The Elephant: Why is JRuby such a polarizing issue? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.headius.com/2008/09/elephant.html <comment><USER2> With Python, there is no real pain that alternative implementations can address. The canonical implementation is good enough, and it will remain a monopoly.

With Ruby, providing significantly better performance and reliability may very well unseat the monopoly of MRI, certainly for commercial applications. Since, JRuby actually looks like it may be able to pull that off in the foreseeable future, it's a much bigger deal than alternative Python implementations.

<comment><USER3> "With Python, there is no real pain that alternative implementations can address. "

No Java libraries seem useful enough to matter? Deployment tools? App servers? GUIs?

<comment><USER4> No, no, no and no. I've been able to work just fine with C/C++ libraries. I would use Jython only when trying to extend an existing Java application or when trying to sneak Python into a primarily Java corporate environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kudos for all the hard work he's put into JRuby. He's very passionate and has obviously put in a tremendous amount of effort into this project. Definitely the spirit of a true hacker!

</comment><comment><USER6> I avoid JRuby just because I'm never very confident on a non-standard platform. I'm not a bleeding-edger, especially with things that I don't like debugging the hell out of.

Just like I don't swap out OS libraries for fun, I don't replace the underlying bedrock of a language for a giggle either. If I had a compelling reason to use JRuby (for example, to get access to all the great Java code that's been written), then it would be more compelling. Until then...if it ain't broke...

<comment><USER7> What's non-standard about JRuby? There's a language specification and there are various implementations. The only "standard" is the specification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FTFA: "Some of them have been Rubyists longer than anything else (or maybe just longer than anyone else), and see themselves as the purists, the elite, the Ivory Tower, keepers of all that's good in the Ruby world and judge, jury, and executioner for all that's bad. In the end, however, there's one thing these folks share in common.

They think JRuby is a terrible idea."

I've been a Rubyist for about 8 years; I love JRuby!

And Headius rules. (As does Tom and the rest of the JRuby team. #jruby on freenode rocks.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I liked the line: _We build a layer on top of that shim that better exercises Ruby's potential, or we help build a new wrapper to replace the old._

I think this is a great idea - it's the ultimate technical jujitsu. Take the weight behind Java and use it to give you a leg up.

The org I'm at is attempting something similar at the moment.

Course. Getting the wrapper/interface right becomes pretty important, but this is always the case.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Writing such a wrapper also introduces the possibility of someone later implementing the same library for Ruby itself. As long as the wrapper's interface makes sense and the library is worthwhile, there is no compelling reason that the Java bits underneath couldn't be replaced by a C library and some glue code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used JRuby on a few projects and was able to sneak it in the door in corporate america cause it was still java.

</comment><comment><USER11> Like I've said before and I'll say again because it's important to realize:

Computer languages are just as much social/cultural/psychological constructs as they are technologies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Without knowledge of JRuby, IronPython or Jython, I'm curious how Python's low tolerance for code formatting flexibility has helped here.

Anyone?

<comment><USER13> If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times: Python cares about indentation _not whitespace_. You can format your code any way you please, but it turns out that arguments about where to place curly braces don't actually contribute to getting real work done, and Python people don't miss them.

<comment><USER12> In perl you can write 'if(!bool) { ... }', 'unless(bool) { ... }', or even '... if(!bool)'

As I said, I'm not an expert in the languages in question, but the scope of _code formatting flexibility_ is larger than just whitespace.

<comment><USER14> In Python you can do the same: 'if not bool: ...', 'while bool: ...', '[for ... if not bool]'. Crazy one-liners are also possible.

We have just enough _formatting flexibility_ and we prefer _readability_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It makes me feel dirty having a script interpreter running on top of a virtual machine.

<comment><USER16> What makes Java programs not "scripts"?

Java, Ruby, and everything else are all the same at some level. They let you type in instructions for the computer to execute. A VM is an execution strategy. Why does the front-end to that strategy make a difference to you? (Or rather, why do certain front-ends make you feel "dirty"? I think it's because you have no idea what you're talking about.)

<comment><USER17> I think the OP is trying to say that all dynamically typed, interpreted languages are implemented in statically typed, compiled or JIT languages. If you like the discipline of the latter, you might resent the former.

<comment><USER9> Hasn't Java had a JIT compiling VM for a while now? And in the times I've used it, it has certainly seemed statically typed and compiled (to Java bytecode) to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> JRuby isn't polarizing; Ruby attracts already polarized people (present company excepted.)

I can't think of another language that has attracted as many idiots. Visual Basic comes close, with alarming parallels.</comment>


Beyond the Hard Drive: Encoding Data in DNA - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/future-literacy/beyond-the-hard-drive-encoding-data-in-dna-1d5c2bad5289 <comment><USER2> Although I am a big fan of encoding information in DNA, nothing in the arguments for it make sense, economically speaking, compared to more mature industries like hard drives and flash. People often cite the dramatic growth of storage as a motivation for DNA, but realistically, the amount of storage produced each year is driven by the demand of the previous year + some expected growth. If there was a economic case for needing more storage, vendors would build plants and produce more storage and invest in making mature technologies more efficient.

The claims about DNA being stable are only true under very limited conditions. It would be a significant challenge to store large amounts of DNA reliably, compared to tape or flash.

<comment><USER3> >Although I am a big fan of encoding information in DNA, nothing in the arguments for it make sense, economically speaking, compared to more mature industries like hard drives and flash.

The only application I could ever think that would ever remotely make sense would be when genetically engineering things you could use the 'junk DNA' to put information in about what you designed however, with enough time/generations, it would be garbled.

<comment><USER2> it would be a terrible idea to put data into the junk DNA sections. They're highly variable, under weird selection, and may even have a function that, when replaced with other DNA, could have a deleterious effect. That said I do think you could replace large swaths of LINES and SINES and Alu without any negative functionality.

I think Reed Solomon encoding should be quite robust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote about this back in 2013 comparing what we were able to encode in DNA at the time with what nature can :) [https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2013/3/28/dna- data-...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2013/3/28/dna-data- storage.html)

It was a bit of a task trying to figure out how much a strand of human DNA weighed (turns out about 0.000000001 picograms).</comment>


EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products - <AUTHOR> http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/durable-products.47bf <comment><USER4> I totally support this. I accidentally cracked the touch screen of my car radio console. The car is nothing special, a Ford Mondeo that is a few years old.

Cost to replace touch screen module: more than the _entire_ value of the car! That is insane. Effectively, if I want to claim from insurance - crack the touch screen (it is a replaceable module) and have to scrap the entire car.

In this case, I managed to get a replacement (fitted) from a scrapped car for 1/10 of the price the Ford dealer was quoting me.

<comment><USER5> How does regulation solve the issue that replacing e.g. the touch screen may take many man hours of labor, whereas making the car itself took proportionally less, thus making replacements more expensive? Your experience is a symptom of a high degree of automation in one area (car manufacturing) and the absence in another (repairs), and regulation does not change that.

<comment><USER6> This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts:

A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality.

Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It _shouldn 't_ take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability.

It's also worth thinking about why we consider replacement being cheaper than repair to be a problem at all - if you trust the market, what's so horrible about that? Real time saver right?

Answer: the price of new goods does not reflect their full environmental and social cost. The switch in your toaster breaks - you buy a new one for a fiver instead of repairing the switch. The old one goes in a landfill. A quantity of non-renewable resources like oil and metal are used up; a the increased demand for these things contributes to the deaths of miners, and people who live near the factories and refineries. Fuel is burned to deliver the new toaster to you, and the Earth's temperature goes up a teeny-tiny fraction. None of these things are included in the price. Regulation can help that too.

<comment><USER7> > Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several > hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a > touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating > reparability.

Which can increase the original cost of the good.

<comment><USER8> > Which can increase the original cost of the good.

... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

<comment><USER9> To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken.

I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.

<comment><USER10> No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'.

Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get the product at the cheapest possible price and was either willing to take perfect care of it or tolerate it not being fully repairable if it were broken. But that's OK, because when regulating something the most important person to consider is the median user, noth the clumsiest/unluckiest nor the most skilled/luckiest.

If the median user buys a car expecting to drive it for 5 years, and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component during that time, it would be pretty inefficient for said damage to cost more to fix than the cost of replacing the whole car, _unless_ cars were to become so cheap that it was actually cheaper and better to scrap them - <USER2> thanks to some breakthrough in large-scale 3d printing technology or so.

That's what happened with computer keyboards; it used to be that they were fairly expensive and if someone spilled coffee into one it was worth dismantling, cleaning, and re-assembling, but then cheap membrane keyboards assembled with increasing levels of automation brought the price down faster and faster, and today you can get a PC keyboard for something ridiculous like $10. A few fetishists still pay out for old-style IBM Model M, but most people will just replace a damaged keyboard.

But while cars remain relatively expensive _and_ hard to dispose of, it makes sense to minimize the economic losses stemming for a lack of modularity and repairability across the market as a whole, rather than seeking to minimize the costs for the stingiest buyer.

<comment><USER11> A lot of people use their computer keyboard more than any other single object they don't sleep on. There's finally (thank you Cherry MX) a supply meeting the presumably pent-up demand for decent keyboards. I hated those membrane things, and you could get them for under $10 as far back as 2003. These days you can get a perfectly good _repairable_ mechanical switch keyboard for about $35.

<comment><USER10> Still though, if you pour orange juice into your keyboard and don't have the time/ability to repair it yourself, who's going to do it for under $35? I seem to remember that fixing a messed up one took 1-2 hours, but that was like >25 years ago when I was an eager whizkid and a new keyboard ran for $120 or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It's not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.

If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.

But what's the incentive for the manufacturers?

<comment><USER13> > But what's the incentive for the manufacturers?

Possibly reducing the companies' environmental footprint on the world.

Instead of cheap devices being scrapped every two years and sent to the landfill, consumers could instead hold on to the companies' products for much much longer. If products have comparatively more time and quality parts, the cost will indeed go up--both for manufacturing and retail price.

My grandmother had the same bread mixer the whole time I was growing up. And I know she had it long before I was born. It was built to last and she took care of it. My mother, on the other hand, went through at least six different plastic, Made in China bread mixers over the course of my childhood.

Where's the corporate responsibility for all the waste that is generated by crappy products?

If you were KitchenAid or another brand, wouldn't you want to set yourself apart from the others as a company who cares about the environment by making products that will last for years to come and acknowledging that in advertising? Products that can also be repaired if there is an issue, as opposed to chucked aside for a new one because of their lack of value?

I'd consider such a company the "Whole Foods" of appliances. Citizens who share similar conservation values will likely pay more for that product, just as those who opt for solar/wind energy over coal.

<comment><USER14> This isn't really an incentive though, unless this is driven by very knowledgeable consumers the companies that don't do this will make more money and eventually drive out the moral companies.

One way of doing it would be to charge companies up-front for the cost of handling the waste for the eventual disposal of the product. That directly disincetivizes companies from make it poorly, pile it high, sell it cheap business models.

<comment><USER15> I'm becoming increasingly convinced that manufacturers should be responsible for the full cost of disposal, and that this obligation should be non- transferable to consumers.

After all, they built the widget! The vast logistical network of freight, retailers, consumers, and waste disposal services merely transported the widget to a landfill.

But there are difficulties with this viewpoint. How does the disposal obligation work in horizontally-integrated industries (e.g. car manufacturing)? How does it work with globalization (import taxes?)? Is there any viable way to account for the waste (core samples into landfills?) or will the cost be a guess subject to lobbyists?

One approach might be to require the manufacturer or importer to rent space in a network of landfills by tonnage. Call it "waste disposal insurance".

EDIT: A random idea would incorporate a blockchain containing transactions identifying the serial numbers of the products or components. That way, assemblages could be formally shown to be composed of properly insured components, even requiring the final serial number to be the hash of its components. The tokens could be traded between manufacturers and landfills directly, closing the loop on the product lifecycle. Compliance audits would simply compare sales records to the public chain.

On the landfill side, tokens operate as space reservations by tonnage, and can be efficiently traded to balance loads without requiring products to be taken to specific landfills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with this too. I always try to repair things first and then replace them if necessary (even if it is a torn shirt or backpack, a broken zipper on a shoe or broken connector on a laptop).

Also, I try to buy things which are durable, but a lot of times it is hard to tell what will be durable so I go with the pricier option hoping it will last longer. This is not always true, especially for shoes and clothing, but in electronics too. The problem is when someone looks for reviews, they only find reviews of new models, but there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years without breaking. Do you guys know about such a site? Or something similar? I am always thinking about starting such website, which would provide reviews for older things, so there would be chronological ratings and we would see which brands make quality products and which of them not. ...but that would need a lot of input data to be useful and I am not sure how could this be started. Or even if this would be useful for others or only I am concerned with this.

What do you guys think about this?

<comment><USER17> > there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years > without breaking.

The problem is the X years.

For electronics that website would be almost useless. I could tell you about the failure modes of my past laptops and phones but would you buy a discontinued product? At best you could hope that newer products of the same brand fixed some of the problems of the past ones and didn't add new issues.

The same applies to most goods because they are replaced by new models yearly or faster.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it is hard to tell if a new product will last and for them it is useless, but such website could tell which brands are more trusty in this manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vertex-four Of course, the flipside of this is the flipside of Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness - if the cheap boots that fall apart quickly didn't exist, Sam Vimes would not be able to buy boots at all in the first place.

The solution is, of course, to put more people in a position where they can afford to buy the more expensive boots and see the value in doing so.

<comment><USER18> I am unconvinced that more expensive = better quality for a lot of things these days.

There are some anecdotal examples of people with Miele washing machines that have lasted for decades etc (... as an aside I guess we wont know about _today 's_ Miele washing machines for several more years at least ...), but in my experience paying a premium for a product more often than not just gives you an as-cheaply-made product but with a brand name you've heard of. I am very happy to pay for decent stuff, but I am not prepared to pay extra for the same quality stuff just to get a brand name.

What seems to be the biggest problem these days for me is not _mechanical failures_ , but what can only be assumed to be _software failures_ \- things just going haywire or flashing an LED/error code and not doing what they should.

Perhaps there is some cheap capacitor that has blown somewhere, but it is often a waffly explanation along the lines of "logic board has failed" (and they are always super-expensive to replace due to it being 10 years old and not made/stocked any more etc etc). It is usually more sensible to replace a 5-15 year old appliance with a new one, rather than buying a spare part that costs 50% of an entire new appliance, (plus then you usually get the benefits of improved energy efficiency)

<comment><USER19> If you buy a Miele appliance anf get the extended guarantee which is ~10% of the purchase price, you get 7 _years_ guarantee. As in, something breaks, tomorrow a repairman will be at your house and fix it, no extra cost.

Quality _is_ available, people just don't want to pay for it. Those washing machines that lasted for 15 years? Back then, they cost one or two months' wages. Try to get anyone to pay $2500 for a washing machine today.

<comment><USER20> Speed Queen is making a go of it. Slogan is "Built Better to Last Longer."

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

When my Frigidaire washer finally dies that's what I'm getting. I already injured myself replacing the pump once. And now that I've seen the cheap plastic parts used I don't have confidence it's going to last.

<comment><USER21> I like it. It's like buying a commercial TV because they aren't full of smart features[1] and are made to run under harsher conditions(i.e. 24/7). Better yet, the MultiSync V404 model can have a Raspberry Pi plugged in for your own custom smart features.

[1][https://www.nec-display- solutions.com/p/uk/en/products/choic...](https://www.nec-display- solutions.com/p/uk/en/products/choice.xhtml?cat=PublicDisplays)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why can't we have economies that can be stable without the sky falling, can grow when wanted, and shrink when needed without a cascade of catastrophies? Can't we? It's a honest question, I have no clue.

Because I also think this is a great idea too, but everything else being the same, the general insanity being the same, something else will probably give. On the other hand, if we did have this hypothetical more flexible economic system, making things well instead of hustling and externalizing costs might come as a lasting side effect of that.

<comment><USER23> That would take central planning. The government in capitalist societies can't force someone to open a business when unemployment gets too high, and can't force businesses to close or merge when there are inefficiencies in the market. A capitalist economic system is inherently reactionary: someone notices a demand and creates supply for it. Someone tries their hardest to keep their business open even with low demand, right up until the point where they fail catastrophically. The drive to do better than everyone else is what keeps our economy afloat, but it also sometimes runs competitors out of business.

We can have an economy that is stable and fair for everyone with no winners or losers. But people have been trained against socialism and communism for so many years, it'd be a very tough sell. The only way to have an economy flex responsively is if the government is a central planning agency for businesses.

<comment><USER24> >The government in capitalist societies can't force someone to open a business when unemployment gets too high

It does all the time, no? At least here, town halls give stupid jobs to people when unemployment is too high. Obviously, the results are catastrofic.

<comment><USER23> There are notable exceptions (like the New Deal) but it's not a really widespread program. The government can certainly give people jobs, but they're either filling existing demand (like Manpower-type headhunters) or they're creating demand through government work (like road construction).

It's not like Soviet Russia where the government can open a new plant and put people to work there producing private-market goods and then shut it down when supply gets too big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Manufacturers should be made responsible for disposal. This would provide an incentive to make products last and be repairable.

<comment><USER26> A better incentive would be to _require_ manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired.

Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product.

A significant number of consumers will appreciate the predictable cost for the use of the product and take out such a warranty.

<comment><USER27> That isn't really reasonable. No product is expected to work _forever_. Things fail. ICs go out of production.

<comment><USER26> At some point an equivalent product could be offered as a replacement. Or parts could be replaced. The cost of this will be reflected in the price of the warranty which also serves as a down payment for a replacement product. But still, the producer will have an incentive to do an honest assessment of the longevity of the product via the cost of the warranty. Too low will cost the company and too high will shy away the consumer.

<comment><USER21> >At some point an equivalent product could be offered as a replacement. Or parts could be replaced.

Some computer graphic card manufactures have a system like this. If the card fails in it's lifetime warranty they will replace the card with an equivalent or better model. One of my friends had their RMAed EVGA card upgraded even though it was 5 years old, and it wasn't to just the current performance equivalent, their $300 5 year old card was replaced with a $300 new card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Although I would welcome this, I can't understand how such broad demands can be enforced.

If the EU is really interested in increasing the lifetime of products, it's simple, just increase the mandatory warranty from 2 to 5 (or some other appropriate number) years.

That would right away, increase the lifetime of the products, but would also, put a strain on the manufacturers to make it easier to repair (after all, if you have to increase the number of repairs to your products, you are going to make it cheaper to repair it in order to save money).

<comment><USER29> > That would right away, increase the lifetime of the products

there's no guarantee of that. the manufacturers could just charge X times more, and expect on average to send 1.5 replacements out.

(or less, most likely. folks who wouldn't bother to ask for warranty service, or lose the device first, or otherwise fail to satisfy the requirements of the warranty.)

<comment><USER30> They can charge more, but they need to compete with the others that will charge less if their own products are not breaking that often or if they have a cheaper way to repair instead of replacing the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Perhaps I'm being naive, but how about reducing sales tax ('VAT' in UK) for items which come with long guarantee periods? So sale of a washing machine with a 10 year guarantee would be taxed at 5% instead of 10%, or similar. Wouldn't this give manufacturers an incentive to make more durable products?

</comment><comment><USER32> I recently changed the display on my Kobo Touch and was appalled at what I found inside it.

The battery is glued to the case and the wires are soldered to the board. The display is also glued to the case (I had to break the original display into bits in order to take it out).

The whole thing was designed to be disposable. This just seems wrong. It's unfair to the customer and bad for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree. We need something like this in the US. By law, electronic products sold in EU carries 2yrs warranty and I always wondered why U.S has only 1yr warranty. I can think of an incident where my laptop crapped out right after a year of purchase but the manufacturer was nice enough to repair it for free.

With phones running $800+ nowadays, i would expect it to last longer (3yrs min.) like a laptop.

<comment><USER34> My HTC One M7 is 4 years old now, and still works perfectly.

Battery life is not awesome but still lasts a full day with light 4G usage. I don't get software updates anymore, but that isn't an issue for me.

I know that when the battery dies for good, or if the display shatters, I probably won't have a way to repair it, and that is bad because I really don't need a new phone.

Availability and cost of spare parts, and ease of repair should be major decision factors for people buying electronics. It already is the case for cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > 77 per cent of EU consumers would rather repair their goods than buy new > ones

This is most likely a misleading stat. You can repair most things if you're willing to spend the money or time to do it. Many consumer goods cost more to repair than it's worth. No one is going to do that.

<comment><USER36> It can be made way simpler and faster if optimized for this. Products are designed for being cheap to buy, not cheap to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I agree. I live in the EU and bought a washing machine for 450 eur. After 1 year and 2 months a big hole in the Drum appeared and this makes it flood my apartment. LG wants 530 eur to fix it, so obviously not worth it.

My parents had 2 washing machines in their whole life, in contrast...

<comment><USER35> If this was a concern for you why didn't you buy a more expensive washing machine that has a longer warranty and a reputation for quality?

These things exist but they cost more. Consumers need to be willing to put money where their mouth is.

<comment><USER38> 450EUR is an expensive washing machine, they start at about 200.

"Reputation" for quality won't ensure you anything and noone gives out warranty over mandatory minimum enforced by law.

<comment><USER39> Miele [0] give a 10 year guarantee on their washing machines.

[0] [https://www.miele.co.uk/domestic/10-year-parts-and-labour- wa...](https://www.miele.co.uk/domestic/10-year-parts-and-labour-warranty- included-on-selected-washing-machines-3138.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The issue (that only partially has been solved by the WEEE directives in Europe) is the same as most of the issues when money is involved.

The best form of recycling is of course repairing, you only throw away (and need to dispose of) a tiny piece of (metal, plastic, etc.) instead of having to dispose kilograms or tons of the same stuff (the whole whatever).

But the point is "who is gonna pay for disposal?" a part of the WEEE directives (related to solar panels) goes into the right direction but still, see the previous thread here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250584)

The manufacturer saves today but will (maybe) pay tomorrow.

The only way (unfortunately not very practical) is to have manufacturers deposit today (in some sort of fund) the sum that will be needed tomorrow for disposals, with some sort of scale so that longer lasting products will need less money to be deposited or maybe allowing the withdrawal of a quote of the deposit after some lasting performance has been measured, that would make them think about the opportunity of making shorter or longer lasting (or non- repairable vs. repairable) devices.

</comment><comment><USER41> It seems like a good idea to rule on this: I always used to fix my electronic products... Up to recently it was sometimes difficult to find the issue, but always fine with opening and closing.

I had my very first anxiety thrill ungluing an iPad window to replace the broken microphone; and I look with anxiety at my S7, thinking of when the battery starts aging.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there also a term that describes this phenomena ? "Each year we get an update for product X with a few minor changes that makes the new version parts incompatible with the previous year version (maybe not all parts are incompatible). I noticed this with washing machines, I wanted to buy a similar model with something that I own and they made a different model, redesigned the outside, maybe small changes inside. I also know that cars get updates each year, some stuff gets changed on the front of the car to look "better" but now under the hood some parts do not fit and need to be moved around and redesigned, then the car needs to be tested again. I think it would be healthy to launch a product, then in first year(s) analyze the defects your products get, next product would be an evolution that addresses the issues. I agree if you have new ideas on how to improve your product go ahead and make the new version but don't make a new model of a microwave that is identical with previous one except you changed the shape, moved some buttons and added a gimmick feature.

<comment><USER42> Textbooks? Seriously though I think there is a movement among the rich in America/world to buy products that are simple to use, high quality, and durable. The problem in my view is not that these products don't exist but that it's very hard to find them and verify quality in production over time.

<comment><USER30> I am not impressed by the "expensive" products, as an example I own a Nexus 7 tablet, touch input stopped working reliably, I searched and found many similar issue, the solution is to open it and plug back a connector that got lose and maybe add some paper to have the thing pressed on it's place, so this is not a cheap, no name product, the problem could have been avoided maybe with a few more cents investment per product. I have similar experience with brand name keyboard and mioce that were not cheap and did not perform.

<comment><USER42> for the most part, I don't consider commodity equipment to be 'expensive' even if the price point is expensive. I've observed that there are usually two classes of products in any market, the commodity bottom 80% and then the premium top 20%. My comment is about products that inhabit this 20%. To date, and from my point of view, there is no product running android which falls in this premium category. With the Nexus 7 tablet specifically, I see a commodity android tablet with slightly better build quality and some more expensive components. Not a premium product like the iPad Pro.

<comment><USER30> But most of the premium of iPad is branding, the extra money you pay is not in the hardware, and Apple products also break so you pay a ton of money(you would need to be rich or really a big fanboy to justify buying an Apple product in countries with a lower economy like Romania where you also have taxes and pay a lot more then someone in USA would pay). My point is you buy a super expensive Apple product but you don't get 5 years warranty even if you spent 2-4 medium incomes on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The EU will have fun then with much more expensive consumer goods, and businesses keeping flagship lines of products out of them for sale. More likely this is just another tax increase worded as "consumer protection." No business will really design products based on government say, but will just raises prices to cover whatever penalty fee they issue.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not to play the free market card too aggressively, but isn't there already a solution to this, called "extended warranties"? Whether provided by the manufacturer or from the retail seller, they provide a way for customers to pay an extra fee in order to extend the product's lifetime.

In theory, they even give a way to price out the effective longevity of comparable devices by looking at the prices of the warranties.

In the end, my understanding is that customers do not assign a lot of value to that lifetime extension, and as a result the extended warranties are generally not purchased.

If the EU enacts measures to enforce product longevity, they force customers to buy something that they have already chosen not to buy.

<comment><USER45> My hunch: part of the problem here is that people got fleeced by retailers, who sold hugely overpriced extended warranties, banking on loss aversion and risk aversion and general lack of technological understanding. When people realised how much they had been fleeced (assisted by consumer programmes like _Watchdog_ in the UK), many of them went off extended warranties as a mug's game — and never came back. (I once had a Xmas temp job at UK electronics retailer Dixons, commission was on profit, and one extended warranty was worth dozens of devices sold — beaten only by mobile phone contracts).

So anyway, that's a reason why people's revealed preference for extended warranties might not correspond with their true preference for longevity in consumer products.

It's also the case that if you can afford to insure _yourself_ against something (like a consumer good breaking down), and average the costs across all such things, then generally you'll save money by doing so — especially if you reckon, as I do in this case, that you take better-than-average care of your consumer goods. In that case, the price of the extended warranty is a signal of expected longevity, and features in your purchase decision (lower = better), even if you don't buy it. So again, revealed preference for warranties may not equal true preference for longevity.

Finally, we're collectively using and disposing of too much stuff, and one of the reasons for this is that externalities such as waste and resource depletion are not fully internalised. So even if people are not buying extended warranties, and that truly reflects an indifference to product lifespan, there may well be an argument that by "forcing them to buy an extended warranty" — which also forces the manufacturer to take responsibility for the product over a longer period, and thus pay more attention to how long it generally lasts — you get higher social welfare, despite some constraint on individual consumer freedom.

Finally, people are hyperbolic discounters, they are myopic in a way that hurts their happiness, so a regulation that encourages longer-term thinking may help them in the long run.

TL;DR: I think this measure has potential to be a really good thing all round.

<comment><USER44> Yes, you can argue that warranties are overpriced, but if everyone factored the price of the extended warranty into every purchase they made, then manufacturers would naturally be forced to reduce the cost of the warranty, by making their product either more reparable or increasing initial quality.

> Finally, people are hyperbolic discounters, they are myopic in a way that > hurts their happiness, so a regulation that encourages longer-term thinking > may help them in the long run.

Here it may just be my Yankee self-reliance talking, but this smacks of the worst sort of paternalism. Arguing slippery slope arguments is in itself a slippery slope, but why stop here? If buying a bigger TV is not going to make me happy (or make me unhappier) then surely a regulation should exist to prevent me from buying it.

When there are significant externalities (like leaded gasoline) then government regulation is easy to justify. When the externalities are second- hand (the reduction in demand for product longevity causes reparability to become a secondary concern for manufacturers) then I'm more inclined to err on the side of "let the customer set the price of their own risk", rather than "let's just increase costs for everyone because it may or may not have a net societal benefit".

I don't trust that regulatory authorities are above the myopia and are truly able to see long-term more than anyone else.

<comment><USER45> On the last point, yes this is paternalism, but I'm not convinced it's the worst sort.

On your big TV example, you probably shouldn't be prevented from buying it, but other measures to discourage you from buying it could in theory be welfare-improving on a societal level, and if they were then that would constitute part of a case for imposing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The article says that consumers are discouraged by the cost of repair.

A few weeks ago, I repaired an eltronical appliance and was surprised to see that all screws were screwed into plastic. As I unscrewed them to access the inside of the device, the plastic around the screw broke.

I think there should be laws that prevent screwing into plastic. That just makes no sense appart from upfront cost. Once the plastic is broken, there is no way but to throw the broken device away. Unless you can somehow glue everything back together, but that seems unpractical.

It's like devices are not even planned to be repaired. They are designed to be sold and then abandoned. That's the real issue. Not cost of repair.

<comment><USER47> A law requiring a particular material? Unless it's health or safety related, no way. The last place I want to see government is regulating how a product must be constructed (unless it's health or safety critical obviously.)

If you want a device without plastic screw holes, pay more money and find one or make one yourself, market it and sell it to other like-minded people.

If I have a toaster that breaks, the time it would take me to go to a repair shop is more valuable to me than the cost of a new toaster – not to mention the cost of the repair itself.

In China, you often do get smaller appliances repaired because the labor cost is so low. So it makes economic sense to get those kinds of items repaired.

But in France, if I want to get a microwave fixed, the item is either still under warranty or the depreciated value is less than the repair cost. Perhaps if government lowered taxes and relaxed the labor code, then repair shops could charge less and it would incentivize people to get repairs on smaller ticket items rather than buying replacements. But I certainly am not going to spend €65 getting a €150 microwave repaired when the microwave is already several years old. I migh spend €20 for that repair if I really liked the microwave.

I certainly wouldn't be happy if I had to pay several hundred euros more for a microwave because of a law mandating the type of screw holes that must be used. The increase cost wouldn't even be in materials as much as the buereaucratic cost of implementing such requirements.

Health and safety regulations – of course. Regulations because you're unhappy with screw holes? Not a chance.

<comment><USER48> The electronics could have a 'repairability' rating similar to energy- efficiency one.

Otherwise there is no feasible way to know what's the build quality before opening it yourself.

<comment><USER49> Generalising and mandating some sort of 'star rating' \+ notes along the lines of the ifixit Repairability Score[1] system would be a good first step.

AIUI, for products marketed in the US there are often internal photographs & other documentation (e.g, a totally random example product I found with one of the FCC ID search engines: [https://fccid.io/2AMOCKST-900](https://fccid.io/2AMOCKST-900))

Having some semi-standardised set of robustness and repairability criteria and requiring that businesses publish an evaluation of their products against the criteria would at least allow people to get some idea of the 'build quality' or other potential decisionmaking info before buying.

Of course, it would be easy for unscrupulous product manufacturers to find ways to game the evaluations, or just outright lie, so you need some teeth to the rules if caught.

And on the other hand, you're imposing further regulatory burdens on those producing new products, increasing costs and maybe time to market. So there are definitely downsides.

Balancing everything and making it useful without being burdensome is the real problem.

As an afterthought, even if you look inside _one_ instance of a product, there isn't any degree of certainty that if you buy an (externally) identical, matching model number/SKU, it will be the same.

Some regulatory system that actually required version-numbering, or different model-numbering on non-trivial changes would be useful, especially if combined with some obligation to record/announce those version releases, maybe even with some actual change notes.

[1] [https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone- repairability](https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This made me think about the lamp that shines for 100 years in a fire department somewhere. It even has a cam [http://www.centennialbulb.org/](http://www.centennialbulb.org/)

Now lamps have a limited lifespan because of the manufacturers, so they have more sales.

I think this was the article: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the- great-lightbu...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great- lightbulb-conspiracy)

<comment><USER51> I mean, LED bulbs have made traditional ones redundant and have incredibly long lifespans, so this isn't really true any more.

The article makes some good points that lifespan was controlled, but not as drastically as you imply. They were talking about losing a third of the lifespan. While yes, they were clearly aiming to reduce the lifespan of bulbs, they did so by making the bulbs better (brighter) in a way that made consumers want those bulbs.

If you could do both brighter and longer lifespan, I'm sure someone would have (it's not like that cartel is still going - 1940 was a long time ago) - <USER3> don't think what they did was that dissimilar to desktop software moving to subscription models to increase profit - as long as they introduce value from that change to justify it, then it's not wrong.

The century-old bulb is an extreme outlier and there was never an expectation for anything to last that long. Trying to imply that modern bulbs are handicapped intentionally to such an extreme is just misleading.

<comment><USER52> > If you could do both brighter and longer lifespan, I'm sure someone would > have

No, they did, that's what is called a halogen lamp, quite a bit more efficient, lasts about twice as long.

<comment><USER51> And a lot hotter and more expensive - hence why they didn't replace normal bulbs.

<comment><USER52> Well, no. Yes, a bit more expensive to buy, but not more expensive TCO if they were actually on a lot, at least for the low-voltage versions.

And also, obviously not hotter, how could they be more efficient at producing light, and still be hotter? Yes, the filament in halogen lamps is running hotter, that's why they are more efficient (and the halogen process is what keeps the filament intact despite the high temperature), but they're also more compact--the total amount of thermal power produced by a halogen lamp of equal light output as a regular incandescent bulb is lower, and thus, if you put it into the same form factor and under the same cooling conditions, it's actually going to be cooler at the surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> As I read through some of the comments on this thread what jumped out at me is that products today are designed with DFM in mind rather than DFR. Design for Manufacturing vs. Design for Repairs.

Industrial products are different. There's a class of product that must be designed for easy maintenance. Not so in consumer-land. For example, to replace some of the lights on a BMW you have to remove the front bumper. Crazy.

</comment><comment><USER54> I kind of want these rules to go into effect in the EU just to see what happens.

I don't expect good things to happen, but one way or another it would be instructive.

<comment><USER55> Mandatory warranty of 2 years seems to be doing fine

<comment><USER56> It should be at least 5 years for large home appliances like washing machines, refrigerators, TVs, etc. Cars too.

<comment><USER57> I think this is absolutely the only way we're ever going to get better repairability and manufacturers who make products to last that length of time.

In Australia, we have the traditional warranty by law, but we also have a law that requires appliances to last as long as would be reasonably expected to by a consumer. [1] And they must meet any extra claims. Of course, this is an absolute pain to then try to get the manufacturer to uphold, and you may have to threaten legal action.

We did this with an Apple Watch that broke when dropped onto concrete. My argument was that the watch was repeatedly marketed as a "sports watch", and such a device should be able to withstand a small fall without being destroyed. Took a few months, but we got a replacement. Have had friends with good experiences with large appliances, but you certainly have to be prepared to fight.

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/broken-but-out-of- warr...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/broken-but-out-of-warranty-you- still-have-rights/2749924)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> They can start by changing the warranty regulations [1] to be valid 10 years instead of a ridiculous two years.

[1]: [http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees- returns/index_en.htm)

</comment><comment><USER59> The solution is metered trash/pollution for everyone.

The more you throw away, the more you pay. The more waste you produce, the more you pay. The more you harm the environment, the more you pay.

This will incentivize individuals to throw less away, hence buy less and seek more durable products.

</comment><comment><USER60> From TFA: "if a repair takes longer than a month, the guarantee should be extended to match the repair time,"

Uh, no. That will insure that repairs always take 29 days, except in february where they will take 27 daze.

Simply always extend the guarantee by the amount of any repair time.

</comment><comment><USER61> When I read about yet another EU regulation of this kind I always remember the cookie law :/

<comment><USER62> I want to write some comment to agree with you, but I can't find the words the express my frustration with the cookie thing. It beggars belief.

<comment><USER63> I think the idea's reasonable but it was implemented wrongly by everyone, making it stupid. The aim was to stop unnecessary tracking, not all tracking. See the list of exempt cookies here: [http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm](http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> [http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees- returns/index_en.htm)

</comment><comment><USER65> Finally.. Although I am not optimistic about seeing results soon. Companies will go to extremes to circumvent such rules.

But it's shocking to see their lack of insight:

> software should be easier to repair and update

ROFL!

<comment><USER52> Why ROFL? Fixing bugs is essentially repairing software, isn't it? And it seems perfectly reasonable to me that if I buy some software, I should be able to "repair" any defects in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> You can call for anything, however it will happen only if it makes economic sense to manufacturers, sellers and customers.

</comment><comment><USER67> The EU also has a 3-year minimum warranty requirement on consumer products.

Much of what the EU does is to make buying from another EU country within the EU a seamless experience. They just prohibited phone roaming charges within the EU, for example. This is the "single European market" concept.

<comment><USER68> Not 3 years, it's 2 years, and it's not exactly same as "warranty".

 _Directive 1999 /44/EC says all EU countries have to ensure a retailer could be held liable for all "non-conformities" which manifest within two years from delivery._

[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/feb/05/how-long- elect...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/feb/05/how-long-electrical- goods-guaranteed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> paradoxically we want longer lifetime for some products but not for IE 6, Windows XP, JDK 1 , name your product's support hell...

<comment><USER70> Arguably, Windows XP had an incredibly long lifetime (12 years!) in terms of actual support/updates. The problem is getting people to leave after that lifetime is _over_.

If something is going to get updates for twelve years, there's no problem with people continuing to use it.

<comment><USER71> XP is still used in all sorts of (theoretically) non-networked applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> In other news, the parliament took a vote affirming previous decisions that TV shows should be funnier.

..I guess that was trite. The EU parliament is in a constitutional limbo state. It doesn't have real power or a predefined legislative jurisdiction, so voters don't take it seriously. They elect quirky, fring-ey members they wouldn't elect to their own national parties.

I'm in favour of durable products, but I don't see how this is en route to policies that affect this.

<comment><USER41> You probably do not live in Europe (or maybe you just like trolling?).

First I am a voter and I do take the EU parliament seriously. I also consider what the groups and candidates voted in the past before giving them my vote - especially on topics like world trade giant agreements (TTIP, TATFA, CETA... - yes they also vote on that and it is very meaningful for our future).

You may also read some documentation on the powers and functions of the EU Parliament: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Powers_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Powers_and_functions)

You may also just read the news:

-> UK just voted to get out of EU to escape EU funding and regulations - so probably those regulations do exist at a significant extend.

-> A recent example: the GSM roaming (a former giant cash machine against consumers) just got extinguished within EU countries by EU regulation.

So probably - yes - they can set rules on repairability and durability.

<comment><USER73> > A recent example: the GSM roaming (a former giant cash machine against > consumers) just got extinguished within EU countries by EU regulation.

Wasn't that the European Commission (and not Parliament) though? They seem to be significantly more powerful.

<comment><USER74> EU law needs to be proposed by the Commission (though the Maastricht Treaty gives Parliament powers to request that the Commission should put forward proposals on their behalf), and then normally approved and/or amended by both Parliament and the Council, with drawn out conciliation procedures if one or the other changes the proposals too much.

The complexity stems from the legal status where the EU is in some respects a confederation of sovereign states, where the governments of the member states need to represent their respective nations, and in some respects a union of people. The gradual shift of power towards the Parliament represents attempts to shift it towards the latter, while the Commission and Council represents the treat realities where delegating more power to Parliament would require constitutional changes in a number of member states to cede the sovereignty (currently this is worked around by having the treaties bind the respective governments to take make the required decision - it's exploiting the wide latitude most governments have in exercising treating rights and obligations.

<comment><USER73> Thanks for the writeup! This gives some insight into how convoluted the system is and hence why people don't trust it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Some of their proposals are just the product of people who have no concept of how technology works. Hell some of it reads like an anti-Apple manifesto being that they integrate battery and LED and such. What would a tablet with a user replaceable battery look like? How many years must they last before they are long lasting? If a battery in a laptop last four years for a nominal charge is that sufficient?

With regards to products like cars where the makeup can come from hundreds of manufactures who decides what needs to adhere to the rules and what doesn't? Someone posted about a cracked screen on a radio, how far down the component tree do we go before we stop?

I do like one section, no software should enable the fixing of a user owned product. The exception would be software that locks out repairs that might allow for unauthorized access; what I mean is that this could be an end run to making touch id easily hacked by government by forcing it to be serviced by third parties.

<comment><USER76> > What would a tablet with a user replaceable battery look like?

[https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability](https://www.ifixit.com/tablet- repairability)

It looks about the same as any other tablet, but with non-fragile latches holding it shut and no glue anywhere.

> If a battery in a laptop last four years for a nominal charge is that > sufficient?

No, the consumer should be able to replace the battery every few years and keep using it for over a decade, assuming a typical situation where nothing else breaks.</comment></comment>


The Best Job Interview Question (Software) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dev102.com/misc/the-best-job-interview-question-software/ <comment><USER2> Although the article's title is off (no "best question" is ever given), I'll offer up the question with which I've had the best luck.

I ask the candidate to describe what they've currently been working on (sadly, this alone filters out a lot of people). Once I understand, I make up a feature that I'd like to add, and then I ask them to task it out and estimate how long the tasks would take. Depending on how bright the candidate is, you can poke at their suggested implementation to see if there's any good alternatives, if they understand the associated scaling or performance issues, etc. etc.

Interviews are highly imperfect at best, but this has worked well for me. Your mileage may vary...

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't the title be, "how do you find the best job interview questions?"</comment>


Dow plunges 666 points – worst day since Brexit - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/02/investing/stock-market-today-dow <comment><USER2> The media gets too hysterical about short term events in the stock market. They tell a just—so story about why the market reacted the way it did and then next week everything will be back to normal like nothing happened. Invest in bitcoin and you'll realize that a 2.5% move is nothing.

<comment><USER3> 2.5 on the dow is big. These are real companies selling real things and employing actual people.

<comment><USER2> Daily stock market moves don't effect these companies. We could just as easily way up next week and be right back where we were. This is just variance in the market and the event will likely be forgotten in a couple of weeks.

<comment><USER3> Depends. Many use held stock as collateral on debt. Stock dropping is akin to a drop in credit rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Still up 22% from 1-Feb-2017. You can't really worry about any daily volatility, and even larger/longer corrections happen from time to time in an overall positive trend.

</comment><comment><USER5> Count me among those who think a pause or dip is necessary now and then.

If prices keep going up it's hard to buy, as Warren Buffet once said.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the Future of Program Synthesis? - <AUTHOR> I see that program synthesis has recently becoming a hot topic. Where do you see this going in the next decade and in the long-term future? Is it reasonable to imagine a world where AI can automatically synthesize programs? <comment><USER2> Here is a survey: [https://alexpolozov.com/blog/program- synthesis-2018/](https://alexpolozov.com/blog/program-synthesis-2018/)</comment>


It's Time to Plan for a Future Beyond Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynerash/2019/11/21/its-time-to-plan-for-a-future-beyond-passwords/#24363ee72e7d <comment><USER2> The executive branch of the US Government got rid of passwords a long time ago as part of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) of August of 2004. Almost all agencies within the executive branch switched to using Personal Identification and Verification (PIV) smartcards, which have X.509v3 certificates issued by the Federal PKI (FPKI) and RSA private keys. The US Department of Defense was already using Common Access Cards (CAC) which were very similar to the PIV cards, and after NIST standardized PIV as NIST SP 800-73, the DOD updated their CACs to be PIV-compliant.

WebAuthn/U2F are all newer than the migration to PIV (and they are compatible). I maintain PIV/CAC middleware called CACKey ( [https://cackey.rkeene.org](https://cackey.rkeene.org) ) and I've been thinking of adding WebAuthn support.

The DOJ should be a part of the executive branch of the US Government so they should not be using passwords, and their statistics for HSPD-12 compliance looks pretty good: [https://www.justice.gov/archives/us-hspd-12-piv-card- issuanc...](https://www.justice.gov/archives/us-hspd-12-piv-card-issuance- statistics)

So, why they had passwords is interesting, but it is (in my experience) an anomaly.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you Backup your Personal Files? - <AUTHOR>

Call me a child of the American media's fear tactics, but this well publicized story of Matt Honan's hack has me questioning my backup techniques of personal files (pictures, music, important family legal docs, tax data, etc...).
Currently I have one hard drive on my home Windows 7 desktop machine, with dropbox sync setup to mirror certain folders and then I use Google Drive for most of my pictures and media sorts.  Now I am thinking I need a local option, something fully under my control (and unfortunately my responsibility).
With so many options out there, I wanted to see what the users of Hacker News were doing with their personal files, outside of the plethora of cloud solutions.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> First line of defense is a Time Machine backup to a 1TB drive connected to an Airport Extreme. No-brainer if you're on a Mac, in my opinion. Tip: excluding my Chrome profile from the backups reduced the size of most backups by an order of magnitude.

Second, CrashPlan. It's the only decent solution I could find with support for backing up network drives without being prohibitively expensive for large amounts of data. The client is a bit resource hungry, but I'm hoping the situation will improve as soon as the first run is complete.

I also have a Dropbox account which I mainly use for syncing and sharing, but I've included the most important files there as well for extra redundancy and ease of access on other devices.

In addition, all my code is pushed to at least one remote repository, either on Github or a server. I also run my own mail server which is rsynced to another server, so there's at least three separate copies of my mail folders.

<comment><USER3> I tried crashplan on my macbook air. The big thing I'm noticing right now is it takes freaking forever to do the initial backup. I'm really hoping that subsequent backups don't take nearly as long.

<comment><USER4> The initial backup can be long yes... I usually leave my Mac always ON for a couple days when that initial backup is happening. After that first backup is done all the others are incremental and usually fast... Unless of course you just created a multi gigabytes movies that need backup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have multiple layers of redundancy. This is Mac-centric, but you can do something similar in other operating systems:

* I use a Time Machine to do incremental backups of my system drive which also contains any files that I don't want to lose.

* I periodically make a complete image of all my important drives. I have two copies of this. One copy stays off-site and I never have both at the same location as my originals. The other copy is local but left disconnected. I periodically rotate a copy to the off-site location. I use SuperDuper to make the images.

* I use DropBox for things I am working on and various other important files I want backed up and shared across my computers. This isn't big enough to contain the bulk of my media files (music, photos, video), but anything small enough goes here. A few of my super-important media files I keep here, like my wedding video and photos. I started using DropBox's photo syncing feature for my phone camera and am thinking of using it for all my cameras as well.

* Anything in my DropBox gets backed up by Time Machine as well on two different computers at two different locations.

I think it's really important to have at least two backups in the case that one of them fails. And one of them absolutely should be off site since a burglary, fire, hurricane, etc can potentially take them all out if they are all in the same location.

Also, it should not be possible for a remote attacker to erase all of your backups. For example, if you used a combination of Time Machine and cloud backup, an attacker could potentially gain access to your local machine, do a secure erase of all your drives including your Time Machine backup, and gain access to your online cloud backup and erase that. In a situation like that, you better hope that your cloud backup provider keeps enough backups such that you can recover erased files.

If you want to be even safer it's good to have 3 backups. One local, one off- site, and one off-site in a different city (e.g. Internet backup or shipping your drives somewhere). Now this is considering a severe worse case scenario, but having an off-site backup in the same city isn't enough, because a hurricane or earthquake could potentially damage your drives in both locations.

<comment><USER6> I have a similar backup system as this, but I temper my use of DropBox for super important things because it is a hot storage solution. If I (or someone) happens to delete it from one DropBox location, it's deleted everywhere.

For that reason, I also SFTP my files up to Amazon S3 as a cold storage solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know you are looking for a non-cloud option, but Tarsnap (an excellent service by HN's cperciva - <http://www.tarsnap.com/>) is impervious to the sort of issues raised by Matt Honan's hack, as long as you properly secure your private keys. Of course it is still susceptible to the other weaknesses presented by the cloud, which is why I also use an rsync'd external drive.

<comment><USER8> Same here. Tarsnap + external drive, with the occasional burning of DVDs for Very Important Files™(with parity data).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a 1TB external drive, and occasionally plug it in and run a script that calls `rdiff-backup --exclude-other-filesystems foo /mnt/backup/bar` for multiple values of foo and bar.

It's not complete enough that I could wipe my root partition, restore the backup and start running again, but I'm not going to lose anything important if my laptop gets stolen.

I don't use cloud backups, mostly out of laziness. (I would have to think about what is actually worth backing up, and organise things so that it's easy to back those things up and not other things.)

</comment><comment><USER10> I run a Tahoe-LAFS grid that spans a couple drives in my home machine and my office workstation. The majority of "archival" stuff I need to store that's large and relatively infrequently accessed (music, ripped DVD backups, hi-res TIFF scans of my artwork, RAW files for my photography) just lives in that grid. "Backups" are implicit. I even wrote my own music player that just streams out of Tahoe instead of off disk.

I actually had a (mostly full) 2TB drive go south just the other week and I was able to pull it out and replace it without any data loss. The rest of the grid was even still available while I replaced the drive. I put a new drive in, made a new Tahoe node on it, brought that node into the grid, then ran a "tahoe deep-check --repair" and it repaired and rebalanced all the files that had had shares on the broken drive.

My source code is vitally important, but small. I use git so I just always maintain a couple repos. Generally one on my workstation, one on our office git server, one on github, and there might be copies on my laptop, home machine, and a personal Rackspace server.

For my personal websites, I have a cron job that dumps data out nightly and drops it into Tahoe.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've spent a lot of time thinking about this... I don't trust Drobo/Synology etc because if the unit dies I need another one to retrieve my data. Jungledisk adds up if you have 100+GB, Backblaze is the best of these services, however they are proprietary, and imagine if either were cracked and your life ended up on on a torrent server somewhere... In the end I decided upon a HP Microserver running Ubuntu with disks in RAID5 + a cheap UPS. I then have an rsync cronjob on my laptop. I tried FreeNAS but it was slow. I may consider an offsite backup of the Ubuntu server (critical files (photos etc)) to AWS with Duplicity and PGP... So far I feel the safest and happiest I've been in awhile about my backup situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a 6-drive Netgear ReadyNAS Probusiness that is currently at about 3TB. It supports Time Machine, so I backup my 2 Mac Laptops through Time Machine only. I backup my desktops and all my other files on the ReadyNAS. I have UPS on all my desktops and ReadyNAS to prevent any power outages from causing data corruption. This came in handy a few months ago when a tree branch fell and took out my power lines.

I have two 2TB drives that I switch between every couple of months that I backup my ReadyNAS to. Because this data is basically my entire digital life (my photos, documents going back to about 1993, emails, etc), I don't trust a straight file copy, so I wrote my own simple bit-by-bit file comparison program. An engineer at NetApp told me all the horror stories that he's been involved with in terms of hard drive reliability, including things like the hard drive reporting to the OS that it wrote everything correctly, when it fact it didn't, so I've become pretty paranoid. The last thing I want is to make a backup, and then find that what was written on my backup hard drive was corrupt.

I have a couple of 500GB hard drives that contain some older archived data from 3+ years ago, so my older photos and documents have about 4 different copies. The only thing I don't implement, which is probably my biggest weakness, is that I don't store any copies offsite, so if there's a fire, I'm screwed.

Except for database and photos, my data growth has slowed down considerably. I would guess that my database data grows about 100 GB every year (I collect stock quotes every day), and my photos and videos are, on average, 10-20GB. This year was an anomaly because I went on a road trip where I used 2 GoPros to take time lapse photos and videos of the entire road trip, and that data itself is about 100 GB, and 99% of it is useless (and embarrassing).

</comment><comment><USER13> Multiple backups. Redundancy is the name of the game (redundancy and paranoia)!

1) Backblaze - fire-and-forget cloud backup, running in the background [constant]

2) Time Machine drive - what if I have no network access and need to recover work? [daily, when I'm at my desk]

3) Carbon Copy Cloner - what if I suffer a catastrophic boot disk failure? [weekly]

The drives for Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner are in separate geographical locations (fire, theft, etc).

CCC creates bootable backups, so if my internal SSD drive dies I can boot from USB or just switch the drive out, then restore any changes from TM. Minimal downtime!

</comment><comment><USER14> I've had certain personal data wiped from a hard drive many years ago, so I am a bit paranoid:

USB Thumb Drive for active files, 2 copies on External Hard Drives for long term storage (which I migrate once a year to new drives), and two physical copies of critical documents (legal, tax) kept in two locations (usually my parents house and a safe deposit box).

</comment><comment><USER15> I have some items that I would not like to lose - photographs of my son.

These are copied to multiple machines, in different houses. They are uploaded to 2 different providers (facebook (natch) and dropbox.)

I also create rars with par2 redundancy data and burn them to good quality CDs which are stored in tyvek sleeves in a firesafe.

That's perhaps a bit over the top, but I really don't want to lose those photos.

Passwords and serial numbers are printed out and kept in the firesafe. That's perhaps a bit insecure, and I need to arrange an "in case of death" list.

Everything else used to be rsynced to a different machine in the same house, but now it's time machined.

<comment><USER12> A firesafe is a great idea, and I might follow your example. Do you know if the temperature inside the firesafe remains low enough so that things like CDs and hard drives don't get corrupt? I know that they work for things like papers, but are they deemed safe enough for electronics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hourly remote-initiated rsnapshot to MyBook Live NAS on internal network.

Then the NAS performs a nightly sync of selected folders from the latest hourly backup with tarsnap, keeping backups from the last 7 days, last 4 weeks and last 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a cheap box at a webhosting company with ssh access.

I use svn over ssh and check in all of my person stuff there.

This is really nice because I can share linux dotfiles, etc. between my work and home machines.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a Linux user. I have a laptop that's my main machine and a fileserver for storage. I try not to keep anything on the laptop, but have my programming projects & config files on it (so I can work if I'm away from home).

The fileserver is where most of my stuff lives; it gets NFS mounted to the laptop. It's got two drives as RAID1, and backs itself up to an external hard drive using rdiff-backup. It also backs itself up offsite using duplicity to a server on another continent. Everything's encrypted, so if anything gets stolen I only have to worry about the material loss.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dropbox syncing to 3 machines, one of which is a linux server in my closet. The linux server makes snapshots of the folder and saves rolling daily, weekly and monthly snapshots to a RAID1 array. (see [http://neverusethisfont.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-back-up- drop...](http://neverusethisfont.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-back-up-dropbox- automatically-daily-weekly-monthly-snapshots/)) The RAID1 array is then backed up to a separate RAID1 array nightly.

Thia has been working pretty well for me and is a good balance between automation and sufficient redundancy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Arq backup works great. It does encrypted incremental snapshot backups to your personal S3 account (unlike most services which hold your backups hostage). It has an open-source recovery program. It has a documented format.

For local backups, I use a poor-man's Time Machine — rsync with hard links. It's how Time Machine works under the hood anyway, and I used it long before Apple baked it into the OS. Works great.

The OP uses Windows, though, so I honestly have no idea what equivalents to these options exist which would work with, e.g., NTFS.

<comment><USER21> Mark me down as another vote for Arq ... total set it and forget it setup. Very easy to use and inexpensive option for offsite backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just be careful those of you using sync too much, I've definitely seen people sync across deletes and other errors.

I personally backup about 1tb of home movies, photos, music etc. I keep 1 local HD + crashplan + crashplan remote in a friends house + Google Drive for docs I use daily. I also keep an offline drive just in case an error is replicated across my live drives.

I also used to use BackBlaze but dropped them, they play tricks to get out of storing a lot of content for too long

<comment><USER13> Can you expand on the 'Backblaze plays tricks' comment? I am current user and am curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm finding I generate very few "personal files" these days, compared with, say, ten years ago. Most personal files are produced/archived with Google Docs.

Yes, that is scary.

I also have 100 GB or so of archived photographs and videos that I back up with a mixture of Ubuntu One (videos and assorted files from 10 years ago) and Rackspace Cloudfiles (photos). I wrote my own Python scripts for backing up and verifying photos on Cloudfiles.

<comment><USER24> I've also been working on less files locally. Everything is sitting in Google docs. Or worse, I've mailed it to gmail and it sits there unread.

I rsync between my two nix boxes. My wife's Win box I do every now and again, mostly video and pictures.

Drop box for scripts I need across the nix boxes.

And I do a manual copy to an external, my folder structure is the same on all boxes but I like to watch this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At the end of each day I run this Allway Sync app that makes both two way and one-way syncs of my folders to an external 320GB Samsung HDD. I don't propagate deletions for my photos and videos, so they accumulate forever. For all the other folders, I propagate deletions and modifications. Every couple of months or so I mirror this daily use external HDD with another one I have just to avoid any risk involving hardware failure.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know this is controversial in light of their recent breach, but I use Dropbox in conjunction with a symlink into my docs folder. I don't have photos or videos, and my documents easily fit into Dropbox (I also have a lot of bonus space, from Dropquests, job fairs, and referrals). Everything automatically backs up, is accessible from any device, has revision history, and won't get destroyed if my house burns down.

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally I have been very lazy with backups, but I take important documents to usb stick which I carry with my keys everywhere I go.

Though I should probably start backing up my personal hobby projects, because I have lost ton of them over the years, because I just kept one working copy of them, but I have been lazy to great a backup plan which I would actually follow.

</comment><comment><USER28> \- Dropbox for documents and archived log files.

\- Photos and videos are backed up to a truecrypt drive manually using FreeFileSync twice a week or so.

\- Backblaze running constantly.

\- Pogoplug (+1 external drive attached) offsite at my parents house with archlinux installed. Eventually I'll attach another drive and have rsync mirroring them using a cron job.

</comment><comment><USER29> 1 TB Time Capsule for my most regular main backup (2 mac laptops) iCloud backup for iPhone and iPad (upgraded storage) Arq backup direct to s3 for really important stuff like photos (<http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/>). I have about 200GB on reduced redundancy storage.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rsync cron to my RAID 6 NAS box. Photos get sync'd to 3rd party service. Thumbdrive for critical passwords (keepass).

</comment><comment><USER31> I live exclusively in the Apple ecosystem, so I:

      1. back my Mac up with Time Machine;

      2. do a weekly Carbon Copy Cloner dd of my disk;

      3. keep copies of my data (documents, music, photos) on Dropbox.

iCloud handles syncing. This is not bulletproof, but it works for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> My first line of defense: Dropbox

I also have CrashPlan running in the background but hardly ever have to use it

I have an Apple Time Capsule as well but, like CrashPlan, I try not to have to use it and it's more of a worst case scenario backup.

Dropbox all the way.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just keep everything I care about in my Dropbox. I use enough machines on a day-to-day basis that this leaves me with a decent local redundancy, and having it all on Dropbox means that I'll have access to it even if all of my machines go down at once.

<comment><USER34> I fear Dropbox may be more like RAID than like backup: what happens when a file is deleted, causing it to be removed from all of your redundant machines?

<comment><USER35> You have 30 days to recover it using the free version, and unlimited time if you pay for it: <https://www.dropbox.com/help/115/en>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Apple Time Machine and two external 2 TB hard drives for the iMac. Additionally, a daily backup backup of my Macbook Air to a 128 GB USB flash drive, which I copy over to the external hard drives once a week.

<comment><USER37> Mine is similar: Time Machine all the time, and a periodic drive image using Super Duper to one of two external (actually enclosure-less internal) drives, one of which is always offsite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Time Machine via a drive hooked to an Airport Extreme along with Backblaze.

</comment><comment><USER39> CrashPlan.

Maybe this post should be converted to a poll, though?

</comment><comment><USER40> BackupPC handles all computers. Then...

Photos and documents (basically small stuff) -> rsync.net every day.

Large stuff (music, video) -> external USB disk.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1TB Touro Mobile USB, always sitting on top of my desktop. I just have to do a manual backup every so often using Sync Toy.

I also use Dropbox etc free.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been wrestling with this same issue, ever since I read Google's EULA. I'm thinking of using Carbonite, which no one's mentioned yet.

</comment><comment><USER43> * Crashplan, family plan that has unlimited backup for 5$/mnth

* Drobo FS for local backup, can go upto 5 HDDs as RAID.

</comment><comment><USER44> OS X

Time Machine backup (daily) + bit-by-bit copy of hard disk using SuperDuper (on another external drive).

</comment><comment><USER45> Over 400GB backup on external and crashplan, these include all my personal files and photos throughout my life.

</comment><comment><USER46> rsync to RAID 5 externals.

Crashplan running in background.

Google Drive for Docs and working files.

Github & other git services for projects.

</comment><comment><USER47> Github + Dropbox + CrashPlan

</comment><comment><USER48> rsync cronjob to my external 8TB :)

<comment><USER21> I don't know why the comment below this "What will you do if your house burns down?" is marked as dead ... it's a very valid question.

Backing up onsite is almost as bad as no backup at all. You are protecting against hardware failure ONLY.

If your house burns down you are screwed. Also, if someone breaks in and steals your computer, do you think they aren't taking your external drives as well?

Offsite backup is mandatory if you really care about not losing your data.</comment></comment>


ButterflyLabs BitCoin Mining Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.butterflylabs.com/products/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have any numbers on the ROI of this?</comment>


Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html <comment><USER2> I have trouble believing that even a professional, experienced psychiatrist or therapist can diagnose being cured from clinical depression based on a handful of facebook photos. I also have trouble believing that the decision at the insurance company was made with any involvement whatsoever from professional psychiatrists, much less her therapist in particular.

Dropping coverage is potentially dangerous, if they're on medication. Altering (or stopping) anti-depressent dosages requires professional oversight. And if you're getting worker's comp, I certainly hope you're on medications.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most interesting part: _She also doesn't understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts._ Assuming this is not a case of user error, I too wonder about that.

The insurance issue is interesting too, but the 'depression = disability?' question is rather too broad for HN.

<comment><USER4> Because the default privacy setting for photo albums is "visible to everyone", and most people don't realize that it's independent from profile privacy. It's one of the many flaws of facebook's privacy (at least for an ordinary user who isn't web-savvy).

Also - even if she totally locked down her profile, the photos of her could have been uploaded by friends with more lenient privacy settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is the tip of a large iceberg, and we may see more of the iceberg in upcoming years. A large number of web users have discarded traditional ideas of privacy to post information about themselves.

Suppose Facebook applies some Machine Learning algorithm and can predict roughly which users will incur insurance claims. Inputs could include user- generated text, size and shape of social graph, entities recognized in user- generated photos, etc. That data would be valuable to insurers.

It seems like many of these users are mentally in a living room with their friends, while actually uploading their private info to a corporation's servers.

<comment><USER6> While that may be the case, in this instance the insurance company is probably in the wrong. The Facebook photos along should not be enough for them to say that she's cured. Maybe enough for them to feel they need to spawn an investigation, but I somehow doubt that they consulted with her doctor or had a doctor of their own choosing interview her.

An insurance claims agent looking at Facebook photos is not enough to say, "Look! There's a smile on her face! She can't be depressed! It's impossible for a depressed person to smile!" This isn't exactly the same as seeing a photo of someone that claims to be paralyzed from the waist-down running in a marathon...

How the insurance company accessed the photos in this instance is irrelevant. I'm more concerned with how they _used_ them once they had them. I'd be concerned with how they obtained them if there was a possibility of using 'dubious means' though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll be totally honest–I'm having a really hard time generating a _fair_ opinion on this matter.

I'm not going to pretend to know how depression works, how often it strikes patients, or how much it disables a person. If you truly can't work, I get it.

OTOH, if you can go on vacation, it would seem to me that you could perhaps work part-time, try to attend vocational rehab, or something.

I know it's not popular to side with big insurance companies, but I can't blame them for at least investigating claims like this.

<comment><USER8> My father is a V.A. Dentist. He routinely sees veterans who are collecting big benefit checks and receiving full medical (plus travel compensation) for PTSD. The the thing is, they never get "better". They live on the tax-payees dime perpetually. Most have never seen combat.

This is a lot like that.

<comment><USER9> There's no widely-accepted cure for PTSD yet. Sometimes people get better on their own, but we really don't know why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What people don't seem to understand about insurance is that they are entirely motivated by profit. They're not your mom and dad. They're not going to feel obligated just because you've been contributing to their plan for twenty years. If you have car accident, for example, they're ok with you being laid up for a few weeks but after a certain point you become a problem, a very serious problem and they'll do whatever it takes to get you back to work. Or off their books. Either way it doesn't matter. The longer you drain their funds, the more intensely they'll scrutinize your life, looking for some justification to ditch you. If you're on sick leave due to depression it's just dumb to post party pictures on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is private disability insurance in a province of Canada? How does that interact with Canada's system of medical insurance?

<comment><USER12> There are still private insurance companies that will cover things not normally covered by the provincial plans. Drugs would be another good example of something not universally covered (depending on drug). Drugs are, however, price controlled in many cases. My sister has asthma, and has to pay a lot for inhalers; thus, working somewhere with health coverage is still a big concern for her.

Quebec always tends to do things a little differently, but I'm surprised at this because in general they cover more things publicly, not less. I'm betting that the province would only cover "long term" disability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is what happens when we treat mental illness like physical illness.

Depression just ain't the same as a broken leg.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can get paid sick leave for "depression" in Canada?

(You can't easily claim worker's comp for mental illness in the US without it being concomitant to a physical injury; I'm not making a statement about the seriousness of depression.)

<comment><USER15> "depression" is serious. I would down vote you if I could.

<comment><USER16> If it is serious, why aren't those benefits available in US?

<comment><USER6> It wasn't that long ago that people with mental problems were sequestered away in asylums where the conditions were often-times worse than the prison system. And many times the workers would abuse the patients (phsyically,sexually,etc) because there was little the patients could do (i.e. if she says that I raped her, I'll just say that she's delusional).

Is it any wonder, that other mental conditions aren't really taken seriously? For most people 'depression' is some nebulous condition that no one takes seriously until the depressed person has a failed attempt at suicide _then_ everyone says that the "didn't see it coming."</comment></comment></comment></comment>