AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is the fastest processor on Geekbench - <AUTHOR> https://www.techquila.co.in/amd-ryzen-9-3950x-vs-intels-18-core-i9/ <comment><USER2> If that's really true, a 16 core AMD having a higher performance than a 18 core intel processor at twice the price, that's a fabulous news for all consumers. Hopefully that will stop both intel from setting absurd price for mid end processor and generally push the industry forward.

<comment><USER3> What really matters (for people that do the CAPEX and OPEX math on their assets; not gamers) is the performance/power ratio. Without this I don't see AMD eating much of Intel's lunch (35B vs 208B market cap).

<comment><USER4> The Zen 2 16 core chip is 105 watt TDP. The chips its wiping the floor with are 165 TDP. TDP doesn't necessarily correlate with real world usage, but benchmarks show that AMD is much better at their chips running closer to TDP than Intel chips are, so the gap is probably actually wider. The strength of Intel chips is being able to pump a lot of power through them to hit higher clock rates.

It sounds like you're saying performance/power is a benefit for Intel, possibly based upon the history of AMD chips, but that line of thought has been wrong since the Ryzen architecture.

<comment><USER5> Not Ryzen related, but seems you're pretty up to speed with AMD products. Does that include Radeon as well? I have a MBP and I am considering a Radeon VII for my external GPU (currently GTX 1080 but only usable in Windows. Thanks Mojave). My main concern though is thermals and noise. Does it perform on par with Nvidia there or little bit worse or considerably so? Power draw I'm not that concerned with.

<comment><USER6> In the most recent generations, Radeon has run hotter than nVidia cards for similar performance. Seems to be true of the Radeon VII as well [0].

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18194190/amds-radeon- vii-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18194190/amds-radeon-vii-is-a-hot- loud-powerful-answer-to-nvidia)

<comment><USER5> thanks for that. That's a huge bummer. Really wish Apple wouldn't force the Metal issue with Nvidia. Yeah, it'd be nice and all, but as a user, I'm fine with the various scripts I have to run after macOS updates to get the card running again but they just nixed that outright. Oh well, hopefully AMD can solve the fan problems or Nvidia and Apple can work something out, either or.

<comment><USER7> The Radeon 5700 and 5700 XT are supposed to be competitive with the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 at slightly lower prices. Only reference cards right now, but things might be looking up once OEMs have a chance to put better coolers on instead of AMD's reference blower.

I'm planning to hold out for next gen when they get ray tracing hardware to be a bit more future proof (my GTX 970's not dead yet), but since I'm thinking of trading my Wintendo out for a Mac + eGPU setup it's nice to see that AMD could actually be a good GPU option now.

Those were just announced this week, so keep an eye out for 3rd party benchmarks soon.

<comment><USER8> Will probably pull the trigger on a Radeon VII myself, only because of the better Linux drivers, and possibility of hackintosh usage. At least for my current system, I did a mid-cycle upgrade for the GPU (GTX 1080) and added NVME a couple years ago. Still running 4790K on 32gb ram, and does great for most stuff, but not so much for encoding or dev work (couple dbs and services in background).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surprisingly no one noticed or reported that the memory is _heavily_ overclocked by +29% in this specific benchmark. Here is the direct link to the detailed results: [http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867](http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13495867)

Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz) according to the published specs [https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd- ryzen-9-3950x](https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x) however in this benchmark the memory was overclocked to 2063 MHz:

      Memory: 32768 MB DDR4 SDRAM 2063MHz

Memory overclocking heavily impacts Geekbench multi-core scores. For example the old Threadripper 2950X sees a score boosted by +18% (39580 vs 46908) with a +9% overclock (1466 vs 1600 MHz): [http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baselin...](http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13400527?baseline=12434177) Although to be honest comparing random Geekbench scores in their database is not exact science because too few system details are reported (for example we don't know if the user systems are running dual or quad-channel DDR4) and we don't know what other hardware mods users make.

<comment><USER10> _> Officially Ryzen 9 3950X supports up to DDR4-3200 (1600 MHz)_

No, it supports "4200+ with ease, 5133 demonstrated".

From official slides [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd- zen-2-microarchitec...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14525/amd- zen-2-microarchitecture-analysis-ryzen-3000-and-epyc-rome/11)

<comment><USER9> While AMD claim it can be overclocked to 4200 or 5133, it doesn't invalidate my claim that officially it is spec'd for DDR4-3200 according to the product page: [https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd- ryzen-9-3950x](https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x)

Note I am not playing down the 3950X's performance. It is overall a processor superior to Intel's counterparts in most aspects.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if G.Skill will release new RAM targeted for Zen 2. Their 3200 MHz FlareX works pretty well with Zen+.

<comment><USER12> It's G.Skill. They'll release ~100 new SKUs for it, as long as they can get enough well-binned modules from samsung.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the bigger news here is that it almost _doubles_ the score of the similar AMD Threadripper 2950X (also 16c/32t).

34650 to 61072 in a generation is no joke, while being both a far smaller, much lower power part.

<comment><USER14> Don't you think it means the number is probably fake?

Before the release and subsequent independent testing the trust in any exceptional results should be very low.

<comment><USER15> I'd be more likely to believe Geekbench is just a terrible, broken benchmark than anything else.

An Epyc 7501 (32c/64t) apparently only gets 17k multicore score on geekbench under windows: [https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2141](https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2141)

Which is hilariously wrong. And if you think that's some quirk of Epyc, well, same CPU gets 65k when run under Linux: [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/10782563](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/10782563) So clearly there's a software issue in play. Maybe this is related to the new Windows scheduler change. Maybe geekbench just has some pathologically bad behavior. Who knows.

So yes we should wait for release & independent testing before getting too excited, even if that's just so we get numbers from something other than geekbench.

<comment><USER16> Geekbench exposes some strange behaviour around the memory allocator under Windows. On systems with more than 8 cores Geekbench spends a significant chunk of time in the memory allocator due to contention. This issue (at least to this degree) isn't present on Linux, so that's why Epyc scores are much higher on Linux than Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might be an unfair comparison — the AMD numbers are from a single benchmark, and the article is comparing this against the aggregated scores of the i9-9980XE. A few i9-9980XE multi-core scores on Geekbench reach higher than 60k as well, with the highest being 77554 multi-core.

<comment><USER18> [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-99...](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=i9-9980XE&sort=multicore_score)

Looks like a couple hit 70k+ at 3.00 GHz base [1].

[1] [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13419502)

<comment><USER19> Geekbench just lists the stock speeds for the chip, not the actual speeds used for the benchmark.

<comment><USER18> Yep I think that's clear in the Geekbench interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Ryzens have an absurdly long branch prediction history that make them much better at repetitive tasks than random real-world workflows. I wonder how much this is effectively "gaming" the Geekbench suite.

[https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks- rememb...](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-microbenchmarks-remember- branch-history/17436/9?u=mbauman)

<comment><USER21> That's not the impression I got from that thread. They seem to agree that this is bad for benchmarking, but remain undecided on whether that's good or bad for real-world processing.

It depends on the work. So as always benchmark suites are to be taken with a grain of salt. More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific use cases.

Until we see more specific data on how these chips perform for certain tasks, this is just FUD.

<comment><USER4> > More specific benchmarks, such as compiling a standard set of real software > packages, can give a clearer picture of performance for those more specific > use cases.

Is there a good place to go for this? I've tried to find software development focused benchmarks before, but I've come up mostly empty.

<comment><USER22> Phoronix is a good place to go for compilation benchmarks - [https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test- suite](https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite)

<comment><USER21> The link I posted in a sibling comment is a more direct way to get to the results of that suite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bravo, everyone on the PC side has great options now, but I feel for Mac "Professionals". Sad they just got straddled with the horrendous over priced and under performing Xeon platform. It boggles my mind why Apple would release a $6k model that will get trounced by these chips for a fraction of the price. I know the expand-ability is what you are buying into, but I imagine 90% of Mac Pro customers could care less about terrabytes of memory or a video solution that improves current vram limits. Add to all of that the gimped performance you are going to get on the Intel parts with the latest security patches.

<comment><USER24> Apple must have had an interest in going with AMD - the fact that they didn't makes me think that getting macOS ready as a productive, reliable OS on AMD CPUs isn't as trivial as we might assume. Also, is Thunderbolt even an option with AMD?

<comment><USER23> I think you nailed it... Thunderbolt is not possible on AMD.

<comment><USER25> It is...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's an increasing groundswell of trust in AMD and their Ryzen chip. It's great news, I've owned one for two years now and it's fab.

The new XBox will feature a custom Ryzen of some form. Who's next, Apple?

<comment><USER27> >it's fab.

Given that it's AMD, shouldn't that be "it's fabless"?

I've got a mix of Intel and AMD, and have had no loyalty back to when I replaced my Pentium 75 with a pre-unlocked AMD Duron from OcUK.

I'm so glad to see AMD not only raise its game exponentially, but also force Intel to compete. It's good for everyone.

My next purchase will probably be a Ryzen 5 2600, because the price drop ahead of the 3xxx has made them ridiculous value for money.

Definitely a good time to be a PC gamer.

Slightly frustrating that the integrated graphics 3x00G chips are basically Ryzen 2xxx chips though. I hope the g-range gets a refresh with proper Zen 2-based chips shortly.

WRT "who next", did you see the Chinese AMD custom Ryzen+Vega APU console last year, the Subor Z-Plus, with 8GB GDDR5 as shared system and graphics memory?

<comment><USER8> Totally agreed on the 3xxx(G|H) parts not being Zen 2, and really misleading on that front. Though they're mostly underclocked with lots of room for boost, so competitive to Intel's. Also the onboard vega gfx almost doesn't suck by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's a lot of performance for 749 USD. Building a new workstation / gaming rig in about 18 months time so I will be spoiled for choice by then especially given the used market as these will be old hat by then.

</comment><comment><USER29> Would rather see numbers on Cinebench, Video encoding, 7-zip...

</comment><comment><USER30> It looks like single core performance is still worse than i9 9900K. I wonder how this could look like when overclocked? Sadly my workflow prioritises fast core over multiple cores - audio production. This workflow cannot be made parallel as one plugin depends on the output of another. If plugins can't keep up with filling the buffer you get stuttering. Single core limits you how much processing you can have on a single audio track and multiple cores how many tracks of that processing you can get. It looks like I wouldn't be able to run my chain in realtime on this new AMD even if it had 100 cores.

<comment><USER31> Why would it not be possible to use multiple cores? Even though the plugins depend on the output of the previous one, they could sit on different cores, passing their output on from core to core. Even though that would not be parallel, being distributed, it could be faster (in some cases it might not).

<comment><USER30> These cannot run at the same time as the output of one feeds into another one. Data travelling from one core to another could mean additional performance loss. Some plugins use multiple cores if whatever they calculate can be parallelised, but still the quicker it can be done the more plugins you can run in your chain.

<comment><USER32> This is silly. A bottleneck for audio processing is a particular product's flaw, not an intrinsic challenge of audio. A modern machine capable of doing interactive, high-resolution graphics rendering or high-definition movie rendering can do a stupendous amount of audio processing without even trying.

The data rates for real-time audio are so much smaller than modern memory system capabilities that we can almost ignore them. A 192 kHz, 24-bit, 6-channel audio program is less than 3 MB/s, thousands of times slower than a modern workstation CPU and memory system can muster.

The stack of audio filters you describe are a natural fit for pipelined software architectures, and such architectures are trivially mapped to pipelined parallel processing models. Whatever buffer granularity one might make in a single-threaded, synchronous audio API to relay data through a sequence of filter functions can be distributed into an asynchronous pipeline, with workers on separate cores looping over a stream of input sample buffers. It just takes an SMP-style queue abstraction to handle the buffer relay between the workers, while each can invoke a typical synchronous function. Also, because these sorts of filters usually have a very consistent cost regardless of the input signal, they could be benchmarked on a given machine to plan an efficient allocation of pipeline stages to CPU cores (or to predict that the pipeline is too expensive for the given machine).

Finally, audio was a domain motivating DSPs and SIMD processing long before graphics. An awful lot of audio effects ought to be easily written for a high performance SIMD processing platform, just like custom shaders in a modern video game are mapped to GPUs by the graphics driver.

<comment><USER30> This is a simple fact of life and downvoting isn't going to change it. Plugin cannot start processing before it gets data from previous plugin (sure it can do some tricks like pre-computing coefficients for filters etc). How are you going to get around it? What's happening within a plugin of course can be parallelised, but other than that, the processing is inherently serial. If a computing a filter takes X time and a length of the buffer is Y you can only compute so many filters (Y/X) before it starts stuttering. You can spread that across different cores, but these filters cannot be processed at the same time, because each needs the output of the previous one.

<comment><USER32> Pipelining means that each stage further down the pipeline is processing an "earlier" time window than the previous stage. They don't run concurrently to speed up one buffer, but they run concurrently to sustain the throughput while having more active filters.

For N stages, instead of having each filter run at 1/N duty cycle, waiting for their turn to run, they can all remain mostly active. As soon as they are done with one buffer, the next one from the previous pipeline stage is likely to be waiting for them. This can actually lower total latency and avoid dropouts because the next buffer can begin processing in the first stage as soon as the previous buffer has been released to the second stage.

<comment><USER30> I think this is one of the most misunderstood problem these days. Your idea could work if the process wasn't real-time. In real-time audio production scenario you cannot predict what event is going to happen so you cannot simply just process next buffer, because you won't know in advance what is needed to be processed. At the moment these pipelines are as advanced as they can be and there is simply no way around being able to process X filters in Y amount of time to work in real-time. If you think you have an idea that could work, you could solve one of the biggest problems music producers face that is not yet solved.

<comment><USER32> Something like a filter chain for an audio stream is truly the textbook candidate for pipelined concurrency. Conceptually, there are no events or conditional branching. Just a methodical iteration over input samples, in order, producing output samples also in order.

Whatever you can calculate sequentially like:

      while True:
         buf0 = input.recv()
         buf1 = filter1(buf0)
         buf2 = filter2(buf1)
         buf3 = filter3(buf2)
         output.send(buf3)

can instead be written as a set of concurrent worker loops.

Each worker is dedicated to running a specific filter function, so its internal state remains local to that one worker. Only the intermediate sample buffers get relayed between the workers, usually via a low-latency asynchronous queue or similar data structure. If a particular filter function is a little slow, the next stage will simply block on its input receive step until the slow stage can perform the send.

(Edited to try to fix pseudo code block)

<comment><USER30> This is how it is typically being done. This is not a problem. Problem is that being concurrent, end to end this process is serial, so you can't process any element of this pipeline in parallel. You can run only so many of those until you run out of time to fill the buffer. I think it could be helpful for you to watch this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso)

<comment><USER32> Sorry for the late reply. We have to consider two kinds of latency separately.

A completely sequential process would have a full end-to-end pipeline delay between each audio frame. The first stage cannot start processing a frame until the last stage has finished processing the previous frame. In a real- time system, this turns into a severe throughput limit, as you start to have input/output overflow/underflow. The pipeline throughput is the reciprocal of the end-to-end frame delay.

But, concurrent execution of the pipeline on multiple CPU cores means that you can have many frames in flight at once. The total end-to-end delay is still the sum of the per-stage delays, but the inter-frame delay can be minimized. As soon as a stage has completed one frame, it can start work on the next in the sequence. In such a pipeline, the throughput is the reciprocal of the inter-frame delay for the slowest stage rather than of the total end-to-end delay. The real-time system can scale the number of pipeline stages with the number of CPU cores without encountering input/output overflow/underflow.

Because frame drops were mentioned early on in this discussion, I (and probably others who responded) assumed we were talking about this pipeline throughput issue. But, if your real-time application requires feedback of the results back into a live process, i.e. mixing the audio stream back into the listening environment for performers or audience, then I understand you also have a concern about end-to-end latency and not just buffer throughput.

One approach is to reduce the frame size, so that each frame processes more quickly at each stage. Practically speaking, each frame will be a little less efficient as there is more control-flow overhead to dispatch it. But, you can exploit the concurrent pipeline execution to absorb this added overhead. The smaller frames will get through the pipeline quickly, and the total pipeline throughput will still be high. Of course, there will be some practical limit to how small a frame gets before you no longer see an improvement.

Things like SIMD optimization are also a good way to increase the speed of an individual stage. Many signal-processing algorithms can use vectorized math for a frame of sequential samples, to increase the number of samples processed per cycle and to optimize the memory access patterns too. These modern cores keep increasing their SIMD widths and effective ops/cycle even when their regular clock rate isn't much higher. This is a lot of power left on the table if you do not write SIMD code.

And, as others have mentioned in the discussion, if your filters do not involve cross-channel effects, you can parallelize the pipelines for different channels. This also reduces the size of each frame and hence its processing cost, so the end-to-end delay drops while the throughput remains high with different channels being processed in truly parallel fashion.

Even a GPU-based solution could help. What is needed here is a software architecture where you run the entire pipeline on the GPU to take advantage of the very high speed RAM and cache zones within the GPU. You only transfer input from host to GPU and final results back from GPU to host. You will use only a very small subset of the GPU's processing units, compared to a graphics workload, but you can benefit from very fast buffers for managing filter state as well as the same kind of SIMD primitives to rip through a frame of samples. I realize that this would be difficult for a multi-vendor product with third- party plugins, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X have the same TDP as 12 core Ryzen 9 3900X (105W)? It even has higher max boost frequency. Is it just because of lower base frequency?

* [https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x](https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3900x)

* [https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x](https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-3950x)

<comment><USER33> TDP doesn't tell you what the actual power consumption in practice will be. It is defined in some weird ways (different between manufacturers), and generally not intuitive. I would recommend to avoid trying to read too much into the TDP, wait for actual measurements of power consumption.

My understanding is that typically the TDP is designed to fit to the base clock of the processor, and doesn't necessarily include the amount of power necessary to achieve the boost clocks.

<comment><USER34> Anandtech do a deep dive on how Intel calculate TDP numbers [0]. It's complicated (and completely different from AMD, so never try to compare numbers).

[0] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors- dr...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more- power-than-expected-tdp-turbo)

<comment><USER11> Interesting, thanks! From that article, Intel's TDP is roughly equal to the power draw during full load on base frequency. How does AMD define it then?

Also, what about GPUs TDP?

<comment><USER34> I've read some in-depth analysis of AMD's calculation somewhere too, but I forget where. I do remember that the TDP numbers on AMD are closer to maximum power draw.

Never investigated GPUs. One way to find out would be to trawl Anandtech reviews and collect TDP and measured power draw numbers, they always take measurements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Powerful stuff !

In order to see optimum use of those many cores i wish to see.

1\. Most used legacy software libraries to incorporate concurrent/parallel algorithms for both CPU and mixed (CPU +IO) load.

2\. Some inventive, compact and powerful heat sink design to be implemented in laptop models.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why do you think Apple hasn't moved to AMD cpus for its Mac products?

In the past I thought maybe the rumored move to ARM could be the reason, but now with the new Mac Pro I doubt Apple will move to ARM except for some of its laptops.

<comment><USER37> That Apple have married themselves to Thunderbolt (co-developed by Apple and Intel) may have had something to do with it. Previously Thunderbolt was not well supported on AMD platforms, as I understand it. This appears to be changing though.

<comment><USER38> Thunderbolt has been an open standard (and now royalty free) for some time. I'm sure if someone as big as Apple wanted to adopt AMD that was the only blocker, it wouldn't be a blocker for long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pretty stoked about what AMD is doing. Even if these benchmarks are inflated, it's an amazing bang for your buck and you can build some really solid budget machines. The next generation with PCI 4.0 looks extremely promising. I wish they'd concentrate on pressuring motherboard companies to make more professional non-server boards for the Ryzen 9 chips.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does Ry(Zen) now support AVX-512 and thunderbolt?

It will be interesting to see if Jim Keller comes up with something for intel too, now that he's there and no longer with AMD.

<comment><USER41> From what I remember Thunderbolt is Intel proprietary even though at launch they said it will be open.

Does anyone know if that has changed?

<comment><USER42> Yes, thunderbolt 3 is open now. There's a few AMD motherboards out there right now that support it but they're not common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> With 1903 update or without?

</comment><comment><USER44> I went with a ryzen for my newest desktop and it's been great so far, I love it.

Not only does it work well, but it fixed the issues I was having. I used to have shutdown took 5-10 minutes due to some systemd nonsense, mysteriously fixed with the new mobo and cpu. Definitely a plus to have it gone now.

Tested with Ubuntu and also windows, Keras and games.

</comment><comment><USER45> Perhaps we need data from "real" benchmarks, such as SPECCPU2017. Geekbench is merely a toy compared with SpeCPU.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hopefully AMD will release details on the next ThreadRipper iteration before the 3950X release in September.

If the top end ThreadRipper is just two of these glued together then there's not really any other choice for a workstation build.

But if the next ThreadRipper goes further and has 4 core complexes on a single MMU then it have insane performance.

<comment><USER47> I think it all depends on if ThreadRipper gets a new socket. Matisse is 2 channel DDR, Threadripper is currently 4 channel, and Rome, the new server platform, is supposed to be 8 channel.

Using the Rome platform unmodified means 8 channel matching DDR4 kits for consumers. Re-using Matisse silicon glued together makes next-gen ThreadRipper into a NUMA device. Maybe AMD has an I/O die just for the low volume ThreadRipper in production. Hopefully, AMD will just harvest Rome I/O dies for ThreadRipper and tease us with 32, 48, and 64 core models that work on the existing TR4 socket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Traditionally AMD does NUMA differently from Intel. Would like to see a comparison focusing on NUMA.

<comment><USER49> Ryżem branded cpus have single NUMA zone, threadripper have 2, EPYC have 2 per socket

<comment><USER34> This was true up until now, but the upcoming 3900X and 3950X have 2 separate dies ("chiplets"). I assume this means it will have the same architecture as the current TR 2920X and 2950X.

Edit: opencl post above says apparently not, it's a different memory architecture.

<comment><USER50> The 2 smaller chiplets are for core complex, the memory controller is on the IO die(the other bigger one) that these 2 CCX share. So there is still one single memory controller, and hence, not NUMA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> And it looks like it has room for overclocking. Here to 5GHz and 65499 points in Geekbench 4 (record for Core i9-7960X is 60991 points)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1woeitoCXsQ)

</comment><comment><USER52> Does anyone know how these CPUs compare with Spectre/Meltdown protections enabled?

<comment><USER42> AMD processors have so far been immune to all but one attack and in the previous gen processor the mitigation caused a 2% performance hit. This gen has specific hardware for mitigating these side channel effects so the numbers you're seeing are with the mitigations.

<comment><USER53> I think the parent comment is asking if the patches have been applied to both chips in the benchmark. Yes, AMD perf will be largely the same but comparison between patched and unpatched will be different.

<comment><USER8> Not sure about this benchmark, but the differences in the AMD presentations have been Intel unpatched comparisons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I want one, no real reason other than increasing my SETI@Home score, however I'd probably do a lot more video encoding with that much horsepower.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wondering if it does makes bazel build faster?

<comment><USER56> I used bazel on Threadripper and it's much faster there than on a standard lower core machine.

<comment><USER55> I might consider upgrade my workstation. My quadcore i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz isn't up to the task.

[https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png](https://i.imgur.com/Iz0SMvR.png)

<comment><USER56> After this post, I am thinking about replacing my TR with this beast :-)

<comment><USER8> If you're already on a 16c Threadripper, it may be worth it... presuming the shared IO/Memory controller carries over, it'll have much better throughput on memory constrained workloads that bottleneck with NUMA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > So, as AMD's new 16-core Zen 2 flagship has now been officially launched

Does that mean there's no 16c Threadripper planned?

<comment><USER58> Why? Threadripper is for workstations, Ryzen for consumers. Core count does not have anything with that. There was 8 core Ryzen along with 8 core Threadripper in the past.

<comment><USER57> > Why?

Because the bit I quoted calls the 3950X the Zen 2 flagship.

> Threadripper is for workstations

Threadripper is HEDT, it's not a strictly workstation part (unlike Xeon W).

<comment><USER58> They promised new Threadrippers. I guess, it's flagship until Threadrippers are revealed.

<comment><USER57> Ok, thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> More interesting is how close they are in single core performance.

This is a very important battle to watch.

<comment><USER60> I'm out of the loop. Why is single core performance important, since no one (I think) buys a multi-core CPU just to limit themselves to using only 1 core?

<comment><USER59> What makes you think anyone limits their computer to run only one core? I'm flabbergasted.

Many people choose the CPU that has the highest single core performance, for both gaming or real-time multimedia processing.

Games are usually optimized for a single core, or a low number of cores, not to use all 4 or 6 or 8 cores of a system. Therefore, for gaming single core performance is still very important.

You can read some opinions about people still choosing Intel because of single core performance in this very discussion.

Additionally, modern CPUs move running threads among cores to avoid a single core from overheating. It's a strategy for thermal management.

<comment><USER60> Like I said, I'm out of the loop. Thanks for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Whose your fave Youtube reviewer for CPU releases?

</comment><comment><USER62> Wow

</comment><comment><USER63> Single-core performance > Multi-core performance for most workloads. Maybe in 10 years it will be the opposite.

<comment><USER64> That's not true.

<comment><USER63> I wish it wasn't but I'm tired of seeing many processes locked at 12% CPU i.e. one core. Granted I mainly use old software. If you recode video or play modern games I assume it's better. But by now I'll keep judging the worth of a CPU by its single-core performance.

<comment><USER65> You just said something in general, then replied about "for you".

There are millions of PC gamers and video encoders and multi-workload users. If you're running intense, non-multithreaded workload and need the absolute best without caring about security (Spectre/Meltdown) or cost, go Intel.

<comment><USER66> I'll agree even for video games, single core performance matters a lot. Most workload that can use multiple cores are on the GPU. Whereas the main event loop will be single core constrained. Maybe AI. But Again AI should be on the GPU or dedicated chip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Side-channel vulnerabilities routinely attack performance optimizations that reveal information about the data and/or code.

How much of the difference is attributed performance lost to recently patched side-channel vulnerabilities?</comment>


How strongly is pay linked to productivity? Nice gals finish last? - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/do-nice-gals-finish-last/?hp

<comment><USER2> I wonder what the pay gap would be like if you added in zeroes for all the unemployed men in this recession: [http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/arch...](http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/05/number_of_worki.html)

Returning to the piece at hand, this quote really bugs me:

"But one could also argue that pay differences among all individuals — as well as gaps between men and women — reflect differences in personality, preferences and principles as much as productivity.

If this true, then policies like executive pay restrictions and higher marginal tax rates would not necessarily lower productive contributions."

How did she go from "maybe those factors are as big as productivity" to "therefore there won't be any effect on productivity" in consecutive sentences?

There are some interesting links in the article, but a ton of shoddy thinking in and around them.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article isn't based on any grounded research or survey. It is basically a collection of what the author feels is happening in the current day with random selective citations from other articles written by other authors touting their own opinions.

If you're going to write about your personal opinions, don't pretend you are knowledgeable and speak as if you are talking about facts.

We have enough articles in the every day media that pretty much have "citation needed" written all over them. We don't need them on hacker news.

<comment><USER4> The basis of the article is that "machiavellians" who are more likely to cheat and lie are also more likely to succeed. If you believe these then maybe you don't feel the need for citations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This struck me:

 _But one could also argue that pay differences among all individuals — as well as gaps between men and women — reflect differences in personality, preferences and principles as much as productivity.

If this true, then policies like executive pay restrictions and higher marginal tax rates would not necessarily lower productive contributions. They might even discourage selfish opportunism that can be counterproductive to society._</comment>


Tengine: a web server based on Nginx, offering advanced features - <AUTHOR> http://tengine.taobao.org

<comment><USER2> Older discussion here on Hacker news including comments from the project leader explaining the reasons for the fork : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3645055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3645055)

(I see a correlation of the reason with the recent news on ngingx plus, but that can be only mind tricks)

<comment><USER3> \---- key quote from the above discussion ----

We asked how to collaborate with them.

Their replied as following: "It's interesting what you guys do and let's keep in touch. I'm not really quite sure right away in regards to what can be imported to the main branch, but hopefully we'll find things to collaborate on. We're a bit busy towards the end of the year, so probably a good idea to catch up in January."

More than two months have passed. We are still waiting for their requests. We are very confused ...

\----

Seems reasonable to me. These people are running one of the largest websites out there, the project is open source, they seem to have put a reasonable effort into merging the changes back in, they were ignored. They could have just kept the changes internally but they decided to share. Good for them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> key selling point: dynamic module loading support (" You don't have to recompile Tengine when you want to add a new module")

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this differ from OpenResty? They seem very similar. Both are based on Nginx, come from Alibaba, offer Lua scripting. So what's the difference?

<comment><USER6> OpenResty seems to be a bundle of nginx add-ons, while Tengine is a fork. Also, tengine has DSO loading.

<comment><USER7> and would scripts written for openresty work for tengine?

<comment><USER2> From the page (All features of Nginx-1.2.9 are inherited, i.e. it is 100% compatible with Nginx.)

My guess would be if the scripts are compatible with Ngingx-1.2.9 it should work.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it looks like 1.2.9 with a bunch of additional modules! I like the sysguard module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting. First Chinese OS project i see posted here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone here using this in Production who could comment if using Tengine makes sense over vanilla NGinx and workarounds?

<comment><USER11> Interested as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, I've been working on a nginx buildpack for Heroku/Dokku/Flynn optimized for static sites. I should create a Tengine fork to benchmark with nginx.

[https://github.com/cpursley/buildpack-nginx- js](https://github.com/cpursley/buildpack-nginx-js)

</comment><comment><USER12> So, they're basically adding the features from Apache ...

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems pretty interesting. It seems like several clever hacks (module injections, LUA support, combining css/js...) packaged into a soft.</comment>


Dreams of iPhone On Verizon Are Of The Pipe Variety - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/30/sorry-to-shatter-your-dreams-but-iphone-on-verizon-is-of-the-pipe-variety/ <comment><USER2> Even by the standards of lightweight blog articles commenting on reports of rumours that was a terrible article.

Don't give them the ad impressions, all he's saying is "it's a rumour" and then gives the most inane reasons for why he doesn't think it will turn out to be true. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, either way you can find better things to do with your time than read this drivel.</comment>


Google Glass Is Dead and the Great Glass Pivot Is Underway - <AUTHOR> http://glassalmanac.com/googles-great-glass-pivot/6605/

<comment><USER2> "When's the last time you saw any consumer electronics product — much less a cutting-edge one — go two-and-a-half years without a significant hardware refresh?"

The TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus calculators. See for example [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/what-y...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/what- your-old-graphing-calculator-says-about-technology/244028/) .</comment>


Comparison of Secure Messaging Applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/node/82654 <comment><USER2> What I can not comprehend is how respectable people and experts like Snowden and others from EFF can get behind a messenger that its authentication is based on cell phone numbers!

When an application sends all your contacts to its servers (whether they are hashed or not) and more importantly when your whole access depends on a none encrypted code sent via SMS and worst of all, your identifier can be tied to your real identity extremely easy, how can they call it secure at all?

It is not all about E2E or how the crypto is designed or implemented, its also about your anonymity, your social graph and other pieces of information which are arguably more important not to give away!</comment>


At World's Largest Hedge Fund, Sex, Fear and Video Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/bridgewater-associates-hedge-fund-culture-ray-dalio.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I had the most unprofessional interview experience of my life with Bridgewater.

They contacted me out of the blue and had me go through one phone interview, their culture introduction and quiz on their website, a HR round with a recruiter, and a coding project. After I passed all these, I was put in another phone interview. (Note: I am in the West coast.)

Remember, these clowns were trying to recruit me. I was at that time working as a Research Scientist in X in one of the big firms over in the West coast.

A good part of the interview was spent by them disparaging X. Then they ended the interview with "We have all the information we need, we won't be calling you."

I felt like I had been hazed by a couple of dimwits who were not even that good at it.

This article assuages my worry that I was being unreasonable.

<comment><USER3> I had an incredibly positive experience with Bridgewater. I didn't get an offer, but I witnessed their celebrated "radical transparency" first-hand.

Everyone was respectful and courteous throughout, from the recruiter to the CCO who interviewed me.

The moment I'll never forget: when the CCO came back to the conference room to tell me they weren't going to give me an offer. Most people would stop there, maybe say sorry, and send me on my way. Nope. He asked me, "what do you think?" and "do you think this is a reasonable decision, why or why not?" and "how could we have improved the process" etc.

I reasoned with him. We had an amazing, rational, open conversation. I learned why they rejected me. They learned how their process could be improved.

Remember: this is with a C-level executive of the world's largest hedge fund, not some rinky-dink middle-manager. A similar conversation took place with the recruiter as she walked me out.

We complain so much, on this forum especially, about how flawed the recruiting process is. Yet we almost NEVER ASK FOR FEEDBACK. These guys are doing that, with every candidate who walks through their doors, and they're finessing their process bit by bit. It shows.

Perhaps all parts of the company aren't like that (it's quite large, especially by hedge fund standards), but I was thoroughly impressed with the side of Bridgewater I experienced.

<comment><USER4> I would pay a surprising amount of money for that kind of interview. I interview quite a lot, having my ear to the rails pretty much all the time, and to keep my interview skills up to par. I interview perhaps once or twice every couple of months, or less if I don't have the spare time, since it is expensive to do this much interviewing. I have yet to interview at _any_ tech company -- literally _any_ tech company -- that has made good on their promise to tell me why I was rejected when it happens. Not a single one that has ever rejected me has ever gotten back to me. I should say that I'm rejected probably a couple of times a year. It happens more regularly than you would think. I should say that I don't mean I want to pay one of those interview boot camps. I want the kind of interview you've just described.

<comment><USER3> It was memorable. I'm not sure it taught me how to interview better, but it have me a first-hand glimpse of elements I will integrate into my company/team the first chance I get to run one.

In spite of its flaws (which company doesn't have flaws?), Bridgewater is an exceptional company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That video of the crying manager is what made me quit Bridgewater. The craziest part was that the manager who ended up crying became the one who would teach lessons to new hires on how to "diagnose" other employees. Totally psychologically broken.

Ray Dalio won't quit and he won't relinquish power. What you have instead now is this psychotic power grab at the top with three or more people competing for the crown. Any time someone gets close to knocking him out, they get demoted or fired.

Principle #41: By and large, you will get what you deserve over time.

The basis for any oppressive religion is #41. Those at the top deserved it, and, if you are at the bottom, it's because you haven't.

<comment><USER6> Principle #41 has a name in academia: the _just-world hypothesis_ [1] (occasionally the _just-world fallacy_ , largely from atheist and feminist sources). It has surprisingly widespread consequences and implications. Conservative politicians and pundits play on it when they tout "personal responsibility" in the face of systemic bias. Abusers use it to convince their victims that they "deserve" the abuse. Religiously devout people use it to minimize tragedies (not to mention crimes) as "part of God's plan", and so on.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just- world_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

<comment><USER7> I often see people discussing the just world hypothesis and the awfulness of the people who believe it. But I very rarely see those same people even considering the possibility that it might be true.

In the world of work, while exceptions exist, I've always seen a strong correlation between position and competence. (I haven't worked at bridgewater so I don't know if it's true there.)

In the political/economic world, I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite.

So I'll ask the question that I guess makes me an awful person too: why do we think the just world hypothesis is actually false?

<comment><USER8> > In the political/economic world, I see poor people refusing to engage in > personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, > smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich > do the exact opposite.

Yet there are plenty of poor people working two jobs and clipping coupons but never see their economic situation meaningfully improve. On the other side, someone born into wealth can be lazy, use drugs, and be a general screw up and still die wealthy.

Plenty of rich people do drugs too but the chances of them going to jail for doing drugs are negligible compared to the chances of jail time for a poor person. Law enforcement targets poor neighborhoods far more heavily, wealthy people don't buy drugs off street corners, and wealthy people can pay for far better legal representation.

Crime? White collar crime is rarely punished with jail time. Someone selling drugs on the street might get several years in jail, whereas someone who helps launder billions for drug cartels gets no jail time and their company only pays a fine.

Unethical sociopathic behavior in politics and many parts of the business world is how some people get to the top. It's not that the most qualified or deserving person got what they deserved, it was that the most ruthless, self- promoting, and deceitful person took the spoils.

The just world hypothesis is often what callous people use to justify why they have the riches and people lower on the totem pole don't. It's easy to point at poor people and say they're poor because they're lazy or irresponsible, but it's much harder to admit that someone succeeded because of either advantages they were born into, or outright immoral behavior.

<comment><USER7> Very few poor people work two jobs or even one. That's a marked contrast to high income individuals who work very hard.

[http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...](http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf)

Similarly, poor people are more likely to have substance abuse problems.

[http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs...](http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH- MHDetTabs2013.pdf)

Now, as you note, rich people get away with things more - so wouldn't responsible poor people be _less likely_ to do drugs? As a responsible adult, I do far more drugs in India (a cop might want 500rs ~ $7) than Malaysia (off with their heads!).

You seem to believe the just world hypothesis is false, yet you clearly haven't even googled data which suggests it's a pretty solid statistical hypothesis in this case.

It's truly a flaw in our society that such rhetoric - describing people who hold true beliefs as "callous" and "immoral" \- is causing people to hold utterly incorrect beliefs. It's kind of like the modern version of "only satan worshippers believe in evolution".

<comment><USER8> The point isn't that most poor people work 2 jobs or whatever, the point is that there are plenty of poor people that work very hard but don't get ahead. Someone born into wealth who even puts in half the effort of a single mother working two jobs is still going to be wealthy. Furthermore, if you are born into a family where you have to work hourly jobs to support the family at the expense of your own educational advancement, chances are you are not going to advance as much economically as someone who doesn't have to make that compromise.

As far as poor people and substance abuse, several states implemented drug testing regimes for people on welfare and what they found in all cases is that the drug use rate for welfare recipients was less than that of the general public, in most cases, about an order of magnitude less.

[http://time.com/3117361/welfare-recipients-drug- testing/](http://time.com/3117361/welfare-recipients-drug-testing/)

The problem with the just world hypothesis is that it goes backwards from the successful outcome, then asserts that this outcome is proof that the world is fair. Person A is rich and successful because they worked hard and people who aren't rich and successful must've failed because they were lazy or irresponsible. But the truth is that circumstances are a large part of success and failure.

Sure, when you equalize circumstances someone's personal effort, ability, and choices are what determines outcomes, but circumstances are rarely equal. When you're talking about groups of people born into massively unequal circumstances, the whole 'just world' thing falls apart. Someone born into a poor area, with bad schools, poor economic opportunities, and crime problems is simply not playing with the same deck of cards. Similarly, someone in the professional world who doesn't have the same connections as others or is not willing to bend the rules like others may be, is at a disadvantage.

It doesn't mean that working hard and being skilled won't get you forward in life, most times it does. What it means is that success and achievement are not always fair and they are almost never independent of the situation someone is born and raised in.

<comment><USER7> Congrats - you've just disproven the just world hypothesis as a hard and fast, 100% true for every person rule. That straw man is now just a pile of hay!

 _The problem with the just world hypothesis is that it goes backwards from the successful outcome, then asserts that this outcome is proof that the world is fair._

Ok, so you have no problem with a _statistical_ just world hypothesis like what Dalio and I suggested? Namely, good behavior causes good outcomes, but only probabilistically?

 _Someone born into a poor area, with bad schools, poor economic opportunities, and crime problems is simply not playing with the same deck of cards._

It's far from clear that this is true. Consider a statistically typical American born into such circumstances. Now consider a Gujurati, born into far worse circumstances who then shifts into American "bad circumstances" at age 12.

Do you think the Gujurati will have the same bad outcomes as the American? If not, then it's not really a defensible claim that circumstances (at least as far as variation within the US goes) matter a lot.

(We know from historical experiment that the answer is no, the Gujurati will perform quite well.)

<comment><USER9> There are a lot of problems with your post. How do you know that these ubermensch "Gujarati" were uniformly born info "far worse circumstances"? Were their ancestors forced into slavery in the USA, then Jim Crow, then systematic segregation and on-going police brutality? I think you have lived in India for a while. Can the strata of society that is actually able to afford/obtain a visa to move to the US be compared one on one with a person from a bad neighborhood in this country? And why "Gujaratis" for goodness sake? Are Tamils SOL? How many of these folks do you know that have had good vs. bad outcomes? What historical experiment are you referring to here? I am spluttering but the rules of this site prevent me from venting what I actually feel after reading the above.

<comment><USER7> From age 0-12, the Gujurati lived in circumstances that were below the bottom 5% of the US, same as basically all Indians: [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves- and-t...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have- nots/)

 _Were their ancestors forced into slavery in the USA, then Jim Crow, then systematic segregation and on-going police brutality?_

You seem to be suggesting that bad circumstances at time X cause bad behavior/outcomes which then is passed down through the generations.

Lets assume this odd Lamarckian theory were true for a moment (I don't think it is) and explore it's consequences. Wouldn't this provide a specific causal mechanism for hereditary inferiority of various groups, thereby making it more likely that such theories (usually termed "white supremacist", though not by me) are true? Lets consider another group - folks persecuted by the Nazis, and hundreds of other incidents before then. Shouldn't they be underperforming?

(Let me emphasize that I'm a Darwinian, not a Lamarckian. I'm just exploring your theory and illustrating why I think it's false, and why I think you should too. Let me also point out that you made this hypothetical American black, in my comment he was "statistically typical" which would make him white.)

The historical experiment I refer to is the Gujurati diaspora. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarati_people#Diaspora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarati_people#Diaspora)

Your last line suggests you are having a strong emotional reaction to the idea I'm attempting to convey, namely that Gujuratis engage in certain behaviors that drive success while other groups don't. (Or perhaps it's the idea of black Lamarckian inferiority that is causing you negative emotions.) Can I ask why that is?

(Tangentially, why Gujus vs Tamils? No compelling reason, Gujus just spring to mind because a good friend of mine - with whom I occasionally discuss issues like this - is Guju. But I believe that a Tamil immigrant would also behave differently and have better outcomes than an American.)

<comment><USER9> You know, I am not as aware of these theories as you are so my view is a little bit simpler. In the NYT article you helpfully listed, the insight that the richest folks in India are worse off than some of America's poorest is interesting but a false comparison nonetheless. In my view, comparing the outcome of the poorest class in India, specifically the high unlikelihood of their chances for moving up not to mention getting to America, to the outcome of the poorest class in the US is a more fair comparison. I must clarify that based on my knowledge of that society and this, I find the conclusion in the article a little bit ridiculous but I need to read it carefully again when I have more time.

You have also somewhat misunderstood my statement about systemic, multi- generational oppression of the poor and African Americans in the US: I feel unable to compare in any rational manner this long-term ethnic and class oppression in the US to the Nazi oppression of the Jewish people in Germany. EDIT: the closest thing I can think of is the oppression and discrimination against Jewish people in society prior to the Nazis and its role in driving social outcomes for the Jewish people. For example, in the book Neuro Tribes, the author posited that since medicine and psychiatry were few of the professions open to the Jewish people in Austria, you saw a significant number in that role.

My emotional reaction came about because it was extremely strange for me to see someone blithely compare such blatantly obvious apples and oranges to make a point. I can't understand why that makes sense to you and I still don't. To make a somewhat charged statement about "outcomes": one can argue that Philando Castile had a good outcome in this society until a misguided reach for the wallet per his apparent interpretation of the officer's instructions. The multi-generational set of circumstances that led to "this" (whatever it might be) is what I think you are missing but what I feel unable to communicate clearly.

<comment><USER7> _In my view, comparing the outcome of the poorest class in India, specifically the high unlikelihood of their chances for moving up not to mention getting to America, to the outcome of the poorest class in the US is a more fair comparison._

So it's more fair to compare poor Americans to poor Indians who poop in the field, have no power, get water from a communal well, and may well be living under naxalite (communist) oppression?

Actually, I suspect that latter group may also do pretty well if allowed to enter the US. Poor Vietnamese fleeing Communism didn't do too badly, nor did the poor illiterate Chinese who came here to work on the railroads.

 _EDIT: the closest thing I can think of is the oppression and discrimination against Jewish people in society prior to the Nazis and its role in driving social outcomes for the Jewish people._

I was deliberately hinting at this. Yet somehow American Jews have excellent outcomes, far better than non-Jewish whites, nearly as good as Asians. It's weird how their circumstances didn't hinder them.

Of course, it's not so weird if you observe that American Jews share certain behaviors with other high income Americans, with Gujuratis, and with Chinese. But they don't tend to share these behaviors with either low income whites or blacks. It's almost as if behavior is far more important than circumstances.

 _My emotional reaction came about because it was extremely strange for me to see someone blithely compare such blatantly obvious apples and oranges to make a point. I can 't understand why that makes sense to you and I still don't._

Why is it apples and oranges?

I'm also curious why you seem to want to make my statistically typical American black. Virtually none of the things you bring up happened to white Americans, yet the Gujurati (or Tamil if you prefer) will probably have better outcomes than the typical poor white American also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know one company where semi-formal ultra competitive asshole culture worked.

It worked because it was only applied at senior level (80% marketing and sales) and there was extremely strict policy for not behaving like that for outsiders or underlings. Boss giving temper tantrum or bullying his workers resulted creative and humiliating punishments. Employees who were not part of luscious bonus program knew they were safe.

My theory is that forcing people to change behavior in different context was easy way to differentiate between people who enjoy aggression and job insecurity from people who are assholes 24/7.

Obvious downside was very self selective almost exclusively male club that had to exclude talent that could not adjust. But those who liked it had incredible job satisfaction and earned lots of money.

<comment><USER11> > Obvious downside was very self selective almost exclusively male club that > had to exclude talent that could not adjust

Why is that a downside? I mean, you say that they were very successful... Maybe the people they excluded wouldn't be as successful?

<comment><USER12> For that particular circular definition of "successful."

If you follow the naive but socially sanctioned view that making money = success, or "getting what you want from life" = success, then hedge funds can look like very successful places.

If you have a more independent view - the kind of view that someone like Dalio, for all his alleged openness, is likely incapable of understanding - then hedge funds aren't going to be the right place for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So it seems then that ultra-transparency and a culture of candor bordering on hostility doesn't prevent people from being assholes, and takes away avenues for raising concerns with management. I wonder if this is more a result of the company being an old boys club (like just about every hedge fund), or if it's just a commentary on human nature.

<comment><USER14> > ultra-transparency and a culture of candor

I interviewed there and got the strong impression that their 'total transparency' spiel was just a cover for bosses to be assholes.

<comment><USER15> I've never encountered an environment where this wasn't the case. When I was younger and, in many ways, more of an asshole, I found myself playing along in such a culture--candor and "straight talk" were ways for me to step right up to the line and try to put me over somebody else. Breaking free of it was difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I interviewed onsite at bridgewater and it was a very strange but interesting experience.

They take radical transparency very seriously. They record everything, but do ask your permission first(well... can I say no?)

The people were nice. They are brutally honest and let me know what I was lacking.

Watching videos including the crying manager were too much for me.

It doesn't surprise me that fucked up HR situations occur.

The one fun event was watching the receptionist applying radical transparency(assholeism) to a delivery guy. They take it seriously!

<comment><USER17> It sounds like you didn't take the job (or maybe you weren't offered) but certainly you can say no!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Such 'cultural principles' are typically platitudes wielded and bent like biblical verses to support arbitrary positions. I think I'd prefer something honest like "1) we're a business. 2) we like to make money. 3) We will do whatever the executive leadership thinks might eventually do that".

<comment><USER19> Typically, yes. But not always.

[https://youtu.be/sf5r4yLTc9k](https://youtu.be/sf5r4yLTc9k)

(Disclaimer - I work there :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not that I condone this culture in any workplace, but it's a damn hedge fund. You can't really expect "bring your cat to work day" or yoga break-out spaces. Looking at the sole-focus of companies like this and the effect they have on our society, it's hardly surprising that their workplaces are toxic.

<comment><USER21> i work at a hedge fund where people are nice, there are yoga break-out spaces (literally), and the prevalent culture is laid-back, like a typical west-coast tech company, or academia.

<comment><USER22> One person winning the lottery does not invalidate the statement "You can't really expect to win the lottery".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _" The firm is governed by "Principles" — more than 200 of them — set out in a little white book of Mr. Dalio's musings on life and business that some on Wall Street have likened to a religious text."_

Is there a copy of this online?

<comment><USER24> [http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...](http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater- Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf)

Sounds like a lot of Trumpisms.

And lots of obvious things only a dim egotist would consider to be revelations worth collecting into a manifesto.

"... if a billionaire loses $200 million he will probably be unhappy, while if someone who is worth $10,000 unexpectedly gets another $2,000, he will probably be happy".

woah, fark, really?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I also interviewed there. They had me fill out a feedback form following the interview to tell them how to improve

</comment><comment><USER26> Is nytimes.com down? HNed?

<comment><USER27> It's up for me (and I doubt HN could single-highhandedly bright down nytimes.com).

<comment><USER27> Yikes, looks like autocorrect did a number on this one. That should be "single-handedly" and "bring down".</comment></comment></comment>


The Subways Seeded the Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/jeffrey/harris/HarrisJE_WP2_COVID19_NYC_13-Apr-2020.pdf <comment><USER2> Wuhan Subway: [https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/hubei/wuhan/subw...](https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/hubei/wuhan/subway- map.htm)

Milan: [https://www.introducingmilan.com/metro](https://www.introducingmilan.com/metro)

Seoul: [http://www.seoulmetro.co.kr/en/cyberStation.do](http://www.seoulmetro.co.kr/en/cyberStation.do)

And the flip side:

Los Angeles: [http://www.orangesmile.com/common/img_metro_maps/los- angeles...](http://www.orangesmile.com/common/img_metro_maps/los-angeles-map- metro-1.png)

San Francisco: [http://mapsof.net/san-francisco/san-francisco-bay-area- metro...](http://mapsof.net/san-francisco/san-francisco-bay-area-metro-map- bartl)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting. I think it may be slightly overconfident in the sense that the data is still not super granular and there aren't too many other data points of comparison (geographic restaurant data, work data, etc.). However, so much data reports viruses being more likely to spread indoors and in close quarters so the subway makes perfect sense.

It is also very scary. I currently live in a fairly remote town of 3000 people. There have been a couple Covid cases here, but it is pretty easy to see how even with the most loose social distancing policies the R0 here would be lower than a fairly stringent policy in NYC. I used to live in Manhattan and the number of people I would be a few feet from just walking out of my apartment, walking one block to a grocery store, and coming back up is more people than I am within a few feet of here every week even when restaurants are open. I'm not sure how big cities solve this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Counterpoint: [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/15/the-subway- is-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/15/the-subway-is-probably- not-why-new-york-is-a-disaster-zone/)</comment>


What are the best places to find practical advice on startups? - <AUTHOR>

We're creating a search engine prototype for entrepreneurs as part of an SBIR project funded by the National Science Foundation and we need to index some quality resources and information for new entrepreneurs. It can bee about the mundane details and paperwork to the big-picture, strategy stuff.Any ideas?<p>I'd also love to hear of stuff that you wish was out there to help startups. Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> You also can send ideas to email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> I am a bootstrapped guy. I wish there was a step-by step guide that one can follow before and after launch. Despite the target market,etc. I think the basic things that any new startup needs to follow is pretty much the same. A guide will be tremendously helpful that lists a few things such as:

Pre-Launch: \- Contact blogger/journalist a,b, c and d, to give free beta invites and coverage during launch \- Do ....(twitter, facebook) etc to engage with potential customers and start building a community that will end up becoming your first set of customers. \- ... I am sure there are plenty of things a startup can do (and is applicable to any startup across the board), that will help build anticipation and buzz around the product/launch

Post-Launch: \- Immediate steps that can be taken to get your first set of customers \- Startups desperately need traction and attention now that they have launched. PR is critical. What are some of the strategies that can be applied here? For instance, going after middle level bloggers. You are not ready for TechCrunch yet, or you do not have the right contacts. No-name blogger will not give you any exposure (however, I should say that any mention/link helps) - but you need to find the right balance to get maximum realistic bang for your efforts. \- Some strategies to monetize. If product/service based monetization - what are some of the important things that need to be done? Ditto with advertising based model. \- Despite the amount of time you've put into development, you will need to listen. Do you have proper feedback channels in place? Based on this feedback, you might need to completely change your business model, or at least think about tweaking several things including better user experience / smooth user-flow.

I just wanted to say a few things to get a conversation started. You have started ene of the most critical and much needed conversation topics here. Let's here from others. In today's world with all the tools and more or less the same paths that users take to grow their startup, A "Startup Handbook" would be an asset.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting. So are you envisioning something like a how to guide to use on things like PR services (prnewswire, businesswire, etc.) or more of a breakdown of what is out there (like <http://mashable.com/2007/10/20/press- releases/> ) or just a checklist of best practices?</comment></comment>


Illustrated Book on Indian Mars Orbiter Mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission/illustrated-book-mars-orbiter-mission

<comment><USER2> This is meant as a book for kids to bring more passion to the field.. Dont worry about the scrolling and fonts. Its the pdf of the printed copy..

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how they made the Great Red Spot on anthropomorphic Jupiter into a bindi. Who knew that Jupiter was Hindu :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that sending a probe more than 200 million kilometers to another planet is a lot easier than launching multi-ton payloads into the geosynchronous orbit.

I am referring to the fact that India still relies on the ESA to launch its communication satellites.

<comment><USER5> The problem is India's yet-to-be-perfected indigenous cryogenic engine for the GSLV (Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle), which I suppose is required for launching into a geo-synchronous orbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Off-topic: Is it just me or does this page mess with scrolling?

</comment><comment><USER7> Of all the excellent casual script typefaces out there, they had to choose Comic Sans.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure its not Comic Sans

<comment><USER9> According to a WhatTheFont analysis, it is.

[http://i.imgur.com/4N2tN9M.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4N2tN9M.jpg)</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon selling remaining Kindle 2 stock for $89 on Black Friday - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/amazon-selling-remaining-kindle-2-stock-for-89-on-black-friday-20101124/ <comment><USER2> How long before eBook readers are entirely free, supported by subscriptions and/or sales of media? It seems like they are headed in the direction cell phones have already taken.

<comment><USER3> The thing about mobile/cell phones is that they are subsidized only when there is a guaranteed subscription, namely the contract. If eBook readers can figure out a similar guarateed subscription, then yes. Otherwise, I don't see how they can be 100% subsidized.

Amazon _may_ try to play a game of lifetime value of a Kindle owner and subsidize based on that. I'm hesitant to think that will work because if the price point drops to $0 to the consumer then Amazon will attract customers who will have lower lifetime value and thus end up costing Amazon the difference between their lifetime value and the cost of the Kindle.

<comment><USER4> Video game consoles are generally subsidized, yet their customers have no guaranteed video game subscription.

<comment><USER5> But only a little bit - they are still sold for $200-$300 so you are selecting users who are likely to go out and buy games. If you gave away XBox/PS3 for free the vast majority of users would just use them fro playing dvd/blueray or browsing - not enough people would buy ninja-killer-car-stealer-gold edition for $60 to pay them back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Kindle 3 web browser (based on WebKit) is _much_ more capable than the Kindle 2's, opening up all sorts of possibilities (like SSH access via shellinabox: [http://tinyapps.org/blog/eink/201009300700_kindle_text_editi...](http://tinyapps.org/blog/eink/201009300700_kindle_text_editing.html) )

<comment><USER7> Now I can ssh from my Kindle. miles++

<comment><USER8> Funny that the third and forth octets of the IP address shown in the Kindle screen shots are obstructed given that the IP begins with 192.168.

<comment><USER6> I'd rather not give away _too_ much info about my internal network (though you're welcome to the first two octets ;-) Even non-routable IP address info can be useful under some circumstances. Probably should've just blanked out the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good deal, but I prefer the larger screen for textbooks/reference material which is where you get the most use out of the Kindle. Paperbacks I generally get at the library or used book stores for a buck, reference books I buy and keep.

<comment><USER10> Kindle doesn't seem to be that well suited to references to me. It's not a kind of reader where you can quickly flip pages back and forth.

<comment><USER9> Interesting point, I was going on the fact that I keep a lot of mechanical engineering books for the tables in the back of various material properties, and having a kindle instead of a 6 testbooks would be physically so much smaller on my bookshelf, but for actual content the kindle might not be the best choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm still planning to get a Nook, mainly because it is more open to non-Amazon books. The ability to put my own ebooks on there is very inviting.

<comment><USER12> This seems like a pretty common misconception about the kindle. I've never come across a book I couldn't read on my kindle. Just give it plain text and it's happy.

<comment><USER13> Isn't there an issue with not being able to read .epub format though?

I have a nook which I use exclusively for reading out-of-copyright epubs. I can't complain about it.

<comment><USER14> Calibre,is an open source ebook management app that allows converting to and from many different formats including epub and mobi (Kindle).

<http://calibre-ebook.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never had a kindle before, but this sounds like a rather bad deal. I mean, for how much could they sell the Kindle 2 now on a normal day?

<comment><USER16> It's not that bad, since the Kindle 2 doesn't have any compatibility limitations compared to the Kindle 3.

It's not like Amazon has moved to a format that is Kindle 3-only. The K2 can access all the same media, and ebooks released in 2011 won't strain the K2 CPU any more than ebooks released in 2009. It just has a somewhat lower-contrast screen and a little less storage (which is not a big problem given the small size of ebooks.)

ie, it's not like buying an original XBox after the release of the 360.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Man, I just had my Kindle 2 stolen last month. (Well, I left it on a plane, but someone did take it and purchase stuff).

This is tempting.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope the DX will drop in price too.</comment>