66> No!

Thank God we will always have BSD/Linux.

<comment><USER6> My kingdom for a laptop loaded with Linux I can buy at a store on which the sleep/hibernate, fan speed, battery life, wifi and temperature are okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've said it before here: Intel allowing ARM chip makers to use its 10nm process is _not_ an "automatic win" for the company, as many seem to believe it is.

If Apple is already able to match some of Intel's mainstream CPUs with an _inferior process_ , what do you think is going to happen when Apple can use the same 10nm process Intel uses?

a) Apple embarrasses Intel with a much cheaper chip (I'm talking ~5x here) that can surpass some of its most powerful _notebook_ chips, while both using the same process.

b) Apple replaces Intel in most of its Mac lineup with the exception of Macbook Pro (and even those chips could be replaced with cheaper AMD Zen chips soon).

c) Intel is ultimately chased to the more profitable "up-market" (typical innovator's dilemma), and loses control of the consumer market.

d) All of the above.

I hope Apple _does_ switch to its own ARM chips for the Mac line. It's what Steve Jobs would've done and would've wanted, but it remains to be seen if Tim Cook is willing to follow in his footsteps to that degree.

For those still worrying that "Mac performance would suffer" \- newsflash - Macbook Air has already been using the lower (than Core i3) performance "Core M5" for at least a generation. So if you have the latest Macbook Air, you're already benefiting from _less_ performance than you did 2-3 years ago with Core i5.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Apple announces an A11-powered Macbook Air next year that is 30%+ faster than the _previous_ "Intel Core" Macbook Air. It would also be a great and very smart way to launch the ARM-powered Macbooks because people would have little to complain about (other than perhaps a few initial compatibility issues, but I think they will get over those quickly as developers update their apps).

<comment><USER67> Next year? No way. 2020 give or take a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I see the iPad Pro gain more functionality and be the "computer" for most people. Its possible that slowing the development of Macs further may actually help future iPad Pro sales.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is great but keep in mind vr/ar is going to be changing the game in the next few years. We'll be back to chasing max power.

<comment><USER70> If VR/AR is ever going to change the game, is going to be _in mobile_ , where efficiency matters most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I wonder how soon Apple will have custom GPUs in their Macs? Or maybe a standalone display driven by an Ax chip?

</comment><comment><USER69> Off topic but I'm starting to think people find any excuse to use the word "portmanteau". Maybe that should be a new law like betteridges law. (Wikipedia is littered with it)

</comment><comment><USER64> Next month: A leak shows that Xcode has a flag to compile to arm.

Next developer conference: Apple announces that all macs are moving to their chips. Developers, get ready to port your apps.</comment>


Best CRM for measuring and reporting? - <AUTHOR>

What's the best simple CRM tool with solid reporting metrics? <comment><USER2> You may want to consider web crm www.worketc.com, as for me it is the best CRM for managing my sales and it provides detailed reports of my projects. A Gantt chart view of the sales and project funnel is a big help --it saves me from time-consuming report preparation every time there is a management committee meeting.</comment>


Ask HN: What problems do you have with GitHub Pull Requests? - <AUTHOR> My team is considering moving to GitHub from BitBucket. I'm trying to do some research to find criticism of the PR mechanics on GitHub but my searching is weak or it's hard to find.
We are going to dual-remote it for a bit and actually try out the GitHub and do some PRs there so we'll get firsthand testing. But, GH does offer a lot of functions that BB doesn't so until I know about all of them, it's hard to gauge how the full GH environment will suit us.
So I'm looking for some folks that really understand GH to comment on how to do effective PRs with all that GH has to offer. Anyone know of a good resource or willing to provide some commentary? <comment><USER2> The use of PRs ties you to Github. That's the biggest drawback.

While it's easy to solicit random PRs, the workflow is IMHO unintuitive for new Github users to discover (just my opinion) and the quality of random PRs tends to decrease with ease of access.

IMHO the whole code review thing is overly formalized for anyone who is not a 100% distributed team.</comment>


The world's biggest grave robbery: Asia's disappearing WWII shipwrecks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/worlds-biggest-grave-robbery-asias-disappearing-ww2-shipwrecks?CMP <comment><USER2> Any idea why low-background steel[1] is that valuable given the fact that it is only 0.005 mSv/yr above natural levels at 1.26? [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation)</comment>


The NASA Rocket Countdown Came from a 1929 Fritz Lang Film - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nasa-stole-the-rocket-countdown-from-a-1929-fritz-lang-film-1d569cc0-50ff-4045-b0c9-1f0d72a193db <comment><USER2> I went looking for a picture of the retired analog countdown clock from the article, expecting to see a giant clock face with hands.

But as far as I can tell, the analog clock they're referring to is the one in the photo on the right here [1], which most people would probably consider digital.

[1] [https://www.nasa.gov/content/new-display-counts-down-for- new...](https://www.nasa.gov/content/new-display-counts-down-for-new- generation)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't use a digital display, so how can it be considered digital?

<comment><USER4> "Digital [adj]: (of a clock or watch) showing the time by means of displayed digits rather than hands or a pointer."

<comment><USER5> Imagine the confusion in an alternate universe where the clockmakers of old decided to call the pointing sticks "fingers" instead of "hands".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ...And his follow-up contribution to illustrate a modern economy circa 2015 was "Metropolis."

"...Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's ruler, and Maria, a poor worker, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes of their city. ..."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_\(1927_film\))

<comment><USER7> Metropolis has quite an interesting history:

The original cut was lost and only fragments survived. Since the 80s the most popular version was one made by Giorgio Moroder (the same guy that worked with Daft Punk on the Album Random Access Memories). Over the years different versions and scenes were found all over the world and since 2010 there is version that is considered close to the original.

Popular culture is full of references to this movie, from "The Fifth Element" to Queen's "Radio Ga Ga".

I can also highly recommend "M"[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_%281931_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_%281931_film%29)

<comment><USER8> I also recommend M. Given the fame of the original film, it is a little bit surprising that they haven't remade it recently.

<comment><USER9> There is a 2000 Anime and Manga remake of Metropolis. Very interesting variation. (but not close to the original)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole film is on Youtube. If you are just interested in the countdown scene the link is below:

[https://youtu.be/9MVga1D6rRQ?t=5626](https://youtu.be/9MVga1D6rRQ?t=5626)

EDIT: The clip is also in the original article but a bit different. This link shows only the last 10 seconds, it has English translations of the titles and has no modern background music.

<comment><USER10> I'm a big fan of colorized history over on Reddit. The old pictures become much more appealing this way.

Wouldn't it be great to colorize these classics, and also remove the title cards and hire some foley and voice artists to create a soundtrack for them?

<comment><USER11> These are artworks, and even though they are made with limited technology they are built to those constraints. You can't update the medium and not lose the essence of the piece.

You don't make super mario more appealing to modern audiences by rendering it from first person. We should build emulators so that people can play the original. Or you can draw inspiration from the original and make a new piece that works in modern ways.

So I think it would be waste of effort. Colorizing historical photos is cool, but I don't think it's the same thing.

<comment><USER10> > You can't update the medium and not lose the essence of the piece.

I don't find this argument compelling at all. If the director at the time had color film and sound, he certainly would have used them. After all, how many silent films have been made after 1930? 2? B+W persisted for a while because it was so much cheaper than color film, but now that that differential has gone away, how many movies are released in B+W? 1 every 5 years? Even film noir is done in color today.

<comment><USER11> Yes it's a technical limitation which he would not have chosen today. I agree.

In the silent era they had to work around the missing technology and that affects acting style, story points, the pacing, lighting, set design etc. This created silent film. To reverse those creative decisions you need to redo lot more than color and sound.

Even today when you shoot b+w movies and probably use color camera you light it totally different. Just simply desaturating the image does not work.

<comment><USER10> The examples in Reddit's colorizedhistory subreddit show how good and effective colorization is. It doesn't have to be effective, and those colorized pictures don't quite look like color photography, but things don't have to be perfect to be a huge improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pictures of the clock from when it was being dismantled:

[http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4558-s.jpg](http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4558-s.jpg)

[http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4559-s.jpg](http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4559-s.jpg)

[http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4560-s.jpg](http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4560-s.jpg)

[http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4561-s.jpg](http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/images/small/2014-4561-s.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> Fritz Lang, in turn, may have been inspired from the old portrait photography days whereby the subject is counted down to -- to indicate that the long process is almost over after many many minutes.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Nazi party had this film withdrawn from release. They felt the film was realistic to the point of giving away German technological secrets.

<comment><USER15> I was just skipping through it. This film gets things right many scifi films don't to this day. Which is astonishing, really. There was no real need for it to be this accurate. I mean, there just was no space flight, so you could just as easily have picked stereotypes about what it's like to fly to space … it's not like anyone (safe some scientists) would have noticed.

(I love the scene with the water bottle in zero g with some nice special effects. They got the nice round water bubbles right, but didn't quite go for space travelers catching them with their mouths. I don't think putting those bubbles in a drinking glass would be as easy as they show it to be. But probably easier from a special effect point of view.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This attributes a little too much insight to Lang. Multi-stage rockets had already been invented. It is quite likely that people developing rocketry at the time were already using count downs and Lang was inspired by what he witnessed. This is the first documented countdown on film. It doesn't necessarily represent a novel invention.

</comment><comment><USER17> If the article is about a specific item, there should be a picture of the item in the article. Without it, it's nearly worthless.

<comment><USER4> The second picture in the article shows the countdown clock. The article just confuses it by calling it "analog" and comparing it to a wristwatch, but in fact most people would consider it digital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It should be on every nerds bucket list to view live rocket launch.</comment>


New Senate Bill Aims to Restrict Tor Access for Illicit Activities - <AUTHOR> http://themerkle.com/new-senate-bill-aims-to-restrict-tor-access-for-illicit-activities/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be the relevant text from the PDF that the article links to, on page 22:

"The Committee recommends $50,500,000 for programs to promote Internet freedom globally. [Description of various techologies snipped] [Censorship- circumvention] technology alone does not further Internet freedom abroad, and the Committee acknowledges the difficulties in monitoring and conducting oversight of the use of such technology. For this reason, the Committee requires that spend plans submitted by the Department of State and BBG pursuant to section 7078(c) of the act include a description of safeguards to ensure that circumvention technologies are not used for illicit purposes, such as coordinating terrorist activities or online sexual exploitation of children."

</comment><comment><USER3> This article seems to imply -- incorrectly -- that the Tor Project is funded _only_ by the State Department and that, as a result, development would cease if that funding were cut.

Neither are true.</comment>


Show HN: A CreateJS simulator of "bacteria" using genetic algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://ferrolho.github.io/createjs-bacteria-sim/ <comment><AUTHOR> A description of what is going on can be found here:

[https://github.com/ferrolho/createjs-bacteria-sim/blob/gh- pa...](https://github.com/ferrolho/createjs-bacteria-sim/blob/gh- pages/README.md)</comment>


An Article on Work Relationships: Relationship Banking – Are You Overdrawn? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bettermanager.us/relationships/relationship-banking/ <comment><USER2> Normalizing corporate sociopathy with fiscal metaphors is not a remedy.</comment>


The Marshmallow Test Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/13/the-marshmallow-test-revisited/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps what the first study _actually_ discovered, unbeknownst to the original researchers, is that children from homes in which the _guardians are reliable_ turn out to be more prosperous in life. Therefore, what was actually being measured, wasn't the self control of the children, but a proxy for the reliability of the adults in their life.

<comment><USER3> While that's a tempting conclusion, it's a tough to justify. The original experiment didn't study or account for the parental variable, so it's impossible to tell what effect it may, or may not, have had "behind the scenes."

It's entirely possible that the reliability of adults is a _factor_ in developing a child's impulse control. It's also possible that it's a significant factor. But we'd have to design experiments to study its significance. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied in the original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring disguising parental reliability as the true factor.

<comment><USER4> >Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied in the original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring disguising parental reliability as the true factor.

The variable being studied was weather or not the children would wait for the second marshmallow, and that the children who did wait did better in life. I suspect that everyone would agree that this is not an casual relationship, which would imply that the children did better because they waited for the marshmallow. Therefore, we know that we are looking for what factor(s) lead to the correlation between waiting and success in life. In the original experiment it was assumed, I believe without justification, that the common cause was impulse control. This experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the environment plays a significant role in determining how the children make their decision. This result support the hypothesis that the original marshmallow experiment was a proxy for the living environment of the children, not their impulse control. I'll leave it up to researchers to determine how to answer the question of what is going on behind the scenes, however I think the take home message for the rest of us is that experiments and statistics only prove exactly what was being looked at, and any conclusion we draw from that is interperatation that is subject to human error.

<comment><USER5> _"This experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the environment plays a significant role in determining how the children make their decision."_

No, the experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the person establishing the _immediate challenge_ plays a significant role in the outcome. It's a huge leap to go from that relatively mundane finding, to the conclusion that the randomly selected participants in the original study were biased in a systematic way toward mistrust of adults.

 _"This result support the hypothesis that the original marshmallow experiment was a proxy for the living environment of the children, not their impulse control."_

It provides only extremely weak support for that hypothesis. A reasonable prior expectation is that it is unlikely for a randomly selected group of young children to share a mistrust of adults that would carry on throughout their lives.

<comment><USER6> _"It provides only extremely weak support for that hypothesis. A reasonable prior expectation is that it is unlikely for a randomly selected group of young children to share a mistrust of adults that would carry on throughout their lives."_

I think you misunderstand gizmo686's point. My reading (of gizmo686's post as well as the study) is that this is not about a question of merely the individual child's responses but also about their environment, which at the age of 3 is going to be primarily controlled by their parents. It's not just a matter of whether a child who grows up mistrusting the world is at a disadvantage. It's more that a child who grows up in a world that is untrustworthy is at a disadvantage.

Let me be blunt, we are talking about shitty parents. Or, to tone it down one notch, less capable parents. On the one hand you have parents who can provide for their children, who are attentive to their needs, etc. Those parents will tend to raise children better, and will tend to raise children who grow up to be more successful. On the other hand you have parents who let their children down often, are unable to provide for them as well, make promises that go unfulfilled, etc. Those parents will tend to raise children less well, and will tend to raise children who grow up and have more problems in life, problems finding jobs, problems with law enforcement, problems with relationships, etc.

In broad strokes this is essentially what the second experiment is trying to show that the first experiment is testing. By intentionally priming children to either be trusting or untrusting of their immediate environment and of adults they show that they can control the outcome of the marshmallow experiment. And that in turn leads to the argument that perhaps it is a similar degree of priming (through the ongoing experiences with their family) and the underlying level of trust for adults that is being tested in the first experiment.

It's not an ironclad experiment but it's an interesting hypothesis, certainly, and at the very least it unravels some of the overly simplistic interpretations of the first marshmallow experiment.

<comment><USER7> I believe timr's point is that this is a hypothesis based on the outcome of the study, but the study did not measure it. The study _measured_ the response to the experimenter.

I would add that it's possible that the two marshmallow experiments have very little to do with each other besides using children and marshmallows to perform. Further study is needed to make further conclusions.

For example, we might be tempted to try to combine the results and say something like "kids who trust and respect authority do better in life as adults." But this is not what the study/studies measured, and while this study may inspire interesting hypotheses for future work, that work needs to be performed before we can make conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In watching my kids grow up I'm always struck by my inability to figure out why they did certain things. They obviously had reasons but when questioned those reasons were regularly things I would have never thought of. I always felt it was a bit like anthropomorphizing animals to make deductions about their behavior. You might think you have a good hypothesis but it's very difficult to know that you're working with the same variables they are.

<comment><USER9> The more I read about psychology/rationality, the more I realize that what you're saying is also true about _ourselves_. We regularly do things that don't make sense, and have only vague, and often wrong, ideas about why we did what we did. Except that our brain is amazingly good at self-delusion, making us believe that there _were_ reasons behind it all.

<comment><USER10> There are almost always reason, but not always conscious rationality. Emotions in the limbic system are sort of like the analog machines of old, before digital logic computers, as a weak analogy.

What is often ignored is that rational decision making depends on priorities and estimations of prior probability, and these vary wildly based on circumstance.

<comment><USER11> I'd like to agree; but the conclusion "Irrationality is observed; sometimes I find out its based on emotion: All irrationality is based on emotion" is not warrented. Its possible people make bad decisions because they're bad- decision-makers. Or maybe something else, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting bit in the original experiment seemed to be the kids who'd _say_ they'll wait for 15mins, but then succumb to the temptation of the marshmallow in front of them and eat it while waiting. Any rational (inductive) bit ought may be expected to be completed before the wait started.

PS: Will be good if such article writers link to the paper, or at least the abstract.

</comment><comment><USER13> When I saw the title, I originally thought of:

<http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Welcome.html>

I think the above is a more interesting challenge. Particularly because there is a magical point where the kids or even adults realize that they just have to start playing with the spaghetti - can't just stare at it.

<comment><USER4> The more interesting part of that is that, next to engineers, kindergardeners are the best performing group at the marshmallow challenge. [1]

[1] <http://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did any of the kids eat one marshmallow and then trick the study administrators into giving them the other two marshmallows? Those are the kids that are going to be founders.

Maybe I'm reaching.

<comment><USER15> I think I remember reading about some of the kids (in the original study) who hollowed out the marshmallow and ate the insides, then left the shell on the plate to trick the adults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What if the child didn't much care for marshmallows, and reasoned that spending 15 minutes of their life waiting for an extra marshmallow was an incredible waste of time?

<comment><USER11> Funny; but seriously the kids enter the room knowing "Im taking part in a serious Adult study of my behavior." They likely try to behave as they're expected to behave. The real test is, how soon does the feeling of obligation decay to the point that the appeal of a marshmallow (admittedly insignificant) outweights the desire to please.

My Sister took her youngest to an experiment where, in the waiting room they put the kid in a room with toys on a table, and took her to 'do paperwork'. The boy was told to leave the toys alone.

Really she went to the observation room. They simply timed how long it took for the bored child to play with the toys.

See, by testing the child 'before the test started' they avoided pre-loading the kid. They changed-up the test by having other kids and adults enter the room and play with the toys, or repeat the admonition, or whatever.

The

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My issue is this: I do not know at what age the ability to prioritize is developed(this may be ignorant). I feel prioritizing and weighing pros vs cons are both much more valuable than delaying gratification.

I am not a young child, anymore, but I could imagine a child (me) taking the marshmallow that is sitting in front of me, because maybe I'd rather have a marshmallow now, and waiting 15 minutes is just too long for a second marshmallow. Maybe I'm wrong and I was just a kid who didn't think about candy all the time.

My point is even when I was really young, I still may value my time (not consciously), and would rather go play with legos and have a marshmallow, than spend my time concentrating on getting a second.

<comment><USER18> Good point. I'd hope the study would control for this by locking you in a room for 15 minutes regardless of marshmallow logistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whenever I meet a new kid, I mentally classify them as either a "one marshmallow child" or a "two marshmallow child" based on what I think the result woud be if they took the marshmallow test. One thing I have noticed is that there is a strong correlation between one marshmallow kids and one marshmallow parents.

<comment><USER20> The question then is then: is it a genetic predisposition or is it more behaviorally learnt?

<comment><USER21> This calls for a twin study!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Notice what they downplay in this article: That almost half of the kids who had just been in contact with a reliable adult still ate the marshmallow.

Also, were the kids allowed to keep playing with the fun art supplies while they waited?

A link to the actual study would help.

<comment><USER4> In the third paragraph, "revisited" is a hyperlink to the original paper. For anyone interested, here is the URL: [http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeriAslin2012_Cognition.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone interested, here is the original paper: [http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeriAslin2012_Cognition.pdf)

It was hyperlinked in the 3rd paragraph.</comment>


Microsoft and Google to sue over US surveillance requests - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/aug/31/microsoft-google-sue-us-fisa <comment><USER2> Perhaps, in the end, the NSA has done us all a favor: they have shown us the fundamental insecurity of giving 3rd parties access to our data. With this move, Google and Microsoft clearly believe that there is demand for privacy, and understand that loss of trust has real, possibly severe, bottom-line implications. They act not of idealism, but out of fear.

The issue, of course, is that if someone wants to talk to me they need to connect with my physical equipment. In a perfect world, people would look me up with a simple IP address, and I'd have whatever services I wish to provide running on various ports from that IP. This machine could be my phone, or a computer I keep in my home. But what's funny is how the modern internet appears to conspire against this extraordinarily simple idea: the first problem is IPv4. There aren't enough IPs to give every internet-connected device a unique IP address, which means NAT, which is, AFAIK, fundamentally insecure when handling inbound traffic. The second is that virtually all internet providers forbid us, in their terms of service, from running "servers". Which brings us to this interesting syllogism:

1\. Communication sent through third parties is not private.

2\. All internet communication involves a third party

3\. There is no private communication on the internet

Until the problems of IPv6 adoption and contractual restrictions on how you use your internet connection are solved, people do not have a viable alternative to using 3rd party hardware for communication over the internet.

Of course, if the "no fly list" is any precedent, the government argument will be something like, "then don't communicate with the internet".

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I would go as far as saying it's _impossible_ to have private communications on the Internet.

It's impossible _right now_ for the _masses_ , because they've decided they can _trust_ these 3rd parties. So we never really put much thought into adopting "Trust No One" type of services. But having such services is probably doable, and now that we know these companies can't actually be trusted, perhaps we'll start using them.

Again, the main reason we didn't have private communications through 3rd parties, is because we thought we could trust those 3rd parties. But that has changed now.

<comment><USER4> > _they 've decided they can trust these 3rd parties_

Most of said masses don't even realize there's trust involved, leave along _making a decision_ on whether to trust vendors or not. They just swallow what's free without much thinking.

Just look at something like the real-estate business. You'd think that realtors would appreciate how much private information is passing through their hands and that they would conform to the privacy protection laws they are typically bound with. And yet, every single one of these retards uses Gmail and routinely email forms stuffed _to the brim_ with delicious personal info in plain text. How can you realistically expect _the masses_ to do any better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PR theater. After how these companies reacted to the initial leaks, I can't think of another possible scenario other than the CEOs sitting in a room with government officials discussing the best strategy for damage control, and the government giving them green light to sue. But I guess I'm just stating the obvious.

<comment><USER6> How do you know it's just PR theater, and that these companies aren't just trying to legitimately defend their reputation? You dismiss the entire story and claim that it's so obvious, but how can any of us know that right now?

And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?

<comment><USER7> When it comes to security, your default position should always be one of extreme scepticism. Believing "what has been given to us" is what got us in this mess to begin with.

<comment><USER6> I understand what you mean, but I'm not opposed to extreme skepticism. It's alternative explanations that seem contrived that I'm opposed to.

There is a difference between extreme skepticism in the face of one story, and postulating hypothetical scenarios that have equal or higher burdens or proof, and are less likely or more difficult to demonstrate.

In fact, in terms of logic, the two are diametrically opposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damned if they do, damned if they don't. It's really an impossible situation for the companies involved as their actions, as the comments so far state, will be viewed through the biases of the observer.

One way out, to appease the outrage over what happened, would be for a few CEOs to spill the beans on what took place at their organizations. But after they were carted away to jail the company would still be in the situation it was before. Another would be simply to shut up shop in the USA and move somewhere else - but where? It would need to be a county where the intelligence services did not have the capability - end of business. About the only realistic and probably credible response is not to sue but to put a lot of effort into supporting third-parties opposed to the situation such as the EFF. Then at least, despite what they were forced to do behind closed doors the company would at least have a visible position and be seen to be trying to getting of the handcuffs put on it by the government.

<comment><USER9> The tech industry needs to get over this underdog mentality. It dwarfs industries that people regularly claim somehow own the government (e.g. media industry).

If tech companies thought it was in their best interest, they could bury the DOJ in litigation for years and barely feel it in the pocket book. It happens all the time when it comes to other industries that have more balls.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I'm always fascinated by how different industries punch above or below their weight in government.

The movie industry seems to more or less own half of Congress, and appears to be able to get industry-specific legislation created nearly at will. Yet total US movie industry revenue is in the neighborhood of $85 billion, which is about half of Apple all by itself, not even counting _any_ of the many other valuable tech companies out there.

<comment><USER11> Calculate "total revenues"/"added value to society". The bigger this number, the more likely that the industry is heavily involved with the government.

Except for negative numbers, of course.

<comment><USER9> Because oil isn't valuable to society while internet advertising is very valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These comments tell us far more about the people making them than they do about the issue in question.

<comment><USER6> Yep...we have no proof of Google or Microsoft being complicit in NSA surveillance.

Despite that, news like this is going to be analyzed in whatever light suits the reader's bias. People are going to argue and say that this is just a fake attempt at saving face, and that it's a conspiracy sanctioned by the government to allow these companies to regain their reputation. Then there are going to be counter arguments citing what the CEOs announced publicly. And so on and so forth.

People will believe what they want, one way or another. Occam's razor be damned.

<comment><USER13> > Yep...we have no proof of Google or Microsoft being complicit in NSA > surveillance.

The top secret internal NSA documents saying they were partners in PRISM with colorful logos and all weren't enough?

<comment><USER6> No, they aren't, not after the Guardian backtracked on "direct access." It was independently reported elsewhere as well.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence- of...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas- direct-access-to-tech-companies/)

<comment><USER3> They didn't really backtrack. Maybe on some kind of semantic definition of "direct access", but not on the whole thing.

They even wrote later from new leaks, how Microsoft was having a "team play" with the NSA to give them a lot of data from Skype, Outlook.com and Skydrive, in an almost "direct access" kind of way:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft- nsa-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa- collaboration-user-data)

<comment><USER14> If by team play you mean they obeyed court orders for interception, well, yes. That article is incredibly deceitful in its wording. "Circumvent encryption" aka "hand over unencrytped data on disk". Using "pre-encryption" sounds intriguing, but it's nothing special and most companies are going to obey a court order versus shutting down. If you had to implement a wiretap, I doubt LE is going to accept you sending them the emails after you encrypt them. Pretty sure if you tried such a stunt, a judge would smack you back since it's obvious you're obstructing their order.

It may be that Microsoft really, really, loves to give the NSA everything, but so far, there's no evidence of anything beyond complying with the law. Just speculation and spin.

<comment><USER3> But this is what we're talking about here. Those "orders" give them almost unrestricted access to everything they want - for _mass spying_. All thanks to the so called general "warrants" from FISA.

Does that make you feel any better? I know it's not making me feel any better, because I know there's virtually no oversight, and the fact that you can even get a warrant for thousands or millions of people at once, is not right, and quite disgusting move from the government (regardless of how constitutional it is - there's such thing as human rights, too).

<comment><USER14> Microsoft has said there are no general orders to tap everything. There is a huge difference in a rubber-stamp, poorly-audited system, and a wholesale surveillance where Microsoft is giving the NSA raw data on everyone.

Trying to conflate the two for media impact will backfire by making people jaded after they discover the spin being put on things. The info Snowden has released is bad enough as-is (the lack of oversight, the scope, etc.) - there's no need to invent stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope these companies aren't delusional enough to think that even if they win this one, and are allowed to say how many NSL's they receive, they would score some kind of "big win" with us, the public.

This will barely register on my radar, if they don't take serious steps in not just fighting the government more aggressively over the mass spying (they should be fighting to declare NSL's and mass data collection unconstitutional, for starters), but also in securing their services end-to-end.

So even if we can't trust them anymore per se (which we won't), we could still probably use their services if they adopt that.

</comment><comment><USER15> Now that their back is to the wall and their reputations destroyed.... now they will sue.

I think there is a point however where one has to accept the reality of surveillance at this point and that large companies are probably not going to be the best points of resistance. Open source and open infrastructure with strong crypto and chain of custody tracking on keys is what is going to be required in the long run. I am not even sure we can go back to trusting the certificate authorities here and if we can't do that then these lawsuits are way too little way too late.

</comment><comment><USER16> A clumsy and crude PR exercise to minimise financial loss.

<comment><USER17> And dangerous as both Google and MS are quite opaque - this falls into the "be careful what you wish for".

I could see pressure being on both of these companies to be more transparent as a result of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Trust is a very delicate thing. I feel sorry[1] for these companies; this whole thing can't have been easy to deal with. We can talk could-have,would- have,should-have all day long. Bottom line is _right now_ we've got what we've got. Does anyone on HN have any idea what could possibly be done at this point to rebuild trust? Or is it just completely wrecked? It seems that to trust big internet companies again we have to believe the USgov is trust-worthy. To be brutally honest that's something I cannot see happening without a very real revolution. I'm curious if there's anything else that could restore trust.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182651)

<comment><USER19> Here's a suggestion I read early on in the Snowden-storm that hit HN, and that I thought was reasonable:

If Microsoft and Google are really united and seriously hurting, why don't they each individually (not acting as a cartel) kick the NSA out of their data centers? There may be a lawsuit, yes, and there will likely be a hit to their share value, but it's that same old problem of trading short-term safety for long-term freedoms.

It's a good way for them to put the money where the mouth is. Yes, I'm aware of the "requirements" to allow monitoring equipment; I'm specifically calling for the executives of these companies to engage in civil disobedience. Politicians are famously sensitive to anything that actually gets the attention of the _masses_. Like, shutting down Google due to court-ordered monitoring and Google refusing to comply. How long would the NSA endure such a standoff before backing down with some weasel-words about "coming to an agreement"?

<comment><USER20> Google at least says that the NSA is _not_ in their data centers, and that there isn't and never was any "direct access". So how can they kick the NSA out if they're not there? Google admits to granting lawful requests for data, such as warrants and NSLs, but this appears to be by delivering the requested data via some non-direct-access means like CD or SFTP. Google is not a telecom and does not have to implement wiretapping like Verizon, etc., so there's no law requiring equipment or access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Two giants whose revenue streams revolve around knowing their clients' personal business inside and out are suing the government because they want to get paid for turning the information over.

Just like the money PRISM brought to enable the monitoring, now they want per- use or even better regular rents from the government to keep the taps open.

The nice little side benefit is the puppet theater for their customers who still labor under the delusion that they have some shred of privacy with either of these for-profit corporations.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why haven't they do this before? Cause now this looks like damage control, they have to _show_ they care because they are losing money. But tooo late, compromised services opened significant area for others, only in question is quality, but quality is also defined by people using those services and lot of people want to use something not compromised -> if you ask me now is right time to get dirty and do the job.

</comment><comment><USER23> What needs to happen is for these companies to place an intentionally insecure vulnerability on their website somewhere that leads to a full archive of NSA correspondence. Then sit and wait for someone to hack it and release it anonymously. Remember, according to the CFAA, security doesn't matter, and therefore 100% of the blame falls on the hacker the that found it.

</comment><comment><USER24> If Microsoft really believed they had a "clear right under the US Constitution to share more data" they would step up and do it. Suing for the right to exercise constitutional rights looks more like a cheap dog and pony show to make the public think they haven't completely whored themselves out to the neo-stasi agencies. It's too late. They should get ready for a steady Exodus away from US based technology products and services.

</comment><comment><USER25> In case you don't buy the PR circus, start protecting yourself:

[https://prism-break.org/](https://prism-break.org/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Only now, after selling out their users and lying about it, only after seeing they can't manipulate the public with distractions, now they sue.</comment>


Fast PHP – effective optimisation and bottleneck detection - <AUTHOR> http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/04/fast-php/

<comment><USER2> I am always curious when reading these articles: How much are about unique optimizations for this specific language vs. general programming tricks. For example, his use of the classic "calling a function on every iteration vs. calling it just once" is pretty basic.

Do you guys do the same thing? Review every "optimize your Python" and "Ruby speedups" etc. post and tick off various iterations of "Intro to Programming Day 2", "RTFM", and "finally, something I didn't know based on the implementation of this language"? And do you feel that most of these are really about the language, or about programming in general?

<comment><USER3> well, as I say in the first few lines of the article:

> Here are some frequently encountered bottlenecks found in web applications > generally, and PHP specifically</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should we interpret our specific "Show HN" results? - <AUTHOR>

We did a "Show HN" on Monday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8193301 ) for Sheldonize. And I'd like to share some of the results, and ask you for any clues to help explain those results.
The "Show HN" link itself got 5 points (as of now), and 1 comment. Not bad, but really close to bad though. We did get a fair amount of traffic:
288 sessions, 241 users (over Monday 18th August and Tuesday 19th August -- compared to 99 sessions and 71 users the Monday-Tuesday before). We have a video on the front page which was viewed 45 times (18% of users). The video percentage is good I find.
Q1: is 241 users a "normal" average for HN? Or is that "well, no, there seemed to have been little interest in your product. that's the clue. take it."
Q2: is it normal that 241 users result in roughly 5 points and 1 comment. Or is it again about taking the hard truth, and "yeah, no, no-one really liked your stuff"?
Regarding sign-ups for the free trial, the situation got even bleaker: 2 sign-ups in that period.
Q3: Is that "well, there was a video which reached 18% so HN readers are not that interested in signing up, as they want to give you feedback, which they could based on the video."?
Q4: Is that "well, you indicate that this would be a paying service after the 1 month free trial" so there is a huge wall stopping people from trying something where they feel they will not want to pay that kind of money (3.99 per month) anyway?
Q5: Or (and this is open-ended), are there any "well, I think this and this should be improved on the landing page, I think that could explain the few sign-ups"?
Q6: Or, well, we are just not that into you (the product)?
Thanks a lot; I hope that with your help I can let this data "speak" a bit better to me such that we can appropriate actions! <comment><USER2> Yes this is a data point to consider. But do realise that it is, in fact, a single data point. Try not to draw too much from it.

Secondly, there are so many variables involved to convert a HN post down to user conversion. It could be your HN title, time of day, landing page, etc. Some factors are within your control, some are not. So who knows what happened from that one post.

I hope this is useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks; yes, that's useful. I probably also got my hopes up pretty high (reading too much success stories of "our servers were screaming after a Show HN")</comment></comment>


Show HN: WeFinance: Earn 4% interest by lending to real people with low risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.wefinance.co/listings

<comment><USER2> Why would I use this instead of another service like Lending Club? It looks like this gives me a lower return (Lending Club's lowest rate of interest seems to be 6%) with significantly higher risk (it looks like your site does not offer any assistance with borrowers who default and use Facebook to verify their identities).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very fair question. The primary reason is the underlying population of borrowers is completely different, so your claim that the risks are much higher on WeFinance is not well founded. Collections agencies on services like Lending Club fail to successfully collect a large share of the time, and when they do collect successfully they still charge a large fee. Borrowers on Lending Club are in general higher risk individuals to begin with for a variety of reasons (which led those debts to have much higher original interest than the WeFinance debts, such as large credit card balances). If WeFinance lenders are many times less likely to default than Lending Club lenders, they would be lower risk even if we didn't help resolve defaults at all. (In practice, we're committed to helping lenders and borrowers resolved problems, and that plus the social ties between lenders and borrowers we believe will help lower defaults in the first place and resolve them effectively when defaults do occur.) We've also individually interviewed each borrower and are confident on the identity verification front, and in fact, for friends-of-friends lending, having 20 Facebook friends in common with someone seems like a pretty good verification to me that they are a legitimate person.

Lending club clearly offers higher interest rates. We believe the risks are also much larger and in particular are tough for casual investors to navigate well; this is borne out by the fact that most money invested in Lending Club comes from institutions, not people.

We think WeFinance is a great fit for lenders who like higher simplicity and lower risk, and who get some value out of lending to people they are connected to or who have compelling stories.

<comment><USER2> > _If WeFinance lenders are many times less likely to default than Lending > Club lenders..._

There is no good way for me to evaluate this claim. If you had a page like [https://www.lendingclub.com/info/demand-and-credit- profile.a...](https://www.lendingclub.com/info/demand-and-credit- profile.action) (or any statistics about current loans) it would help.

I haven't signed up for either Lending Club or WeFinance, but it looks like Lending Club gives me significantly more information about the lenders' finances. I would rather see a potential lender's credit report than how I am connected to them on Facebook.

> _In practice, we 're committed to helping lenders and borrowers resolved > problems..._

Your FAQ states that lenders with loans in default should use "conventional legal means" because WeFinance "isn't a party to your contract". If there are other things you do, prospective lenders would probably want to see it.

> _We 've also individually interviewed each borrower and are confident on the > identity verification front..._

I don't know if this means you have exchanged emails with them, had a phone call, or met them in person. I don't know if you are using some third-party service to verify identity, or just verifying that they have a Facebook profile. In an earlier comment, you said that all borrowers have stable jobs and good credit histories, but your FAQ explicitly states that you do not check credit or employment.

It's possible that you're assuming that this site will be used by people lending money to people that they already know in real life, in which case most of my concerns above are invalid or irrelevant. I don't think that's clear from your language here or on the website.

Even if that's the case, you still might want to:

\- use SSL to protect the borrower application at [http://www.wefinance.co/borrower_interest](http://www.wefinance.co/borrower_interest) or even the entire site

\- reconsider the name, since searching for "wefinance" on Google brings up multiple financing companies with the same name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This is helpful feedback. It's true that our current home page pitch doesn't heavily emphasize the social connections, which does lead to some of the questions you've asked, and we can do better on that. Most lending does indeed come from people you either know in real life or friends-of-friends, and that's how our marketing is typically focused, which is why most people have not expressed too much concern about identity issues and the specific nature of collections arbitration, etc.

I am curious--for the types of borrowers we have (typically young with a pretty empty credit history outside of a large student loan), are you interested in seeing the credit report because you think small variations in that number will be meaningful? Or is it more to have more confidence that there's not some huge blemish on it? Part of our hypothesis is that in terms of the former, the range these numbers fall in for these people are not that meaningful to lenders in terms of evaluating risk levels. But it's true that if someone's score was 300 points lower than you expected it to be, that would be worth knowing, and there might be a way to set a minimum credit score or something else private we could do to help build that confidence without simply publishing their whole credit report for the world to see, which some borrowers might resist.

We're adding SSL as soon as this batch closes. I'm confident we can get to a decent spot on SEO with a little more growth, but it's certainly possible that won't work and we'll change the name.

Thanks again for the thoughts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a nice concept ! It seems like the "natural" thing to do IMO, just lend from people to people. I'm wondering though: Is such a system legal everywhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Conrad--it's legal for US residents. (Our payment processor requires a US address anyway, so we are currently US-limited regardless of laws in specific other places.) We've done ample research with experienced counsel and are configured a bit differently than some other peer-to-peer platforms, so we're confident it's legal everywhere in the US.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the clear answer and good to hear! Any plans to expand this type of concept to Europe (or other regions) someday? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still very much in the early stages here in the States but definitely would love to be able to support Europe and elsewhere eventually!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks pretty cool but why are you running Web Brick?

<comment><AUTHOR> @dham, at the scale we're at we're okay with largely default Heroku rails configuration. Pointers are welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you know the risk is low?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've personally interviewed all of the borrowers; all the borrowers have stable career paths and no history of problems paying back debt, and most are already making monthly payments on their debt--this just helps them lower the payment. Of course, there is some small chance any one of them could have a problem, but we believe the odds of default are much lower than the risk of loss in the stock market or other higher margin lending options. Of course, part of the point is that you can read their bios and decide for yourself which ones you believe to be an acceptable risk.</comment></comment>