Intel's Haswell Architecture Analyzed: Building a New PC and a New Intel - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture <comment><USER2> I really hope that the threat of Apple switching to ARM causes Intel to push Linux as an alternative to OSX.

I'm not holding my breath, but I can only hope.

<comment><USER3> Linux is unlikely to be an alternative to OS X (for most users). The key is in looking at why most users decide to buy an OS X machine. Many people on here probably bought one because it provides a decent _nix style OS with normal command line interface and the ability to run the things they use for development in much the same way as their Linux deployments. However, that isn't the majority of OS X users.

The majority of OS X users probably bought it because it felt more like a consumer electronic device than their Windows computer did. Apple's integration between the hardware and software means that things like trackpad drivers, sleep mode, ambient light sensors, etc. all just work nicely and smoothly. Many PC manufacturers offer features thinking that a feature is just a boolean: it has it or it doesn't have it. For example, a friend of mine has a Sony laptop with a backlit keyboard - just like my MacBook. Except that, in practice, it isn't like my MacBook. Either the light sensor is faulty or it doesn't use one, but it doesn't change the backlight brightness automatically. When you manually change the brightness, sometimes a box on the screen comes up showing you raising and lowering it and sometimes it doesn't. The same can be said for the WiFi helpers that companies seem to install to manage the WiFi: they feel cheap and poorly executed. So, for many users, a MacBook is more like buying a consumer electronic where you feel like it's been manufactured as a cohesive product a little more than the Windows environment where it feels like an OS on top of hardware with the pieces supporting hardware specific functionality created hastily and poorly.

If Intel pushes Linux as an alternative, it could help Linux along for those wishing they had a Windows with a _nix development environment (which is what I think you mean when you say "alternative to OS X"). It's unlikely to create something that most OS X users would want since mainstream Linux would mean the same hastily made pieces to do hardware specific things. Even look at Android. It's great, but what does everyone complain about: the ways in which manufacturers customize it to make themselves seem different from everyone else.

\--

In terms of the likelihood that Intel will do this, I think it's highly unlikely. You talk about Apple (potentially) switching to ARM and Intel losing that. However, if Intel pours money into Linux to make it a better OS than it is today, that isn't helping Intel's case. Linux can transition to ARM a lot easier than OS X can. Most Linux software is open-source meaning that even if the original maintainer is gone, someone else can recompile the software. For OS X and Windows, it would be a lot harder for them to transition processor architectures since they would need developers to do that work or provide a translation layer like Apple did moving to Intel.

Making Linux the best OS out there would only make it easier for people to leave Intel processors. With OS X and Windows, Intel has a certain amount of lock-in. It's growing smaller, but there's a lot more lock-in than with Linux.

Ultimately, Intel has to compete to make a processor that people want.

<comment><USER4> I think to most people, Android feels more like a consumer electronics device than even OS X. Yes, Samsung Android is different than HTC Android, but only geeks care about that.

Intel is putting a lot of effort into making sure that Android runs well on Intel. As a side effect, stock Linux will run well, too, since the vanilla and Android Linux kernels are converging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anand is too optimistic about Apple adopting Intel chips in iPads or iPhones in the future. Personally, I don't think that's ever going to happen, and I don't think it makes any sense either. Apple is trying to become an ever more integrated company, and apparently making their own chip is becoming very important to them. And recent rumors start pointing to the same conclusion, although we probably won't see this happening until 2014:

[http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/apple- reported...](http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/apple-reportedly- wants-to-ditch-intel-chips-in-macs-hire-its-own-soc-designer-1101772)

From what I hear Haswell will be significantly more expensive than Ivy Bridge, too, so again, to me it looks Intel is becoming less competitive with ARM, not more. But I think having full control over their chips matters more than anything else to Apple, and I think they will move there at least gradually. Apple's A6 is a significant step in that direction, and I don't see them moving back from it.

<comment><USER4> Anand is probably talking more about Windows 8 tablets. We're already getting Ivy Bridge based tablets, so it's obvious that we're going to get Haswell tablets. The article just shows us how compelling those tablets are going to be, as long as you don't paying a few extra dollars.

I suspect that this also means that we're going to get Haswell based Android tablets, which along with initiatives like Ubuntu for Android might be really compelling to a certain subset of HN readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good article. I've always wondered how the bypass network on Intel chips works, though. Is it between the ports or directly between the execution units? I also can't imagine it being fully bypassed in either case, so I wonder what it looks like.

</comment><comment><USER7> Intel is making the necessary steps to stay relevant as we see smaller lower power devices become the norm. Ultrabooks (and their silly netbook cousins of the past) are merely stepping stones on the path to more embedded, power sipping devices everywhere in our lives.

I'm curious to know what this means for Nvidia. Nvidia is now essentially competing on both big fronts. On one end, nvidia has to stay relevant with its video cards. Things like Tesla are going to be big business, but how do you compete with intel's on chip offering and keep power demands low enough? On the other side of the wall you have Tegra. Intel is a much easier target here as the Tegra is arm based and can already be found in android phones and tablets. And as the article indicates Haswell is still not equipped to truly compete with Tegra at the low end of the power spectrum.

Also, and it hurts to mention it, what about AMD? Bulldozer was at best a lukewarm release and piledriver still isn't out. On the other hand, AMD's graphics offerings still compete well with Nvidia. Big box retailers don't offer much in the way of AMD but ATI still sees significant usage. Dell, for example, only offers opterons in its servers, but offers plenty of AMD graphics cards in consumer offerings. But as AMD still has the same problem as Nvidia: this side of the business is being disrupted by things like Ultrabooks and tablets though so its hard to see how this will last. For AMD to compete with intel, it would seem they need to focus on SoC designs.

Lastly, one thing I found very interesting was the various winks and nods to the fact that intel creates a lot of interesting features that are more expensive, but only 'one' manufacturer ever uses them with the need for the stick. That manufacturer is clearly Apple.

People often like to parrot the meme that Macs are simply more expensive PCs but it seem clear here that other manufacturers require the stick to get them to make improvements to their boards.

> Intel gave one example where an embedded controller on a motherboard was > using 30 - 50mW of power. Through some simple firmware changes Intel was > able to drop this particular controller's power consumption down to 5mW. > It's not rocket science, but this is Intel's way of doing some of the work > that its OEM partners should have been doing for the past decade. Apple has > done some of this on its own (which is why OS X based notebooks still enjoy > tangibly longer idle battery life than their Windows counterparts), but > Intel will be offering this to many of its key OEM partners and in a > significant way.

You don't drop power consumption by an order of magnitude that easily unless the original chip was seriously poorly designed.

</comment><comment><USER8> I still can't help but think that the name is a little jab at the added hardware level STM support...</comment>


Machine Learning 101: 2 yrs of headbanging, so you don't have to (2017) [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kSuQyW5DTnkVaZEjGYCkfOxvzCqGEFzWBy4e9Uedd9k/preview?imm_mid=0f9b7e&cmp=em-data-na-na-newsltr_20171213&slide=id.g26e9e6b8ff_0_34 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion when this was first released: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919115)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see one day ML will subsume traditional algorithms. What i mean is that, traditional algorithms is just one use case of AI techniques.

<comment><USER4> On the contrary, I am expecting ML to evaluate all these seemingly random node weights in neural networks and come up with solid algorithmic explanation of what they really mean in step by step procedural perspective. Deep understanding :)</comment></comment>


30C3 Recordings - <AUTHOR> http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/ <comment><USER2> I found a similiar posting on HN last year. I saved exactly 97 videos from 29C3. All of them with an interesting title. My brilliant plan: watch them over the year while traveling by train or plane. Maybe I read HN or slept but I watched not a single video. Now I have another ~100 great videos to watch. I really want to watch them all but I doubt it. I need a direct brain uplink.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you should start by watching "Towards an affordable brain-computer- interface": [http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5395_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5395_-_en_- _saal_6_-_201312291600_-_towards_an_affordable_brain-computer-interface_- _dominic_-_anne.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Transcripts can be found here: [http://subtitles.media.ccc.de/](http://subtitles.media.ccc.de/)

</comment><comment><USER5> 10Gbit/s mirror (also offers ftp and rsync): [http://ftp.halifax.rwth- aachen.de/ccc/30C3/](http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ccc/30C3/)

<comment><USER6> For best experience, please do _not_ use mirrors directly. [http://media.ccc.de](http://media.ccc.de) ([http://cdn.media.ccc.de](http://cdn.media.ccc.de) to be precise) will redirect you to the fastest mirror near you (GeoIP and ASN-based).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Which recordings do you recommend? (One per comment.)

<comment><USER8> FPGA 101 is very informative: [http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5185_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5185_-_en_- _saal_g_-_201312281715_-_fpga_101_-_karsten_becker.html)

ps: CCC is awesome, every hacker should plan of attending at least once in your life! :)

<comment><USER9> First time I attended, I agree with this statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Python script to download them all

[https://gist.github.com/hydrogen18/8185934](https://gist.github.com/hydrogen18/8185934)

<comment><USER11> You know there's a root index file at [http://cdn.media.ccc.de/INDEX](http://cdn.media.ccc.de/INDEX)

Also you should use the CDN to redirect to the correct mirror

<comment><USER10> The web server returns redirect responses to mirrors that wget follows.

<comment><USER6> Just to clear this up: cdn.media.ccc.de is the new name for ftp.ccc.de. It was renamed because it does not actually serve FTP anymore, since HTTP can be load-balanced a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone care to summarize what this is about?

From what I gather these are 30C3 recordings from a CCC-TV website. The recordings have titles like FPGA 101 and Programming FPGAs with PSHDL.. There is no about page and the home page has further topics like, SIGINT13 video release, SIGINT12 video release and 28C3 webm release.

I'm confused..

<comment><USER13> If you want a one line summary, they're similar to TED talks, but much longer and for technical people.

I've been to HOPE conferences in New York, fun but terribly expensive, these look similar but slightly more technical. I'd be interested in a comparison/contrast from people who've been to both HOPE and CCC cons.

The videos and the podcast feed for them can be fed into MIRO which will feed into my mythtv setup so I can watch them all at home. Unfortunately, I prefer listening to audio of conferences in my car, have done that for many years, and video isn't going to work, or at least would be tremendously wasteful. Perhaps there will be mp3 files and a podcast xml feed of them for the CCC presentations sooner or later.

<comment><USER14> C3 talks come in several varieties. There are hardcore tech talks about actually attacking and exploiting devices ( _security & safety_) and more hardware-oriented talks about building things ( _hardware & making_). Next you have lectures about general science and engineering. On the less technical side there is one track about ethics, society and politics and another one for _art & beauty_.

Apart from the talks there are usually workshops, special interest groups (knitting, BSDM,...) and dedicated space for socialising and collaborating with others on projects on site.

<comment><USER15> Is BSDM a new furk? ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The rise of "homeless" media: Publishers that don't require home pages or apps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/thoughts-on-media/the-rise-of-homeless-media-97e031c8b319 <comment><USER2> How is that any different than something like television, or a magazine, or newspaper, or cinema? Nobody used to visit a studio. They produced content for something like ABC, which is one of the main feeding troughs for mass consumption.

But that's mass consumption, where it's feeding ground for swine. I look at things like Twitter, and I see a big pile of spam. Spammers following spammers to spam their spam to spammers. I won't be producing content for channels like that, just like I wouldn't write on Medium.

But keep singing to the choir, and boosting your "following", and watching numbers rise... as if they meant anything. Just like people realized calories could be empty, someday the general public will awaken to the obvious concept of _empty follows_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just remember the slight problem with this 'let third parties host your content' thing.

Namely, you lose control over what you can say and how you can present it. A media company who operates purely on social media is going to be in deep, deep trouble if anything they say annoys the network that's hosting their content. It's like being a massively popular Youtuber who has to worry about content ID and things being taken down at the drop of a hat.

If it seems like a good deal now, then watch out, it'll bite you in the arse if any controversy comes along.</comment>


Generating Mazes with Inductive Graphs - <AUTHOR> http://jelv.is/blog/Generating-Mazes-with-Inductive-Graphs/ <comment><USER2> On topic, a great programming book other HN readers might like is Mazes for Programmers by Jamis Buck ([http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/](http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/) .)

It's brilliant: very clearly explained, you can recreate source by reading the description in text which I find is the rarest of rare items in books about algorithms. Source is in Ruby, is very minimal and clearly written and is easily portable to other languages (I have to C++ and Delphi, and github contains many repos in other languages too.)

It's rare that I read a programming book I rave about, but I do rave about this one - as you can all tell :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've just started _Mazes for Programmers_ , this seems like nice extra material.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/061b3929ba0f3964d335](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/061b3929ba0f3964d335)</comment>


Review our webapp- The Uncertain Future (future world modeling) - <AUTHOR> http://theuncertainfuture.com

<comment><USER2> ok....

      Visualizing "The Future According to You"

As some non-AI savvy individual, I take this headline to mean "what I think will happen in the future". But then after reading, it turns out you are asking me very narrow questions having nothing to do with me, and everything to do with AI. So .... I - do - not - get - it.

Sorry if this is going over my head, but its on the front page, and I always take time to upvote and view "review my _" posts. But this one I am completely in the dark as to why its only about AI. What if I don't care about AI? Maybe just be specific as to your motives on the front page then.

<comment><USER3> "What if I don't care about AI?"

\- maybe making AI explicit in the title would be good.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Introduction: The Uncertain Future is a future technology and world-modeling project by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (<http://www.singinst.org>). Its goal is to allow those interested in future technology to form their own rigorous, mathematically consistent model of how the development of advanced technologies will affect the evolution of civilization over the next hundred years. To facilitate this, we have gathered data on what experts think is going to happen, in such fields as semiconductor development, biotechnology, global security, Artificial Intelligence and neuroscience. We invite you, the user, to read about the opinions of these experts, and then come to your own conclusion about the likely destiny of mankind.

<comment><USER2> Why isn't this much clearer and concise intro on the homepage?

<comment><AUTHOR> I added it shortly afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea is good, in principle.

The problem is, you've created both a bayesian decision-making tool AND a dataset for the tool for estimating human-level AI. Forcing a user to learn both of these at the same time is asking too much from your users.

Also, your thesis is clearly "nothing matters about the future other than human-level AI." This is a defendable thesis, but you can't use this as a starting assumption without confusing your users immensely. Maybe you should also ask questions about other things and then have them discover the importance of human-level AI naturally. (assuming it really is as important as you think.)

Finally, your java-ish implementation is really buggy and the implementation/documentation in general needs a lot of work. I couldn't get the tool to really work at all on Ubuntu with Firefox 3.5 (The edit fields keep freezing up)

(Dollars to Donuts, the java applet is written in a Lisp dialect and then translated/compiled into a very fat java applet :-)

<comment><USER4> Also: I found that almost all my answers to the questions require highly lopsided distributions, which the app doesn't support... this makes it hard to get meaningful answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, but when I read required Java, I immediately stopped. The app looks super cool but Java simply hangs my system.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worked well for me (shocking for Ffox 3.5 on Ubuntu). I'm particularly impressed with the interface for manipulating the distributions directly by interacting with the graph.

However, the 'expert opinions' are not very discoverable (they were off the screen for me). Perhaps offering them on the side could work? (Since the input data is pretty fuzzy, the graphical area doesn't need to be so large).

Also, I find the 'rate-increase' graphs are less intuitive than the normal distribution graphs. Unfortunately, I don't know how to improve upon them.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the goal of my interaction with this? You're presenting me with a very short blob of technical gibberish on each item and then you're essentially asking me to guess at the answer.

The best-case result of this is a scientifically (i.e. in the sense of empirical social sciences) awkward set of answers but I fail to see how they would carry any predictive value.

Just because everyone believes the world will be hit by a meteor in 2012 does not make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER8> Really cool. Would be interesting to break some of these things down further, into easier-to-estimate probabilities -- probably using some sort of more detailed graphical model. Seeing some sort of consensus view of the future according to your users would be neat, too (especially if it were broken down by demographic).

The interface is a little quirky. I sometimes found it difficult to determine how to set means / deviations.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't a webapp, it's a wizard for naive prediction of the date of the singularity (you seem to mix AI with a very narrow form of IA). You're not quite "modeling" a future world. Java sucks for this - why use it, given the current state of javascript and canvas?

This would make an interesting blog post if you distributed the various "viewpoints" on the various questions into a bunch of images.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was thoroughly confused testing this out. What's with all the words on the front page? You need to distill your goal to one to two sentences max.

Second, I didn't understand the questions and answers even though I know AI techniques quite well.

</comment><comment><USER11> don't have java installed and don't want to.

<comment><USER12> But I bet you have Flash installed (which performs worse than Java).

<comment><USER11> unfortunately yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately I had to force-quit Safari after about 3 minutes of beachballing. Looks like your Java Applet had some trouble loading. This is on Mac OS X 10.6.2, Safari 4.0.4.

</comment><comment><USER14> I quit after 1 question. I try to review the apps posted on HN, but this one just offered me nothing.

Sorry, guess I'm not the target.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great first run. Keep working on it!</comment>


You should introduce more people - here's a blueprint - <AUTHOR> http://lky.me/9GH

<comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of making introductions, but remember the double-opt-in introduction:

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/11/the-double-optin- introductio...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/11/the-double-optin- introduction.html)

it's the right way to go about doing this, so you don't inadvertently waste people's time, leak information about something that wasn't public, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dan - great point, and thanks for reminding me about folks who want a brokered intro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if it's a change in the areas I'm working in, or because my network has reached some sort of critical mass, but I've found myself doing a lot of introducing over the last year or so.

It's strangely satisfying to get folk who should talk, to talk.</comment>


Is Google too powerful? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_15/b4029001.htm <comment><USER2> Dude, I know they have beach volley arenas on MV. Maybe they're looking for people that know how to play it.

I think having a cool dog helps to get there too :)

Java, C, perl, php, enginnering skills? What are they for on google?

BTW to work with GWT is more about solving puzzles than knowning about programming languages and stuff.

At the very end, doesn't matter what they are looking for. I've a buddy working on Google that learned everything he does there. He has a degree on marketing and works on adwords support team.</comment>


According to the TÜV the Cybertruck won't be legal to drive in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Klingebeil/status/1205495832650420224 <comment><USER2> It's hard to imagine that Tesla would bring a product to the reveal stage without running a crash simulation or two. Although the panels look sturdy on the outside, it's possible for there to be internal (on the reverse side) cuts/scoring which, when impacted by other members, result in buckling.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Musk is particularly safety-minded.

<comment><USER4> Strange statement when the three safest cars on the market at the moment are all Teslas...

<comment><USER3> He owns a rocket company too.

<comment> t-writescode .. and? How many of those have caused serious damage to anyone? Or damage at all to people or even things other than themselves?

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying that SpaceX has harmed anyone or that it is less safe than other space companies. But the whole line of business is inherently dangerous and I don't think someone who personally values safety at a high level would found this kind of company. That doesn't mean they can't decide to have safe cars designed and built – on their own or because their engineers push for it – if it makes business sense.

Musk isn't the only one working at Tesla. People are generally more successful at something if they do it because they care not just because it's their job. So whoever was responsible for the safety of Tesla's previous cars probably cared a lot about safety. I imagine they're the kind of people some people might call boring but no one would ever doubt their sanity. If they ever found a company, it's going to be called "SeatbeltX".

<comment> t-writescode Speaking of that, the inventor of the 3 point harness also invented ejector seats for airplanes

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin)

And the first seat belts were made by a person who had fun gliding in the air.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt)

None of your argument holds water. People who do dangerous things like being safe doing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's 5.88m long! You can't drive it in inner cities of Europe and expect to fit in a parking garage or spot.

<comment><USER6> It will drive itself around the block until you are ready to go home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More fretting by the Germans about Tesla.</comment>


Evernote Secures $20m in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/10/19/evernote-strikes-it-rich-secures-20-million-in-funding/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is awesome! These guys produce a service that has traction, has a loyal following, and AFAIK has never had an issue. I use it, love it, and recommend it. The greatest thing about it is how they have it on all your devices (almost) and I find myself branching out into their "life memory" strategy by, for example, creating a recording of my 15 month old son laughing. That's on top of the business productivity applications I use it for.

My question, though, is this:

Evernote has traction. Evernote is growing. Evernote has subscribers. Evernote has partners developing plugins for it (Evernote Trunk)

What do they need $20m in funding for?

Is it that word of mouth adoption only goes so far? Is it to speed up adoption by buying installs on new computers?

What would you do with $20m if you were Evernote?

<comment><USER2> Today's announcement of our $20 million series "C" funding led by Sequoia Capital means that we now have the resources to significantly expand and improve our service in ways that would have taken years to achieve organically. We'll build more features, add more devices, fix more bugs, expand into more countries, and make Evernote indispensable to more types of users (including corporate and educational folk).

[http://blog.evernote.com/2010/10/19/evernote- raises-20-milli...](http://blog.evernote.com/2010/10/19/evernote- raises-20-million-led-by-sequoia-capital/)</comment></comment>


MySQL Is the DBMS of the Year 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://db-engines.com/en/blog_post/83 <comment><USER2> Method of calculating the scores of the DB-Engines Ranking

[https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition](https://db- engines.com/en/ranking_definition)</comment>


Braintree Ignition - The $50k boost for your business - <AUTHOR> https://www.braintreepayments.com/ignition

<comment><USER2> Wonderful. That's really great news!

Now if there was any way you guys could start offering your Marketplace platform outside the US (UK specifically) I'll be all over that like a cheap suit! ;-)

I salute you!

<comment><USER3> (I'm an engineer at Braintree.)

I can't say too much about our timelines, but we're working on it =)

<comment><USER2> In that case, Roses are red, violets are blue, All my base are belong to you!</comment></comment></comment>


Fairphone 3 Launch [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.fairphone.com/en/special-event/ <comment><USER2> I own a Fairphone 2 and was very proud to buy it and support the company that is behind it. Honestly I have to say that specs are not (and were not at the time) impressive, and that the phone has had quite a few hardware issues (which I mostly attribute to the fact that the Fairphone company is still rather young, and building a high quality smartphone likely requires a lot of experience). As an object, the value/cost ratio is not stellar, but if you factor in the added value given by the work for a better and fairer world, my personal balance is strongly positive. Given that Fairphone 2 was already a great improvement over the first edition, I really hope that 3 is finally a great smartphone, with a great social value. All the best to people developing it! :-)

<comment><USER3> Although I'm generally very satisfied with my FP2 (especially being able to run Fairphone Open, i.e. plain AOSP with their support, is surprisingly neat), I agree that it has some hardware issues.

Those mostly seem to be the result of the "gimmicky" way modularity was implemented for it though, i.e. without screws. I'm very hopeful that FP3 will be much better in this regard. See also [https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/can-fairphone-3-scale- ethi...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/can-fairphone-3-scale-ethical- consumer-electronics/)

Specs are not impressive indeed, but have been perfectly fine for me. Better battery life and a finger print scanner seem like marked improvements, but otherwise given that FP2 has suited my needs just fine, I figure I'd hardly even notice the other improvements with an FP3.

But then, I'm not buying it - with the FP2 still working, that would pretty much be against the concept.

<comment><USER4> If you skip to about 21:00 in the presentation, the presenter says they added screws.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's why I'm hopeful that the FP3 will be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder whether this device will be on the mainline kernel. The obsolescence for Fairphone 2 wasn't hardware, it was software. This seems to be the major issue keeping smartphones running for a long time today, the only equivalent hardware issue on timescale and importance is replacement of the battery. Being able to repair the rest of the hardware is a good next step, but is futile if your security and software updates rely on the chip manufacturer, and get abandoned within 2 years.

<comment><USER6> Software may be a bit delayed, but if you care mostly about security and less about having the absolute latest Android version (with some nice to have functionnalities I suppose, but I don't miss them so far), it's very good.

My fairphone 2 is running Android 7, started at 5 I think, and the latest security update was this month [1]. And those security updates are pretty regular.

[1] [https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/208342503-Fa...](https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/208342503-Fairphone-OS-for-Fairphone-2-Release-Notes)

<comment><USER7> > My fairphone 2 is running Android 7

You will soon be 3 major releases behind.

<comment><USER8> Honestly, major releases of Android meant something between the early Android 2.0 - 5.0 period. Most of the features since then have been largely cosmetic. Ask the average user if they're using their phone differently in the last 5 years (Android 5.0 release was in 2014) and I'd wager little to none of that would be related to OS-level changes.

<comment><USER9> That's quite subjective.

You can get a list here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history)

Android 8, in particular, was a massive upgrade. Plus all the optimizations to save battery, to make apps faster, etc.

<comment><USER10> I guess it really depends on whether you pay attention to the change logs. My phone has Android 9 on it right now and I can't really remember any meaningful new features since Android 6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you just want to see the specs, go to [https://shop.fairphone.com/en/?ref=header&](https://shop.fairphone.com/en/?ref=header&)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't and won't use Android, but the phone itself looks great and I really appreciate the modularity of the build. Very cool and admirable.

<comment><USER6> Fairphone actually provides very good support for alternative OSes, including Fairphone Open, an Android version stripped from Google software ([https://code.fairphone.com/projects/fp- osos/](https://code.fairphone.com/projects/fp-osos/)), and Ubuntu Touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the point of having modular hardware, if the software-side only get a lifetime of (at least) 1 major version?

<comment><USER14> You get 5 year guaranteed support for the FP3. The FP2 launched with 5.1, and it is now on Android 7. We got Android 9 working via LineageOS but that is weekly snapshots which can (and will) break. The problem here, btw, is Qualcomm.

<comment><USER13> So, that's why they can't leave guarantees then, they simply don't know how long Qualcomm will support the chipset.

I wonder how this compares to other chipset makers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" If you don't need it, we don't include it! There's no charger, cable or earphones, so you can use the ones you have and help cut down on e-waste."_

 _" Included: mini-screwdriver"_

<comment><USER16> A USB cable might have been nice, but I never use the earbuds that come with devices. This is okay be me. They didn't even need to include the screwdriver. Actually, I do like having extra mini-screwdrivers, so that is okay by me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've wanted one of these for years, but live in the US. Would importing it work, or would my provider not support it?

<comment><USER3> Likely finicky, they're explicitly not supporting it, and posts here seem nervous about it: [https://forum.fairphone.com/t/general- fairphone-3-discussion...](https://forum.fairphone.com/t/general- fairphone-3-discussion/52311)

<comment><USER17> Official support page: [https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/360032577632...](https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/360032577632-Connectivity-of-the-FP3-outside-of-Europe)

Well that's not too bad. I could live with 3G personally, given what I use my phone for, but I doubt many others could.

<comment><USER10> I would wait a little while to see if they update that page more. It seems like a lot of the text there is just cloned from the Fairphone 2 page.

[https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/360032577632...](https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/360032577632-Connectivity-of-the-FP3-outside-of-Europe)

[https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/115001535686...](https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/115001535686-Will-the-Fairphone-2-work-outside-of-Europe-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like those bezels. I'm not sure why others hate them so much; it's nice to see a phone with room to hold it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Spare display for $90 that I can install myself? _Starts throwing money their way_

<comment><USER20> To be fair, used to also be easily achievable with older iPhone models, like the 6S

<comment><USER21> Is that no longer a thing? I've only repaired up to 6. My wife now has an 8, does she need a case this time?

<comment><USER22> They're still easy to repair, if you are somewhat skilled. You can't always source high quality 3rd party displays, and parts (especially batteries) and Apple is trying to clamp down further on the 3rd party parts market (what's called the "pirate parts" market)

<comment><USER14> > They're still easy to repair, if you are somewhat skilled.

Which is a contradictio in terminis. If only a select few are able to repair the smartphone, then it is apparently difficult to repair the smartphone.

<comment><USER22> It's all relative. It's not a very difficult repair like say, replacing a screen on a Galaxy S8, iPad or Macbook Pro. You need some skills/experience and the correct tools and then it will take 15-20 minutes. An experienced phone technician will have no issues whatsoever. A relatively inexperienced, brave individual like me can do it alone in 30-60 min. But again, not like this Fairphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As much as I'd love to support this, it lacks some of the LTE bands that I'd need.

Worse, too many of the newer phones have jumped on the no replaceable battery/no headphone jack/no MicroSD slot/all glass bandwagon. Sigh.

<comment><USER24> Could you explain? Are you in a country that has different LTE bands than europe?

<comment><USER25> Its band support is not good wherever you live. It doesn't have two Russian bands, one German, one Romanian, a few US etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I strongly considered getting a Fairphone, but the reviews for the last one made it feel like an early prototype. And then there was the lack of Android updates.

The only decent alternative to my iPhone still seems to be a Nokia dumbphone.

<comment><USER27> > The only decent alternative to my iPhone still seems to be a Nokia > dumbphone.

Why? Some of the models featuring Android One are pretty great. As for the environment, I don't think there is much of a difference between most Android phones vs iPhone.

<comment><USER5> iPhones do have a really solid software update programme, they are supported for 4 or 5 years, which is way more than almost all Android phones. Many Android phones are supported only for 18 months. Also, because of the resale value of the phones changing the battery or making minor repairs is much more likely. I actually wouldn't be surprised if iPhone has been better than Fairphone up to now, for these reasons, although Fairphone is working with excellent long term ambitions which we should all support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not sure if I'm missing something but I'm unable to have the phone shipped to Sweden. According to this support article however they do ship to Sweden: [https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/202005103-Wh...](https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en- us/articles/202005103-Where-do-you-sell-and-ship-Fairphone-products-to-)

</comment><comment><USER29> Great news! I hope fairphone will last to the day me and my company will be able to afford them to me and all my future staff :)

</comment><comment><USER30> This needs GrapheneOS support - does it provide the hardware security features that GrapheneOS requires?

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope there will be a supported version of Android without Google services for this phone.

<comment><USER2> Isn't LineageOS what you are looking for? You can take with or without Google bloatware. It is available and regularly updated for FP2, where I use it.

<comment><USER32> LineageOS for the FP2 is no longer supported: [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2)

<comment><USER14> Yes, it is. I don't know why that page says that, but I am running it right now (with microG), and I get weekly updates. Other people are running the non- microG version just fine. One caveat: you're running on weekly snapshots, and these might break. Currently the last known working version of the previous snapshot. The current one (from ~28 August) is broken.

<comment><USER32> It may still have builds but it doesn't have a maintainer.

"If the maintainer is no longer working on it, and it's a 15.1 device (RMN4 is), then it will almost certainly be dropped from the build roster eventually."

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/auymfy/what_happ...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/auymfy/what_happens_when_a_device_is_no_longer/)

<comment><USER14> It has a maintainer: chrmhoffmann. The builds get updated every week.

<comment><USER32> That's weird. The wayback machine suggests that the page was updated to remove his name... today. I'm not sure what's going on.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190827190701/https://wiki.line...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190827190701/https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2)

<comment><USER14> He just posted on the Fairphone forums that he was on a business trip and vacation. New builds have been pushed for LineageOS and LOS + microG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My Fairphone 2 recently broke down and I was disappointed there was no Fairphone 3, or better yet, an upgraded core module for my Fairphone 2. This launch comes just a bit too late for me, because I ended up getting a OnePlus 7.

</comment><comment><USER33> Just an aside: the header image on the FairPhone homepage is nearly 750kb.

Why do companies feel the need to add such bloated images to their homepages even when the image adds nothing to the user experience?

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's about a need to add bloated images, it's actually reverse : putting the full unoptimized version of an image is the default, and they don't take the time to improve this because they don't feel the need to (or they may have other things priorised)

<comment><USER33> Regardless of whether they feel the need to or not, it makes for a bad user- experience. Not everyone is using broadband. Running the image through a basic compression tool reduces the size by nearly 350kb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > $450 for a phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 632, huge top and bottom bezels? > To me, a Chinese moto phone is more reasonable (as I don't have any > important info on it).

<comment><USER14> For you it might be more reasonable. For the people who assembled that Chinese moto phone, and the Earth? Definitely not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> if there's a ruggedized, otterbox-like case, I'll do it! All of my phones have been subjected to harsh physical treatment. I'm wearing out my otterbox :)</comment>


The Last Auto Mechanic - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomprice_22461/the-last-auto-mechanic-841adec75498 <comment><USER2> 1) "within 15 years virtually all vehicular traffic in the US will be by autonomous electric vehicles"

This will be unfortunate news for the major auto manufacturers, who are designing their next-generation ICE-driven platforms that won't even _hit the road_ until 5 years out and have 7-plus year manufacturing tenures.

2) "An EV? (motor will last) At least 500,000, maybe as much as 1,000,000."

The manufacturers don't have as much faith as this writer. The Ford Focus Electric, for example, is warrantied for _only 36,000 miles_.

3) "with so many fewer parts it's relatively easy to make an electric car drive themselves"

For those actually doing the implementations: is autonomous driving "easy" just because the drivetrain is electric rather than ICE?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I make a poll on HN? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll](https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll)

You need more than 200 karma, which you seem to have.</comment>


Asciio -- Cool Per/GTK program ... - <AUTHOR>

I loved this program that helps you draw pure ASCII diagrams! I was looking for something minimalistic to draw flowcharts and ran into asciio. What are some such cool tools you use and love? <comment><USER2> In the same vein, but on the web: <http://www.asciiflow.com/></comment>


The welfare state needs updating - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/international/2018/07/14/the-welfare-state-needs-updating <comment><USER2> Ron Paul had it right. And I'll tell you now both capitalism are bad. But the good thing is you don't have to choose between them because the nation state is rapidly deteriorating into the abyss of the way things are and the way they should be: pure anarchy.</comment>


Fukushima Robot Operator Writes Tell-All Blog - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/fukushima-robot-operator-diaries

<comment><USER2> The translated posts of the (now removed) original content contain some fascinating details about the capabilities of the robots and realities of operating them. As the article mentions, it's interesting for anyone even interested in commercial robotics, and must be solid gold for commercial manufacturers - how often do you get the chance to test in these conditions? The reports are quite detailed and informative.

More generally I couldn't agree more with the decision to publish the removed content, and am also 100% behind the expressions in the article to utilise the experience of the current operators in other nations before they're needed.

Disclaimer: My enthusiasm for the article may be influenced by my opinion that guys like this are the closest thing we have so far to mech pilots ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> > It's ironic that, although the robots are remote controlled, the operators > still have to work close to the highly damaged and radioactive reactors. > There is no communications infrastructure, combining wired and wireless > capabilities, that would allow the operators to do their work from a safer > location.

FWIW, this is ridiculous. Even your average 3G connection should be sufficient to provide a usable video feed, and the workers wouldn't have to try to use laptops while in bulky suits.

<comment><USER4> Right, multi-billion dollar problem and they can't rent some satellite time?

Heck most UAV pilots operate out of Nevada, and it's not like they're flying over first world countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> N.B. It's regarding a _human_ operator of robotic _machinery._

<comment><USER6> Alas, the future when we need to make it clear that a human, not a robot, wrote a tell-all blog is not yet here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've tried but given up finding even a cached version of the original source material. Has anyone else had any luck?

<comment><USER8> Paste <http://sh-blog.at.webry.info/rss/index.rdf> into Google Reader's 'Add a Subscription'; it has all the posts since Jan 7.

Or this link to the feed in Reader might work: [https://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F...](https://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fsh- blog.at.webry.info%2Frss%2Findex.rdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clever on the part of iRobot. Give them 4 robots and some training. Enough to get them going, then later they'll buy more from you since they've become accustomed to the tools and have experience with them.</comment>


Virgin Galactic Unveils Design For SpaceShipTwo - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/23/virgin-galactic-unveils-design-for-spaceshiptwo/ <comment><USER2> _the ability to launch low-earth satellites that could literally take some of the heat out of the planet, by serving as a repository for information technology._

Reminds me of a very hypothetical idea I heard about a few years ago. Some hackers wanted to create a hybrid communications satellite/web server that could host content outside of any legal juristiction. Could you imagine the RIAA trying to shut down that BitTorrent Tracker?

<comment><USER3> While this is great for free speech etc, how can something that is out of legal jurisdictions be defended? What if RIAA decides to point a high power laser at it?

<comment><USER4> The RIAA has high powered lasers? I somehow doubt that line item would be approved by the member companies.

<comment><USER3> You are taking my example rather literally :-) My original question stands: How do you defend something that is not protected by governments?

<comment><USER2> Quite simply, you can't. You only get the benefits of no law and government alongside the downsides of no infrastructure and protection.

I guess with your laser example other satellite owners, including governments would be peeved due to the debris. This would likely lead to stricter rules about space being drawn up.

<comment> daniel-cussen Governments might start claiming space like they claimed coasts in the 50s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting how much more captivating this is compared to anything NASA is doing currently. The rovers are cool, the fly-bys neat, hubble upgrades, etc. But this (and similar ventures) put real, albeit rich and crazy, people into space and that's so... cool. It's tangible.</comment>


Why are so many organizations slow to approve pull requests? - <AUTHOR> https://featurepeek.com/blog/why-are-so-many-orgs-slow-to-approve-pull-requests/ <comment><USER2> Great summary.

#4 & #5 are IT with a capital I-T.

I can speak for my organization: we're understaffed and have shitty regression infrastructure. Even if some blessed soul on GitHub does a ton of good work, we still have to schedule code reviews, which is hard enough for internal staff, let alone external.

We do get to them, it just takes months. Just like our own INTERNAL pull requests. :)</comment>


Ask HN: Charging for hosting on freelance projects - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,<p>When doing side work, do you offer hosting as part of your services? If so, howuch do you charge annually and how do you calculate it? I have a few side jobs that I host. I charged flat rate since they were simple websites that didn't need anything other than static content. However now I'm considering charging for hosting and domain renewal, since I'm eating those costs annually. I use the VPS for hosting my own projects, but I'd like to recoup the costs of the domain and at least some of the hosting costs. I'm new to side work and freelancing, so I'm trying to figure out how everyone else is handling it. <comment><USER2> From my personal experience, I always offered the customer a choice upfront whether they wanted me to provide a hosting solution or if they already had a solution. This was a piece of the contract that was stated at the start.

If they wanted me to provide a solution, it really came down to what I was building and the amount of traffic anticipated. Most of the time I would set them up on a separate hosting plan, and on rare occasions I would host multiple sites on the same server. I would then up charge the hosting to them. So for example, I may have a single Linode account, and for each customer just add a new $20 VPS under that account. I would then charge the customer $35-40 a month to "manage" the server. Server management is really not that time consuming and you can script most of it. The up charge also allowed me to cover customers who may be late with payment from time to time. If down the road, the customer wanted to leave, I can just delete the server from my account. Even if I was hosting multiple sites on the same VPS I may provide a discount (i.e. may only charge the customer $15-20 a month), but hosting was always a revenue stream. You should never be eating the hosting costs though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply; it's given me quite a bit to think through. I think I'll implement some part of this system and either charge recurring for hosting and domain or transfer them to hosting and domain renewal charged to them, their choice.

Spinning up a new Linode for their level of use is overkill, but I'd like to go through the effort to keep my personal VPS, well, personal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Im not in that line of work but I do know it is commonly done.

To the extent you can, register the domain as your own. Dont transfer it to your client until you have bern paid for your final invoice.</comment>


Ask HN: Why there is no advisor on demand service? - <AUTHOR> Startups might need a different advisory board at the different stages. The current way to find, engage with advisors are very manual and sometimes the outcome is not good, especially when companies change direction etc. What if there is a board of director/advisor service startup can access tailored to their specific need and when they need it. Why no such service exists? <comment><USER2> I'm late, but if you're interested in the legal landscape around that issue, Stephen Bainbridge and Todd Henderson published "Outsourcing the Board: How Board Service Providers Can Improve Corporate Governance" earlier this year.

[0] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/outsourcing-the- board/6...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/outsourcing-the- board/62A7D399C71D53B750B711AB7E12F33A)

</comment><comment><USER3> There used to be HN Office Hours and a few other startups that tried to do this a few years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943633)

[https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/opzi-a-quora-for-the- enter...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/opzi-a-quora-for-the-enterprise/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://clarity.fm/](https://clarity.fm/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I am aware of clarity.fm. I am thinking more a packaged advisor service like a group of advisors (e.g. one marketing, one product, one legal etc) to provide on-going very tactic advisors based on startups' context. Something like YC is offering in their core program but to every startup.

<comment><USER5> Because I don't want an armchair advisor w/ no skin in the game to give me advice on generic things like marketing, and product. I want someone who's invested in the journey. They'll also have more meaningful advice b/c it means they've done the research into my product/market/competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because demand far outweighs supply. Good advisors don't have the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. Though every startup wants to get the best advisors in theory. They might also be OK to get good enough advisor based on their stage. For example, a pre-seed startup might find valuable to get advice from an A-round founder. Any thoughts on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't consulting agencies provide these types of services?</comment>


Million Lines of Code - Infographic - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ <comment><USER2> How are dependencies such as external libraries counted? Some programming languages will "include" code while others will link "against" external code.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure how they measure the lines of code. Are comments, headers, etc included or is it just the the code flow?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does an average modern high-end car really have a hundred million lines of code?

</comment><comment><USER5> The number of LOC is nothing to boast about in my opinion. The simpler your codebase the easier it is to maintain, the easier it is to focus on what actually matters: the end product.

<comment><USER6> It also seems quite arbitrary to compare LOC's between all those products. It seems like it would vary greatly depending on the language and other factors (No idea of the metric includes comments/whitespace etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That last one is a hoot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does 60 millions of lines of code of Facebook make sense? I mean I know its a large project with multiple modules, but any ideas why such an enormous codebase?

</comment><comment><USER9> The original Doom was under 50,000 lines of code.

</comment><comment><USER10> Firefox and Mozilla core are games?</comment>


Google Thought My Phone Number Was Facebook's and It Ruined My Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmpm43/google-thought-my-phone-number-was-facebooks-and-it-ruined-my-life <comment><USER2> I used to get weird phone calls all the time for people having trouble with their phone service. Weird part was that I actually worked for the telecom, but making software in some obscure department, not as customer support. I was so confused the first few times how people knew I worked for the company and how they got my personal cell number.

What happened was that my cell phone number was one digit off the corporate switchboard. And people kept dialling me. I don't even know how they got the switchboard number, I have no idea where that thing would have been published. It certainly wasn't published on the company's website under customer support.

You don't have to publicly post your number to fall victim to this. Sometimes, you just have really bad luck that your number is similar to something that someone sees. Then they dial the wrong number twofold (first in that the company's support number is completely different or nonexistent, and second in that they couldn't even properly dial the number they were trying to dial).

I guarantee that there are people out there who had this guy's number, but one digit off, and they were receiving Facebook complaints too. I like to give benefit of the doubt to humanity, but when you get a steady stream of these calls, you tend to not want to give it anymore; you just end up wondering how stupid everyone can be. Logically, you know it's just a statistical quirk, but that's small comfort. For me, it stopped when I finally switched my number.

</comment><comment><USER3> > After reaching out to Google to get my number removed, the company fixed it.

Yeah sure getting unwanted phone calls ruined your life. More like ruined your week/month.

</comment><comment><USER4> My partner worked for a non-profit, who apparently traded her name and address to other mailing lists, and it steamrolled out of control. We get PILES of junk mail from various Christian and anti-choice organizations that I find repugnant. It is also just annoying to throw the mail into the recycling and have to deal with the security issues of having piles and piles of mail with our names and addresses on it.

This is our new reality: Constant kafkaesque bullshit that wastes of our time to keep these corporations from sucking our blood.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lives sure are easily "ruined" in Vice land.

<comment><USER6> 1000s of phone calls coming into your personal/main phone number at a rapid rate would ruin lives at this point.

You'd basically have to get a new number to prevent it which is a big problem for most.

<comment><USER7> _You 'd basically have to get a new number_

Utter ruin.

<comment><USER6> For people who've had the same number for decades like me and hundreds of contacts, it does matter.

<comment><USER7> Getting falsely accused if a grave crime, and doing time in jail, is a true 1st world ruin event. Dying of starvation, or curable diseases, losing your family to war, in many places. Losing your phone number is not.

You devalue the meaning of "ruin", and minimize the experience of true ruined lives, if you truly mean it. Of course you're free to do so, as I'm free to mock it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't you blog? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In 2003 blogging was a conversation -- you'd post and folks would post in response. You'd get a real discussion around ideas.

In 2016 blogging is just screaming (or whispering) into the void. If there is a conversation around the post, it will be in short comments on aggregator sites (such as this one).

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to, starting maybe 15-16 years ago, and I kept it up for a good long while, but I don't get much out of it anymore. A bunch of people decided, for reasons which never made any sense to me, that blogs and blogging somehow ought to be a mechanism for making money, and in their rabid enthusiasm for commerce managed to suck all the life out of the medium. I no longer feel like writing blog posts is an act of participation in a community, because there is no community anymore, so far as I can see.

The web itself seems to be pretty much over, as far as you can consider it to be a community medium, and the death of blogging is just the most visible aspect of that. I still post on my blog from time to time, but it's basically just out of habit, or because I think I might want to find some interesting link again later.

<comment><USER4> You are commenting here, its a community.

<comment><USER3> Yes, there are still a few pockets left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because to write takes as much time and effort thinking through the structure of things as programming does, but the compiler is much more poorly specified.

Really though, I need to get together some folks who can do usability tests on my writing. (If, uh, anyone is interested and wants to learn about server configuration, please tell me what you think of [https://saltstack-from- scratch/](https://saltstack-from-scratch/)

<comment><USER6> I am interested, and will try to give you some feedback. Is this the correct link to what you are talking about?

[http://amfarrell.com/saltstack-from-scratch/](http://amfarrell.com/saltstack- from-scratch/)

I tried some different TLD endings to the link you posted but got bored after a few and hit google.

<comment><USER5> oh wow, I had typed that on mobile and completely omitted the domain name. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Time mostly with a side order of I'm not sure I have anything to say that anyone would want to read.

The only area's I have any in depth knowledge are already well covered by others.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do: [http://www.jakeseliger.com](http://www.jakeseliger.com). But I can tell you why most people don't: Writing interesting content with any kind of consistency takes a lot of time, energy, and effort, and it's poorly remunerative in the short term. For many people it's poorly remunerative in any term.

</comment><comment><USER9> I need something between twitter and medium. Short, but not that short, with connections to people who might be interested (ie, not the people on Medium).

<comment><USER10> I use Sublevel[1]. It's not perfect, but it's heading in a direction I like.

Discourse and Flarum are both so heavy and app-like, it's just not necessary.

[1] [https://sublevel.net](https://sublevel.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a lot of ideas in my evernotes, but I am procrastinating on building my webpage. I want to be perfect, which ofcourse will require time and I am too lazy to invest that much time. so basically cos I am lazy and just trying to convince myself with false reasons

</comment><comment><USER12> ROI (lack of) or the losing end of opportunity cost (there is something better I could be doing).

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that successful blog post requires either having expert knowledge of a specific domain, or an interesting take on a trending topic. It's hard for many (including myself) to break through the barrier of self- doubt if neither of those cases are obviously true.

Blogging for personal reasons is still a good option (as many would say), but why spend limited time on writing a blog post when you could be working on a side project instead?

<comment> lloyd-christmas Personally, I like blogs where people are about 85% sure they know what they are doing. It tends to spawn better conversation (as long as the comments section ends up minimally moderated). "This is how you do [insert complex concept here]" is a lot less interesting than "This is how I fucked up trying to do [insert complex concept here]". Obviously though, it does take time from the side project. I write notes to myself constantly. For me, setting up the blog seems more time consuming than taking some time to edit my notes into something coherent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Right now, I don't blog much because I tried to make money off blogging and failed.

I used to blog on & off since early 2000s. It was mostly about my daily life, interests, and photos. It was a lot of fun and many friends read it.

Then I added ads and affiliate links. I hardly made any money from those ads or links but once I accidentally ended up making $200+ from one affiliate link. This got me greedy, and I started to think I can become a professional blogger. I cleaned up my personal stuff from my blog and started to write with a focus of gaining views. This ended up being work and boring. Also my blog suffered negatively as my friends stopped visiting it. I lost my interest too. Started to blog less often.

But this year I will re-start personal blogging. I don't have anything important to say to the world. My blog will be just for my friends & family. Also I removed all ads and affiliate links from it to remove any temptation of making money.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been blogging since 2008 [1]. I think blogs are the least 3rd party reliant outlets for personal/pro content. As long as you can keep your domain, you have control over how, where and when your content is accessible. You control your URLs, whether you want ads or not, layout, etc.

Simple web pages (as opposed to walled gardens of social networks) are search engines' best friends.

As for mine, I actually wrote a static blog generator from scratch in 500 lines of python and all the articles are in pure HTML. Runs on S3 (can move away in a heartbeat), fast as a Ferrari and I wouldn't give it up for the likes of Medium in the long foreseeable future.

[1]: [https://blog.oxplot.com/](https://blog.oxplot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think my thoughts on topics are much needed. When I feel like they are needed, I can comment on current discussion.

Blogging is just putting your opinions out as fact with no way for readers to disagree. I prefer commenting.

</comment><comment><USER17> I ask if it is useful to others: the answer is probably no. In a group of 100 people at random, I am not the best one at breaking down complex subjects, nor the most likely to be a cultural pioneer, so the utility to others would be low. I ask if it would be useful to myself: the answer is no. I write for myself, in a way that is useful to myself, but not to others. I think the blogging provides a lot of leverage to superior writers, and is probably a wasteful distraction to the other 99%.

</comment><comment><USER18> I took the plunge to writing a blog, because I like to sometimes express (really stupid) ideas in long-form, which social media is ill-suited for. Also, I hate most social media platforms. So basically the same reason Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants exists. But I am an idiot, so don't expect that kind of quality content. If you're insane, or curious as to how many bad ideas a bored, slight knowledgeable hobbyist can come up with, it's at qwertyuiop924.wordpress.com

</comment><comment><USER19> Most of what I have to say, I haven't thought through enough to commit to the internet permanently. When I was a little younger I was willing to put anything out there, but not anymore. So I prefer a transient medium.

The other thing is that that there a handful of disjoint subjects that I might like to blog about: a hobby (that I do have a nascent blog for), things learned in tech, etc. But they don't have much to do with each other, and putting them all in the same place feels silly.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've got a lot of blog post outlines saved, and I'm no longer so worried about posting something to the internet and receiving critique. However, no matter how good my intentions are, I always find something 'more important' to do with 2-3 hours on a weekend. E.g. sleeping, extra work via side projects or freelancing. I just need to find a way to break it down into half-hour blocks of time, or to lock myself in my office for a few hours on a Saturday night.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have many articles written on software management. They document my journey as a new engineering manager. I also write down what my other friends deal with as managers/tech leads. It's amazing to see what everyone has to think about and how events could possibly unfold behind every decision.

They're all sitting on my laptop, but I worry about keeping topics separate from our employers. I want to keep things classy.

If you've got suggestions how to approach this, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER22> Personally or 'professionally'?

I've ran various news sites in the past, and I'm working on one now, if that counts as blogging.

But I don't run a personal blog. Why? Because I don't see the point. Anything related to gaming or tech is already discussed on my existing sites and social media accounts. My personal life is kind of boring by comparison, so no one would want to read about it. And anything political goes on Medium or some other such platform instead.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty well summed up by other comments, but loss of ROI. Funny enough one of my last blog posts was the most response I've ever gotten (few hundred K readers, tweeted by O'Reilly, liked by Zuck) but it still felt "not worth it" in the end.

Now blogs are simply the place I put something if I truly write something for enjoyment where that enjoyment needs to be 100% of the reward. This does happen, but rather uncommonly (because: life).

</comment><comment><USER24> I blog at [https://glebbahmutov.com/blog/](https://glebbahmutov.com/blog/) as a reminder to myself how some problems are solved. Now people at work, especially new hires, comment how 50% of my communication or answering questions are just links to the blog posts.

</comment><comment><USER25> I always change my mind and partial fear of others judging me or me evolving way beyond my previous viewpoint.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have nothing of substance to say

<comment><USER27> Yeah I am the same. If I force myself to write on a topic I will reread it after a week or two and then disagree/dislike it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Would you rather be Tom Brady, or Al Michaels?

Players play the game. Commentators talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why do you blog?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't blog. I'm afraid people will make fun of what I write if I do.

I have a similar feeling on HackerNews, that people will jump on me. It's also why I don't use Twitter.

<comment><USER30> human,

fuck those other humans. write what you want to write.

humans die everyday. their voices are never heard.

you have an opportunity to speak. take it.

sincerely,

council of space bats

<comment><USER31> I would read a blog filled with advice from this Council of Space Bats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sufficiently white to qualify for a Medium account to tell everyone how I quit my 6-figure paying job at McKinsey, after graduating at Wharton, and my college roommate who graduated in finance gave me $5MM in seed money to start my new photo sharing app, so you can do it too'

<comment><USER33> Sorry I don't understand - you're not sufficiently white enough to blog?</comment></comment>


Bill Belichick Might Be a Mac Guy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/sports/football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-guy.html <comment><USER2> This article literally doesn't mention Macs beyond the title, and in fact states that Belichick is going back to printed photos rather than any technology option. I realize the title is a play on the "guy hates windows so he must be a mac guy" but in this case it's just plain wrong and clickbaity BS.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Furthermore, the Arstechnica article seems to point to the WiFi as the main issue.

>Microsoft's hardware isn't necessarily the culprit here, merely the victim. The NFL uses a lot of wireless hardware—communications headsets, public Wi-Fi networks, private networks for the tablets, networks for the press, and more. Moreover, key portions of the infrastructure, including the tablets themselves, are owned by the NFL itself. Belichick said that although the Patriots' IT person, Dan Famosi, did a "great job" of handling all the systems, he had no power to diagnose or fix problems with the league-provided equipment.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill- belichi...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichick- dumps-surface-tablets-in-five-minute-rant/)

<comment><USER4> I've got a friend who does wifi installs in stadiums and other large event spaces. This kind of install is the very definition of hostile networking environment. It cannot be easy to use lots of wifi devices with so many radios all blasting signals in a giant bowl.

Whats more egregious is the short time span given to fix things. Either the NFL needs to open that up, or have a whole ops team who does it for the teams and has a SLA related to making it work.

If I'm dealing with the pressure to perform that goes with running a NFL team, networking and communications infrastructure is about the last thing I'd want to worry about. Belichick is being quite restrained if he's only throwing the tablets. I'd probably crack it over my knee!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems that the bulk of his complaint was not with the Surface, but with the unreliability of the whole tech stack. There are a whole myriad of communications systems set up and he said in his full comments that they often do not get the stack until hours before the game. So when there are problems it is often too late to properly test and fix everything.

His full comments are here: [https://twitter.com/ZackCoxNESN/status/788411998006603776](https://twitter.com/ZackCoxNESN/status/788411998006603776)

<comment><USER5> Then why did you re-title it to "Bill Belichick Might Be a Mac Guy" when you posted it?

That's not the original title of the article. Macs are not mentioned anywhere in the article. It seems like you were the only one saying this...

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't retitle it, that was the original title. NYT changed it realizing it was clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great example of the principal-agent problem [1] that is so common in the enterprise IT world. The NFL is in charge of the hardware purchased and support of said hardware yet the teams are the ones who actually use the technology and suffer when it doesn't work correctly. The NFL doesn't particularly care about it because it has little impact on their end product or their bottom line (they are already cashing their sponsorship checks from Microsoft). The result is as Belichick suggest, there is little urgency for a fix from the NFL and the teams end up just abandoning the technology completely.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it is more likely that Belichick is just a Luddite, or to be more charitable, that the tech just isn't very good. In the ESPN article[1], he comments that nothing in the communication stack works reliably, whether it is the tablets, or the in-helmet comm systems, or whatever. People have tried to spin these tech failures in New England as something nefarious along the lines of what Auerbach used to do with the visiting locker room at the old Garden, but these outages hit the Pats often enough that I'm not convinced Belichick is Sauron, Spygate be damned.

[1] [http://www.espn.com/blog/new-england- patriots/post/_/id/4796...](http://www.espn.com/blog/new-england- patriots/post/_/id/4796733/bill-belichick-im-done-with-the-tablets-just-cant- take-it-anymore)

</comment><comment><USER8> He's notoriously bad with all technology. I love this clip of him talking about, and then trying to change the clock in his car for Daylight Saving Time: [http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england- patriots/09000d5d8226f...](http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england- patriots/09000d5d8226fa64/A-Football-Life-Car-trouble)</comment>


SeaGlide - <AUTHOR> http://www.seaglide.net/

<comment><USER2> I love seeing kids involved in projects like this. The excitement that goes alongside building these kinds of things is likely to keep them interested in similar projects in the future.

Does anyone know of any similar initiatives?</comment>


Will self-driving cars enable jerks? - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/january42017/index.html <comment><USER2> Let's put the question more realistically: "why would self-driving cars, which require a great number of cameras to function, and may have the capacity to record everything they come across, including license plates, etc., fail to report bad human driver behavior?"</comment>


Ask HN: Health insurance for self-employed? - <AUTHOR>

I recently graduated from college, moved to the Bay Area and I'm currently bootstrapping my company. I have let my Student Health Insurance expire (I know, I shouldn't have).
My question is, what are some of the Insurance plans / companies that entrepreneurs opt for? Is there anything in particular that should be considered before finalizing a plan?
(I am also a foreign national on F1 visa so I do not think HSA is an option for now)
I have looked at old posts on HN but these are several years old. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199651) <comment><USER2> A few other threads: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5244867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5244867) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6110551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6110551) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5023840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5023840)

My personal advise based on my personal preferences for insurance is to get the highest deductible you possibly can. The monthly cost for a single person in their 20's will be cheap. This will cover annual exams and stop you from going broke if you get really sick or hurt. This is especially good if it is unlikely that you will get sick.

I should note that many people disagree with me on this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Checkout eHealthInsurance.com</comment>


Thermal Testing Raspberry Pi 4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/thermal-testing-raspberry-pi-4/ <comment><USER2> This isn't documented anywhere I can find, but I think it should also be possible to flash the firmware from a 64-bit Ubuntu distribution. Afaik, the vcgencmd it needs is available is closed-source and only available as 32-bit binaries that also need some 32-bit shared libraries. Also, the Ubuntu PPA [1] that someone created only goes up to bionic, and I'm running the latest release, eoan. Still, with multiarch support, [2] this seems to create a working vcgencmd:

        $ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
        $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-raspi2/ppa
        $ sudo perl -pi -e 's/eoan/bionic' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-raspi2-ubuntu-ppa-eoan.list
        $ sudo apt update
        $ sudo apt install libraspberrypi-bin:armhf

and from there it looks like you can get the firmware updater stuff to run:

        $ git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom
        $ cd rpi-eeprom
        $ cat > from-ubuntu <<EOF
        #!/bin/bash
        export FIRMWARE_ROOT=$(pwd)/firmware
        export FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS=beta
        export VCMAILBOX=/usr/bin/vcmailbox
        mkdir backup
        export FIRMWARE_BACKUP_DIR=$(pwd)/backup
        export BOOTFS=/boot/firmware

        # Seems to want the vl805 executable from within $FIRMWARE_ROOT to be in the
        # path.
        export PATH=$FIRMWARE_ROOT:$PATH

        . $(pwd)/rpi-eeprom-update "$@"
        EOF
        $ sudo ./from-ubuntu -a
        *** INSTALLING EEPROM UPDATES ***
        BOOTLOADER: update required
        CURRENT: Fri May 10 18:40:36 UTC 2019 (1557513636)
         LATEST: Mon Nov 18 11:06:55 UTC 2019 (1574075215)
        VL805: update required
        CURRENT: 00013701
         LATEST: 000137ab
        EEPROM updates pending. Please reboot to apply the update.

When I reboot, I see the firmware update has actually taken.

[1] [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi)

[2] [https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO](https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. A few weeks ago I struggled for an hour to update my firmware from Ubuntu 19.10. Eventually I gave up and figured it would be easier to go through the normal channels so I created a second SD card with Raspbian to do firmware updating.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I almost ended up doing the same thing.

Another thing I haven't tried yet is the network/USB booting support in the beta firmware. It doesn't help you with the initial upgrade of course, but once you've done that it gives you two more alternatives to the second microSD card.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe that the beta has USB boot support - isn't it just network boot at the moment?

<comment><USER2> I think you're right; I mixed up what's planned [1] with what's available in beta.

[1] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md) says "The current schedule is to release network boot first, then USB boot."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This gentleman[1] has tested thermals before and after firmware updates on RPI4 with several active/passive heatsinks.

There are some clear improvements.

[1]:[https://youtu.be/VJC6OpGpq0Y](https://youtu.be/VJC6OpGpq0Y)

</comment><comment><USER6> I probably shouldn't poke fun- but I found it a little bit hilarious that we brought a Pi 4 to its knees on launch day in the Cambridge Pi Store just demoing a web application. The totally enclosed official case is a baffling idea and if memory serves it was a warm day to boot. Reminds me- I still haven't dremelled holes in mine. The case, not the Pi.

<comment><USER7> I think that says more about web tech than the Raspberry Pi.

<comment><USER8> Not really. The CPU generates 5W of heat which needs to be removed or it will throttle itself down. The way the default Raspberry Pi 4 chooses to remove heat is by interfacing the CPU directly with air inside a closed container. This does not work well.

As an aside, the reality is that the Raspberry Pi is not a particularly speedy computer even when not thermally throttled. It is close in non-graphics performance to x86 computers from the 2000s. Though using only 5W to do that is a huge improvement; that was the era when CPU heatsinks started getting so big they broke the CPU socket off the motherboard ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The gem is at the end of the article. Looks like you get double time oomph before the thermal throttling hits in if you turn your Pi to a vertical position.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if there are cases out there that specifically work with this fact...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice and detailed benchmarks, but I have one complaint that's similar to complaints I have about many similar benchmarks: I don't see any explanation of what they consider "idle". In my fairly cool room (20C-22C), the Pi took quite a long time to reach equilibrium temperature - even more than a bare board would have, since I was using a heatsink case. If a Pi hasn't been left sitting over an hour, I wouldn't trust an "idle" measurement.

Leaving mine overnight, while running a few server applications mostly idling. In my room it hit an equilibrium temperature of 53C. If I recall correctly, without running anything at all, Raspbian would hit over 50C. This was back in August.

I heard conflicting reports from other people - that their Pi was idling in the same case at 35-40C. The thing is, as far as I was able to determine, they were all reporting the temperature of the Pi within a few minutes of a cold boot. This doesn't make sense because the Pi takes time to reach equilibrium, especially with a case.

Right now, having been idling in the heatsink case for over 24 hours, my Pi is at 45C. That suggests a maximum of about 5C improvement on idle since August. (Probably less though, it's a few degrees colder in this room than it was in August.)

To be clear, they don't even report idle CPU temperatures anywhere as far as I can tell (other than implicitly in the thermal camera pictures), so they're not lying about anything. But it would be nice to see what "idle" is supposed to mean specified more clearly in benchmarks like these.

</comment><comment><USER12> The heat issues feels like some sort of boundary at which the question is asked:

"What is the raspberry pi? What defines it? What is its purpose,place and soul?"

Is it to be a hot machine that requires thermal management or is it something else?

</comment><comment><USER13> My heatsink case is cool to the touch these days, over the summer it was nearly too hot to touch. I thought it was down to the weather, but there is clearly more to it ;)

Nice work, guys!

<comment><USER14> The October firmware update (which will be updated automatically by `apt-get update` in raspbian) did a lot to decrease temperatures of the SoC, rather impressive really.

<comment><USER15> Semi-offtopic, but does anyone know how to upgrade between raspbian versions? Clearly it's not a rolling release model, but I don't think Ubuntu's do- release-upgrade works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What struck me was how poor the CPU speed management was.

The long-term outcome should have been 1GHz, not 600MHz, in most of the plots. The Pi jumps back-and-forth between 1GHz and 1.5GHz until it overheats, and then throttles all the way down.

The vertical orientation made a small difference in temperature but a huge difference in how long the Pi took to throttle precisely because of poor clocking schedule.

<comment><USER17> I think you read it wrong. The time to throttle is the time it took to go to 1GHz for the first time. The load is applied for 600s and then disabled, at which point the CPU goes to 600MHz due to lack of work.

<comment><USER18> Yeah that was my take too, they include some part of the sensor readings after the load was removed. Probably to show the temperature decay back to no-load conditions...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I picked up a RPi 4B the other day to use as a pi-hole[1] and was surprised to see it running at 65C while idling. It doesn't help that I have the board enclosed in the official case, which provides absolutely no airflow.

Everything runs fine at these temperatures, but all of the ports are hot to the touch. Under stress the SoC seems to reach 80C+, which I imagine would make connecting and disconnecting USB devices a fairly unpleasant experience.

[1]: [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

<comment><USER20> For comparison, I set up pi-hole today on an original (non-plus) Model 3B and it's sitting pretty at between 44 and 46 degrees Celsius - no case at the moment. Ambient temperature is controlled at around 20 degrees Celsius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anecdata: my pi4 with heat sinks in the clear plastic case it came with would regularly hard lock under normal loads (presumably thermal issue) until I put it in an actively cooled enclosure. Now it's fine.

Not sure if this was before or after these fw updates but it was two weeks ago on stable raspbian. I don't actively monitor the temp as it is remote.

</comment><comment><USER22> The kernel compile times at the end of the article is swapped by accident:

> Compilation finished in 5097 seconds – one hour, 24 minutes, and 57 seconds.

> Compilation finished in 2660 seconds – 44 minutes and 20 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's nice to see the Foundation continuously improve the Pi. Makes me happy to stay with it; instead of looking for marginally cheaper clones.

<comment><USER24> The problem with the Raspberry Pi is that it is based on dead IP after Broadcom fired the whole division and canceled the program.

It went ok the last few years as at least the CPU improves as the foundation makes an effort to release new SoC revision with updated ARM cores. However the GPU is in a dead end since quite some time and most likely this will never change.

<comment><USER25> Do you mean this story[0]? It's the only reference I could find.

[0] [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom- VC4-V3D-Developer-Left)

<comment><USER24> No, Eric wrote the open source driver for the GPU. There was actually quite a lot of effort invested into VC4 and that's why we still have it. But this is all software. [0]

The actual HW didn't change much and the reason is because they got all fired. [1][2] I will give you a few links but this happened in 2014/2015 so it's not so easy to find a lot of relevant things (James who commented in the forum worked for them):

[0] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&si...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&sid=7e97844c1dcf5c7c80c890ab31fa96de#p846710)

[1] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p8...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p893456)

[2] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_b...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_broadcom_thousands_laid_off/)

Edit: Back then I was a bit involved into QPU programming with the assembler which was written based on the open source documentation of the VC4. That's why I have seen all this discussion. [3] I doubt that Broadcom has done much more then maintenance on the GPU IP in the last few years because Raspberry Pi are their only customers.

[3] [http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html](http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html)

<comment><USER23> Sad to see the GPU IP linger, but at least it's just the GPU. It's not like Pis are meant for video rendering or training ML models or whatnot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just get a flirc case. Inexpensive, made of metal, and great thermals.</comment>


What are some good Django opensource projects like Discourse? - <AUTHOR> Projects like Discourse help me understand the how to the large projects are organized keeping code clean. Is there anything like Discourse for Django? <comment><USER2> The backend for Sentry is a great example of a well-architected Django project: [https://github.com/getsentry/sentry](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry)</comment>


Would love some feedback on my programming tutorial aggregator site - <AUTHOR> http://madrasa.ca

<comment><USER2> Choose a different name to avoid association with religious schools.</comment>


Show HN: If you write Markdown on iOS & need reference materials, try WritingKit - <AUTHOR> http://getwritingkit.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this app since June 2010, and just released a 3.1 update to the app yesterday. It's come a long way, and now very much stable for daily use.

Check out my homemade unedited screencast here for a taste of Writing Kit's text editing power: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5KgaL8LV2g&feature=youtu.be#t=01m00

Writing Kit is meant to give writers tools they need to finish their task: Dropbox sync, TextExpander, built-in browser, answers from DuckDuckGo, Instapaper & Readability access for materials, you name it.

iTunes link: <http://bit.ly/getwritingkit>

<comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to screencast: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5KgaL8LV2g&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5KgaL8LV2g&feature=youtu.be#t=01m00)</comment></comment>