How do you move out of a smarthome? - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/how-do-you-move-out-of-a-smarthome/ <comment><USER2> I just. don't. get. it.

All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers to save energy. I don't need it internet-enabled (and hackable). I don't need WiFi-enabled smoke alarms--especially if they have a damn microphone inside! (and yes, Nest smoke alarms have a microphone built-in for self-testing!?) I don't want to talk to Google or Amazon and ask them questions. I just don't need their services, and I sure as hell don't want them listening all the time. We seem to be in some kind of insane tech bubble where we need to put gluttonous software literally everywhere, often for nebulous gains. And if you aren't scared by pervasive surveillance, fine. Just imagine Russian script kiddies chuckling over your miserable sex lives. Or imagine how well your stupid internet-enabled doors and teddy bears will work in a cyberwar with Russia.

I leave my smartphone at home these days. Partly because I know what it is doing, and partly because I don't know what it is doing. Partly because I just want my old life back. I take walks and see cool things without needing to tweet about it or even take pictures. I am trying to get away from this madness.

(But here I am on hackernews, being a Luddite, oi.)

[edit: maybe my fears of downvoting were overblown.]

<comment><USER3> Y'know, after a decade on Internet forums, I've found saying "I know I'm going to get downvoted, but—" usually leads to downvotes, while simply stating your position gets judged on actual merit rather than self pity.

Just my ฿ 0.0002.

<comment><USER4> I would actually speculate that it's the opposite. Though not exactly the same, 2 of my 3 most upvoted comments on reddit (465 and 510 votes) contain edits where I ask about why I'm getting downvoted. As soon as I added that question in, the voting seemed to switch directions. It's like people took a second more to think about the comment rather than just acting on emotion. I think that's why the saying has survived and you see it so often. Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I think there's some neat psychology happening when someone brings up upvotes/downvotes. It'd be interesting to do an analysis to see how those words effect a comment's score.

Edit: Just realized that the parent of the comment I'm replying to is the top comment on this post, so that's another piece of anecdotal evidence.

<comment><USER5> For what you've described, I agree: if you write a post, get downvotes, and then add an edit wondering about the downvotes because you're genuine about your position and are looking to engage, people tend to start engaging in kind and upvote you at least to neutral.

But I think the parent is talking about the habit of many who are about to post a counter-groupthink or controversial opinion to lead off with "I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but...". My feeling there is that people generally view that as a sort of flippant disregard/dismissal of the community moderation process, so it basically _invites_ downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset > everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new > accounts?

Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts.

> When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up > manuals online to try and work out which buttons to hold down in order to > claim the devices as my own?

 _shrug_ , yeah, why not? That's the kind of stuff I would do anyways. Moving into a new home requires all kinds of "oh, ok, that's how that works" kind of discoveries. "Hmm, the breaker panel says '#5: kitchen' but that one also apparently has the garage lights. But not the garage door opener, for some reason."

> not be able to easily set the heating until they've moved in ... the epitome > of "first-world problems"

I will concede that this is truly a PITA and a drawback of modern life.

Computers are so cheap that we can "afford" to put them everywhere. Hopefully the next generation of these devices will have sane fallback/factory reset modes that behave like their ancestor devices until they've been setup/enabled.

<comment><USER7> > _A bit of a faff - and possibly annoying to the new occupiers to not be able > to easily set the heating until they 've moved in, configured the WiFi, and > registered for an account._

I would argue that that's a failure of the thermostat. It absolutely needs to have a dumber fallback mechanism, not just for new residents, but for the current ones. (What if my internet goes down? What if the cat pees on my router?)

<comment><USER8> You should probably start by changing the litterbox...

More seriously though, this is a major pet peeve of mine. Many of these devices will also become completely unusable when the manufacturer decides to terminate the service. This is a big reason why I hesitate to pay for products that don't adhere to open standards, and allow for local/offline use as a primary mode.

<comment><USER9> I was just reading a review of a sous vide stick the other day that mentioned that issue. Fortunately, it supported Bluetooth...

<comment><USER10> Even Bluetooth is a no-go. What happens if the control is app no longer available or drops support for your model? Something like a sous vide stick should have control buttons.

Ditto for stuff like Roombas. I've noticed all the new ones have their schedules set via an app. WTF? My current one has buttons and that works just fine. I'm seriously thinking of getting a spare now.

Smartphones are great solution for controlling a lot of things, but it seems like we're in a place where people stupidly think it's the solution to control all things.

<comment><USER8> I think Bluetooth could be doable; assuming their use of the protocol is well documented and open to 3rd party implementation. For a lot of these devices, the API could be described in AT commands (flung over any of several bluetooth profiles) pretty easily.

<comment><USER11> These devices use Bluetooth Smart/LE (as opposed to traditional). It provides functionality more akin to RPC and Pub/Sub. But yes, it's easily implemented if documented, I've done a device to replicate another vendor's protocol for some basic IO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren't going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It's a pain, but assuming you don't move very often it's worth it. Now I have all the things in my new house and it's setup just the way I like.

<comment><USER13> I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

<comment><USER14> If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that juncture.

That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it", where x is the cost for me to just buy new modules for my new place.

<comment><USER7> > _you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub > device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it._

That sounds like a pain in the ass.

> _if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it 'd be a "if you > want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll > leave it_

I don't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany.

<comment><USER15> _I don 't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany._

In context they are also more or less offering to remove it for free. I expect that includes putting conventional fixtures in (depending on the terms of the sale, but why bother trying to insist that the house doesn't come with light switches).

<comment><USER14> Indeed, an option like that would be purely: If you're going to want these, I can save myself the effort of swapping them if you want to buy them off me. Otherwise, I'll either reinstall the original equipment or buy new equipment. (New dumb light switches for my old condo cost me $1.95 a pop.)

At my old condo, one thing I left as a bit of a 'gift', was a extremely solid dual-arm TV wall mount. It was cheap for me to repurchase for my new place, and then they don't have the risk of screwing into the studs near but not in the holes I had mounted mine or such concerns that might weaken their own mount. I had all the hardware and instructions, which I left with it. This might've been a less handy choice had either the condo been large enough for other places for the TV to make sense or be appealing, or if the TV mount I had installed wasn't sturdy enough to support all possible TVs one might be bringing in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have IKEA Trådfri (which is ZigBee-based). While the hub does connect to the internet for software updates (using ethernet - no WiFi, and no WiFi password to update), there's no "cloud" component. You can't create an "IKEA account", even if you wanted. If IKEA went out of business tomorrow, my switches and bulbs would keep working. I like that approach a lot.

It would be perfectly feasible to leave the IKEA hardware in the house if we were to move.

<comment><USER17> How do you like the IKEA stuff? I've seen their lights that can shift through daylight/evening hues and brightnesses and was tempted.

<comment><USER16> Works great so far. The iOS app was janky at first (it would forget about the hub it was connected to) but seems better now. I don't really use the app though - a recent update added Alexa support, and that works great. I've mounted the remote control on the wall and either use that or Alexa to turn the lights on and off.

I don't want purple or green lights in my living room, so the fact that IKEA bulbs are limited to warmth and brightness is fine for me (I like to just keep them on "warm").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently sold my home. I didn't take the plunge with smart switches, but I had Nest thermostats and Nest smoke alarms.

I wish I either removed everything before putting my house on the market, or excluded them all from the sale. The buyer was confused, and the Nest smoke alarms needed to be replaced prior to closing.

The Nest smoke alarms were fine, but due to local fire codes, I needed to have wifi running at inspection time and all of my smoke alarms had to be Nest. I was replacing one a year and still had a few "dumb" smoke alarms in the mix. Unfortunately, my realtor advised me poorly in this situation when I told him my plan was to take the smoke alarms and thermostats with me.

<comment><USER19> Fire code requires that fire alarms be networked to alert people in all rooms in the event of a fire. Older un-networked units are grandfathers until you begin replacement. Wifi networking is allowed by the code, but for obvious reasons, the inspector has to verify that it works and is set up correctly which requires running wifi.

Personally I would not purchase a home that was configured with nest or other home automation equipment for several reasons.

1) It's a huge security risk. When you buy a home the first thing you do is change the locks because you don't know who the previous owner may have once loaned keys out to. Now you have a bunch of computers in your house giving remote access that may or may not be giving other people access and you can't tell.

2) Most consumer home automation systems have incredibly bad failure states. Those wirelessly networked alarms? When you cheap Chinese wifi router catches fire from a faulty power supply the failure mode is that you die. That's a pretty big oversight. Remember when NEST pushed an untested software update remotely and caused dozens of houses in the Northern Midwest to lose heat in the middle of winter and then be destroyed by broken pipes?

3) Vendor lock in. I don't want the previous owner to lock me into a line of products. Period. I'm sure everyone here remembers when Phillips decided that their smart light sockets would embrace DRM and only accept Phillips brand LED bulbs. They backed down but it is bound to come up again. Not to mention simple incompatibility between competing products and stacks.

4) It's just a damn pain to use most of the time for gain that can be measured almost entirely in novelty factor.

<comment><USER20> Fire code where? Requirement to be networked is a new thing to me, at least as far as single family dwellings go.

<comment><USER19> I've dealt with it in the state fire code for Massachusetts and Maryland. I believe it is also in the New York and New Jersey code books. I'm unsure of other states but, it is a relatively recent adoption in all of the aforementioned states and I expect that it will be common in nearly all states soon.

If it seems to be a bit much just be glad you aren't in Massachusetts where they are currently trying to get arc flash rated 110V breakers added as a requirement to the electric code.

<comment><USER21> Arc fault protection for outlets in dwelling bedrooms was was new in the 2002 NEC. Back then, the only available solution was an arc-fault interrupt circuit breaker. Arc fault receptacles are currently available in the market place...

...however, the code (at least back in 2002) specified protection of all electrical _outlets_. Receptacles are plugged into outlets. So are hired wired lights, smoke detectors, etc. An outlet is "A point on the wiring system at which current is taken to supply utilization equipment."

This means that any literal reading of the code requires arc-fault breakers from a practical perspective since even the outlet into which an arc-fault receptacle is plugged requires protection upstream from the receptacle. On the other hand, building departments often make code interpretations that are politically expedient and that's why some jurisdictions may allow arc-fault receptacles as a means of code compliance.

<comment><USER22> Erm, receptacles _are a type of_ outlet.

AFAIK the code also requires the wiring itself in those places be AFCI protected, since the (immediate) goal was to avoid smoldering fires in the wall where people sleep. This would imply the simplest route is an AFCI breaker for the whole branch circuit, although it was (is?) permissible to run metal conduit up to the first receptacle and have that do the AFCI.

Would have loved for the NEC to require that the code on AFCIs was technician- upgradeable and some general sense of open, but I'll just go back to banging my head against the wall now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am dealing with this right now. I am fixing up my house to sell. I moved out of it into a new home a month ago. I disconnected the Internet connection at the house I am trying to sell. I have a Wink Relay there and I deleted my account from it before disconnecting the Internet. Now I can't use the physical switches to control the lights they are connected to. The designers of these devices are not thinking at all about the long term use cases.

<comment><USER15> Counterpoint is that buyers aren't either.

I think the underlying issue is that people don't see a huge amount of value in a little bit of automation and balk at the prices, so the market consists mostly of buyers that _really_ want to be able to do various automations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, you make it a stupidhome.

Switch outlets with $1.80 switches. Yank out pretty lights and put in simple cheap hanger cans. Keep your dumb honeywell thermostat and reinstall the 4 wires. Buy dumb smoke alarms and litter them everywhere (they're cheap). Yank out special outlets and put in el-cheapo outlets.

In other words, yank out and substitute the smart stuff back to cheap dumb stuff that just works.

This isn't hard. It's a few hours to do this swap. And most of the mains stuff can be picked up at Walmart or similar for cheap.

<comment><USER25> Yep. It's no different than my studio which I swapped out bunch of lights for Phillips hue lights. They had some plug ones that I went to Home Depot and spent like 1.50 on each adapter or something to make it work. When I leave, I'm taking my bulbs with me and replacing them with basic ones.

Same with a nest thermo. Swap out for a honeywell done. These things are pretty much low cost and minimal time commitment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is this really a huge problem? How is this any different then, say, disconnecting your utilities? What's the big deal with factory resetting everything you're leaving behind?

<comment><USER27> > do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online

I don't see how this is different than learning how your 10-year-old garage door opener or 20-year-old furnace works.

<comment><USER28> The garage door opener works when you push a button. The furnace works when you change the little numbers on the thermostat. If it doesn't work, you call a garage door or HVAC company and they fix it. I think most people are barely aware that these things even _have_ manuals, let alone actually sit down and read them.

<comment><USER29> > The garage door opener works when you push a button.

What button? I've got a detached garage, so it doesn't make sense to have a button inside. And when the previous residents were (apparently) evicted, they took various keys, remotes, etc with them. I most certainly had to buy a remote and find my garage door opener's manual to get it working. Damned if I was going to pay a garage door repairman to come out and hit a few buttons for me.

<comment><USER28> This scenario is covered under "If it doesn't work, you call a garage door or HVAC company and they fix it."

Your typical HN reader is probably willing and able to reprogram the thing on their own, but this is not normal.

<comment><USER29> You say it's covered; I disagree, which is why I responded. HVAC? Maybe; it's sometimes hooked into the gas lines, with wiring through the walls and such. I feel like it's condescending to assume that most people would be unwilling or unable to pair a remote with a garage door opener, though.

<comment><USER28> "Condescending" may very well be accurate, but that doesn't make the statement wrong.

<comment><USER29> Doesn't make it true either, and you're the one making the claim.

<comment><USER28> Sure. I'm just describing what I've observed. If you don't think it's correct, that's fair. I'm just pointing out that whether or not it's condescending is a completely different question. I'll happily admit that I have a really bad attitude toward the general population's technical literacy or willingness to RTFM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another modern-technology problem: how do you pass on your cryptocurrency wealth when you die? Wills, trusts, estate law, and legal force are meaningless if you've forgotten to provide your private keys to next of kin.

<comment><USER31> You can print out private keys (and passwords, etc) and put them in Trust. If you are feeling paranoid that you can't _trust_ your Trustees, you can use something like Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm [1] to give individual Trustees only a portion of the private keys (or passwords, etc).

I explored at one point if there was a market for an app to automate that last part, but so far such noodling keeps winding up at a less generally useful Keybase.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing)

<comment><USER30> Trust is only part of the problem. It's also competence on the part of the recipients to combine the Shamir parts, correctly pick Segwit vs Legacy chains, not send BCH to a BTC address, not email their private keys to the Geek Squad, and then not get it all swiped on their malware-infested PC.

<comment><USER31> The joke answer is "At that point, what do you care, you're dead?"

The long answer is that's all part of setting up a Trust for your estate, picking Trustees that can execute your Trust responsibly/competently when the time comes, and picking recipient heirs as well that can benefit from your property. All of that is a long conversation to have between you and your lawyer and your heirs.

(In that way, Shamir's Secret Sharing is simply a modern technical/mathematical equivalent to bequeathing your heirs a puzzle box with a safety deposit key in it. If your heirs can't solve the puzzle box, do they deserve the contents of that safety deposit box?)

That said, there probably is a role for some of the cryptocurrency exchanges to play as possible Trustees in an estate, just as banks large and small play into many estates for the transfer of wealth. It could be a feature the exchanges could offer whereby they help liquidate a cryptocurrency as a part of executing a Trust.

(I would also not be surprised if there was at least one person building a Rube Goldberg machine in Ethereum smart contracts where on proof of their death the contracts execute transactions to an exchange sell order with forwarding instructions to Western Union telegraph the money to a loved one's postal address.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This might be a little tangential, but as interesting as the idea of a smarthome is, I'm not sure I'll ever buy into it. I've never tried it, so can't speak to the benefits, but on this topic I'm always reminded of how my mom decided on buying a 2004 Honda Civic in 2008. She wanted manual locks and windows, to minimize the possible failure scenarios, and I can understand why. Sure, it's a pain in the ass to manually roll the window down, but she'll never have to worry about it going wrong.

Moving out of a smarthome seems like a pain. I can imagine in the future that smarthome companies will roll out better authentication and setup processes, but in my paranoia I can imagine too many security issues that will arise. I don't want my home to be a gateway for breach in another dimension. I'm okay to turn the light on myself when I enter a room, set the thermostat, and water my own plants. I don't see a need for improvement there.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is why I set a few "ground rules" before I started adding home automation stuff to my house.

1\. Everything must be reversible, preferably within a short period of time. If I replace the doorbell or locks with smart ones, I keep the old ones in storage. If I replace light switches, I make sure to document the way the wiring worked before I touched it, and keep everything so I can put it back if/when I move. I had a house with 14 light switches, 2 door locks, a garage door opener, 3 cameras, 7 door and window sensors, like 4 or 5 outlet controllers, and a thermostat all upgraded to "smart devices" in my house, and it took me about 5 hours to set everything back to the way it was before i added anything.

2\. Everything should work exactly the same as it did before being "smart- ified", and should never stop working because of a network being down, or a power outage reset it. This means light switches still need to look and act like light switches, in 100% of cases. A thermostat should still work without WiFi, the TV remote should always be able to control the TV, the door should be able to be opened with a key, etc... When my nephew comes over and likes to switch the lights on and off really fast when he can sneak over to it, I shouldn't need to "reset" anything or have it be in a weird state because of that.

3\. Rely on external servers as little as possible. If the internet is down, but my local network is up, my whole system should run at least 90% as well as it does with the internet.

Following those few ground rules meant that it cost more to do the whole system, and there were some things I could not upgrade to "smart devices", but it made the whole process much more fullproof, and it was significantly easier when we went to leave (just had to mention that the smart home stuff was not included in the sale of the house).

Light switches were "automated" by putting small z-wave switches in the electrical box of each switch (leaving the original switch showing and acting the same way it always did), z-wave plugs and power strips were used to turn on/off various things if needed, smart lightbulbs were avoided at all costs, the thermostat was reliant on a 3rd party network for the remote switching, but still worked 100% of the time by adjusting it on the wall. Door locks, garage door controllers, doorbell, etc... They all worked completely on their own, and then had the extra "smart" functionality layered on top.

I hear the sentiment that all IoT stuff is garbage, and I have to completely disagree. The cheapest item in the category is probably garbage, but that's common with just about every other area. If you spend the money, if you actually do a little research, there are many options out there which are secure, reliable, and actually built to last.

<comment><USER34> So, Liskov substitution principle does apply to intelligent stuff.

<comment><USER33> That's a very interesting way of looking at it. I never thought about it that way before, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.

For example, I have a google home. Google home relies on an external server to work, but that's okay, since it's not really "replacing" anything, only adding a new "class" of device.

But it's not okay for a door lock to not take a standard key (or in my case, the door lock needed a number pad), just to get "smart" functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The issue here is the fragmentation in the authors system. While not as feature rich as the flavor of the day automation toy, I did my full house with Insteon. If I move, I would just change the email on the account to the new user and hand them the password and leave the $100 controller hub with them. Simple.

</comment><comment><USER36> Some property disclosure forms are now requiring that these items are documented. Example:

[http://transitionrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RE- Pr...](http://transitionrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RE-Property- Disclosures.pdf)

Line 183-184 "Are there any items or systems on the property connected or controlled wirelessly, via internet protocol ("IP"), to a router or gateway or directly to the cloud?"

</comment><comment><USER37> The Quentin in the comments is the chap behind the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, for those up on their Internet history.

</comment><comment><USER38> I remember in one of Vernor Vinge's science fiction novels, whenever one space-faring civilization managed to capture a warship of another unfriendly civilization, they usually just melted it down for scrap metal because there was no way to trust all the embedded automation.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is one thing that worries me as well. Fortunately, none of my smart home stuff is cloud connected.

Most smart home problems that tend to be solved by using a cloud service could be solved just as well by using a VPN. I do this with my Hue and my Wifi cameras, both with great success.

The challenge with a VPN is setting it up. Router manufacturers generally either offer OpenVPN, which requires a 3rd party app, or PPTP, which is horribly insecure. A router that could generate a secure IPSec configuration and push out a profile for the smartphones would make it a lot more usable.

Even then, it's still probably going to be more work than using a cloud service.

Maybe IPv6 will solve the problem as all of these things can have publically routable addresses. What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER40> When I installed smart stuff in my home I kept the originals. When I sold earlier this year I switched everything back out before I listed it. It was worth the hassle to me. No one pays extra because the Nest thermostat is installed vs $30 basic. And I'm going to want to install another Nest in the next home so...

I haven't installed any smart outlets but I would consider doing the same. Most of these jobs are super easy, and if you can't handle it a $20/hr handyman certainly can.

</comment><comment><USER41> You move out by changing the passwords & account email addresss, leaving the hubs and giving them the hubs. And tell them to change their passwords.

It's like giving the keys to the house and suggesting they change the locks after they move in.

I know what this guy described is a more involved process, but most smarthome cloud accounts are about as simple as an email & password change.

Most smart home stuff should work fine if there was no hub controlling them, like with light switches and electric shades.

</comment><comment><USER42> Google's Weave has ideas of ownership & security on a devices unsure where its. we could see a day where a house of infrastructure devices gets handed over as part of the sale with this type of system.

Andrew Warren video talking about these features [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUJARumXWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUJARumXWE)

</comment><comment><USER43> Hui, I really hope, that once I will buy a house, the whole automation thing/IoT will be standardized. And I controll everything with one app, tied to the (small) house server.

And the new owner just gets control over the system and controll everything. No cloud/account nightmare like described here ...

</comment><comment><USER44> I am slowly making my home "smarter" but only installing things that don't use the internet or require or use an external service or account.

Secondly for everything i install I write a document on how it works, how to override it or bypass it if it breaks, and how to remove it when I move out.

</comment><comment><USER45> All internet connected devices in our home are identified by a special "home" email, and info. No personally identified info -- just house identified info (of course not with the house address!)

I wonder how many license agreements I did not follow by doing this?

<comment><USER46> What do you mean? How do you do this?

<comment><USER45> All devices/services have their own "identity" that belongs to the house (basically the house has its own email address). When we move we simply need to hand over that identity to the new home owner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am setting everything in my home up with it's own email account and gear.

Additionally - use something like a raspberry pi or an appliance that will remain with the home. If I decide to rent it out, or leave it behind, its not tied to me, but is still manageable.

</comment><comment><USER48> I suspect that eventually this kind of thing will start being specified in the conveyancing, and the lawyers will take the accounts through their custody just as they do the keys and deeds.

</comment><comment><USER49> Do the next resident a favor and burn it to the ground.

</comment><comment><USER50> As fast as possible

</comment><comment><USER51> You want both dumb and smart, or better _automated_ systems.

</comment><comment><USER52> 1\. Say: "open the (pod-)door hal!" ?

</comment><comment><USER53> Whether you're moving out of a smart home or moving into one there a few things you'll want to keep in mind to ensure it's a smooth transition.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why are you leaving your shit?

</comment><comment><USER55> Use lots of thermite to ensure any local data has been deleted ;)

<comment><USER56> I was going to say burn it down, and make it look like an electrical thing...

<comment><USER13> Rig the Nest smoke alarms to start the fire for maximum irony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Answer: Open suitcase. Insert 5 t-shirts, 2 trousers, 7 units of underwear of preference, 7 pairs of socks. Close suitcase. Repeat the same with laptop into backpack. Open door. Move out. Done.

<comment><USER58> You should try getting a cloud-connected suitcase and some underware with its own app, then we'll talk.

<comment><USER57> Answer: Don't do that.</comment></comment></comment>


Washington Post public editor: Jeff Bezos could solve pay equality tomorrow - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/washington-post-bezos-pay-equality.php <comment><USER2> > money he would never, ever miss. But he won't do it. That's all you need to > know.

Saved you a click. Seems like some kind of sustained narrative against Jeff Bezos rather than any serious analysis

<comment><USER3> Amazon drew attention to themselves with this press release [https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/amazon- donates-10-millio...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/amazon- donates-10-million-to-organizations-supporting-justice-and-equity) and I think holding them accountable for not actually doing the thing they want credit for doing is fair.

<comment><USER2> Oh sure, but I was talking about news even before their donation. The news cycle constantly has something negative to say about his net worth for some reason. A figure that is just paper value btw, it's not like he could actually cash in and have billions of dollars in the bank. Net worth numbers are worthless heuristics

</comment></comment></comment><comment> seph-reed I absolutely agree that with social power should come with social responsibility. I absolutely see that Bezos has insane amounts of social power. I absolutely see that he is taking on very little social responsibility... which is the normal amount (note: "normal" has been very many bad things before).

Overall, this article is lame. It's a weak stance and misses what I think should be the central point: with power comes responsibility. Including social power.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have we learned nothing from the past 2-3 weeks? Puff pieces like this don't accomplish anything. Need to find the next Jimmy Hoffa to lead a unionization effort, while putting safeguards in place within the union structure to make sure power is decentralized.

<comment><USER5> If we really need help from the Mafia in order to fix income inequality then we truly are screwed. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> right because your elected officials cannot, therefore we need to find someone that could and look how easy is for them to do

<comment><USER7> Yes, we should demand more from government. However, collective action by workers inside their workplace is also incredibly important. You should check out the Washington Post Guild study cited in this piece, it's quite interesting.

What I'd also add is that in our system the government does not operate independently of powerful folks like Bezos. You can't ignore either of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People are living without hope all across America and Jeff Bezos is afraid of being slightly less rich after becoming the richest man to ever live...

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that pay inequality can be solved by simply having the owner talk to the union and toss money at the problem. Have any large organizations been able to close their pay gaps this way?

<comment><USER10> I don't think the article is suggesting that the billionaire owner should intervene directly with a donation. But rather the billionaire owner should accept 200k p/a drop in revenue from WashPo to clear the gap, the resulting hit in reporting would affect his net worth, but only by a minuscule amount.

<comment><USER9> Right, that's the framing that I don't understand. I'm pretty confident that the cause of pay inequality at the Washington Post isn't people explicitly saying "well, we could pay women and minorities fairly, but we won't do it because Jeff Bezos wants higher profits".</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Fire TV Stick - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/firetvstick

<comment><AUTHOR> With the $20 discount as a Prime member it only comes to $19. I decided to give it a try. I had actually been considering purchasing a Roku recently because my Chromecast doesn't work with my new Comcast router without some router adjustments. For $19, I'm ok with using this for Netflix rather than Chromecast and having to figure out how to setup my router to not use the 5ghz channel.

<comment><USER2> The bummer is that the Netflix app for FireOS is old compared to what you get on other devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I obviously haven't tried it yet. I sure hope they have an update to the Netflix app soon.

<comment><USER2> They must have heard us!

[http://www.aftvnews.com/netflix-releases-new-fire-tv- app/](http://www.aftvnews.com/netflix-releases-new-fire-tv-app/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> $19 makes this an incredible impulse buy.

I recently lost my apple tv remote and buying a fire stick is more attractive than trying to figure out where to buy a new remote and how to set it up.

<comment><USER4> You can program any IR remote (like, for instance, your TV remote) to act as your AppleTV remote. Much more convenient than using the provided-by-Apple remote.

Of course to teach the Apple TV you'll need a working remote or mobile app, so if you don't have any iOS devices you may be out of luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Fire TV stick cannot be powered directly by your HDTV and should be plugged into the wall"

That's really disappointing, I'd rather have less power and be able to power via the TV USB port like chromecast. Maybe even a dealbreaker, definitely broke my impulse buy for now.

<comment><USER6> I'm assuming it means it's the same as the Chromecast, i.e. it isn't powered from the HDMI port.

<comment><USER7> Chromecast is typically powered by the USB port on the TV, not the wall. I'm not going to buy this if I need to plug it into the wall.

<comment><USER8> > Chromecast is typically powered by the USB port on the TV, not the wall.

Chromecast is powered by USB, whether that comes from the TV or the wall depends on whether the TV has a free USB port (which requires having a USB port to start with.) I suspect lots of Chromecasts are used with older, pre- USB TVs (the popularity of TV USB ports largely coincides with Smart TVs, and Chromecast adds more to a TV that isn't already a Smart TV.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you mirror a laptop to the tv using this?

<comment><USER10> It has been confirmed by Amazon to support Miracast, so that would make it the cheapest way to get Windows 8.1 wirelessly cast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fire+stick#!/story/forever/0/fire%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fire+stick#!/story/forever/0/fire%20stick)

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone ran the Amazon Fire TV/Chromecast through a proxy to see what sort of information is being sent back to Amazon/Google?

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone knows what tech is used by included remote? BT or IR?

<comment><AUTHOR> This has turned out to be far more difficult to find out than I would have guessed. I still don't know! They also sell an optional "voice controller", I would assume that uses the same tech. Maybe we can figure it out through those specs.

<comment><USER14> I think we can safely assume it is bluetooth (as the streaming stick is usually behind the TV, out of line-of-sight.

Plus they need to use bluetooth for the voice controller anyway - good luck transmitting voice data over IR :)

<comment><USER15> the remote for the fire tv is bluetooth[1], so I think that is a safe assumption.

and the picture of voice over IR made me think of the IR stream coming out like morse code...

[1] [http://zatznotfunny.com/2014-04/tale-three- remotes/](http://zatznotfunny.com/2014-04/tale-three-remotes/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ultra-cheap mini-server potential?</comment>


The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_2637_video <comment><USER2> I don't think I've managed to piece all this together, perhaps someone can fill in the blanks.

• The patch automatically creates a task group for each TTY.

• The patch automatically assigns each new process to the task group for its controlling TTY.

• In the case where there are large (>cores) numbers of cpu bound jobs, the latency of interactive jobs is vastly improved.

I think the piece I'm missing is the behavior of the scheduler. Does it now make its decisions based on task group cpu consumption instead of process? I saw options to that effect back around 2.6.25.

Why is this an improvement over just nicing the "make -j64" into the basement and letting the interactive jobs have their way as needed? (Likely possibilities are that it is automatic, or maybe there is something about disk IO scheduling happening from the task groups as well.)

<comment><USER3> > I think the piece I'm missing is the behavior of the scheduler. Does it now > make its decisions based on task group cpu consumption instead of process? I > saw options to that effect back around 2.6.25.

Yes, and yes. Previously you could set things like this up explicitly, this makes it (optionally) automatic.

> Why is this an improvement over just nicing the "make -j64" into the > basement

That gives you... I think 10% less CPU weight per level, so you can get down to 13% of base. So your 64 processes will still weigh about 8x one base process.

This lets you consider everything spawned from your terminal as one group, and everything from your X session as another, so your compile processes collectively (no matter how many you have) weigh as much as your GUI processes collectively weigh.

<comment><USER4> So does "tty" or "terminal" in this context also refer to pseudoterminals, so that each xterm/konsole/gnome-terminal instance gets its own scheduling group as well?

<comment><USER3> I would be very surprised if it didn't, this should be the same as what shows under the "TTY" column from "ps -f".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't follow kernel development extremely closely, but it fascinates me that people are _still_ actively working on the kernel's scheduler and achieving a "huge improvement" like this.

<comment><USER6> I remember reading something about an anesthesiologist who got into hacking the scheduler targeting desktop use cases. He generally said that the scheduler gets a lot more attention from people who care more about server work loads and such. He had his own custom kernel patches that people used to get directly from him that weren't in the mainstream kernel -- This was before the era of multi-core, but people said his scheduler had better responsiveness than the default one.

<comment><USER7> Con Kolivas. He's also mentioned in the article.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It makes me wonder whether it is a sign that desktop responsiveness has been neglected by the kernel devs which possibly prioritize server issues. I had read a Google engineer suggesting Canonical should hire decent kernel developers : " P.S. Next thing for Ubuntu to learn --- how to pay their engineers well enough, and how to give them enough time to work on upstream issues, that once they gain that experience on Ubuntu's dime and become well known in the open source community, they don't end jumping ship to companies like Red Hat or Google. :-)"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321029>

<comment><USER9> Canonical has some decent kernel developers, just... not enough, especially for their install base and the amount of work they do.

<comment><USER10> At least they're aware of it; just yesterday they posted this: <http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/canonical_KD%20PG3/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the actual patch ([http://marc.info/?l=linux- kernel&m=128978361700898&w...](http://marc.info/?l=linux- kernel&m=128978361700898&w=2)), with a bit of a summary of what it does.

I don't have enough context to fully follow it, but it sounds like it sets up a better hueristic for grouping related processes into task groups in the scheduler.

</comment><comment><USER12> So what's the downside? You almost never get optimizations like this for free. The post hints that this is also good for server workloads, but what suffers? Realtime would, but realtime usually involves a different scheduler anyway.

<comment><USER13> There isn't one. It's an existing option in the kernel, you can configure cgroups that way already, but most people don't do this so the feature is wasted. All this patch does is roughly approximate a decent-looking cgroup configuration by splitting processes by tty automatically.

<comment><USER14> Of course there will be a regression if you change the scheduler policy. ck tried something similar to this and mplayer performance suffered with it (though I don't remember the details). It also broke gnome-startup because it assumed some specific schedule ordering, though this patch is more limited so it might not.

<comment><USER13> When your application breaks because of _scheduler ordering_ , You're Doing It Wrong.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, well, kernels need to support existing programs…

By the way, your post is the single most obvious statement I've read this year. You got upvoted just because you capitalized some words?

<comment><USER13> I got upvoted because I'm right. Kernels don't need to support horribly designed programs just because they exist, just like they don't need to support horribly designed programs that don't exist yet. Kernels support an interface and that's it. If you write code that abuses the interface, get ready to become a regression, and that'll be your own fault.

(TBH I have no idea why I got upvoted, it wasn't that insightful, but I stick by what I said)

(EDIT: I'm talking about gnome-startup. That's a stupid regression that never should've happened. The mplayer performance bug is totally understandable if you're mucking with the scheduler. What we really need is for someone (distros?) to pick up cgroups and provide a nice UI for it, some sane but nondestructive defaults, etc. Until then, this is a nice patch that keeps badly behaving programs from dragging down the entire system. At the very least, we mostly get user separation in multi-user environments.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not down for me... but here's the text:

In recent weeks and months there has been quite a bit of work towards improving the responsiveness of the Linux desktop with some very significant milestones building up recently and new patches continuing to come. This work is greatly improving the experience of the Linux desktop when the computer is withstanding a great deal of CPU load and memory strain. Fortunately, the exciting improvements are far from over. There is a new patch that has not yet been merged but has undergone a few revisions over the past several weeks and it is quite small -- just over 200 lines of code -- but it does wonders for the Linux desktop.

The patch being talked about is designed to automatically create task groups per TTY in an effort to improve the desktop interactivity under system strain. Mike Galbraith wrote the patch, which is currently in its third version in recent weeks, after Linus Torvalds inspired this idea. In its third form (patch), this patch only adds 224 lines of code to the kernel's scheduler while stripping away nine lines of code, thus only 233 lines of code are in play.

Tests done by Mike show the maximum latency dropping by over ten times and the average latency of the desktop by about 60 times. Linus Torvalds has already heavily praised (in an email) this miracle patch.

Yeah. And I have to say that I'm (very happily) surprised by just how small that patch really ends up being, and how it's not intrusive or ugly either.

I'm also very happy with just what it does to interactive performance. Admittedly, my "testcase" is really trivial (reading email in a web-browser, scrolling around a bit, while doing a "make -j64" on the kernel at the same time), but it's a test-case that is very relevant for me. And it is a _huge_ improvement.

It's an improvement for things like smooth scrolling around, but what I found more interesting was how it seems to really make web pages load a lot faster. Maybe it shouldn't have been surprising, but I always associated that with network performance. But there's clearly enough of a CPU load when loading a new web page that if you have a load average of 50+ at the same time, you _will_ be starved for CPU in the loading process, and probably won't get all the http requests out quickly enough.

So I think this is firmly one of those "real improvement" patches. Good job. Group scheduling goes from "useful for some specific server loads" to "that's a killer feature".

Linus

Initially a Phoronix reader tipped us off this morning of this latest patch. "Please check this out, my desktop will never be the same again, it makes a _lot_ of difference for desktop usage (all things smooth, scrolling etc.)...It feels as good as Con Kolivas's patches."

Not only is this patch producing great results for Linus, Andre Goddard (the Phoronix reader reporting the latest version), and other early testers, but we are finding this patch to be a miracle too. While in the midst of some major OpenBenchmarking.org "Iveland" development work, I took a few minutes to record two videos that demonstrate the benefits solely of the "sched: automated per tty task groups" patch. The results are very dramatic. UPDATE: There's also now a lot more positive feedback pouring in on this patch within our forums with more users now trying it out.

This patch has been working out extremely great on all of the test systems I tried it out on so far from quad-core AMD Phenom CPUs systems to Intel Atom netbooks. For the two videos I recorded them off a system running Ubuntu 10.10 (x86_64) with an Intel Core i7 970 "Gulftown" processor that boasts six physical cores plus Hyper Threading to provide the Linux operating system with twelve total threads.

The Linux kernel was built from source using the Linus 2.6 Git tree as of 15 November, which is nearing a Linux 2.6.37-rc2 state. The only change made from the latest Linux kernel Git code was applying Mike Galbraith's scheduler patch. This patch allows the automated per TTY task grouping to be done dynamically on the kernel in real-time by writing either 0 or 1 to /proc/sys/kernel/sched_autogroup_enabled or passing "noautogroup" as a parameter when booting the kernel. Changing the sched_autogroup_enabled value was the only system difference between the two video recordings.

Both videos show the Core i7 970 system running the GNOME desktop while playing back the Ogg 1080p version of the open Big Buck Bunny movie, glxgears, two Mozilla Firefox browser windows open to Phoronix and the Phoronix Test Suite web-sites, two terminal windows open, the GNOME System Monitor, and the Nautilus file manager. These videos just show how these different applications respond under the load exhibited by compiling the latest Linux kernel using make -j64 so that there are 64 parallel make jobs that are completely utilizing the Intel processor.

<comment><USER15> OT: is "make -j64" overkill unless you have dozens of cores or am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> You're right - but that was the point. The patch was trying to fix problems with the process scheduler, and "-j64" is going to make lots of processes that want to do work and need scheduling.

<comment><USER15> thanks, but then the "that is my tipical workload" thingy does not hold, as you rarely have >60 cpu bound processes running at the same time. Well, flash player in chrome notwithstanding ;)

<comment><USER17> It probably approximates Linus's typical workload, which I imagine involves constant compiling and testing while compiling. He's probably still CPU bound.

<comment><USER18> make?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am newbie when it comes to compiling kernel. Is it a pain to do with stock ubuntu 10.10?

Sometimes I run something heavy on my laptop and desktop freezes annoy me. If this patch will allow me to get around it - I would be glad to try it out.

Anyone having url of some niuce tutorial to compile new kernel for ubuntu 10.10?

<comment><USER20> It isn't hard to do, but a painless way to learn is to install a ubuntu 10.10 instance in a virtualbox and try it all in the box. If you screw up, who cares. After you have been through the process once it won't be intimidating to do it for your real OS.

<comment><USER21> Yes, it's indeed quite easy to compile your own kernel, and virtualbox is a good idea. (For compiling you won't actually need the virtualbox, but for booting from it without worries that you broke something, virtualbox sure comes in handy.)

I use "sudo make menuconfig", which gives you a text-based menu, there may also be a graphical version. I would not recommend "sudo make config", as that only gives you a long list of questions to answer.

Anyway, the trick is to read all the documention, and stick with safe choices, if you do not know what you are doing.

<comment><USER22>
      # sudo make xconfig

should give you a point-and-click interface to the same menu. I haven't used it in years, but it was pretty clunky back then. It's just nicer to poke around in than the text-mode menu.

<comment><USER23> You don't need to be root to compile a Tk application and run it! You also don't need to be root to compile the kernel.

You only need root to copy vmlinux to /boot and copy the modules to /lib.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anything from Phoronix should be taken with a grain of salt. This looks legit since it has a message from Linus praising the patch, but there have been several similar stories out of Phoronix that turn out to be hoaxes or misunderstandings.

That said, such a patch would be pretty rad.

</comment><comment><USER25> i whish something similar could be ported to BSD/Darwin, OSX. I have a MBP 6,2 (i5) with 4GB mem/5400 rpm disk and it's quite easy to hog it down, to almost unbearable sometimes.

<comment><USER26> What sort of tasks?

FWIW, I had a similar configuration to yours (just an older MBP) and installing an SSD helped _immensely_. I can hit 200% CPU load and not even realize it until the fans kick in…

<comment><USER25> I know the subject is pretty much Apple's and oranges but i'm currently running: \- Terminal with 2 tabs \- firefox with 2 tabs \- chrome with about 9 \- gaim and skype \- iTunes streaming soma.fm \- Netbeans with an opened project \- jEdit \- Colloquy \- Postgres instance

and as soon as i booted Windows XP in VMware, well, took me a while to be able to reply to this post (after the vm settled).

I also that you might be saying "d'oh" but i've had Gentoo running on this metal and a "similar" environment AND compiling stuff with -j4 doesn't freeze away my UI.

My user experience with "OSX" is that it's, way more prone to unresponsiveness due to load, but hey, who cares :P _clicks Time Machine_

<comment><USER26> Your typical workload sounds almost exactly the same to mine - right down to VMware temporarily killing OS X performance.

Not that Anonymous Guy On HN is worth much, but get an SSD - it'll be the best upgrade you've ever purchased.

(Or maybe I just needed to sidegrade to Linux. :)

<comment><USER27> Do you have a suggestion on a good and large SSD? And what did you install it into?

<comment><USER26> The Intel SSDs are good; they top out at 160GB and they're not as fast as some of the newer drives - but their track record is nearly flawless. It's what I have, but I ordered one the minute it was posted on Newegg last year. Some of the newer Sandforce-based drives are supposed to be good, though you'll want to pick one from a reliable manufacturer and with a stable firmware. If you have a Mac, OWC[1] is a good choice, as I believe they have firmware that garbage-collects HFS+, which helps to keep the SSD as fast as possible. I also think OCZ is good, but check reviews to make sure people aren't having too many problems.

You can also get a brackets that replaces your optical drive, and allows you to fit a 2.5" HDD. I have one in my 17" non-unibody MBP, and it's really the best of both worlds - I keep OS X, my working files and apps on the SSD, along with my main Windows XP web testing VM. My iTunes library, media, and games stay on the HDD, along with a Boot Camped copy of Windows 7 (though it's a pain to get the installer to run without an internal optical drive). I keep a cheap Samsung bus-powered DVD burner in my bag, but in reality I rarely need it. I think OWC sells a bracket for Macs, but if you can figure out exactly which bracket you need, a site called newmodeus.com sells them for almost every laptop ever made for considerably less.

I really do believe my SSD is the best upgrade I've ever spent money on; no computer I use from now on will be without one. It's not so much that the computer is faster; it's more the feeling that the computer does not grind to a halt or slow down, no matter what's going on. (I may have compared my computer to the Terminator amongst friends once or twice… it just doesn't slow down.)

1: macsales.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 9 upvotes and it's already down. Anybody has a mirror? This seems pretty useful.

<comment><USER29> anybody know a ubuntu ppa for this ?

<comment><USER17> Do they put kernel patches in PPAs?

<comment><USER30> No, but you can make a deb of a patched kernel and compile that for PPA distribution.

It wouldn't be very difficult to make, I would expect to see one in the next 24 hours or so.

Be wary of getting your kernel from a PPA though - consider it experimental.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I've only used PPAs for apps and such, didn't realize people put kernels up too. Though like you say, probably would only use that for a virtual machine instance, will wait till the next kernel patch for my base workstation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just for the brave ou there: to build a custom kernel for Ubuntu, based on the actual Ubuntu kernel image, you have to follow these instructions:

<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile>

Apply the patch before compiling and there you go.

</comment><comment><USER32> Makes me wonder that don't they have kernel APIs for process schedulers and I/O schedulers by now? The scheduler tweaks have been going on for ages.

Instead of compiling a single new kernel module (or downloading it prebuilt from an apt repo or a PPA) and kicking it in with modprobe, we now need to obtain the sources for the whole kernel, apply the patches, configure, build, and deploy. Sure Debian/Ubuntu has that partially automatized but it's still a pain.

At least I'll wait for stock 2.6.38 on Ubuntu and cross my fingers they put this patch in.

<comment><USER33> Pluggable schedulers have been proposed, implemented, and shot down by Linus several times in the past. IANAKH _, but Linus's argument seems to basically boil down to this: for a monolithic kernel, delegating something as central as task scheduling to pluggable modules is a pretty big hit in terms of latency and complexity vs. just putting the best, most tightly-tuned scheduler you can smack dab in the heart of the beast.

_ : I Am Not A Kernel Hacker

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is funny and cool at the same time- back when I still used Linux regularly, it was because it was way smoother than windows under load. I don't know if it regressed since then and was fixed, or just got better, but either is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER35> So, is this really going to help, if I don't have tons of busy processes (a'la "make -j64") running?

<comment><USER4> It can help prevent background processes (like disk indexing or manpage index updating) from interfering with interactive processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> i am impressed, i have never expected such dramatic improvement on my desktop</comment>


Dell Said to Near Buyout as Microsoft Talks Deal Financing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-22/dell-said-to-near-buyout-as-microsoft-discusses-deal-financing.html <comment><USER2> I am reminded of a comment I heard attributed to Bill Joy which was "Nothing says 'circling the drain' like one former tech leader buying another former tech leader."

I see that there are several reports of this rumor floating around, I suspect that its true and the 'leaker' is someone who is trying to get a better deal by letting the world know you can buy Dell for $14/share. I expect it is a positive for Dell to go private again, but I don't know if its in Microsoft's interest to be part of the game. I expect a successful Dell strategy might be to partner with Redhat and move their product line to something more standard with solid Linux support. Which is to say something closer to Supermicro's strategy but with Redhat on board.

<comment><USER3> According to the article, Microsoft is not buying Dell. They are financing the deal - and at $2 billion, essentially out of petty cash.

While there are many possible upsides, the one that stands out is that as a private entity, they can participate with Microsoft on research without worrying about Wall Street's demands for quarterly growth. For Microsoft, inside knowledge of the hardware roadmap will help them maintain leadership in the Enterprise segment.

As for Red Hat, they didn't earn $2 billion in net revenue last year. And Linux is certainly not a path to success with consumers or on the enterprise desktop.

<comment><USER2> To be clear, anyone who participates in the financing is given fractional ownership in proportion to their participation. There are a number of reasons to have fractional ownership, but at this level it is generally strategic.

Dell's strategy seems to be about increasing their enterprise presence. And that can be achieved in much the same way IBM or HP go about it which is a combination of software offerings, product mix, and consulting.

At the enterprise software level there is a 'gap' (at least I see one, it may be bogus) of enterprise level support for Linux systems. Red Hat does software support (RHEL) but they don't have a hardware business to go along with it. So if I'm an enterprise customer, and I want to install a Linux server 'farm'/'grid'/'cloud' and I want one team to "own" the support issues, I'm sort of stuck.

I recently did an evaluation of the HP Gen8 server hardware which was amazing hardware, but really suffered from a sort of 20th century server mindset. I've got Supermicro hardware which goes out of its way to be flexible, but I'm still chasing driver updates in enterprise linux builds (RHEL or CentOS). So having something a server choice that was strongly aligned to Linux in the enterprise space, and willing to provide first responder support to driver compatibility issues, that would be a good addition to the current choices.

And if one of your strategic partners was Microsoft, I expect it would be uncomfortable pushing a strategy that made Linux a solid alternative in the Enterprise at that level.

<comment><USER3> Red hat isn't cut out to be a full stack partner. Not large enough to support the 38,000,000 PC's Dell sells a year. Indeed, few companies are.

Nevermind that partnering with Microsoft made Michael Dell a billionaire and the thirty year relationship between the companies. Or the lack of a roadmap for Linux and a mobile strategy.

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested in knowing your (brudgers) history with this to put that statement into context. Your blog doesn't offer much insight.

I ask because the statement "Red hat[sic] isn't cut out to be a full stack partner" is unsupported. Followed by the comment on "38M PC's Dell sells" in a year missed the point completely.

The margin in Dell's business is in servers. Not 'desktops' and not 'laptops' (which may be your primary exposure to the company, but I don't know). The successful enterprise server companies (IBM, HP, and to some extent Sun/Oracle) benefit from that 'full stack' support, but one of Red Hat's challenges has been that no single partner (with the possible exception of Supermicro) can extract the necessary cooperation from the third party device makers to get the support they need to drivers. IBM, HP, or Sun can say to Marvell "We're going to use your SATA controller in our xyz-666-3245-665-/A controller, if we can get driver source code and 24hr turn around on support issues." Those agreements will usually put a few exemplar machines inside of Marvell (or what ever vendor) which will work with the company to insure that the driver does everything it should and nothing it shouldn't. And more importantly when it breaks it gives enough information to turn around a fix in short order. Those relations cost resources and really are only affordable to companies that have a solid presence in the enterprise space. (or in places like Google where a lot of servers are being used internally)

Dell using Red Hat for their server OS partner, might feel more comfortable, and have better pricing control, than Dell using Microsoft as a partner. And at server volumes and margin points such a strategy is very doable. You could even play Canonical off the Red Hat guys for a bit of competitive pressure. All of that is cheaper than building a new distro team in house and not one of Dell's core competencies.

The more interesting statement though is the last one, _"Nevermind that partnering with Microsoft made Michael Dell a billionaire and the thirty year relationship between the companies. Or the lack of a roadmap for Linux and a mobile strategy."_

That is all accurate, but what is the truth? And this is where we have to guess. Was the lack of a Linux and mobile strategy _because_ of the partnering with Microsoft? Or was it just a bad guess? If it was the former, then having Microsoft own a big chunk is a problem, if it was the latter then you're not going to get very quality advice from Microsoft based on Microsoft's track record on Linux and Mobile. Either way, what "was" for Dell may have lead up to their current situation, but seems pretty clear that continuing on with the same plan they have had for the last 10 years isn't going to result in success.

That leaves us on HN taking potshots at these dribs and drabs of information. Sort of like CIA analysts looking for a plot inside innocuous movements of goat herds.

<comment><USER4> A strong Dell buying or partnering with Red Hat would make sense for Red Hat for the reasons you propose, but doesn't really make as much sense for Dell, and especially not for Dell as it is now.

The commodity Linux server world is going to switch, increasingly, to Supermicro or even lower margin providers.

The kind of enterprise sales which do bring in big margin and big absolute dollars for Dell are still Windows (and to a lesser extent, VMware), and include ok storage and crappy networking/accessories.

I think there's money in USG-scale desktop deployments, but it might just be a cost of getting the server business; it's hard to separate out "we can cover all of your desktops AND servers" into separate profitability for each line, since clearly servers, storage, and services are used to cross-subsidize the desktop/laptops.

The weakness for Dell is mobile (which Red Hat doesn't touch); Windows Phone may be a viable partner there, although personally I would have bought RIMM at the depths of their doom instead.

The other weakness has always been a lack of professional services, but we've seen how badly attempts at that have worked out for HP, too. What might have made sense would have been buying mid-market microsoft solution providers and rolling them into Dell Professional Services.

Partnering more with Microsoft seems like the best move for them to preserve total profitability; it probably isn't the best for Dell's overall position in 15 years, but I think that ship sailed; the biggest server vendors in 5-10 years are going to be building totally commoditized stuff to public specs, I believe.

<comment><USER2> That makes a lot of sense. Seeing it from the Dell perspective a bit more puts them into something of a sticky wicket. I don't think the Ubuntu phone would count as a mobile strategy just yet.

Looking over some of the presentations from the Open Compute Summit it looks like Dell could play there. It has some attractiveness for a vendor that is operationally efficient. I don't see a lot of Windows support there but that may be that I just don't look for it for my shop.

One wonders if they get a big cash infusion from selling off their Laptop/Deskside business to an LG or a Asustek they might carve the company into a enterprise servers, storage, services (SSS) play. Not sure who would head it up though from their current management ranks. Alternatively an OCP/PrivateCloud play for companies that want a more fungible server architecture. Maybe take some of the wilder work Cutler did on the distributed computing side and productizing around that.

Not a fun place to be for them to be sure, I will be watching closely to see what road they pick and how well they execute on it. From such things one can learn quite a bit.

<comment><USER4> Open Compute type platforms are going to destroy margins. Margins for high volume servers (i.e. anything where Supermicro can play) already suck so much compared to the old school "Dell just has to be cheaper than Sun or IBM" world.

I really think preserving their (dying) enterprise margins gives them better total profit over the next 10 years, vs. being fast to position themselves for the bleak low-margin future. It's just like the RIAA labels -- made more sense for them to eke out $20 CDs for an extra year or four vs. going early into the MP3 future. Use the cash from $20 CD sales to then sue/force unprofitable licenses on anyone crazy enough to do music services, later.

The only really good thing about Dell is that they're not HP. HP has strong channel sales, especially in the middle east/etc., but has probably the worst corporate governance of any major company, and is generally doomed, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What replaced Dell? HP?

Offices are still buying desktop PCs by the pallet-load. What are they buying?

edit: I'll answer my own question: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_leading_PC_vend...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_leading_PC_vendors#2006-2012)

<comment><USER6> They are also just NOT buying. A five year old computer should run email and Office just fine. Maybe get a RAM upgrade or something for $50.

<comment><USER7> I think its also about Microsoft and how the company has failed to provide any real additional value over a Windows XP machine with Office 2001. My corporate client is running XP with Office 2003 and I really wish they'd stuck with the 2001 edition. Same features, less annoying.

Stagnation in innovation is coming back to bite them.

<comment><USER8> For many of them XP is perfect, a lot of their work is being done online or custom apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dell is not being purchased by Microsoft. Silver Lake Partners, a PE firm that does investments and leveraged buyouts (LBOs), is conducting an LBO of Dell. Microsoft is merely providing some of the capital for the buyout, which would likely take the form of a loan to Silver Lake Partners.

Again, Microsoft is not buying Dell, Silver Lake Partners is.

It makes a lot of sense for MS 1. from a strategic standpoint, 2. Microsoft having tens of billions of cash reserves which need a return, and 3. MS + Silver lake have a prior relationship: MS purchased Skype from them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Dell on Apple in '97:

 _> "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"_

Dell on Dell today:

See above.

Sound like he heeds his own advice

Have to respect that :)

<comment><USER11> They're not shutting Dell down...

<comment><USER12> But if they're going to be backed by private equity ... those guys REALLY want their 20+% return in five years. And they'll direct Dell to shutter unprofitable or non-key parts of their business as soon as possible.

I expect Dell to be a much smaller company a year from now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dell desktops and laptops are incredibly popular in India because they are officially Linux supported (N series) and because of their CompleteCover warranty, which is awesome.

Macbooks are very expensive out here, plus Apple warranty is really, really bad.

Surprisingly, the other company which has a decent after sales support is Samsung (Lenovo sells through resellers, which screws up the experience).

</comment><comment><USER7> Dell is a surprising addition, but only logical if you consider that every business partner of Microsoft, ever, was either bought out or killed by Microsoft. I am still surprised people want to be business partners with that company. Watch what will happen to Nokia.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see what advantages Dell hopes to gain by going private. Dell has always been a one-trick pony: reduce the cost of PCs and servers by eliminating retail operations and manufacturing to-order or overseas. Everyone caught up to Dell a decade ago. Their problem today is that they provide nothing distinctive and occupy a stagnant market niche. Are they planning some sort of outrageously-expensive pivot to Apple-style consumer electronics or a Nokia-style desperation move to pin all their hopes on Microsoft's mobile platforms?

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope they don't cancel the ubuntu xps developers edition :(

</comment><comment><USER16> Dell, Nokia, Borders, Blockbuster. The world changes and people shift platforms. It doesn't matter how good the company is when they don't have products anyone wants. The enterprise market is still there but not so much with Dell and it is never going to have the same margins again. Microsoft is just going to draw this out.

</comment><comment><USER17> I could see a certain benefit to a Microsoft-owned Dell.

It might sound strange to the HN crowd, but I've actually seen more loyalty toward Dell than MS in "the enterprise" recently.

I could see a strategy around retaining and expanding certain parts of the the enterprise business being enabled by owning and integrating the entire stack.

</comment><comment><USER18> i don't get what MS is trying to achieve. the market isn't there anymore. so why prop up a business with outside money?

dell for consumers is done. low margin commodities can be done without that kind of overhead. a race to the bottom is profitable for while, but then you reach it and boom.

<comment><USER19> Dell makes a nice bit of coin (2+bil in profit last quarter according to google), mostly from the enterprise stuff, hence the kerfuffle over 3Par 2 years ago.

What I don't get is why they're submitting to a leveraged buyout.

<comment><USER20> It's Michael Dell that's trying to bring the company private. It's hardly _submitting_ to a leveraged buyout when it's the founder and CEO (who still owns ~ 12% of the company) leading the effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I haven't bought a Dell PC since 2000. It was a piece of junk. Their support was also junk. I'm curious if this has changed in the past decade. Anyone bought a Dell recently that wants to weigh in?

EDIT: Guess not (which isn't too surprising)

<comment><USER22> It's hardly scientific, but both my parents have Dell laptops, and they seem happy enough with them. I'm not a big fan of the plastic construction, having been spoiled by my metal Macbook, but they seem solid enough, and apparently there's always some special offer of one kind or another to take advantage of, so the prices can be very reasonable.

And my old employer bought dell desktops. I guess they had some bulk deal or something. They always seemed basically fine, and felt pretty solidly put together - I wouldn't have wanted mine to fall on my foot. Some of the staff had dell laptops, and nobody seemed to have much to say about them one way or the other. Which is probably exactly what you want, really...

I can't speak for older Dell stuff, nor for anybody else's experience, but I've seen no evidence that their computers are worth avoiding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure Dell would have preferred Microsoft give them an OS that people would want to buy PC to use. But this will do.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool. Secure Boot for all your dell stuff.

</comment><comment><USER25> Microsoft will now have their hands in 1) Facebook 2) Nokia 3) Dell

Interesting

<comment><USER26> And all that without making anything anyone gives a shit about :-)</comment></comment>


Tech Giants Protest Looming US Pirate Site Blocking Order - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/tech-giants-protest-looming-us-pirate-site-blocking-order-171013/ <comment><USER2> Now is a good time to bookmark the sci-hub onion site, [http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/](http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/)</comment>


German intelligence: Saudi Arabia is playing a destabilizing role in the M.East - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-is-playing-an-increasingly-destabilising-role-in-the-middle-east-german-intelligence-a6760911.html <comment><USER2> We could have just told them.

edit: I undertand it's a big step to see a government agency make an official announcement that will have a lot of diplomatic fallout. The big news is that the BND said it, not that someone was surprised by what they said.

Now, at least, se can all talk about the elephant in the room.

<comment><USER3> It's a big step (and fraught with diplomatic problems) that a government agency is saying this openly. Have any other (major, Western) governments or their agencies done so already?

<comment><USER4> It was mentioned by one of the candidates in the republican presidential debate for example (I forgot who), so it definitely is part of the mainstream discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> German Vice Chancellor Gabriel:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/120...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12035838/German- vice-chancellor-accuses-Saudi-Arabia-of-funding-Islamic-extremism-in-the- West.html)

[http://news.yahoo.com/german-vice-chancellor-warns-saudi- ara...](http://news.yahoo.com/german-vice-chancellor-warns-saudi-arabia-over- islamist-135521960.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a question for all the folks out there who preach the "give them all jobs" line to ending terrorism: What happens when oil has no value cause we don't need it anymore? You know, the same oil that bankrolls half the paragon countries on the planet like our good friends the Saudis.

In case you can't tell, I believe that line of reasoning is complete garbage.

<comment><USER7> Could clarify that a bit for me? Thx.

<comment><USER8> I believe the GP is talking about the fact that most of the jihadi foot solders are unemployed/under-employed with poor job prospects, and many are unmarried with poor marriage prospects. For instance, Saudi Arabia for a time had a program where they took convicted jihadis, gave them job training and loans/grants for dowries (and maybe ran some kind of matchmaking service... I forget the details) and saw significantly lowered re-arrest rates for jihadis who got jobs and wives shortly after leaving prison.

Improving economic outlook reduces the pool of recruits, but the GP is questioning the long-term macroeconomic outlook in the region, and in turn questions the long-term viability of harming extremist recruiting by improving job prospects for young unmarried men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After 9/11 we should have taken over Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq since that is where the money came from.

<comment><USER10> You can't attack Saudi Arabia because that's tantamount to the attacking the entire Muslim world. Not many Muslims I know have any love for the Saudi regime, but almost all have a huge emotional connection to the holy cities of Makkah and Medina that they don't even have for their own countries.

<comment><USER11> The cultural cities usually were exempted from destruction. See the siege of Leningrad (with targets being hospitals or bazaars but not bridges or other cultural artifacts, when it would have been easy to rake the ground all over) or the avoidance to target Kyoto (when almost every city over 30k people all around Japan having been bombed at one time or another).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm skeptical. Wouldn't it be more beneficial for them to have a stabilized region under their control than a destabilized one? They have enough economical power to pull this off, so I assume the destabilization is merely a side effect of supporting the wrong groups due to religious association than a dedicated effort at destabilization.

<comment><USER13> When Iran was supporting Shiite death squads in Iraq, I'm sure part of their plan was to destabilize the US backed unity government in order to further Shiite control of that government. Which looks like it pretty much worked. Destabilizing the Yemen government would allow the Shiite rebels to gain more power.

Discrediting the recognized government (can't really say legitimate to any government over there), is an old strategy intended to grant leverage and the eventual bargaining table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> But the ultimate enabler of countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran is the US/West by 1. making them rich through oil-buying (some of the money goes to fund terrorism) and 2. selling them arms.

So the West is to blame indirectly (and directly), too.

</comment><comment><USER15> Obligatory:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcaIA9SU7o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcaIA9SU7o)

</comment><comment><USER16> is it a Hacker News, isn't it?</comment>


Security flaw in NXP chips, millions of car remotes are effected - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/08/oh-good-new-hack-can-unlock-100-million-volkswagens/ <comment><USER2> Link to full paper: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3010178/Volkswage...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3010178/Volkswagen- amp-HiTag2-Keyless-Entry-System.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Affected. Not effected.</comment>


Show HN: Build custom designed CMS sites in the browser without any coding - <AUTHOR> http://pinegrow.com

<comment><USER2> That's all well and good until people start wanting more power over the development. It would be nice if these projects that started out with a clear goal and intentions stayed this way.

The unfortunate truth is CMS's are ten a penny these days and to knock the big boys off is near impossible

Yes it looks good, yes it looks promising but yes there are 100's of CMS's already built out there that do this exact job.

Good luck with the endeavour but I think you are about 5 years too late

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! Our unique value proposition is that designers can build custom site templates quickly, without coding. Most existing solutions (Weebly for example) require coding html / css templates for implementing custom site design. Our target market are designers who don't have a lot of coding skills or those who don't want to deal with coding for smaller projects.

<comment><USER3> Did you do any research to validate that designers want something like this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. We did a lot of client web development work (Pinegrow evolved from there) and we often work with designers who need us to turn their designs into a functional site. Many designers are not coders and have no interest in dealing with nuances of html, css and javascript. They are very interested in Pinegrow as a development tool, backed up by good technical customer support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The demo is impressive. I guess many people would be interested in this. I would pitch it on Forrst and Dribble where a lot of designers hang out.

From the demo I see that most dimensions are determined the wysiwyg way. Can you serve different resolutions like those used by smartphones, tablets, PCs/Macs and printers and are the layouts fluid?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, fluid designs are possible. We are also working on option to specify media based rules for individual elements including serving different image resolutions to different devices. The main idea is to have one set of content that is then published in appropriate form to individual publishing channels.

<comment><USER4> Great to hear. People will like it. Non-fluid designs and missing media support are what I hear most when talking about CMS'es. There will always be different levels of site building in the future and your product fits in between them:

        - Simple page builders
        - Engines with prebuilt themes
        - Engines with custom themes
        - Your Pinegrow
        - Designed PSDs converted into themes
        - Individually programmed sites using frameworks
        - Totally custom built sites

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First thing that struck me was professional designers probably wouldn't use this, they're likely not willing to give up complete design control to a wysiwyg tool, and most have preferred cms and tools.

So with that said, seems the best target is hobbyists, casuals, or people like small business owners who want to save a buck by trying to make their own site (I know several small business owners who have rolled their own site with dreamweaver, for example)

I'd love to see it with a landing video that talks about the problem it solves for people with no experience, rather than using terms like "standards compliant", "hosting platform", etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition to DIY market we also have those designers who until now had to hire a programmer to turn their designs into a functional website (with cms or without). Thanks for the landing video suggestion!

<comment><USER5> True, but I would have thought most designers like that would work at a web dev shop already, thought I couldn't say that for sure.

Forgot to mention: Looks like a great piece of tech and a great product. Can't wait to see where it goes after launch :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't know about anyone else but the submit button isn't working for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a delay with sending form submissions through email. I disabled it, works much better now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems pretty slick!

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool, looks interesting. I look forward to checking out its features.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks wonderful!

</comment><comment><USER10> God, please, anything but Vimeo... I can't watch it on my phone. I could use a PC, but I cannot do it right now.</comment>


NASA just launched 8 satellites from a rocket dropped from a plane at 40,000ft - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/nasa_orbital_atk_cygnss_launch/ <comment><USER2> Lifting a rocket that high before firing it carries another benefit besides the (small) altitude gain and lower fuel requirements due to drag: Max Q, the maximum dynamic pressure that has to be sustained by the rocket usually happens at a lower altitude than that (depending on the mission).

This means your rocket has to sustain a far lower structural load, making it safer and lighter.

<comment><USER3> Max Q for the Peagus and Saturn V are actually at the exact same altitude. ~14-16km. And nearly identical pressures.

The thing is because all rockets follow the same trajectory to orbit, The gravity curve. So you hit similar speeds at similar altitudes. If you don't, you either aren't making it to orbit, or you're wasting fuel.

This is because the gravity curve is a straight line if you ask Einstein, just earth's gravity makes space-time look wibbly-wobbly.

Newton calls this the derivative of the balastic arc.

There isn't a magical trajectory to orbit that is cheaper.

<comment><USER4> I was disappointed to realize that "balastic arc" was just a typo. I thought I'd learned a new word. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Orbital ATK has been building and launching the Pegasus XL ([https://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-systems/space-launch- vehic...](https://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-systems/space-launch- vehicles/pegasus/)) for a bit now. It is an extremely cheap platform that is launched from an airplane.

What's neat is the User Manual is available online: [https://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-systems/space-launch- vehic...](https://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-systems/space-launch- vehicles/pegasus/docs/Pegasus_UsersGuide.pdf) [pdf]

<comment><USER6> Extremely cheap? Initially it was $6mm, now it costs almost as much as a Falcon 9 launch.

Part of that is due to its extremely low launch rate -- this was the first launch since 2013 -- but still.

<comment><USER5> if Orbital launched as much as SpaceX, the Pegasus cost before margin could be 20% of what it is today.

<comment><USER6> With Stratolaunch buying a bunch of Pegasus XL rockets, we'll know in a couple of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked on the software for the star trackers in these. Glad to hear they have already made contact. :-)

<comment><USER8> I can't get my head around how this thing works. Apart from the direct GPS signal it's able to also receive the part of it that was reflected by the ocean? How does the reflected signal tell anything about the wind speed?

And btw what are star trackers used for? As a fallback for GPS?

<comment><USER9> IIRC, star trackers are used as both a position and an attitude reference. GPS gives you only position (though more sophisticated systems can be used to determine attitude).

While a GPS outage is a minor inconvenience for most of us, it could be pretty catastrophic for spacecraft if they didn't have another position reference.

EDIT: See below - I was off; they're just attitude, not position

<comment><USER7> Star trackers are usually just used for attitude, not position. I've heard of research to use them in conjunction with a camera pointed at Earth to resolve coastlines to get position, but it's very theoretical at this point AFAIK.

<comment><USER10> For those of us just watching, what is attitude? At first I though spellcheck might have corrected it from altitude, but 3 times among 2 differently people I see attitude.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's orientation, AFAIK, what direction it's facing.

<comment><USER7> Yep. Think of it like right ascension, declination, and roll from astronomy. Given attitude, your position, and the time, you can know where you are pointing on the Earth (lat/lon).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just an FYI, NASA live streams mosts of these launches here: [https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public)

</comment><comment><USER12> The Pegasus launch system has been around since 1990. First private orbital launch system that worked.

</comment><comment><USER13> A little off topic.. I've always wondered why NASA lunched rockets from Cape Canaveral (only 3 meters above sea level).

Granted, it's a little tricky to transport rockets, but surely it would have made more sense to move the operations to a mountain near the equator?

How much fuel would be saved by lunching 3000 meters above sea level instead?

<comment><USER14> Not much at all. Low earth orbit is ~200km so the mountain is only helping by 1.5% of the needed altitude.

Altitude is not even the most difficult part of getting to orbit. Getting to the necessary horizontal speed to stay in space takes a hell of a lot more fuel than going straight up.

<comment><USER13> So say a 4000m launchpad is feasible, that's 2% of the needed altitude. While gravity will be roughly the same (yeah it's higher altitute, but there's the mass from the mountain). There is much less atmosphere* (~50% less pressure & 1/3 less of it to get through).

Given that payload to fuel ratio is roughly 1:10, this does seem to add up to a significant saving.

*Air pressure numbers [http://www.mide.com/pages/air-pressure-at-altitude-calculato...](http://www.mide.com/pages/air-pressure-at-altitude-calculator)

<comment><USER14> you're missing the point. altitude and drag losses are nothing compared to horizontal velocity. you need to be going 7.8km/s. Per second! That takes a lot more energy than gaining any kind of altitude or overcoming atmospheric drag. It's not significant savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Given how SpaceX has landed things on a drone ship, presumably they're considering launching from a rocket that's been lifted above the bulk of the atmosphere using a balloon of some sort.

You'd probably save a ton of fuel if you could launch from 40 or even 100K feet.

<comment><USER16> Eh, not really. It's not getting to altitude that's expensive, it's speed. Orbit is blisteringly fast.

<comment><USER15> It's a lot easier to get up to speed if you don't have to deal with cutting through a heavy chunk of atmosphere on the way up. Plus, rocket designs could vary, be less concerned about aerodynamics, if they were starting from a launch platform already in very thin air.

A wider, shorter rocket might work better in thin air, for example, but that would be impractical launching from sea-level as is tradition.

<comment><USER17> I have this dream that someday we'll build a SR-710 that's 10x the size and carry a BIG payload. And then putting stuff into orbit will basically be strapping your thing to a "big" upper stage (but small relative to a whole rocket stack), loading it into the cargo bay and then some fancy flying.

I know it'll never happen for a variety of reasons. But it's such a cool plane and when you think about cruising at mach 3 (2000mph+, 15% of escape velocity ([http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/)](http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/\))) it seems like it could make the rocket equation for a plane-launched rocket much, much more forgiving.

<comment><USER18> One big reason it'll never happen: The square-cube law. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square- cube_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)

<comment><USER17> Well 10x doesn't necessarily mean 10x longer, it might mean something with 10x the total wing area and thus 10x the lifting capacity. Which might only be say 3x the length and 3x the width.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is probably a tremendously dumb question, but what are the major impediments to literally sticking a big freaking balloon to the top of a rocket and floating it up much of the way?

<comment><USER20> Why bother with the rocket? It sounds mad, but you can actually just send the balloon. to orbit... [http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf](http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Why do they need the space station part?

<comment><USER20> Because the orbital ship is structurally unable to cope with higher atmospheric density so must be assembled and maintained at altitude and never go below the height of the station. There's a few challenges there...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, kudos to NASA but also kudos to ISRO for taking the initiative in making satellite launches more cost effective.

<comment><USER6> Pegasus XL is a private launcher (NASA is the customer), and it's not cost- effective. It costs nearly as much as a Falcon 9 for a much smaller payload.

I'm not sure where the India reference came from? The EU and Japan both operate smaller launchers. A couple of startups are getting close to their first launch, too.

<comment><USER22> I see. I made the wrong assumption then that sending 8 satellites from a rocket that gets some help from a plane (requiring less propellant/size) was more cost-effective. Thanks for clarifying.</comment></comment></comment>