ZFS v0.8.2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-0.8.2 <comment><USER2> I contributed a few patches to ZFS on Linux about 8 years ago - at a time when it was still very much in its infancy and panic'd when you looked at it in the wrong way.

It's incredible how far they've come. We're using ZFS on Linux on about 120 servers at work and it's rock solid. Snapshots are a life saver in our day-to- day ops.

<comment><USER3> Would you know how it compares to btrfs? I found btrfs easy to set up but with hard-to-debug rough edges.

<comment><USER4> zfs is really a study in cli ergonomics. It has a quite idiosyncratic CLI, which one might assume is a bad thing. But the CLI is so well thought out that learning this new "language" is quite intuitive.

btrfs uses a more traditional command, subcommand, args setup, which by itself is not a problem, but the actual command and subcommand structure is a dumpster fire to be charitable.

Try managing large groups of snapshots without custom tooling. The whole thing makes me sad really.

btrfs has a lot going for it at the architecture and disk format level (dedup is actually something theoretically useful, while the zfs design was flawed from the start), but the implementation has just never made it.

<comment><USER5> Dumb question as I haven't used the feature: Why is dedupe flawed? Is it because it requires "enormous" amounts of RAM? Does it eventually slow down writes?

<comment><USER6> Dedup on ZFS is problematic because ZFS, in exchange for some of its core useful features, promises that block locations on disk are immutable.

So the only place you can do dedup is inline, as the data is being written the first time, not after-the-fact.

In addition, this requires you keep a huge indirection table (the DDT, or dedup table) that needs to be read for all writes, so either that has to be kept in memory or on fast storage, or you've just turned every write into one or more random reads, plus writes.

This also means that even if you turn off dedup after turning it on, the performance implications remain until the DDT no longer contains any blocks (e.g. you rewrote all the data after turning dedup off).

There are feature proposals to make the performance of dedup less pathological, but nobody's taken up implementing them so far. (Someone even did a proof of concept implementation of one of them, and it still hasn't been finished and integrated.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imo ZFS is just awesome, as many things sprung from sun/solaris.

I first came in contact with it through solaris, and looking back at that stack with zfs, zones & software defined networking it just seems like such a contemporary fit. Recently I've looked a bit at smartos and joyents offering that kind of takes it the way I _thought_ it would take, back in the day, pre- oracle.

Been using ZoL for years now, both for private filers but also professionally as of late for things like physical docker/container hosts.

Just rock solid!

<comment><USER8> Agree.

Just a shame that Solaris wasn't Open Sourced sooner, as if it'd grown more traction we'd be in a different world now.

I think Linux kind of creeped up on them, and in the meantime Oracle got its grubby its on Sun, then embraced Linux itself.

Zones are /amazing/.

<comment><USER9> Oracle only got its grubby on Sun, because no one else saw any value doing a counter offer, including Google after doing their Java curved ball to Sun's licensing.

<comment><USER10> IBM actually offered $7b, but was outbid by Oracle back then.

<comment><USER9> Yes they did, but nothing prevented them to do a counter-offer, which wasn't seen as being worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe change the title? It's not ZFS v0.8.2, it's ZFS on Linux v0.8.2.

<comment><USER12> FreeBSD is migrating to ZoL: [https://papers.freebsd.org/2019/bsdcan/jude- the_future_of_op...](https://papers.freebsd.org/2019/bsdcan/jude- the_future_of_openzfs_and_freebsd/)

<comment><USER11> I didn't know that, but this is much bigger news to me. I have been always told that the biggest reason to use FreeBSD is ZFS a long time ago. Things has been changed that much since then.

<comment><USER13> On FreeBSD 11.x and 12.x (and older ones) the currently by default remains the old (not ZFS on Linux) ZFS implementation that has lots of FreeBSD additions like TRIM that was lacked on Linux.

FreeBSD forked ZFS on Linux GitHub repo and now its called ZFS on FreeBSD. You can try it already by installing these two ports:

\- sysutils/zol

\- sysutils/openzfs-kmod

Regards, vermaden

<comment><USER14> Damn, I could've used this a few weeks ago. I moved my NAS from bare Ubuntu + ZoL to FreeNAS, and got stuck on a read-only pool because of unsupported features such as userobj_accounting (1). I had to zfs send/receive to external drives and back again to work around this, which was annoying, to say the least.

[1] [http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Feature_Flags](http://open- zfs.org/wiki/Feature_Flags)

<comment><USER15> This is kind of standard faire though. I did a `zpool upgrade` on my root pool once and broke GRUB's ability to boot my system, since there were features enabled that it didn't understand (wouldn't have hurt anything to ignore, but GRUB wants to play it safe obviously).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone from Cannonical here? When can we get official backports for LTS version of Ubuntu? Cannot really upgrade servers to 19.10

<comment><USER17> You don't strictly need a backport (which I think will never happen, as the ZFS packages are locked to v0.7 on 18.04) - there's a PPA for it: [https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/zfs](https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/zfs).

<comment><USER15> Note that this PPA doesn't have 0.8.2 yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Always admired ZFS since when it came out. The talks by the creators were so enlightening.

The license for this is CDDL? Wasn't that the license for the original ZFS, which was the whole reason people had to port it? (apart from kernel sys calls, etc)

<comment><USER19> They didn't rewrite ZFS for Linux support, they did the syscall stuff in such a way that it's reasonably compatible license-wise. I don't know the specifics, I just know it's a forked codebase that improves compatibility with Linux.

FreeBSD moved to this new codebase because it is getting a lot of attention and better support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> ZFS 0.8 has native encryption.

Maybe v0.8.2 is close to the point where 0.8 is stable enough to upgrade?

<comment><USER17> I can't say about the specific version, but ZFS has a history of great stability, with very few isolated cases of data loss.

0.8 also has trim support :-)

<comment><USER21> ZFS on BSD has that track record. ZFS on Linux already has had a couple incidents in a relatively short track record.

The incident where updating your Ubuntu kernel resulted in data loss probably could not have occurred under the BSD model due to close coupling between the kernel and the filesystem.

<comment><USER6> To be fair to ZoL, at least the nastiest data loss bug I can think of (hole_birth) was cross-platform, so FBSD, ZoL, illumos, and everyone else in the OpenZFS family was equally affected.

<comment><USER21> I was thinking of this one.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797919)

The whole downstream/upstream model with different parts of the OS kernel / filesystem / userland moving out of sync with each other through multiple levels of backporting is not a positive one for reliability. FreeBSD is FreeBSD and the buck stops there. Responsibility is too diffuse in the Linux model to get the kind of reliability that FreeBSD has enjoyed.

I realize that I'm being a bit of a fuddy-duddy but it really didn't take too long at all for the ZoL team to start making dumb mistakes that cause data loss. Hopefully it's a learning experience and didn't happen again.

I myself have a dataset that I can't send from a FreeBSD system to my Ubuntu 16.04/ZoL backup server. It worked at one point, as of about a year ago it no longer does. When the send is finished, the client machine just spins forever. I've tried everything short of formatting and reinstalling the backup server. I tried incremental sends, I tried re-sending the whole thing, I tried killing the pool, updating everything and re-creating the pool, I tried messing with microcode in case it was a wayward regression from Spectre, etc etc. ZoL just won't receive that dataset anymore.

Best of luck to the ZoL guys but I guess FreeBSD is working well enough as a data storage layer for me. Too much weird shit going on with ZoL.

<comment><USER6> Ah yes, the zap shrinking bug, that was silly, but as the one I mentioned illustrates, not all of them (or even necessarily most of them, few though there have been) originate with ZoL.

Have you tried reporting the bug you're having with send/recv? I imagine people would care about that kind of reproducible failure.

Re: FBSD versus ZoL, go with what works for you. If something is working well enough, I'm not going to advocate changing it. (This tends to be an unpopular opinion among other people though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like there are no RHEL 8 packages yet, but I think this release fixes the build issues, so they'll probably happen soon.

<comment><USER13> ZFS being available since 2005 ...

BTRFS is developed since 2007 ...

... and Red Hat decides to reimplement this kind of pooled storage filesystem again with XFS on LVM now called Stratis ... not very bright.

<comment><USER22> I think Red Hat ultimately decided btrfs is not going to go anywhere, and ZFS is unfortunately a non-starter for licensing reasons, so from their perspective it really doesn't matter how good it is.

I suppose the benefit of using XFS and LVM is that they're both very well understood and widely used technologies. Sometimes incremental evolution is all you need.

I'm following the development with interest, because I think the approach has merits. Dave Chinner's talk about teaching XFS how to do snapshots and subvolumes was particularly interesting. The gist of it, as far as I understand, is that XFS can pretty much do those things already, but it needs better integration for performance and usability.

<comment><USER23> Red Hat doesn't have developers to support Btrfs, and it takes a lot of support if you're going to depend on constant backporting of fixes and features. All the major work on Btrfs happens upstream and RHEL kernels just aren't anywhere close to that. So to support this in an enterprise context with support plans, you'd have to have many knowledgable Btrfs developer and support staff.

Obviously it is going somewhere, upstream is very active, and SUSE uses it by default everywhere both enterprise and openSUSE. And they have the developers to support it. Facebook uses Btrfs quite a lot in production both servers and desktops.

<comment><USER24> _Red Hat doesn 't have developers to support Btrfs, and it takes a lot of support if you're going to depend on constant backporting of fixes and features._

Given how many kernel developers and filesystem developers they have, it would not be hard for them to hire btrfs developers or ask some of their kernel developers with a background in file systems to specialize in btrfs. I think the reasons are different: either it's because they have a lot of XFS developers on staff, fighting a transition to btrfs nail and tooth; or they simply believe that btrfs cannot be made good enough to support _their_ enterprise developers within a reasonable time frame.

<comment><USER22> I suppose requiring a transition might be the problem in the first place. XFS and LVM are things that are in use _now_. Though they might not be the most performant or the most convenient at this time, it makes for a strong strategy if you can bring in new features without requiring users to switch over to something completely new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Still no block-pointer rewrite? :P

<comment><USER26> No, but it's becoming less relevant now. Certain things thought to require bp rewrite (e.g. vdev removal) are now implemented without it.

<comment><USER25> I'd like to see background dedupe. Dedupe is not useful in many real-world situations because of ARC space requirements, but a COW filesystem ought to be able to find duplicated blocks and rewrite pointers at some point after the data is written; after all snapshots are a very specific type of deduplication, so most of the machinery is there to handle it.

I have a data store (nightly build archive) that gets almost 3x reduction in space used with dedupe, but the performance hit is just too big for us to use it.</comment></comment></comment>


Hello World in Go -- A Memcached Server - <AUTHOR> http://dustin.github.com/2009/11/12/gomemcached.html

<comment><USER2> Has darcs just disappeared off the radar? I'm using it for all my projects, though I'm not sharing wih anyone else, so I've never come under pressure to switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> darcs is a fine revision control system. I used to use it quite a bit. The biggest problem I ever had with darcs, in practice, was not having ghc available when I'd do an OS upgrade and thus having no ability to access my repositories.

I am a pretty huge fan of git, though (obviously) so all of my new projects and many of my older ones show up on github.

Otherwise, perhaps I'd be posting this source to <http://patch-tag.com/> instead. :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! My comment was actually supposed to appear on another story about git! I got confused ...

<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=939603>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are goroutines really that lightweight that this could handle thousands of simultaneous connections? If so, go is even cooler than I thought. If not, is there epoll/kqueue support yet?

<comment><USER4> You have to be careful how you use them. Many green-threaded runtimes convert blocking I/O to non-blocking, but it appears that Go does not. If you have N goroutines blocked on I/O, it looks like Go will use N+1 pthreads to support them; thus a goroutine-per-connection model with blocking I/O is basically the same as the old thread-per-connection model (as used by Varnish or the Apache thread MPM).

This stuff isn't entirely clear to me, so maybe someone from Go land can clarify.

<comment><USER5> I think the intent is to multiplex the goroutines on some smaller set of threads.

From the language FAQ (<http://golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html>): "The idea, which has been around for a while, is to multiplex independently executing functions - coroutines, really - onto a set of threads."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to see commentary on the error handling he decided on (basically: r = write(x, r) r = write(y, r) etc, with write being: func (x, ok): if (ok) { ... }

<comment><USER7> Yea that's probably an artifact of a C code. The correct way to handle this in go ( i think, i'm a beginner like everyone else ) is to pass around a request struct that contains an error channel and have the main connection handling gorutine select on this.

That's at least for bigger picture errors. On the method level you should use multiple return values to indicate erros (usually as last return value).

So r, err = write(y) { if (err!=nil) { request.errors <\- err; return } }

<comment><AUTHOR> The most important part is to stop doing the thing that isn't working.

If I communicate this to the channel and the channel is read by the current goroutine, then the channel's buffer must be large enough to handle the total number of errors that may occur in a single invocation or the goroutine will deadlock on itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see a sibling scripting language, desgined to be embedded in Go programs, with a very similar syntax to Go and optional typing.

<comment><USER9> Exactly my thoughts too. That would be an ideal server side programming tool. E.g. imagine a webserver written in Go with long polls, and the applications on it in GoScript. Or an XMPP (Wave) server. Or a distributed Map/Reduce engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome as always Dustin. Love reading your blog. Keep it up.</comment>


National Opt-Out Day Called Against Invasive Body Scanners - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/national-opt-out/ <comment><USER2> The TSA is now calling National Opt-Out Day "irresponsible."

John Pistole, TSA Administrator: "On the eve of a major national holiday and less than one year after al Qaida's failed attack last Christmas Day, it is irresponsible for a group to suggest travelers opt out of the very screening that could prevent an attack using non-metallic explosives." [http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protest...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protests- mount-over-safety-and-privacy-of-airport-scanners)

That, to me, doesn't jive with their stance that body scanners aren't a big deal because you can opt out. To me, it confirms that opt-out "enhanced pat- downs" were introduced to intimidate people into being scanned.

<comment><USER3> _"On the eve of a major national holiday and less than one year after al Qaida's failed attack last Christmas Day, it is irresponsible for a group to suggest travelers opt out of the very screening that could prevent an attack using non-metallic explosives."_

He seems to be overlooking the possibility that things are getting so bad with the TSA that increasing numbers of travelers would rather take their chances with terrorists and underwear bombs than submit to the TSA's heavy-handed, dehumanizing procedures.

<comment><USER2> And that no security measure at the airport will prevent a threat before the security checkpoint. With or without people opting out of the body scanners, security checkpoints are bottlenecks (something that the scanners have, in fact, exacerbated) and therefore vulnerable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Gandhi's non-cooperation attitude and shrewdness in dealing with unjust people or policies in power.

As an individual, you are powerless when you go through the security line. As a group, however, the American people have _all_ of the power. Because this is both a democracy and a capitalist country (however flawed it may be), if there is an _organized_ and _concerted_ effort against the TSA policies, they simply cannot stand. Congress would not be able to oppose a unified voice of the people saying "this is not okay" and the airlines would not be able to tolerate a significant reduction in customers (and therefore would put pressure on the TSA to change its policies).

Gandhi organized a "day of prayer and fasting" which was basically a general strike of all of India. It was a wake-up call to the British. If somebody organized a "do not fly" day where no one flew, that would probably be a bigger wake-up call than opting out of the scan.

Sometimes you have to give up some temporary convenience or comfort to send a message to those in power that you don't agree. During the Montgomery bus boycott, people stopped using the bus and this was extremely inconvenient but they would rather not trade their dignity for convenience.

<comment><USER5> The major difference between this situation and any efforts of Gandhi or the civil rights movement is one of leadership.

An entire country would (and did) follow Gandhi. I don't think there is a single person in the US whom everyone would follow for a day. Especially if it meant shutting down all business travel during that day.

<comment><USER4> I tend to agree; however, if the issue was important enough I think that a significant portion of our population would organize to achieve a goal. Look at how many people showed up for the rally to restore fear and/or sanity which actually didn't have any stated goals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ugh, it makes me sad to see everyone blaming _these_ people for "holding up the line." No, it's the _TSA_ , who decided to treat every passenger as a criminal suspect, who are holding up the line!

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope they're successful in getting TSA's ridiculous policy changed. One shouldn't have to choose between being unnecessarily irradiated and virtually strip-searched or being sexually assaulted (in any other context, TSA's new pat-down procedures would be classified as criminal sexual conduct) just to ride on an airplane.

<comment><USER6> It's just a normal pat-down, the kind that might be given by an officer of the law to someone reasonably suspected to be armed and dangerous. It's not like the pat-downs themselves are unusual, it's that the TSA doesn't have cause (or maybe even authority) to do these pat-downs.

Also, it's not sexual, so it can't possibly be sexual assault. Assault or battery is about the most you could claim.

<comment><USER8> TSA agents aren't officers of the law.

You might consider it non-sexual, but try asking a rape victim instead. I most certainly consider someone touching my private parts a sexual assault; and the fact that it's institutionalized doesn't make it any less a scandal. Don't be under any illusions; people who enjoy this kind of thing will see it as an interesting alternative career choice to school janitor etc.

If the scanners become mandatory here in the UK for going to the US (they aren't on Virgin Atlantic flying out of Heathrow, last time I checked, a couple of weeks back), I'll probably have to quit my job, as I will no longer want to travel.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's what I meant when I said they might not have authority. But they have been delegated that authority by the DHS, which does have cabinet-level executive status. So it's arguable.

It's interesting how you consider any interaction with your "private parts" to be sexual in nature. If you lean against a table, are you having sex with it? Are you having sex with your underwear right now?? The agent isn't touching you sexually, so it's not sexual assault.

<comment><USER9> If I lean against a table it's not sexual, but when the table grabs my balls it sure as hell is. What I find interesting is that you equate an inanimate object in contact with a sexual organ with a human being fondling your penis, vagina, or breasts.

I honestly care less about the pats, if a dude or dudette wants to touch my balls and buttocks to make sure I'm not packing (pun intended), then go ahead. But to see them extend this same courtesy to grandmothers and little children is disgusting, unnecessary, and irresponsible.

<comment><USER10> An argument could be made, a really depressing argument in so many ways, that including children and grandmothers in the TSA's sexual assaults is for their protection, because if they were exempt, they could be targets for hiding contraband.

<comment><USER9> But what happens when terrorist children shove explosives inside themselves through their anuses, or when terrorist grandma shoves a handgun inside her vagina?

It's a very slippery slope to climb without a safety-line mate. The minimal increase in security this new procedures allows is just too small in contrast to the vast damage it does towards people's liberties and towards avoiding precedents that could influence some Big Brother type of behavior.

This might sound awful, but a terrorist attack is most likely to be thwarted because some agents doing profiling decided to be extra careful with Muslims (and this is just an example, I'm not targeting Muslims in any way), than because we have xray machines that strip people naked.

<comment><USER10> I'm not making the argument that I noted, I'm just pointing out that it fits within the twisted logic of our current situation.

I agree with your points, and I don't feel any safer for the new procedures. Indeed, I feel less safe, because the TSA's efforts are misdirected, and the TSA has demonstrated its disdain for me, my rights and my dignity.

<comment><USER9> Oh no I got from your post that you where not making that specific point. Sorry if I came off as 'protective' of my ideals or something, I was just trying to convey why I thought that the TSA policies are rubbish. I agree with you that there is a counterpoint to the way I see everything regarding this, I just think that the counter point is as misguided as the policies are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm so tired of seeing pictures like this: [http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/11/airpor...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/11/airport_scan_f.jpg)

Classic red herring. You couldn't sneak a pistol through security before 9/11, you couldn't do it after 9/11, and the NakedTron 5000 doesn't do a damn thing to change that.

<comment><USER12> The press has been running stories about random people managing to get guns past airport security for literally decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anybody knows people in tv or radio, it'd be good to get the word out.

Opt-Out Day is Nov 24th. The day before Thanksgiving. It's going to be packed and slow without people opting out. Make sure to remind the mad people that it's the TSA that's forcing you get a pat down.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you opt-out, please be respectful to the TSA security people. They're just working and can't change the policies for you. Most of them are not in high positions and can't just walk away and find another job the next day/week. So they're not quitting no matter how rudely you treat them. No point to it and it'll just make them grumpy towards you and everybody after you.

It's best to just talk to them like a regular person and be nice about it. It'll make the pat down experience better for you and them. Just ask them to send the word upstream.

edit - Why was I voted down? Is someone suggesting that you should act like a douche bag to the staff?

<comment><USER14> See tptacek's comment from a few weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1849035>

<comment><USER13> The post may have gotten a lot of up votes, but it doesn't mean he/she is right.

I'm pretty sure that those low TSA people would LOVE to get a better job, but guess what they're there and that's the reality of it. In a better reality, we wouldn't have this security theater. However, we should focus our angry/energy towards solutions that will bring better results.

Besides, if they quit, there lines of people to take their place. The economy isn't that great and there's lots of people looking for jobs.

(I'm not saying let them keep their jobs and security theater. Just saying not need waste energy on being rude to them.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too few people will even give the scanners a second thought. Unfortunately, most people are satiated enough to watch their freedom gradually erode without realizing what's happening. I don't know how far this call to opt-out will spread, but if enough people opt-out to draw the attention of those who haven't paid attention yet, things might change.

It takes a lot of effort to match government sponsored indoctrination. If this works at all, it might lead to a lot more people waking up and saying 'no' to the bullshit constantly being shoved down their throats.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not sure how feasible or legal it is to do this, but a good strategy for a demonstration might be to hand out fliers to people waiting in the security line. On the fliers would be some information on the new security policy and body scanners and an example image of a body scan. Also attached would be a sticker that says "opt out".

That we people can make an informed and visible decision _before_ they encounter the TSA pressure.

<comment><USER17> Better yet, t-shirts. The front of the t-shirt is innocuous (so the security guards don't get alarmed too early), but the back explains the body scan process to everyone in line behind you, with example images.

<comment><USER10> Wear your Fourth Amendment tshirt whenever you fly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the great things about this backlash is that it springs mostly from just a handful of small, mostly web-based efforts. Jonah Goldberg's post arguably kicked off this latest, biggest anti-body-scanner outcry.

Among web sites:

<http://www.optoutday.com> is probably the most notable.

<http://wewontfly.com> is another biggie.

<http://www.imadethetsafeelmyresistance.com> (disclosure: I made it) has gotten a bunch of traffic too.

There are lots of others. This whole thing has heated up a lot in the last week or two. And I suspect the next week or two are going to be a lot bigger.

</comment><comment><USER19> As I just ranted on my blog: call your Congressional representatives and ask them how they would feel about their wives and kids being groped.

BTW, the backscatter scanners might prove to be very unsafe.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, I'll be flying that day, but I would probably opt out without the designated day.

<comment><USER21> Same here. Except I like to think of it as opting in for a rub down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This protest might not slow down security lines. These new scanners are pretty slow to begin with.

When I went through SFO recently it took 1-2 minutes to go through the scanner. The slowness seemed to be a combination of the instructions given to the flyer for positioning themselves inside the device, the slowness of the device itself, and the slack in the line.

In any case, I remember thinking that a pat-down might actually be quicker.

<comment><USER23> Recently when I choose not to go through the digital strip search they spent a good 20 minutes going through my stuff, asking me questions and getting a pat down.

<comment><USER24> The point is that if enough people are opting out, it's going to be a lot harder for them to take the time to individually harass people.

<comment><USER25> Not harder, just slower, and why would they care about that? There are many people with enough empathy and diligence to feel bad if you miss your flight. But I don't see how any of them could stomach working for TSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't get behind this, especially when it comes to kids. I really hope that someone finds proof they do store images and sues the US government/TSA for child pornography or something similar. While I doubt this opt-out day will gain serious traction to make a decision, I agree that the best thing to do is continue to call media attention to and scrutinize it.

<comment><USER27> _The TSA has asserted that the machines cannot store pictures, but security personnel at a courthouse in Florida were found to not only have saved images but shared them among colleagues in order to humiliate one of their coworkers._

<comment><USER26> I saw that, but it's not enough. Someone needs to send some of these pictures (even better, pictures of congress members) to Wikileaks or a similar organization to really push this forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I fly out the Friday after this and will absolutely be opting out.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm emigrating from Canada to New Zealand and we're flying on Nov. 25.

Since I'm near the border, we're flying from Detroit to Fort Worth and then LA.. I am not looking forward to this flight.

I've already had dozens of medical x-rays in the past few months, and don't particularly want to get another dose, however low it may be.

On the other hand, opting out sounds really unpleasant. I especially don't want my wife potentially suffering that indignity at the hands of a male TSA agent (as some people have reported).

I don't think I have the balls to opt-out this time around.. I just want to survive the 48 hour trip intact, with all my luggage.. but this will likely be the last time I fly through the US.

<comment><USER30> I've opted out twice and it really hasn't been a big deal. It's slightly slower, but the security guys treated me fine. It was no more invasive than being patted down before entering a nightclub to make sure you aren't carrying anything pointy.

Given your health concerns, opting out seems like the clear choice (though bear in mind I'm pulling from a sample size of only 2).

<comment><USER31> What kind of nightclubs do you go to? I've never seen that before. The most has been to check for ID.

<comment><USER30> Welcome to Atlanta! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There seems to be debate about whether or not this day is good or bad. But it is pretty simple if the scanners are good the day is bad, if the scanners are bad then the day is good.

This is the real issue, but there has probably been alot of debate about this already? What made you take your current stance?

I went though the body scanner this Monday in Cincinnati, well aware of the fact that they can see your penis etc (and it was cold that day...). It didn't bother me that much, but it was much more time consuming than going through the old metal detectors, and I don't like the fact that this could be harmful (but I haven't researched how credible this is).

<comment><USER8> We have to draw the line somewhere; if not here, they'll push the line further, and further. The TSA has no motive to do a cost-benefit analysis: the force pushing them forward is risk, no matter how small, but the only force pushing back against them is how much budget they can get out of the American taxpayer. The saliency of terrorism fears overpowers analytic reason in too many people.

A quick search indicates there are over 87,000 flights daily in the US alone; that puts the number at over a _quarter billion flights_ without a successful terrorist incident _in the absence_ of these scanners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would recommend taking this one step further. Let's all find a day in the next few months where we simply refuse to fly. We can call it "dignity day". If air traffic was significantly down because of this, the airlines would start pressuring the TSA to back off. After all, keeping shareholders happy trumps whatever safety concerns we might have.

<comment><USER24> This would be useless for the same reason that "Gas Out" boycotts are useless.

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18492185/>

The only way to make an impact is to fly less, not to shift your flying dates around to avoid a given day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think I will buy a ticket somewhere just so that I can participate.

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of all those Facebook groups telling people to protest OPEC by not buying gas on X day.

<comment><USER36> The gas "boycotts" are stupid, because they just shift sales to the days before and after. This could have a meaningful impact, because it really will increase the number of molestations that TSA agents have to perform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Really disappointed in the hackernews community for downing dissenting opinions in this thread. I understand this is an emotional issue for people but that doesn't excuse for immaturity. Fortunately my karma is pretty meaningless to me as much as I like to watch it go up (or down.)

<comment><USER9> You called the communities opinion pathetic, based on some erroneous what "ifs" you came up with. Lot's of people just gave you their point of view on why you're wrong and others just down voted you because you didn't back up anything you said with facts. Here's my take:

1) I don't care about anyone seeing me naked, I've been working out for years, four times a week to look like I look now and if could walk butt naked everywhere I would. That doesn't mean that it's alright to look at other people's naked bodies, and sure as hell doesn't make right the possibility of a predator looking at naked children.

2) Regarding the scanner's radiation in no way is a healthy thing, and in the absence of actual proof stating if it's really negligible or if it poses a serious health risk, everyone should consider it dangerous. You're basically saying that it's OK to walk through that tight dark alley in the middle of a bad neighborhood at midnight because there's no proof that anyone has been killed or mugged there. I'd rather avoid that kind of situation unless completely necessary thank you very much.

You wanted a rational discussion so I'm giving you a rational answer (I have no emotional issue with the topic at hand). I don't care about people touching me or seeing me naked, and I do care (albeit very little) about the potential health risks. I find your comment on how seeing someone's body through X-rays is not a big deal, but seeing someone's luggage through X-ray is a violation of privacy, preposterous and honestly laughable. Tell me what the big difference between looking into your luggage and looking at your naked body is that makes the latter so unimportant in comparison to the former.

You made a comment for the sake of disagreeing (instead of saying anything of any value for the discussion) and then made some utterly incompetent remarks all the while calling people immature and basically saying their opinions have no value because you believe we're all cattle in the herd of the Anti-TSA fad. While I don't agree there was a necessity for down-votes, you're comments did add no value whatsoever so the people where in a way correct to do so. Next time if you're going to disagree do it politely and state facts and opinions instead of trying to come of as the better person.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the feedback, however I did not call the community's opinion pathetic, nor did I state a bunch of ifs. In fact I did not even use the word "if" that I could find, nor did I state conditionals in any other way. I did say there was a pathetic lack of rational discussion, and I was not referring to HN specifically, but instead the general public discourse.

I did not comment "for the sake of disagreeing," but rather because I strongly disagree with the prevailing group think going on. This policy was poorly presented to the public, but that does not excuse its butchering, nor the wholesale dismissal of the TSA.

I also think it's wrong to pile on a bunch of decent people working as TSA agents just because of a couple bad anecdotes that made the news. Further, I think the rationale behind the policy, ways to limit abuse, and the trade-offs should be the subject of discussion. Instead it's a bunch of "fuck the police" without consideration for those of us in favor of having secure airline flights.

I don't see how being searched for weapons and explosives before boarding an aircraft is a violation of privacy, and finding ways around a more thorough search does not mean a more thorough search shouldn't be implemented.

You are free to fly your own plane without such searches, or to drive, walk, take a train, etc - however if you get on a plane with other people you simply do not have a right to not be searched, any more than you do when entering a courthouse, having a private dinner with the President, or going to a nightclub. Those policies are implemented to counter real dangers and threats, and your right to privacy does not prevail here.

I just got off a flight from OAK-SEA without incident or encounter, a few helpful pointers, and plenty of courtesy.

<comment><USER9> I get that you didn't mean it as a put down, I was just expressing to you how it read for me (and probably for a lot of people). I didn't mean to come off as aggressive towards you specifically, I was more being aggressive towards the idea itself.

Now I don't see where the general disdain relates to the TSA agents themselves, with the exceptions of a few posts stating that people that work as TSA agents would resign as a result of this policies, and I agree with you in that they aren't the ones that should have to deal with out unhappiness with the policies.

It's not that people think that they have a right to not be searched, it's that people think they have a right to not be treated in a way that demeans them and that violates some of the basic human rights they posses. There is no expectation of privacy on an airport, and as such you should be searched for dangerous artifacts and weapons, but that doesn't mean that you should be stripped by a machine or 'fondled' and 'groped' without a reason. There is no expectation of privacy while walking down the street or getting into a bus, and as such, but that doesn't give the right to anyone to take naked xray pictures of your person or to touch you in way you not deem appropriate.

You might get plenty or courtesy on behalf of the TSA agents, and that's great; however the fight is not with the agents themselves, it's with the policies that demand people to submit to potentially damaging irradiation or to a search procedure that proves to be invasive and with which you don't feel comfortable with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This anti scanner fad stinks of mob mentality and hysteria. There is no evidence images have been stored at airports or that harm is caused by scans. There is a pathetic lack of rational discussion of factual policies and why such policies might be necessary, whether we like them or not.

I expect more from the HN crowd.

Someone want to fill us on on facts instead of speculation and fear mongering?

<comment><USER38> Let's start with this:

In a free society, people are being coerced to participate in a security procedure that violates their privacy. Don't want to go through the porno scanners? Okay, punk — have fun being aggressively _groped_ in punishment.

You don't get to enact this kind of invasive, extreme policy on a whim. Extreme measures call for extreme circumstances and at this point, _no one_ has made any sort of compelling case for the necessity of seeing the American public naked or grabbing them by the nuts.

No one asked for this. And no one gave permission for this, aside from bureaucrats with more agenda than sense.

Finally, anyone dedicated to destroying themselves and others with a nonmetallic explosive is simply going to shove it up their ass. No pat down can detect that. So what, beyond further terrorizing the public, is the point?

The terrorists groups are a bunch of amateurs. If you want to see real terror, call up some bureaucrats.

<comment><USER37> We have always been coerced into procedures that violate our privacy when we fly. If we were not, terrorists would regularly board aircraft with guns and ammo.

From a shitload of personal travel (I fly twice a month) I have found 95% of the TSA to be good humored and responsible. The situation today is fa better than it was when run by private companies.

<comment><USER31> "far better than it was" ... citation needed? I thought the GAO has reported several times that it's as easy to get "bomb parts" and other weapons through TSA security as it was in the pre-TSA days.

I've been trying to find the report. The closest I got to was one on "TSA's Cost and Performance Study of Private-Sector Airport Screening" which said there are methodological problems in the TSA's report on the cost of private security over TSA-base ones. It pointed out that a handful of airports (including SFO) use private security.

So, how has SFO compared to LAX?

<comment><USER37> I don't fly to LA.

By far better I mean the procedures are faster, better explained, and the operation is more professional.

My point is not to advocate government run security, but to point out that all this reactionary criticism of TSA is unjustified and it's crowdthink going on right now.

<comment><USER31> But is the security any better? Back in the 1990s the procedures were faster (because there was less checking) and better explained (because there were fewer things to explain). Does 3-1-1 and taking off of shoes make us more secure? If not, then the professionalism is unwarranted.

And every study report I've seen says that outside of a few things (secure doors, which the airlines fought against in the 1990s; and halting the practice of responding to hijacker demands), the overall security is not made better by this ever-increasing level of passenger scrutiny.

<comment><USER37> By this logic, we could drop all security checks. I'm sure no one would ever board a plane strapped with explosives...

<comment><USER31> That's not what I said and your logic makes no sense.

A few months ago we had security X. We now have security Y, which is more expensive and more intrusive. Is that change justifiable? The TSA has not really justified this, which is easy to see from the Government Accountability Office reports.

A decade ago we had security A. We now have security Y (still). The same argument holds - are flights more secure, and which security factors are beneficial and which are not? Quite clearly the secure doors and rejection of the policy to agree to hijacker demands are effective against a broad range of attacks meant to use airplanes as a directed weapon. This is a security change I would not drop.

But since the GAO has shown that it's as easy to smuggle in "bomb parts" into an airport during periods A and Y, there is quite clearly limited improvement in the effectiveness of preventing people from blowing up planes. Note that this is a different security threat than in the previous paragraph.

How here does this equal to a logical conclusion that we should drop all security checks? That only makes sense if you think that none of the security screenings work, which I quite clearly did not say.

Oh, and in your original post you said you "found 95% of the TSA to be good humored and responsible." If you deal with 3 TSA people each trip then every 5 trips you'll be dealing with a non-good humored or non-responsible TSA member. If in a 1990s-era airport you found that only 90% of the staff was the same, but you only needed to deal with a single magnetometer staff, then you would have problems only every 7 trips. More professional staff doesn't necessarily mean a better experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My First Hack. What's yours? - <AUTHOR> http://danhough.com/blog/my-first-hack/

<comment><USER2> My first hack was a bulletin board I wrote in 1984 for a Commodore Vic-20. It had multiple message areas ("rooms"), private mail and an online game. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or private. There were about sixty rooms with topics ranging from string theory to general chit chat.

It was very popular even though it had only one dialup connection at 300 baud. The average user spent more than an hour on it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone wanna share their first hack here?</comment>


[not NIST] PHC – password hashing competition – source code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bsdphk/phc

<comment><USER2> More details at: [https://password-hashing.net/](https://password- hashing.net/)

Finalists (marked in red) at: [https://password- hashing.net/candidates.html](https://password-hashing.net/candidates.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Competition at [https://password-hashing.net](https://password-hashing.net)

Finalists (marked in red) at [https://password- hashing.net/candidates.html](https://password-hashing.net/candidates.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy to see how much success this project has seen. Here's hoping that we get some demonstrably resilient algorithms out of this.</comment>


Forget Tech, Big Oil Is Doling Out America's Fattest Paychecks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/shale-country-upstages-silicon-valley-in-fat-paycheck-lure <comment><USER2> Before 2016 they were paying $20,000 _a month_!</comment>


$5000 Preorders in 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.sketchcase.com/blog/5000-preorders-in-24-hours <comment><USER2> How do you price something, when you have no idea how much each unit costs to produce?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a rough idea. I even shared how you can make one on the DIY page. The economy of scale shows that the more you produce, the cheaper it becomes to produce each unit. DIY was the maximum cost to produce one and you just work from there. Work out a rough estimate of the cost of the material, packaging, shipping, labor, and the fixed cost (vinyl cutter, etc).</comment></comment>


Rrtr Is Dead, Long Live React Router - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/rackt-and-roll/rrtr-is-dead-long-live-react-router-ce982f6f1c10#.tmh7pl32d <comment><USER2> Sounds like the guy who forked had some legit beef (and wasn't just being prissy, as I saw some people imply). Glad they could work it out.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you do what you do? - <AUTHOR>

I thought I loved web development, but recently I feel like I've plateaued. I'm not wealthy, and now it feels like I'm working just to survive, not out of some divine passion. It scares me because I've recently turned twenty and I feel I need to start making some decisions.
This got me thinking about all the other people on HN. I know some people here can be very evangelical about their work publicly, but I want to know the true reasons people here do what they do.
Do you work to survive?
Do you genuinely think you're changing the world?
Do you just love what you do?
I think knowing about other people's situations will help me a lot. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I work for other people to survive. I work on projects that I find interesting to stay sane and hopefully change the world at least a little. Of course I try to keep those two lined up, but it doesn't always work out that way. That doesn't necessarily mean its time to move on... if you are in a stable work situation where you can pursue what you really want to be working on the side that can be a really good thing.

Could I do something else? I write a little fiction when the mood strikes if that ever took off I would be tempted to see where it went, but writing software scratches that same creative itch and is a much more reliable source of income.

</comment><comment><USER3> Over the course of my 24 years in technology I've felt like this many times. It feels like you hit the valley floor and you don't see the mountains on the other side.

After the big Y2K push. I was making a ton of money and had lots of money in the bank, but was working on uninspiring projects that just felt like I was going to work just to pay the rent. I left that company and moved thru several positions with different startups. Some had passion and some where just created to steal money from investors (literally).

Whatever you're feeling now, will pass if you are focused on some sort of goal.

Take some time and think about what you really enjoy about technology, what you'd like to learn and where you'd like to go. Then create some kind of outline of how to get there. It will help you the next time you feel this way.

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> Great advice. When you're that young you barely know who you are, let alone figure out your life's calling. I'd just add that every step along your career journey (no matter how random or seemingly insignificant) will help you get there.</comment></comment>


Tea and the Value of Doing Nothing - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You forgot the URL. Try submitting again.</comment>


A tutorial on how to make a complete game from scratch using Lua and LÖVE - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/30 <comment><USER2> This is awesome</comment>


Cows wearing VR headsets might produce better milk - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/26/cows-with-vr-headsets/ <comment><USER2> It's a disturbing dystopian thought, cows packed in narrow, closed locations, with a VR to make them think they're in a idyllic field. They would effectively be in the same situation humans were in the Matrix...

<comment><USER3> Just wait until VR is good enough to do office work in.

Also, the Matrix would have been better had Neo woke up as a dairy cow after taking the red pill.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Intellectually simulating Podcasts/conversations/Talk - <AUTHOR> What are some of really intellectually simulating podcasts/talks/videos you have come across. In any of the categories. <comment><USER2> In Our Time with Melvin Bragg from BBC Radio 4. It's a colossal podcast series split into six podcasts discussing Literature, Culture, History, Philosophy, Religion, and Science. Each episode Melvin Bragg brings together a panel of professors and experts (mostly from within the UK) to discuss a topic, event, or famous figure.

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish from Farnham Street. "Master the best of what other people have already figured out" sums it up.

EconTalk with Russ Roberts from the Hoover Institution. Russ brings on distinguished guests to talk about economics, finance, and more. It's a neat way to discover interesting thinkers. The topics are far ranging: he once brought on Judith Donath to talk about human-computer interaction and online communities and identities.

<comment><USER3> I've really liked the BBC content that I've managed to listen to. But their catalog really show the navigation, discovery mismatch between established publishers and the podcast networks.

Podcast UIs need trees or facets or something, to ease drill down.

Much as I've disliked the NextStep (iTunes) panel navigator, I really miss it on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lex Fridman's AI Podcast. He gets to invite a lot of very interesting people (not just from AI research space).

[https://lexfridman.com/ai/](https://lexfridman.com/ai/)

My personal favorite episodes are with Chris Lattner, Bjarne Stroustrup and Jim Keller.

<comment><USER5> he also interviewed Knuth, one of the better ones as well IMO!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Revolutions" by Mike Duncan, its a survey through most of the important liberal political revolutions of the western world. Its extremely informative but his conversational style makes its totally accessible and stimulating.

<comment><USER7> I'd also highly recommend his History of Rome podcast

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eric Weinstein's "The Portal"

Lots of episodes of Joe Rogan (Depending on the guest)

Brett Weinstein's "Dark Horse Podcast"

Rationally Speaking by Julia Galef (Been on hiatus for a while, though)

Uncommon Knowledge by Hoover Institution (I don't appreciate some of their conservative views, but they have interesting guests and are a good way to break the liberal bubble)

<comment><USER9> I just subscribed to Uncommon Knowledge, thanks for the reference. I am a very far left liberal, but if I have to talk politics then I prefer to doing so with my conservative friends rather my with liberal friends. I think having my own viewpoint just reflected back at me gets boring.

<comment><USER10> I will check this one out (the Hoover one), but I'm skeptical.

I could see, in theory, reading or listening to some conservative stuff, but it just never seems to be honest. Or...lacks basic human decency. Is outright racist. etc.

I do remember, at least think I do, 20 years ago -- you could find at least some people being serious on the right. Eh, I was probably just being naive.

Hoover - last time I saw something from them - it was basically VDH arguing for total war or something.

And...what is with billionaires buying universities' prestige? It's kind of like you can have excellent global heating reporting in the WSJ, and then their OpEd page will say, 'There is no evidence of heating.' Same thing with Hoover and Stanford. Or the Kochs buying...everything. I guess Unis are on even shakier ground now. :-/

...checked them all out. Not for me. Except one Rationally Speaking episode about whether global poverty/rate is good/bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.econtalk.org/](https://www.econtalk.org/) Fascinating insights into economics, with a Hayekian bent. Lately has been diverging into many other topics related to philosophy and religion, but always interesting.

<comment><USER12> Econtalk is by far my favorite podcast and it blows my mind that one can get quality content like it free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Conversation with Tyler is a good one too. Check it out at [https://conversationswithtyler.com/](https://conversationswithtyler.com/).

<comment><USER14> +1. His conversation with Neal Stephenson is a fun entry point. A recording and transcript is here: [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler- cowen-neal...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-neal- stephenson-science-fiction-writer-7fbe020e60b6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would highly recommend the "In our Time" podcast by the BBC. The host gets three experts to discuss a very wide range of subject from history to science to art.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hardcore History (Dan Carlin) [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history- series/](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/)

In Our Time (BBC) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl)

But there are many interesting programmes and podcasts on BBC Sounds. Worth browsing generally. Example of one currently available:

The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pw9tw](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pw9tw)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like the podcast feed of The Syllabus[0], It's run by Evgeny Morozov, one of my favourite technology writers.

It's a weekly curated collection of interesting podcast episodes, focussed around philosophy, technology, political economy & social justice. It's my favourite source of new ideas I wouldn't encounter anywhere else, I often find interesting perspectives in their collection.

[0]: [https://the-syllabus.com/goods/best-of/best-of-podcasts/](https://the- syllabus.com/goods/best-of/best-of-podcasts/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The Art of Manliness Podcast.

Brett actually reads the material that the guest is coming on to talk about.

Shocking, I know.

He lets his guests talk, but reigns them in and directs the conversation well. His choice of guests reinforces the 'manliness' themes, of course, but he gets a lot of great female guests too. Each episode gets a full written transcript too, along with a lot of great links and other resources.

I often find myself using bits from nearly each show and thinking about the material for weeks afterwards

[https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/](https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/)

Some favorite episodes:

The Case for Blue Collar Work With Mike Rowe: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/mike-rowe- interview/](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/mike-rowe-interview/)

How to Be a Creative Genius Like da Vinci: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/da-vinci-walter- isaa...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/da-vinci-walter-isaacson- interview/)

Jack London's Literary Code: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-579-jack- lon...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-579-jack-londons- literary-code/)

St. Augustine's Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/st-augustine- philoso...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/st-augustine-philosophy/)

Babe Ruth and the World He Made: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/babe-ruth-jane- leavy...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/babe-ruth-jane-leavy- interview/)

Inside the Gangsters' Code: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/gangsters-code- lou-f...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/gangsters-code-lou-ferrante- interview/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Right now, if you're looking for advanced discussions related to SARS-CoV02, is suggest this week in virology, [https://microbe.tv/twiv](https://microbe.tv/twiv) (I didn't double check http vs https or www vs not). Right now they are getting some really good corona- virologist guests and they don't pull intellectual or depth punches to appeal to every layman. There's a lot, maybe look for episodes with field-expert guests.

<comment><USER20> +1. Twiv is superb. Someone recommend this podcast on HN a few weeks back, and I've been hooked on it. I think it's one of the best sources for Corona news. The hosts are good too. I think they do great job of breaking down complex topics so layman like me stand a chance of understanding it. I've learnt a great deal about viruses, vaccines and immunology in the 2 weeks I've been listening to it. It really is worth a listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surprised no one has mentioned [https://darknetdiaries.com](https://darknetdiaries.com) yet!

The podcast covers the stories of hackers, and the stories behind hacking attacks like Stuxnet. The creator comes from the cybersecurity field, so episodes don't shy away from including technical details. Each episode is well researched and very interesting. It is by far my favorite podcast.

</comment><comment><USER22> Science Talk has been a longtime staple of mine: [http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/science-talk](http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/science- talk)

I know you asked for conversations/talk and John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed is a monologue, but wow is it a well-told and researched monologue. [https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene- reviewed](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed)

I recommend it for anyone who wants to think more deeply about all things, including those which we previously might have considered unworthy of our mind cycles, such as the Taco Bell breakfast menu.

</comment><comment><USER23> No Agenda by former MTV VJ Adam Curry and former PC Mag columnist John C. Dvorak! [http://www.noagendashow.com/](http://www.noagendashow.com/) They do media deconstruction and discuss stories the media can't talk about. They have no advertising and use a fascinating "Value for value" model, people donate based on the value the podcast gives them instead of monthly subscriptions (like Patreon), for some it's $5, others it's $500, and for some it's $0

<comment><USER24> I am always amazed how much people are willing to give.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast.

[https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/)

<comment> Ono-Sendai Yup, really very good, especially the physics ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [1] - _Partially Examined Life_ \- [https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/](https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/) \- The most informed and engaging philosophy podcast I've come across.

[2] - Erik Davis' _Expanding Mind_ \- [https://expandingmind.podbean.com/](https://expandingmind.podbean.com/) \- Covering various fringe topics like psychedelics, religion, the occult, underground culture, and other forms of high weirdness.

[3] - _Radiolab_ \- [https://www.kqed.org/radio/program/radiolab](https://www.kqed.org/radio/program/radiolab) \- Still good after all these years. Early episodes were more sciency and philosophical, newer episodes are a mix of science, politics, and _This American Life_ style vignettes on random subjects.

[4] - Dan Carlin's _Hardcore History_ \- [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore- history-series/](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/) \- Carlin makes history interesting like no one else. Favorite series: _The Wrath of the Khans_ , _Blueprint for Armageddon_ , _Death Throes of the Republic_

</comment><comment><USER27> I find podcasts with a good bit of humor fill this spot for me personally. Here's a couple that I regularly listen to, degree of "intellectualness" varies, but they all have episodes that require attention and make me think.

Radiolab - Very well known, you've probably already listened. I like it because the hosts are genuine and they tell good stories. Older episodes hit the spot better than newer for me.

The Infinite Monkey Cage - Science based panel show. If you like things like QI, this is similar, but less gimmicky. Real science discussions, plenty of jokes.

Judge John Hodgman - This isn't "sciency" but it does make me consider my position on social norms, while also being pretty dang entertaining.

Revolutions (Mike Duncan) - This is a fantastic history based podcast. The first episode or two in a series are always dry as he paints an overview of what's coming, but it's worth chugging through. I strongly recommend his third series on the French revolution, Mike does a fantastic job making history about the people and not about fluff like dates/locations/memorized crap. This podcast could have replaced most of my history classes in school and I'd be a better person for it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have three favorites: Lex Fridman's AI podcast, Azeem Azhar's Exponential View, and recently I have also started listening to Eric Weinstein's Portal.

Before the covid-19 period, I used to hike multiple times a week with often large groups of hikers. Now, with social distancing I have been mostly hiking by myself and I find hiking with either having a phone call with a friend or listening to a podcast makes very long solo wilderness hikes less lonely.

</comment><comment><USER28> Physicist/geneticist Steve Hsu and linguist/neuroscientist Cory Washington have an extremely good podcast called Manifold. This episode in particular is a good introduction to the show: [https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/04/vineer-bhansali- physic...](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/04/vineer-bhansali-physics-tail- risk.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER29> Deconstructing Yourself: interviews about Buddhism, meditation, neuroscience, ... [https://open.spotify.com/show/4oG8x34GxVEKakCTNalxDh?si=-oCw...](https://open.spotify.com/show/4oG8x34GxVEKakCTNalxDh?si=-oCwFwZKTmmNnG_wH5b36w)

Some episodes of the Tim Ferriss show.

</comment><comment><USER30> I quite like [http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org](http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org) if you can get past the very annoying intro music. Whether it's stimulating or simulating is for you to judge.

<comment><USER8> I wonder where Julia has been. I know there's been the pandemic, but the podcast was already done remotely. Her last tweet was back in November. Hope she's okay and will eventually bring the show back.

<comment><USER30> There is a note about a "hiatus" on the website though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here are some of my recent favorites. Important to note, I find one good podcast out of like 5-10, most podcasts are not worthy of a listen. However here are some of my thought provoking favorites:

\- The Portal with Ryan Holiday \- The Knowledge Project with Jason Calacanis \- Future Thinkers with Ken Wilber, all episodes are worth a listen, my favorite is: Clean Up, Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up \- Future Thinkers with Bonnita Roy \- Conversations With Tyler with Ben Westhoff Conversations With Tyler with Ted Gioia \- Y Combinator with Russ Roberts

<comment><USER32> unblobbed:

\- The Portal with Ryan Holiday

\- The Knowledge Project with Jason Calacanis

\- Future Thinkers with Ken Wilber, all episodes are worth a listen, my favorite is: Clean Up, Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up

\- Future Thinkers with Bonnita Roy

\- Conversations With Tyler with Ben Westhoff

\- Conversations With Tyler with Ted Gioia

\- Y Combinator with Russ Roberts

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My preference is history podcasts with single narrators which are generally a fixed length 45 minutes to an hour.

You Must Remember This A good podcast on the history of Hollywood and has some interesting insights if you're into old movies. This episode on Marilyn Monroe was interesting just to show how little she started out with: [http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustre...](http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/2/24/star- wars-episode-viii-how-norma-jeane-became-marilyn-monroe-ymrt-34)

The History of Ancient Greece This can get bogged down in terminology some times, but its necessary due to the amount of detail the podcast gets into. This episode on Pericles and his role in Athenian democracy I found to be interesting because of the details on the extremes they went to: [http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2017/05/044-democra...](http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2017/05/044-democracy- under-pericles.html)

Tides of History This has a lot of flavor and is pretty good at framing topics. I really liked the insight that Charles V was in a sense the Paul Atreides of Middle Age Europe. [https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of- history/](https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/)

</comment><comment><USER34> For a studiously centrist look at politics, I just got done with Jonah Goldberg => [https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69305785&refid=asa](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69305785&refid=asa)

If you find politics emetic, the Futility Closet is somewhere between Paul Harvey and Ripley's Believe it or Not => [https://www.futilitycloset.com/podcast/](https://www.futilitycloset.com/podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER35> The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe has been a weekly must-listen for me over the last decade+. They cover "science news, critical thinking, bad science, conspiracies, and controversies".

</comment><comment><USER36> The most consistent source of intellectually stimulating talks I have found is, by far, The Great Courses series by The Teaching Company. They're high quality recordings of full college lecture series coving many many topics. Honestly some of the most rewarding content I've consumed in my life.

They can be found on Audible for very fair prices. They also have a video streaming platform, The Great Courses Plus, that's very cheap.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Philosophize This!" Start at the earliest episodes and work your way up!

</comment><comment><USER38> I love the freakonomics podcast, especially when it gets into behavioral economics. There's a ton of good episodes. If you've never listened before try the Trader Joe's episode.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a long time (almost 20 years) fan of PTI on ESPN, I finally began listening to the Tony Kornheiser show, which is a daily podcast.

I like it very much - a mix of sports and pop cultural commentary and some very high profile guests (along with recurring guests on topics like film, food, etc.)

It's a bit diminished right now - only runs three days per week and, obviously, they are reaching a bit now with whatever sports or film commentary they might have ...

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.macrovoices.com/](https://www.macrovoices.com/) Macroeconomics and finance podcast on the rapidly evolving economic situation. Also highly recommend RealVision on the same topic: [https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBH5VZE_Y4F3CMcPIzPEB5A](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBH5VZE_Y4F3CMcPIzPEB5A)

</comment><comment><USER41> The How To Write Funny podcast [https://howtowritefunny.com/podcast/](https://howtowritefunny.com/podcast/) is quite entertaining and give a lot of insight into what's happening behind the scenes of comedy (i.e. it explains how the sausage is made). Also, Scott Dikkers is an amazing interviewer and he is a founding editor of The Onion.

</comment><comment><USER42> Waking Up by Sam Harris and Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson. Lex Fridman and Eric Weinstein's podcasts are also pretty good most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER43> Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - Good on a cloudy day

Methodically Processing Systems - Good for a quirky evening (I make this one)

Econtalk - Good for commuting.

BBC's In Our Time - Good during a shower.

</comment><comment><USER44> Really Good:

      Econ Talk - great in depth interviews and thought
      Bound By Oath - about 14th amendment of US constitution
      Serial - in depth look into a story
      Shit Town

Politics/Policy/Current Affairs:

      Reason Round Table
      Reason Interview
      Reason Soho Debate
      Cato Daily Podcast
      LSE Lectures

General Internet: Reply All

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a frequently-asked Ask HN. Maybe you'll find something here:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E3%20%22Ask%20HN%22%20podcast&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none)

</comment><comment><USER46> Somebody already mentioned my top choice, Sean Carroll's Mindscape.

Lawrence Krauss, also a physicist, has a similar podcast called Origins.

[https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vcmlnaW5zcG9kY2...](https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vcmlnaW5zcG9kY2FzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw&ep=14)

</comment><comment><USER47> Run, don't walk to [https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/](https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/)

A podcast by some guys that were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, then thought better of it.

If you are into philosophy and philosophers, these are like the friends you wish you had.

<comment><USER47> Podcast list is here [https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/category/podcast- episodes/...](https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/category/podcast- episodes/?order=ASC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Multiple people have brought up Econtalk and Conversations with Tyler. Those two are my top 2 as well.

If you're into pop culture (sports, music, TV and Movies) I'd also recommend the Bill Simmons podcast. The interviews are usually great (especially the ones with actors) and the sports takes are entertaining as well.

</comment><comment><USER48> Robert Evans' The Women's War is really good, proper first hand journalism covering the incredibly unique Rojava revolution. This is the real deal and the gold standard of journalism IMO.

Another great podcast is Intelligence Squared - effective and intellectual debate on loads of topics. Pretty US centric but great debates.

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://after-on.com/episodes](https://after-on.com/episodes)

He brings outstanding guests and help you reach a very good understanding of a topic in a very short time.

I've learnt a lot about space, MRI, CRISPR, genetics, lots of things, highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER50> The Partially Examined Life. It's about philosophy, they take a text each episode and discuss it. Most philosophy podcasts usually just means politics. Sometimes they have distinguished guests (Peter Singer, Judith Butler)

</comment><comment><USER51> Developer Tea is one of my favorites. It's about software development and psychology.

[https://spec.fm/podcasts/developer-tea](https://spec.fm/podcasts/developer- tea)

</comment><comment><USER52> Good technical specialist discussions of science from an explicitly left-wing perspective [http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/](http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/)

Light and amusing handling of a wide variety of moral/ethical issues [https://www.youtube.com/user/thephilosophytube](https://www.youtube.com/user/thephilosophytube)

One of the few actual left-wing podcasts. Coherent, solidly-researched journalism with very high-production values. [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/panoply/intercepted-with- je...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/panoply/intercepted-with-jeremy- scahill)

Excellent BBC series. There are other In Our Time subseries also. Would recommend using get_iplayer to navigate what seems to be a deliberately self- sabotaging BBC website In Our Time: History [http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p01dh5yg.rss](http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p01dh5yg.rss) [https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer](https://github.com/get- iplayer/get_iplayer)

TrueAnon: deliberately rambling and speculative, provocative. Dirtbag Left. [https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod](https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod)

Excellent material both video and audio. Includes people like Judea Pearl, Patricia Churchland. [https://www.edge.org/audios](https://www.edge.org/audios)

UK dirtbag left. Very loose format, intentionally unprofessional (?!) good deconstructions of Silicon Valley startup b/s [https://twitter.com/trashfuturepod](https://twitter.com/trashfuturepod)

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://historyofphilosophy.net/](https://historyofphilosophy.net/) has a great series on the history of philosophy.

<comment><USER54> +1 Been my fav

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Soft Skills Engineering.

It's about non-technical skills in software engineering, but the hosts are constantly laughing and making humorous insights into general western work culture.

</comment><comment><USER56> Blowback, a podcast about the Iraq war is very good.

</comment><comment><USER57> The knowledge project podcasts with Shane Parrish

<comment><USER58> Shane Parrish always waists an enormous amount of time on uninteresting aspects of his guests and then after 1.5 hour when he finally gets to interesting matter the podcast ends. A good example is the podcast with Jim Collins where the interesting stuff came after 2 hours.

I like the long form of content but it should be used appropriately. When Shane does an interview it always sounds like he is completely out of depth with the answers his guests give as if he hasn't researched the topic well enough.

Give this podcast a shot and just listen to the last 10% of the recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> \- 99% Invisible

\- Invisibilia

\- Hidden Brain

\- Opening Arguments

</comment><comment><USER60> Pomp Podcast has had some phenomenal guests lately including Chamath Palihapitiya and Mark Cuban. Worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER3> My brother turned me onto Adam Gordon Bell's Corecursive. [https://corecursive.com](https://corecursive.com) Fantastic.

I wish I was more like AGB. He's very good at adopting the worldview of the guest on their terms. Whereas I still have the toxic habit of compiling all the ways I disagree, instead of really listening. So I'm really enjoying how much AGB is stretching me.

In totally different way, I'm also getting a lot out of 5x5's Critical Path. Very unpolished, long winded, but somehow works. [http://5by5.tv/criticalpath](http://5by5.tv/criticalpath)

\--

Podcasts have done a lot to get me out of my filter bubble.

I now regularly learn (of, about, from) people I would have never bothered with previously.

And some of the curation value add has greatly expanded my horizons by bubbling up people I would have never discovered on my own.

Ezra Klein's interview of Grover Norquist is a master class on building a movement.

Ben Shapiro's interview of Ezra Klein was a master class on constructive disagreement.

Eric Weinstein's interview of James O'Keefe was both illuminating and infuriating. (Come one guys, you're not the first to discover "journalism".)

Ezra Klein's interview of Rebecca Solnit blew my @#$!! mind. Really put a lot of my past experiences into a whole new light.

I started binging on Philosophy with No Gaps podcast after Klein's interview of Madeline Miller. (Their comparison of comic superheroes to ancient myths is nerd paradise.)

I wanted to punch the asphalt during Lex Fridman's interview of Jack Dorsey. (Explains Square's success is due to their novel strategies for identity and authentication, but then says nothing about Twitter's utter rejection of those traits.)

Of course, Joe Rogan. Wow, I really reject the worldview of about 25% of his guests, grrr. But I've also learned so much. Dr Patrick Rhonda and others. I've been struggling to get out of a post surgery rut, so I just rewatched the David Goggins episodes and clips, which I imagine is helping me.

Lastly, Philosophy Tube is about the best thing ever. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2PA- AKmVpU6NKCGtZq_rKQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2PA-AKmVpU6NKCGtZq_rKQ) Like other geniuses said of Feymann "Often you think, 'Oh, I could have thought of that if I was a bit smarter. But with Feymann, you couldn't ever imagine coming up with his insights.'".

<comment><USER61> Corecursive is pretty good. Haven't listened recently, really enjoyed these two:

[https://corecursive.com/021-gods-programming-language- with-p...](https://corecursive.com/021-gods-programming-language-with-philip- wadler/)

[https://corecursive.com/006-type-driven-development-and- idri...](https://corecursive.com/006-type-driven-development-and-idris-with- edwin-brady/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Free as in Freedom is great: [http://faif.us/](http://faif.us/)

</comment><comment><USER63> 1\. The Portal (Eric Weinstein)

2\. Lex Fridman

3\. Joe Rogan

all three are YouTube interview series.

</comment><comment><USER64> During the Corona lockdown, Devdutt Pattnaik shares stories from Indian, Abrahamic, ancient and modern mythologies. Unusual and uplifting stories that help us learn and appreciate life in these difficult times

He does this1 hour session everyday at 4pm India Standard Time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZpjdaHJdSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZpjdaHJdSw)

<comment><USER65> Wouldn't recommend

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Eric Weinstein's "The Portal". Especially when he has scientists on.

</comment><comment><USER67> If you're open to being pissed off and want to go exploring beyond the SF / SV / liberal / rationalist / techie / IDW / iNtElLeckshualLY sTiMUlAtING hivemind, I'd recommend the following, all hosted by academics radioactive in one circle or another:

 _What 's Left_

What's Left? is a podcast hosted by Aimee Terese and Benjamin Studebaker, discussing political theory, philosophy, and current affairs from a [editor's note: materialist / marxist] left wing perspective.

[https://soundcloud.com/whatisleftpod](https://soundcloud.com/whatisleftpod)

 _Manifold_

Steve Hsu and Corey Washington have been friends for almost 30 years, and between them hold PhDs in Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Theoretical Physics.

[https://manifoldlearning.com/podcasts/](https://manifoldlearning.com/podcasts/)

 _The Classicist_

The Classicist is the weekly podcast of Victor Davis Hanson, an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

[https://www.hoover.org/publications/classicist?go_type%5B0%5...](https://www.hoover.org/publications/classicist?go_type%5B0%5D=204)

 _Reasonable Disagreements_

Hoover fellows Richard Epstein and Adam White discuss major legal and policy issues and debate points of disagreement between their libertarian and conservative perspectives.

[https://www.hoover.org/publications/reasonable- disagreements](https://www.hoover.org/publications/reasonable-disagreements)

(all the Hoover pods are pretty interesting)

<comment><USER67> One more:

 _Aufhebunga Bunga_

The global politics podcast at the end of the End of History. From a left perspective.

[https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/](https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "What Trump can Teach Us About Con Law" is a great appetizer sized podcast. The hosts are obviously not trump supports, but this isn't screaming in the wind or just complaining. A constitutional law professor takes tweets the president has sent and examines precedent and previous Supreme Court cases on similar topics. Each episode deals with a particular topic and is only about 20-30 minutes long, but they manage to pack a lot of really fascinating details into that time and I have certainly learned a lot.

[https://trumpconlaw.com/](https://trumpconlaw.com/)

I can also recommend the host's other podcast "99 percent invisible" which is about all sorts of things that are vital to everyday life that you don't think about much.

<comment><USER68> Roman Mars does an amazing job at making sense out of things. Highly recommend both of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Sam Harris's conversation with Robert Sapolsky - [https://samharris.org/podcasts/91-biology-good- evil/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/91-biology-good-evil/)

</comment><comment><USER70> Steven Strogatz's "The Joy of x."

</comment><comment><USER71> Planet Money and The Indicator

</comment><comment><USER72> The Fifth Column

Lexicon Valley

Econ Talk

Free Thoughts

</comment><comment><USER73> 13 minutes to the Moon

Intelligence squared

Making sense

The knowledge project

</comment><comment><USER74> Sam Harris: Making Sense.</comment>


What Happened After Gravity Payments Set a $70k Minimum Wage - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html <comment><USER2> At the bottom of the article there are other CEOs quoted including

>Outsource it all.= >Andrew Alexander Founder, Limitless Academy, Scottsdale, Arizona >"I pay my people $4 per hour. No, that's not a typo," says Alexander. "My most recent hire is named Mary, and she lives in the Philippines, which annoys a lot of my American friends struggling to get work. This is becoming the new norm for startup entrepreneurs. With limited funding, it's important to get the most as we can out of every dollar. >"But this goes beyond the money. ..."

At $4 / hr this is all about the money... Credibility gap in my mind.

<comment><USER3> He fails at getting the most he can out of every dollar since he overpays Mary according to the rest of his quote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did not expect the results to be so positive. I'm curious how much of his business's success can be attributed to the publicity that this whole thing caused versus happier, more productive employees; but it's a pleasant surprise to see it's working out so well.

</comment><comment><USER5> same article (but on Slate.com) and 120+ comments this morning here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10450541)

</comment><comment><USER6> discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448113)</comment>


Ask HN: finding a laptop in 2011 with the whole set of ports? - <AUTHOR> Today while giving a hand to an friend who wants to regain access to some of his old data, I realized that I depended on various cables and peripherals to try to rescue his devices, that I could run into a similar problems because I no longer had a "rescue laptop"
Years ago, I had a rescue machine, which stayed idle most of the time, but could become quite needed.
It's the kind of machine that : - runs an old linux distro to make xp/linux hd bootable again with grub/lilo/whatever - is used to grab network data with tcpdump from some equipment in the next room - tests if IR remote controllers actually work,
- serves as the last resort to try to read the  floppy disk where the unique copy of some historical file has been stored
 - connects to the printer in parallel mode to put the printer online when the jetdirect is down for some reason
 - can be used to run diagnosis on serial ports
 - still has a modem so it can serve to replicate the problem a guy still on dialup is reporting.
You see the kind of machine - a lot of ports, most of which are no longer used (floppy, firewire...) but come in handy when you need them.
My googling did not return such a machine, so I guess I'll have to get a second hand.
So can anyone recommend me a laptop or a tablet with : firewire/rj45 (ideally 2x) /rj11/serial/irda/parallel/floppy/dvd/vga/tvout/wifi/bluetooth
Tablet a plus (because it will be easy to store/carry when needed)
It's just a laptop to be put in a drawer until a specific problem happens where it will be needed (3rd call this week, the 2 others were a firmware upgrade on my modem and sniffing ethernet data to find out the correct tos values) <comment><USER2> How many of those can you find as X-to-USB adapters or USB peripherals? Probably all of them, which would mean any laptop will do, you'll just have a bag of addons to keep with it.

<comment><USER3> The problem of newer machines and/or peripherals is that they often work in some wacky almost as good as original thing modes, which are "compatible" for most consumer type regular uses - without actual backwards compatibility.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hence the question. I have already far too many cables. An old laptop with everything integrated would reduce the odds of loosing the connectors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Replying to myself - found on forums many suggestions for a thinkpad T30 to this same question

It will just miss the firewire but nothing a pccard that'll stay inside (and not be lost!) can't fix</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would HN be a good use-case for a PWA? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not really IMHO: little point to offline use, constantly changing content, quite slim so little traffic savings.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> how do you consume HN daily on your phone?

</comment><comment><USER3> No.</comment>


Flow – A Coroutine Kernel for .Net - <AUTHOR> http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/09/07/flow-a-coroutine-kernel-for-net/

<comment><USER2> Its too late for me to read through in full now, I'm afraid I'll have to defer that to tomorrow.

However, when coming across anything to do with writing async code in .Net, my immediate question is how does it compare/cooperate with TPL, Rx, and the new async/await keywords. From skimming, it doesn't appear these are mentioned at all.

Is this of any use in the .Net4/4.5 world? Or just for writing code from the .Net2 era? (Or Unity/Mono, which I'm not so familar with).

</comment><comment><USER3> Coroutines are a big part of the Mono .NET based Unity 3D engine. Very helpful but less powerful than multithreading, although less problematic.</comment>


ReelSurfer beefs up discovery + clipping tools, success among brands/publishers - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/12/reelsurfer-beefs-up-its-discovery-and-video-clipping-tools-finds-surprising-success-among-brands-and-publishers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, co-founder of ReelSurfer here. Would love to hear your feedback on our new design and tools!

I'm especially excited that you can clip ESPN now (among a ton of other providers). For example, ever wanted to know what Dennis Rodman thinks about... Kim Jong Un? Well now you can! <http://reelsurfer.com/watch/share/29794>

</comment><comment><USER2> imgur for videos? you get satisfaction in just a few seconds unlike every youtube link ever. wish people would send me reel surfer clips instead of nine minute youtube videos...</comment>