X-ray technique can reverse-engineer an entire chip without damaging it - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/design/xray-tech-lays-chip-secrets-bare <comment><USER2> > Some of that information can be regained by making some assumptions about > what you're looking at, explains Aeppli. For example, we know that real > interconnects can't have certain shapes.

This sounds like the beginnings of the silicon obfuscation strategy: hiding things in silicon that lie below these assumptions

<comment><USER3> Maybe! I've got some experience with tomographic algorithms, and what they're referring to is correcting for the "missing wedge" in the Radon and/or Fourier transforms - the measurements that tomography produces - of the chip ([https://images.app.goo.gl/HWPX2LKBsDd7eeBe6](https://images.app.goo.gl/HWPX2LKBsDd7eeBe6)). There has been lots of interest in statistical or data-driven algorithms to reconstruct missing measurement areas from the existing ones. It sounds like a key technology here was better algorithms to accommodate a larger missing wedge, so they didn't have to tilt the chip to extreme angles when getting projections.

It's possible you could fool the algorithm in some way, but you'd have pretty weird and severe constraints on the shapes of your hidden parts to hide their presence from low-angle projections. They're probably not actually hand- crafting geometric assumptions about chip structures or anything like that.

<comment><USER2> Yep that's exactly the idea. Basically the silicon version of the underhanded C contest [1]

[1] [http://www.underhanded-c.org/](http://www.underhanded-c.org/)

<comment><USER3> Cool! Know of any websites or writeups about the silicon version?

<comment><USER4> Some anti-reverse-engineering work was put into the Z80 chip 45 years ago. [https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11143/in-...](https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11143/in- the-original-z80-layout-where-are-the-traps-located-and-what-are-their-ef)

<comment><USER5> Before 1984 there was no copyright on the contents of chips, it was completely legal to create masks from a competitor's chips and sell them - people used to create on-chip structures designed to fool the optical processes that were used to do this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That should make it a lot easier to identify hardware back-doors.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Also I hope it brings the end of the Apple security-by-obscurity methods that allowed that one iPhone to be cracked by a third party hacker. If you know what's in the hardware a 4-6 digit PIN is fine for deterring casual onlookers but is _never_ enough entropy to secure data.

People should learn to use real passwords if they want their data secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just want this to be cheap enough so that we can archive and re-create no- longer manufactured chips.

<comment><USER9> How do you recreate them? On FPGA? Fabricating a chip is not cheap.

<comment><USER8> Personally I was thinking of being able to recreate some discrete chips with breadboards.

Then again MOSIS has prices down to a few thousand/square millimeter. Since current gen stuff is so much smaller, that's probably <$100 for the more complex chips from the 70s, & 80s.

The best I think we'll get is some Amiga/Commodore build it yourself kits That weren't possible before because of out-of-production chips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previously, in 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13952016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13952016)

</comment><comment> ur-whale > not just reverse engineering but assurance that chips are manufactured > according to design

This, combined with stuff like RISC-V is very good news and big progress towards making a secure (read backdoor-free) hardware platform.

Gotta love the Swiss !

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the implications of this could be for the emulation community...maybe someone more knowledgable about this stuff can enlighten me: would something like this be useful in creating more-accurate emulators?

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this technique can be used to scan a PCB as they can be in attack vector for supply chain attacks.

<comment><USER13> Dare I bring up the Bloomberg article without causing a shitstorm? I remember reading around that time a (I think) presentation on how to trick / hide against x-ray tomography etc but I can't find the link to the source if anyone has it?

<comment><USER12> I recently had an IPMI on on of my Supermicro servers and it was super funny to hear the conspiracy theory from the SuperMicro support that it was not working because maybe the Chinese were worming through a backdoor that was hidden on the machine.

I'm quite sure that the issue was just a faulty IPMI as I've seen it happen before with older units but I had a good laugh.

I'm a believer in Murphy's law where whatever can happen will happen. Supply chain attacks are quite possible, would be very fruitful and therefore must be happening. But will we ever get the truth from the big vendors? I don't think it will happen any time soon but with this x-ray technology, it will be way easier to detect them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do you pronounce that word?

I worked at intel in the 90s, and they put malformed cpus in key chains.

But what will be interesting to see will be is when they build a library of Devices where they can quickly ID Trojans

<comment><USER15> Ty-ko-graphic

<comment><USER14> Can you also explain the "ty-co" part of it

<comment><USER16> As a suffix 'tych' (pronounced 'tic') refers to multiple related/connected things ... tables, leaves, panels, works ... (diptych, triptych, polyptych). EG 'triptych' "derives from the Greek adjective τρίπτυχον 'triptukhon' ('three-fold')".

'Ptychography' was coined by crystallographers in 1972. Wikipedia has more on the origin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptychography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptychography)

<comment><USER14> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does this have any implications for Secure Enclave like chips?

<comment><USER18> I have no expertise on this subject, but here goes. First, I don't think the technique can see electrical charges, which is how any chip stores volatile state. Second, if such chips rely on security by obscurity -- and judging from the NDAs typically required to get any official information about them, I'd say it's part of their defense in depth -- then that security would now be weaker. Finally, this technique would arguably enhance security if independent labs were now able to verify that a chip is devoid of back doors and implementation errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the 40+ layer NAND chips would give a problem for this technique.

</comment><comment><USER20> Time for a silicon easter egg hunt!

</comment><comment><USER21> Can it be used on cryogenically frozen brains? The flick "Sleeper" could become a reality, although you'd probably have an android or R2D2 like body.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can someone please share the actual paper? Sci-Hub fails to retrieve it either by DOI or by the Nature link.

</comment><comment><USER23> Next step: chips include critical components that _can_ be damaged by x-rays.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice, china is glad to hear that

<comment><USER25> china has no problem destructively reverse engineering chips. they aren't validating them, they are copying them. and the destructive method may be time consuming, but surely for China it's cheaper?

this technique would be more like CMM validation of a part after manufacturing. very, very useful but with a different goal in mind.

<comment><USER26> Plus aren't many chips made in China? My impression after watching BigClive tear apart stuff was that a lot of Chinese clones use their own chips, and many chips are custom and seem to only exist between Chinese manufacturers (like custom USB charging chips, led chips for flashlights, etc.)

<comment><USER27> In order to manufacture these chips you need the schematics. It's the same thing as having the source code and the deployment/compilation instructions: You don't _need_ anything else.

<comment><USER28> Strictly speaking, for manufacturing you need the layout for the chip, but extracting a schematic from a given layout is an automated process and used for verification. You create a layout from a given schematic and later check, whether the layout implements that schematic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My "Working While Standing" Hack - <AUTHOR> http://chengsoon.com/2011/09/14/my_working_while_standing_hack.html <comment><USER2> Yeah I'm sorry but you can't argue with science.

"Sitting for more than 1 hour has been shown to induce biochemical changes ... leads to the deposit of fats in adipose tissue rather than these being metabolized by muscle, ... heart disease risks". Read the original article for details.

Apparently we have a tradeoff between staying in "flow" and staying healthy. Since that seems to be the choice at the moment then I'll move every half an hour and worry about my productivity using other hacks.

<comment><USER3> Or you could just get good at keeping flow while not staring right at your code.

I know I'm not the only person who occasionally likes to get up and walk around as I chew through a problem in my head. Surely this doesn't constitute a break in "flow".

<comment><USER4> >get up and walk around as I chew through a problem in my head. Surely this doesn't constitute a break in "flow".

I'm afraid it most certainly does for myself and other programmers I know. My "walking around and contemplating" is a completely different mental state than flow for me, and flow produces an entirely different league of results above and beyond any other mode of working I've been in.

If I could discipline, harness, and achieve flow more quickly (like the people who teach themselves to dream lucidly) I would be a much better programmer.

As it is, I'm currently contemplating how to cope with the apparent health risks of sitting all day vs. achieving flow.

Going even a week without flow tends to depress me, I doubt I could make disrupting my work multiple times daily a regular part of my habits.

<comment><USER5> Wireless headphones. The quality isn't as good, but they do wonders for allowing me to get up and move, whilst staying in the flow. Might want to give it a try.

<comment><USER6> I picked up an OfficeRunner [<http://www.officerunner.com/>] headset last year. I spend 4+ hours a day on skype calls -- the ability to step away from my desk has been priceless. I originally looked for an app for my iPhone that would function as a wireless headset. There are one or two in the app store, but they all have latency issues...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to disagree on taking a break every 20 to 30 minutes being in conflict with getting into flow. If I apply the Pomodoro method and set a fixed time for the break to start, I found that for me it's actually quite easy to get back onto the problem after the short break.

What I think makes the difference is that forcing the break, although annoying at first, makes you take the break when things are going well, resulting in eagerness to continue solving the problem after the break. While, if you take a break when you feel you need one, things are probably already stuck and it's harder to start up again.

I do agree with getting away from the computer for a proper break every few hours, but isn't that quite natural already? I can't go without eating/drinking for much longer than that anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dancing definitely makes it easier on the legs and feet, as you're not stuck in the same static position all day. Alternatively contracting and relaxing the calf is necessary to achieve return blood flow up the leg. If you stand without moving, you are at risk of varicose veins and such things, but this effect is much reduced if you are dancing at the same time. Plus, it's loads of fun!

</comment><comment><USER9> I like his last comment: "dance". I'm glad I work from home, because if I'm standing at work and a great dance tune comes through my mix (currently Basie doing Shiny Stockings) I can't stand still.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some have suggested that using any kind of timer to remind them to get up and walk around will interrupt the flow, and if they don't have a reminder they will not get up often enough.

For those who like to listen to music while coding, you can use your music to help with this. Simply queue up ~30 minutes worth of songs, and then get to work. When the music ends that probably won't be enough of a distraction to pull you out of the flow, but realizing will slowly bubble its way to the surface that the music has stopped.

When that happens, you can put on another ~30 minutes of music after taking your walk-around break. Repeat.

I find that this doesn't disrupt flow, because the "time to change music" event is not an interrupt. I think being in the flow is a lot like sleep in that it goes through cycles much like the sleep stages, and you become aware of the music having stopped at a stage in the flow where it is easy to stop and restart.

BTW, music also makes a great way to keep track of time for billing. Back in our consulting days at work, I'd keep track of how much time was spent for each client by what CDs I listened to while working on that client's project.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do a similar thing. I also have a variety of objects under my desk at different heights so I can rest my feet in different positions and do whatever feels comfortable.

My desk isn't adjustable (atm) and one of the biggest (but unexpected) benefits of standing at my desk is that it tires me. After two hours or so I am forced to go have a sit down _away_ from my computer. This helps my productivity more than trying to take regular breaks when sitting as I find it harder to waste the time browsing the internet or simply skip a break.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice list, though I'm not sure if longer breaks and longer periods of sitting are as good as more frequent breaks. The last suggestion, dancing, is a very good one (And one I should do more). There is one thing that's even better then sitting _and_ standing, and that's moving (hence the treadmill-inder-desk phenomenon) so if you don't have a treadmill, dancing is a good second ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://gregschlom.com/post/4555981908/standing-desk>

</comment><comment><USER14> Geekdesk FTW. I stand almost all day now, it's great.</comment>


Modern "Hackintoshes" show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/05/hackintoshes-keep-giving-apples-frustrated-pros-a-place-to-go/ <comment><USER4> Boy did they drop the football in this area. I always thought the advantage to making the switch to more common PC architectures was the ability to keep pace and support a wider array of components and technologies.

Instead, they over-designed the enclosure and froze the high-end range of the platform. Creating a simple, but reliable tower design (optimized for speed rather than size) would have been extremely well received, would be nearly free money, and would have done wonders for the brand and their connection to creative pros.

Most of the pros I work with in the industry have gone from loving the mac to tolerating the mac. They are certainly looking around. I don't love Windows, but I have to admit that the Adobe Creative Suite now sings on a modern Windows machine.

<comment><USER5> Deleted this comment because it's apparently rubbing people the wrong way that I experienced poor performance using Adobe programs on a Windows machine and decided to share that experience.

<comment><USER6> I am very suspicious of the benchmarks that you pointed to. Maybe some users are reporting erroneous data?

Take a look at the Passmark list here: [http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php)

The i5 scores in at 7995, and the i7 4960HQ is 9770. If you are really CPU bound, there are going to be some big advantages for the i7 here.

Of course, if performance is so bad on the Windows machine that it is nearly unusable, then there is probably something else causing the issue.

<comment><USER5> Maybe that's the case, then? I just googled the comparison and that site I linked came up.

<comment><USER6> It is definitely possible. I switched to using Passmark almost exclusively after having some of the other sites give me some really horrible data a few times (CPU Boss, in my case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem isn't that the Mac Pro isn't upgradeable. That is a _symptom_ and a _potential solution_ , but not necessarily the best one.

The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn't been able to keep up with demands. If they were able to enhance and sell a "new model" of Mac pro every 6-12 months, the problem would go away. Nobody _wants_ a hackintosh, barring the long tail of people who like building PC's _anyway_. (And that's an enthusiast market, not worth catering to.) A vast majority of pros would just buy a new machine every couple years. So the _problem_ , then, is that there's no "new machine" for them to buy.

Positing that the solution is to offer an upgradeable tower implies that Apple can't keep up with demand. Which, let's be honest, _they can 't_. But the better solution here is to build a Mac Pro that _Apple_ can upgrade in the form of a new model. That enthusiasts can upgrade it as well is a moot point (or an additional benefit).

Hell, they could even have a Genius-led support model that swaps out the guts of your machine every 12-24 months. Apple-Hardware-As-A-Service?

<comment><USER8> _The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn 't been able to keep up with demands._

I think the problem is they chosen not to update the Mac Pro, not that they haven't been able to. Resources should not be an issue given their cash reserves.

And frankly, even if the Mac Pro were not a profitable machine for Apple overall, they would be better served by choosing to keep it up to date, and to keep is desirable, in order to keep their developers happy.

<comment><USER7> I suspect they got wrapped around the axle on too much industrial design and painted themselves into a corner where they _couldn 't_ upgrade it easily. The ROI of going back to the drawing board so soon was a non-starter.

They're not yet at the point where their developers' grumblings are having a material negative impact on the bottom line. Yet.

I hope they don't make the same mistake twice. But I don't think a hackintosh- inspired tower with the upgrade path left solely to the buyer would be a good strategy.

<comment><USER9> I think the grumblings are impacting the bottom line, and have penetrated the Cupertino distortion field.

The slightly panicked assertion that "Hey we're working on new Macs for pro users" earlier this year is evidence of that.

Previously the strategy seems to have been to put minimal effort into the Mac line and push it towards a closed kind-of-good-enough commodity platform designed to maximise margins not performance - basically a step up from the iPad range, for people who have an inexplicable legacy interest in real keyboards and bigger screens.

That was a _very_ bad mistake.

It seems to be the case that Cook doesn't understand the pro market, and may even be vaguely hostile to it, for some reason. In fact there doesn't seem to be anyone at senior level cheerleading for professional users, and no reaching out for input from professional communities.

I hope the grumblings have been loud enough to steer management back to reality. If not, we're just going to hold our noses and move back to Windows for professional creative software and Linux for everything else - which might seem like a small immediate loss, but will do massive damage to the Apple brand image.

<comment><USER7> It's not the "pro" market: Apple considers ~30% of their user base to be "pro". You wouldn't ignore that.

Now, within the pro market, notebooks are far-and-away #1, iMacs are #2, and the Mac Pro is #3 (and is described as "single digit" sales percentage). Would you care about 1-3% vs. the other 97%?

The problem is that that 1-3% are probably very vocal and the "trend-setters".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not allow developers to build their own Macs?

The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with notebook sales?

<comment><USER11> The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware.

That simple.

That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS.

IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge).

You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, but it is Apple's DNA now - and all the issues in the pro segment stem from it. Not enough hardware to be sold, why bother, etc.

<comment><USER12> As much as that's true, Apple has been trying to dig deeper into "services" over the last decade. App sales, music sales, movie sales, cloud services, anything they can do to expand their software ecosystem to make it more versatile and useful on hardware they never produced.

If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro" market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider it.

The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people?

It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted.

It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where to place people.

<comment><USER13> As I inderstand it, Apple isn't organised that way. They have OS teams, app teams, design teams, which work on whichever product at a given time. They don't have product-specific teams.

As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch (commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than Microsoft's Surface business.

<comment><USER12> What I mean is that the OS people get prioritized for phone features first, computer features second. The filesystem team, which is a great example, did work for both products, but note that it hit the phone first.

Apple minus iPhone means no watch, no tablet, and marginal market share since these products help spur sales in the computer area. Using a MacBook as a hub for all your Apple devices is a compelling reason to get one.

Look at how hard it has been for Microsoft to grow market share being what is basically an OS company with no significant hardware sales to speak of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For people wed to commercial design apps, I can totally understand the draw of running macOS on commodity hardware. But as someone who skews more to the hacker end of the spectrum and doesn't depend on commercial software, the day- to-day qualitative experience of Linux is head and shoulders above macOS these days. Ditto OpenBSD, etc. I'll never go back.

At least it does if you've already come around to using a desktop formfactor. For me I get lots of physical RAM (R / Pandas) a mechanical keyboard, and one of those straight-out-of-the-90s Logitech marble mouses that you'll pry from my cold dead fingers. Hardware support in Linux/*BSD for any Intel graphics based system is a total non-issue.

<comment><USER15> Uhhhh. I put my time in with a Linux desktop for nearly a decade until a job bought me a Mac and there's no way I'd go back. And I think my "hacker end of the spectrum" bona fides are pretty good--but those bona fides aren't incompatible with a preference for a pleasing UX that has been considered with users in mind, which for my money _no_ open-source desktop environment has even approached (and I have my beefs with OS X but they're small fry compared to even just "why is there no terminal emulator on par with iTerm2 in 2017?"). Wanting to enjoy using the thing you spend much of your waking life in front of is a pretty reasonable ask, and the indicative give-a-damn of well-thought- out polished experiences is worth it to me to the point where I don't even bother to boot the way faster desktop with way more RAM that sits under my desk when I can just plug in my MacBook Pro and everything just works. (Also that the window system doesn't randomly lose heads, which still happens on my dual-boot desktop, in 2017, to the point where I don't even bother with it. I'll probably Hackintosh that next time I'm bored.)

Casting your own preferences as implicitly "hacker" and pulling out some "qualitative experience" (which among nerds is best read as "subjective preferences") stuff is pretty silly.

<comment><USER16> I've found Gnome-terminal to be better than iTerm2 in the areas that matter to me - speed, color/font rendering, and configurability. I switched from OS X to Ubuntu and i3 because I was tired of how slow iTerm2 was compared to Gnome Terminal, and haven't regretted it even slightly.

My main workstation is a Lenovo Thinkpad with dual 1440p external monitors, and haven't run into issues losing heads, however, I wrote my own auto-detect and screen layout wrapper for xrandr so that it would consistently do what I wanted. Basically, my window manager makes calls like: `xrandr --output DP-2-1 --left-of eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-2 --left-of DP-2-1 --auto --output eDP-1 --auto` when I connect to my docking station and `xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-1 --off --output DP-2-2 --off --output HDMI-2 --off --output HDMI-1 --off` when I disconnect. MacOS's screen arrangement consistency was pretty great, though - on par with the consistency of my own script.

I think the improvement of moving from MacOS to Linux for me has been that I don't have to try to figure out how the OS "magic" works to make it do what I want, because there is no magic, it's just scripts I've written myself and I understand them because I wrote them.

<comment><USER14> Yes, magic is a great way to describe it. Sometimes it's delightful and benevolent magic, while other times it's more like a trickster's curse.

For me, there came a point when making Free nixen do what I want became easier than making macOS not do what I didn't want. Returning to Linux/*BSD from my decade long sabbatical to macOS, I've been delighted by the things that have changed, but even more delighted by some of the things that haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> May be it's just me, but I don't really care about design at all. I'm perfectly fine with huge tower or some reasonable fan noise. What I care is price, durability, extendability, repairability, and, of course, performance. I'm not really into macOS, I can use Linux or Windows just fine, but macOS is not that bad.

I'm actually opposed to thin things or design aberrations like trash can mac. I'm paying for that after all, with money or engineering trade-offs.

The best of both worlds would be officially supported hackintosh (that is, curated list of hardware parts, which are guaranteed to work for some reasonable period (15 years or something like that). But I don't think that would happen, Apple is greedy corporation and wants piece of pie from everything.

<comment><USER18> > Maybe it's just me

It is. I don't care a lot about design either (although I care a lot about user experience), but many people /do/ care for design, and are willing to pay a premium to get that design.

<comment><USER19> Honest question: what percent of Pro Mac users care more about design than performance? I get that lots of creatives (who might care about design) use Macs, but in the Pro community the sense I get is that performance (and expandability) are relatively more important. That's why the trash can Mac Pro was not particularly popular, to say the least.

<comment><USER20> The trash can Mac Pro is definitely too much form for too little function - but letting the pendulum swing back the other way is IMO also bad.

The previous tower Mac Pros are _massive_ machines - massive beyond the point of practicality for many purposes. They're also insanely heavy to the point of impracticality. Not all pros want/can live with something 3 feet tall that consumes several square feet of floor space.

The "right" path forward for the pro-desktop Mac is IMO something in between - something that maximizes extensibility and versatility without completely embracing the gigantor-ATX-case-on-the-floor direction.

I'm wondering about the practicality of something more like mini-ITX - <USER2> enough to be practical, but allowing access to all the core bits (RAM, CPU, GPU, HDDs).

<comment><USER21> Having max settle on desktop-class ITX motherboards would be huge... having the MB themselves be user purchasable would be beyond awesome. Buy a known quantity board with wireless/btle and an apple boot system, throw in your own cpu, ram, ssd, either onboard or offboard video, and you've still got a decent DIY system.

Apple could sell the full systems with a great looking case, and DIY enthusiasts could have a fast path to a hackintosh with a MB that's far less likely to blow up when updates happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apple could literally just release the new Mac Pro in the old case, with updated hardware and ports, and _if_ it was priced closer to reality, it would make a lot of their pro users happy. I doubt it would cost them much to do so too. I'd start it off at around $1500 for an entry level 4 core Xeon with an mid-level graphics card (GTX 1060 or Radeon 480).

<comment><USER23> I believe that's probably what they will do in 2017 from Tim Cook's comments.

<comment><USER24> There is zero chance it will look the same though - they couldn't eat that particular humble pie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Absolutely. I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it is still going strong, an absolute workhorse of a machine with 4 hard drives; incredibly reliable. At least, it was incredibly reliable with Snow Leopard, but MacOS X has been a bit downhill from there as far as reliability of the audio subsystem. The only real downsides to this machine have been that it is loud, which is problematic when using it for recording. But I would happily buy a modernized version of the same machine, and I'd be _especially_ happy to do so if it was much quieter.

If Apple offered me a dead-silent Mac Mini, even one with not much CPU capability, I would use it for tracking -- that is, right in the room where I'm recording. Also for Skype stuff for podcast recording, and streaming; probably two of them. These machines don't need to have a lot of CPU to record; they only have to do a modest amount of live audio processing. They don't have to run dozens to hundreds of instances of plug-ins like when I'm mixing.

Then the Mac Pro can go in the room where I'm mixing and mastering. So quiet is important but dead silence in the Pro is not really a requirement for me.

<comment><USER26> I helped my friend run conduit last week to solve this exact problem... a 100'($500) thunderbolt cable lets him keep the machine and storage in a separate room outside of the studio. Probably cost close to $600 when you factor in the conduit materials and the Korean BBQ wings he fed me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How about Apple create a "Custom Hardware" program ala their Developer program and basically charge $99+ a year for a legal install usb image. Then they can skip building a Pro and concentrate on the portables and iMac they like.

<comment><USER28> Because the cost for supporting random hardware will probably run to more than they make from running such a program.

Not to mention Apple doesn't seem to care about the developer and/or professional consumer anymore.

<comment><USER29> There is a middle ground between "random hardware" and one Apple device, clearly evidenced by the Hackintosh community. The difference is that Apple can more effectively support a whitelist of components than the Hackintosh community that is _already doing it on a volunteer basis_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> HP has stepped up to compete with the sealed Mac Mini. Their "Z2 Mini Workstation" is small, has user upgradeable RAM/disk, optional Xeon and Nvidia GPU, and can drive six monitors, [http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z2mini.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z2mini.html)

<comment><USER30> Looking at the specs, none of the Z2 configurations have ECC memory.

That's extremely disappointing for a "workstation". :(

<comment><USER29> ECC memory is available when you select a Xeon CPU.

<comment><USER30> Ahhh thanks, didn't notice that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've heard they are worried about brand dilution.

If that's the problem, then why not create a subsidiary firm and call it, I don't know, Pear, Gala, McIntire, Darwin or something. Let this firm build hackintoshes from off-the-shelf components. The trick is then to remove any reference to Apple and every logo from the OS. People "in the know" would be able to buy a Pear and use it just like a Mac.

This would be really cheap to pull off, just give some people a factory and a few million dollars, and would put next to no strain on Apple proper. It's really just buying a few blessed components, putting them together, and creating a boot disk with the needed kexts. Any mom and pop computer shop can do that if it weren't for legal issues. In the next year's iteration you can talk about custom hardware / buying at scale.

<comment><USER32> They tried this before with clones in the 90s. It didn't end well for anyone involved.

<comment><USER31> I don't know what you mean, the model worked extremely well and IBM PC clones took over the market completely.

Oh, you mean Mac clones ;-).

What I'm trying to say is it depends entirely on execution if it works or not. I wouldn't go the way of outsourcing it to others. I would make the clone company a 100% daughter company of Apple, and at the same time I would crack down hard on other Hackintoshs (legally and technically). Apple can milk their cash cow and eat it, too (aehm, I mean their cake).

<comment><USER33> And how much of the PC desktop market did IBM retain? Apple probably prefers 100% of a smaller cake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is a lot of opportunity for Apple to still make a design statement with a tower. One that people willingly display. The key is that is not only does it need to look good but cooling fans need to be deathly quiet. Then offer it up in aluminum or black enclosure.

Dimensions are pretty much locked down by what types of video card technology they wish to support, really would love a new solution that doesn't use the typical slots we still have today.

With regards to the mini, my only beef was when I wanted to integrate with my home theater white boxes just don't fit. It had to hide.

</comment><comment><USER35> Apple never wanted to be part of the DIY PC movement.

They adopt industry standards when convenient, but would be perfectly content to make a Pro machine locked to Moore's Law and 3-year turnovers.

Dongles. Dongles are your Pro future.

Apple don't want to be associated with the "Gamer".

</comment><comment><USER36> I already linked it, and I don't want to make it feel like I'm hammering the link, but as the subject come up often lately. I wrote a small serie of article sharing my moving experience away from macOS.

[https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos- part-1-moti...](https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos- part-1-motivations-b10accc10889)

</comment><comment><USER37> Steve Jobs - Apple Is Software - <USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs)

Apple is a Software company, You just have to buy their Hardware first to use it.

Apple lately has been too focused, or too worried about the Design of the product and lost sight of its main direction.

To more accurately phase it, Apple is an Ecosystem company. You use its Software, Hardware and Services across all ( most ) segment.

I'd argue Mac Pro should be the one of those segment, ( representing 1% of the total Mac Sales, and more like 0.1% of Apple's total revenue ) where they should make it impossible for average consumer to come up with a similar spec Machine with similar price. It doesn't mean Apple is making a loss, it is more likely Apple is just making very little profits on it.

The Apple now, or the Mac Ecosystem now is very different to 20 years ago. iPhone manage to pull in Lots of new developers and Pros.

</comment><comment><USER38> Apple doesn't need to do shit.

What are our options?

Windows? Where Microsoft is collecting every bit of data possible while pushing ads.

Linux? I'm a geek and Linux is annoying, I've been a Unix guy since 1984. I run it on my daily laptop only because I'm not willing to spend $2,000 extra for a Macbook Pro with the same specs as a $750 Dell Laptop because it weighs 9oz less

MacOS is the only real game in town.

Apple knows they are in the drivers seat and they are skull fucking the public to the best of their ability. If you doubt it, see their quarter of a Trillion in cash. If they release just a Mac tower it might just break the spell and convince people they are getting skull fucked.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is what they used to do with the venerable Mac Pro tower, built as recently as Mid 2012. The heavy gauge aluminum construction was a work of art. People pick up Mac Pro G5 shells and use them to build tables, benches, etc.

I am hoping that Apple returns to this sort of design philosophy. It's quite frustrating that many of their iMacs are not (easily) user upgradable. Upgrading an HDD to an SSD requires cutting adhesive, suction cups to remove the display, disconnecting not-meant-to-be-disconnected cables from comically delicate sockets, and similar feats of delicacy.

The Mac Pro redesign applied the same sort of anti-consumer bullshit.

<comment><USER40> The current philosophy is pretty solidly in line with the historical Apple design philosophy, so I wouldn't necessarily expect it to change. The iMac is basically today's evolution of the original Mac [1], a single-piece computer/monitor combination with no user-serviceable parts. Jobs said in 1984 that hardware customization is unnecessary to support, because "customization really is mostly software now".

The Mac Pro towers were pretty different, but if anything they were the aberration, going in a more Unix workstation direction.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K)

<comment><USER41> You're cherry-picking. That is definitely _one_ of Apple's design philosophies, and it has definitely worked very well for the iPhone and iPad. But not all their computers have followed that style. The Mac II launched in 1987(!) and was very influential. And as the earlier commenter mentioned, before the "trash can" redesign, the Mac Pro was easy to open and had plenty of ports.

Trying to apply that sealed appliance approach to every single product is sometimes a mistake, as demonstrated by the Mac Pro misstep.

<comment><USER42> The recent MacPro was only a misstep in that they bet on CPU/GPU design zigging instead of zagging.

It was a technically beautiful machine (still is, really) but their choices meant it became impossible to update.

If the market had gone the other way we'd likely be talking about the 2016 MacPro instead.

<comment><USER41> But they didn't have to make a bet at all.

They wanted to make a tiny, silent Pro machine to make a statement, but nobody seems to have cared much about that. I haven't seen a single person saying "I hope the new Pro is still really really small, even if that means it's more expensive and less expandable!"

<comment><USER42> > But they didn't have to make a bet at all.

Sure, neither does anyone... on anything. If the bet had succeeded though we'd all be calling them geniuses and suchlike. If no-one made bets like that we'd still have boring beige boxes. Hell the original Mac was a bet like that (the design was radical at the time).

The MacPro is an _awesome_ machine. Everyone I know that has used one _loves_ it. That's great for a pro-machine. That's exactly what Apple likes to do - create hardware that people _love_

They lost the bet, but it was a good bet to make. I'll take a company that makes bets like that over one that doesn't, long term.

<comment><USER41> Sorry, I was unclear about the "bet". I don't mean they shouldn't take risks, more that in this case it would have been easy to hedge the bet -- launch a bigger expandable box at the same time.

In their recent discussions around the upcoming redesign, it sounds like they didn't realize they were making a bet at all. If they had, they should have monitored it more closely and been a lot quicker out of the gate with the redesign.

A possible defence is that Apple had other priorities at the time, and wasn't paying full attention to the Pro. But it's mystifying why the world's biggest company by market cap can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

 _The MacPro is an_ awesome _machine. Everyone I know that has used one_ loves _it._

It's funny it hasn't been more successful, then! Although I certainly believe you. It's definitely possible for it to be popular with a niche while failing in the wider market.

<comment><USER42> High end desktops _are_ a niche, a small but important one, and the MacPro was _wildly_ successful... at first.

There's a reason people complained about the lack of upgrades and it wasn't because no-one bought one.

Your suggestion would be the most un-Apple thing I've heard. They _never_ do stuff like that because they _believe in their solution as being the best_.

They could have been right - that was the bet. What you describe is not a bet at all!

<comment><USER41> _What you describe is not a bet at all!_

Of course it is! Not all bets have to be all-in. Having a backup plan would have reduced the downside if the Pro wasn't a hit. It would also add a little risk, sure, of being perceived as cowardly or unfocused by going for such an "un-Apple" approach.

When a product like the Mac Pro is widely perceived as a failure, and you have to resort to the extremely un-Apple thing of discussing your future roadmap, it seems to me very reasonable to ask what might have been done differently, and why.

I still say that if Apple had kept their eye on the ball, they would have known within a couple of years that the Mac Pro wasn't working as intended. They could and should have started work on a more modular replacement a year or two ago. It would have been shipping _now_ and they wouldn't be in the embarrassing situation they're in.

Wikipedia's summary seems fair: "By 2016, reviewers started to agree that the Mac Pro was lacking in functionality and power, and should be updated by Apple. Apple later revealed in 2017 that the thermal core design had limited the ability to upgrade the Mac Pro's GPUs and that a new design was under development, to be released in 2018 or 2019."

Either it took them a year to figure out the problems with the current design and realize they needed to go back to the drawing board, or (I'm guessing) it was just allowed to languish and no serious investigation was done until fairly recently.

(Take all this with a pinch of salt, of course! I'm a random internet pundit and not actually running one of the most successful businesses of all time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm not sure why everyone is so gung-ho for a big tower. I want expandability, but with Thunderbolt3, you can add now external GPUs, fast external drives, and (almost) anything else. And you then don't have to worry about the thing heating up.

I owned a late 2013 Mac Pro for several years and it had the vision right. It was just too early and they gave up on it too quickly. I want v2 with a similar design, slightly upgraded CPU, thunderbolt 3 ports, and integrated graphics. Then pair it with an eGPU enclosure (like razer core), and get OSX to support this feature natively.

I also own a Razer Stealth along with the Core, and it's a great setup. Only downside is they have to work with some shit software (Windows and terrible drivers). Apple would have the ability to own this experience from top to bottom.

I don't think trying to stuff everything into a box makes sense anymore. Apple has paved the way with connectivity options, fast graphic switching, and fast bus speeds. Continue forward instead of going backwards.

</comment><comment><USER44> Can anyone tell me their experiences running a virtual hackintosh?

In my current job I don't need a mac anymore, so I'm switching to a NUC which I'm thinking it'll be best to run Qubes on. But I do have existing mac/ios projects that I'd like to support, thus the need for a virtual hackintosh.

<comment><USER45> I've tried running OS/X in VMWare on Windows. Technically it works fine but there's no video acceleration and that's annoying enough to not make it a viable option for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what the OS and software guys at Apple think about the lack of options in their own hardware department. It must be a little frustrating to be invested into the software as a developer but know that a lot of pro users (people like themselves) are moving away from the platform.

</comment><comment><USER47> You dont need a hackintosh to run a great mac for cheap(er). I picked up a 2012 mac mini off CL with 2.5 i5 and dropped in a SSD and maxed RAM to 16GB. Runs silent in a small package. Also added a 28" 4K off craigslist (although it'll only drive up to 2k). All for under $900

<comment><USER48> The Late 2012 was a great model. Easily accessible memory as in previous all- aluminum generations and replacing the hard disk is just a few screws. I also have a Late 2012 with 16GB RAM and SSD (500GB) like you. I bought it new for IIRC 600 Euro. So, it's been a great investment --- had it almost five years now and it still flies.

I really hope that they'll make a new Mac Mini extensible like the 2012 again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm not sure it follows that Apple should build it just because some people want it. Some people build Hackintoshes because they like building things or they want to save money. Neither would be addressed by an official tower.

<comment><USER46> Well to me it is important to remember _who_ the people are that want it - These are professionals and developers that create applications for the OS (mobile and desktop) as well as creatives who have kept Apple afloat in rough times. I would think there is strategic value in keeping these people somewhat happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if Apple would prefer to simply not be selling computers at all at this point, but can't stop without seriously hurting their image.

<comment><USER51> They've been pretty open recently that the issue with their desktop platform is that the trashcan design assumed SLI would be the future. It isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Worse than the Hackintosh users, Apple have just about lost me completely to Windows.

Apple held my attention for years because I need Adobe software and prefer a Unix enviroment. I'm pretty happy using using a Windows 10 desktop with Windows Subsystem for Linux now. My workflow is pretty much the same as it is my MacBook now. So much so that I'd probably do the same with my next laptop.

</comment><comment><USER53> I was looking into hackintoshes a lot in past, mainly in hope to build a custom Mac Pro that would fill my needs, but failed to find even a single build that wouldn't require overly complex and risk fun with custom kexts on build and then with every minor OS update. Has anything changed today?

</comment><comment><USER54> Profit margin, plain and simple. I'm willing to pay a premium for the best laptop, been using macbooks exclusively for years and they are actually a great value for the quality of the components. But I will not pay 3x for comparable desktop that I can't upgrade just to run MacOS.

<comment><USER55> Yeah, and upgrade parts are far too much of an an (ahem) apples to apples comparison. Seeing a 20-30% markup on a graphics card might make people reconsider the value they're getting on their macbook or iPhone.

There's some brand reputation to protect here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Stackable Mac Minis anyone? daisy chained and with a single OS controlling all the RAM and CPU power

<comment><USER35> So, "'Zilla" or Xgrid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Honestly, Apple should make a Mac tower, and then incentivize graphic card manufacturers to write drivers. Imagine a Mac with not last years cards, but current generation cards. No custom bios BS like they had before, just buy a card, put it in, install the driver.

<comment><USER58> As of last week newer (newest?) NVIDIA GPUs work and are supported for hackintosh and presumably Mac desktops

<comment><USER57> So once, in the past like 10 years have we been able to run a newish gpu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Do we really need a full tower? Isn't most of the space in a traditional PC "trash can" form factor wasted? The graphics card size would need to change, but it would be great if we could shrink the case and still have all the power of a desktop.

<comment><USER60> Full towers have a couple benefits against smaller cases, thermals and space for expansion (internal hdd's, additional graphics cards, etc.). Smaller cases really suffer from lack of expansion space and often severely restrict the components you can use just based on the volume you can work with.

<comment><USER59> Yes, the expansion capabilities are well understood.

Applying an 80/20 rule, one or two graphics cards, and a couple of drives should pretty much cover it.

Apple could offer a large and small form case. The real problem is heat, right?

<comment><USER60> Heat is a big problem but given that they barely seem to want to be in the pro business at all these days given their laptop choices lately I doubt they'd want to have 2 different desktops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I run a Hackintosh for my home studio and it simply comes down to cost/performance ratio. I can build a legit Hackintosh for less than the cost of a Mac Mini. EVEN IF they offered a new Mac tower, I'd probably still build my own.

</comment><comment><USER62> I've been with my hackintosh for 3 years, first it was mavericks, yosemite and now i use el capitan. My pc is 2.99 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram and nvidia gt520 use only to develop. And works quite well.

</comment><comment><USER63> If Apple can put an authentication chip in a phone cable, what is stopping them to lock down macos? They don't want to do that.

<comment><USER64> They have this in the form of a legal note, don't they? Last I heard it was technically "illegal" to run macOS on anything other than Apple hardware per the TOS. Or is that just an urban legend?

<comment><USER42> Not illegal, just against the EULA. Basically they could revoke your usage of the software and _probably_ legally fine you.

It is a software license issue. Technically it would be something like unlicensed distribution/copying.

Practically speaking they _don 't care_ though. The machine building market is _vanishingly_ small and the licensing gives Apple plausible "we never said it would work" deniability.

<comment><USER65> I think the illegal bit is using an illegal copy of their OS to install as you don't hold the copyright and so aren't allowed to make a (modified) copy of the installer that works on the non-Apple hardware.

<comment><USER42> Potentially. Of course if you're just downloading a modified version then it's not _you_ that modified it.

It's a bit of a strange area. Either way - it's not illegal due to any specific thing _Apple_ does. Other copyright/IP law may apply though.

<comment><USER65> I think downloading an illegal copy of something is still illegal though right? If I download a copy of a DVD for instance I've committed a crime in the UK at least.

I agree it's not due to anything specific about Apple - it's just that it's an illegal copy as you are not the copyright holder and so have no right to make a modified copy or download a copy or modified copy.

<comment><USER42> > I think downloading an illegal copy of something is still illegal though > right?

Mostly not! _Seeding_ a torrent however _counts as distribution_. Using the software is against the EULA on ToS usually though.

It's kind of like how, back in the day, if you bought pirate software from a guy in a market _they_ were the criminal, not you. Copyright law is mostly about infringement which requires distribution.

It's how torrent sites stay (mostly) legal: they don't actually distribute the files (usually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Apple isn't making a Mac tower because there is no demand for overpriced machines with mediocre performance. All those people building hackintoshes want a cheap Mac desktop. They won't buy a new Mac tower should Apple produce one. They'll continue building hackintoshes.

<comment><USER67> not true for me. I built the hackintosh I'm typing this on last summer so I could run a large 4k display and have an Nvidia graphics card to monkey around with. If Apple builds a nice Mac tower that I can upgrade and extend (a new, larger SSD ... a new video card ... etc), I'll buy it. It's not really cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I purchased this ([https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell- In...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell- Inspiron-15-i7559-5012GRY-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.333475500)) laptop from the Microsoft store, paying right around ~$700 with a student discount.

I bought an m.2 solid state and a wifi adapter that is known to work well with hackintosh's (the stock wifi card wasn't compatible), and another 8gb of ram for another ~$150.

I followed this ([https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell- inspiron-15-75...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell- inspiron-15-7559-skylake-i7-6700hq-intel-hd-530-using-clover.191921/)) guide to get a nice hackintosh out of this laptop. Obviously this is a decent bit more difficult for the regular computer user to do.

So for ~$850, after 'hackintoshing' this computer, I get: A laptop that gives me the choice to boot into an SSD imaged with latest OSX Sierra, or the regular 5,400 rpm Windows 10 drive. The last thing I want to do with this laptop is exchange the 1tb 5,400 windows drive for a 1tb SSD.

When booted into Sierra: The software runs exactly the same as using a real mac. I've done some video editing in Final Cut, some audio work in Ableton, streamed 1080p youtube / netflix videos no problem. There's decent battery life, as the guide above shows you how to disable the nvidia graphics card entirely when running OSX (doesn't work anyways) to save battery. The specs are comparable to a modern macbook pro, and in one case even better.

Pros \- Actually get 4k resolution/screen

Cons \- SD card reader does not work \- Mobile graphics Nvidia 960m does not work, but intel 530 HD graphics card does just fine \- Backlight adjustment doesn't not work (could probably spend time to get it to work, but I'm fine without it for now) \- Trackpad is a little too sensitive

Sames \- Hardware: Core i7, 16gb ram \- Full airdrop support

Where am I going with this? In my opinion the general public is becoming more tech savvy. If Apple does not embrace the culture of people wanting to experiment with code (theirs or not) on different devices, then they are putting themselves at a disadvantage. The guides to make hackintoshes are more than likely getting easier and easier as time goes on and support grows. (this was my second attempt and first success)

What a disappointment this macbook pro reveal was. So instead of spending $2,399.00 on a new 15" macbook pro, I decided to hack together a very comparable one for ~$850.

I'll take the $1,550 savings for a little software and screwdriver work, even with a couple of minor issues, any day.

As long as those dedicated apple fans eat it up, I don't expect anything to change anytime soon. But for everyone else who can't afford those business practices, there are ways like what I did above to get what you want without breaking the bank.

<comment><USER69> Thanks for the post, do you know what other 4k laptops are currently a popular choice for hackintoshing?

<comment><USER68> I'm getting back into it, but a quick look at [https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/sierra-laptop- guides.189/?...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/sierra-laptop- guides.189/?order=view_count) tells me that it's still pretty early for 4k hackintosh laptops. Looks like the one I got was one of the first ones.

If I had unlimited funds, I would probably just build a desktop, since they have a really good monthly recap of what hardware works with the current software. [https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017](https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017)

I guess that's sort of where the line is drawn is you can't really "build" a laptop. Seems like there are a few good Dell models that chose hardware that works with mac, though. I'm sure in the near future we'll start seeing more 4k capable hackintosh laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Quicksilver Tower was the best Mac in history IMO.

</comment><comment><USER71> Apple did. It came with a G5 processor. Most people didn't want to pay the exorbitant prices that Apple wanted them to pay for things like Apple- compatible AGP graphics cards and such when PCs got the same thing at literally 1/3 the price, and they pretty quickly fell into irrelevance.

Apple would probably go the exact same route as they did the last time and fail just as miserably.

<comment><USER72> Wasn't this use case exactly what was part of their justification for switching to Intel?... the ability to keep up faster.

<comment><USER71> They certainly did not keep up. Their equipment has been behind as far as I can tell when I worked for them starting back in the G3 days, and that's including after the intel switch.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Before there were MOOCs - advice for a startup - <AUTHOR>

Fellow Hackers,
I'm a startup founder, and a little over a year ago I set out to build a "Wikipedia for courses".  I ended up building a publishing platform - the idea was to make it extremely easy for anybody to produce highly interactive, online courses (without, and then easy for anybody else to learn from them).
Pensieve: www.pensieve.net
From an infrastructure standpoint, the platform has been quite mature and powerful - anybody can come to the site, and immediately create interactive courses, and put in assessments, assignments ... etc.  We generally receive solid approval of our product.
However, our success at programming has been matched by our inability to gain traction. Users don't come for infrastructure, they come for content or because of your brand name - without either, nobody will come.  Since then, Coursera and EdX rose, and due to their names, academic relationships, excellent funding, and access to a large body of quality content - they are growing at an insane pace.
The last thing I would want would be to be a "me too" type of company.  The thing is, that I believe the we still provide a major value which I haven't yet seen replicated.  I've seen lots of content distributors, but I haven't seen a platform which makes it possible (and easy) for you or me to make a course that is more than just a youtube video channel / wiki.
I've tried several things (most promisingly targeting the corporate training market), but I'm interested in your opinions - how would you move forward and get traction? <comment><USER2> clickable: <http://www.pensieve.net>

I am newbie founder, also trying to gain traction, so I am trying to share guesses here, not knowledge.

Actually, I am trying to deliver value, not gain traction. "Growth hacking" must be done just after the product/market fit, and I still don't have it. If yours "solid approval" means prod/mkt fit, than you can start to build some features to hack growth. But I would keep it at small scale. I would say, work hard to keep the course creators coming back to create new courses. Use cheap adwords (that you pay) to attract users to their courses (not to your platform).

But for this to work, your course creators must have an audience. Something you can do is attract common people that publish courses on Youtube and already have small, but regular viewers. If you provide enough value for these "amateur professors", they will bring on their audience. This will demand a great effort of research, to cherry pick the right teachers.

Don't try to create a exponential growth from day zero. Don't be Formspring or BranchOut. Think hard about traction, but a solid, relatively small one. Don't compare yourself (yet) to these big names.

<comment><USER3> _Actually, I am trying to deliver value, not gain traction. "Growth hacking" must be done just after the product/market fit, and I still don't have it._

Not really. Through "growth hacking" you discover the different markets your product fits into. Though you started with the wrong step. You dont design a product and then search for a market. You search for a market and _then_ do the product.

<comment><USER2> Growth hacking is not searching for a market. You described "customer development" - which is what I am doing right now - not growth hacking.

<comment><USER3> If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. Anyhow, good luck.

<comment><USER2> Don't patronize me. Please, explain me what is wrong with my concept.

Basically, I agree with these guys: [http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy- of-a-failed-growth-...](http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy-of-a-failed- growth-hack/) and [http://www.aginnt.com/post/46854446756/interview-a-growth- ha...](http://www.aginnt.com/post/46854446756/interview-a-growth-hacker-with- greg-tseng)

That's where my concepts come from. If you think that me saying "customer development" is BS and that I should be trying to grow like hell and not wasting time with delusional customers interviews, or something like that, please explain why.

<comment><USER2> There is a limit for replying in HN? I can't continue to reply to the last response. But I will do it here anyway.

I didn't make my mind. That's why I wanted you to explain it. And I quite agree that growth hacking is very different from customer development. What I am saying, and you apparently is disagreeing, is that you first do customer development and only after product/market fit you do growth hacking. I am now only doing customer development and I think is not a good thing to already start growth hacking.

I am not "buying into the hype", on the contrary, I am postponing the growth hacking for me. I think you assume too much of what I think. But it is ok if we have two different concepts about what growth hacking is - even though I can't say i KNOW what it is.

<comment><USER3> Allow me to apologize. I'm constantly getting bamboozled by wanna by founders looking for an easy paycheck that it makes me more negative than usual. Why don't you shoot me an email and we can talk about whatever. Cool?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Put some money into the look of the site. It is too ugly to be interesting. Hire a designer, and re-launch. And stop feeling bad for yourself. Shit happens, you re-try. If anything, shoot me an email, I participate in a group that is full of people like you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I would be interested in meeting this group - I didn't develop the company in a place like SF or in hub with active developer / startup communities, which I think was a big mistake.

<comment><USER3> Not being in SF is the best thing you can do for a company. Anyhow, see you there!</comment></comment></comment>


What Emotion Goes Viral the Fastest? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-goes-viral-fastest-180950182/?no-ist <comment><USER3> I dislike when news try to talk about research but do not cite the source. The actual paper can be read here: [https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp- content/uploads/2011/11...](https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp- content/uploads/2011/11/Virality.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Case in point: United Airlines

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of this from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

> Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception > of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of > Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news > but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome > whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being > there.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _The one emotion that outpaced anger in Berger's study was awe, the feelings > of wonder and excitement that come from encountering great beauty or > knowledge, such as a news report of an important discovery in the fight > against cancer._

I find this incredibly encouraging. I try to be mindful of what feelings I spread on social media. I've seen too many friends fall into the "perpetual rage" trap, where they grow addicted to news that makes them angry and keep seeking out angrier and angrier pundits and ultimately fall into obstinate- pouting and irrationality.

The sense of awe and wonder are what I try to spread the most of online, but it's difficult. Spreading outrage is easy. It doesn't take much thought and the memes fit into headlines. Awe and wonder require research and understanding. What's amazing about a scientific discovery doesn't fit into a headline. You have to read the whole story to get what's epic in the article.

If the cure for outrage is awe, then we have to figure out how to squeeze awe into 140 characters.

</comment><comment><USER7> Outrage, obviously.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of- rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

<comment><USER8> The paper claims that awe surpasses outrage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same emotion you need to be most wary too. It's easy to get sucked into these Rage inducing news and waste precious time and energy over things that possibly have no relation to you and only make you feel worse. In words of pg, Life is too short to spend on such bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd highly recommend Jon Ronson's book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" for more on this sort of thing. He discusses online lynch mobs and speaks to some of those at the receiving end of the internet's outrage.

</comment><comment><USER11> Related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

</comment><comment><USER12> Unless I missed it, they didn't answer their own question, and instead just listed a few emotions that get people riled up the most.

<comment><USER13> They mentioned it in the second paragraph:

> Their conclusion: Joy moves faster than sadness or disgust, but nothing is > speedier than rage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surprised it wasn't fear. Maybe because mass hysteria events based on fear are rare?

</comment><comment><USER15> I think indignation is a more precise term for the phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought it was gonna be either the "aww!" of cute kitten videos or the moral outrage of look-what-Donald-Trump-is-doing-to-oppress-women-this-week.

Turns out I wasn't far off.

</comment><comment><USER17> Five minutes of hate - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER18> TLDR: Anger. In a surprise twist, also Awe.

#stopclickbait

<comment><USER19> Anger is not surprising.

Reminds me of this:

[http://www.basicinstructions.net/basic- instructions/2011/4/5...](http://www.basicinstructions.net/basic- instructions/2011/4/5/how-to-explore-your-emotions.html)

<comment><USER20> Anger wasn't supposed to be surprising, hence parent's use of punctuation. Awe was supposed to be the surprising one.</comment></comment></comment>


Life in Text Mode - <AUTHOR> http://aperiodic.net/phil/archives/Geekery/text-mode-guerrilla.html <comment><USER2> Nice to see like-minded folks out there. Like him, I run X mostly for having multiple full-height rxvt+screen sessions (three per virtual desktop).

I only use three graphical apps: Firefox, pidgin (grudgingly), and the Qt interface for VirtualBox. The rest are text apps and custom shell scripts for accomplishing tasks in tandem with those apps (such a "find | random | mpg123" for shuffling music directories).

I highly recommend "evilwm" for managing such a setup. Its single-pixel window borders with no window decorations is desktop minimalism as its finest. It's also got the lightest memory footprint of all the minimal WMs out there. Windows can be moved, re-sized, and snapped to locations with keystrokes. For fine-tuned placement of regularly-used apps, a simple shell script can be crafted to launch them with the precise geometry you require (or ALT+MOUSE_LEFT to lift the window). I have hot-keys defined (using "xbindkeys") that will populate virtual desktops to exact specifications.

My only gripe with this setup is the competition for key chords amongst emacs, screen, and evilwm itself. That, and every once in a while, some web page will throw a Firefox window that I simply _cannot_ close without the "x" screen decoration (at least not without closing Firefox itself -- grrr...).

<comment><USER3> Haven't tried evilwm, but the reasons you list for liking it apply also to XMonad, which I use and love.

I've tried awesome, wmii, dwm and a couple other tiling window managers and XMonad is by far my favorite.

Bit of a learning curve if you aren't into Haskell already, but it's very sensible and intuitive syntax that you can easily grasp from the many examples in the XMonad config archive.

Highly recommended. Active community, easy to extend. Lot's of reference configs. Changed my entire computing life...

It's tiles, all the way down.

<comment><USER4> I've tried quite a few window managers but I must say the automatic tiling wm actually make me prefer gnome, what really seems to do well with me is ratpoison or stumpwm. The control of tiling seems to work great and both are quite customizable (especially stumpwm). (I use C-, for my prefix and C-t in tmux) Recently I just use gnome though because my laptop just works there and have a full screen web browser and a full screen tmux (so I at least have some tiling).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've replaced _screen_ with _tmux._

<comment><USER6> What are the advantages of tmux? (I have been using screen for persistent sessions on production servers.)

<comment><USER7> I still use screen on a few servers but have switched to tmux everywhere else. They're quite similar, but tmux has a number of small advantages that add up.

* Better support for panes and splits. Besides vertical splits (which you can get in screen if you're willing to patch), with tmux you can for instance quickly join two existing windows together with a split, break a pane out of a split and into its own window, or arrange panes into a predefined layout.

* You also have the ability to name windows, reorder them, swap them, and generally move them around with tmux.

* With tmux, activity notifications are persistent and per-window. While screen can monitor windows for activity -- I always monitor one window that runs mutt, and another that runs irssi -- screen notifies you by flashing the caption once, briefly or until a keystroke, and doesn't mark the active window until the caption gets redrawn. This doesn't work so well if you're typing away in your editor window. ;) I got really tired of missing notifications, especially chats. Not an issue anymore with tmux, which immediately marks the active window.

* Session sharing works without having to setuid the tmux binary.

* Copy mode is mostly the same, but tmux maintains a stack of paste buffers, and keeps a viewable history of everything you've copied. One thing screen has though that tmux still doesn't (afaik) is the ability to copy rectangular blocks of text, not just complete lines.

* The scripting / programmatic interface for tmux is much nicer.

<comment><USER6> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone still use "mc" ?

I like vifm (vi-like file manager), although i can't say i fire it up too often.

microemacs (jasspa's) has a nice inbuilt file manager (F10).

<comment><USER9> > Does anyone still use "mc" ?

Midnight Commander is great!

I use it for file management on my wife's iMac (I'm usually ssh'd in, while she uses the console). I also use it to keep her small business web site updated (it supports ftp, which is what my wife's web host uses).

<comment><USER10> _> it supports ftp, which is what my wife's web host uses_

Ouch!

By all means, please switch to a protocol of the 21th century!

Midnight commander supports secure protocols like SCP or SFTP as well.

Also, there's sshfs which allows you to handle the remote directory like a local one without any special features of mc (or KDE or Gnome). However, I don't know whether sshfs is available on the Mac.

Anyway, there's hardly any reason to use FTP, unless your hosting provider doesn't care a lot about security.

<comment><USER11> MacFUSE exists, and sshfs is usually the 'flagship' file system for FUSE, so I would gamble that it exists. It's off-topic, but a few years ago I remember someone creating a bunch of nifty file system plugins to MacFUSE to do things like create a file system that represented the open applications and/or windows on OSX. They seemed to be mostly tech demos, but I found it interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was just about to badmouth his tool choices when I noticed that the post is from 2006.

<comment><USER8> what are your updated/better choices ? Thanks.

I use links (i/o lynx). And vim.

<comment><USER12> I think he made a lot of good choices. These days I would pick tmux over screen and newsbeuter over snownews.

ion really was a great and influential window manager, but now, it'd probably be better to pick XMonad, awesome, or i3.

vimperator has been a lifesaver for me, but I'm switching to luakit because it doesn't seem to allow flash to steal the keyboard focus.

<comment><USER8> Is luakit a Linux only software, or does it work on OSX, too.

<comment><USER13> I saw compiler flags for OSX in the source tarball [1] but to install on OSX probably requires installing from source, and if my experience with using macports to install Conkeror and uzbl is any indication, installing all of the dependencies correctly is likely to be something that requires hours of tedious effort unless one is an expert. The reason for that is that luakit (and Conkeror and probably uzbl) rely on a very large stack of "non-Mac-like" software including the GTK toolkit and the X windowing system.

If you can get around in Linux, I would test drive the software on Linux to make sure it is as useful to you as you imagine it to be before doing the work of figuring out how to install it on OSX.

I will add that the difficulty of installing relatively unpopular Linux packages on OSX is one of the biggest disadvantages of OSX for me. (The unavailability of laptops in which everything Just Works is of the biggest disadvantages of Linux for me.).

I've tentatively given up on relying on software that requires X while I am using OSX: I plan to keep on test-driving such software (on Linux), and if I decide I have got to have access to it, I will switch back to Linux.

[1] [https://github.com/mason- larobina/luakit/blob/develop/config...](https://github.com/mason- larobina/luakit/blob/develop/config.mk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Last year my laptop got stolen, and while I shopped for a replacement at work, I had to use my (previously headless) server machine for other tasks at home. Beyond what the linked article discusses, I'll also mention:

elinks (<http://elinks.or.cz/>) is far more featureful than links, w3m or lynx, to the point where it even supports CSS and a little JS.

libcaca (<http://caca.zoy.org/>) comes with an image-viewing tool, "cacaview", which is handy when somebody sends you a picture and you don't have a graphical framebuffer handy.

<comment><USER15> The page is a little dated now. I use elinks instead of w3m these days. cacaview is pretty neat-looking, though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ugh. procmail is disgusting. Consider maildrop instead (part of the courier mail server suite: <http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/> )

<comment><USER2> Procmail exemplifies the leanness, speed, and precision that all Unix utilities should strive for.

That said, I've never used maildrop, being quite smitten with procmail myself. But since the size of maildrop's source distribution is ten times that of procmail, I'll stick with the latter out of principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good list, but where's ffmpeg?

Though I come from the design world, I realized how much speed and power advantage there is in the command line, and spent the time – over several years – learning how to use it. The speed advantage is so apparent in comparison to GUIs, and now Web Apps, but I guess that's the geek appeal;)

<comment><USER8> I use ffmpeg a lot to extract the audio from video's I've downloaded from youtube. Does anyone use any command-line youtube downloaders that _still_ work? I use one written in awk (pete krumins). The others stopped working a while back.

<comment><USER12> youtube-dl!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title is ambiguous. I expected to see a text mode implementation of Conway's Game of Life. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's what I'd add to this nice list:

\- emacs-jabber: the best IM client in the world and you can use various "jabber2any" gateways to stay in touch with your "legacy" contacts. emacs- jabber allowed me to get off using pidgin grudgingly :)

\- ratpoison for managing shell windows under X (and I've heard stumpwm is great, for all you lisp lovers :))

\- conkeror (or vimperator) for keyboard-driven web browsing: not character mode, but surely helps a lot when most of your software is.

\- urxvt (rxvt-unicode).

\- gnus for mailer: probably. I've heard it's even better than mutt, but I don't use email often enough to warrant the switch yet.

<comment><USER11>
      > and I've heard stumpwm is great, for all you lisp lovers :)

IIRC, the creator of ratpoison is also the creator of stumpwm (though I could be mis-informed).

      > gnus for mailer: probably. I've heard it's even better than
      > mutt, but I don't use email often enough to warrant the
      > switch yet.

A couple of years back I tried to get Gnus working, but I ran into: (i) confusing documentation, (ii) not much help through blogs/Google, and (iii) Gnus users on IRC telling me "not to bother" trying to learn Gnus because there were better solutions out there. I've also heard complaints on a number of occasions that Gnus is a dog when trying to load up large mailboxes (and that mutt is better at this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another simple yet efficient cli todo is todo.txt <http://ginatrapani.github.com/todo.txt-cli/>

and for all vim users out there, I would highly recommend <http://code.google.com/p/vimwiki/> which is a portable wiki right inside vim.

</comment><comment><USER20> Love to see posts like this. I've the feeling I'll be happier in keyboard+text land but haven't had the courage to take the leap yet. My favorite use of screen space is a ginormous editor window.

If anyone is interested, the October issue of Linux Journal has a pretty good roundup of command-line tools. It should be online soon (first of December?)

</comment><comment><USER21> Why would you do that?

I can understand using only the __keyboard __, because it's faster and easier to automate and whatnot, but giving up on a normal browser just to be "in text mode"? Why not Firefox + Vimperator, for example?

<comment><USER22> Typically in a tiling window manager you will have a main window open with, say, an editor, and other windows open with man pages or documentation.

Sometimes you just want to browse through something that is text, online documentation for example. In a tiling window manager, your browser might be in a window that is, say, only a quarter of the screen's real estate, so you definitely don't want the browser to be filled with cruft like scroll bars or menus. Since the viewport is so small, you want all of it to be "content" and none of it to be "browser". So a text browser makes a lot of sense.

I do this all the time, usually with elinks. Mind you, I still have chrome open in a different group (or tab).

<comment><USER23> Google "uzbl".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> if anyone's curious, well, I was, So I just started up 30 terminals under awesome wm.

I did 30 gnome-terminals, and then 30 xterms, and then 30 urxvts

I start out at 150 mb of ram, and then with 30 gnome-terminals I go up to 250. With 30 xterms, I end up at 230. With 30 urxvts, I ended up at around 210

I used htop to measure memory.

I've always wondered how much lighter the lighter terminals are, they aren't enough to make me switch, but there you go, there's definitely a difference, since I'm usually at least running 1 graphical we browser(like chrome) that always dominates my memory usage

<comment><USER2> Now, try that with different shells and report back to us. ;-)

I'm _pretty_ sure that "pdksh" is the smallest (or very close), but I think it's static, so in the context of opening up 30 instances of that shell at once, one of the others (most of which are dynamically linked) might beat it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of my favorite bloggers is K. Mandla, who runs command line only systems on older hardware:

<http://kmandla.wordpress.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> He surely misses mpd. <http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki>

</comment><comment><USER27> I agree with you . ttp://www.braceletpandora.uk.co ttp://www.pandorajewellerymall.uk.co That's very interting.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you're an emacs user, why don't you just use org-mode for todo lists?</comment>


Show HN: Extreme Results – An App for Agile Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.gjermundbjaanes.com/xr/ <comment><USER2> Really interesting project. I did not know the method but am willing to give it a try. The code on github looks nice. Congratulations on releasing a side project.

I did not know what hot spots are, and the post doesn't mention it. Here's an introduction: [http://www.30daysofgettingresults.com/2011/10/day-5-hot- spot...](http://www.30daysofgettingresults.com/2011/10/day-5-hot-spots-map- out-whats-important.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

The implementation of hot spots in the app is something I almost pulled out. I think there are better ways of doing it. You are right though, I should have at least explained it :) Thank you!

Edit: I added a small section on Hot Spots on the blog (also used the link you so kindly found).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you like code pairing interviews? I hate them - <AUTHOR> I dislike code pairing interviews.  Specially ones where you haven't even talked to the team, don't know anything about the people they just give you a laptop connected to a tv so that they can sit infront of you and watch you code.   Maybe I am the only one but I can't perform when someone is watching me or analyzing what I am doing.  I would prefer if they gave me a set of tasks.  A github repo where I commit code and then I submit the code and we can discuss what I did and my reasoning.  But when I am being watched I forget everything.  It sucked :( <comment><AUTHOR> What made it frustrating is that I am the type of person who likes to have my dev environment setup for coding, I also work in linux and not on a mac. I am also a quiet type of guy who codes best when I am sitting on my own. I do work with my team very well but I feel weird when people are watching over my shoulder. The funny thing is that I went to a second interview at a company that is doing interesting things with biometrics and large scale problems and their approach was to ask me lots of interesting questions about how i handled scaling, how to debug performance, optimzing queries, log analysis. I am a senior engineer with years of experience and these guys were very smart, at the end of the interview their HR person came and said the team loved me and would like to extend an offer. My jaw dropped. I came from a really bad interview to a place where they are doing more advanced stuff and I got the job. I thank them so much because I felt they gave me a fair chance to get to know me. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Would it be easier if you had half an hour to chat with the person before you jumped into writing code?

A lot of companies prefer pair programming so they can talk through problems with a candidate, both to get a feel for how they approach their work, and to make sure they aren't blocked on anything, given the limited amount of time. Was your interviewer talking with you while you paired?

</comment><comment><USER3> What you are describing is a pretty poor pairing interview process. I did a bunch of really frustrating whiteboard type interviews and sudo pairing interviews like you describe before interviewing for my current position [1].

The screen is a one hour onsite pairing session followed by a final round that is a day of pairing using a proper workstation: One computer, two monitors and two sets of mice/keyboards. You pair with one person in the morning and another in the afternoon. It's very relaxed (you take turns "driving") and it gives you and the interviewers a lot more information about each other and your potential place of work. It also gives you enough time to adjust to the process if you are nervous. I don't think I'd do it any other way going forward.

[1] [http://pivotal.io/careers](http://pivotal.io/careers)

<comment><USER4> I would love to work for an outfit like Pivotal. Unfortunately I live in Maine and I know they don't do remote. :( I'm feeling seriously burnt out at my current position as the culture seems to be predominantly "throw something against the wall." There seems to be little thought towards maintainability, testing, etc. so feels like I'm pushing a rock up the hill continually trying to provide suggestions in PRs, etc.

If anyone knows of any well run consulting outfits that work with remote workers, practice pairing, TDD, and just all around "giving a shit" I'd welcome pointers.

Thanks!

<comment> jon-wood I'll second that. I find it really odd more consulting companies aren't remote given their clients almost always are anyway.

<comment><USER5> Pivotal does pair-programming, which demands inflexible hours and intensive/stressful workload. Working remote is impossible as you cannot pair with another colleague.

<comment> jon-wood Sure you can. Maybe not quite so efficiently, but its far from impossible

<comment><USER5> hv u done pair-programming before?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After searching for developers this year, I can say that pair programming during an interview is hard on the interviewee and could also be frustrating for the interviewer.

That said, our best hire was the one person who rose to the occasion and solved the problem we were asking. For that reason, I would do it again.

<comment><USER7> As an Interviewer I had a similar experience a while ago, there was a large language barrier with the candidate that was utterly obliterated once collaborating on code.

</comment></comment><comment> J-dawg It would be cool if there was some kind of service to simulate these interviews, where you can code while being watched in real time and then receive good quality feedback. Does anything like this exist?

<comment><USER8> Something like this was shared here not too long ago.

[https://www.pramp.com/](https://www.pramp.com/)

<comment> J-dawg This looks great, thanks for sharing. Have you used it?

<comment><USER8> Nope

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's definitely a new skill on top of sitting alone and writing code. You can practice by doing some pair programming at your current workplace, with a friend, or at a coding meetup.

Edit: it may also mean the company you are interviewing at does pair programming. If you don't like pair programming, the interview is a good time to bring it up!

</comment><comment><USER10> It's sort of like assigning a watcher to you while you using a bathroom.

Usually companies who engage in these practices have tendencies to micromanage their personnel down the road.

Red flag.

</comment><comment><USER11> This sounds better than whiteboarding, but I think you're right. There's a big Heisenberg effect going on that's going to cause a lot of false positives

</comment><comment><USER12> A more common complaint is about whiteboard coding. Having a laptop connected to a projector is exactly what many people say they would prefer.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is simply a skill worth learning if you are not good at it already

</comment><comment><USER14> I like them a lot. It tests a lot of things.</comment>


Hacker collects 272m email addresses and passwords, some from Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/04/gmail-yahoo-email-password-hack-hold-security <comment><USER2> Reuters original: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-passwords- idUSKCN0XV...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-passwords- idUSKCN0XV1I6)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like someone has just put together a collection of dumps into one master list as opposed to these being the result of a new breach. Still could be useful.</comment>