Stacer: Linux System Optimizer and Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oguzhaninan/Stacer <comment><USER2> Hi, I am oguzhaninan I am rewriting the new version with c ++. It will use a maximum of 20 mb ram. In a very short time, I will release the new version with more features.

<comment><USER3> Why not Rust :)?

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing due to the wealth of GUI frameworks available for C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh... I haven't used this, but in general management GUIs are a cheap veneer over the goodness of Linux. You're still going to need the terminal when things break or just can't be done with the GUI.

I will admit that I started managing Linux through GUIs, but ultimately CLI utilities and configuration files lead to a deeper understanding and a wider set of options.

Run Arch Linux for a few months and you'll get over the textual interface hump.

</comment><comment><USER6> This one is probably a bad example (there are some warning signs). But for people who don't get computers (willfully or not) it's useful to have things like this. There is a large portion of the market who is going to want things like this. And as Linux becomes more popular we can either build good ones and recommend them on all of the swap to Linux websites (or include them by default in common consumer oriented distributions) - a lesson windows learned - or deal with a ton of shitty adware infested bloatware variations. People _are_ going to download things like these, and it's a question of whether they will be good ones or malicious ones.

</comment><comment><USER7> While it looks nice, I can't find any use in it :-/

I mean those desktop widgets displaying CPU/Mem usage integrate much better into the desktop. If you want to uninstall something you should better know what you are doing and the same goes for init jobs...

Don't get me wrong I love visual tools as long as they do something better than their cli equivalents. For example, I am a huge fan of filelight [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filelight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filelight) because it enables quick insights about disk usage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh boy. Reminds me of the classic "Windows optimizers" complete with set of badges from various "quality websites". In case you are not familiar with the category, generally you were lucky if they only left your system in subtly half-broken state. Because the other, possibly more common, alternative was that the software was used to drop in a bucketful of malware.

</comment><comment><USER9> How "big" is it? I'm just wondering what space do these Electron apps take. It's great to see such "Windows" apps in Linux at last. I just hope it won't be 300MB per app.

</comment><comment><USER10> My first thought was that Electron and Node would be pretty heavyweight for this use case. I'm curious to know if anyone who's tried it is seeing the app itself dominate a CPU. I'm hoping not, because it does look really nice!

[https://github.com/oguzhaninan/Stacer/issues/62](https://github.com/oguzhaninan/Stacer/issues/62)</comment>


The Truth about Scientific Models - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-scientific-models/ <comment><USER2> Sabine's argument is basically that many predictions are conditional, and the conditions often aren't met in practice, therefore we shouldn't judge scientific models based on predictions. Well, the conditions _are_ met _sometimes_ , and those are the times when the models can be fairly validated or not. Also, you can make "unit tests" that examine submodels with less conditions/assumptions. Getting all the conditions/assumptions right for the "integration test" is of course hard.

If you can show that you model can make many blind predictions that end up being correct, that's a good model! I don't think Sabine denies that, but she sees predictions as impractical. Her alternative is not better as-is to me, though.

In my experience, physicists tend to prefer "explanatory power" or other qualitative metrics to more objective ways to determine whether a model is validated. In contrast, my experience is that engineers and statisticians tend to prefer objective measures. Explanatory power is a useful concept, but at present it's rather vague. I did recommend AIC as a similar objective measure to what Sabine argues for on her blog, but no one responded:

[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/05/predictions-are- ove...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/05/predictions-are- overrated.html?showComment=1588873188265#c6900263718570345454)</comment>


How I Hired Freelancers Who Went Way Over the Deadline – Elena - <AUTHOR> http://smartpuffin.com/i-hired-freelancers-they-went-over-the-deadline/ <comment><USER2> Even with very experienced teams who you know well and maybe even report to you, not to mention people you dont know and maybe in another country, the one best thing I've found is have the daily meeting.

Call it Scrum if you like, it can be 15 minutes. Its just really hard to stay on track w. remote teams otherwise. I used to think daily status was a bit heavyhanded and I hate heavyhanded, but its really needed. Sw dev is too complex and quite difficult to get right in a fixed timeframe.</comment>


A Recession Hasn't Arrived (Yet). Here's Where You'll See It First - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/business/economy/economy-recession.html <comment><USER2> Recessions are good for business. Plain and simple.

The media does their best to try and scare you into doing all sounds of bizarre and nonsensical things when the markets "crash." Really, if you employ basic facts and logic, the best thing to do is just business as usual.

Stop futzing with saving money and buy stuff -- that's how a market works and keeps functioning! It's Econ 101! I'm sure most of you smart fellas on Hacker News already knew that though. :)</comment>


Nike wins over moderates with Kaepernick TV ad according to  Swayable (YC W18) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swayable/nike-wins-over-political-moderates-with-new-kaepernick-tv-ad-8728a0653d74 <comment><USER2> "These results offer a perspective on a question that is becoming more and more important for brands: can taking a clear stand in favor of core values be a winning strategy, even when that stand is opposed by a segment of the public as well as the president?

Just measuring reactions on social media would argue against this — with the hashtag #boycottNike trending on Twitter. However, social furor and engagement from those active online and overall sentiment of those actually viewing the ad may not be correlated based on Swayable's research. Instead, this research suggests that the furor is limited to a few specific groups."

Without demographic breakdowns, one could suggest anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really interesting study. Goes without saying that this would be a lot more impactful if it came with demographic breakdowns and confidence intervals.

It did get me curious as to Swayable's methodology, which isn't really listed on the website (or I didn't find it in a cursory review).

Finally, this would all be more meaningful to view it from a specific purpose lens. Do we care about whether or not it affects sales? Then perhaps it would be helpful to know the results from likely buyers. Do we care whether it affects voters? Then a view of likely voters is relevant.

In any case, I love blog posts like this that share data. I almost always wish they'd dive a little deeper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. You're totally right, demographic breakdowns and confidence intervals are important. There's a link to the demo at the bottom of the blog post where you can see that. The little gray lines on each graph indicate the confidence intervals. The bars are grayed out if the result isn't statistically significant. There several demographic breakdowns available as well.</comment></comment>


Things Developers Want More Than Money (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://robwalling.com/2006/10/31/nine-things-developers-want-more-than-money/ <comment><USER2> "Money is a motivating factor for most of us, but assuming comparable pay, what is it that makes some companies attract and retain developers while others churn through them like toilet paper?"

My take on that would be that paying more would almost certainly help. Companies who are wondering why they can't seem to find or retain top talent should most likely not wonder about all the soft factors but pay more.

There is this almost comical aspect to companies hand-wringing about how they tried everything, except paying closer to top of the market.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first time I started looking for my next job I realized what this guy was saying, some half a decade after him. I didn't want to work for the sort of team idealized on HN: good pay, 9-5, fixed vacation days, no social events, private offices, clear spec to code to.

I wanted the high variance outcome. I say this because usually when HN threads with titles like this come out an army of people descend to say "No! This is not what developers want. They want cash".

I wanted to work in a competitive atmosphere where we had to demonstrate to the market that our stuff was good. I wanted to be an engineer but not a spec- to-code converter. I wanted unlimited vacation. I wanted my coworkers to be fine being my friends (though I have friends elsewhere too). And I didn't want private offices or cubicles.

But what I really really really wanted:

* Trust, and from that, autonomy

* Coworkers I could trust

* Recognition of achievement

* Intelligence org-wide in decision making. And true openness in this.

* Rapidity in development

* Interesting technical problems

I actually found a place I liked and it didn't have all the things but it had a lot.

I thoroughly enjoyed working there and would happily "work" in the shower. None of the scare factors materialized. It actually worked really well. Many of the people I knew there senior to me went on to found other companies and I can see that they took a lot of the culture with them.

There are lots of 9-5ers and there are lots of companies for them, but the best companies for the other kind are in the Bay and I love it for this.

It's funny but when you have a good management team, so many worries go away. You don't have to protect the downside of "what if the company doesn't actually respect 'unlimited' vacation?" Or "What if they won't buy me the new Tesla GPU for my work?" A good management team won't nickel and dime you and they know when to say "Cash is tough now, we can't expand that cluster. Let's try to make the job more efficient" (less relevant now when you don't have this massive necessary capital expenditure and have some elasticity, but it was back then). They won't screw you on options because they aren't planning for this to be their only success.

In fact, now I'm fully confident that the leadership is everything when it comes to a startup. Life's too short to downside protect. It's a hell of a lot of fun to swing for the fences.

</comment><comment><USER4> After 10+ years working in software project teams of various sizes, the thing I want more than money is to work solo. No peers. No project managers, product owners or scrum masters.

Working in a team is extremely frustrating. It's like artists working together to produce a portrait. No matter how good the artists are, the process would be mired in conflict and compromise and produce a mediocre result.

<comment><USER5> Does this not imply that your "way" is the "correct way"? As frustrating as teams, peers, and different stakeholders are, they make the thing we are building better. Yes, group think doesn't produce the best results but it is no worse than someone building something in solitude without outside input.

<comment><USER4> > Does this not imply that your "way" is the "correct way"?

Not at all. There are many ways to get the same job done. Ideally, the best ideas would win. In my experience, however, the hierarchy always wins and creativity is punished.

> it is no worse than someone building something in solitude without outside > input.

In a solo dev project, outside input comes directly from stakeholders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a solo developers, i have no team. I have no time (it means i need to deliver product as soon as possible). I have no tool (that means i only use what i discovered myself, because i have no consultant).

The only thing i want, is to reuse my code. To save everything above. Frameworks exist for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would trade double digit thousands of dollars per year if I had a private office.

<comment><USER8> I was curious about the actual cost of doing this.

       Average annual rent $/sqft = $30 (US), $40 (Seattle), $70 (SF/NY) [1]
       Average private office space: 196 sqft [2]
       Average cubical: 90 sqft [2]
       Price of upgrade: $3180 (US), $4240 (Seattle), $7420 (SF/NY)

Another way of looking at this is ~$2-4/hour.

This ignores that if you did actually give every developer an office, prices would increase due to lack of space. It also likely ignores a slew of other factors from the real world.

[1]: [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle- re...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-rents-for- offices-soaring-much-faster-than-elsewhere/) [2]: [https://www.thercfgroup.com/files/resources/Revisiting- offic...](https://www.thercfgroup.com/files/resources/Revisiting-office-space- standards-white-paper.pdf)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Quick search and preview your audio files - <AUTHOR> https://victorribeiro.com/look4sound/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, recently GDC released 50+ GB[1] of free sound effects. As I'm doing some game development and need to find some sounds, I made this simple tool that let's you search for sound and preview them in a single page. click load, select all your audio files, then just search.

when you click on a result it will create a preview of that sound, click again and it will go away.

hope you like it.

[1] - [https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc2020/](https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc2020/)</comment>


Kobe Bryant Is Obsessed with Becoming a Tech Bro - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/kobe-bryant-silicon-valley-tech-bro <comment><USER2> Next up: "Every Cold Call Kobe Bryant Ever Made".

We caught up with Kobe Bryan recently about his start-up Baller.ly to talk about the key to his success.

"I think the thing it comes down to is relentless follow-up. If you look at the numbers we are doing as opposed to the numbers you are seeing elsewhere, we are just making more dials. And when you are making more dials, you are going to see the results, but you are going to see them over time. So if you look at what we have been doing in terms of dials and in terms of strategy, I think that is where the success comes from."

We live in an incredible world.</comment>


Inside the Operating System Edward Snowden Used to Evade the NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tails <comment><USER2> One important and often overlooked feature of Tails is when you shut it down it wipes your system memory/RAM using sdmem.

Your encrypted data and sensitive files are often accessible via memory forensics even if you shut your computer down. Including the websites you visited. Your encryption keys can be in your computers memory for weeks and is easily accessible via a memory dump.

This is why people say that with physical access your computer can always be owned. Even if it's encrypted. Tails is the only one I know that handles this attack vector by default.

[https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/memory_erasure/](https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/memory_erasure/)

<comment><USER3> Data can be retrieved from DRAM not after weeks (your claim is "even if you shut your computer down (...) Your encryption keys can be in your computers memory for weeks") but only

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack)

"in the seconds to minutes after power has been removed."

The reason is explained here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_refresh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_refresh)

And even the electrons from SRAM, which doesn't need refreshes and which was for decades not used as "RAM" in the computers will leak away without the power:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random- access_memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory)

"SRAM exhibits data remanence but it is still volatile in the conventional sense that data is eventually lost when the memory is not powered."

Of course, if you never power off your computer but just reset it (the power is never cut off) or if you shut it down and immediately power it up the content of the RAM can really survive for much longer.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, this is true. Encryption keys can exist in memory for up to a week [edit: or longer] in live memory with power on. This is well after they've been used on the machine, or say after you close your Truecrypt volumes. The vast majority of people rarely shutdown their laptops for extended periods of time and often just suspend to disk, instead of a full power-off.

This is why it's good to power down or sdmem when you're finished working with sensitive data.

On a full shutdown persistence is not as big of a risk, as the other commenter pointed out, cold boots are mitigated by DDR3 similar to how modern SSDs with TRIM make deleted data-recovery nearly impossible (such as Swap data which may also contain encryption keys).

<comment><USER3> > Encryption keys can exist in memory for up to a week in live memory with > power on.

No. After some high-enough RAM area contained the keys and you keep it powered and your OS uses much less physical RAM than physically available there's no hard limit. Just forget the "week."

<comment><USER2> Updated comment for HN pedanticism.

<comment><USER4> You really should replace the words 'for up to a week' with 'indefinitely'. Mentioning a time limit at all is misleading in that context. This isn't pedantry: it's mere correctness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amnesic_Incognito_Live_Syst...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amnesic_Incognito_Live_System), a Debian fork which forces Tor for all outgoing and incoming connections. Designed to be run from read-only media.

<comment><USER6> So, is this proof that tor is not completely subverted by the NSA? Recent articles here claim that the NSA has been deploying numerous nodes and can analyze traffic from multiple nodes to compromise the user.

Or is this proof of tor being better than nothing?

<comment><USER7> The latter. The NSA didn't have to analyze anything: Snowden was not a known target, and he revealed himself before any real manhunt or mass-analysis had started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Impressive how much thought and work has gone into Tails development, e.g. it has a surprisingly-convincing XP skin that hides the fact you're even using Linux to the casual observer. Kudos to the devs.

<comment><USER9> It's called GNOME 2 and it feels exactly like you're using Linux, which is a great feeling. Kudos to the devs.

Edit: apparently I was mistaken. GNOME 2 is the default desktop, but there is an XP skin. See comments below.

<comment><USER10> GP is referring to XP Camoflauge option in Tails.

[http://www.bitblokes.de/wp- content/uploads/2013/02/tails-0-1...](http://www.bitblokes.de/wp- content/uploads/2013/02/tails-0-17-04-xp-tarnung.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Oh I see.. I just skimmed the Wikipedia article. That is very interesting. Would come in handy in an environment where your superiors are looking over your shoulder. I guess it can't be _that_ bad of an experience since it's Linux underneath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can hack SD cards actually unlike the article states, Bunny's blog post and presentation at Chaos Computer Congress mentions of this possibility. SD cards have microcontrollers and with enough resources their guess flash media can be subverted. Diversity of these controllers and variety of "proprietary" standards the way these flash controllers work however can be the entropy that makes SD controller hacking very unlikely - but you never know.

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554)

my 2c

<comment><USER12> also, in your hdd controller(s) [http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack](http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack).

same stuff, too many cpu everywhere, making protocols meaningless.

<comment><USER2> And Macbooks can be hacked through the battery [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2796264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2796264)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's worth noting that Tails doesn't make you impervious. Tails uses Tor, and Tor is vulnerable to NSA and GCHQ attacks. Specifically, they have the capability of deanonymizing individual targets. I hypothesize that this capability works by monitoring Tor traffic worldwide, then performing a timing correlation between an origin and an endpoint.

Here's an example: Let's say (for the sake of example please) that the NSA can passively monitor Google searches in realtime. Let's say you search for a phrase that sets off their monitor: something like "a Tor user has Googled for Snowden." They'd like to know who you are. How would they do that?

One way is to record the fact that from your home computer originated some Tor traffic at almost the same time the Google search took place.

It's unclear exactly how they deanonymize Tor users, but one piece of info that may corroborate my hypothesis is that in a Snowden screenshot, you can see the NSA has a tab called "Tor Events" in one of their tools.

The need for websites to load quickly is Tor's Achilles heel, because it enables timing correlation. The fact that few people use Tor exacerbates the problem.

<comment><USER14> > One way is to record the fact that from your home computer originated some > Tor traffic at almost the same time the Google search took place.

This either implies someone already suspects you and are monitoring you or that you are the only person searching on Google using Tor at that particular moment. I find the latter hard to believe. Even if it is true, it can be mitigated by more people using tor at the same time.

<comment><USER15> You might want to run a non-exit node at your home. That way you have a lot of Tor traffic all the time, and the one time you really do need anonymity, it doesn't show up as anything unusual.

<comment><USER16> I don't quite know how this works, so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but couldn't someone just take the difference between your inbound and outbound tor traffic to find how much traffic originates from your computer?

<comment><USER17> They might know how much, but they wouldn't know which traffic was yours.

<comment><USER14> The same is still true even if you do not run a tor node.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another Debian based boot-from-CD OS that used to be quite popular is Knoppix [1]. I remember that was a big thing in the times of Win98 viruses when people used it for system recovery. In Germany they distributed it as add-on to computer magazines.

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

<comment> k-mcgrady Knoppix was my first introduction to Linux. The boot-from-CD aspect amazed me. At first the only thing I used it for was recovering data from a screwed up Windows install but eventually I got more into it and started installing other distress (starting with Ubuntu I think).

<comment><USER19> For some perspective, this was back in the days where it was actually quite a bit of work to get get linux configured and running correctly on your at home desktop. Knoppix was quite a miracle.

<comment><USER20> Knoppix came out in 2000, a lot of time had passed since it was "actually quite a bit of work to get get linux configured and running correctly on your at _home desktop_." If you were mot using a thinkpad or ibook a laptop could still cause some trouble.

<comment> k-mcgrady I started using linux around 2004 and it still required quite a lot of technical knowledge to get working. Drivers were a big issue around sound, graphics, and network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some alternatives: Whonix: (vm isolated or hardware device isolated, tor) [https://www.whonix.org/](https://www.whonix.org/) and Qubes OS: (sandboxing different processes, needs torVM to do tor things) [http://qubes- os.org/trac](http://qubes-os.org/trac)

A nice comparison: [https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others)

<comment><USER22> This table is also interesting:

[https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others#Attacks](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others#Attacks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Even wired don't know what an OS is. Or rather the definition of OS has changed. A strange time when your industry jargon enters the popular lexicon but always slightly twisted.

You can't even call yourself a Troll in the UK now without people thinking you go on Facebook and mock the dead to their nearest and dearest.

<comment><USER24> Yes, the BBC News at Ten told us that "the website Mumsnet has warned its 1.5 million users that their data may have been hacked as a result of the Heartbleed computer bug. It's the first time the virus has been found on a British website"

<comment><USER23> I have found the BBC's Technology reporting particularly irksome. Their website is filled with re-hashed press releases. I even re-wrote an article concerning turning urea into electricty for them to show what it _could_ have been like if they had put half an hour's effort into it, naturally I didn't even get a response.

<comment><USER24> Of course not. They thought that you were taking the piss in a shocking way.

I did once mail a correction to a story about a new EU regulation which had been a high profile item across BBC News. It was quite a fundamental thing, and I got a short mail from a senior editor, thanking me and angrily lamenting that it wasn't a difficult thing for his reporter to check, state of journalists these days, etc etc. The story was changed.

\--edit: make a bad pun worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > How do we now it isn't some government plot designed to snare activists or > criminals? A couple of ways, actually. One of the Snowden leaks show the NSA > complaining about Tails in a Power Point Slide; if it's bad for the NSA, > it's safe to say it's good for privacy. And all of the Tails code is open > source, so it can be inspected by anyone worried about foul play.

It does not follow that either, or both, of these points (Open source, an NSA complaint slide) make this "snare proof". I'm _not_ saying that it isn't, but there is no logic in the Wired article's assertions.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, safe and open source are not necessarily synonymous. (see openssl "heartbleed")

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the way I had to click the article to see what it was. I was wondering if it'd be Tails or something. Yep.

</comment><comment><USER28> _And naturally, nobody knows exactly who created it._

Shouldn't it be the opposite so we all know who we're relying on? It's the same question I'd throw at Bitcoin.

<comment><USER29> I think users would prefer that covert government agencies not know where to find the authors, either to avoid undue influence or surreptitious hacking of their development machines to insert backdoors and other nefarious things.

Plus, as TFA states, the code is all out there in the open and able to be reviewed. Does it matter who wrote it at that point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That reminds me the movie Captain America 2. Use such a USB based OS, enter an Apple store and find a macbook. Literally an untraceable hacking.

</comment><comment><USER26> A real inside look at it. /s

</comment><comment><USER31> is website under ddos?

<comment><USER32> HN-DDOS, probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well it's not like Snowden managed to remain anonymous forever

<comment><USER34> You mean when he did a video interview? He managed to do what he did and leave the country without being caught. I call that mission accomplished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The article suggests security because "all of the Tails code is open source, so it can be inspected by anyone worried about foul play."

Yeah, that worked out well for openssl.

<comment><USER36> Yes it did. The heartbleed bug was found during an audit of the open source of openssl.

<comment><USER37> The audit occurred because testing revealed the presence of a problem. Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted is no vindication of open source.

<comment><USER38> How would you have found the bug without it being open source? You think companies pay for these open public audits on _proprietary software_?

<comment><USER17> The vulnerability was first found by a fuzzer, which would have worked equally well on closed-source software. And I believe the fuzz tester (part of Codenomicon's "Defensics") is also closed-source.

<comment><USER38> You misunderstand - how would the public have found out about the results of that audit? There is no incentive to release this information for a closed product; very much the opposite.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Office Chair Recommendations? - <AUTHOR> Most people on HN probably spend their entire working day sitting.<p>Which office chair would you recommend to your fellow software developers and techies? Why? <comment><USER2> The Wirecutter just published[1] a story about the best office chair. The winner: Steelcase Gesture.

[1]: [https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-office- chair/](https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-office-chair/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Steelcase.</comment>


Secretive Bitcoin Startup 21 Reveals Record Funds, Hints at Mass Consumer Play - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/10/secretive-bitcoin-startup-21-reveals-record-funds-hints-at-mass-consumer-play/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting because it's the first time I've heard about 21 and they have raised $116 million pre-launch. Given that companies who've raised an order of magnitude less are all over the news, it's surprising they have been so stealth.

I'm also still not clear what 21 does. According to the article they are building out the blockchain into the internet of things (IoT). That sounds really vague. Plus, the article mentions a contractual twist - like smart lawyer contracts. These two things don't seem to obviously go together.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like some variant of the hardware Bitcoin bank idea that has been floating around the valley.

The rough sketch of the idea is

-Hardware device runs a full security bitcoin node in your house -Provides a multisig for your mobile wallet. -Automatically moves savings into cold storage -Provides a basic environment for implementing crypto banking features

<comment><USER4> yeah, another bitcoin pipe dream... what's needed is probably something like integrating a wallet+bitreserve+exchange+payment processor in a single business. And then forking/enhancing btc itself. Some of the top btc companies have got ridiculous investment rounds that could be used towards that goal, easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With this kind of investment capital on the line, I sure hope that they are focusing their efforts outside of the consumer payments area. I think the fact that consumers must purchase Bitcoin in advance, with no clear advantages that average consumers would appreciate (consumers generally don't care about privacy), makes mass-adoption of Bitcoin for payments incredibly unlikely to ever happen.

The biggest question in my mind is whether or not they have developed a realistic revenue model. The whole point of the Bitcoin protocol is to relinquish control of the blockchain to the network's participants, which makes it hard to monetize. They could license whatever software/hardware they manage to build for various applications of the technology (voting, research, etc), but $116 million seems like a big bet on a company building solutions on top of open source software.

Edit: It appears that they are building both software and hardware, and more interstingly, intend to operate their own datacenters. One of the job descriptions from [https://21.co/#jobs](https://21.co/#jobs) :

 _" 21 is seeking a Datacenter Operations Engineer to travel to our datacenters and keep them up and running smoothly. You should like big iron, cutting edge equipment, and firmware._ The job description says you will be responsible for _" day-to-day operations of 10,000+ server installations"_. I guess we know where $116M is going.

</comment><comment><USER6> 21 Inc was previously 21E6 [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334759.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334759.0) who was in the news back in 2013

</comment><comment><USER7> What percentage of that funding is just buying and holding Bitcoins? Many of these large rounds have that business model baked into the amount they raise. There's much more profit to be had from buying at current prices and selling at a consumer inflection point than there is in actually building a Bitcoin service.

<comment><USER8> It's idiotic to assume an investor will invest in a company to buy coins, rather than coins directly.

Maybe if it was expensive art, exotic animals or something difficult and tricky to buy and store without having specialized knowledge, yes then you'd invest in a company to buy and manage these assets.

But storing bitcoin is storing private keys... a password. Anyone can buy it and store it. Hell you can even buy it on registered exchanges, or as a security from SecondMarket's bitcoin fund.

No. These guys raised money to hire software and hardware engineers, they're looking to build a product.

Does that mean the investors aren't buying bitcoin? No, they do so, but outside the company. It's well known that there are a number of VCs (e.g. Chamath) who have bought a few million worth of bitcoins besides their investments in bitcoin companies.

I don't any evidence that many of the 'large rounds' have this business model. There are some companies that bought bitcoin, but that's for liquidity, not investments. Circle, Coinbase or exchanges all need bitcoin to sell as they're brokers/exchanges. But they didn't buy it as an investment, they could just buy bitcoin as individuals, as could investors.

<comment><USER7> I spent 2014 trying to get a Bitcoin derivatives exchange off the ground and had a lot of intimate conversations about business models with large players, I am not speculating here.

Consider that Bitcoin has return characteristics that are highly desirable to a VC's risk profile, yet the restrictions of their limited partnership agreements precludes VCs from directly buying Bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> So you're saying Coinbase, Bitpay etc or likewise have bought bitcoin purely for speculation (not as necessary liquidity as part of the product they're offering) with VC money and directed by VC orders to act as an investment vehicle for bitcoin, while using the tens of engineers etc and products as a front? While simultaneously lying to the VC funds' investors who have set restrictions that they're actively circumventing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It may be coincidental, but Qualcomm just announced a massive stock buyback.

My best guess is this is an IoT play targeting embedding cheap cell chips into devices which will carry their own wallets. The cell chips connections to the network can be funded with cryptocurrencies the devices carry, but the ultimate goal is likely enabling software delivery into the devices. Devices pay for the software downloads. Users fund devices using credit cards, etc. Think of it as a fancy licensing engine for the trillions of devices that will be hooked up.

My second guess would be a decentralized cell network, powered by cryptocurrencies.

Either of those is a massive market.

</comment><comment><USER10> How much Bitcoin do the founders, employees, or investors own? Curious to see what real gains they could realize if they succeed in making people see Bitcoin as a legitimate means of payment.

<comment><USER11> LOTS. 21e6 has been mining for some time, and A16z has been funding and involved in Bitcoin for a number of years now, with a very 'winner take all' approach.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. What's Coinlab? The website is down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> hopefully, they take me up on the advice I gave Bitpay: [http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at- the-20...](http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at- the-2014-bitcoin-bowl) (see "The solution")

</comment><comment><USER13> Since they're looking for ASIC engineers, I guess they're a mining hardware company.

I've been hoping someone will design a bitcoin cash voucher reader/printer, like you see in the casinos.

(For use in small retail business and vending machines.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Are there ways to reduce the size of the block chain? Or will we get to the point where only large service providers can hold the block chain?

I ask because I was maintaining my own wallet for awhile but stopped because the block chain database was getting unwieldy - it would take up to a week to resync if I ever turned my wallet software off for a significant amount of time.

You know though... I actually don't care. Bitcoin was an interesting curiosity and useful in some situations (transferring money to people in rural areas of 3rd world countries, for example), but it's slow (up to 15 minutes for the transaction to be approved?), has high fees in its transactions and even higher to convert from/to cash, it's unwieldy...

To use it from consumer devices would require someone else managing the wallet, and at that point I'll instead just use cash or a credit card.

<comment><USER15> I'm in India and I can't even buy it easily. Paypal hates it, as does India's Reserve Bank.

Too much effort for too little reward. Right now, the only thing I'd actually want to buy with BTC is illegal stuff off the darknet. There is virtually nothing else I need that bad that normal cash can't do.

<comment><USER16> > Paypal hates it, as does India's Reserve Bank.

I can't believe this doesn't immediately make you think that maybe, just maybe there is something good about Bitcoin. Are you 0K with the central bank stealing wealth from you and your family through the debasing of your currency? Are you 0K with working your ass off so that bankers and other powerful people can live a life of wealth and pleasure? How can you take advise from such people?

"Bitcoin is bad, don't use it! It's a drug currency... very shady... also, terrorism!"

That is basically what every central bank said to the people in their country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If they raised over $100M, why do they need Bitcoin? I'd assume they intend to have their own coin. Fewer headaches.

<comment><USER18> It would be very difficult to get another coin to the level of adoption that bitcoin has. Many have tried, and none have come close.

<comment><USER19> They possibly could if they create a more secure cryptocurrency

<comment><USER16> That's not really a possibility, it's just your desire to see Bitcoin go down. I don't know why there are so many people so salty about Bitcoin.

<comment><USER20> Yeah really, the only other time I saw a group of people so salty about something is Google glass. There is just something about bitcoin and glass that makes people go NaCL.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/112783391065033208484/posts/16WyAvu37wE <comment><USER2> For folks who are headscratching here, back in about 2007 (I remember it because I was getting into Rails) Joyent's precursor company TextDrive bootstrapped some hardware purchases by selling a (barely capable of running Rails, fairly rare for the time) shared hosting account. The kicker was that you'd pay about ~18 months upfront and it would be Lifetime. I don't trust my memory for numbers but somewhere between $150 and $300 if I recall correctly.

I actually used them as a hosting provider for a while, and followed the support forums. Supporting the Lifetime offering was a challenge pretty much from the getgo, because some folks were less than neighborly with their usage of system resources, partially out of ignorance, partially out of Rails playing very poorly with shared systems, and partially because you attract an _interesting_ type of customer with this offering. The physical hardware had some faults and probably has not improved much over time.

Meanwhile, shared hosting for Rails is, well, not a very attractive option over the last couple of years, thanks to VPSes, Heroku, Amazon, etc etc. Joyent apparently wants to exit the business.

Of note: I remember somebody asking Slicehost to match the business model and Matt shot them down saying that it was too gimmicky for his taste and wouldn't be mutually beneficial. Slicehost eventually came up with a neat solution towards the same end: they were oversubscribed, so they sorted their waiting list by the amount of non-refundable deposit you were willing to make, giving them much-needed cash flow without committing them to service for forever.

<comment><USER3> There were actually a number of "VC" phases with TextDrive, starting with the "VC200" in 2004 that raised $40,000 from 200 pledges of $200 to acquire and set up the hardware--

[http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to- raise-40...](http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to- raise-40000-in-4-days)

That was followed by a number of upgrade offerings ("Mixed Grill", "3 Martini Lunch") in subsequent years, extending into the Joyent merger/acquisition, that required a larger lump-sum payment.

Their pitch on lifetime service? "How long is it good for? As long as we exist."

[http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.com/mixedgrill)

Now, you can argue in strictly financial terms that those initial customers (of whom I'm one) have probably got their money's worth, and that the hosting landscape has changed sufficiently that the lifetime products are peripheral to Joyent's main business. The counterargument is that Joyent not only acquired TextDrive's customers, but the goodwill surrounding Dean Allen's original venture, and has traded on that goodwill ever since. Clearly, they feel that's not worth much these days.

Furthermore, giving people who've had eight years of not having to think about hosting options just 80 days to migrate, with explicit notice that their servers will be shut down and wiped on October 31, strikes me as pretty cheap.

<comment><USER4> As far as getting one's money's worth, the "VC-like" pitching makes that odd. Obviously it wasn't an actual VC arrangement, but it had some similar aspects: you take a risk by giving $X now to buy a "lifetime account" with some startup that might be bankrupt next year. In return for helping to fund them and accepting that downside risk, your potential upside is that if they do succeed and exist long-term, you get what would in retrospect be below-market-priced service as a reward for your early support.

It doesn't make much sense to say that, hey, thanks for the "VC" investment when it was a risk to buy from us, but now that we're successful, you've gotten your money's worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012"

If you're writing that sentence and don't see a problem with it, there's no helping you. Look, many of us have been there and sold "free" things to early customers who become a pain later on, but you have to honor it. Better yet, never sell something "lifetime" without at least some kind of low recurring fee to cover nominal costs.

<comment><USER6> Thank you: just the idea of someone sitting down and typing that phrase in amazes me. Some kind of token refund and a slightly longer switch-over period could have turned this into a PR positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh.

Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER7> On a related note: where is good for hosting two small websites? I'd like to be able to log in with SSH and get an actual Unix shell (and not have to pay too much, as the websites are neither large nor popular).

<comment><USER8> I highly recommend Webfaction:

<http://www.webfaction.com?affiliate=hammertime>

Yes, I just shamelessly put in an affiliate link, but the service really is very good. It's shared hosting but you get SSH, a smart admin panel and very reasonable prices for your memory. After a few years using it, I'm also happy to report that their technical support is excellent - timely, helpful and knowledgeable.

<comment><USER9> What I disliked about webfaction is that the connection is proxied behind an nginx. But it is true that they have an excellent support. They answer almost inmediately. Also their Q&A was migrated to a stackexchange clone.

I prefer Linode, a little more expensive but you get decide even your own distro. (Yay for Archlinux)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do not want to be a jerk here, but the only reason I joined was the promise of "lifetime" - they can NOT just cancel our accounts does it does not suit them. Please contact me webmaster @ opendomain ORG if you would like to join the class action lawsuit.

<comment><USER10> Wow! I have received over a dozen emails in the first hours that want to join in the lawsuit. We have enough to form an offical class and will be able to get Joyent to abide by the original terms. Please contact me soon if you want to participate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why Joyent thinks they can get away with this. "Q: How long is it good for? A: As long as we exist." seems to be a pretty good definition of "lifetime." I would think they could only get out of their promise via bankruptcy. Maybe Joyent is trying to substitute for legal bankruptcy with moral bankruptcy.

<comment><USER12> "I wonder why Joyent thinks they can get away with this"

"As long as we exist"

Possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Nobody is going to file a private lawsuit to enforce this (assuming there is even a leg to stand on to enforce it I haven't read the exact contractual promise..) And the other option would be a class action lawsuit where there would have to be enough class members to interest an attorney.

(Not relevant in this case but if a company was acquired the new company may have not acquired all the previous companies legal obligations but simply setup a new entity and assumed some of the assets, liabilities and obligations but not everything. When I sold a company that is how it was handled.).

<comment><USER4> Although it still wouldn't be a cost-effective use of time, a sufficiently peeved customer could file a small-claims suit for a return of the fee (or some portion of it).

<comment><USER12> Actually not a bad strategy assuming the venue is convenient.

A corporation has to be defended by an attorney while an individual can be pro se.

As a result the corporation would typically want to settle rather than spend money to go to defend in court. My guess is as long as the person filing the suit didn't blog about it and bring attention to the action beforehand there would be incentive to settle this out of small claims court. The amount settled for could easily be the value over time of the "lifetime" benefit. If the company choose to go to small claims court and lost it would certainly not be to their benefit as it would show others what was possible and set some precedent.

Keep in mind that even if the company feels their contract is airtight they might decide to settle simply to not have to pay legal fees in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like what Joyent is doing with illumos, dtrace, and other similar projects. That said...

They basically have let their "legacy" customers languish for a while, and after a pretty bad migration process a year or two ago, it was obvious that they really wanted to discard these old accounts - those boxes are running a version of opensolaris that's over 4 years old (snv_67).

Most of us paid quite a bit for our "lifetime" subscriptions, just to have it ripped up into a bunch of different parts that either get EOL'ed or sold off to another company (as was done with Strongspace).

<comment><USER14> We're still developing Strongspace, and the lifetime subscribers are still being provided for by Joyent.

<comment><USER13> I'm not faulting Expandrive by any means - you guys are great.

Any intention to EOL the "lifetime" plans on your end?

<comment><USER14> Nope. Joyent is working with us to move the lifetime customers to some newer infrastructure, but they will be taken care of. Lifetime is a somewhat better story for storage, as you can consolidate 8U of power-hungry X4500 thumpers using 500GB disks down to a couple U of modern machines with 12x3TB arrays and a lot of RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fairest way to offer "lifetime" or "unlimited" plans is to include a simple warranty:

"If we ever cancel this plan, we will refund your money in full."

<comment><USER16> yup. I'd be suspicious of any "unlimited" plan which didn't offer such a guarantee - anything that doesn't put its money where its mouth is is just marketing, a polite euphemism for "lies" in this case.

or time-bound it, so everyone's clear - if I know I'm buying a 10 year plan, that's fine. I know I'm getting value for money, and the service provider knows they have a finite projected cost.

<comment><USER15> The other way to look at it is that the service provider is borrowing money from you and paying you in services instead of interest. They have the right to pay the principal of the loan back at any time.

If their cost to provide the service is below the market cost of loaning them money, the difference is their margin. They simply need to price the "lifetime service" appropriately such that there's a market demand for it. If the price the market will pay is too little relative to their cost to provide the service, then they don't have a viable "lifetime offering."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the end shared hosting with Joyent wasn't very good. It was slow, it was clunky and had an air of neglect. I have one site remaining on it I think. Most of my sites are on Linode.

What was worse was that Joyent changed directions, decided its then current customers weren't profitable enough (my guess shared hosting = higher per head tech support costs) and basically stagnated the service while it introduced new services. I think they did this a couple of times, and it has always made me relunctant to recommend them to friends (even ones looking for cloud services).

 _Sigh_ I hope StrongSpace will still honour the lifetime part.

BTW for readers who think lifetime account holders are being greedy, the point of the accounts was that when TextDrive/Joyent needed extra capital to expand, they offered lifetime accounts in return for quite a bit of cash up front. In part, they are where they are due to this clever bit of fund raising.

<comment><USER18> The real issue is, to paraphrase a football player, "What do lifetime mean?" Is it the lifetime of the product (typical in consumer goods), or was it the consumer's lifetime (i.e.-until they died)? If it was the consumer's lifetime, if they had a site where someone died and another person was going to take over, would we then be upset if Joyent started charging the successor?

Lifetime typically means expected life of the product (see: lifetime warranties). Death is really, really complicated, so I can't imagine anybody would actually tie their products to a consumer's death.

<comment><USER17> If you look at the offer on the waybackmachine: [http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.com/mixedgrill)

It has this Q&A item: How long is it good for? As long as we exist.

The footer states: a Joyent company

Nothing complicated, Joyent still exists. _shrug_

<comment><USER18> Yup, that's pretty cut and dry, and that's what I was looking for, so thanks. You guys that got hosed by this may have a breach of contract case if you'd like to take it that far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why they are this dumb. It's like buying bad press. Did they really think this wouldn't get out and make them a mockery? Would it really cost that much to continue providing something to these people forever, so they wouldn't have to say the lifetime is over? Dumb dumb dumb.

</comment><comment><USER20> I assume they're giving everybody a refund of their purchase price, right? ...Right?

<comment><USER21> They should, but probably wont.

If you sell a service, but decide not to provide it you should refund the money. Judging from the comments most of HN assumes if you "attempt" to provide the service you can keep the money.

Yes, I get it's a losing proposition for Joyent to live up to their obligations. So what? You either live up to them, or refund the money, it's really that simple.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway.

I look at this the same way I look at "unlimited" internet service. Unlike a lot of the tech crowd, I have no problem whatsoever with metered bandwidth. My only quibble is that if you advertise "unlimited" you had better actually provide unlimited. If you want to charge for overages or enact caps, you don't get to call it "unlimited".

<comment><USER19> Personally, I think it's much more likely any random internet companie's life is a lot shorter than my own.

<comment><USER22> Yet, Joyent still exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great, one company less to worry about next time I'm shopping for hosting.

<comment><USER24> Seriously. We are looking at hosting right now and are considering Rackspace and Joyent. In fact, I am one of the lifetime hosting people screwed over by this move, but this makes it an easy call. No way we are trusting Joyent with anything.

<comment><USER25> Rackspace are amazing. The only gripe I have (which isn't minor, I might add) is that you can only buy machines in tiers. If you want a machine with high network throughput (say, like a proxy), you need to purchase lots of cpu, ram and disk space that you have no need for.

<comment><USER26> Yes, I really like Rackspace. Great customer service! And the tier setup makes sense to me. It's Smith's Division of Labor principle at play. Sure, it's technically possible to adjust each feature separately, but you add so much complexity at every layer that it's a wash economically.

In the same vein, I can buy a Honda Civic for $10K, but a car with custom specs isn't $12K, it's $some_orders_of_magnitude_more, even if it's equivalent to a Civic in almost every way.

<comment><USER25> I fully agree with that. It's just something to keep in mind before building on their platform. It's not for me to decide how Rackspace should run their business, but for me it simply means I can't use them even though I want to. If only they kept a few "asymmetric" configurations as options, like Amazon does. But, alas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Joyent just offered me 50% of my original investment back as a payout. Anyone else hearing this? Might be more lucrative than whatever a class-action lawsuit would return to each of us.

Might take them up on it as it's better than the hosting deal they are offering (given that i want nothing to do with them, anyway... dollar for dollar it seems about equal).

<comment><USER27> VC here...How did you get this? Did it come in response to a support ticket? Did you ask them for a full refund? Is half of your original investment $100 or more like $1000?

<comment><USER24> I asked for a full refund. They came back with "half".

<comment><USER28> Should be more like "triple" or some other multiple, given the risk the early adopters took. Joyent used that capital and expanded it many, many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems a little odd, surely with the cheaper RAM, far more powerful CPUs and inexpensive disks these days, they could spend a few $$$ and burn a couple of U , keeping their customers happy?

I don't know how many servers they would have needed in 2007 to provide the services they sold, but surely now they could consolidate all those users onto 1/4 the machines?

What is this negative press costing them?

<comment><USER30> I think the real issue is that Joyent no longer provides any form of shared hosting and they don't want to. So they have no equivalent service to migrate the old lifetime customers to. They'd probably lose quite a bit of money if they migrate lifetime customers to their cloud.

<comment><USER23> I bet they're going to lose more in bad PR. People here usually do not forget fuck ups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here's the answer you'll get if you write to their support complaining about the change:

Hi Obie,

As often happens in the software business, vendors "end of life" older platforms and migrate customers to new versions or platforms. The service you purchased a "lifetime subscription" to will no longer be supported or available from Joyent. On the other hand, we appreciate and value your business as an early customer. As such, we have created special offers specifically for you to make this transition as easy as possible. Details and promo codes were provided to you in the email.

I hope you will be able to take us up on the offer and see the benefits of our new platform.

Thanks,

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> Peter Yorke Senior Solutions Architect JoyentCloud.com

<comment><USER3> That's the boilerplate that the support desk is sending out to everyone.

I suppose the question to ask is this: "Were you lying back in 2006 when you said the offer was good '[a]s long as we exist', or are you lying now? Or did you decide to renege on your promise somewhere in-between?"

You'll get the same boilerplate response, but it'll be on record.

<comment><USER32> I have obtained 50% refund from the support desk by replying to the sunset email and asking for it.

This morning I found this Jason Hoffman post about the EOL and a possible refund here and added to my response email: <http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955>

In my case and theirs, I consider this partial refund ok because I have been using his service 8 years and now I will move my small sites to a cheaper host.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As annoyed as I am with all of it, I'm more interested to know how to move off of their products and services now.

My lifetime account is where I have several important email servers, and I don't know how to migrate them. All the email says is to contact Joyent about getting migrated to one of their other product offerings. However, if I am only given 2.5 months to sort all this stuff out, I DO NOT WANT to use Joyent services. I'd love to use GMail for Business, Linode or what have you, but I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER34> I tend to just use an IMAP mail client (like thunderbird) connect the old server, and new server, then copy from one to the other... this doesn't take care of multiple users and their accounts/passwords though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Dear Joyent

You got me:

"We've been analyzing customer usage of Joyent's systems and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our early products and have not migrated to our new platform, the Joyent Cloud."

So sorry about not appreciating enough your new platform because " Everyone that's moved to our new cloud infrastructure has been pleased with the results".

About the whole "lifetime" ("As long as we exist.") thing ... Stupid me. I never get that. I mean that was meant metaphorically, right, like in marriages?

Ok then, you divorced me. Thanks that I can still sleep under your roof for one and a half month.

And yes: You keep the house. And the money. I keep my files.

I think, we can call this a true a win-win situation. Sorry, I mean "win-win".

Sincerely.

<comment><USER36> Two and a half months, actually. Which is still a lot less than the lifetime we were promised (unless you're a fruitfly or something, I guess) but you have a little longer to migrate your stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > "...and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our > early products..."

One of the few? Cool. It's not costing you that much to keep them on their lifetime plan. Surely its not worth the negative PR?

Not sure what Joyent is thinking.

<comment><USER24> They try to make it seem like we are a couple of dozen duffers who never really use the service anyway. What a gimmick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Had an account with them back around then because their site made them seem technically proficient, but dealing with their customer service was like dealing with bad sys admins - grudging help and lazy. There were also a lot of unfinished nooks and crannies in their system. An overall lack of craftsmanship and care. The email brought back not so fond memories and is indicative of their attitude in all their interactions. Partly you are paying for company culture and theirs is not good.

</comment><comment><USER39> This was the same service that had an outage last year which took over two days to recover from, for which their answer was basically "what did you expect, we're neglecting that server"? Sad thing is, putting the bottom line before responsibility is probably an effective strategy because the market does not penalize it sufficiently.

<comment><USER40> Funny you mention that. My server with them (shared hosting, lifetime account) just had a two-day outage Monday through Wednesday and still isn't totally recovered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1].

The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you.

Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw this with AT&T's "unlimited" wireless data plans recently [2].

I know why people do it: as an alternative to raising capital. Businesses do Groupons for the same reason. In fact, I'm feeling like a broken record here [3].

The problem with Groupon (and similar "offer" sites) is they create the wrong incentives and attract the worst kind of customer. The best situation for Groupon and for businesses is for lots of people to buy the offers and then not to use them.

The lesson here is that if you want to create a sustainable and _liked_ business, you need to align your incentives with those of your customers [4].

As a customer, stop falling for this charade.

As a business, stop taking short term cash flows for _perpetual_ liabilities just to raise capital.

Seriously.

EDIT: regarding "unlimited" (in Karunamon's comment), he is correct: we do need to hold companies to a higher standard. For example, Australia's ACCC (I guess equivalent to the FTC but with a heavy focus on consumer rights) has cracked down on the use of "unlimited" (eg [5]).

But that just reinforces my point. In Australia pretty much all Internet plans have stated quotas. With unlimited plans you create the wrong incentives to throttle users, impose nebulous "fair use" conditions and generally whittle away at what's really "unlimited".

It's the wrong incentive system.

With Internet quotas at least you know you're getting what you pay for and your plan is priced for your usage, not some median or 95% usage that will constantly have the provider trying to throttle "power users".

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3936701>

[2]: <http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/att-limits-unlimited-data/>

[3]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2649739>

[4]: [http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/ronaldbaker/firms- future/...](http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/ronaldbaker/firms- future/incentives-matter)

[5]: [http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/12/accc-taking-tpg-to- cour...](http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/12/accc-taking-tpg-to-court-over- unlimited-plans/)

<comment><USER42> I was one of the original 200 to back TextDrive in with the VC200 accounts. The risk, of course, was that the venture wouldn't be successful and we'd be laying out $200 for less than $200 worth of hosting. If they were successful, $200 would buy a reasonable shared hosting account for life.

Far from being naive and "falling" for the pricing model, my assessment was that

1) 200 shared hosting accounts (one server?) is a completely plausible lifetime offering for a successful hosting company, 2) $200 is a low risk punt, and 3) these are good guys and I think they can realistically make a go of it

TextDrive was a success, now continues to be a success as Joyent, and 200 shared hosting accounts (the state of play when I signed up) should be trivial for them to provide - even if they outsource that obligation to another provider.

I know I wasn't wrong about them being good guys (they are), but that's why I'm bewildered by today's announcement.

It may not be economically viable for them to provide these services now, but it wasn't economically viable for them to start a hosting company until we backed it. That was the deal. Joyent has an obligation to keep these services online, and if that means they need to take a bit of a hit to do that, then that's what they need to do.

Otherwise, I'm unclear how anyone would trust them again.

<comment><USER43> I'm guessing from <http://textusers.com/wiki/VC200> this $200 hosting offer was in 2004, eight years ago. $200 up-front comes to a bit above $2 a month.

In 2004, shared hosting with PHP/MySQL was the standard hosting package. A good quality Cpanel account at that time was about $15-$20 per month. So you've gotten an exceptionally good deal.

Around that time Dreamhost became the place to be. quickly followed by a series of lengthy outages that utterly destroyed it's reputation. Other Cpanel-powered hosts popped up, went under, merged, acquired, disappeared, reappeared, went down, never came back out.

Fast-forward to today, shared hosting is just a race-to-the-bottom barrel scraping. Margins are practically non-existent. Every kid with a bedroom computer has their own Reseller account and pretend they have their own hosting company. Pricing on that seems to be about $4 a year, but the quality is absolutely dire, and that's when the server is actually online.

Shared hosting is largely a dead industry today, it bottom-feeds because their top-end audience grew into dedicated servers, and their average and above average end customers are comfortable running their own cheap VPS. Safe in the knowledge that it's very much harder for another customer to take down everyone's website.

Shared hosting is no longer a sustainable business model. You got a great ride for your money, you got a very good deal. Now it's time to move on.

Grab yourself a VPS, and take a step up to the next curve on the online hosting technology stack. It's well past time. Good quality shared hosting, with great support is getting more and more expensive, because the market for it is dwindling down to people who can't or won't take the step up towards VPS/Dedicated servers - that means the support cost per customer rises. And that isn't a sustainable process.

If the average monthly price you paid for good quality hosting on TextDrive/Joyent is under $10 because of these packages, well done, you got a tremendously good deal. How would you have rated the service you received before you received the email/message? Think about that - consider if the support/service you received related to the per month price you've paid.

Now go out and find a web hosting offer that will give you the same quality of service, for the same monthly price - and switch to that. I get a feeling, apart from special offers that will surface because of this, you'll be hard- pressed to find an equivalent.

But seriously people, "lifetime" and "unlimited" are the two emptiest words in the language of web resource offers. You know that. I'd feel sad for you if you only got 1 years hosting for your $200 for such features.

But if you got 8 years for your initial outlay, and you still feel you deserve more... that's a text-book example of bottom-feeding. Quite the sort of customer a web hosting company wouldn't miss.

A class action? That would be amusing.

<comment><USER44> A few corrections.

Dreamhost isn't and wasn't ever cPanel. It got hot back in '01 / '02. The outages in 2004 weren't lengthy, were mostly DoS and got blown way out of proportion by people who thought $10/month was a kingly sum that entitled them to dedicated-server quality. The quality of Dreamhost's shared hosting hasn't really diminished over the years and it's still perfectly adequate for low traffic PHP or even Rails sites.

TextDrive by contrast was founded on the principle of combatting the race to the bottom by charging a fair price and offering unparalleled power and flexibility. This vision was sold to us by Dean Allen who had an enormously positive reputation as one of the very best early bloggers. Funding TextDrive with these lifetime accounts was not just us chumps buying into some bottom- feeders marketing scam. There was real intention and integrity behind this.

The problem was that they couldn't actually deliver this quality service despite charging a lot more for it. I mean there was flexibility (webmin instead of cpanel, etc), and TextDrive was the first shared host supporting Ruby on Rails (in fact it was the "official" rails host for a while), and they were always working on awesome new tech (huge Solaris boxes, ZFS, bla bla bla). But in the end, Jason Hoffman did not know how to build a stable hosting service.

Eventually after the Joyent acquisition/merger I think they figured out how to run a business, but it was _our_ money that allowed them the time to learn how to do that. The actual experience of hosting with TextDrive was always shit, and it never cease to amaze me how many hours Jason Hoffman spent posting in the forums when there was obviously a lot of urgent work that needed to be done.

At some point in the early history, Dean Allen went dark and largely disappeared from public view. You'll notice that now Jason Hoffman is the Founder and there's no mention of Dean Allen, but if I recall, it was definitely a partnership, with Dean bringing the name recognition and web experience, and Jason providing the system architecture (business/technical co-founders if you will). I don't have any inside information about what happened there, but I do know that Jason Hoffman and Joyent burnt their bridge with me and I'll never trust anything they do.

If there's a class action lawsuit I'm in.

<comment><USER43> "TextDrive by contrast was founded on the principle of combatting the race to the bottom by charging a fair price and offering unparalleled power and flexibility. This vision was sold to us by Dean Allen who had an enormously positive reputation as one of the very best early bloggers. Funding TextDrive with these lifetime accounts was not just us chumps buying into some bottom- feeders marketing scam. There was real intention and integrity behind this."

* principle over actual experience

* a blogger over someone with actual knowledge and technical expertise

* an undefined "fair price"

* an expectation that comfortably exceeds the current delivery levels

* intention and integrity

And what you ended up with is a typical shared hosting company experience, one that lasted a whole lot longer than a large number of other web hosts.

I can't help but feel that a large number of people would be happier if Joyent went down in a big ball of flames suddenly, rather than an orderly and planned 60-plus day notice of a shutdown of their service, in favour of focusing more on a better and more sustainable business model.

Businesses grow, industries grow and change. There's not much of a sustainable business in shared-hosting, the margins are too razor-thin got that, the middle and top end has been chomped off by affordable VPS offerings. Lifers seem appalled they are effectively paying the same price as everyone else.

The rest of your post seems to be on a personal crusade against the technical "co-founder". Why not the original blogger co-founder who promised a service he could not work with someone to deliver?

<comment><USER44> It was anything but typical. Seriously, you shouldn't comment on it as if all your stereotypes perfectly explain everything. They don't. You weren't there.

Regarding Dean Allen, I have no beef with him, because A) he wasn't in the forum daily talking about all the awesome stuff they were doing that never actually panned out for years on end and B) I suspect he disagreed with the way the company was being run (the instability, the poor customer service) and either was forced out or left of his own volition. But either way it would be bad form for him to air his dirty laundry, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Also FWIW, I'm not on a crusade at all. I haven't thought about TextDrive or Joyent for years. I've written them off. But I do see it as a public service to make my opinion of Jason Hoffman's integrity known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've been warning people about Joyent for a few years now. A few years back I was using them for some hosting and they were dishonest about their shared filesystem issues.

</comment><comment><USER46> The fact that I got a good deal for hosting in retrospect is irrelevant. Joyent offered lifetime service in exchange for a large payment up front. It wasn't just a one time deal they regretted. They made lifetime offers on numerous occasions. It was their business model at the time, no one forced them.

Here's a very easy solution for Joyent.

Refund my money. My payment was for lifetime service. Pay me back and we'll call it quits.

</comment><comment><USER47> Joyent seems to be doing some general housecleaning... I received a similar notice (same first paragraphs) related to the closure of their <http://no.de/> Node.js hosting service:

\----

Joyent is retiring the No.de service. If, as a Node.js developer, you prefer a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, we suggest that you consider our third- party partner, Nodejitsu, who offers a Node.js PaaS that runs on Joyent. Joyent continues to provide an ideal cloud infrastructure to run your Node.js applications, with performance and debugging tools that no other cloud provides. Sign up for a free trial on Nodejitsu (www.nodejitsu.com) or take advantage of Joyent Cloud's 30-Day Free Trial using this promotional code.

\----

</comment><comment><USER48> Every company that offers "lifetime" anything, seems to mean their lifetime, not yours.

I once had a lifetime free checking account, I still have the advertising flyers from when I got it.

Well they took that away from me last year too.

I guess they just count on you getting a lawyer and lawsuit being more of a hassle than you just walking away.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm another Mixed Grill customer, currently on a shared Solaris box.

When I bought it, I knew it was a gamble, and with the $500 spread over 6.5ish years, it's not a terrible ROI.

I assumed I'd lose out due to the company eventually folding, though. "As long as we exist" seemed pretty straightforward, and what I knew about them didn't leave me believing that they'd just pull the plug like this.

I've updated their Wikipedia page with a short section that I believe summarizes the situation accurately and factually, without letting my emotions creep in too much - if anyone cares to edit it, have at it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joyent>

Joyent, I'm disappointed. You had a few memorable tech disasters, but never before did I personally experience ill will from you. I had begun to trust you guys.

</comment><comment><USER50> Looks like Jason Hoffman has stepped into the forums to explain the reasoning behind their decision and do some damage control:

<http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955>

They probably should have done that on the original letter.

</comment><comment><USER51> Someone already started a Google group for people to discuss where to move their hosting: <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ex-joyeurs>

</comment><comment><USER49> For anyone who's interested, a "Money back or five free years of your own virtual server" offer has been posted by Jason Hoffman: <http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=33682>

It doesn't come close to honoring the "as long as we exist" that we bought in for, but it's a lot better than the starting position, and Jason is talking a little about why we're being cut.

(From what I can see, it looks like cutting the lifers may have been a requirement of some of the recent VC investors. That's me reading between the lines a bit, though.)

</comment><comment><USER52> This actually seems fairly typical for most free or lifetime plans for things. Are there counterexamples of site/services that offered lifetime access that are still doing so 5 years later?

<comment><USER19> Tivo has Lifetime subscriptions, where the lifetime is of the hardware but they transfer if you sell the hardware. They aren't always selling them as an option, but they always honor them, and have been for 10+ years.

<comment><USER53> I had one of the original Tivos in the UK, and I bought a lifetime subscription.

They ended this service in 2011.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo#United_Kingdom>

They no longer honour this deal in UK (which sucks, because I loved it).

<comment><USER19> Yeah, not much you can do about the service ending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This reminds me I bought a lifetime license for Visual Studio in the 90's. Less than a year later they revoked it ans esent q cheque for $50 and a copy of Visual Java

</comment><comment><USER55> Split the company in two, one with lifetime accounts one without. One with lifetime accounts goes bankrupt immediately. Promise kept, goals achieved!

</comment><comment><USER56> Seriously though, the printout I have from March 29, 2006 of their Mixed Grill offer says "One-time payment of $499" and "How long is it good for? As long as we exist."

That constitutes a contract which they are clearly trying very hard to ignore. It seems so petty given their success, available resources, and the very manageable limited bandwidth and quota'd storage space us lifetime customers are allocated.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think lifetime should mean lifetime.

They should of given you at least 15 years free I think.

<comment><USER58> It appears that lifetime means lifetime of the product rather than lifetime of the customer. Is anyone really that surprised?

<comment><USER59> According to michaelhoffman, the FAQ said this: "Q: How long is it good for? A: As long as we exist."

Seems pretty clear cut to me.

(Not sure this is accurate, though. I did find it repeated in a forum discussing Joyent in 2006.)

<comment><USER11> Linked from other comments in this thread:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.com/mixedgrill)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Wow. Either Joyent is financially doomed on its own (and is trying to cut costs), or is just really stupid.

EOLing an old lifetime product with high support costs makes sense. What they should have done was moved the "small number of customers" using Lifetime service onto a new lifetime platform using their shared hosting platform. The plan they're offering for a year seems like an adequate replacement -- the cost of providing that low tier of service forever is probably not much more than the cost of providing it for a year.

Maybe make it opt-in, so inactive accounts don't spin up on the new platform, and provide some higher level of service at a discount (so, instead of a $50/yr cloud plan for free, you could optionally get a $250/yr plan for $150/yr.)

</comment><comment><USER61> They did the same for their perpetually paying customers too. When I signed up for my TextDrive account it was billed as one price ($10/month) forever. Then Joyent bought them and things were OK for a while but I figured that was the end of my price guarantee.

My biggest issue with Joyent is they seem to change their services every year or two while letting their legacy customers languish. I used to have an account on a shared host. Now I have a Smart Machine, or maybe a Shared Accelerator. I'm not sure anymore and they keep changing the support website.

Now I just use them for mail but, I'm dissatisfied with that so I'm looking to move.

What I want is to pay for a service and not worry about it. It's too much work being their customer nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER62> Class action law suit?

</comment><comment><USER63> Much suckage. Lifetime means lifetime. It wouldn't be too much out of the way to provide a small host for "lifetime" users. I have complained to joyent.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is fraud, no contest. The real question is what's the best way to deal with it. 1. Social pressure to re-instate equivalent service (1.5gb for me) 2. numerous small claims court applications (full refund + migration costs/damages) 3. Class action (similar to above).

To make any of them work to full effect, we'd probably have to band together? Any argument as to which method is preferred? CCT

</comment><comment><USER65> I believe I also have a "lifetime" account, I have not received this email. Though I did switch over to the solaris machines a few years ago.

<comment><USER66> I received the email. Felt unpleasant. It wasn't much financially, just the feeling that it is wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> TextDrive was a great host back in the day (I signed up around 2004) and I was also happy with Joyent as well. They've obviously changed target markets since then, which is unfortunate, but I think the offer they made is certainly palatable and a sign of good will. All good things must come to an end, and then you go on to the next good company.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you are a VC/MG/3ML like me, I think you can ask support for a partial refund. I did it, now let's see...

Jason Hoffman says that and other interesting things about the EOL here (read all of his posts):

<http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955>

</comment><comment><USER68> Had a similar experience with an old host, promised "lifetime price freeze". A couple of years later they started charging me more as they had 'moved me to a new server' which I fiercely contested. In the end we settled for a compromise.

<comment><USER69> Ridiculous, since the reason to get a new server is that it's cheaper per cycle/byte/watt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> "There's a sucker born every minute" -- usually attributed to P. T. Barnum. The people who got sucked into buying into this "Joyent ending 'lifetime' hosting accounts" hustle probably got the greatest bargain of their lives. I'll bet they were mostly young folks, ever chasing after that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (although some never quit). Hoping for endless service with no further incentive for the provider. What a priceless lesson at such a small cost! This company has actually taught one of life's great lessons for a truly paltry sum!

Anyway, here's what I do: I register my domains at nearlyfreespeech.net. They have a somewhat limited number of different TLDs available, and at about $9 per year, are not cheap (or "free"), but certainly not exorbitant. But their integrity is rock-solid. One time I let my domain expire for a couple weeks, an alarming circumstance. But they restored it for free after I simply payed the fee (this can only work for a limited time, of course). My old (and reliable) previous host and registrar would have charged me about $200 to get it back! So the $9 is like cheap insurance.

I use asmallorange.com as my host. They charge as little as $35 per YEAR, with $0.50 per GB per month for additional bandwidth. (Both of these hosts are "pay as you go.") So if I ever have a disagreement with my host, they cannot mess with my domain name! Also, my registrar uses FreeBSD servers, while my host uses Linux, and I don't want to deal with FreeBSD (it's probably more stable than Linux, but I know nothing about how to use it). The smallorange service (running on Linux) is chock-full of great features, including Cpanel. They have a feature inside their Cpanel that one-click installs things like WordPress, and I used it. But I chose a one-click install password that it allowed, but that the rest of Cpanel would not allow, and that lead to problems. But their customer service was right there for me, and they immediately cleared it up. Hope this doesn't sound spammy. The main point is, if you really want service, pay as you go is the way to get it. It worked great for me.

</comment><comment><USER71> I thought I'd switched over to Solaris hosting, but still got the email??

</comment><comment><USER72> They could have just refund ALL of those money as credits for JoyentCloud. Would this be a better solution?

So you essentially got "x" years of hosting plus Those money back as credits.

</comment><comment><USER73> I have quite a few static sites on them right now (personal, friends and family). Looking for a reasonable host that won't cost a bunch. Any recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER63> BTW, I too have moved to the Solaris hosting.

</comment><comment><USER74> My two cents: <http://stateful.net/joyent-refugee/>

</comment><comment><USER75> To anyone thinking of Joyent for cloud services: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

</comment><comment><USER76> Outraged, too. Any suitable alternatives in sight?

</comment><comment><USER76> Where is Dean Allen now that we need him?

<comment><USER6> He seems to have disappeared, apart from sporadic tweets. A quieter version of Mark Pilgrim and _why?.

Is this normal for successful Web entrepreneurs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Dear Jones, we said "till death do us part" but you are now divorcing me. :(

In case you didn't get it, Jones is the name of the shared server that I'm on. ;)

</comment><comment><USER77> Mixed Griller here. I don't remember what the language was, but perhaps in this case "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the product, shared hosting. Personally, I'm happy with the accelerator, I never did like shared hosting and quit using it a long time ago except for a couple of sites that are gathering dust.

<comment><USER78> [http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdri...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdrive.com/mixedgrill)

Q: How long is it good for? A: As long as we exist.

<comment><USER79> Didn't they cease to exist when they were acquired?

<comment><USER17> see footer of the page. They (TextDrive) were already acquired at the time of the offer.

<comment><USER79> Aha. That would indeed make a difference. ;) Thanks.

<comment><USER80> It doesn't, really. Being acquired wouldn't ordinarily relieve them of a contractual obligation. (Bankruptcy would.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Restyling apps at scale - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/ <comment><USER2> If GNOME would drop "theming", would that actually change anything? Would Ubuntu stop modifying GNOME so that is fits their brand and would user stop complaining to app developers that their app does not work on Ubuntu? I guess not.</comment>


5 reasons Not to choose Atlassian JIRA for agile projects - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sensinum/5-reasons-not-to-choose-atlassian-jira-for-agile-projects-aeb1fd4ffc7a#.4q60vt8nj <comment><USER2> We use Jira for agile and this article is pretty spot on. We finally have it configured to fit our workflow, but, that took a while. Also; Atlassian likes to change the UI quite a bit in Jira (stop f*cking with it already!) so every week or so you get to learn something new.

In fact, we're considering rolling our own app to handle tickets/hours because of it.

<comment><USER3> I think you may have been caught up in a once-off UI rewrite over the last year. In general we don't change things that often, though there are minor improvements we try to roll out regularly.

Love more context on what you found jarring?</comment></comment>


Debian Riscv64 port in mid 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://people.debian.org/~mafm/posts/2019/20190617_debian-gnulinux-riscv64-port-in-mid-2019/ <comment><USER2> Basically LLVM is now a dependency of equal importance to GCC for Debian.

Hopefully this will help motivate expanding architecture-support for LLVM, and by proxy Rust.

<comment><USER3> Godbolt shows that Clang is a lot more aggressive with use of "cmov" \-- conditional move instructions.

When the Spectre and Meltdown family of security debacles surfaced, cmov was promoted as a way to choke off speculative execution. But that suggests, also, that cmov would be bad for performance in places where cross-process security isn't a concern.

Did something important change, or did I misunderstand? Maybe only cmov memory -> register blocks speculation?

<comment><USER4> CMOV replaces branches. So no branch, no speculation. Typically, though, only branches that the compiler identifies as not reliably predictable would be replaced. Because with a well predicted branch you do not waste resources. CMOV executes both paths, wasting the work of one path, but saving the mispredict penalty. Which for "flakey" branches can be a overall win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised at how m68k was rescued from oblivion in 2013... Who is using it?

<comment><USER6> I suspected that it had something to do with ColdFire. It seems that was partly true, but another interesting factor was apparently ARAnyM (an Atari 68k ST/TT/Falcon emulator) which can conveniently run a Linux system: [https://grep.be/blog/en/computer/debian/m68k/arrakis/](https://grep.be/blog/en/computer/debian/m68k/arrakis/)

<comment><USER7> There's also the Apollo core used in the Vampire accelerator, that's much faster than anything else m68k, and even faster than ColdFire.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but that doesn't explain the m68k porting effort of 2013. The Apollo core doesn't have an MMU so it won't run Linux.

<comment><USER8> I thought m68k/nommu exists and is used?

<comment><USER6> That's true and I didn't know of that. That said, the Amiga configuration depends on an MMU. I don't know how hard it would be to retarget it for an MMU-less system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They say Rust support is blocked by having no RISC-V backed for LLVM, and no Rust Gcc front-end. But I thought there was a working Gcc front-end, just without the borrow checker, which is superfluous for code generation. Maybe it is for an old version of the language, and can't build the current library?

<comment><USER9> AFAIK there's no gcc port underway. There is another Rust compiler[1] but it's not a complete alternative to Rustc, in the short run it was mainly intended to be a way to bootstrap a Rust compiler without needing to go all the way back to the original ocaml implementation of the first Rust compiler. As such, it is only known to output correct binary when running on the code of the Rust 1.19 compiler. This was a really successful project, but it's not something you can use to replace to compile your own arbitrary rust code.

[1] [https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc](https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc)

<comment> infinity0x-2 Debian Rust maintainer here.

We don't need to bootstrap from scratch, Rust (via LLVM) can cross-compile very easily once riscv64 support is added.

In practise I am already cross-compiling amd64->mips/mipsel for every stable Rust release on my home box, because a native mips rustc compile runs out of memory on those 32-bit machines. [1] The cross-compiled mips works completely fine to build smaller rust packages, e.g cargo [2] ripgrep [3]

[1] [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/56888](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/56888) [2] [https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=cargo](https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=cargo) [3] [https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=rust- ripgrep](https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=rust-ripgrep)

<comment><USER10> Yeah back with 1.14 or so I set up some cross (and native) toolchains for mipsel with the intent of putting some stuff on my ER-X. While it was a giant pain in the dick with the unsupported version of Debian Ubiquiti was using, it was doable. Cross compiling on Debian has come a long way (altho I'm using crosstool-ng on OSX these days which is fairly slick).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am waiting until the Bitmanip extension lands to get excited about RISC-V: [https://github.com/riscv/riscv-bitmanip](https://github.com/riscv/riscv- bitmanip)

Just can't live without that popcount.

<comment><USER11> What do you need popcount for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good to see it so far along!

There's some work to be done in rust on portability - it's been a problem in pkgsrc too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looking forward to a standardized MMU interface and page table format.

<comment><USER14> What's the precise problem? As far as I know the privspec has standardized enough in this area.

In any case, as one of the maintainers of the Fedora/RISC-V port (we also work closely with Debian) we're relaxed about _kernel_ changes, because those are simple to make. (The big problems are changes in userspace code and glibc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any "Pi'esc" boards available yet? I would love to run Buster on a RISC-V board.

Seeedstudio has an "Arduino'esc" RISC-V board for around USD 30 which looks very interesting. [1]

This board [2] also looks very interesting but is around USD 1000 and I can't find any comparisons on performance to a "regular" PC. I know these things are like comparing apples to oranges but I would like to know how for example a browser performs loading a webpage in comparison with another CPU.

There also appears to be an expansion board with PCI so you can add a GPU for USD 2000. [3]

[1] [https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maixduino-Kit-for- RISC-V-...](https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maixduino-Kit-for-RISC-V-AI- IoT-p-4047.html)

[2] [https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive- unleashed](https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed)

[3] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed- expan...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion- board)

<comment><USER16> The Unleashed board has a performance similar to a Raspberry Pi 3 in cpu terms but it's biggest bottleneck is that the SD card is running on a SPI bus where it gets something like 2MB/s. This is due to having the complete SOC as opensource and the SD card association not allowing open source IP for it's interface.

<comment><USER7> I think there's some degree of compatibility between SD-card and MMC-card standards, and that the latter are comparatively more open. Surely that could solve the open-IP issue?

<comment><USER17> Last time I looked both MMC and SD were JEDEC standards available under the same terms?</comment></comment></comment></comment>