My 2020 Hackintosh Hardware Spec - <AUTHOR> https://infinitediaries.net/my-2020-hackintosh-hardware-spec/ <comment><USER2> > Replacing an iMac also means getting rid of a perfectly good monitor.

This is the thing that absolutely friggin kills me with the Mac lineup.

As a developer I see monitors and computers as the perfect example of loose coupling. And I've absolutely had different lifecycles for monitors and computers in the past. My Mac mini that was once my primary desktop machine is now a media center hooked up to a TV.

But if the Mac mini doesn't meet your needs (fast CPUS, storage bays, whatever), and the Mac Pro doesn't fit your budget, Apple gives you a big ol' middle finger.

I mean, I COULD buy an iMac, but then 8 years down the road when I want a new desktop, I've got this unwieldy all-in-one where that big screen feels like more of a hindrance than an asset.

I haven't built a Hackintosh myself, but every time I look at the desktop Mac lineup I think about it.

<comment><USER3> I just completed my first Hackintosh in many years. I have perfectly serviceable iMac in the family room (2015, 32GB, 1TB Fusion), but wanted more.

I have a beautiful case (Corsair 570x mirror black tempered glass on 'all' sides). 8700K, 64GB memory, 4TB of SSDs, Vega 64. Runs just as silently as you could hope (H150 closed loop water cooling).

Like you said, Apple gives you the finger for a lot of things. I've lost track of the number of iPhones, iPads, MBPs between my girlfriend and I (but probably at least five each of the letters, and most of the iPhones). But I cannot stomach, in good faith, the world's richest company charging me $1,000 for 56GB of RAM (8->64) when I could buy high end or even faster memory for $250 for 64GB.

And, following some guides? It "just works". Continuity, Handoff, Apple Watch unlocking, iMessage, Sidecar. Clover Configurator is awesome, and if you want to be/feel even more native, OpenCore is even better (though requires manual work, whereas Clover can have your system booting into macOS in 40 minutes from building your USB).

So could I spec out a new Mac Pro that outpaces this? Sure. As could I grow this machine (it's just been my Windows workhorse for about 18 months).

I still love Apple products, but I don't feel any particular remorse for doing this, versus plonking down what most likely would have been $9,000 for a similar Mac setup.

<comment><USER4> Until you try to update it and doesn't boot, then spend hours researching guides (that don't have your exact hardware specs) on the hope you can update.

Then inevitably something doesn't quite work properly anymore.

<comment><USER5> I chuckled because that was the last experience I had with Hackintosh before I caved and bought a real Mac (2011). But to be perfectly honest, it is the same experience that I have been having on my 2017 MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER6> same here. however with a legit mac you can always netboot to restore so long as you haven't borked the uefi firmware somehow. this obviously isn't the case with a hack

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've started building my own "budget" hackintosh yesterday actually! It is pretty straight forward if you are purchasing components specifically for hackintosh (instead of trying to salvage your current PC).

Here is my geekbench 4 benchmark: [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15176970](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15176970) (slightly better compared to new 16'' macbook with i7)

And these are components that I've bought and for which prices:

      Motherboard: ASUS TUF Z390M-PRO GAMING - 144 euro
      CPU: i5-9600K - 208 euro
      RAM: Predator 2x16gb RGB - 184 euro
      NVMe: SILICON POWER 512GB P34A80 M.2 PCIe M.2 2280
      SP512GBP34A80M28 - 81 euro
      PSU: THERMALTAKE Smart Pro RGB 750W Bronze - 89 euro
      GPU: ASUS Radeon RX 580 4gb - 166 euro

I still have to see how stable this will be, and if it can replace my 2015 iMac.

Here are useful links I used: [https://github.com/alienator88/ASUS- TUF-Z390M-Pro-Gaming-Hac...](https://github.com/alienator88/ASUS- TUF-Z390M-Pro-Gaming-Hackintosh) Also Google: hackintosh asus tuf z390m

<comment><USER3> > It is pretty straight forward if you are purchasing components specifically > for hackintosh

Definitely this. There are "golden builds" where people have ironed out components and steps exactly so there's barely any more pain than installing Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have the same, 9900k with a 5700XT. Catalina works with SIP enabled, FileVault 2 works perfectly, etc. Been doing hackintosh since 2016.

With that said I'm pretty much done with it now that they made the 16 inch MBP. I bought one with the i9 and 64GB of ram and the experience is way better. I don't need to mess around with clover or update random kexts anymore. It gets old after awhile!

<comment><USER9> Do you not ever miss the added power of your hackintosh though? I have a 2017 MBP and it's a great machine but I still love having my big ridiculously powerful desktop with three monitors for when I want that.

<comment><USER10> The new MacBook Pro is pretty powerful. I have four monitors hooked to mine and the machine is _much_ faster than my five-year-old Hackintosh. I _could_ build a new Hackintosh that would have somewhat better performance than the MacBook, but for me the difference is no longer worth it, so like the previous commenter I'm probably done with building Hackintoshes for now.

<comment><USER9> I totally get that. In all honesty, in a rational world a MacBook is more than enough performance for me (and it's actually what I use at work), but there's still very much an enthusiast alive in me that loves my over the top desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The last hackintosh I made was in 2017 and it's still a beast. Maintenance was relatively easy

However, the future of pain-free Hackintosh doesn't seem very likely. It's rumored (or confirmed?) Apple will do its proprietary ARM system as MacOS eventually moves onto that [1] (maybe not this year, but in the near future). And then there's the T2 chip.

I have been slowly moving away from Mac in general as I have no need for it (not a Mac/iOS developer). The alternatives are just as good or better for my taste.

[1] [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-arm- cpus-2020-in...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-arm- cpus-2020-intel,38668.html)

<comment><USER12> We know that Apple uses x86 macOS Servers internally on commodity hardware (from previous discussion on HN[0]). Presumably, they'll need to keep some way of booting on machines missing the special Apple security hardware while staying secure, so Hackintoshes will always be able to find a way, since macOS will have to be able to boot on non-T2 systems for quite a while [1] (some machines they sell don't even have them yet, and presuming they keep up the 8-10 years of software support, there's nothing to worry about).

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18114712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18114712) [1]: [https://support.apple.com/guide/security/mac-computers- apple...](https://support.apple.com/guide/security/mac-computers- apple-t2-security-chip-secb7e3c7483/1/web/1)

<comment><USER13> That thread mentions Apple using a combination of linux and macOS on commodity hardware for workloads that weren't suitable to their current hardware. If the Mac Pro satisfies those workloads now Apple is free to make the T2 chip mandatory.

Their own security makes a mandatory T2 chip inevitable imho - there were dubious allegations they were using compromised motherboards in servers last year, it wasn't true but they'll want to make it impossible.

<comment><USER14> _If the Mac Pro satisfies those workloads now Apple is free to make the T2 chip mandatory._

I don't think even Apple can afford to buy too many of the Mac Pro. :)

In all seriousness, the Mac Pro doesn't make a good server (for most purposes). Most servers don't need GPU, no server needs a way way overdesigned and expensive case. Don't need the expandability. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What exactly would Apple lose if they offered A subscription service ($199/year? $19/month?) that allowed registered developers the right to install macOS either on bare hardware or a VM? I can't speak for everyone else but the only reason I bought a MacBook Pro was for iOS development; I have to imagine there is a number where Apple would be fine with dispensing with making/shipping/selling/supporting the hardware and would just sell the software. Heck, I'd be fine if it was a developer-only stripped down macOS that only ran Xcode and tooling that required Xcode (Xamarin, Flutter, and Ionic development and IPA compile step). Seriously: what is the harm to Apple is allowing/selling this?

<comment><USER16> It's actually not too bad to run macOS in a VM -- this is an option Apple doesn't explicitly support, but they also realize how useful it can be for automated testing of apps and browser compatibility. The company line is that they only support macOS on a VM on a "legitimate" Mac, but realistically it's not hard to find guides on how to virtualize it on a Windows host.

<comment><USER12> With the ever notable exception that graphics acceleration straight up does not exist at all in macOS in a VM. The only way to get it is to use virtIO on a Linux box to pass through a secondary AMD card, I believe.

<comment><USER17> That seems to be the case.

Note that you'd have to user vt-d, in combination with vfio, not virtio. Vt-d allows for PCIe passthrough. VirtIO is a family of paravirtualized hardware like HDD controllers and network interfaces.

Besides the name-switchup, you're completely right.

[https://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio](https://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio)

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel- virtualizati...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel- virtualization-technology-for-directed-io-vt-d-enhancing-intel-platforms-for- efficient-virtualization-of-io-devices/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Upgraded my 2011 Hackintosh last year: i7-950 -> x5680 overclocked to 4.25GHz (good enough can probably go up). Upgraded from 12GB RAM to 24GB triple channel RAM (can upgrade to 48GB). Also upgraded from a old 1.5GB video card to the Sapphire RX 580. It was too much of a pain to get mac OS to run with this setup so I gave Windows 10 a try. It works great. I only use it for photography and video work. This setup smokes my 2016 Macbook Pro. I was considering tossing the system but a couple hundred dollars worth of upgrades and new life to a old system.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have heard good things about Hackintosh on Ryzen does anyone have more Info?

How viable is it? I'm using a 15 inch Macbook Pro but it struggles with 3 1440p monitors but my PC with a Ryzen 3800x and RTX 2080, 32gb RAM runs like a beast on Windows.

<comment><USER9> I'm running a hackintosh with a Ryzen 9 3900X. The OS itself runs great. The only thing to be aware of is whether your software will play nicely with a non-Intel CPU. Adobe software requires patching for example, and VMware / Parallels explicitly require VT-x and won't work with SVM.

<comment><USER20> Do you have tutorials/examples for both the installation on a Ryzen system and the patching of Adobe systems?

<comment><USER21> The canonical guide for installation is amd-osx.com ; plenty of helpful folks in the forums and discord.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The iMac has a build-in screen which likes go bad from dust, as do the > components inside.

First I've heard of this, but I guess it's a thing?

(I've got a 2015 iMac 5k with no such problem, but, ironically, my screen is blue-taped in as I'm in the middle of adding a larger internal SSD)

[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/did-you-know-about- dust...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/did-you-know-about-dust-problem- in-27-imac.2122476/)

[https://hothardware.com/news/apple-class-action-lawsuit- dirt...](https://hothardware.com/news/apple-class-action-lawsuit-dirty- macbooks-imacs-lacking-dust-filters)

<comment><USER23> It's not a thing. It can happen but it's not a thing in the same way as macOS updates disappointing are are thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> interesting list of hardware and beautiful photos, but this blogpost missing one key item -- cost!

HOW MUCH $$$ TO BUILD THIS MONSTER of a "mac", and how does that compare to a similarly-specified Apple product?

Without this, it feels like a collection of thinly-disguised product placements.

<comment><AUTHOR> I paid around 1600 USD for everything. Counting the parts I reused from my old hackintosh, around 2000. A similarly specced Mac Pro 8-core is around 7200 USD.

<comment><USER24> thank you. A very useful contribution that neatly answers the question of why anyone would go through so much trouble. I would have guessed the difference in price was "only" a few hundred, and obviously would have been quite wrong! I never would have guessed 3.5 times!

<comment><USER25> In a way this isn't a "similarly spaced Mac" though - it's using Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, server motherboard with 6 memory channels, professional GPU, etc.

The problem is if you want a Mac tower desktop they don't offer anything with consumer components.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think AMD offers the better bang for the buck right now and thanks to amd- osx.com it's not that hard to build a Ryzen (including Threadripper) based Hackintosh.

<comment><USER27> Until you need to use the Adobe Suite.

<comment><USER28> So what's the problem with Adobe exactly? Is there any fix on the horizon?

<comment><USER9> In short, some software (Adobe included) makes use of features that are available on Intel processors but not on AMD. Whilst both AMD and Intel _are_ x86-64 they do both have their own unique features. For example, on Intel you've got fast memset, which doesn't exist on AMD.

<comment><USER28> But Adobe apps run on Windows with AMD, which means they custom build/compile their apps for each OS ( which is perfectly normal ) and since Apple only deals with Intel CPU's it's understandable.

Maybe it would be better to check for CPU capabilities at runtime and have a more portable app, but what do I know, obviously Adobe PMs will not pay the cost just so some mutts can run hackintosh.

<comment><USER9> My understanding is it's actually a limitation of the Intel C++ compiler they use but I can't confirm this. On Windows it bakes in some conditionals to check if the CPU is GenuineIntel before doing some things, on macOS it doesn't bother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be nice if Apple opened up OS X a bit. I _know_ that goes against brand principle etc but they also lost a lot of ground back to Windows in the past five years.

I used OS X from launch but switched to Windows three years ago because it was simply a better package for me. Cloud computing has pretty much eliminated the need/preference for OS X.

<comment><USER27> They should release an ATX "Mac Board", one version with an Intel socket and one with an AMD socket for like $499-$599 USD. It would sell so well and they would still earn so much money.

<comment><USER19> They make their money selling you overpriced hardware. This won't happen. Well maybe it would but then every part of the ATX Mac Board would also be sold by Apple and third party RAM etc would never be allowed.

<comment><USER30> Right. Plus, it would only take Apple to start using a custom firmware to only allow hardware that is exclusive to Apple's computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would have been curious to see a price comparison between the build and a Mac Pro with the same specs.

<comment><AUTHOR> This build cost me around 1600 USD (I moved over a few parts from the old hackintosh (2x HDD, WiFi card, GPU). So around 2000 with those. I already had the two monitors (for many years now) too.

<comment><AUTHOR> A Mac Pro with the 8-core CPU, 48GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, the Promise bay for 2x HDDs runs around 7200 USD.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps the closest comparison is to throw in a 5K screen making it (say) $2500 with the Hackintosh and compare with an iMac (Non-Pro) with 64Gb non- ECC. It's around half the cost, plus you get to keep the screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Haven't made a Hackintosh in a while, OpenCore is new to me. Does anyone know if Messages, Apple Store, etc. work or do you still have to hack it with a real serial?

<comment><USER9> You still need a real serial but you can generate one pretty easily. Just need to check on Apple's website if it validates.

I have my PC with an AMD Ryzen 3900X running with macOS with working iMessage / App Store etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In my case I'm running macos in kvm VM on my home server based on SuperMicro X10SDV-6C-TLN4F. Seems to work ok but with some exceptions. First is the graphic card which I pass through to VM, it is geforce gtx 1060 and unfortunelty it limits me to use only high sierra, which seems to be the last version of macos for which nvidia web drivers are available. Both video and sound goes through hdmi cable connected to my tv. Other is network card, if you are ok using kvm emulated nic like e1000-82545em then you are set, if you are trying to pass physical interface, or sr-iov vf you may have to deal with bunch of kexts or flashing NIC eeprom to been seen as a card supported by drivers like the one provided by smalltree.

If someone want to try, here is with what I started [https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM](https://github.com/foxlet/macOS- Simple-KVM)

<comment><USER35> Surprise. Would try it with my intel nuc Ubuntu tmr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting. I actually started buying components to build a new hackintosh to replace my old El Captain one from 2013. Man, I can't believe how far SSDs have come. My current SSD is only 250 GB and now you can get a 1TB SSD for like 150 USD

</comment><comment><USER37> Kind of off-topic but can anyone weigh in on how a 2019 (2020?) Macbook Air fares for programming? Specifically frontend programming: running VSC, maybe a couple frontend build watch tasks, and a node server. Currently using a 2017 13" MBP and I assume it'd have similar performance?

At this point in my career I spend most of my days running around in meetings so if I'm doing programming I'll usually do it on my desktop. My laptop ends up being a glorified note-taking machine with only light frontend programming so I'm really optimizing for portability. Interested to hear some thoughts from fellow engineers with the newest Macbook Air.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I'd wait for the new keyboards first. The Airs and 13-inch Pros still have the faulty ones.

2\. I'd get a low-spec MBP13 or MBP14, whatever comes out next.

<comment><USER37> The keyboard is a fair point. I had mistakenly assumed they fixed them with the recent update but there they are on the list of models with free keyboard replacements.

As for 2, I already have an MBP13 2017 and I want something even more portable. That was why I was interested to hear people's experiences programming with it's lower spec CPU.

<comment><USER38> I haven't used an Air for development, but I do know that its power supply is 30w instead of the MBP's 100w. That's a big difference. Beyond the CPU's official specs, I'd bet some throttling happens there.

That said, I recently upgraded to a new MBP because my 2013 MBP had gotten really laggy for certain things, particularly the web (and the inspector, etc.). This was weird, because on pure-compute tasks it still did pretty okay. But basic sites like Twitter were visibly laggy, and the Chrome debugger was like mud.

I did some research and ended up concluding that it came down to the integrated GPU. The processor itself was still significantly faster than a brand-new Air, based on benchmarks, but integrated GPUs have made huge strides in the past 5 years (and web pages have gotten significantly heavier) and I guess that has a more noticeable impact on basic tasks than the CPU does.

Anyway. If you're only doing the occasional, light web dev then I would guess you'll be fine. It'll be noticeably slower than your 2017 MBP, but probably still passable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Oh, I did expect a higher geekbench score TBH: My dual Xeon 2687W (v1) with 128GB DDR3 (2*4 channel) gives me 830 SC and 6000/10000 MC (1/2 CPUs). And that's with thermal limitation due 1U cooling solution. OS is Arch Linux on nvme with spectre&other mitigations disabled (compute node).

Omitting disks, that system cost me just a little bit more than your mainboard ;-) Of course two dozen 40mm/7k rpm fans and 480W peak power draw (no GPU!) are quite a tradeoff.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1046367](https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1046367)

</comment><comment><USER40> I've been working on a Hackintosh build since last 2 years, but since I don't need a video rig and/or compiling work horse, I reduced my self to a Intel NUC with Clearlinux OS. I'm getting familiar with Rawtherapee and Darktable workflow (instead of Capture One) since I'm a weekend photographer. Clearlinux has most of my needs, so I'm happy with it at the moment.

<comment><USER18> RawTherapee is great. I also use Digikam. Linux is great but I needed Photoshop (GIMP is not there yet). There are also a handful of mac OS apps without replacements. I upgraded my Hackintosh build and for a while had Arch Linux running on it. Runs great, but ended up running Windows 10 to get my Photoshop fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > this is probably the last time I'm building this sort of computer, before > MacOS is locked down forever

Any info on how they will lock it down?

<comment><USER42> Switch from Intel to their own ARM CPUs will hit the Hackintosh community really hard.

<comment><USER30> The could have done this, if they wanted to, with their own motherboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is it worth it building a Hackintosh? Are there any downsides comparing to Apple hardware? (in terms of using OSX)

<comment><USER44> I spent a lot of time setting up Hackintoshes and, in the end, I always ended up asking myself: why did I bother doing all this?

The time you have to spend maintaining it can amount to a lot. In my case, the machine would always feel sort of unstable with random freezes, etc. You just never really know 100% what's going on behind the scenes, it could be the wrong kext, or the wrong graphics card, or the wrong os patch, the wrong iso used, etc.

If you have plenty of time to play with it, I would say go for it. But if you just need your machine to do work and cannot afford having a computer that may suddenly stop working (and requiring a lot of time to get it going again), just save your time/money and buy an actual apple device.

The idea of having a fast and custom made computer running macOS is pretty enticing, but it's a lot more time consuming/intricate than one would like to admit.

<comment><USER45> You need to buy hardware specifically for hackintoshing. Don't just buy whatever's in fashion and try to make Mac OS fit.

If you do that it's mostly hassle free. Never had freezes, had stuff like sound not working when coming back from sleep (which i solved by switching to usb audio).

Of course, then something will come along and fuck you up, like Apple dropping nvidia drivers completely. Which is solved by getting an AMD video card. Admit it, it was time you upgraded the video card anyway :)

<comment> tokamak-teapot I bought specific hardware,

HP 6300 SFF: $35 NVidia GT 710: $30 16GB of DDR3: $60 Cheap 256GB SSD: $30

More than fast enough for me. Everything works: iMessage, iCloud, etc. No crashes, no freezes, no audio issues. It started on High Sierra and is on Mojave now. Installation straightforward, though it requires concentration as you read the instructions - and no cheating.

<comment><USER46> I was gifted an HP 6300 and was astonished by how easy they are to Hackintosh. The 6300 & 8300 can be had on ebay for $75-150.

[https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-hp-6300-pro- hp-8300...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-hp-6300-pro- hp-8300-elite-a-100-percent-working-and-easily-affordable-customac.224812/)

I added this graphics card:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B7YMBFC/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B7YMBFC/)

I even get HDMI audio support.

<comment> tokamak-teapot Does that graphics card work with the little PSU in the 6300? I have the SFF. Not sure if it even has a power cable to feed it. And is it noisy?

<comment><USER46> It's a low profile card and I don't remember it needing any power being plugged in. To be fair, I think this card is overpriced for whatever performance you would get out of it. That is especially considering I only use it for 2d acceleration. But I needed the card because I could not get displayport from the motherboard working - I suspect it is the particular CPU. Regardless, my entire outlay for this machine was the price of the graphics card.

It is fairly quiet, but I've never heard it really ramp up.

I do vaugely remember the card NOT coming with the shorter edge connect (metal L bracket thingy). Need to look back there and see what I have going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I want to test Safari in a CI pipeline because a lot of our customers are using it, and the only way to do so seems to be by running a Mac. We can test Firefox and Chrome perfectly via docker containers. Should we build a hackintosh and connect it to our AWS VPC? Any tips?

<comment><USER14> _Should we build a hackintosh and connect it to our AWS VPC?_

Are you in a country with a laissez-faire legal system? What you are asking, in a commercial context, is whether or not you should violate your MacOS license agreement. At least by USA legal rules, anyway.

I've never heard of Apple litigating over this, but it's something that businesses try to stay away from.

IMO hackintoshes are for hobbyists.

<comment><USER47> Hm, definitely not in a loose legal system, so hackintosh is not an option. Then the most affordable way is to either run a (used) Mac on-prem or use a SaaS solution for browser testing.

I'm frustrated by how much more difficult this is from running Linux or even Windows on ec2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is it a dual boot box with macos and windows? Or do you use two boxes? Then how u do switch between with one keyboard/mouse? What kind of kvm or so?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dual boot. Two SSDSs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> with all the mention of "getting the right components" what's a reference website where i can learn how to build my own system?

<comment><USER50> [https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a- customac-h...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac- hackintosh-the-ultimate-buyers-guide/)

tonymacx86 has a list of supported components and has suggested builds as well. Been around for years.

<comment><USER49> thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Quote: "The SSD is more than fast enought for my needs. Funny thing is that it's even faster under Windows (3.5 GBps read and 3.3 GBps write)." Also OP is showing ~2.5 Gbps in an image.

Funny thing, I run my Macs in virtual machines (VMWare), and the speed is identical to Windows (host OS), while all other OS'es (Linux / BSD / other Windows') show slower speed. I wonder why.

<comment><USER52> I thought you could only run Mac VMs on a Mac host. Has that changed, or did you hack VMware somehow?

Our automation group has a couple of maxed out trash cans just for Mac VMs. The IT department probably can't wait to replace them with the new rackmounts.

<comment><USER51> As other said it, there is unlocker for VMWare which allows you to have Mac OS as option when creating a new virtual machine.

As for hacking VMWare I got my hands on a official Mountain Lion image years ago, directly from Apple, which I used to copy/upgrade into new VM each time a new Mac OS was released. I have lying around cca 15 VM's with different flavors of Mac OS each, all tests for various projects for my clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> tangential: i am _seriously_ considering getting an eizo monitor for personal (non-gaming) use, and was wondering if anyone here can chime in with some personal experience. a bit hesitant given the price tag. thanks !

</comment><comment><USER54> and the price?

<comment><AUTHOR> See one my of other comments please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it?

Apple clearly doesn't want to support third party hardware and from what I've heard, you have to live in constant fear of updates.

<comment><USER56> > Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that > actively tries to prevent you from running it?

If you're a developer, OS X is great.

Windows is a second class citizen if you aren't using Visual Studio.

Linux is great - it's basically your deployment environment - but you often have to mess around with it a bit.

OS X is 90-95% of the benefit of Linux, but it _just works_ ™. If you want to get work done, that's a pretty good feature.

The trouble is that, if you want to run a desktop, there are basically no good options. Mac Mini is very limited, same with the iMac. The Mac Pro is not limited, but it supports such enormous expansion that the base config is extremely expensive, while not being very performant.

<comment><USER57> A Hackintosh does not just work. It requires far more upkeep than a Linux system.

I certainly wouldn't do it again!

<comment><USER58> You have to think of a hackintosh like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life. You will certainly not be able to update immediately. For some people that's fine, for others who are dependant on Xcode which needs constant OS updates, it's not fine. Really depends on your use case.

<comment><USER59> > ...like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly > whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life.

Not all Android phones are like that -- what are you buying which doesn't get any OS updates?

<comment><USER58> Obviously android phones get OS updates. Hackintoshes also get OS updates. But in either case there's never a guarantee unless you buy a current gen flagship. If you buy an iPhone you will consistently get updates for up to 5 years. Android is more of a "best effort" kind of deal. Maybe they will update your phone this year. Maybe not. Who knows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I have almost the exact same setup as you: same CPU cooler, same CPU, and the pro WiFi version of the Z390. However, when I'm doing a long-running clean build that uses the 16 logical cores, the temperature for each core gets up to 80 C. Any thoughts why that would be?

<comment><USER61> Is your environment 10C higher than OP's? Most reviews compare coolers in terms of the temperature increase over background temperature to control for this.

80C for a 9900k under sustained high load would not concern or surprise me. It's a high end power hungry CPU. 100C is the cutoff temperature so maybe more cooling might help it turbo more but I doubt you even get throttling at 80C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> you are only prolonging their foul empire, lol...

I mean I get you (pity and understand) if you are stuck in Logic or Final Cut Pro land with no painless way out, welcome to the state/reality of proprietary media production workstation software lockin, which is arguably nearly as tight of a lockin as obscure scientific instrumentation and machine control driver lockin etc... "yeah, you'll need a working install of NT4.0"

</comment><comment><USER63> Mac mini too expensive? I'm not sure. Also I've ran some benchmarks against my friend's hackintosh and smoked it.

I mean read his specs, it's not cheap at all. Fractal cases are not cheap, and the RTX 580 that he will upgrade once he gets to Catalina? Right, that's cheap.

Those little mac minis are beasts if you ask me. Mine is called minibeef ;)

I've added an eGPU to it and it's powerhouse for all of my work, in spades.

Edit: my geekbench score is 5547 single and 23621 multi, that seems to be much higher than the posted specs.

<comment><USER27> The Mac Mini has no integrated GPU and is dead because of this reason. Why would I buy such an elegant device if I have to hook an ugly eGPU case.

<comment><USER64> > The Mac Mini has no integrated GPU

They do - they use Intel UHD Graphics 630, which is an Intel GT integrated GPU [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Technology).

How did you think they were running the display? They can't squeeze a tiny discrete graphics card in there!

<comment><USER27> Yes, I know, and the iGPU is complete dogshit. Why would I spend 2k+ on a device that is completely limited by it's GPU. It is not even able to run scaled 4k screens properly.

And regarding the size: Who cares? It's not a portable device, so make it a bit bigger and no one cares but is happy that the hardware is better.

<comment><USER64> > Yes, I know

Lol you said it didn't have one a second ago!

<comment><USER65> No, he said that it does not have a (worthwhile) GPU _inside_ the case and made the unfortunate word choice "integrated". Hence the need for an eGPU.

Your interpretation of what he/she wrote makes no sense for any non-server hardware. If it can show something on the screen it obviously has a GPU (it just might be garbage).

<comment><USER64> An 'integrated' GPU is one on the processor die, not one inside the case.

<comment><USER65> Hence why I said unfortunate word choice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Youtube "star" calls out all startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAKKQt1qzuA

<comment><USER2> So he expects people to submit an idea for a chance that it will be made fun of on youtube? Its easy to bash, he should also share which company he thinks was the best.</comment>


More on Dota 2 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/more-on-dota-2/ <comment><USER2> I know it has been mentioned a lot the past few days, but since the articles keep flowing about it I'll mention it again:

It's a great feat and kudos to the openai team, but it is VERY unfair for the human players who rely on a sensory interface vs a direct API connection. That's unlike chess or go where the interface isn't important. The really impressive feat will be an AI that uses the same sensory information to make decisions (and I really hope that's where the openai will head next)

<comment><USER3> I completely disagree. An API is software's natural input mechanism just like the senses are a human's natural input mechanism. Having the AI use human senses unfairly handicaps it. More importantly, however, is that this is not the key problem.

The key problem is teaching the AI strategy and tactics. What heroes to pick? Where to lane them? When to rotate? What items to buy? What spells to level up? What enemies to target with which spells and in which order? These are the hard problems and they are very hard indeed. A 5v5 AI will have to become expert at risk calculation, Pareto optimization, basic military principles, and many more things. Compared to these problems, the choice of input mechanism is trivial.

<comment><USER4> I'm almost entirely ignorant of DOTA 2, but the coverage suggests to me that it is winning mainly through what I would call "micro" excellence (firing at just the right range, careful maneuvering, and so on). It's clear that this kind of precision control is extremely advantaged by having direct access to the state of the game, rather than having to estimate it in real-time from vision data.

So, to me, based purely on the news coverage, it's not clear that it has learned anything like "superhuman" levels of strategy. We already know that computers have superhuman reaction times and precision calculation abilities, so it seems to me the interesting question is whether an advantage would remain after factoring those out.

<comment><USER5> As someone who plays dota, this bot really isn't that impressive. The hero they chose is seen as a very difficult one to master for humans, precisely because judging distances, current life, current mana, damage etc. is so difficult to do on the fly and even if you can keep track of all of that in your head, you need extremely precise inputs to outplay your opponent. Yet by going through the API, they handed all of that to their bot on a silver platter. They pretty much let the bot sidestep the core challenge of this hero, while it was kept in place for the human players.

On top of that they also reduced the complexity of the game quite significantly by limiting items etc., which further reduced what humans could do against the bot. Even then, the bot utterly failed once humans were allowed to use a tiny bit of creativity.

And that's not even taking into account that this was not even close to the complexity of a real dota match. The big challenge in dota is in the decision making with incomplete information and in coordinating 5 people with only voice and the ability to ping the mini map, in a giant "search space" created by hundreds of different heroes, items and game mechanic interactions.

<comment><USER6> In terms of Dota, I don't think it's that impressive, but it is still cool. I'll be impressed when I see a 5v5 with bots that adapt to the opponents' strategy. I do think that it currently could be an excellent tool for mid- laners and cores to practice. OpenAI is also blowing the door open to Dota AI development and we will soon see bot tournaments. Engineers will develop AI and put them against one another in standard 5v5 matches with a pick/ban phase and all.

In terms of AI, I don't /think/ there's anything groundbreaking here. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't follow AI research, but this technology is nothing we haven't already seen. I believe the development of AI for Dota is a publicity move to get people excited about what AI could be for humanity. This might be the way to introduce AI to non-technologists and get people excited about it.

<comment><USER7> > This might be the way to introduce AI to non-technologists and get people > excited about it.

Yeah, I'm almost positive that this exhibition is intended mostly to raise awareness and create this hype. Go and Chess, for most people, are simple games compared to Dota2, so if Elon is worried about AI and want people to be more aware of the threat he perceives it certainly helps to make this big show and get all those impressions with a game that is considered by the majority of people (especially younger) to be more complex/harder than what has been done before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree that it's a bit of a over hype tactic in a toy situation which might be marking to maybe make people think the technique and bot are more capable than it is. But I think people are overly down on it too. It's a demonstration of a technique in a way the general public (and gamers) will understand. OpenAI isn't going to make money off of building game bots... people wouldn't watch. The human drama is a major ingredient in e-sports.

But we shouldn't be down on this while we were going gaga over a lego sorter done the same way a month or so back.

It looks like for some things we can almost have a plug and play ai solution. EG, like we are seeing with image classifiers, this doesn't take years of phd doctoral research and game theory to build up a world class bot. Which is what everyone used to do. This is moving some of these techniques into the "get data set, get hardware, download library, train" plug and play type solution which we're seeing more and more with in other areas like machine classification. Eg stuff anyone with a few years of experience can do, maybe not amazingly, but better than they could hand coding the solution. The problem becomes one of gathering good training sets or building an accurate simulation to train in.

This means, I think, that you'll see way more of these types of ai solutions where people would have balked at a hand coded solution before. This in turn looks a lot like mobile's change to computing where things that were annoying to do on your home pc became different just because you had a camera + gps + computer + radio in your pocket.

I know my company has started using classifiers a lot more for things that are kinda sliding bad user actions instead of coding up huge rules engines. We may not be as effective as a several area deep engineers writing rules and doing data analysis, but instead we have 1 engineer per problem space being about 70% as effective which is still a huge win over not solving the problems at all.

The funny thing is that this bot actually pulled off the stereotypical hollywood training montage with just a few weeks of hard work it beat the best in the world. Just get some sweet rock in there and you've got it all.

</comment><comment><USER9> Props for the $12k donation to OpenDota. That's really awesome! Tho I personally always preferred Dotabuff.

<comment><USER10> The features are slightly different so people usually use both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a good self-contained example of how people set up learning in ways where "the AI doesn't initially know the rules"?

I've heard this many times and conceptually I get the principle, but I have a hard time understanding how you create a legitimate starting position or measurement mechanism beyond "losing/winning".

<comment><USER12> The linked article says "The bot received incentives for winning and basic metrics like health and last hits". So apart from losing/winning, losing health is bad, last hitting is good. You could add more, but apparently that's all OpenAI used.

<comment><USER13> It also says "We also separately trained the initial creep block using traditional RL techniques." I have no idea how significant that is, but it seems to be getting a fair amount of attention.

<comment><USER14> It's a highly specific procedure that happens before there is interaction with the opponent, so without "handing over" the understanding that having creeps on your high-ground is good, it's very hard for the learning to see through the noise and discover this.

<comment><USER15> Exactly why this is not impressive to me. The point is to be able to learn the rules, but all I see is some of not only the rules, but the actions already prespecified in many cases. Yes its hard, and thats why humans still rule the roost.

<comment><USER16> Surely all this RL process did was speed up what the computer would have learned, by a large stretch? The "cost" factors they chose would have hit them ultimately, regardless of if the bot stood still in the base, or wandered off elsewhere.

<comment><USER13> My guess is that in general, many complex strategies are effectively unreachable without something like analysis, on account of intermediate states being disfavored, leading to algorithms being trapped by local minima in the cost function (I don't know whether that would be an issue for this game, specifically.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The classic reinforcement learning -based AI (from 1992) that beats humans (maybe not top players though) in Backgammon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-Gammon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD- Gammon)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm by no means an expert, but I'm fascinated by the idea that a neural net playing against itself can substantially outperform a supervised learning approach with a large training data set. I mean, gathering training data and making sure it's labeled correctly and all that is a huge hassle so if you could eliminate that step or even reduce the amount or quality of training data required that should be a big win for AI, right? Especially if doing this not only makes things easier but also improves the performance of the model.

<comment><USER19> Reinforcement learning isn't a new idea - I did a Berkeley-based edX course on it a few years ago now and it was not state-of-the-art to my knowledge. That had no deep aspect to it, we just generated a reinfrocement algorithm that utilised a good measure of performance (specifically, it was pacman and the score value is pretty good at that) and changed a few algorithm weighting variables at each iteration.

My understanding, from talking to a ML friend this morning, is that the latest progress is taking reinforcement learning and applying deep learning approaches (nets, etc.) to it. The key becomes finding the right scoring algorithms to tweak the neural net correctly towards the desired outcome.

The self-play really is the reinforcement side of things at work. How you take that 'score' and use it to correctly modify the input weightings - be them in a neural net, traditional algorithm, etc. - is the key.

<comment><USER20> Why wouldn't algorithm reach a local maxima when playing with itself, or even degrade over time by opening up to unknown attacks?

<comment><USER14> One typically keeps pools of trained networks to combat this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find the mechanism for learning + the timeline far more impressive than what they accomplished. A series of 5 bots that can consistently compete with 5 humans at the 4.5k+ level would be a very impressive display of AI training.

<comment><USER22> What I'd like to see is them implementing AI for a strategy game that benefits from an overall vision, such as Civilization.

And then selling the AI to Firaxis.

Yes, Civ 6 AI still isn't anywhere close to what it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dupe, more discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031470)

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately the HN title there which still isn't correct at time of writing this, distroyed a proper conversation.

(Assuming the original article didn't fix their title)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I loved the different ideas to throw the bot off like pulling creeps in a way that would not work for a human. Slacks' courier strategy was entertaining as well.

I don't know enough (no more than a layperson) about AI to have any meaningful comment there. Do they need to train the bot on every hero the same way or does it only need to relearn the hero specifics (and not items/strategies)?

<comment><USER25> Another thing I noticed. Others talked about it using API etc etc so that means that you can't visually trick it by stopping an attack mid animation like you can with human players right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The version they used for TI had a variety of rules that completely changed the metagame of 1v1 (no bottle, for example). Even ignoring the obvious API advantage, the match was unfair because the Pros had never trained under the constraints that the AI team brought.

<comment><USER27> They played under standard 1v1 tournament rules: [http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Dota_2_Asia_Championships/2...](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Dota_2_Asia_Championships/2017/Solo_Tournament)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's a good hero to lead off with. Soulstealer (is the HoN name, blanking on the original Dota name) is a hero with very basic mechanics. Or rather, there's a ranged, AoE ability, an ultimate that boils down to "stand in the middle and hit the button", but the rest of the mechanics boil down to "last hit lane creeps well" which is a huge Dota 2 game mechanic. And this hero does better as they succeed at last hitting.

<comment><USER29> Nevermore, the Shadow Fiend is the original Dota name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe biological explanations might account partially for the openAI bot outperforming human players.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone else have a problem with the line, "the graph is surprisingly linear, meaning the team improved the bot exponentially over time"?

<comment><USER32> I think what they're pointing to is that the ELO system "true skill" that dota uses is a log normal distribution. To your point I'm not sure that means that player skill improves along the distribution, but I think it does mean their probability of winning increases exponentially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really cool writeup. Enjoyed that thoroughly

</comment><comment><USER34> So it appears their bot isn't cheating with vision, and has its action speed capped to human levels. Interesting!

Sad they had whitelisted item builds. I thought the whole point of a machine learnign bot was it was supposed to learn these themselves.

5v5 full game is way more complex than Starcraft. Hope OpenAI are ready.

</comment><comment><USER35> AI players that use internal game calls could beat humans from the beginning of the history.

</comment><comment><USER36> It is amazing what Peter Thiel's OpenAI does! Congrats to his genius.

<comment><USER36> I sincerely don't understand the downvoting. It's Peter Thiel's as much as it is Elon Musk's OpenAI.</comment></comment>


Tesla Temporarily Pauses Production of the Model 3 Sedan Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/tesla-temporarily-pauses-production-of-the-model-3-sedan-again <comment><USER2> Earlier stoppage 3 hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16854065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16854065)

</comment><comment><USER3> While it's interesting to hear, I find it more than a little annoying no cause is cited. It leaves the idea open to speculation by news and it looks to be cynical.</comment>


Summarized top 2018 AI research papers - <AUTHOR> https://www.topbots.com/most-important-ai-research-papers-2018/amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> If any of you read these, which one is your favorite?

<comment><USER2> My 2 favorites are 1\. BERT - easy to understand, SOTA results on most NLP tasks, code and pretrained models readily available. What more can you ask! 2\. ULMFit - transfer learning for NLP, have been waiting for something like this since a long time.

Both these mean getting better results/models for most NLP tasks with lesser training data, effort and time.

Here is another link explaining these topics in a little more detail (a must read if you are in the NLP field) -- [https://jalammar.github.io/illustrated- bert/](https://jalammar.github.io/illustrated-bert/)

<comment><AUTHOR> BERT is pretty awesome. Thanks for the link I wasn't aware of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloudbleed: Namecheap still only supports SMS 2FA after 3 years of promises - <AUTHOR> https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9253/45/how-to-two-factor-authentication <comment><AUTHOR> I have posted this since Namecheap is using Cloudflare and for all I know my password has been exposed. As a frequent traveler SMS 2FA is not feasible. I am constantly switching SIMs. You can read in the comments they have been promising a better 2FA solution for 3 years now.

Please upvote this to bring attention to the urgent need for namecheap domain owners to have real security in light of Cloudbleed.

Domains are one of the most important assets for companies to secure and as such should have bank level security.

Note: I have changed my password but proper 2FA would allow me to sleep a bit better at night.

</comment><comment><USER2> SMS is better than nothing though?</comment>


The Cellphone Glued to Your Hand - <AUTHOR> http://null.authpad.com/the-cellphone-glued-to-your-hand <comment><USER2> I was just thinking of this while coming up the elevator after picking up lunch. Instinctively people reach into their pockets to grab their phones for their 5, 6 or 12 story trip.

It's like a natural reaction - I always find this humorous because there is absolutely no service in our elevators. People just end up scrolling up, then scrolling back down.

People love to be distracted, even if it's just for 23 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER3> In college, of everything that's going on, classes are the least important. Yes, you still need to pass them, but if you're freaking out because someone is distracting you during a boring lecture, you're doing it wrong.

And the boring lecturer is doing it wrong too - wasting your time and money and everyone else's! Be an adult and take matters into your own hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue here is that there is no lecture -- it's workshop. Everyone in the classroom is participating, so to be the student constantly checking a cellphone alienates you somewhat, and you end up distracting most of the class from the work at hand, which is usually trying to help improve someone else's work. Unfortunately, asking the person to stop rarely works. They'll put down the phone for about five minutes, but the request rarely holds and their hand is back on the phone rather quickly.

<comment><USER3> I'm confused - all of the workshop and small-group work I've ever done in classrooms (including college) involves an epic amount of shifting, moving, digging for materials, talking, talking loudly, and sometimes shouting. Someone checking a smartphone in that environment would actually be reducing the distractions in the room.

<comment><AUTHOR> That all sounds far less organized than what we work with in my classes. It's mostly open, but you shouldn't interrupt folks, nobody should need to shout, and you should give room for others to speak. I've only seen people shift around when multiple workshops were going on, usually resulting in small groups working on different pieces, but that's fairly rare and I've seen most instructors abandon it after the first try due to the amount of noise it produces and the tendency to drift off into discussing daily life and such.

It all sort of operates on the idea that you're actually a nice person, capable of behaving reasonably, and discussing things like an adult (or how we believe adults should discuss things even though this is rarely the case). The idea is to ensure the other person wants to return to what they made, and it's enough for one person to treat the work poorly (perhaps in showing they don't care by focusing on their phone) to bother someone, especially newcomers to workshops.

<comment><USER3> 30 humans working independently or in small groups in a 20 foot x 20 foot classroom create almost as much noise as a jet engine, regardless of age or maturity or nationality or other factors. That's something I learned in college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think as we get more interesting and engaging tools like the smart phone, we're going to have to do a lot more reflection on how our tools shape our habits.

Like a lot of HN readers, I recognized the potential an always-connected pocket computer had pretty early on.

Perhaps unlike many HN readers, I didn't actually buy a smart phone until this year (though I've had dev loaners for a project or two). And part of what drove this decision was a recognition that over the years, I've been turning into a infosnacking net addict. Did I really want a device that makes always convenient in my pocket, even though it would offer a world of convenience?

This February, after reflecting on what habits I might want a pocket computing device to shape, I finally bought a used iPhone 3GS. I'm cautious about feeding a gaming habit, so I didn't put games on it. I know that I wish I read more long-form stuff, so I loaded it up with eBook apps, and then Readability for digesting longer articles I might note but want to tackle later. I know I wish I experimented with music apps, so I picked out a few simple ones.

And most important? I haven't added service on it yet. This way, I can't use it for infosnacking anywhere.

The hope has been that I'll learn to connect the device with activities I consciously choose as positive uses of my time, and less with responding to the feeds and firehoses of the nets. So far, the experiment is promising. I'm definitely reading more.

Though I did eventually install Words With Friends. :|

</comment><comment><USER5> The thing that I find amusing is that as a kid I would typically pull out my gameboy whenever possible to pass the time. Now as an adult I seem to have gotten over that and I rarely reach for my phone unless I am expecting a long wait such as at the doctor or the mechanic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a query: suppose you keep notes on your cellphone. Perhaps you use a piece of software to jot things down so you won't forget them, especially all those things that pop into your mind and will distract you the entire lecture, only to be forgotten later. Can you tell the difference between someone texting and someone jotting something down on their cellphone?

</comment><comment><USER7> I have been without a phone for about 3 months now. I haven't missed a million-dollar-deal yet or a life saving text message. There are many things you think you NEED until you find it's just luxury with a monetary and social cost. I may get a wifi only phone, but what's for sure is I won't pay $75 for a service anymore.

<comment><USER8> There are few that would consider their smart phone a "NEED" (save for those that use it primarily for business purposes) however it is highly convenient and affords a significant peace of mind.

In my case, I can hardly imagine traveling in an unfamiliar area without a GPS enabled smart phone, which ensures I not only do not get lost, but should I experience car trouble then help is just a few button presses away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Off-topic question for the author:

How do you use custom styles on Authpad?

<comment><AUTHOR> You click the 'Edit forked style' link on the 'Display' page and customize the CSS from there. Does that answer your question?

<comment><USER2> Came into the comments for a fun discussion, left with a great tidbit about my shiny new toy!

Thanks a ton, given the unobtrusiveness of the font, I'm terrified at how long I would have gone without noticing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> rants.ycombinator.com?</comment>


Applications open Winter 2014 Funding - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/apply.html#w2014

<comment><USER2> One thing to note is that the application deadline is 2 days -after- Startup School.

I went to Startup School last year, and it was an amazing experience.

It can be a great place to meet people, tell them about your startup, and get real, honest, brutal feedback about what you're doing right or wrong.

If you're on the fence about applying to YC, go to Startup School, and you'll be convinced and inspired.

If you're already planning on applying, go to Startup School and meet some other founders- You'll get experience talking to brilliantly smart people who are great at seeing through marketing speak and BS. Practice explaining to as many people as you can - It's a great way to make new friends, and will be good practice for your YC interviews.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure if I can pitch for a co-founder but here goes:

GitHub for CAD. With 3D printing poised to explode shortly, I am predicting a need for versioning of CAD models (along with FEM analyses). Current solutions (PLM/PDM) are very expensive and usually need to be customized. This is a business that is runs into billions of USD per annum and is ripe for disruption.

If anyone is interested, please get in touch at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment> super-serial There should be a thread for co-founder pitches.

It should include what type of roles you can do as a founder, which roles your future co-founder should fulfill, and your location. Also a general description of your idea, what you've built so far, and your technology stack.

Personally I don't mind working solo on my startup - but if there was a thread like that I'd post to it to see if someone could complement my skills.

<comment><USER4> BTW, there is a dedicated site which caters to that need - [http://founderdating.com/](http://founderdating.com/) (I believe they may have a fee for new members now though)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I've just left a startup that I'd spent far too much time on and am looking to regroup. I'm currently validating a new idea and wanting to take all the shit I've learned and really make something work.

One thing I've learned is that anything that allows focus is good (i.e. YC) so I'm casting my eye towards SF and Startmate in Sydney. The problem is I'm based in New Zealand so it's hard to try and meet anyone involved beforehand and work out more about the program than what people say on here. Has anyone got any tips for reaching out to people involved with YC from a distance? I'm assuming PG's inbox is flooded, but I just want to discuss the program with someone who's got experience with or is involved with it in some way so I can form a better idea of it in my head and work out better prepare myself should I actually fluke and get in. Thanks :)

<comment><USER6> Look for someone who does something close to what you're doing. Make your email concise and questions pointed. You'd be surprised who you can email and get answers from.

It's worked for me a number of times. YC founders are fairly nice people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I assume the experiment of considering people applying without a startup idea has not been successful.

What has been your experience with it ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't accept many no-idea applications, and on average those groups have done worse than regular applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> YC RFSs look somehow a bit old as of today, especially "build things on twitter". I'm curious what #7 was? See [http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html)

<comment><USER9> RFS #7's page is still there, just not linked: [http://ycombinator.com/rfs7.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs7.html)

> RFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

> This RFS is no longer active, because we're not sure what Facebook is doing > with Instant Personalization

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are applying to YC and need advice, help on the application, or just want to chat online or at Startup school, email me. aj at instantcab dot com. I was rejected from the first YC batch, started up anyway, got to ramen profitability and was accepted for W12. So I can give a perspective from both sides of the fence :)

<comment><USER11> Did you participate in YC though? I don't see your main page (as well as blog) mentioning YC at all.

<comment><USER10> Yes we did, we should market it more huh?

[http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/instantcab/](http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/instantcab/)

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

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/instantcab-yc-w12-launches-in- sa...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/instantcab-yc-w12-launches-in-san- francisco-offers-more-drivers-lower-fare-prices-than-uber-sidecar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We're a startup that just won the global demo day of AngelHack last week, and we're currently searching for a co-founder/CTO. FOSUBO (FOrget the SUggestions BOx), our start-up, allows customers to individually review employees. T-Mobile is already using our service in 7 stores, and we are planning on applying to YC for this round.

If you are interested in connecting with us about this opportunity, please email me at misa [at] fosubo [dot] com. To find out more about us, please visit fosubo.com and to find out more about me (CEO) visit [http://www.linkedin.com/in/misachien](http://www.linkedin.com/in/misachien)

</comment><comment><USER13> If we apply early, should we update the application with feature changes to our prototype until the last date? Or do you guys not care too much about prototype updates at this stage?

<comment><USER14> We were wondering the same thing.

A YC partner wrote on Quora that it's best to wait until later in the application process rather than describing a half-imagined idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am very intrigued by #1. Especially because I feel like the only one company out there that is redefining Journalism in the way pg talks about is the NYT. This is a space that I would love to get into (love to write, have math/stats skills). Does anyone other companies working on this side of things?

#1 [http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> There are no details in the FAQ about the $80k YC VC note, when do selected companies get it? Is it automatic?

<comment><AUTHOR> They get it as soon as they finish the paperwork. It's automatic if companies incorporate in the US. (I believe there may have been some companies that chose to remain Canadian and thus didn't take the YCVC money, but I'm not sure.)

<comment><USER17> pg, will accepted non-profits get that, too? (Guessing not.)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but we may eventually manage to organize an equivalent thing for nonprofits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pg, Our 4-month-old startup is incorporated in California. I've heard that most Y Combinator startups are incorporated in Delaware. Is it necessary to reincorporate in Delaware if selected for the W2014 program? Thanks!

<comment><USER19> Various VCs have indicated in multiple blogs that the state of incorporation is not significant.

Having an out of state incorporation is a pain in the neck, and expensive, especially for people without much money. Don't bother. If the time arrives where Delaware incorporation becomes important, it is easy enough to merge into a new Delaware corporation at that time.

The main VC advice, and YCombinator advice is that the LLC -- Limited Liability Companies -- are not a suitable vehicle for VC investment.

<comment><USER18> Understood!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As much as I want the kill hollywood rfs to take off, two startups themes come to mind:

      - aws/opsource for medical research (medical will only get bigger)
      - privacy-as-a-services

</comment><comment><USER21> Quante sono le probabilita che qualcuno, tra cui PG, inserira questo testo nel traduttore, ricordera il mio nome, e dara lieve maggiore positiva attenzione alla mia application? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Minimale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >The people in your group are what matter most to us. We look for brains, motivation, and a _sense of design._

Is that last bit new, pg? And what do you mean by it?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that's been there for years, maybe since the beginning. We're looking for people who are not merely good at building things, but who can decide what to build.

<comment><USER23> Paul, I've read Hackers and Painters, and you can't imagine how HAPPY I am that you've been in Florence, and have been influenced by what you saw there.

I love, love the fact that (at least in words) there is a care for beauty, for design.

I am a geek and a hacker at heart, but I also love when something is crafted beautifully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 500px...</comment>


This referendum is a fight between the Greeks and Europe's cruel capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/29/referendum-greeks-europe-capitalism-greece-eurozone-economic-system

<comment><USER2> Respectfully, since when was capitalism sweet? Here is a J.P. Morgan quote: If you owe the bank $10,000 you have a problem. If you owe the bank $10-million dollars the bank has a problem.

In California this Greece situation is weird to some of us since it is barely bigger than L.A. County and its GDP is about 2/3s less. (I compared the GDP and population of each place via Wikipedia)

Every dollar California pays to the federal government we only get back $0.78! That is what richer states are suppose to do here, carry the weak. If we don't, we lose territory and human resources. If Germany and France want to run the show, they are going to have to pay.

Example, California ends up paying for poorer states suck as Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, and New Mexico. New Mexico is so poor that it receives $2.02 cents for every dollar it sends out to the Federal Gov. [http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/united-states- federal-...](http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/united-states-federal-tax- dollars/)

Germany the EU get a major strategic advantage with Turkey and the canal that Russia has to travel through, do they really want to lose that territory from the EU?</comment>


Show HN: RootRedirect for your domain, helps SEO  - <AUTHOR> http://www.rootredirect.com/

<comment><USER2> You're selling a redirect rule...?

      RewriteEngine on
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, hosted on geo-redundant servers, in excellent data centers, monitored 24/7.

You can't use a CNAME record for your root domain. This is a problem for me and lots of folks who run their web servers behind Amazon Elastic Load Balancers or other CNAME-based services. RootRedirect solves the problem nicely.

<comment><USER3> _This is a problem for me and lots of folks who run their web servers behind Amazon Elastic Load Balancers_

Amazon Route 53 solves this problem with an alias record, though your service may be easier to use or cheaper than what Amazon offers.

<http://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/#Zone_apex>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Watch out, you are in the same market as wwwizer.com who offers the same product for free. You are going to have to distinguish yourself somehow to compete with that price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out. There are a number of similar free services.

For my business, I prefer paid services over a free ones. You never know when a free service will go down or the company bought and shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My concern here is that you're selling a service through FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).

 _Search engines penalize sites with the same content on their root and www domains. They treat the domains as separate sites with duplicate content and flag them as spam. Use RootRedirect.com to avoid this penalty and improve your site's SEO ranking._

There's no _penalty_ , you're just forcing search engines to pick one version and potentially splitting the back-link equity that would occur if both www/no-ww resolve to a single location. Duplicate content should not be associate with _spam_ either, since a VERY large majority of enterprise sites have this issue.

</comment><comment><USER6> April Fools comes late.

</comment><comment><USER7> What if I want to redirect www to root?

<comment><AUTHOR> This feature is now live. If you point your www address to RootRedirect, visitors will be redirected to your root domain.

I added this for you, Ben. Please sign up! :D</comment></comment>


The Network Man – Reid Hoffman's big idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-network-man <comment><USER2> Anyone else chuckling at the "big idea" of having a million people raise a billion dollars... so that a billionaire politician can run for office?

<comment><USER3> But Michael Bloomberg is just like us!

<comment><USER4> Well, he _is_ a (wildly successful) fintech entrepreneur!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like the tech sector is at risk of losing one of the things that made it special if we go down a path where networking skills and "who you know" become more important to a person's (or company's) success than than raw ability.

<comment><USER5> What makes you think we haven't gone down that path already? This industry is really no different than any other. Who you know gives you a ton of leverage but I think that's just basic human nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, let Reid make money selling ads while you become a _public person_ whether you really should be or not!</comment>


Mathematics teacher accused of inciting mass riots  once again detained - <AUTHOR> https://meduza.io/en/feature/2017/04/10/mathematics-teacher-accused-of-inciting-mass-riots-now-also-accused-of-supporting-terrorism-and-once-again-detained <comment><AUTHOR> Actual title is: Mathematics teacher accused of inciting mass riots now also accused of supporting terrorism and once again detained. Had to truncate it to fit HN's title limit.

The math professor is Dmitry Bogatov, a Debian and Tor developer.</comment>


Pyramid: Why Windows Phone will beat Android - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20061820-75.html

<comment><USER2> This is definitely a PR hit for Microsoft, and nothing else.

The graph of market share seems like pure imagination, with a "hocky stick" for Windows Phone in 2012. The citations of "market research" seem mostly like wishful thinking to me, and constitue little more than saying "but, but, Microsoft and Nokia!".</comment>


The NASA Art Program - <AUTHOR> https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/support-predawn-nasa-art-program-and-james-dean <comment><USER2> I found this the more interesting: [https://airandspace.si.edu/collections/search/apollo?filter%...](https://airandspace.si.edu/collections/search/apollo?filter%5Bobject_type%5D=Works%20of%20art)

<comment><USER3> From a random cursory sampling of art pieces, I could not find one which allowed reproduction. I'd love to be able to print a poster-size reproduction and hang it in my home.

<comment><USER4> For personal use it should fall into the fair use category, so you should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting and made me want to find more NASA + arts.

I found this: "NASA Langley Student Art Contest"

> [https://artcontest.larc.nasa.gov/](https://artcontest.larc.nasa.gov/)

This Flickr collection:

> > [https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/sets/7215763397791...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/sets/72157633977913266/with/8973492146/)

Of course this fictional space travel advertisements: "Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System"

> [https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/exoplanet-travel- > bu...](https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/exoplanet-travel-bureau/)

<comment><USER6> JPL has a studio that has produced a few art+science pieces, including the exoplanet travel posters.

Its website is: [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/thestudio/](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/thestudio/). They've made a few pieces that are around the JPL campus, and some which have traveled. Some are described in this article: [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/07/nasa- secret-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/07/nasa-secret-art- studio-rocket-science-jet-propulsion-laboratory)

The POC is Dan Goods, who is a graduate of Art Center College of Design. The Deep Space Network sculpture described in the article is on his vimeo: [https://vimeo.com/93420747](https://vimeo.com/93420747)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of those are lovely! I never knew! I can't be hit by a wave of nostalgia, for I was not born for 20 years, but it seems like in the 60s, more attention was paid to culture and art. I don't think art would be considered as part of any modern scientific project.. then again, I don't know. That max-q work hit me in just the right spot, I'd love that on my wall (and a wall worthy of it).

</comment><comment><USER8> While there is certainly value in this, I get the impression nowadays that NASA is doing everything but making meaningful progress in human space flight.</comment>


Scientists Map 5,000 New Ocean Viruses - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-viruses/

<comment> dj-wonk > "In the few decades since viruses were first found in the oceans, scientists > have only been able to identify a handful of species. A new survey has > uncovered nearly all the rest."

My first reaction was "What does 'nearly all the rest' mean and how can one come to such a conclusion?" The article is a basic but interesting writeup about Sullivan and his colleagues did to get there.

<comment> dj-wonk I'm concerned that the study may use "out of sample" reasoning in arriving at its virus population count estimate. Here is a snippet from the Quanta article showing some limitations of the sampling / collection methodology:

> In addition, the scientists sequenced only viruses that use DNA to encode > their genes. Some viruses, such as influenza and HIV, use RNA, a single- > strand version of DNA, to encode their genes. By one estimate, as many as > half of the viruses in the ocean are RNA viruses. What's more, the Tara > Oceans survey only took samples from the surface of the ocean. The deeper > regions have viruses, too, as does the sediment at the bottom of the sea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> ugh. quanta. That, medium.com, and one other that keeps getting posted to HN news that I can't remember the name... it's all just pablum for the TED crowd.

Here's the original paper which you can't read because it's behind a paywall even though it's research supported by your tax dollars: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261498](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261498)

<comment><USER3> Is there any group lobbying for an open source proviso from results derived from a certain threshold of government research funding? That feels like a no- brainer to me, and one which could have enormously positive economic impact.

<comment> dj-wonk As mentioned in [https://www.plos.org/open-access/](https://www.plos.org/open- access/)

> There are many other organizations, such as SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing > and Academic Resources Institute) and the Open Society Foundations, that > work tirelessly for progress in Open Access. You can find many free > resources to help you learn more or to advocate for OA journals in your > institution.

See also: [https://doaj.org/oainfo](https://doaj.org/oainfo)</comment></comment></comment>


Take an Avatar-like robot for a test drive [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=1406165298&id=86347385001

<comment><USER2> It's amazing how science fiction influences emerging tech:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1270489></comment>


My favorite sleep hack - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vojto/my-favorite-sleep-hack-2575d97cc1c8#.vkfb4ng5m <comment><USER2> Summary: have a to-do list that you won't ignore</comment>


Time for a Kinder, Gentler IT Ops - <AUTHOR> http://www.real-user-monitoring.com/time-for-a-kinder-gentler-it-ops/

<comment><USER2> I'm all for it, but IT operations makes a great place for control freaks to "standardize" on some thing or another. IT provides a great rationale to, say, enforce a "standard browser" (strangely, always Internet Explorer) because the "internet connection can't handle all the individual requests, we have to cache them."

IT allows management to put in choke points for purposes of control. And let's all face it, doctrine to the contrary, a lot of what large corporations do is control their employees. While it may be high time for Kinder, Gentler IT (not just Ops), it won't happen. Human nature is against it.</comment>


GoFundMe CEO: One-Third of Site's Donations Are to Cover Medical Costs - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5516037/gofundme-medical-bills-one-third-ceo/ <comment><USER2> I have incurred over a million dollars in medical bills since Sept, 24, 2018. I get a pembro drip that is 28K every three weeks. And a CT scan every few months, 45 treatments of radiation.. 10K a pop on average.

Feeding tube insertion. 40K.

They had to try a few times since my stomach rides high. They had to basically use a live "CT" scan while sending a thing down my throat to push my stomach below my ribs so they could poke a hole in my belly and insert a feeding tube. And then they used staples to hold everything in-place. My god it hurt and they have amazing drugs that make you feel so good and pass out for three hours. Then you wake up screaming frantically pushing the button for more drugs. My sister had twins vaginally.. It is a toss-up who has done more pain.

I am lucky.. I am cheap. I have no kids, and my possessions fit in the back of a 1987 Volvo wagon. I tested that when I moved after I found out about the cancer. But I have gone through all this without worrying about money, kids, or bills. I was lucky I just had enough savings I could quit everything and do my health.

But my god. If you get cancer and you have a mortgage you are fucked. It has consumed every minute of my last year. Every second you think about it growing in you.

<comment><USER3> I really have no words. I'm sorry John.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this not show that there is something inherently wrong with society?

<comment><USER5> Yup.

The US system is expensive and increasingly cruel.

I do not expect that state of affairs to endure too much longer.

<comment><USER6> A majority of Americans support Medicare For All, it's just a matter of getting politicians who will vote for it into office.

<comment><USER7> A majority of Americans do not support medicare for all, they support a public option and believe (mistakenly) that this is what medicare for all means. Moreover 40% of adults have no opinion (sources: [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/americans-need-more- conv...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/americans-need-more-convincing- on-medicare-for-all-poll-says) ). This polling is very soft. ([https://www.marketwatch.com/story/poll-finds-medicare-for- al...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/poll-finds-medicare-for-all-support- drops-when-details-are-included-2019-01-23))

When you explain to them that they will lose their existing insurance and be forced to take medicare then support plummets.

It's a complete mystery to me why people keep pushing medicare for all when a public option is much more popular, and this is even before the ad blitz that would happen should this ever become a serious possibility (which wont happen without a massive political realignment).

The main problem here is that the Republican establishment is led by the plutocrats (the top 0.1%) with a strong economically populist insurgency, while the Democratic establishment is led by professionals (the top 10%) with a a strong leftist insurgency.

But while you can have affordable healthcare with overpaid CEOs, you cannot have affordable healthcare with medical professionals earning the salaries they currently earn, and these groups have enormous power over the Democratic party establishment. We are now spending 19% of GDP on healthcare and that number keeps going up, meanwhile the only thing the Democrats can do is advocate for more government subsidies to allow the professional classes to keep extracting even more from working class americans. You simply can't have universal healthcare while median nurse practitioner wages are $50/hr ([https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291171.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291171.htm)) and no one is willing to take a hammer to medical professional wages in order to make universal healthcare affordable. This is why we got Obamacare/Romneycare when the Democrats controlled all branches of government -- there was no support for anything other than more subsidies being funneled into the pockets of the health care system.

It is the exact same situation as with higher education -- completely out of control costs that are bankrupting people as we spend triple what the rest of the world spends, and what is the Democrat policy? More taxpayers subsidies are needed, because they are not going to take a hammer to the professionals working in higher education anymore than they are willing will take a hammer to the professionals working in healthcare. Both of these are key Democratic constituencies.

Really some kind of political realignment has to happen because the current economic status of this country is that we are being stripped bare by the professional classes who have failed to provide us with either affordable higher education or affordable healthcare and who can only demand more taxpayer subsidies or else they will refuse to provide these crucial services. But people are fooling themselves if they don't see the enormous wells of anger and resentment against the nations universities and hospitals. There simply isn't the support to shovel more subsidies into these groups, and it doesn't matter how you package it, whether a medicare for all program or something else. You are not going to get European style social benefits until these industries are shrunk to requiring European style spending levels. We are talking 50% cuts in total spending just to start things off and even more in higher education.

At least one political party has to be willing to both _massively cut costs_ and _provide insurance guarantees_ to ensure coverage. Those who are convinced that there is popular support for medicare for all as the primary reform are in for a big surprise.

<comment><USER6> The polling data I've seen disagrees, but of course it's going to be up to elections and not polling.

Cost controls and increased revenue will be necessary, but neither will be excessive to accomplish the goal. I carry around Sander's Medicare For All bill as well as the accounting breakdown when canvassing (practicing for my own federal office run), so I am familiar with the details.

<comment><USER7> None of these things will happen until the power of the professional classes is broken. They will fight it, and you will find that you don't have the votes in congress to do any of this stuff. Seriously people are walking into an oncoming freight train thinking they will reorganize 20% of the economy through the power of sheer idealism and it would be funny if the stakes weren't real. But we will meet again in 20 years when the situation is much worse, and you will be confused as all hell why none of these plans were realized. As long as the professionals are in the drivers seat of the Democratic party, you can push the truck as hard as you want but they will steer it towards an Obamacare style solution, at which point you will say "We must push harder! It will happen!"

But it will never happen, not as long as the Neera Tandens of this world are calling the shots in the Democratic Party.

<comment><USER5> This is all accurate.

And the Medicare For All movement knows it.

Organizing to take seats, build something like a 10 million volunteer group, and plans for all that to be very highly active, are in the works.

The current system is completely unacceptable. As it has come into it's own now, the number of impacted Americans will grow rapidly.

I expect there will be significant unrest over this issue.

<comment><USER7> Yes, there has to be unrest. Promising all sorts of benefits isn't the battle. Those who think they can combine the exorbitant spending of a US system with the social financing of a European system are not serious players in these discussions.

Same for universities. If you want European style public financing of Universities, get ready for a system where universities accept only 1/2 of the students that American universities accept, where a degree lasts only 3 years, and where total spending per student is 50% of the US level even on a GDP basis.

This is the kind of the system that you can get the public to agree to fully fund, and it again requires massive cuts to university staffing, shutting down a lot of schools, as well as lower salaries (on average) of those who remain.

When that starts polling well together with the free tuition part, then you know you have real backing for a European style system.

I'm from Europe and I think European systems are more rational and ultimately much more humane, but they are so far different from what is happening in the U.S. that when I see the college kids argue "why can't we have what they have in Germany/France", I want to yell back "If we had a French system you would have never been accepted to University." People have no idea of whether or not these moves will be popular.

Keep in mind that when European nations adopted universal health systems, the health care sector was a small part of the economy and the nations were politically united with high levels of social trust and solidarity.

When England adopted the National Health Service act in 1946, healthcare was less than 3% of GDP ([https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/nhs-spending-as- a-per...](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/nhs-spending-as-a-percentage- of-gdp-1950-2020)) and the nation had high levels of social trust especially trust in government (they just won WW2, large portions of the economy were nationalized, they were used to rationing, etc). Even then it took a big battle, with lots of organizing to get it done.

So when people say "why can't we do what the Europeans did", the Europeans never took over 20% of their economy, they took over ~3% of their economy and that grew to 10%

There is a big difference in the political battle to take 3% versus 20%. Today, in almost every city the hospital is the biggest employer. Healthcare workers are huge political players, and while they certainly favor more government spending, they do not favor more cuts. But taxpayers favor the free stuff, not the "we will tax you more" part. These are huge requirements for social trust and especially trust in government. But now, the U.S. is as divided as never before and social trust, particularly trust in government, is rapidly falling. (source: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/07/22/key-finding...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/07/22/key-findings-about-americans-declining-trust-in-government- and-each-other/)). The younger generation is in the curious position of demanding more free stuff while also trusting government the least of any generation.

So when all these people say "Hey, free stuff polls really well, we can do this people", I just roll my eyes. This would be 10x the achievement of what the Europeans accomplished and in a nation completely divided and growing farther apart each day.

<comment><USER8> "free stuff" is a pretty flippant way to describe a social service covered by taxes.

<comment><USER7> It's not at all flippant when one side describes the benefits but not the costs. If it was marketed accurately, I wouldn't call it the free stuff platform. But then if it was marketed accurately you wouldn't have the majority of people thinking that medicare for all was really a public option proposal, or Kamala Harris throwing smoke in people's eyes by simultaneously distancing herself from medicare for all while also advocating for it. Let's be honest about the level of honesty here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is incredible and everyone should seriously evaluate their commitment to both their money and time when it comes to charity work. So many people "want the government to do something", very few will get their hands dirty.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have any idea how this self reported statistic is verified?</comment>


Why We Shouldn't Accept Unrepeated Science–Our Author Responds to His Critics - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-we-shouldnt-accept-unrepeated-scienceour-author-responds-to-his-critics <comment><AUTHOR> The author answers critic to the original story. [http://nautil.us/blog/we- should-not-accept-scientific-result...](http://nautil.us/blog/we-should-not- accept-scientific-results-that-have-not-been-repeated)</comment>


Ask HN: Why does PHP "suck"? - <AUTHOR>

Let me be clear: I'm not a PHP hacker, I don't use it and probably won't have an immediate need for it. However it's been my perception that many people have a strong opinion about PHP. I'm wondering what specific technical reasons there are for this?<p>(Please excuse me if this isn't the right method for asking these kinds of questions.)<p>Edit: I don't actually have an opinion, in other words I don't think it "sucks", but I'm hoping that some of you might be able to address that "PHP sucks!" line I read so often. <comment><USER2> Yes...it sucks so much, that Facebook used it to scale a network worth $50 billion dollars today.

From a coding perspective, it is a very "loose" language (not that kind of loose). This has advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you are doing.

It is very easy to learn, and therefore there is a large degree of stratification with PHP devs. Professional coders turn their nose up at PHP, because it is kind of like telling Tiger Woods that you play golf. Maybe you do...but you don't play his game of golf. It's more impressive to say you code in a language that is difficult to do well, and that will punish you badly if you don't code in it well. PHP is pretty forgiving, even for pretty crappy code (I've seen some pretty awful stuff).

The truth is that PHP is a great web language. Rails and other frameworks provide tighter integration with the db and view layers, but this isn't necessarily a good thing. PHP allows for that level of integration if you want it (as mentioned, there are many PHP based frameworks). It also happens to have a large, open source code base that is reviewed by many, many eyes, so bugs get fixed quickly and the language evolves quickly. The help manual is superb, and it performs well across hardware platforms.

You will hear many baseball fans saying the other team's players suck. Most of the time it isn't true.... it's just a pride thing.

<comment><USER3> It's funny but people always reference Facebook whenever PHP is called to discussion. Former CTO and now cofounder of Quora, Adam D'Angelo, has said so himself the main reason for Facebook staying on PHP was mostly for legacy reasons. There was simply no good reason to continue using PHP but it had already become a core part of Facebook so they optimize as best as they can. In building Quora, he decided in hindsight to use Python and had Facebook not been so entrench in it, they probably would have switched. That isn't to say Facebook doesn't already use other languages as part of their infrastructure. And it was in part why hiphop was developed.

That said, I have nothing personal against PHP and have been a PHP developer for years. It does get the job done and is forgiving as you have said but make no mistake, there are better alternatives. There are things that, for example, Python and Ruby is able to do that PHP can't since PHP is purely a web base language and Python and Ruby are not. At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with.

<comment><USER2> "At the end of the day, it's really what the developer is most comfortable with."

Totally agree. I would maybe extend to say its what the team of developers is most comfortable collaborating around (assuming you are more than 1 person).

Basically, it should be about building a good product. The end user generally couldn't care less what programming language your project was built in. If you can deliver the best experience in the fastest amount of time with programming language X, then that's the one you should use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know HN ist not place to prais php... PHP ist easy to learn and it easy to code in php, but if your a professional software developer you can also write professional software for php.

You can develop faster, because of large amount of built-in functions and classes. The "shared nothing" philosophy makes it almost unbeatable in terms of performance. Thats why a majority of large sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo and Flickr is powered by PHP.

Well php is not as structured as ruby or python. Sometimes it is not structured at all. :-(

Other HN users would certainly talk about disadvantages of PHPafter my comment. ;-)

<comment><USER5> Please explain how you consider it 'less structured'. I admittedly don't work with much PHP any more, but it has namespaces, classes and objects.

I can write linear Python just as ugly as anything a PHP developer could come up with (probably). And I could write MUCH more destructive C code than anybody in PHP could (probably).

If you mean it's less structured because of Rails or Django, I'd submit that PHP has CodeIgniter, Zend, and a bevy of other frameworks that all seem to be pretty solid to an outsider looking in.

<comment><USER6> I think part of this is the fact that there are a myriad of functions that are just "baked in" to the language, making it a little chaotic. Sometimes it seems like some PHP contributer needed some function and just decided to add it to the language. (Examples: rsort, sort, http_build_query, rawurldecode, urldecode, etc.)

There should be Util or Helper libraries that do that, and in a much more organized way. On the flip side, these commonly used functions are written in C, so they're most likely faster than if you were to write your own in php or load a library.

Either way, I love PHP and use Symfony for all of my projects. PHP/Symfony is pretty much like rails but without the cracked out ruby syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A very good answer from Quora: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-PHP-s-main- flaws-(and-good-par...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-PHP-s-main-flaws-\(and- good-parts\)/answer/Brian-Krausz)

Or, if you'd prefer an HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805729>

</comment><comment><USER8> PHP doesn't suck. It runs the internet. It's possible to write crappy code in any language.

</comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't. It is like anything else, strengths and weaknesses. Disclaimer: I am biased since my successes have all used it.

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't.

You're right, this isn't the right way to ask these questions, and since you obviously recognized that, I can't imagine why you didn't bother to try to come up with a less inflammatory way of asking the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies. Perhaps I should delete this post?

<comment><USER10> Or edit it perhaps and make it a little less condescending.</comment></comment></comment>