iPad Pro as Development Machine - <AUTHOR> https://arslan.io/2019/01/07/using-the-ipad-pro-as-my-development-machine/ <comment><USER2> This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch:

> we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our > main development machine.

A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer

<comment><USER3> This is not a very good argument. I do my development work on my company issued macbook, but its not like I'm doing my work locally. My several thousand dollar macbook pro acts as a terminal interface for me for a HUGE proportion of my work. All my code is developed/built/run/tested on remote machines and my laptop is just a fancy interface to them.

<comment><USER4> It all depends on the type of work you do. I work on the latest top of the line macbook pro issued by work as well, and for me it's too slow. Running the company's php app along with all the other dependencies like MySQL/Redis/etc takes a significant amount of resources. All development is done locally on the dev laptops, bugs are reproduced and fixed on local dev laptops. At this point I almost wish that my laptop _was_ a terminal so that I could have access to more resources like RAM (currently at 16 GB).

<comment><USER5> 32GB of RAM is top for the MBP, not 16.

Edit: OP said he had the _latest_ top of the line. Latest, top of the line has 32.

<comment><USER4> Oh sweet, I am gonna ask for an upgrade then. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This falls under fetish category.

Steve Jobs' Post PC world analogy was off in that PCs are the cars, trucks, convertibles etc. and tablets are the scooter. Yes you can do all your grocery shopping on the scooter given the groceries fit, the shop isn't too far away, it's not raining, the mileage will be good etc - you making that one successful grocery trip doesn't mean scooter is a car replacement.

<comment><USER7> That analogy works pretty good: For many people a scooter is all they need for day-to-day life, and when they need car they borrow/rent one.

<comment><USER8> Your comment reminds me that (AFAIK) there aren't really great rental sources for many pieces of gear. I have often wished something like this existed, and not even for computers (considering I am a dev and have a MBP). But, it would be nice to be able to rent a high end tool that you may only need for one small project, or a high end piece of music gear - like a $2,000 microphone, or guitar amp, etc. - from a well-known and trusted supplier with simple shipping techniques and easy return process (ship back in original packaging with included label, etc).

I suppose enough people use Amazon like this, but they will eventually ban you for abusing their return process.

<comment><USER9> There have been a few companies trying to fill the need you speak of. Two that I'm aware of [https://fatllama.com](https://fatllama.com) and [https://www.beomni.com](https://www.beomni.com). I believe the latter is currently only in San Francisco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These articles are always hilarious.

The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.)

Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP, web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB, Serial, VGA, or Ethernet (along with manual config of the adapter), among other things.

So, with these iPad there are always caveats: you end up needing to keep a "real computer" around for all the cases the iPad can't cover, which is most of them.

A few days ago there was a discussion about Termux ([https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)) on Android here, and with things like USB OTG and removable storage that are commonly featured in Android, a Kindle Fire tablet (which cost about $50-150, regularly on sale) would be more usable, even, than an iPad.

<comment><USER11> > _could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy_

Except then when not using PuTTY, you aren't able to use it as an iPad.

<comment><USER10> Another incredibly good point. Tablets are great at things like watching videos, reading comics, and if you're not doing any typing, are really good 'couch computers'. Rotating the display provides a whole new set of functionality that you just can't get on a laptop, where it's incredibly awkward to do so.

<comment><USER12> The convertible laptop market has had this for a while now. I for one just pull the screen off of my surface book whenever I am in need of a reading device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everyone is so defensive about laptops here that you'd think they feel threatened by this post. Isn't it in the spirit of the hacker community to be open to new modes of using computers? This is an experiment, that's why they documented it and stated clearly that it's an experiment. It's something to think about and discuss, not a statement that you should throw your laptop out.

<comment><USER14> OP here: Thanks for the comment. I thought I was clear that this was an experiment and that I wanted to try out things. Now that I'm using it for couple of months, I have even more things to share that are not covered by my blog post.

<comment> a-saleh Would you be willing to try:

a) some IOS-native IDE, i.e. [http://continuous.codes/](http://continuous.codes/) ?

b) how would android fare in comparison? I.e. I really like termux project, it seems to have much more installable packages than i.e. blink, and it could alleviate the need to run separate session in a separate box over the internet. Similarly, because android is based on linux, there are projects for running linux distros alongside (mostly in chroot?).

I am currently trying to learn Ocaml on my android phone on my way to work with Termux :)

<comment><USER15> Termux is awesome. iSH ([https://ish.app](https://ish.app)) is trying to accomplish the same thing for iOS, but it might not be approved by Apple because it may break the current set of App Store policies. Termux also does not have the overhead of running a complete x86 emulator. I've never needed to, but the possibility of running Xorg (with a real window manager) on my _phone_ is mind-blowing, even if it's uncomfortable without a keyboard and mouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get excited every time I see an article about using the iPad Pro for development. But then it always turns out that people just use blink to ssh/mosh into another machine.

I really wish I could have native Emacs on the iPad. It is one of the fastest and lightest machines around, phenomenally lightweight and with a great battery life. It has a pretty good keyboard attachment. And Emacs even without a native shell would work pretty well (using Tramp for editing remote files).

And no, Emacs via a shell is not nearly enough. You can't get enough modifiers through the TTY, so it ends up being crippled. And no, Apple is not likely to reject it, apps with interpreters have been getting in for several years now. And even if Apple were to reject it, there is nothing that prevents people (as in, me, for example) from compiling Emacs myself and loading it onto my iPad (these are common misconceptions, so I'd rather clear them up right away).

I think I might end up funding a bounty, perhaps someone is willing to shave this yak.

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't the locked-down filesystem be a problem?

<comment><USER16> I don't see why it would be: I don't want to share data with other applications, I just want to edit stuff within Emacs. The sandbox doesn't prevent me from doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too much configuration to even get started!! and the fact that you can't work offline makes this setup so much worse than a regular laptop for my regular use :( I wish there was a better dev environment on the ipad already

<comment><USER19> Why do you wish that? It sounds horrible. Why not just use a laptop (the right tool for the job).

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I don't know why anyone would want that. It's almost the equivalent of getting DOOM running on random devices.

<comment><USER21> You say that like it's a bad thing. You do know the title of the forum you're on right now, right?

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not very useful in a practical sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >If you're using the iPad Pro in the mindset of "This is going to be my main work machine", then you'll be living in constant fear.

I feel like this should be the opening line, not buried in the ending notes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Tried this a few weeks ago. The iPad Pro has the power but iOS is just too limiting still. You still need a remote system to do any _real_ work on so it is just a £1000+ dumb terminal with a really dodgy keyboard (if using the Apple Smart Folio one anyway).

I am hoping Apple will update the 12" MacBook this year so I can try that out for an ultra-portable dev machine. I like the current model but the CPU options are poor/dated.

<comment><USER24> I use a proper desktop when working from home, and an iPad Pro with blink+mosh+tmux to a chunky server when I'm on the move and to be honest I have no problem at all with the keyboard (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home) -- What's your problem with it?

Edit: Hitting the little... "world" key is sometimes quite annoying, it pops up some kind of emoji keyboard? Alas.

<comment><USER25> > (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to > stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home)

Why don't you rebind your Caps Lock to Esc? For Windows there's uncap <[https://github.com/susam/uncap>;](https://github.com/susam/uncap>;) on Linux you can find it in your KDE/Gnome settings or look at the uncap Github page for other methods.

Or if you do use the Caps Lock key frequently, what for?

<comment><USER24> I just never got around to it. I have a .xmodmap somewhere which will probably do the trick. I'm using OpenBSD on the desktop :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've done this before, just not with an iPad Pro.

I used Blink (because of Mosh support), a Digitalocean droplet running docker and Dropbox for syncing local and remote files. Very similar approach to what's been mentioned in this article.

Some of my experiences as a full-stack web developer:

\- Front-end development sucks. You can use Coda for iOS but it doesn't help much. What I was missing was Chrome's inspector. You can do some basic DOM manipulation and console logging via apps and firebug but it's not productive.

\- Manipulating image assets. I didn't use the official Dropbox client (I think at the time Linux support wasn't very good) I instead opted for a small script written in bash that talked to the Dropbox api. If there was an image that needed manipulating, I would push that image to a folder in Dropbox, which I could then open in Pixelmator in iOS. Pixelmator would update and sync to Dropbox and I'd run the bash script on the server to pull the updated file.

\- Browserstack didn't work on mobile Safari. I don't know if it does now but at the time, I couldn't get it working.

\- Lack of multi-tasking. Granted, iOS now supports split screen so maybe this isn't a big deal anymore. I'm ok with looking at one app at a time but app switching in iOS was horribly slow.

This was over 2 years ago and things may be better now but overall as a full- stack web dev, I wouldn't recommend it. It was a frustrating experiment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can you not just use a Surface Pro? I've never used one but I thought it had a full-fledged OS so you could use it as a development machine, albeit with smaller HD and RAM than a typical notebook.

<comment><USER28> Windows 10... a full-fledged OS? Mind you, there _are_ tablets/convertibles that can support a full-fledged OS with relative ease. I just don't think the Surface is one of them, unless you're willing to wait until the hacks that are involved in making it work under Linux are included in the kernel mainline, and thus in distros. The SP 3 is there now, possibly the 4 as well. But what's the point when you can just pick something else and it'll probably work out of the box?

<comment><USER29> The Surface Pros are full fledged machines and quite powerful if bought with the right spec (not cheap though). Just get the keyboard cover. No idea how they work with Linux though.

<comment><USER30> > No idea how they work with Linux though.

On the Surface Pro 1 you can forget using the pen input and sometimes the wifi will just disconnect until you reboot. Aside from that Linux will run pretty smoothly.

From what I've read so far I get the impression it works better on the newer models though(SP3 and up).

<comment> frosted-flakes Many Linux distros don't seem to support display scaling (Ubuntu in particular), so the Surface Pro's high resolution display makes for tiny text. There are some work-arounds like setting custom font sizes, but none that work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apple missed the boat on a tablet running macOS. It's pointless to even try and fill the gap created by their mistake. Because when I boot my device, I want to get to work ASAP rather than configuring 10 things.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've found an iPad Pro to be perfectly acceptable for web development.

Working Copy is an excellent git client, and combining it with Textastic proved a good workflow. Textastic allows you to add any folder, including a Working Copy repo, as a source in the file browser, so no more swapping files between apps.

Using this, I built my personal portfolio site with Jekyll while commuting on the tube.

Other apps are available: DraftCode provides a full PHP/MySQL stack, I got Django running on Pythonista, found iSh could run Bundler and Jekyll and got a long way towards getting Rails working. Also Processing runs, well, Processing. Play.js does react and Node and Continuous does .NET and C#.

There are also Vim and Emacs apps, though I don't know how good they are.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for mentioning that you got Django running on Pythonista. I just spent a few minutes web searching and fiddling and now I have a small Flask web app running on my iPad using Pythonista. There is no hot reload, so if I change code I need to restart the Flask app and then refresh the web page on Safari. I had no idea this was possible, or that there was anything like StaSh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So... this is just another one of those "create a remote server to use as the main development machine"?

What if I want to work in areas of little or rubbish connectivity?

Tools such as docker, etc don't exist just to run things on a remote server.

</comment><comment><USER35> Lightbox, VSCode, or an •XCode Light" is needed. Anything else to me is just a terminal app.

Code editing, highlighting, syntax checking, and a compiler. The iPad is pretty damn powerful, but Apple just won't let it off the leash.

I bought the gen 2 pro in 2017, and while it's a fantastic iPad, it sucks for doing work. I should have just gotten a Mac laptop.

And that disappointment is completely due to software - the hardware is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER36> And all you really need for development is relatively cheap ThinkPad laptop.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been using an iPad Pro (2018 12.9") as my main/only computer for 2 months on a sort of vacation. With the Apple Pencil 2, a detached bluetooth keyboard (because it's sometimes easier to keep it to the side instead of front, especially when working with the Pencil) and the Smart Folio to keep it upright.

It's generally surprisingly capable for a vast number of tasks, and I love using this in bed/on the couch/outdoors more than a laptop, but iOS remains the biggest hurdle. Too many limitations and quirks, and it's frustrating that you have to wait for a year at a time to receive any major changes.

I even tried brainstorming some coding ideas in Swift Playgrounds, but gods it's terrible for that. You can't even really `print` some simple output without awkward UI fumbling as there doesn't seem to be a "console" window without creating views.

<comment><USER38> Isn't it easier to just carry a MacBook Pro 13" instead of an iPad, folio keyboard, pencil etc? You basically making it harder to carry and lose a lot in terms of productivity, since you were working anyway on your vacation

<comment><USER37> I actually sold my last MacBook before going away and got this because I loved the form factor and wanted to try it.

Now I've decided to keep it as a secondary display for my next Mac, which might be a Mini:

[https://lunadisplay.com/pages/using-luna-with-mac- mini](https://lunadisplay.com/pages/using-luna-with-mac-mini)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you frequently use your iPad to access remote servers, check out Fredericco's post[1] at Macstories: there he mentions using FileExplorer[2], which lets you access and copy files to and from remote servers (SCP, SMB, etc) without leaving Apple's Files app.

1: [https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries- using-a...](https://www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/ipad-diaries-using-a-mac- from-ios-part-1-finder-folders-siri-shortcuts-and-app-windows-with-keyboard- maestro/#accessing-macos-files-from-ios-fileexplorer-and-the-files-app) 2: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id499470113?at=10l6nh&ct=ms_...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id499470113?at=10l6nh&ct=ms_inline)

\---

My iPad Pro has been my only computer for nearly a year, and I miss my Windows Machine and VMs. Some things that help me make do:

1\. a VPS with a VNC server installed: I connect with Screens and, for example, can use Firefox's Dev tools. Performance could be better (I'm a ways from my VPS), but it's much better than nothing.

2\. A Google Pixel 2 (or any Android phone) + a USB-C to USB adapter. This lets me put files on a flash drive, or even write Linux ISOs. I've found that, in a pinch, I can often do on my phone what I would have used my desktop to do.

3\. Termux[1] was mentioned here recently, and I installed it, then loaded vim and tmux. SSHing into my phone from my iPad, I have lightning fast (low latency) Linux environment. Have just started using Termux, but for those with similar setups (iOS + Android), it may be worth a look.

4\. Exploit the iPad's strengths. LiquidText[2] is, as they say on the site, "Better than paper". It's been revolutionary for reading my PDFs and extracting and connecting and cross-referencing information in them.

1: [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Why would anyone use iPod Pro as a development machine, when Google Pixelbook is of a similar weight, size, power and price, and comes with a standard keyboard and a native Linux support built-in? Tablets are for consumption, not creation.

<comment><USER41> Maybe because Pixelbook is on its way out.

In any case I do agree, only 2-1 and laptops are viable propositions for coding on the go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I still prefer using my Laptop in most cases, connect it to a nice big 4K screen at home and the office. I also love my iPad for the usecases it is great at, like taking notes and casual browsing/reading but i would not want to use one device for all. If you do that, a Surface Pro is arguably the better choice.

A lot of apps offer seamless syncing which makes using multiple devices really easy. I can throw PDFs on my iPad via Airdrop, annotate them with the Pencil in Notability and see the changes synced immediately back to my Macbook with Notabilitys icloud sync.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well I don't want to be a prude here but if you want to develop on an iPad pro, just get a surface?

</comment><comment> martin-adams I don't think the remote workstation idea is a bad idea. For me, in order to be a proper development machine it would need to have a fully local IDE with a remote terminal so I can run docker, test cases, database commands, etc.

The VSCode Docker image recently discussed is a huge next step if the input and scroll were to be fixed.

I used to use the dev version of cloud 9 on my VMs and code in the browser. It worked really, really well. Getting that right for the iPad would be quite exciting.

<comment><USER44> I'd like someone to build a service and offer native apps for Windows, Mac and iPad, with the data stored on the cloud. Everything should work offline and on flaky networks, with zero latency. Sync should happen in the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> machine? more like a gimmick. machine is what you remotely connect the your pad to to handle all the heavy lifting

</comment><comment><USER46> I still have trouble taking developers in the Apple walled garden seriously, this kind of article certainly doesn't help their credibility in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER47> I could still see something like this as the future of development in some ways -- powerful pro workstation level resources somewhere off in the cloud that you connect to via a super portable client. Maybe even over 5G or some other next generation wireless technology to truly enable an untethered development experience that's not limited by local resources.

But that continues to feel like something many years away.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have been using a similar setup for a while (I use Ansible and Azure ARM templates to provision my remote machine), and it's pretty usable for back-end development if you're used to vim+tmux.

It's not a mainstream solution, though, and for other kinds of development I've found that Jump Desktop and the Citrix X1 mouse ([https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930)) are a great alternative—I can VNC or RDP to a Remote Desktop via an SSH tunnel and run literally anything (mostly VSCode and Firefox).

Doing fully local development with the likes of Working Copy and Textastic is also quite feasible (at least for back-end stuff), but it's always a pain to test and compile stuff.

Things are getting better ([https://github.com/holzschu/Carnets](https://github.com/holzschu/Carnets) lets you run Jupyter notebooks locally, which is awesome), but we're not quite there yet.

</comment><comment><USER49> No way Jose! I am about to update my iOS app, for both iPhone and iPad. I need to add some sounds. That means find an online library, get/buy the sounds, then use Audacity to tweak them. Then watch some Udemy video-classes I bought, then take screenshots/notes and star updating my SWIFT code. The only thing I am doing on my Mac is to type the code on Xcode and run the simulator (and then ofc pack, sign, and upload to Apple).

Everything else (downloading, tweaking sounds, watching classes, reading on Apple's Feb resources, etc. I do on my Windows laptop. I do have an iPad, but it is as good as a video player/kindle. Perhaps I am just lazy and don't bother to learn how-to-ipad-everytbibg, but a PC will always (imho) be more useful than most other alternative options out there.

</comment><comment><USER50> There needs to be something along the lines of the iron law of wages, but for developer machines. Something like:

"If you are unable to run the tools needed to further create software on the machine itself, then said machine cannot be considered a developer machine."

</comment><comment><USER51> About 6 years ago I set-up my HP Touchpad running linux and tried to use it as a development machine.

It was running ArcLinux, node 0.4 (if I remember correctly).

I'm not going to suggest that this was the "future of computing" and I put it away after playing with it for a bit.

I'm not an Apple user and don't have an iPad (pro or other) but I do think we will move away from "pc" needed as your development platform.

At one point we would have said that a notebook wasn't good enough for development, you need a "real pc" (desktop) for development.

With AR/VR we'll move into completely new realms of interfaces for development, I wouldn't rule out a tablet as one of the form factors of the future.

</comment><comment><USER52> I love these articles. I know they're frequent and always come with the same caveats but I dream of the day I can effectively work from an iPad Pro. I have no idea why, it's completely impractical when I have a perfectly good laptop. I just want to.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been using my Openmoko Neo Freerunner as a real development machine back in 2008, with no remote desktop tricks - although the screen could have been a bit bigger, it wasn't that bad. Come back when you reach that :P

</comment><comment><USER54> Reading this and thinking about the Visual Studio Code server post the other day.

</comment><comment><USER55> You might find interesting those two articles by Mark O'Connor written over 7 years ago

I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode [http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my- macbook-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for- an-ipad)

iPad + Linode, 1 Year Later [http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad- linode-1-year-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad- linode-1-year-later)

I followed his steps and enjoyed this approach much.

</comment><comment><USER56> Interesting, but I couldn't do much serious work without external monitors and a great keyboard. I just need the screen real estate and a professional input device to be productive.

<comment><AUTHOR> The iPad supports external monitors and keyboards.

<comment><USER56> Thanks, I didn't know about he monitor support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> No mouse support though.

</comment><comment><USER58> I know this probably doesn't add much to the discussion but I did want to say that I love submissions like this, and I love the enthusiasm behind the project.

</comment><comment><USER59> I have a Gemini PDA phone that I've used to recompile the Linux kernel. It takes 4-5 times as long as compiling on my laptop, but sometimes it's easier than cross-compiling.

I rarely use my phone as a development machine, but when I do, it feels more authentic than using a remote workstation. It heats up because the local CPU is really working. Occasionally I find myself shelling into the phone from my laptop....

[edit, typo]

</comment><comment><USER60> Using apps that support Open In Place has been magical. I now use my iPad 24/7\. Terminus is really great and although I was hesitant to spend money at first I just think the app is so well made. Mix that with Working Copy and it's so easy to edit files on servers and redeploy.

Pythonista (though I'm not python person) is always great to have especially with the new keyboard. Scriptable is also magical.

</comment><comment><USER33> I didn't like that it was a long article, and the author ended saying effectively "nope."

With fine iPad native IDEs for Haskell and Python, some local development is possible. In the future with using the USB-C port to dock to monitor and keyboard, then we get a little closer to a "not nope" answer to the author's question.

</comment><comment><USER61> I can understand why some people might think this kind of setup is crazy but I actually do this with my Android tablet. With the Termux I can have Rust, Python, Neovim etc installed locally. I only ssh to my desktop if I need to do something CPU intensive. I am regularly surprised just how well this works.

</comment><comment><USER62> I wouldn't feel confortable putting my secrets in a remote server with a public IP (IPv6 might be a better idea as it's less guessable).

Also seems a bit over-engineered, I would just ssh into a server and do everything from there as a normal user.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is a great article, it got me thinking on better uses of the iPad and the whole setup on a virtual machine using terraform, docker, etc is also a good way of thinking on how to work remotely. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER64> I think I'd rather go with a UMPC, I'd love to see a 2019 Toshiba Libretto but the GPD Pockets look interesting. I think I'd be happier if it had an ARM processor.

</comment><comment><USER65> This article gets written every month or so at this point.

And they are always using the wrong setup (SSH to remote server with Blink & Mosh). If you want to edit and run code on an iPad (god knows why), use iSh.

It's a userland x86 emulator that will enable you to work offline. It's TestFlight only at the moment, or you can compile it yourself if you have a mac and Xcode.

People who do this kind of thing are like those people who change their linux distro every other month, they are in search of distraction, not productivity.

</comment><comment><USER66> tmux tip: You can press prefix+D to show a list of connected clients. From there, you can choose one to disconnect.

</comment><comment><USER67> That looks like ergonomic terror

</comment><comment><USER68> Honestly i just want MacOS on an iPad Pro, the apple equivalent to the Surface.

<comment><USER69> Basically, and macbook air with touch screen...

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> TLDR (quoting the article which I think buries the lede): "Obviously, there is no way to develop on an iPad Pro."

</comment><comment><USER71> Didn't we do this 3 years ago with the non-Pro iPad?

</comment><comment><USER72> Thank you for taking the time to write up and share your experience with this experiment, Fatih. I enjoyed reading it.

</comment><comment><USER73> I purchased a Pixel Slate (running ChromeOS) and couldn't be much happier. It replaced both my portable laptop and iPad. I'm surprised people here don't talk much about this tablet that runs full fledged Linux!</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources for building user communities? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What do you want? A software platform? a credo and list of values to uphold? Rules for conduct? Moderator advice? Are you looking for software or books and interviews? My cousin started an online community through wordpress for her patients (she is a physician treating depression among other ailments) and I can ask her about the books and research papers she collected in creating it and making a case. She uses a wordpress plugin and has been having success, but it will never actually lead to a social network replacement until she hires someone to build out a whole 'nother service. So, provide more info please.

<comment><AUTHOR> More like case-studies, books, posts, and interviews. That would be interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yourself. And maybe some helpers.

People often underestimate how much work it is to connect with people.</comment>


Another Perl success story: The Swedish pension system - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/swedishpension_0601.html

<comment><USER2> Lately there seems to be much more Perl articles on the front page, is there any particular reason for that? Is Perl suddenly getting more attention for some reason?

<comment><USER3> Well, now that Parrot is doing releases above 1.0, it seems plausible that Perl 6 might actually be a finished product one day. That was in serious doubt for years.

<comment><USER4> Since, for the most part, "Perl 6" = Parrot + Rakudo [1], the _big_ moment (IMO) will be when Rakudo hits 1.0. There should be a serious spike in interest at that point.

Hopefully the Perl community will take advantage of that spike. For example, it would be cool to see mod_perl6/mod_parrot hit stable at around the same time. Maybe even along with some key modules recoded in Perl 6 too (for webapps, maybe CGI::Application?).

[1]: Yes, I realize Perl 6 is the spec, but my guess is that Parrot + Rakudo will be the canonical implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uh... that's from 07/06/2001.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. And the age shows. In the section "Perl Wins the Comparison", they explain Perl's advantages:

      Good database connectivity gave Perl the nod over C++,
      and since Sandell and Johnson received project text files
      in various formats, Perl's ability to parse text with
      regular expressions was much better than COBOL or
      Oracle's PL/SQL.

These aren't the comparisons that would be made today, though I am _very_ proud of Perl, having beaten COBOL and PL/SQL in a regex contest!

I also enjoyed the time-travel qualities of the conclusion of that section:

      They wrote the Web applications in Jscript, and other
      parts of the system in Visual Basic. Some functions were
      written in PL/SQL so they could be accessible from other
      languages using the system. "If we did the project again,
      we would probably strive to make more of it in Perl,"
      Sandell concedes. But with so little time, they couldn't
      ask team members to learn a new language.

JScript no longer exists, unless it's a misnomer for JavaScript. Is it considered best practice to use code rather than stored procedures? (The question is genuine -- I'm not a software developer.)

<comment><USER7> JScript is Microsoft's name for ECMAScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The good news is they are still relying (mostly) on Perl

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ppm.nu%2F7111.html&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=)</comment>


Virus on Police Body Cameras - <AUTHOR> http://www.goipower.com/?pageId=40 <comment><AUTHOR> I came across this because we ordered two demo units for a development project. Both devices were new out of the box and infected the PC the moment you opened the camera on your PC. Pretty scary to think that these cameras are in tons of US Police Departments. These cameras were actually recommended to us by several Chiefs of Police we were working in various parts of the country.</comment>


Obama's big idea: Digital health records - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/12/technology/stimulus_health_care/index.htm?postversion=2009011204 <comment><USER2> Obama's big idea?

"By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs, and improve care."

\--President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 20, 2004

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/technology/economic_policy...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/technology/economic_policy200404/chap3.html)

It isn't hard to see that electronic medical records are "the next big thing" in medicine. Every hospital administrator knows it is coming, and many big software companies are trying to build it.

[http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/businesscenter/smb/us/en/he...](http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/businesscenter/smb/us/en/healthcareemr/nav_id/healthcareintro)

[http://www.emc.com/solutions/samples/healthcare-life- science...](http://www.emc.com/solutions/samples/healthcare-life- sciences/electronic-medical-health-records.htm)

Bush and Obama just want to have their name attached to some "electronic medical records" law, that way they can take credit for it once it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me tell you why EHR/EMR is a joke:

There are no standards.

That's it. Epic, Cerner, GE, Dairyland, OpenVista, and the 180 other people who make electronic medical/health record software all have proprietary file formats and standards. The systems can't talk to each other, and there's a ginormous industry in jury-rigging protocols to make them semi-sorta work. It's a joke.

Of course, in the only place where we've had a standard, we've seen massive innovation in technology. Radiology's DICOM standard is, to me, the single reason why we've gone so far so fast. Because everything is portable, vendors actually have to innovate rather than relying on lock-in.

If Obama wants to save lives through EMR, he's going to have to dictate a file format standard. My contacts and friends at these firms have told me that it would take up to three years of full-on full-time development for everyone to change their software to work with a new file format. But until we do, every dollar that goes to EMR is nothing more than corporate welfare.

<comment><USER4> I worked for a biotech startup which "elucidated" the proprietary file formats of medical instrument vendors and thus commoditized the vendors.

It's a profitable business, but I'm not sure it's 100% legal.

<comment><USER3> You know what? Your work probably helped save someone's life. I could give a shit if it's legal - it was moral.

<comment><USER4> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's interesting in this article to me is the clinical services community acting like a nepotistic clique. "There aren't enough skilled people". Bullshit.

Every industry has it's specialist knowledge. That should be some degree be irrelevant to the IT community building their support tools. Not in the fact that the needs of that community shouldn't be taken care of, but that the IT folks don't need to be experts in whatever it is they are building for.

We should be experts in discovering the needs of our clients whatever their industry, helping them figure out what would reaally make them more efficient need and building that.

The idea that medical IT requires some kind of special half doctor half programmer half ninja to get anything done is repulsive. My mother worked for 30 years managing the medical library for hospital which treats around 70,000 people a year. The number of half-baked crap-tastical systems I saw dumped on her was astounding.

I for one would like to see this as a time where the needs of clinicians can be standardized away from these lock-in vendors. Open the opportunities to companies that will supply modern, well thought-out solutions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you think there are other industries that would be a good example for the medical industry to follow? It seems like coming up with standards for such a complex area has been a stumbling block for healthcare. Is healthcare more complicated than other areas that have seen massive success with IT or is that just an excuse?

Does anyone have any good resources that describe frameworks for developing standards or examples of other industries that have done a good job with standards?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Web app that costs:

212,000 employees "$75 billion to $100 billion over the ten years they think the hospitals would need to implement program. "

<comment><USER7> Those costs seem insane. The sad part is it will probably cost more than that and still save money over the next 20 years.

<comment><USER2> There are about 800,000 doctors in the US (<http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/ranks/rank18.html>); lets conservatively estimate 5 times that many other medical workers providing patient services (e.g., nurses, PA's, medical office assistants).

All these people need to be trained on the new system, except the ones who are replaced by it (1). Every hospital and doctor's office in America need to modify their business practices to fit the new electronic system, and more than 300 million sets of medical records need to be entered into the new system.

(There are about 300 million people with medical records, many of whom have seen multiple doctors.)

The new system also needs to correctly deal with most aspects of medicine, and be flexible enough that unforeseen circumstances can still be tracked.

I don't think $100 billion is unreasonable.

(1) [edit] amusing question: Obama talks about "212,000 new jobs created". I wonder how that compares to the jobs which will be "stolen" by the new technology he proposes? I'm all in favor of creative destruction, I just find the language amusing.

<comment><USER8> The people whose jobs were "stolen" can be employed in more productive ways than schlepping file folders around.

<comment><USER2> I agree, hence my use of scare quotes around "stolen."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Digitizing something that is broken will not fix it. In fact, digitizing a broken system can keep it broken longer. Automation can let people engage in counter-productive activity longer and be "more productive" at activities which ultimately produce nothing of use.

The health care system in the US is seriously broken. The US expends far more per person than any other nation for health care and receive poor medical care in return, with many people excluded almost entirely from basic health care (the emergency ward is the first and last option for those without insurance ).

The disaster that is US health care comes partly out of the adversarial framework of private medical insurance. When one makes money by discovering algorithms for denying care, one is performing an activity with negative social value, akin to building a plant whose sole task is to pipe sulfuric acid into the air.

But the problem is more any particular kind of enterprise. The overall approach of having enterprises that not only seek to profit but seek to increase their profits within the health care field automatically creates abusive situations. Hospital companies routinely add unneeded hospital beds and then charge every patient for the extra beds. Just as much, oversight with that insurance companies have to use to prevent the hospital overruns and the oversight various agencies demand to prevent insurance abuse only add to the total cost which the for-profit system then attempts to pass on the consumer - who is currently less and less able to pay.</comment>


EasyMorph: visual data transformation - <AUTHOR> http://easymorph.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this mentioned at [0] and thought the demo video [1] looked interesting. Curious if anyone here has tried it.

It's Windows-only so I'm not able to give it a shot myself (I imagine this excludes many other HN users as well).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772276)

[1] [https://youtu.be/Y5c3UivKCmQ](https://youtu.be/Y5c3UivKCmQ)</comment>


Joseph Malchow: Those Nonsensical 'Google Bus' Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304026804579411432350179154.html

<comment><USER2> Let me first start by noting that I am not of the opinion that attacking Google Buses is the right way to go to fight rising housing prices, nor do I believe there should be some class warfare raged.

This being said, why does paying collectively $14.5B in taxes mean that you are exempt from attack if you commit a societal wrong? I think this is extremely backward logic, that perhaps Mr. Malchow by which feels threatened -- the belief of "why would there be a world where you can't pay your way out of being a good member of society?" This being said, I do not believe that Googlers and the like are necessarily perpetrating some great societal misdeed, but Malchow's argument is highly problematic.

<comment><USER3> The engineer revolution is showing that people are using tech to build wealth. This is not a multi-billionare banker who scemed millions out of their homes to make a few more bucks, this is someone providing real value to people making a few bucks. Is this so wrong wrong?

These people buy homes, shop in the local economy, they are doing what our country was meant to be like. But they are apparently an easy target, because real targets are too hard to get to.

<comment><USER4> What real value?

<comment><USER5> Is your life not noticeably improved by the existence of the internet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "With 32 engineers over four years, WhatsApp built something that's as speedy and reliable as telecom text networks without any of the regulatory, pricing or spectrum advantages enjoyed by those companies"

While this is technically true, I think it's worth pointing out that WhatsApp doesn't work without those telcoms and all their regulatory, pricing and spectrum advantage. Frankly, WhatsApp did the easiest part of sending a message. That's not to say what they did was easy or trivial, but it's not as hard or expensive or labor intensive as installing and maintaining a wireless network.

WhatsApp did do something pretty useful though: they've shown everyone how overpriced SMSes are.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the most frustrating things about moving out of poverty to the upper- middle/upper class is being an example of "what a little hard work can do".

They always forget to mention how so many people like myself have had to totally cut off contact with their family, watch friends and family die(gang and drug related murders, overdosing, suicide), how often we struggle with depression because we can't figure out what made us anymore deserving than the people we left behind, and have issues dealing with money in general- luckily I'm on the "save every dime" side of that spectrum.

If hard work is all you need then I know a couple hundred people who should be living in mansions.

</comment><comment><USER8> sooo still inequality rising? or did wsj guy just skip over that one?

<comment><USER9> Exactly, some clever, hardworking people also managed to win the Facebook lottery. Therefore the system works and there's no need to change anything…

The worst thing about the wsj article was that it didn't even examine _why_ the piñata people were annoyed.

It's perfectly rational to be ticked off at the people who are making your rent go up 200%. Even though breaking bus windows and having whack a piñata parties doesn't seem like a very helpful solution to your problem.

But since it's the WSJ, we got mindless liberal bashing instead.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting that so much blame is aimed at tech workers who are willing to pay more but none at landlords who are happy to increase rent based on demand. Certainly landlords are profiting quite nicely from the boom, being paid more rent for equivalent properties.

If they wished, they are free to continue renting at the same rates as always, and in fact are the ones "making the rent go up", so I'm not sure how they're managing to escape similar criticism here.</comment></comment></comment>


Try Kill batch processing with unified log stream processing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/logika-io/try-kill-batch-processing-with-unified-log-stream-processing-d92709117f74 <comment><AUTHOR> This kind of basic abstraction in place gives us a way of gluing disparate data systems, processing real-time changes, as well as a being an interesting system and application architecture in its own right.</comment>


"Great tools are what you get when your language sucks" - <AUTHOR> http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/todays-thought/ <comment><USER2> Other reasons your language might have great tools: there are lots of talented, motivated people using it, or there is a large company with lots of resources which has managed to find the right vision to put those resources behind (which, I know, is uncommon, but can happen).

C# is a pretty good language with very good tool support.

Not that there are no examples to supoort the author's overbroad generalization; Objective-C is an abomination, with awesome tool support. (for the record, I am growing to like Obj-C, but GOSH)

<comment><USER3> I think Java, C# and Objective-C are the languages that most need or benefit from IDE's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this applies to a very specific subset of "great tools", to wit: the code-shoveling IDE. Others have already posted examples of useful tools that would be hard to eliminate through better languages. I'll add my own favorite: Slime, an Emacs environment for Lisp that talks to your running program to do things like autocompletion and displaying argument lists.

</comment><comment><USER5> What types of tools are obviated by a better language?

\- Code traversal? No

\- Refactoring? Mostly, no

\- Debugging? I know some disagree, but no

\- Profiling? No

Some of these are less important in certain languages, but I think you still want all of them in any language.

<comment><USER6> Maybe they can't be obviated, but almost all of them can be made so unimportant that it doesn't matter.

For example, how often do you really need a debugger for Haskell?

<comment><USER5> Being able to inspect state is useful whenever you have state. Have you used a good debugger for Haskell? Does one exist? Do you write complicated software in Haskell? I'll agree that Fibonacci and factorial programs don't need a debugger.

And speaking of Haskell, do you think tools like QuickCheck and Hoogle are signs of language deficiencies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This leaves out a couple of use-cases. Most of the "great tools" I use help with project development. And even if not, I'd rather argue it the other way around: Great languages allow for great tools to be built around them.

<comment><USER6> Okay that I cannot agree with, unless you consider Java a great language.

<comment><USER8> False conclusion. Here's what you did:

1) great languages have (or can have) great tools (per parent)

2) Java has great tools (you seem to be saying implicitly)

3) Therefore, Java is a great language

See the problem?

<comment><USER9> That's suggests a vary week meaning of his orignial phrase.

"Great languages _allow_ for great tools to be built around them."

Is ambigous your version suggests he ment, "Great languages" _don't prevent_ good tools from being created. But, that's a fairly week reading. It's more natural to read it as, language design limits the quality of tools you can build, so only great languages can support truly great tools.

<comment><USER7> I rather meant to say that I think the ability of language users/developers to write powerful tools is a very important quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've tried Haskell for a while now and I think it's a great language but it also has some great tools with it, so I think that this is a gross generalization.

</comment><comment> Rob-Goodier Is that a maxim for cultural evolution, also, or is this just for programmers?</comment>


Ask HN: Did HN's SSL certificate just change? - <AUTHOR>

Certificate Patrol just threw up an alert that HN's cert is now from PositiveSSL. Anyone else see this? <comment><USER2> CloudFlare was taking too long to produce their own certificate, so I provided them with an extra we had for other uses:

      Serial Number: 1D 9B 1D 4D 32 6C 01 B6 AC 23 61 14 BB 6D 6C 89
      Fingerprint (SHA1): 5A 2B 9A 0C 7D 29 65 AE B0 6A B0 2E 30 0C 8F E7 5D F7 49 05

</comment><comment><USER3> It may be due to the recent switch to Cloudflare. I also get a PositiveSSL cert with sha1 fingerprint 5a 2b 9a 0c 7d 29 65 ae b0 6a b0 2e 30 0c 8f e7 5d f7 49 05.

My location is Germany, over various providers I get the same cert

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been having problems getting on the site for the last couple of days - CloudFlare has been throwing a 520 error a lot (in the UK, server is London). Could this be related?

</comment><comment><USER5> Cloudflare is overrated</comment>


Why a Free Society Needs a Free Money - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7437/cathy-reisenwitz-why-a-free-society-needs-a-free-money/ <comment><USER3> Author should actually read about the history of money before making grand statements about what money is and isn't for, and what makes it good or bad. Statements about how inflation is "erosion of wealth" indicate a gross misunderstanding of the historical purpose of money and the effects of deflation.

Money is a medium of exchange. Historically, it's been mostly very, very unreliable, and over the last 100 years or so has actually been remarkably solid even as a way to store wealth. But if you want to store wealth for a long period, currency is not your best bet by any stretch.

<comment><USER4> Here is a list of incidents of hyperinflation. How many are in C20 and beyond? How many prior to that?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hype...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation)

Inflation that is rapid and is not covered by interest is most definitely an erosion of wealth.

Specie backed currency was a much better store of money than fiat currency.

For example, gold was $35 dollars an ounce when the US went off the gold standard at the end of the Bretton Woods agreement in the early 1970s. The USD has now lost 95% of it's purchasing power against gold since then. It took the Romans 200 years to do the same with a currency backed by gold.

However, this is not to say that Specie backed currency is a good idea. The expansion of the money supply is, overall, a good thing when well managed. Indeed, a great problem with bitcoin is that it doesn't expand as the economy does.

There is an excellent book by a former FT journalist who now works at The Economist on the history of money called 'Paper Promises' that should be on anyone's reading list if they want to understand money, and indeed the economy, better.

<comment><USER3> Specie backed currency was not a better store of money, because the levels of redeemability of the paper notes were highly variable. Banks went bust all the time in those days, taking all your savings and all the currency and loans issued by them with them. Deflationary periods were even more disastrous than hyper-inflationary periods. Once the banks started popping, they shrunk the money supply along with their numbers, caused further deflation, and further ruined everyone.

Specie backed currency issued by a strong, ethical central bank with a solid management team in a stable country might be a better store of wealth - <USER2> how rare are those? Historically, very.

In the long run, we are all dead and there is no good store of wealth. In the short run, however, diversified investments in stable countries are a decent store of wealth - certainly better than any currency holding. Which is why you don't see rich people hoarding vast sums of cash. They typically keep very little money in the form of cash, because it's the least reliable. Cash, currency, is valuable as a medium of exchange, not of storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I read this until I came to the first badly misleading reference:

 _" When it comes down to it, the leaders of the Weinmar Republic were just running an experiment."_

This makes it sound like the hyperinflation was the consequence of some recklessness, or an experiment carried out in a vacuum. The reality was very different (via WP):

 _" The "London ultimatum" in May 1921 demanded reparations in gold or foreign currency to be paid in annual installments of 2,000,000,000 (2 billion) goldmarks plus 26 percent of the value of Germany's exports.[6]"_

The Weimar government had no choice but to keep shovelling hard currency across the border to France while simultaneously being limited in its ability to earn more. This looks, economically, like a huge trade imbalance which drove down the value of the Mark, and the printing started as an attempt to keep up with the rapidly collapsing exchange rate.

It was not so much an experiment as an act of desparation by a government that was being looted at gunpoint.

Just as famine in the modern world is a political problem rather than primarily an agricultural one, hyperinflation is driven by political or economic collapse rather than some vaguely defined irresponsibility. Also, anyone in the US or UK who is scared of hyperinflation at the moment must not be aware of how close to zero and well-managed inflation actually is.

<comment><USER6> >hyperinflation is driven by political or economic collapse rather than some vaguely defined irresponsibility.

All hyperinflation in modern history has occurred for one reason, and one reason only. That is loss of confidence in currency.

Loss of confidence in a currency can be brought about by many reasons, but there is one constant factor. When hyperinflation has occurred in modern history every economy involved was decimated as and when it occurred. Examples: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hype...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation)

Is it well-managed? Bernake himself said we're in uncharted terretory: [http://www.businessinsider.com/bernankes-2010-qe-2012-8](http://www.businessinsider.com/bernankes-2010-qe-2012-8)

<comment><USER5> "Confidence" is not really an economic variable, nor does it magically evaporate. Go through that list of countries; filter out all those where:

\- it's a very poor third world country (Angola, Zaire, Zimbabwe etc)

\- countries coming out of Communism (all the 1992 events) or other revolution (revolutionary France)

\- hyperinflations triggered by war (Germany, Greece etc)

\- those predating a 20th century understanding of economics

You're basically left with South America, which is somewhat exceptional and has a strong connection with the tendancy for revolutions, coups, US interference etc to trigger crises there.

US inflation, meanwhile, ticks over at a few percent and is resolutely stable, despite the best efforts of the House to trigger a crisis.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the US has the massive advantage of being the world's reserve currency (for now). As such they can EXPORT inflation. Se the Wall Street Journal: The Latest American Export: Inflation

What do the years 1971, 2003 and 2010 have in common? In each year, low U.S. interest rates and the expectation of dollar depreciation led to massive "hot" money outflows from the U.S. and world-wide inflation. And in all three cases, foreign central banks intervened heavily to buy dollars to prevent their currencies from appreciating.

When central banks issue base money to buy dollars, domestic interest rates are forced down and domestic inflationary pressure is generated. Primary commodity prices go up quickly because speculators can easily bid for long positions in organized commodity futures markets when interest rates are low.

The world saw a surge in the dollar prices of primary commodity prices in 1971-73 following the Nixon shock of 1971 when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard. There was also a commodity price surge during the Greenspan-Bernanke shock of 2003-04, when the federal-funds rate was reduced to an unprecedented low of 1% followed by a falling dollar.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870440570457606...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704576064252782421930.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >One Bitcoin user created an exchange which completely solved the problem of violence in the drug trade.

Except he also ordered hits on his enemies, or at least tried to. Feels violent to me.

>That's what's threatened by taxation, regulation and intimidation.

If bitcoin will have any chance of becoming a legitimate currency it will have to be regulated and most importantly taxed. Bitcoin doesn't somehow make you exempt from paying taxes just because it is a digital currency.

On the flip side, I agree that bitcoin can serve as a useful tool to conduct experiments that may be hard to conduct with other currencies and that opens up very interesting possibilities.

<comment><USER8> OTOH, there's something about the need for an economy to be highly taxable which is anti-progress.

1950-2000 Copyright laws were a natural fit for the technologies of the day. It made sense to sell music on discs or tapes. It was easy and possible to create and enforce laws which regulated this. This happened to result in an enormous industry where big profits were made. Then technology changed in a way that made copyright laws a bad fit. The power accumulated in that industry allows them to fight to try and force the world to behave as it had previously, to keep their business model alive.

Over the last decades technology and the general structure of advanced economies (especially in Europe) have allowed a relatively (relative to other times & places) high levels of taxation government services. Governments learned how tax while avoiding destructive reactions in the economy. In a lot of cases this was trial and error (eg, >60% marginal tax rates for high earners). Subsequently a lot of European countries are now at a point where public spending is ~43% of the total.

If technology starts to threaten these models, I think we'll find it very hard to adjust. Governments will have the choice between adapting (unlikely), raising taxes in less disciplined and potentially more disruptive ways, or trying to keep the world as it was by preventing the new technology from being adopted.

I don't think bitcoin is the only such threat. Income inequality might be such a pressure. Mobile freelancers are another. Anyway, if bitcoin gets to the point where it genuinely threatens a government's ability to collect taxes, we're in for trouble.

<comment><USER9> You're confusing taxation with rent-seeking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >> everyone who plays with Bitcoin is a scientist

Bitcoin is neat, but this is not correct.

"Try something and see how it goes", while worthwhile, is not science. Science requires controls and repeatable experiments.

The reason that macroeconomics is at least 50% palm reading is that there is no way to, say, take 2,000 identical universes, bail out the banks in half of them, and compare.

(Science is not the _only_ way to determine truth; for example, you can't do repeatable experiments to identify a murderer.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love that the free market has come up with a working currency, not originated or controlled by a single, or a few, players, and I love that the internet has made this possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hate to be a cynic, but I disagree with many of the points put forth in this article, points that are critical to supporting its thesis. I list some disagreements below.

>Then you have what we're seeing in America, which is the long, slow erosion of wealth and savings through a steady stream of monetary inflation.

Inflation does not reduce wealth. Inflation reduces the value of money. All real goods and services are worth what they're worth, regardless of the stick used to measure them. Inflation only changes the nominal measure of wealth, not wealth itself!

Furthermore, economists generally regard a small amount of inflation as better than a small amount of deflation. First, inflation helps keep prices and salaries less sticky, by constantly devaluing them. Second, inflation helps keep the banking system working (I believe). If nominal interest rates ever go negative, people will withdraw deposits from banks and just hold cash (which always has a nominal interest rate of 0%).

>Not only does inflation slowly eat away at individual wealth, but it also disincentivizes savings.

How does inflation disincentivize savings? Assuming that nominal interest rates are constant, then yes, inflation leads to lower savings. But when inflation is high, nominal rates are high, and when inflation is low, nominal rates are low. The relationship is not clear. Also, remember that S=I, savings=investment. A common misconception is that savings is putting cash aside for the future, whereas investment is spending cash on the future. However, they are actually the same thing. Read more about why savings=investment here: [http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=12617](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=12617)

>One Bitcoin user created an exchange which completely solved the problem of violence in the drug trade.

This user also allegedly hired a hitman to murder someone.

>Governments try to control currencies. With all that power, shouldn't they seek to learn as much about them as possible? Why would anyone attempt to kneecap thousands of unpaid, volunteer experimenters, who are constantly sharing with the world what we're learning about how money works? It's very odd.

I think the US Government is concerned with people breaking its laws. In this case, illegally buying drugs and illegally not paying taxes. It sounds like a reasonable concern to me, though I admit I'm not well informed and I welcome additional comments.

\---

One big downside of a "free" currency is that there are no restorative forces to keep its value constant. A huge advantage of having the US government behind the dollar is that the US can control the value of the dollar. Most of the value here comes, paradoxically, not from controlling the dollar but in markets believing that the US can control the dollar. Those market expectations then themselves keep the value of the dollar mostly constant. Having a currency with a predictable and constant value is hugely important for trade. For this reason, I can't imagine Bitcoin ever succeeding on a large scale for a long time.

<comment><USER13> > Inflation does not reduce wealth.

Inflation (a jargon word that basically means printing money) transfers money from savers to debtors. This is destructive.

It's destructive because the amount of money the government will print is not fully predictable, so it creates financial risks for people who plan ahead.

It's destructive because the new money enters the economy unevenly -- and basically unpredictably and unfairly, not efficiently.

It's also destructive because it discourages savings and capital accumulation, which are important to wealth creation.

So inflation does reduce wealth, overall.

<comment><USER9> >Inflation (a jargon word that basically means printing money) transfers money from savers to debtors. This is destructive.

Call it destructive, but historically it's the only way to prevent society from blowing up in an exponential debt meltdown.

Well, that or banning usury.

>It's also destructive because it discourages savings and capital accumulation, which are important to wealth creation.

Except that the actual source of wealth is just labor and materials, and capital accumulation is a vampiric disease on the honest economy.

<comment><USER14> > Well, that or banning usury.

Or banning maturity transformation, [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.in/2008/01/straight...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.in/2008/01/straightforward-explanation-of-present.html)

<comment><USER9> I don't think that would actually get rid of deflationary financial crises. At least, not under the Hudsonian model I'm using, which is very simple: a financial crisis occurs when the total financial debt exceeds the salable productivity of the nonfinancial economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some good links about inflation, fractional reserve money.

Short version, the people with first access to money (banks, hedge funds) are able to get the new money and use it before the increase in the money supply is reflected in the asset prices.

[http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.no/2013/02/reader- ask...](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.no/2013/02/reader-asks-me-to- prove-inflation.html) [http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.no/2013/03/inflation-...](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.no/2013/03/inflation- targeting-revisited-three.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder to which experiment in the Weimar Republic, Cathy Reisenwitz is referring to.

The reasons for the high inflation until 1923 are very well understood. And IIRC the German government knew that inflation would be caused by their policies, maybe they were surprised by the extent but certainly not by the inflation itself.

Much more interesting was the sudden end of the hyper inflation through the introduction of the Rentenmark. Which wasn't an official currency.

</comment><comment><USER17> unfortunately, the US, its various security services and most of the elected officials are less-than-excited about the idea of a _truly_ free society. currently, the 1st world state has an enormous amount of control over the day- to-day lives of its citizens, moreso than at any other point in history, imo. some things are particularly hard for the state to do vs historically, e.g. institute mandatory military service of some sort, but others have become much easier, e.g. wage economic warfare on opposing states, drone strike small groups.

bitcoin definitely goes a ways towards fixing some of these problems and i think the author is right to cite it as an epic experiment.

</comment><comment><USER18> The entire concept of money cannot be separated from government. The reason why money has any value in the first place is because a government guarantees that value. Without that guarantee money is merely a piece of paper, or a few bytes on a hard drive...

<comment><USER19> Money has value when another party will exchange it for items of value. Banks issued money not all that long ago, people fool with private currencies in the present day, etc.

Government backing can certainly be a valuable feature of a currency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Why a plutocracy needs state-issued money"

FTFY. :-)</comment>


Startup Riot 2010 Accepting Applications - <AUTHOR> http://startupriot.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Startup Riot is hitting its third year in 2010. It is absolutely not a pay to pitch event and has never been - selected presenting entrepreneurs pay NOTHING to present. They also don't pay for a booth or anything else other than their own travel costs. In addition, I'm putting together a travel assistance fund to help entrerpeneurs that need money to pay to come to the event. All startups regardless of stage or need are welcome to apply. The only ones that aren't are services 'startups' with zero innovation (think startup law or accounting firms or consulting practices).

</comment><comment><USER2> Good stuff. Giving a booth/table to each presenter at an event that doesn't charge startups to present is a truly class act.

I am sure the audience prize will make it more exciting too.

</comment><comment><USER3> We'll be in Atlanta for PyCon that weekend as it is (and you all should be, too!). This looks like a great way to maximize utility on those travel costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude - thanks for the heads up on this. Will reach out to the organizers and see if we can help each other out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't find anywhere on the website that states where (geographically) this actually takes place.

<comment><AUTHOR> whoops! sorry - Atlanta, Georgia. Will fix right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to be submitting OtherNum to present! I had a blast last year and saw a lot of great startups. I met pivotal members of the community and got a lot of great ideas. This is going to be an EPIC event.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds great --- I'm looking forward to this event!</comment>


Telstra scores 1-click patent win over Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com.au/telstra-scores-patent-win-over-amazon-339314845.htm

<comment><USER2> note that Telstra are not challenging Amazon on behalf of freedom loving web users around the world, their claim is that they invented 1-click first

they are both being dicks

<comment><USER3> So? The end result can't be "patent gets transferred to Telstra", since Telstra didn't apply for a patent in the first place. If Telstra is shown to have "invented" one-click first then the patent will be nullified and the invention enters the public domain, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused [http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Telstra-l...](http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Telstra- loses-Amazon-patent-ruling-report-pd20110510-GQQCA?OpenDocument)

<comment><USER5> As is so often the case in legal matters, the difference between 'win' and 'loss' is a matter of perspective.

Don't celebrate too soon, because the Australian 1-click patent isn't dead. It's not even resting, or pining for the fjords. It is alive and well, slightly scuffed, but still broader in scope than in any other jurisdiction in which it has been allowed.

See this article (and links within) for an explanation of how a win can still be a loss. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/12/amazon_telstra_paten...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/12/amazon_telstra_patent_law/)

Incidentally, the costs that can be awarded in a matter before the Australian Patent Office are strictly limited by regulation. Despite the length and complexity of the proceedings, the costs awarded are unlikely to much exceed $10,000. Not an amount that either Amazon or Telstra will care about (and, at a guess, less than 10% of what the case actually cost each party).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "lacks novelty [and] an inventive step" Nicely put.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bear in mind that this is a decision of a delegate of the Commissioner of Patents. This decision won't bind anyone except, presumably, the Commissioner of Patents. Its value as a legal precedent anywhere else in the world is roughly zero.

<comment><USER8> IANAL, but Australia and the US have a free trade agreement that specifically includes patent rights and one of the strongest arguments against its ratification here was that Australian developers would be subject to frivolous patent troll lawsuits just as they are there.

If that is the case (a big if), I suppose there could be some legal implication in the US, but you'd have to ask a patent lawyer with intimate knowledge of the FT agreement to be sure.

<comment><USER9> In the IP sphere, free trade agreements are more often focused on the types of laws countries must put in place to protect (or limit, depending on your point of view :)) IP _within their own country_. So, for example, the US-Australian FTA requires that both countries provides for copyright to exist for at least the author's life + 70 years, or that the only grounds for the revocation of a patent are those that would mean the initial filing was invalid.

The USFTA doesn't automatically mean that Australian IP decisions gain legal significance in the US, or vice versa. For this decision to actually have any impact on Amazon's patent in the US, someone would have to litigate it. The Australian decision could certainly be used as evidence in that litigation (as the questions of novelty would be similar), but as noted about would not have any binding authority.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification. A bit off-topic but are you sure about the author's life + 70 years copyright agreement? I remember during the controversy where copies of Orwell's "1984" was remotely wiped off a number of Kindle's, there was some discussion about how Orwell's works were now out of copyright in Australia (and elsewhere) but are not in the US. (eg. <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/>)

<comment><USER9> Yup - that's one of the thing the USFTA changed when in came into force in 2005. The old restriction of +50 was changed to +70. See [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s33.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What the, software patents are allowed in Australia?

<comment><USER11> Yes... sadly, Australia jumped in early on applicability to software. IBM's fault, natch. The case was in 1992, confirmed by high court in 1994. The USA didn't fuck it up until 1998.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. This is huge and this can set a precedent to get the patent killed in the US as well.

One of the worst patents ever granted.

<comment><USER13> Really? That seems unlikely. Foreign legal decisions can set precedent for US court rulings? Are there any instances of that actually happening?

<comment><USER14> Interestingly, if Telstra has _any_ US assets, servers or domains, they can be seized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm going to file a patent for a 3-click checkout system, designed to provide just the right amount of user input and confirmation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good thing for amazon.

don't know anyone who actually set up one-click on purpose.

i'm a fan of the subscription on the other hand. Even tough i fear they could use for timely price increments. e.g. 70% of the people that subscribe to product A choose to deliver on the first week of the month. than for that week that product price will jump 10%, since it's already 'sold' and then go back to being the cheaper amazon price.

Maybe i will patent this... just in case.

<comment><USER17> I use one-click on a near daily basis. Go to a product, click local express checkout, and I'm done. Makes my life easy.

<comment><USER18> Sign up for free Amazon Prime with a .edu email, it changes everything.

<comment><USER16> ha! free amazon prime... yeah, that change my opinion on one click.

without that, good riddance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD 8.4 is now available - <AUTHOR> http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.4R/relnotes-detailed.html <comment><USER2> The release announcement, with links to the mirrors: [http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- announce/2013-Jun...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- announce/2013-June/001479.html)

And AWS ami IDs are in the usual spot on cperciva's page: [http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on- ec2](http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you to everyone at FreeBSD (and some folks behind the scenes at IXSystems) that made this happen.

A lot of people really appreciate seeing the 8 branch extended in its lifecycle like this, and it marks a subtle, but important culture change in FreeBSD development.

<comment><USER4> What, specifically, did iX Systems do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are notable improvements in this version for ZFS, including the LZ4 compression algorithm that is both faster and better than the previous one. (Benchmark: [http://code.google.com/p/lz4/](http://code.google.com/p/lz4/))

<comment><USER6> What zpool version is it at?

<comment><USER7> If it has LZ4, I don't think it has a zpool version. Versions were deprecated, and now ZFS uses feature flags instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does someone knows why FreeBSD doesn't offer any virtualization platform based on Intel VT or AMD-v? Is there any architectural incompatibility or is it just a case of virtualization not being a high priority?

<comment><USER9> They're still working on BHyVe, but it'll probably be a few releases.

They do however have fairly-powerful jails(not as powerful as LXC though), and I think you can run VirtualBox... Or maybe not.

<comment><USER10> > fairly-powerful jails(not as powerful as LXC though)

IMHO LXC wishes it were jails with vimage, and if you really wanted some hillarity you could actually run a linux container-like system under a jail using the linuxulator.

<comment><USER11> Linux namespaces allows namespacing almost any subsystem, although I don't know what FreeBSD offers w.r.t that.

<comment><USER12> > Linux namespaces allows namespacing almost any subsystem

Namespacing has nothing to do with it. Not even a decent try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have a good recommendation for a lightweight laptop (ideally 11", but 13" is OK I guess) that would run a BSD system out of the box (as much as possible)?

Trying to slowly start a switch from OS X for basic stuff (internet, writing LaTeX, writing some elementary code, etc.), something to replace my Macbook Air would be awesome.

<comment><USER9> Not sure if FreeBSD has power management worth a rectal excretion, you probably wouldn't want to run it on a laptop.

Try GNU/Linux, really.

<comment><USER14> Or OpenBSD. That runs really well on most laptops.

<comment><USER15> As long as they're connected to a wall socket. Otherwise, citation needed. Power Management in hard. Who does the myriad of hardware quirks for OpenBSD?

<comment><USER16> If you are referring to suspend/resume, then OpenBSD has great support[1]. Its one of the very few ACPI stacks not derived from Intel's ACPICA reference code.

[1] [http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/zzz.pdf) (older, 2011)

<comment><USER9> Suspend and resume are basic features, by power management I mean idle and active power management, optimizing the race to zero, reclocking...

<comment><USER17> Working suspend and resume is not a basic feature as far as linuxen go.

<comment><USER9> Would you like to explain that, and maybe cite some references? Suspend and resume have been stable for me as long as I've had a computer capable of supporting them. And I'm not aware of any way to make them fail without doing something obviously intended to disable them.

<comment><USER18> Reference: Every time I've tried Linux on a laptop, Suspend, Resume, or Both has been broken in whatever $FLAVOR_OF_THE_MONTH distro/package/kernel the community insists is the next big thing.

The BSDs tend to implement these things later but far more reliably.

<comment><USER9> Never been broken on Arch, Fedora, Debian... or any of the upstream distributions I've used, when I've used them.

Your personal exacerbation of whatever imaginary and nonspecific issues you're talking about is not relevant to a conversation about people other than you.

The world doesn't need your BSD FUD. "The BSDs" is also absolutely silly as ideas go, there are BSDs which have never supported suspend/resume.

<comment><USER19> What the world doesn't need is this continuing holy war from a particularly small but sadly vocal minority of the Linux community. You really don't help the cause. I find it particularly irononic of you to accuse someone of spreading "BSD FUD" on a thread about FreeBSD. I'll 'cite' you an example of real 'FUD'; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839565)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shared Autonomous Vehicles: Rethinking The Morning Commute - <AUTHOR> http://www.engr.utexas.edu/features/shared-autonomous-vehicles

<comment><USER2> So, in essence, "we reinvented public transit, but we need to market it as 'cars' to Americans, because cars good, public transit bad"? Interesting, both in practicality and marketing.</comment>


The Teacher Who Couldn't Read - <AUTHOR> http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

<comment><USER2> Why do I have the feeling "The Project Manager that Couldn't Code" wouldn't sell as many copies?</comment>


Why did I leave Google? A thread - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jessiedotjs/status/1162364434846822401 <comment><USER2> It still blows my mind that Andy Rubin made almost $100M for getting fired, when he should be in prison right now.

It's becoming clear that there is no rule of law or even basic ethics among the elites. They don't even seem to try to hide this fact anymore, it's just all out in the open.</comment>


NASA not ready for dangers of deep space, auditors say - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/11/23/nasa-not-ready-for-dangers-of-deep-space-auditors-say/ <comment><USER2> Of 135 shuttle missions, 2 resulted in the death of all crew, giving a confidence interval of something like 1-4% for the mortality risk of each flight. Any sane assessment of the first Apollo landing missions would put the subjective mortality risk at 10% at the very least. (Later landings were somewhat safer, subjectively, since the equipment was proven.)

I can't imagine the _in-mission_ mortality risk of a Mars mission would realistically be less than 5%, and 15% would not be unacceptable to me. A 10% in-mission risk equates to something like 5 years of lost life in expectation.

In comparison to this, the risk of cancer seem small or comparable. Yes, you'll need to provide sufficient shielding to prevent aggressive cancers from probably developing during the mission, or ones that will reliably lead to death before 60. But I'm not at all surprised that we may need to accept a much higher cancer risk than we would for a normal occupation. This doesn't strike me as one of the key challenges.

<comment><USER3> _I can 't imagine the in-mission mortality risk of a Mars mission would realistically be less than 5%, and 15% would not be unacceptable to me. _

Thus the rationalist Mars mission: send a drone to Mars. Give your five favorite NASA crew members one shot in the head apiece with a fairly spun six shot pistol with one bullet chambered. This accomplishes all of your objectives, is cheaper, and minimizes the danger that the mission architects are underestimating the risk.

<comment><USER2> "Rational" is not a property of ends, it is a property of means (and beliefs). All ends are arbitrary.

The robots sent to mars are not useful for any reasonable economic reason. Even insofar as you count speculative basic research as economically useful, there are _vastly_ better ways to spend that money on speculative basic research on Earth.

So why go to Mars? Because either (1) you find the basic research being done about Martian geology particularly compelling or (2) you want to see it explored by humans for its own sake. If you really actually believe in (1), then by all means; send more robots. But I'll bet 100:1 that you personally have no appreciation for the basic science questions, which are mostly very technical and boring. (Hint: grand-seeming questions about life are promoted for publicity and funding reasons, but these are not the ones that actually drive the science, and we are not learning more about the origin of life from going to Mars.)

Rather, I think you'll have to admit we want to go to Mars because it is _awesome_. You may think sending metal under our control is just as awesome as sending flesh and blood humans, but ultimately this is an aesthetic judgement which is not grounded in rationality. Personally, I would like to see humans walk there, and I'm happy to pay my citizen-share of $100/year over the next decade to make it happen.

<comment><USER4> >"Rational" is not a property of ends, it is a property of means (and beliefs). All ends are arbitrary.

So let's just skip the trip to Mars and spend the money to build high-tech pyramids in the Nevada desert and sacrifice virgins.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that the whole point of Las Vegas?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" the astronauts chosen to make at least the initial forays into deep space may have to accept a higher level of risk than those who fly International Space Station missions."_

Is this surprising to anyone? It's a far greater challenge?

<comment><USER7> The world is not moved forward by those who seek the safety of their current existence. It is those who dare to throw caution to the wind and embrace the challenge of the unknown.

Just because there is a danger of dieing doesn't mean that it shouldn't be attempted or that there are not those willing to attempt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A realistic near-term goal is to establish a space station at the earth-moon L1 point such as

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

The answer to radiation is that you want 6 feet of rock, ideally all around you, but particularly between you and the sun on solar flares. That can be harvested from the moon or an easy asteroid.

A presence on the moon is a lot more realistic, and if commercially useful water can be found at the pole and converted to fuel, it would make it affordable to send astronauts to mars with radiation protection. At that point we would have extensive experience with "living off the land" in space and won't be doing it on a planet with toxic soil.

</comment><comment><USER9> Exactly whose safety are they concerned for? The volunteers who would gladly accept the risks of death, disease, and injury for a chance at glory? If we'd had this attitude to risk in the 1960s, the Apollo program would have ended after Apollo 1 burned up.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that is exactly whose safety they are concerned with. People who are willing to give their life for a cause may be too willing to do so. There is nothing wrong with making a project as safe as possible, even if you can find volunteers with higher risk tolerances.

<comment><USER11> "There is nothing wrong with making a project as safe as possible"

This is crazy, it will leave us with space projects that will never be finished. Didn't mars one prove that people are willing to die on Mars to get there first? The cost of getting people to mars is trivial compared to the cost of getting them back. We spend so much time on safety we have become totally immobile in space. The whole NASA budget should be given to the private sector!

<comment><USER10> OK, fine, what if we changed it to "as safe as practical"?

The point is that those who are willing to die should not set the safety standards. We should surpass their personal risk tolerances, and make it safer than that.

<comment><USER11> As a parent, I found that what I considered "as safe as practical" was considerably different than what my wife considered safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what I don't understand, can someone ELI5 it for me:

"Even nutrition, the report said, could be problematic, because any Mars vehicle will likely be significantly smaller than the International Space Station, and astronauts will be too far away to receive the regular resupply missions they now get on the station."

Why does that have to be the case? Why are we limiting the size of the spaceship to what can be launched from Earth? Wouldn't it be better to construct teh ship in space so it could be a behemoth that had ample supplies, etc. and in effect could be a semi-permanent space station in Mars orbit that could be launched from to the surface with smaller ships?

<comment> david-given The short answer is: launch costs and crap rockets.

Building a big ship, right now, means lifting lots of mass into orbit and assembling it there. That in itself will be stunningly expensive. But then you want to actually send it to Mars.

Earth orbit to Mars orbit costs about 6 km/s (see [http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png](http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png)), which is comparable to the 9.4 km/s needed to get from the surface of Earth to low earth orbit. Now, we are in space, which means we can use slow, efficient burns rather than the fuel-belching behemoths you need for a launch... but right now we're limited to inefficient chemical rockets, which means a hell of a lot of fuel.

The ISS masses about 400 tonnes. Assuming hydrazine as a fuel, with an isp of about 350, that means that the wet mass of your vehicle has to be (dry mass) * e^(deltav / isp _9.8) = 400e3_ e^(6000 / 350*9.8) = 2300 tonnes. So you'll need 1900 tonnes of fuel. That's 380 Falcon 9s full of rocket fuel. (Assuming my maths are right.)

So you try to make your spacecraft as small as possible. That way you don't need to carry the fuel needed to move the fuel. The rocket equation is a bummer.

(Of course, nuclear engines, are vastly more efficient, change all this. Shame we don't have any. If you were willing to wait long enough, an ion thruster with an ISP of 20000 would require only 12 tonnes of fuel. But you wouldn't live that long.)

<comment><USER13> Yes, but realistically one could mine the Moon poles and develop the fuel there...

Better yet expand it grow food on moon and refuel and load up on food in moon orbit.

<comment><USER14> Does growing food on the moon actually help? Unless you can mine the nutrients for the food, you still need to bring up all of the mass that would go into the food, at which point you might as well just bring up already processed food (which would also be denser in value/weight). The main benefit of growing food in space is that it lets you recycle nutrients. (I am including the atmospheric gasses as nutrients in this).

<comment> david-given Yes, you'd have to mine the nutrients there for this to be effective. As you say, there's no point lifting it all from Earth.

Organic life is largely made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (the so-called CHON). There's not much carbon or nitrogen. This is one reason why people are so interested in hypothetical ice deposits at the poles. There's a reasonable chance that there'll be stocks of this elements there (in the form of ammonia or hydrocarbons).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the source report:

 _" Although NASA continues to improve its process for identifying and managing health and human performance risks associated with space flight, we believe that given the current state of knowledge, the Agency's risk mitigation schedule is optimistic and NASA will not develop countermeasures for many deep space risks until the 2030s, at the earliest."_

[https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf](https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> Humans were evolved to survive in a razor-thin sliver of Earth's atmosphere and nowhere else. We aren't designed for and don't belong in deep space.

We should genetically engineer smart creatures that can fare better out there, creatures with enormous capacities for cancer resistance, stupefyingly impressive energy efficiency, and staggeringly long lifetimes. They don't need all of our gravity-influenced skeletal structure and musculature. The fact that we're air-breathers is a particularly worrisome liability for being a space-faring critter. Little holes in our tin can atmospheres can lead to explosively bad results.

I'd start with something closer to an octopus and then throw (even more) intelligence at it.

<comment><USER16> surely it would be easier to build better robots?

<comment><USER15> Maybe, if the robots can self-replicate and/or self-repair and have that creative spark, but that's asking a whole lot of tech that we haven't sorted out yet.

Life has the replication shit already worked out, so if the goal is really to put intelligent life in deep space in a sustainable way, a genetically engineered super-bright octopus species in a space-faring aquarium with environmental selectors for intelligence built in might actually be more effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> New auditor's report say that humankind is not ready to leave the cave. We should all stay in the cave.

<comment><USER18> It was a mistake to leave the trees even.

<comment><USER19> Arguably, becoming air breathing has turned to not be all it was cracked up to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone have historical audits of NASA from 1960? I'll bet they were saying the same thing about moon missions back then.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've often seen two things conflated when it comes to cancer & Mars.

The first is that if we send people on a one-off return mission their lifetime risk of cancer will increase by X%. This is obviously a concern, but as others here in the thread have mentioned we could get people willing to accept the risk.

The second is that if people stay on Mars for generations you have the risk of cumulative damage to DNA over generations. Now it's not just a problem that instead of living to 80 you die of cancer at 60, but rather that after N generations the population's DNA might be damaged past repair.

</comment><comment><USER22> The only real _hard_ limit is likely to be specifically the radiation acquired from Galactic Cosmic Rays.

There is, to a first approximation, nothing you can do about this; And it is in fact up there around our thresholds for dose limit, unless you're satisfied with increasing the mission mass by a factor of a thousand. The only practical thing to do is to adjust our thresholds.

But screw it - we're talking about landing on another planet, about millions of man-years of time investment, about activities plenty of people would donate DALYs to accomplish; About activities they will usually have to donate their entire career and their marriages to accomplish anyway, where the unknown unknown risks of sudden death are expected to be of a higher magnitude in the first place. Thresholds are silly in that context.

For comparison:

Flight attendants who have been on the job between five years and their whole careers have ~600% of the breast cancer (and likely other cancer) risk of the median person.

Regular smokers have 2600% the risk of lung cancer as people who have never smoked.

Pay a smoker a million dollars to sign a contract stating they will never smoke again, send him to Mars, then pay a private investigator to follow him around for the rest of his life ensuring he does not start smoking, and he will have a vastly lower rate of cancer at vastly lower monetary outlay than if he had been rejected at the first astronaut screening and NASA had attempted to mitigate radiation risk from GCRs.

<comment><USER23> In case anyone else is puzzled: DALY = "Disability-adjuseted life year", i.e. a year you're alive and not disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ok, exploring space is risky. How does it compare to the risk of previous exploration? I don't imagine that sailing off into uncharted waters in a wooden boat with whatever provisions you could carry was a particularly safe endeavor either. There are more important things than maximizing safety.

</comment><comment><USER25> At the very least, ISS should have a module or two dedicated to growing food. Right now. I don't understand why they're neglecting this technology.

<comment><USER26> Just as an experiment? ISS would have to be much larger to be self-sufficient in food. On earth it would take around 4,000 m^2 of solar power and 900,000 kg of topsoil (one acre-furrow-slice) to feed each of the six crew.

<comment><USER27> Hydroponics and aeroponics don't require any soil. Using red/blue grow lights instead of full spectrum roughly halves that solar power estimate, and in space they have no atmosphere to block the sun. The ISS certainly couldn't be self-sufficient as is, but it could be with relatively modest expansion.

<comment><USER28> Would be interesting to see how the lack of gravity affects growth.

<comment><USER27> They're working on it: [http://spaceflight101.com/iss/veggie/](http://spaceflight101.com/iss/veggie/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Lately I've been seeing NASA and NSA swapped with each other on a subliminal level once in a while and it always leads to some amusing double takes.</comment>