G Found in 31 Non-Western Cultures: Strong Evidence That G Is a Universal Trait - <AUTHOR> https://psyarxiv.com/uv673/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting study, but it begs the question: Was there really any serious doubt that Spearman's g is a general human trait, vs. a trait limited to Western cultures?

I realize that the mildly controversial nature of factor analysis plays into all of this, but the general concept of g is one of those things that seems to be intuitively obvious.

G by itself is a correlation factor that comes out of the numbers, but its essential nature is rather easy to summarize: Individuals that do well on one type of task that requires a level of cognitive ability tend to do well on unrelated tasks that also require a level of cognitive ability. G is an attempt to put a number to that correlation and thus to serve as a measure of general cognitive ability. The fact that g is defined as a hidden variable revealed by factor analysis doesn't really change the basic concept.

When described in that fashion, it seems ridiculous to imagine that that g could be anything but a universal human factor. For goodness sake, it can even be measured in some (non-human) mammals.

I would go so far as to say that if factor analysis did not find g in non- western cultures, this would say more about the reliability of factor analysis than it would about the existence of general cognitive ability.</comment>


Zuckerberg won't go to UK for testimony, despite threat of future arrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/15/17355532/zuckerberg-declines-to-testify-uk-committee-privacy <comment><USER2> Still recovering from the expenditure of humanity in front of US Congress.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good. We (Americans) fought a war against Britain over, among other things, transportation as punishment.

<comment><USER4> You're either a troll or an idiot. Not sure yet...

<comment><USER5> He seems like a hybrid troll idiot.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Bootstrapped founder seeking advice from people who've done it before - <AUTHOR> Hi HN. I'm building a fairly vanilla Rails app--"server-side HTML w/ JS sprinkles." It's for small businesses and I will be charging for it. For those who have done this before: what choices can I make now that will make my life easier later? (e.g. tools that help, workflows, code structure, business practices. Anything really!) I'm bootstrapping, it's just me, and I'm looking for any advantage I can get. <comment><USER2> I am still in the processing of building out my side project. What has helped me the most is only building what the customer is willing to pay for. That means going out and talking to customers, finding out their problems without suggesting your app. If your app solves their problem, ask them for a commitment to buy.

The next best thing that has helped me is to document and automate as much of the system as possible. This includes the server setup etc. If you need to upgrade to a new version of the database or the OS, how easy is that for you in your current process? If you do not automate something, did you document it well enough the first time so you can easily perform the task in short order without having to scour the internet for answers?</comment>


The 1000 most-visited sites on the web (by Google) - <AUTHOR> http://fseek.me/2010/05/the-1000-most-visited-sites-on-the-web-by-google/ Stackoverflow: #824 experts-exchange.com: #996 <comment><USER2> I extracted the data, added IP, country and response headers, and dumped it into a usable format:

<http://openmymind.net/top1000data.txt>

You can do some decently interesting analysis..like the fact that nginx is the front-end for nearly as many sites as IIS.

<comment><USER3> Why is dropbox 'myth and folklore'???

<comment><USER2> The categories of the json dump come directly from the original google source..so i don't know (and dropbox certainly isn't the only mis-categorized entry):

<http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They must have filtered porn. There is no way redtube.com is not in the top 100.

<comment><USER5> They did: " Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don't have publicly visible content or don't load properly, and certain Google sites. "

<comment><USER6> A curious list of restrictions... I wonder what kind of site would be in the top 1000 that didn't have publicly visible content or load properly? Pure Flash sites, maybe?

<comment><USER7> Alexa has a top 500 list with google and porn sites included <http://www.alexa.com/topsites>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Source: <http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/>

<comment><USER9> Not sure why that's not the main link here instead of a useless blog article that removes half the data and adds no insight or extra information whatsoever.. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazing that Facebook has _ONE THOUSAND_ pageviews per unique visitor compared to about 100 pageviews per unique visitor on the rest of the sites.

</comment><comment><USER11> # 824 stackoverflow vs # 994 expertsexchange

Perhaps another confirmation of what the SO folks have been saying about their popularity.

<comment><USER9> Note that StackOverflow is listed as being in the "Music" category :-) Wha..?

<comment><USER12> I always go to StackOverflow to find out what the kids are listening to these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> #20 - ask.com #252 - digg.com #261 - justin.tv

Reddit not in the list... What I don't understand is how come sites like openoffice.org, kaspersky.com, mcafee.com are so high in the list. Do people really visit them that often?

<comment><USER13> It's more likely that their computer does. For stuff like Auto-updates.

<comment><USER14> Ahh that probably explains counduit.com at #29 as well.

<comment><USER15> And likely HP.com as well. Stupid printer drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone care to do a scatterplot of domain name length vs rank?

<comment><USER17> Monthly uniques versus domain name length:

[http://images.rdujour.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/uniques...](http://images.rdujour.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/uniquesVersusDomainNameLength.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Depressingly, Mahalo is on the list (#946).

</comment><comment><USER19> Dropbox on the list at 985. Impressive.

<comment><USER20> But reddit.com is nowhere to be seen... surprising.

<comment><USER21> My question is, if reddit were on that list, would the moderation system be able to prevent it turning into Digg? I don't think it could, although maybe the subreddit system could. Places like /r/politics/ are fairly useless for intelligent debate already. Such link sharing sites don't have the same "my friends are there" grounding force that Facebook has, it's just the "vibe" and community so running away to a new site is easily mounted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did you guys notice Wordpress.com and .org in there:

.com: 120,000,000 uniques

.org: 8,100,000 uniques

Impressive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Keep in mind that the numbers listed are estimations.

For example, HubPages, the site where I work, is listed at #270 with 11M unique visitors and 97M page views.

Our monthly absolute unique visitors (according to Google Analytics) is more than three times that. Our monthly page views are greater than 100M.

</comment><comment><USER23> "...as measured by Ad Planner."

the list is a decent guesstimate. unless every single site on the planet uses the facebook like button, google analytics, google ads, or something else that tracks globally, there is now way to correctly measure UC or PI.

</comment><comment><USER24> it reassures me that foxnews.com is farther down than I would have expected.

43\. <http://bbc.co.uk> 83\. <http://nytimes.com> 179\. <http://reuters.com> 257\. <http://foxsports.com> 279\. <http://foxnews.com>

</comment><comment><USER25> Mashable - #696 Techcrunch - #850. Nice to see I'm not the only one that prefers Cashmore to Arrington.

<comment><USER26> Why? All Mashable does is post about Twitter trends and recycle Techcrunch posts a week later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really doubt that usgs.gov (#978) gets anywhere near the number of visits that nfl.com gets (#993).

<comment><USER28> Everytime there's an earthquake in California, half the state goes there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, yahoo is up there. It's a shame they can't monetize their websites more.

<comment><USER30> I think their problem is that they are to big an operation. They probably could be if they trimmed the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Geocities still running in Japan after being shut down in the west? Wierd!

</comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting how hard it is to come up with <http://windows.com> even though I tried explicitly searching for it

</comment><comment><USER33> where s youtube?

<comment><USER6> "Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don't have publicly visible content or don't load properly, and certain Google sites."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> where is google in that list ?

<comment><USER35> "Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don't have publicly visible content or don't load properly, and certain Google sites." reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> the daily mail at 236 aarrgghhhhh!!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER37> Scribd 102. Excellent. I would like to know how much financing each one of those site took to date.

</comment><comment><USER38> google isn't on that list?

</comment><comment><USER39> where is slashdot?</comment>


Which Comes First, Big Cities or Big Gods? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/which-comes-first-big-cities-or-big-gods <comment><USER2> I have heard the argument that religious morality arises when human groups become big enough to grant anonymity to individuals. When individuals can't keep track of everyone in their community it becomes important that everyone internalize's the communities ethical and moral standards of behavior.</comment>


Canadian 'freezeway' could let residents skate to work - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31581592

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of "Ice Town"[1]

[1] [http://parksandrecreation.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_Wyatt](http://parksandrecreation.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_Wyatt)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9099573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9099573)</comment>


Analyzing a Stuxnet Infection with the Sysinternals Tools - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/30/3416253.aspx

<comment><USER2> Stuxnet is so incredibly scary that I would be afraid that the thing would come alive during the dissection... like a scene from Independence Day.</comment>


WF2: That's All, Folks - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/02/07/WF-All-Done <comment><USER2> What a useless article title. Unfortunately, the article behind it also isn't particularly worthwhile.

TL;DR: Someone[1] who did great work[2] on a parallel benchmark[3] was recognized as being good by tbray, who told a Google recruiter to favor them. Said engineer now works at Google.

Unless you are trying to score a gig at the Goog, just skip to [2].

[1|<http://www.1024cores.net/home/about-me>]

[2|[http://www.1024cores.net/home/scalable-architecture/wide- fin...](http://www.1024cores.net/home/scalable-architecture/wide-finder-2)]

[3|<http://wikis.sun.com/display/WideFinder/The+Benchmark>]

<comment><USER3> Actually, this is a wrap up post to an entire intermittent series on parallel processing. Bray links to a page summarizing the series, near the top.

He's writing to a pre-existing audience. If you don't already know, or look into, the context, then no, it won't be of much value.</comment></comment>


AMD lands Google, Twitter as customers with newest server chip - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amd-alphabet/amd-lands-google-twitter-as-customers-with-newest-server-chip-idUSKCN1UX2KL <comment><USER3> It is worth pointing out the David versus two Goliaths situation here.

AMD 10K employees and a $1 billion annual R&D budget.

Intel 100K employees (including 10K just in software) and $20 billion R&D.

Nvidia 11K employees and $2 billion R&D budget.

AMD CPUs now surpass Intel and their GPUs are competitive with Nvidia except at the high end.

<comment><USER4> AMD software ecosystem is pretty bad. They fired many of the Linux platform devs in ~2013 and never recovered. There is nothing like Intel's vtune and even the basic functions like performance counters, MCA support, ECC events etc are janky on AMD CPUs. Intel does a pretty good job all around there. Nvidia is leagues ahead on GPGPU with CUDA and general Linux driver stability.. sure it's a blob but if it works well in a commercial setting nobody cares.

The Rome is a nice chip nonetheless, I hope they can rehire a big enough Linux team to get over these humps it isn't that much work on the CPU/platform side.

<comment><USER5> I work on game performance (or rather, I work on the underlying engines with an eye on performance) and that is the biggest reason why my computer has an Intel CPU. I would love the killing power of an Zen 2 machine, the compile time improvement alone would make ith worth every cent. Unfortunately I use VTune a lot for work and there just isn't any alternative, so I'm stuck with whatever Intel gives me. Which is doubly sad, because I end up optimizing for Intel's microarchitecture and can only hope that it runs decent enough on AMDs CPUs.

On the GPU side though, at least with the modern APIs (Vulkan, D3D12 and Metal), AMD isn't too far behind Nvidia. I actually prefer RenderDoc to Nvidias Nsight because I can capture multiple frames instead of pausing the application to look at one frame at a time. That being said though, the OpenGL tooling for AMD is abysmal and so is their OpenGL driver. All things being equal, just swapping an Nvidia card for an AMD card gives around 40-50% speed up when running OpenGL purely by getting rid of the driver overhead. Although with Vulkan AMD and Nvidia are actually on par, so at least that's solving itself for us.

<comment><USER6> I feel like this is a safe assumption, but I assume you do most of your performance work on Windows? Since you would even focus on OpenGL at all, I have to assume that you at least spend some of your time developing on Linux.

Have you tried the AMD mesa drivers? The open source driver performance doesn't look terrible, and in my own experience, it tends to work far better for OpenGL than AMD's proprietary GPU drivers.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-5700-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-5700-july&num=2)

<comment><USER7> Probably Windows, because on Linux you have the AMD mesa driver and perf and valgrind-callgrind and kcachegrind which are all pretty good. For OpenGL there are renderdoc and apitrace. Unfortunately, the rr reverse debugger does indeed not work with Ryzen because the performance counters are too fuzzy, as mentioned in another comment.

I have been working with performance tools on Linux for over 10 years and occasionally debugged graphics issues.

<comment><USER8> kcachegrind is okay, but VTune is a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope this puts AMD in stable footing for many years to come. Having newer and faster chips is great, but whats even better is long term competition in this space.

<comment><USER10> Opteron was crushing it back in the day. I think Tech is just cyclical. It seemed like AMD was in a lull for a while which basically made intel not really compete. Hopefully this forces Intel to step its game up. Competition is always good for the consumer.

<comment><USER11> Was AMD in a lull or just making longterm bets on technology?

I've only followed casually in the last decade+ but I was under the impression that the ATI merger was meant to support a long term bet on better chips by AMD and we're starting to see the fruit of that labor.

<comment><USER12> As a layperson, I never understood that merger. How does buying a graphics card company make for better chips in general?

<comment><USER13> Some advantages:

* Integrated graphics in their CPUs is important for lower-end systems and APU/SoCs. Intel had an integrated GPU at the time, AMD didn't.

* It allowed them to provide the CPU+GPU for all Xbox and Playstation consoles since the acquisition

* It might have allowed them better deals with chip factories because their volume increased

<comment><USER14> It was a bad bet on netbooks that didn't fully anticipate the dominance of smartphones.

<comment><USER15> Their low-end Ryzen APUs can game better than low-end Intel chips with their IGP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The historical context here is that AMD once had a monopoly inside Google's datacenters and pissed it away by shipping the horribly broken Barcelona followed by the not very broken, but also not very fast, Istanbul. This is a return to form for them, after a decade of poor form. The important thing for an operator like Google or Amazon is pricing power. As long as they can brandish a competing platform under the nose of Intel sales reps, they can get a better deal from Intel regardless of which they really prefer. You may have noted that a few years ago Google was showing a POWER platform at trade shows. That has the same purpose of putting Intel (and AMD) on notice that they have the capability to port their whole world to a different architecture if needed.

<comment><USER17> AMD is not just competitive, it is better than Intel. Thus Google should adopt it and role it out, and faster than any other cloud provider. This will win them customers. I want 256 threads per machine at competitive prices.

<comment><USER18> AWS has AMD machines. Amazon claims they perform worse than the Intel machines they use, and they are priced lower as a result.

<comment><USER19> T3 are intel, newer than the T2, and perform worse than the T2. T3a are AMD and perform on par/slightly better than T3 for less cost. (From my own testing. Not a claim I can backup this is just my observation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article is missing the largest elephant in the room for datacenter cpu's: the security issues Intel chips have had latent for the last decade, and the constant patching and bios updates (and re-updates as researchers discover new attacks) that are needed in order to make datacenter use sane.

Intel really messed up, and has no one to blame but themselves.

<comment><USER21> Does anyone know of any benchmarks that go through the full impacts for all of Intel's hardware-level security issues?

I remember seeing the Linux kernel devs discussing some massive 10+% performance hits back around Meltdown/Spectre patch time, and I'm now wondering what the final impact has been.

<comment><USER22> 10 percent? My teams RDS cpu usage spiked up by 40 percent after the initial patch [0].

[0]: [https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU](https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU)

<comment><USER23> What is RDS short for?

<comment><USER22> Amazon web services relational database service: [https://aws.amazon.com/rds/](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a big win for AMD and for me it reconfirms that their strategy of pushing into the mainstream features that Intel is trying to hold hostage for the "high end" is a good one. Back when AMD first introduced the 64 bit extensions to the x86 architecture and directly challenged Intel who was selling 64 bits as a "high end" feature in their Itanium line, it was a place where Intel was unwilling to go (commoditizing 64 bit processors)

That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by commoditizing "high core count" processors.

Each time they do this I wonder if Intel will ever learn that you can't "get away" with selling something for a lot of money that can be made more cheaply forever. Processors are not a veblen good.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by > commoditizing "high core count" processors.

They've done much more than that. Intel's current server CPU lineup is tightly siloed into different segments to limit every feature that some customers would pay more for into it's own line priced to match. That's why they currently have Xeon Scalable {Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum}, Xeon {D, W, E} lines, with 402 different Xeon CPUs actively being sold.

In contrast, AMD has two EPYC lines, P and non-P, only differing in that P is for 1-socket servers. The models in these lines differ in that they have more/less cores and different clocks, all those features that Intel gates and segments by, are found in every AMD CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > new Intel chip features for machine learning tasks and new Intel memory > technology being with customers such as German software firm SAP SE > (SAPG.DE) could give Intel an advantage in those areas.

I hope AMD turns their attention to machine learning tasks soon not just against Intel but NVIDIA also. The new Titan RTX GPUs with their extra memory and Nvlink allow for some really awesome tricks to speed up training dramatically but they nerfed it by only selling without a blower style fan making it useless for multi-GPU setups. So the only option is to get Titan RTX rebranded as a Quadro RTX 6000 with a blower style fan for $2,000 markup. $2000 for a fan.

The only way to stop things like this will be competition in the space.

<comment><USER26> Their GPUs already have really good performance for machine learning tasks, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot more they can do about people overwhelmingly using CUDA. Their ROCm software stack has gotten reasonably good but getting developers to buy into is hard with how much inertia NVIDIA/CUDA has.

<comment><USER27> Why cant AMD make their gpus to be CUDA compatible?

<comment><USER28> I'd say it's likely because NVIDA's CUDA compiler produces code for NVIDIA GPUs, and AMD would have a lot of (questionably legal) reverse engineering ahead of them in order to support the same code on their own GPUs.

If you're asking why AMD doesn't make a compiler for CUDA source code that targets their own GPUs--that's basically what ROCm currently does. They're pushing their CUDA alternative, called "HIP", which is essentially just CUDA code with a find-and-replace of "cuda" with "hip". (And other similarly minor changes.) They have an open source "hipify" program that does this automatically ([https://github.com/ROCm-Developer- Tools/HIP/tree/master/hipi...](https://github.com/ROCm-Developer- Tools/HIP/tree/master/hipify-clang/)).

So, basically, AMD GPUs are already sort of CUDA compatible: just run your CUDA code through hipify, then compile it using the HIP compiler, and run it on a ROCm-supported system (which, for now is the most spotty of all of these steps IMO).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This must be one of the reasons [https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg)

Edit: source [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd- epyc...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd- epyc-7502-7742&num=4)

<comment><USER30> Beating Intel using their own codec! That's gotta hurt.

<comment><USER31> Looks like the dual socket systems don't really fare well in that benchmark. Either way, it's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode.

Jokes aside, I know H.264 was at this point in the past, I just wonder how long it's going to be before we see AV1 hardware encoders that produce good quality video (and hell, hardware decoders at that as well).

<comment><USER32> > _Either way, it 's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to > exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode._

When H.264 was introduced, you needed a state of the art CPU just to play it back... You can imagine how slow encoding it was.

<comment><USER33> Wasnt that bad. H.264 ratified in 2003, meanwhile even first Xbox released in 2001 (~celeron 733MHz) can play H.264 480p 2.5Mbit (DVD resolution, equal quality to 10Mbit mpeg2) movies with ease, just as desktop budget processors released in 2001 (Celeron 800/Duron 800, both included SSE).

Higher resolutions were another matter. 720p needed at least 2GHz Athlon/2.8GHz P4 for smooth H.264 720p 5Mbit playback. Either top of the line 2003 CPUs, or 2006-2007 budget ones.

H.264 1080p 30Mbit bluray released in 2006 could be decoded purely in software on top of the line 2006-2007 CPUs (dual core P4, A64 X2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm curious, since I don't follow hardware that closely: Is the current battle really best framed as a fight between Intel and AMD, or between Intel and TSMC? I.e. is AMD's recent resurgence due to better chip design, or because Intel's fabrication is struggling, whereas TMSC isn't?

<comment><USER35> It isn't just both, it is all _four_ area of them. That is Intel's Design and Fabrication _and_ AMD's Design and Fabrication.

It was basically a perfect storm that is unthinkable few years ago. ( To me it is still very much unreal even with today's announcement. ) Intel 10nm cant be fixed in time ( In fact for 24 months, they just keep lying both publicly and in investor's meeting ) , that is Intel's Fab problem. And Icelake couldn't arrive on time because of 10nm, their Design could not adopt to 14nm or other node, it was stuck with 10nm, compare to Apple and AMD which has adopted the _train_ development method where their Design were less fixated on a Node Schedule.

And AMD managed to execute in _perfection_. Naples set the tone to the industry, Rome ( Zen 2 ) were a huge leap in performance, the Chiplet design gave AMD the advantage in cost ( Smaller Die, Higher Yield, Mass manufacture in volume ), so while it had a lower price than Intel, they are not hurting their margin to fight this battle. Very important for the long term survival of AMD. Along with TSMC 7nm were running in perfect harmony. Not to mention TSMC were willing to fight and get 7nm capacity for AMD. Along with risking more CapeX and building more Fab.

And to add a fifth thing to all these, Intel had major securities problem just months before AMD's Zen 2 launch.

As if the whole thing were scripted to play the perfect Counter Attack by AMD and TSMC. But No, it is the Hard work and dedication of AMD and TSMC, the will to fight and deliver against all odds, compare this to Intel in the past 4 - <USER2> years.

So if you loathe Intel, now AMD is not only an _alternative_ , but also possibly the best option on Server.

And if you love Intel, you should buy AMD to teach them a lesson for milking and sitting on their butt not Innovating.

<comment><USER36> Don't forget that the IO die (which is actually much larger than the CPU die) is still on Global Foundries 14nm, so more of most of these chips is 14nm than is 7nm. This increases the number of 7nm chips AMD can get which definitely helps keep up with the (seemingly) massive demand.

<comment><USER37> There is real demand, I'm building a Zen 2 based system for a co-worker and I had to try three different places (online) to get my hands on a 3600 the other day.

Damn thing is faster than my 2700X (which I'll be upgrading to a 3900X when I get back from holiday).

AMD is straight _killing it_ at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's not just Google and Twitter, Azure is in as well: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd- ep...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based- azure-virtual-machines/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of many years ago when the absolute best $ per performance setup was a rackmount dual socket opteron. Right when the opteron first became a thing.

</comment><comment><USER40> They need to build a server ecosystem. I'm hoping that this success will help with that so that things are better positioned for the next new server CPU launch.

We've had engineering samples of Rome for quite a while. However, there are very few available boards with PCIe4 right now. The one we've tried (under NDA) has a busted BMC that won't accept network settings, which has really hampered Rome testing. We've actually done most of our Rome testing using 1st generation boards, with slower RAM and PCIe Gen3.

</comment><comment><USER41> Genuinely asking, since I have little to no concept of this space - how does the prevalence of either Intel or AMD affect developers?

<comment><USER42> For most developers, it doesn't. They're both making x86_64 chips with coherent caches of similar size, similar core and thread counts, and a lot of overlap in instruction set extensions. For people doing very high performance work (heavy data processing, simulations, etc.) or performance critical work (think hand coding optimized crypto library routines in assembly), the subtle differences in those categories might affect how they lay out data and access it, how many threads they use and how they use them, and preferences for the availability of instruction set extensions that are specific to the kind of workloads they have (vector processing extensions, native crypto operations, unusual bit twiddling patterns).

<comment><USER43> Another difference is that Intel and AMD virtualization (vmx and svm) are incompatible with each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Intel stock has dropped quite a bit in the last month.

<comment><USER45> I remember when AMD's stock was a running joke on WallStreetBets. Doesn't seem like much of a joke now.

<comment><USER46> Would love to see someone who YOLO'd @ $2.00 and HODL'd till now...what a bet that would've been.

<comment><USER30> I seriously considered it just under $2. If I believed all I read about zen it would have been a sure thing to double or triple my money on an AMD comeback. But I couldnt tell if that was my intuition or just hope, so no bet. If I had bought there's no way I would have held all this time either (maybe some shares but not all). But with what's happening now it looks like $40 is entirely possible. That will be 20x in just a few years, but I didnt play...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love that! This AMD/Intel competition is bringing us faster and cheaper cpu!

</comment><comment><USER48> How long do you guys think it will take Intel to come up with an Infinity Fabric equivalent architecture? I feel like Intel wasn't working on it until recently and that it might actually be a few years before they can produce competitive silicon, especially accounting for the possibility that AMD is going to keep releasing on this yearly cadence while simultaneously leveraging full node improvements @ TSMC/Samsung...

</comment><comment><USER49> Weird sensation, I remember the struggling days of AMD. And now that they're about to become very successful (plausibly) ... I'm almost tempted to donate to them. Go AMD.

<comment><USER50> Donate? Buy some of their products.

<comment><USER49> I didn't imagine donating 100$ or anything near the price of one of their CPU. It's just that they cracked through years of hard work and it's great IMO.

<comment><USER51> Are you actually talking about giving away your money to a multi billion dollar public company?

Buy some stock instead, don't just throw your money away. How would you even 'donate' to them?

<comment><USER49> It's just an emotion toward a company that made business in a way I value. Maybe buying stock is how you express "emotional" appreciation in the business world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Maybe it has something to do with all the recent speculative side channel attacks. Intel seems to have more hardware vulnerabilities than AMD.

</comment><comment><USER53> If only now I can use AMD GPUs for training neural networks. Nvidia badly needs some competition.

</comment><comment><USER54> I sit sometimes wondering how much energy is wasted from the intel security fixes and what that translates to in real dollars. IMO the market should gut punch Intel for causing such a wasteful problem if competitors bring the figurative heat.

</comment><comment><USER55> One product i've been waiting for is the upcoming mac pro. But given it has an intel cpu, overpriced and less lower powerful than the amd, i am going to delay that purchase for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER56> What does Twitter have to do with any of this? Do they run their own data center?

<comment><USER57> Yes, more than one infact.</comment></comment>


Global divergence followed by convergence – Economic history in one chart - <AUTHOR> https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality#global-divergence-followed-by-convergence-economic-history-in-one-chart <comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot more in this article but even this single chart (from the linked chapter 1) alone helps a lot when thinking about inequality, how it was and how it is developing.</comment>


Co-Founder Lost Motivation and Quit - What Now? - <AUTHOR>

So, a year ago I went to my friend with an idea for a live video startup and asked if he wanted to join. I would deal with design and frontend development. He would deal with backend development. We both have full time jobs and live over an hour from one another. So we worked remotely and as much as we could.
Recently, the design has finally come together and I'm getting close to finalizing the frontend code. I was hoping that soon we'd hook backend / frontend and launch. However, he has just quit.
He has seemed busy and I suppose I wasn't entirely surprised when he told me that he wasn't spending as much time as he would have liked or as the startup deserved. He said he'd be able to work on things for the next few weeks and help to transition things to me. He felt bad and didn't want any compensation for his work.
While I couldn't ask for him to leave in a better way, I'd be lying if I didn't say I wish he would stick around.
At the same time, the idea and startup passion was always mine. I don't think he has the startup passion (perhaps not even from the start). He just enjoyed creating something. So, I can't force him to work if he feels he doesn't have the time. Since even after launch, things won't get easier.
What do I do from here?
1. Take his code and try to finish what was started and launch by myself?
2. Find another co-founder?
3. Hire developer(s)?
4. Try to talk things out with co-founder and get him to continue?
Any other options?
Anyway, I'm sorry for so much writing. I just needed to get it out there. I truly believe in the startup and refuse to give up, but would love to get some advice from others. Thanks! <comment><USER2> First, don't stress. This is normal. I've had a number of projects, including my current one, that has had early people come and go. A startup is a monumental commitment and it's a good thing your partner realized their heart wasn't in it before things got more serious (ie; product launch).

As for where to go from here, it depends a lot on the state of the current project IMO. If it's _possible_ to get something out the door with the backend as it is now, I'd say do that. Call it an MVP, and see how it goes. If it turns out you're on to something, you can start looking for others to join you and use your traction as an argument. If it just absolutely doesn't work as- is, and you really believe in this, you should probably do what it takes to get an MVP out the door. That might be picking up the backend where he left it yourself, or hiring some freelance help if that's something you're more comfortable with -- be careful if you're new to this.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. My gut was telling me to do the same. It can't be launched as-is, but I'd say the backend is 80% there. However, the last 20% is quite important. But I think it should be something I could put together. The issue isn't so much what's not done but the fact that I don't know Ruby, Rails, or backend development at all really. Then there is the linking of the backend and frontend with AJAX. Which although I have yet to do it... I've become familiarish with it. And then pulling things from local environment to the server. Again, never done it... but I'm sure I can learn.

It's going to be hard, but I feel going solo for now might just be the more realistic option. I don't want the headache of hiring developer(s)... nor do I think it'd be safe to risk finding a strange co-founder at this stage.

Well, going to be a tough couple of months ahead of me! That's for sure.

<comment><USER2> A tough and probably incredibly worthwhile and rewarding few months! Stick with it, there isn't anything that some creative googling and enough console.log()'s can't get you through. By the way, if you're new to development, you might check out a guide I recently wrote on learning to code/hack[1], though it sounds like you're already well on your way.

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZYvik8gFPK_HTYEoqJNwHw_2...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZYvik8gFPK_HTYEoqJNwHw_2UDDfGxCRsHYrWahjt_Q/edit)</comment></comment></comment>


How a "speed gene" test is stirring up horse racing and athletics - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/can-science-breed-the-next-secretariat

<comment><USER2> It really troubles me to know that we've started to apply this method of genetic testing for human sports as well, which this article mentions. Testing and admitting children based on their genetics traits is a slightly removed method of promoting eugenics all over again.

If this were to catch on, we can image little kids interested in competitive sports pre-screened and "discouraged" from playing competitively even before getting their first baseball glove or basketball. Imagine if this were to catch on to other "sports," such as e-sports or chess. It eerily mirrors the dystopian society depicted in Gattaca.

<comment><USER3> There is no money in discouraging. People would discourage themselves once they found out. The money would be in encouraging those with high potential. Just like now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We all know real gangsters can't run fast.</comment>


F# in the open source world - <AUTHOR> http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/f-in-the-open-source-world-3885

<comment><USER2> F#'s greatest understated value might be in not being part of the Visual Studio ecosystem.

Yes, it can run on Visual Studio, but in principle it is not tainted by the "give me a job" C#/Visual Studio/.Net mentality.

As such, F# developers could consider avenues and form communities which are taken for granted in other environments (Unix, Python, Ruby, etc).

<comment><USER3> I write F# on Windows for a living. However, I don't get this "give me a job" mentality as you say it - is it wrong that c# is a highly sought-after skill in the market?

There's already a tremendous(but small) community behind F# . I've never seen a question on F# go unanswered in most popular forums. With the start of F# foundation and open-sourcing of F#, I am confident F# will survive even if MS drops the ball.

The taint on F# is that it's a Microsoft language - that's enough to make some people never consider it, and that's okay. That baggage is historical.

<comment><USER4> Someone should get F# to run on the JVM. They can then call it Fava, which will inevitably result in a Chianti web framework.</comment></comment></comment>


Joe Gould's Teeth: The long-lost story of the longest book ever written - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/joe-goulds-teeth

<comment><USER2> Wow, nine million. At its current rate, this fanfiction will surpass that tome in 8 or 9 years: [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4112682/1/The-Subspace- Emissary...](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4112682/1/The-Subspace-Emissary-s- Worlds-Conquest)</comment>


Former Tor developer created malware for the FBI to hack Tor users - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailydot.com/politics/government-contractor-tor-malware/ <comment><USER2> I bet he's real proud of himself, way to contribute to society you lame scab.</comment>


Ask HN: What software to write a technical book in? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I'm about to write a book on web development in Clojure.
I'm completely new to this so I'm wondering if you guys had any recommendations for software to write the book in.
Syntax highlighting is preferred.
I'm currently looking at Lean Pub at the moment but I would rather not like to rely on a third party. <comment><USER2> Emacs, Word, whatever...the first draft is the task at hand, not typesetting. Writing does not require software: Paper and pen are enough to start. Searching for the optimal software feels like work and is attractive because it is easier than producing a manuscript.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a related question - I am looking to (self) publish a hardcover dead- tree book aimed at a luxury niche and sold via Amazon.

Can anyone recommend an online publisher? So far blurb.com looks like it ticks all the boxes but reviews are mixed.

<comment><USER4> selfpublishing.com

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I will check them out. A shame that their quotes are hidden behind a lead capture form, though.

<comment><USER4> Good news is, they were a client of a place I used to work. So, I can safely say that you can put any data in there and it'll give you the quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw this yesterday and haven't checked it out fully but it'll probably be interesting to you. [https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another alternative to Leanpub is Softcover ([https://www.softcover.io/](https://www.softcover.io/))

</comment><comment><USER7> LaTeX comes to my mind.</comment>


Ask HN: how can we establish prior art to fend off future patents? - <AUTHOR>

As part of building a spreadsheet, we've come up with a pretty neat algorithm to run a recalculation in parallel, taking advantage of multiple CPU cores etc.  We're don't like software patents, but have had some experience with the patent process in the past.  Looking at the algorithm, our gut feeling is that clever enough to be patentable but not so clever that we don't think other people aren't quite likely to come up with similar ideas should they put their minds to the same problem.
If we don't patent it, our worry is that someone else will independently come up with the idea, patent it, discover us, then sue us.  The best defence against this that we can see is to make sure that we can prove that we had the idea before they patented it -- that is, to be able to establish priority.  What we're wondering is, what's the best way to do that?
We've no worries about making the algorithm public -- it's pretty clever, but not that clever. But proving the date on which we made it public might be hard.
Any ideas?
[EDITED TO ADD] It occurs to me that there's another question here -- do we need to prove prior art, or just priority?  That is, do we need to show that the algorithm was already public and known at the point that someone else tried to patent it, or do we just need to show that we had created it (even if we'd not shared it with anyone).
I guess being able to prove that we'd published the algoritm and thus it was prior art is a subset of the case where we can prove that we had thought up the algorithm, so making it public is safer. <comment><USER3> I too am not a lawyer but another possible way to do this, to the best of my knowledge:

File a provisional patent application (with maximum disclosure) with the USPTO - this will give you a priority date on official, government record. Make sure you obtain a certified copy from them. Then let it lapse (i.e. don't convert to a full application within the stipulated time period of one year).

I guess that should do it.

Disclaimer (again): I'm not a lawyer :-)

Edit: Added: I don't know how effective/legally valid this is today, but there also used to be something called a _sealed cover method_. You disclose the full invention on paper, get a government approved notary to notarise it, seal it up in an envelop and send it as a registered mail to yourself. On receipt, don't open it - just keep it safe. In case of any later dispute, you'll have _two_ government agencies establishing your date of invention. - <USER2>

2nd Edit: Added: The sealed cover method, if valid, would probably be the _least_ expensive one. :-)

<comment><USER4> Has the "mail to yourself" thing been done successfully? I have trouble believing a million-dollar court case can be decided upon the tamper- resistance of a cheap paper envelope. And all prior art must be published somewhere in order to have any effect on patentability, so the envelope could only establish a priority date.

<comment><USER3> > so the envelope could only establish a priority date.

As I understand, this is _exactly_ what the OP is after. :-) If OP has a _provable_ priority date, a future patent holder can't sue the OP. Or can he still? I guess only a patent attorney can tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas!

Re: posting -- I guess I would worry that the "attacker" would say that although the letter proved that I posted myself _something_ on a given date, if the package was not tamperproof then it could have been anything.

OTOH the idea of filing a provisional patent sounds very plausible, albeit perhaps expensive.

<comment><USER3> > the letter proved that I posted myself something on a given date

This is where the notary angle kicks in. Notary records will prove the date (2nd proof of date, btw) _as well as_ the _content_. (Strict legal angle apart, I think this simplistic method packs a lot of _sophistication_!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> RMS once pointed out that prior art is more effective if it doesn't surface until a court case: <http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/57167>

Basically, if a examiner knew about the other work but granted the patent anyway, the court must presume the examiner was competent and the patent is valid, and therefore that the other work isn't relevant prior art. But if potential prior art wasn't known to the examiner, the court has to actually evaluate it. Judges don't share patent examiners' quota-driven incentive to rubber-stamp everything under threat of their jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That interesting, thanks -- I didn't know that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Submit it to a journal for publication? Present it a a conference of some sort? If you can't get it published in a traditional journal, write it up and submit to arXiv? Publish it on a website where it will get crawled by the Wayback Machine? Write it up and see what it takes to get it indexed by CiteseerX?

Even better, try to turn publishing it into an opportunity to gain some PR: send press releases far and wide about it, and put an implementation of it in a GitHub repo. Shout it to the world.

IANAL, YMMV, HTH, WTFBBQ, etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks! I like the last idea -- I'm sure a PRWeb release ($200 or so) would get picked up by enough random press-release-republishing semi-splogs to make the publication date pretty easy to prove. And a GitHub repo would give us another proof-point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Post it on Github?

Also, if emails are admissible in court in your country, you could email a description and copy of the algorithm to a company that provides "email notary" services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that could work, though of course we might then have to prove that GitHub's records of when the repo was created/populated were correct -- I like mindcrime's suggestion (peer of yours) of combining that with a PR blitz, though.

Re: a notary -- we're in the UK, and I believe email can be admissible in court, but its admissibility can be contested on what amount to common-sense grounds -- for example, I doubt we'd be able to use a record of an email from our own server to prove we'd sent a message with a given content on a given day unless we had a lot of backup evidence. Interesting point about an email notary -- perhaps we could even use a regular one and get a statement of the algorithm printed on dead trees notarised? I guess the question then has to be, do we just have to prove that we had developed the algorithm before the other person had the idea, or do we have to prove that it was already public?

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, the dead tree option did not occur to me for a moment. Once it is printed, the problem almost goes away - you can do the publicity blitz, but also lodge the copy with the notary.

Wrt your second question, I am not sure - I think the latter. For something to be considered "prior art" I believe it has to be publicised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a great ebook, Patent Pro Se, that gives practical advice on protecting you IP, and it is now free to download...goes over everything from Provisional Patent apps to the Mail-yourself-a-letter-method. May be a good resource for you <http://www.carrferrell.com/free-resources.php>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, sounds useful!</comment></comment>


DesktopBootstrap: like Twitter Bootstrap, but for desktop apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adamsmith/DesktopBootstrap

<comment><USER2> "The Service is a Windows service, which runs as SYSTEM, and is available to apply automatic updates, or do other things as SYSTEM."

Is it just me that doesn't like this. Services are meant for processes that need to do something in the background, not some hack to get around elevation requirements.

If I look at the list of services running on my machine it's getting like the old days with notify tray apps. All of them nibbling away at my resources.

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows desktop apps.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much work it would take to port to Mono, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks Adam. There was another interesting windows project called command line ide for creating visual studio solutions. <http://remi.org/2011/04/17/clide>

</comment><comment><USER6> "ClickOnce" deployment, which you get for free when you're developing a windows desktop app, does the same thing as far as I can tell. And it doesn't install a service on your system; instead you can configure it to check for updates in the background when your app is running, installing them when it's launched the next time.

So... what does this offer over the stock solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never used ClickOnce, so maybe someone with more direct experience can chime in!

My current project, and my last project (Xobni) both worked with COM components that could not use Reg-free COM for various reasons. Thus, if another app registers the same COM component, and then the user uninstalled that app, we needed to be able to re-register that COM component, which required SYSTEM level privileges in order to avoid a UAC elevation prompt.

Services can also be useful if you want to be able to run code when a user is not logged in, or if you want installs to be system-wide.

For example, in DesktopBootstrap, installs are for "all users," but if one user disables auto updates or starting up with Windows, it actually asks the service to disable those things for all users. You need a service running as SYSTEM to be able to pull that off, again unless you ask the user to elevate you.

Finally, I'm curious about ClickOnce's browser-powered install. I'm not saying it doesn't work -- it might even increase conversion rates -- I'm just curious. I'd love to learn more about what happens with users who are using a non-ClickOnce-compatible browser, and/or who don't have the .NET framework installed yet.

<comment><USER7> ClickOnce doesn't require admin privileges to install software. Each program is installed on a per-user basis under the user's profile. So it doesn't need admin rights to write to C:\Program Files. I'm pretty sure this is how Chrome works as well.

As for installing COM components, you can install COM components on a per-user basis as well. The registry keys are installed under HKCU rather than HKLM, so again you don't need admin access.

I program .NET client applications for my day job and we use ClickOnce to deploy our software. The software doesn't require admin access to install or use, and we register a COM component for integration with Excel and it all works just fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's really cool! I wasn't sure you could register COM classes from ClickOnce.

So yes it seems like ClickOnce is great as long as you don't need per machine installs or special powers to eg upgrade the user's .NET version, etc etc.

How have you found the .application installer? (vs exe)

Edit to add: I was surprised when MS introduced .msi installers! Someone at MSFT is cranking out the installer systems.)

<comment><USER7> I actually like the .application format. It's nice because it's just an XML file that the end-customer's computer knows what to do with it.

At my company we've actually created an ASP.NET MVC application that dynamically constructs and serves the .application file on a per-user basis. This easily allows us to do canary releasing or beta previews.

We're very happy with it, and so are our customers and stakeholders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Users love software that gets better over time, with no effort on their part."

This is still a big deal in the desktop world where I live.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can we have a screenshot?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! There's not a lot to look at! Here are two screenshots:

DbgView of an update happening: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3/DesktopBootstrap_Updating.png>

Default tray icon menu (with custom cloud icon): <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3/DesktopBootstrap_TrayIcon.png>

(The idea is that you can blast away the tray icon if you don't want or need it, and either way you add your own UI and application logic on top!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Uh, what's the relationship to Twitter Bootstrap? That's a library for GUI widgets and styling.

</comment><comment><USER11> curious, why winforms over wpf? Are you intending for more cross-compatability that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah -- the particular application that this is derived from needed pretty wide compatibility out of the box, so the projects are targeted to .NET 2.0.

But this is also helpful for DesktopBootstrap. If someone wants to retarget to a higher .NET version it's very easy to do. There's only one winform in there (the tray icon)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, uh, what does this provide over Glade, wxGlade, and QtDesigner? Why should I go with this instead of the open-source solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't really the same thing. Those things (at least after my brief googling) are for building apps. This is an attempt at packing everything else -- mostly an installer, build system, and auto updates -- but for .NET apps rather than python apps.

(If there's such a set of things for python desktop apps, including a byte code obfuscator ideally, or someone builds it, that'd be awesome and I'd love to know about it!)

<comment><USER12> I think it's interesting that you mentioned Python instead of C or C++.

There is no such thing as bytecode obfuscation for Python. The nature of Python's bytecode is such that there is no effective way to obfuscate what the bytecode is doing without incurring massive slowdowns. Consider using legal means, rather than technical means, to protect your code from prying eyes, and remember that many proprietary companies publish Python source with their non- free software. My favorite example remains Civilization 4.</comment></comment></comment>


How pCell works and why its a bigger deal than anyone realizes - <AUTHOR> http://akbars.net/how-steve-perlmans-revolutionary-wireless-technology-works-and-why-its-a-bigger-deal-than-anyone-realizes.html <comment><USER2> A couple of clarifications and comments (new whitepaper is coming with a lot more info):

The iPhones (and dongles) we demoed have no software modifications at all, and there is no additional overhead beyond the standard LTE protocol. pCell works with unmodified Android LTE phones, too. (We had wanted to post a lab demo we did of the Galaxy S4 and an Xperia, but we just ran out of time.) Out-of-the- box compatibility is essential for rapid deployment. And, yes, we are meeting many of the core goals of 5G today (e.g. unlimited 4K UltraHD streaming) using Rel. 8 LTE devices in LTE spectrum.

pCell is indeed protocol agnostic, and can concurrently support different protocols in different pCells in the same spectrum. For example, we can support unmodified LTE phones in their own pCells, while concurrently supporting lower cost/lower power devices with far lighter protocols (that are lower latency), since we don't need all of the complexity of LTE. For example, there are no cells, no cell edges (and no need for CoMP), and no cell handoff.

I'm waiting for something to connect the dots and realize this is a vastly more efficient way to use white spaces than anything currently on the table. White spaces will be full overnight with current techniques. With pCell, they will never be full.

More data is coming later. Apologies. We have been utterly overwhelmed in incoming inquiries since launch.

But, I will confirm this: pCell is indeed a much bigger deal than anyone has yet touched on. The "tubes to transistors" analogy is not just marketing speak: Compared to cellular, pCell is far more reliable, enables much smaller and lower power device and can be continually extended in density. Tubes had physical constraints that limited their reliability and scalability. Transistors did not. Cellular (and other interference avoidance protocols like Wi-Fi and cognitive radio) have a physical constraints that limit their reliability and scalability. pCell does not (as far as we know). Cellular has stalled in scalability. There is an entire era of innovation in front of us with pCell. - Steve Perlman

<comment><USER3> > "no cell handoff" I'm curious how this would work. Presumably in the pCell > system the base station focuses the radio signals in something like a beam > towards the device but this must have a finite range - I wonder how far - > and when you go out of range the system must switch to another base station. > Maybe you call this a different name than 'handoff' but presumably the > switching base stations thing must happen some how?

<comment><USER4> The pCell is "synthesized" using all base stations in range I guess. Which base stations that are involved in your pCell changes as you move around ...

<comment><USER3> Ah - I see, thanks. I guess that's how they can focus the signal so narrowly to 1 cm or so. Looking at the numbers the wavelengths used for 4G are of the order of 1 ft so you wouldn't get much focus from a single aerial of similar dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the idea of focusing multiple low power radios onto a single point so that they coalesce is simply being rediscovered. While we could do this before the real ingenuity is being able to rapidly update all the parameters when the point you want to focus onto is rapidly changing.

Another scary idea: While we could beam wireless power imagine if this was in any way weaponized. With all these stations beaming power to everyone what would it take for an overwhelming number of them to direct it at a target with the purpose of eradicating it? Certainly not a laser in the traditional sense but surely something just as destructive.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't have to be high power to be effective. Google search on "russian microwave US embassy" (not Bing search, unfortunately), which yields some interesting background on the Russian's beaming microwaves at the US Embassy. It was within the US legal limit at the time. Health problem ensued. Making an adversary sick without noticing may be more effective for some situations.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.ehjournal.net/content/11/1/85](http://www.ehjournal.net/content/11/1/85)

The literature seems to indicate that the Russian microwave campaign resulted in no measurable health effect to the employees at the embassy. This is unsurprising because a wide variety of publications detailing similar microwave exposure from modern electronic equipment like cellular towers, phones, and WiFi access points seem to also indicate a negligible widespread health effect.

<comment><USER8> If you can transmit power to a 1cm bubble in space, you may be able to offset it into, say, brain tissue. Brain tissue probably doesn't due too well under a focused heat source.

<comment><USER9> That's were magnetos helmet comes in. In all seriousness what material (or device) could stop this from working?

<comment><USER10> A simple Faraday cage, I would think. Hard part is making it look good.

<comment><USER11> we're going to need that transparent aluminum

<comment><USER12> aka sapphire & ruby

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice explanation, does it bother anyone else that you could set up a bunch of antennas such that they could create a lethal 1 cm ball of energy anywhere in the space they can see? Sure they think about powering devices but what about a couple of Watt-Seconds of energy appearing in your frontal lobes? If Perlman can do that its kind of the ultimate 'border' fence is it not?

(I'm tempted to write, "All you would need is an unscrupulous engineer to develop a targeting system ...")

<comment><USER14> The first question that comes to mind is this: how can we defend ourselves from being brain burnt?

<comment><USER15> Funniest part about that is that a foil hat might very well prevent it from forming in the brain.

<comment><USER13> That is the funny part, and it would work. If you wore conductive clothing you could create a faraday cage around yourself thus preventing RF energy from crossing that boundary.

On a related note, discussing this offline with some friends they pointed out that the pCell system is getting feedback from the phone about its signal strength, and your body wouldn't be giving that feedback, so you would have to have something tied into the pCell on your person (or not move). Your phone could work for that. The question then is how far away from the phone can the energy be localized while the feedback from the phone would still be accurate enough. That I don't know.

<comment><USER15> Yea that's one thing I'm not sure about is how easily one could create it without that feedback. I'm sure it'd be possible but certainly more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the latency of pCell is low enough then you could have a thin-client phone tunneling into a cloud OS. Now get rid of most of the CPU/memory hardware complexity on the phone (which should lower power requirements for the phone too). If you can wirelessly send energy then get rid of most of the battery.

Suddenly you've got a very, very thin phone with infinite battery life and computational power only limited by the server you're hooked up to. It's the perfect mobile device. Do the same thing for a laptop and I'm in paradise.

<comment><USER17> Wow, what a paradise. Total control made simple, that's what I see...

<comment><USER9> Device good enough to do encryption?

<comment><USER18> It's not like you can just sprinkle some encription there and it will be ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Assuming pCell works as advertised it's a _huge_ deal.

It allows you to cover a city in cells for insanely cheaper than current cell technology and provide far, far better reception and bandwidth to far larger numbers of customers AND it works with existing LTE gear while also affording simpler, cheaper, and lighter-weight new gear and reducing power consumption across the board. What's not to like?

I don't think anyone who has heard about pCell thinks it isn't a huge deal, _if it works_.

One example of a major potential problem: how well does it track erratically moving objects (e.g. most cell phones?), in built-up areas with lots of signal reflection?

<comment><USER20> The answer would largely depend on how large the focus area is or how fast the signal quality degrades the further from the epicenter of the focal point that the receiver is.

Maybe the system could apply road map info to fast-moving cell phones which it can assume are in traffic. And this could help it predict possible future locations of your device.

For much of the day the majority of devices in a given "cell" will be semi- immobile at a desk or slowly moving when someone's walking.

<comment><USER21> What happens when someone turns on their phone on a plane? ;-P

<comment><USER20> I think an on-board "repeater" would be the best solution. Of course, a high- powered directional antenna would translate to less hopping between towers but also increased costs to the carriers. Something like Google's Loon project might have more coverage and work well with aircraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Steve Perlman always comes across as a snake oil salesman, but I didn't think he could do OnLive either, and that technology works fantastically. As a result, I'm pretty excited about pCell, even though it's being preceded by a wave of marketing hype.

<comment><USER23> It still hasn't made its way to my country, but it certainly is an interesting service.

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

However, they did overpromise and under-deliver, but it's still very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As many positive things as I have heard about it I have one question: will we ever actually see this as an actual product? I feel like I hear about so many cool things which never come to fruition and I have a nagging feeling that this might be one of them. Why? Because, as I've read, the companies would need data centers to manage all of these connections. What interest do these companies have to risk all of this money (a recurring cost, might I add) when people probably wouldnt spend more for it? I dont profess to know, so can someone who has actual information enlighten me?

<comment><USER25> That isn't why stuff doesn't turn out. It usually has some problem or another which is being assumed will be "solvable" by the time they release.

Never solve it? It's never released.

Alternatively, it does come out, but its gains are just evolutionary improvements not revolutionary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "With this technology, it's conceivable that 5G wireless could displace both cable and DSL connections within a few years, as is claimed in the presentation."

A few years?! This statement should give landline data providers, like Cox and Comcast, some serious pause.

<comment><USER25> Except for the part where you need an huge array of transmitters with backbone bandwidth equal or greater the number of devices they may be serving simultaneously.

In which case those companies just start doing fiber installs to wireless stations, not houses, at roughly the same density.

<comment><USER27> Or just piggyback an antenna into the hardware otherwise installed at each consumer location. There was a theory almost a decade ago that Google would do something like that on top of all the 'dark fiber' it was buying up at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The original Columbia presentation is actually pretty cool ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274288) ) I thought I'd mention it as it only got a couple of votes and sarky comments at the time but having just watched it all I think it really look like a major breakthrough, maybe the biggest one of the year and could be giving us 4k video all over the place before long. One of the interesting things is it will work with existing unlicensed spectrum, existing handsets and the backhaul can be done with line of site links on rooftops so it can be rolled out pretty much straight off - well they are talking a year or so.

<comment><USER28> Once you begin exploring the implications and the possible applications to things other than communications it begins to look like possibly the biggest breakthrough in history.

Only one in energy could surpass it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if wireless power like this could be used to provide power for launching spacecraft and this avoiding the tyranny of the rocket equation?

<comment><USER30> This wouldn't help a rocket. For a rocket you should just aim a laser at it.

But you still need reaction mass, and pure energy doesn't work well for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Will it work for WiFi as well? It's protocol agnostic, so it could work in > unlicensed spectrum as well. The issue is that you don't have complete > control over all the other transmitters, so you can't coordinate them.

From the moment I heard of it, the first thing I thought about was: this could make long range Wi-Fi possible (and therefore meshnets and carrier disruption possible).

Seeing this tech being used by wireless carriers would be cool, but I really want to see it (or something like it) being used in new mile long Wi-Fi standards. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance only needs to make one for us.

Long range Wi-Fi could also make communication between self-driving cars much more feasible (got your attention now, Google?) - although that presents a pretty huge security risk, too, but I imagine the industry already wanted them to be connected to the Internet, so it wouldn't be much worse.

</comment><comment><USER32>
        > Humans use <todo>.

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wireless power transmission will change everything in hardware if someone can pull it off. I'd bet Apple is waiting until they can do low power wirelessly to launch their smart watch.

<comment><USER34> I doubt that Apple is waiting until wireless power to launch the smart watch, but I agree that it will change everything. And it would make sense for Apple to buy pCell. Of course Steve Perlman worked at Apple before.

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

<comment><USER35> Yes. I would much rather Apple spends billions on this than buy silly things like Whatsapp. Article Point out C-RAN being expensive, surely Apple could help or even host their own C-RAN? Since Apple were Originally interested in MNVO anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Don't you still have large power losses from the inverse square though?

<comment><USER37> Nope (well, yes, as distance -> infinity)

Imagine three boats making waves such that the ripples constructively interfere in some spots and destructively at others.

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

<comment><USER38> This will not magically be overcome by constructive interference - each beam will still lose a significant amount of power as function of distance.

Higher frequency RF signals are fairly easy (especially V/UHF) to beamform into a tight area, which can compensate for the loss, by focusing your power in one direction instead of radially. You still lose power over distance as the beam's energy spreads.

I don't believe they will just be able to blob a "networked" 60Hz transmission into a 1cm area - I did not read the patent, but you may be able to do such a thing by varying the phase to induce a 60Hz wave via beat frequencies between transmitting signals, at ONLY the specified area.

Having the necessary +-1Hz resolution on a 2.4GHz carrier (especially one that is not using a hardware connected, phase locked oscillator) may prove very difficult if not impossible. I suspect they may try to use one of the lower scientific bands around 900 or less MHz. HF is also a fairly unregulated option, though tight beamforming may still be difficult. Perhaps a smart application of null steering could create the necessary oscillation - I am still working this out in a simulation.

If this method is correct, keeping everything tight enough to be within US electrical standards will be difficult - there are specific regulations related to in-band power, harmonics, frequency tolerances, etc. Regardless of all that, this technology is pretty incredible and I look forward to investigating it further!

<comment><USER39> > This will not magically be overcome by constructive interference - each beam > will still lose a significant amount of power as function of distance.

Well, yes, and no.

Each beam does "lose" energy compared to the theoretical amount it'd have without interference.

But the power you can transmit into any area inside the cells coverage is nearly constant, and you do not need to put that all extra energy your beans are "losing" into the transmiters, just a tiny part of it (due to errors, delays, object interference, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a very nice explanation of not only pCell but of what modern communication systems are like (802.11n has MIMO/diversity but also channel estimation, etc)

People may find this interesting: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_block_code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_block_code)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there any reason this same technology wouldn't work with light? Wouldn't that be a phased light array?

<comment><USER39> Electronics swithcing speed is the main botleneck to doing this with light. And there are hard barriers that makes this kind of device impossible there.

But different devices with the same results are fair game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> With seemingly unlimited mobile bandwidth and speed, the cloud gets a new dimension too. Perlman has already proven that even the most demanding applications, realtime games, work well in a streaming scenario even today. With something like this, i could see my desktop in the cloud being accessible from anywhere through a mobile thin client in my pocket. Hook up multiple monitors/keyboard/mouse to it or just use the device screen itself, with computing power only limited by the cloud provider. Technologies like OnLive or PCoIP show thats its possible even today, all thats missing is the infrastructure to support it and pCell could be the answer to that.

</comment><comment><USER42> Linked paper:

[http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf](http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER43> While I think charging cell phones and Telsas is a problem, getting cheaper than petrochemical energy is the key. So I have always thought that some sort of space-based energy source was the solution but how do you get it back to earth? 1000's of small solar cell beaming back energy concentrated at one point would be a great solution. How much would this cost would be interesting to find out?

</comment><comment><USER42> Sort of reminiscent of ESWL, which breaks kidney stones, except in that case they "aim" the sound waves with an elliptical waveguide.

</comment><comment><USER44> At first I thought the technical challenges inherent in maintaining state for a web of arbitrarily placed transmitters cooperatively targeting thousands of moving devices would make this technology impractical for deployment in the wild, but now I believe. pCell is going to be revolutionary. I can't wait to get rid of my consoles and stream new, triple-A games over it.

</comment><comment><USER45> USA Federal Communications and other gov agencies EU's for example wanted to move towards telecomms spectrum being a commodity where the device hands off to other carriers seamlessly to handle spectrum scarcity

pCell takes a different tact ..seems that the way to get telcomms to move would be through government mandates tied ot say spectrum sales.

<comment><USER46> pCell still requires a license to use out in the open. in the same way a fempto cell does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sorry, its just beamforming. Its not new, its just marketing.

its not all that different from having an 802.11n MIMO hotspot in your house.

<comment><USER46> Infact its not all that different from femto cell base stations. You'll still need a license to transmit on that frequency, and you still need a reliable backhaul to dump the data on.

<comment><USER4> It's different from the MIMO employed in Wifi or "normal" LTE. They do not create a cell per user, neither does a femto cell base station (it only creates a small cell, not a personal cell).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I like to think of it as that conventional cellular is using a broadcast medium for "narrowcast" communications.

If you put it that way it's obvious that we're currently Doing It Wrong, provided there's a practical alternative. It also helps people get over their reflexive "But Shannon says…" reaction.

</comment><comment><USER48> A friend at CERN commented with this: " This is EXACTLY the same procedure we're using to correct experimental data from distortions introduced by detector effects (unfolding) - [http://cds.cern.ch/record/1600778](http://cds.cern.ch/record/1600778) "

</comment><comment><USER49> I am pretty amazed by this technology and can't wait to learn more about it. Just a note on the live demo with iPhones — aren't they likely to have buffered the video they need before they were stacked, and therefore it doesn't matter if their antenna connection was interrupted?

</comment><comment><USER50> "Humans use <todo>" ? Perhaps attention?

<comment><USER3> Seems we use a variety of mechanisms, not fully understood - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Another case of application might be localization.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this also instant and incorruptable net neutrality?

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe it's just me, but that background on the left looks like some monitor that had a seizure.</comment>


You Will [Commercial Break] - <AUTHOR> http://howtosplitanatom.com/mixed-media/you-will-commercial-break/ <comment><USER2> 1993 video, Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future, 14 minute video [http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/04/connections-at-vision- of-...](http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/04/connections-at-vision-of- future-1993.htmlTom)

"You Will" voiceovers by Tom Selleck of Magnum P.I. fame <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Selleck>

</comment><comment><USER3> With the promises of fiber everywhere in exchange for billions in tax breaks and subsidies that were never delivered on, leaving substantial portions of the country with only dial-up in _2008_ , I'd say they did as much to _prevent_ these technologies as they did to bring them.

<http://www.newnetworks.com/failedfiberstates.htm>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's also interesting how small a part (though they did participate) AT&T had in all of that innovation.

<comment><USER5> Two words: "Bell Labs".

I think the transistor might have had something to do with all of this innovation. Not to mention C++, wireless networking, and a sizeable fraction of the semiconductor process technology that makes modern electronics possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> enjoyable. it's nice that we've gotten to the point where each of those possible uses is either so trivial that no one wants it (buying concert tickets from an ATM), or costs <$100 (GPS, on-demand Netflix box, webcams, etc).</comment>


BackType Analysis of the Tunisia Twitter Trend - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backtype.com/2011/01/analysis-of-the-tunisia-twitter-trend/ <comment><USER2> Is it really twitter that is helping out Tunisia or is it just other people observing the event just tweeting about it. Like we saw what happened in Iran there seems to be a correlation but the causation is sort of fuzzy.

<comment><USER3> various Anon Ops also add to that. during their attacks these days quite a lot of tweets on #tunisia and #sidibouzid were from anons activity.

<comment><USER2> So the real question is how do we separate signal from noise?

<comment><USER3> Exactly. And activists' communication from foreign slacktivism, but that's another story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main event that started the Tunisian revolt was a shopkeeper, squeezed by a corrupt policeman and refused help by the corrupt local government, protested by setting himself on fire.

The fact we're even considering Twitter a factor here just shows how completely out of touch we are with the lives of people in dictatorships like Tunisia (which isn't amongst the worst in the region). These are places where people burn themselves in the street get attention, rather than tweet.

Last week 4 Algerians, one Egyptian and one Mauritanian have torched themselves in similar protests: <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/world/africa/18egypt.html></comment>