I will not log in to your website - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3203 <comment><USER2> I do not recognize the problem the author talks about, but it seems weird. From the article:

> Prof. Aaronson, given your expertise, we'd be incredibly grateful for your > feedback on a paper / report / grant proposal about quantum computing. To > access the document in question, ...

It seems odd to want feedback and then ask someone to go and register somewhere, probably requiring to accept a bunch of legalese in the privacy policy and terms of service... Just attach the document you want feedback on, right?

At least if I'd email someone (out of the blue or an acquaintance) for feedback due to his expertise, I'd be grateful for the time taken and try to make it as easy as possible to do.

Edit: it has been made clear to me that it's not about individuals contacting the author, it's some big corporation that probably sends this out, probably in an automated manner. I still don't understand why anyone would bother with this when "peer reviews" can happen between "peers" (i.e. sending each other documents for review, rather than going through the middleman that everyone seems to hate such as Elsevier, if blog posts linked on HN are to be believed).

<comment><USER3> I assume they are trying to keep the documents in question confidential. Email is not confidential.

EDIT: Folks email is not secure. Even if someone doesn't have access to login to your mail account. Emails in transit are insecure.

Using outside systems to send confidential data is common practice and has been for years.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. A sysadmin is not allowed to take a peek in emails unless there is a reason. Or if I create a folder named "private" on my work computer or work email, they aren't allowed to look in there without a good reason. But I suppose Dutch privacy laws aren't universal, so I don't know how that would be in your (or the author's) country.

And if you want to take matters into your own hands, you use PGP. But outside of the computer security business I guess that's mostly unused.

<comment><USER4> This is not strictly true with US businesses and academia. My last place of employment was a university, and per our legal, all data going through the University email or computers is University property; while there is a pledge from IT that all email is private and will not be accessed except for specific circumstances, these circumstances could be pretty much anything and had no relationship to any existing case law outside of what legal felt was necessary to use as reason for why we could access it.

But the pledge was just a formality - should there be any interest to check the mail, there was nothing technically stopping anyone with the required access except for someone else with equal access having a problem with it. Likewise, various management offices had no issue with submitting email fetch requests for the simplest of things, with date ranges exceeding two or three years sometimes for what turned out to be incredibly minor reasons.

There really is no expectation of privacy with academia in the US when it comes to University owned property or services.

(The only reason I found out about any of this from legal was because I asked for clarification on our "duty to report", and one of the lawyers was almost excited as he told me about how we own everything legally.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently, in my customer support tickets, more and more of my users have given me email addresses "protected" by [http://boxbe.com](http://boxbe.com).

When I write my reply to them and submit, I get an ACTION-REQUIRED from boxbe.com telling me to register + captcha so that I can get on the receiver's whitelist.

It's so invasive that I don't bother. They'll have to check their spam folder for my email.

<comment><USER6> I had an email with I think bluebottle that did that, but it automatically whitelisted people if you sent them an email. Personally I think that if people aren't willing to complete a captcha to send me an email, that email is probably not so important for them.

It is a moot point now, because googles spam filters are good enough that I never see spam, but I just wished there would be an easier way to mass unsubscribe marketing email.

<comment><USER7> The problem is places like support forms. If you go to my site, click on "contact us" and fill in your message and email, you did not directly email me, as per boxbe. So if I honestly try to reply to you, I'll be forced to waste my time? You better believe you'll never get a reply then.

So to reply to your "if people aren't willing to complete a captcha to send me an email, that email is probably not so important for them.". No. Replying to your request isn't that important to me. It probably was to you though....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha ha, I'm at the same "get off my lawn!" moment in my internet life to. The barrier "first, create an account and login..." is a one that very very few products can tempt me to do.

I realized recently that I have space in my life for three log-in websites (HN, a gamedev site, one subreddit), three web apps (gmail, github, slack), and three non-built-in phone applications (instapaper, ride sharing app, twitter). If there's something new in town - it needs to be more valuable than these to knock someone else out of rotation!

<comment><USER9> could this be alleviated by password managers or is the act of logging in, in and of itself, a burden you would prefer not to do?

<comment><USER10> I'm not mrspeaker, but I have a similar stance regarding apps/logins/etc.

For me, it is the burden of having to create accounts for stuff I'll probably only use once, plus the mental burden of knowing that the website has my personal information and might leak it.

That, and the fact that having an account/app these days is synonymous with "oh, sure, send me all the spam you have!", via e-mail or mobile notifications.

If anything, password managers help me see which accounts I should be deleting.

<comment><USER11> > If anything, password managers help me see which accounts I should be > deleting.

I think this is a hint towards what, IMO, password managers should be moving towards. I would like a password manager to really be an _account_ manager that can do things like:

* Alert me if a site I have an account on has a publicly declared breach

* Let me manage personal details (such as associated email address, phone number, etc.) all in one place

* Tell me how often I use each account (and when I login to them from 'unusual' locations/computers)

etc.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I have been fantasizing about a similar thing for about a decade! Currently my "account manager" is either an e-mail folder (I save the welcome e-mails), or my Facebook/Google account (the "authorized apps" page), and this is far from ideal.

I also wish I could sign up for new websites/services using such a manager. If it already had all my personal info, it would take just one click to sign up. And maybe selecting which personal details I would like to disclose with the website.

Mozilla Persona with browser integration[1] was the closest thing to that. Too bad it was abandoned.

[1] [https://people- mozilla.org/~faaborg/files/projects/firefoxAc...](https://people- mozilla.org/~faaborg/files/projects/firefoxAccount/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is, in principle, no different than the fact that you have to log in to Github to create issues or add comments.

What makes it different is that as a profession, we have decided that Github is nice, good, and ubiquitous. Unfortunately, the portals that he's describing are crappy, bad, and balkanized.

<comment><USER13> You have to log in _to GitHub_ in order to create issues _on GitHub_. But that doesn't mean you must have a GitHub account to report issues to a project hosted on it. Emailing the author with an issue report (and a patch) works as well.

<comment><USER14> You would have to use it if you wanted to keep the reviews/issues anonymous.

<comment><USER13> Can't you use email@example.com?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the topic of "the humans failed to engage them through the intermediary of their bureaucratic process", we long ago stopped accepting any purchases for under $20,000 if the customer insists we apply to their organization, sign contracts, and fill in paperwork to obtain a vendor account with their organization.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yup. In addition to not creating accounts, I've stopped filling in Captchas, especially Google's notoriously horrible re-captcha (I've already clicked all the storefronts about a million times and still it's not good enough), turning on JS for sites that don't present content without it, using sites that don't work with ad blockers, etc. except when I have no choice (banks, work). To me, all these sites are broken. If they want content, they need to fix themselves, and present something useful and secure. Most won't due to their business model.

</comment><comment><USER17> I applaud this attitude, not least because it reminds me of the UX design story on allowing guest checkouts: [https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/](https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/)

Add a hurdle, _any_ hurdle, to your potential users' workflow and you are doing yourself a massive disservice.

</comment><comment><USER18> This describes an increasingly common practice among online businesses -- aggressively monetize visitors, turn them into clients and corporate assets.

When you visit a typical modern website, within 15 seconds an overlay appears encouraging you to sign up, give away your email address, and become part of what's _really happening_.

In a hypothetical parallel universe where telling the truth is mandatory, you would visit a website and ask, "So, what are you selling, what is your product?" The website will be forced to reply, "You."

All this apart from the present state of the scientific-technical publishing business (also discussed in the linked article), which uses different methods to obtain the same result: monetize people's wish to communicate with each other.

<comment><USER19> I wish the sites with the annoying "give us your email now!" popups would be honest. Just say, in plain language:

"You can support this site by giving us an email, which we will then add to a list we can sell to various entities. You don't have to give us your main email address. Just please use something other than mailinator (and their ilk) so it's an saleable address. This will help us stay open despite most of our visitors blocking our ads. We will send you a newsletter occasionally so we can pretend this exchange is not purely about money. Thank you."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The worst are the companies who seem to get completely new systems every few years, and if you didn't log in recently you effectively have to create an entire new sign in, and guess what you can't reuse that email and you have some silly new password restriction because SAP or whoever says so. Just awful experiences.

</comment><comment><USER21> From the article: Oh, Skype no longer lets me log in either.

Funny, I've had the same issue. Between legacy Skype passwords, Microsoft accounts, and what not, for a period of time it became almost impossible to log into Skype. It has improved, but the reset process was designed almost as a maze to help shed all but the most determined. I was not determined enough and eventually gave up and forced Skype contacts to reach out to me via WhatsApp/GChat/Signal/Duo/Allo/FBMessenger. Anything but Skype.

Side note: Same thing happened to Wunderlist after they too got purchased by Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree with all the advice and sentiments given. Moreover, the proliferation of user accounts, the stickiness that implies for registration email addresses, the general failures of password-based security systems, and the unconscionably high level of tracking implied by indivdually registerd, client-side tattling interfaces, are all rapidly reaching a crisis point.

Some months back, another HN user mentioned as an aside in comments that he had _over seven hundred_ site authentication credentials. This is a slight inflation over ordinary users, but not tremendously -- the typical citizen will have a score or several accounts -- social media, email, various vendors, and quite easily 100 or more.

There's also the problem of multiple worlds colliding. As YouTube's founder famously noted when faced with a "Please create a G+ account" prompt a few years back. After being reasonably assured that G+ and YouTube activity were separate, I've just learnt that they are not, with results that 1) I'd inadvertantly changed my G+ identity and 2) I've yet again blown away a YouTube profile I really don't care for.

I'm not sure what we're going to replace this system with, but extending the current path ain't gonna work.

As for the haircuts, a $25 set of electric clippers addresses that need. Or a blade. A 35 year old man is old enough to learn to cut (or shave) his own hair.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm no scientist, but I was involved in a couple of projects with a research group to develop web apps that others could use to run biophysics simulations.

When submitting them for peer review, there was an absolute requirement from the journals in question that the sites did not require a login to use, and not even an email address to be entered to alert the user to results/completion. Result pages and download links were to be provided at a hidden URL which was linked to from the submission page after the form was submitted. So while we did this, we also ended up maintaining emails for job alerts, but optionally so. Most users have since used their emails to run jobs as it is more convenient for them.

But for the reviewers, their requirements made sense. We were submitting to journals which had entire dedicated editions for online scientific apps. Hundreds of them, all of which required peer review by scientists who were being very generous with their time. For a free service, such requirements don't seem at all unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Whenever my deepest beliefs and my desire to get out of work both point in the same direction, from here till the grave there's not a force in the world that can turn me the opposite way."

Words to live by.

</comment><comment><USER25> The Journal Of Open Source Software does the review process rather nicely: You send them a PR with your software/description, and then a reviewer will publicly go through the review process (described here: [http://joss.theoj.org/about#reviewer_guidelines](http://joss.theoj.org/about#reviewer_guidelines) )

Of course that doesn't work with all of science, you don't always want open peer review, usually because several people are working in various stages on similar or related things, or you don't want to publicly criticize the reviewed party, or you don't want to make the reviewer look bad when the reviewer doesn't know what s/he is talking about

</comment><comment><USER26> Google now hosts web pages on Google Drive you can't even read without a Google account. Please don't use or link to those.

</comment><comment><USER27> On a related, but more trivial level, I note that a lot of places that used to have a nice little punch card or whatever for a loyalty program now have accounts you can log into. So I can, if I want, choose to have to remember a _burrito password_. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a global issue. We all experienced friends or people asking for joining them on their social network, or their IM app, which unfortunately you're not on. Same for vendors and partners and such that ask you to create accounts on their websites for sometimes just a single event or document to sync. XKCD recently published a fun illustration of it (1810).

On the other hand, most of us want to split between work and friends, between private and public. So we have different accounts for this purpose. I don't use Twitter and Linkedin the same way, and I don't have the same circle of relations connected by those means. So it may be "convenient" to have separate accounts, but at the same time this becomes a burden to maintain and check every of these (not counting data breaches and so).

My current practice is the following : \- an email address for my close friends & family. \- some public accounts for infosec usage (linkedin, twitter...) \- some undisclosed accounts for my professional usage. \- some undisclosed accounts for my private usage (ecommerce etc.) \- all the rest (a vast majority) uses throw-away emails (I own a domain, enabling me to generate unique email addresses per website) and random passwords, so I don't care to monitor them or if they are breached. If I know I won't use the site frequently I don't even remember the password, I just do a "recover password" if I need it in the future.

My rules: 1\. never reuse the same email twice for websites. That also helps me monitor breaches and/or spam and/or db resellers. 2\. never reuse the same password twice. Obviously. 3\. never use 3rd party authent such as "Login with FB, Twitter or Gmail", as it breaches the first rule.

It generates some work to maintain all of this, but I've been doing it since probably over a decade, and it's now an habit I can't quit, considering the benefits.

So, back to the paper, I'd tend not to follow this guideline, even if I'm tempted to do so.

<comment><USER29> I'm in the process of setting up the same thing for my email. Any interest in sharing what you're using?

<comment><USER30> I have a godaddy domain with email. I give each company companyname@myfakedomain as the email. They all forward to me at astro@myrealdomain. If/when they aggressively send me aggravating email, I flip it to forward to some big wig at the company and forget about it.

Works well and is pretty cheap.

<comment><USER29> Thanks, though I am looking for something that I can manage myself. I won't say without a third party - using a VPS - but I am trying to build it such that I can pick up and move to a different VPS provider without a lot of pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The author was me before I started using LastPass password manager and form filler. I can input my name, address, credit card number in seconds, and it will automatically track all my logins. There are many other such apps out there besides LastPass, so this is not a particular endorsement of that product. And, of course, LastPass or other password manager will not fix all the bad websites out there.

</comment><comment><USER32> And that is why we have implemented this in our platform:

[https://qbix.com/platform/features/invitations](https://qbix.com/platform/features/invitations)

[https://qbix.com/platform/guide/invites](https://qbix.com/platform/guide/invites)

</comment><comment><USER33> Lol this reminds me of the Demolition Ship Captain incident at AoKH where DSC hacked into Angel THS's account (and then ban half the active users on Age of Kings Heaven) by just creating a website where he could get Angel THS to use the same password he could use everywhere (HUNTER)

</comment><comment><USER34> Unreadable for the over 40 crowd on mobile.

<comment><USER35> Everything is unreadable for the over 40 crowd on mobile. That's why I use Firefox reader view on mobile. On desktop it's as simple as ctrl-shift-+

<comment><USER36> No, this site is especially bad. 50% of the total screen real estate is taken up by useless margins that shouldn't be there on mobile, and the text size is way too small. Most sites do a way better job of rendering on mobile.

<comment><USER35> Yes, that site was poorly designed. Unfortunately is true of most sites to varying degrees IMHO. I browse in desktop mode on mobile (because I don't want the sites to treat me differently) and then use reader mode to read (because then I get a consistent experience).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > __Why didn't I call myself? Mostly, because I hate making unsolicited calls > of any kind, a phobia that I admit isn't entirely rational and that often > causes inconvenience. __

Interesting. I hadnt thought of a reservation as being unsolicited. What about online reservations that are more pubsub-like?

</comment><comment><USER34> Readable version

[https://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottaaron...](https://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scottaaronson.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D3203&theme=white&size=medium)

</comment><comment><USER38> The unnecessary accounts I hate the most are the ones that are needed to send feedback. An account should not be required for that if you want feedback from outside your happy users bubble.

</comment><comment><USER39> Narcissistic proclamation in a blog that brings no discussion or interesting thoughts.

<comment><USER40> A recent link from Scott Aaronson's blog points to his survey paper on P and NP ([http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf)).

If you think that this brings no "interesting thoughts", this probably says more about your intellectual tastes than it does about Aaronson's work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you ever wondered what people meant by out of touch "ivory tower" academics, just read this post.

Just imagine telling a client, "sorry I don't open Google Docs on principle. Life is too short and too precious."

<comment><USER42> You say that but if one looks at your example at face value then you would be surprised how often things like that do happen. I had one supplier threaten to cancel business relations with us if we didn't send through customer details (related to the product they were supplying) on an excel spreadsheet via email. It took quite some negotiation to agree a secure compromise.

That's just the most recent example but I've had to deal with countless insane demands from suppliers like this over the course of my career. In several cases being borerline to saying "if you don't want our business then there's plenty of other suppliers that do".

However by far the most annoying one I've had, and one that used to be common place 5 years ago in the UK, was recruitment agencies refusing to accept CVs in PDF form. They would accept a Microsoft Word document or RTF. Some even accepted plain text files. But a PDF was point blank refused even in tech- agencies. This used to be a real pain for myself, a Linux developer and administrator who didn't run Windows so couldnt guarantee what OpenOffice would spit out when exporting to .DOC. I ended up having to use a spare work machine and thankfully had a _very_ forgiving boss.

<comment><USER6> When they insist on a doc document it is because they want to edit it, which means they are about to screw you over.

<comment><USER42> I guessed that much myself to be honest :). However it has always been trivially easy to copy and paste content from a PDF so their restriction didn't make much sense to me even with that point in mind. And with the added issue that every tech recruiter I approached enforcing the same policy, it made it impossible to shop around for recruitment agencies that would honour my CV.

Thankfully I've not had the same issues when job hunting again recently. At least not thus far.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TED Refusing to Post Talk by VC Saying Rich People Don't Create Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-billionaire-venture-capitalist-gave-a-ted-talk-saying-rich-people-dont-create-jobs--and-ted-is-refusing-to-post-it-2012-5

<comment><USER2> Discussion from couple hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3983598> (points to nationaljournal.com instead of businessinsider)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I missed the original and didn't spot it on hnsearch with that name.</comment></comment>


The iBackPack, a failed crowdfund with an FTC investigation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21156136/ibackpack-smart-backpack-kickstarter-indiegogo-crowdfunding-scam-investigation-ftc-doug-monahan <comment><USER2> > ... most of these things could be bought on their own and crammed into any > old backpack ...

Similar gimmick employed by the "Coolest", on Kickstarter, though with more success in production.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

 _The second explanation for iBackpack's existence, Monahan says, was realizing that crowdfunding could offer him lots of money to fund an idea. In fact, he took hints from one of Kickstarter's most notorious feature-stuffed gadgets: a cooler with a Bluetooth speaker, USB chargers, and a built-in blender. It raised over $13 million on Kickstarter._

 _"I saw the Coolest Cooler, and I'm thinking, 'Jesus, if people are going to give $14 million to a cooler for crying out loud that they only use every weekend, maybe, then what do they need?'" he asks._

...

 _What Monahan perhaps didn't see coming was that Coolest Cooler wouldn't ship to all its backers and would officially shut down its operation five years after its Kickstarter campaign went live. Its backers are also angry, as evidenced by comments on its Kickstarter page. They, too, operate a Facebook group, and the Oregon Department of Justice investigated the company._</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the real chances of Startup Act 2.0 to pass? - <AUTHOR>

Startup Act 2.0 is something Obama promised in his campaign, and as we know, a lot of the campaign promises are often broken.
What are the real chances of Startup Act 2.0 to actually pass and come to effect? <comment><USER2> <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s3217>

Chances aren't looking too good.</comment>


Have a successful product, everyone thinks I am unemployed - <AUTHOR>

Curious to know if others have managed to create a good life for themselves as a one person company, only to have the rest of the world think they are unemployed.  In my case, this perception is compounded by my disdain for materialism.<p>Many people earning a lot less often suggest they can help me find a job -- certain I am completely unemployed.  Any similar stories?<p>(I don't mean to suggest this is a real problem.  But it is a minor annoyance) <comment><USER2> Do people actually think you are unemployed, or do they just think that what you are doing cannot possibly support you full-time/comfortably?

I experience the second reaction fairly commonly. People ask me what my job is, I explain it to them, and then they inevitably follow-up with "Is that profitable?" or "You work on that full-time?" -- basically, some variant of "that sounds like a nice hobby, kid, but what do you really do?"

I think it stems partly from insecurity, and partly from lack of understanding.

The insecurity part comes from the fact that most people don't want to actually believe that you can be successful by working for yourself. Many people dream about working for themselves or starting their own company, but few are willing to take the actual risk. When they see other people fail, it confirms that their decision to take the "safe" path was the correct one, and makes them feel better about themselves. This may seem really cynical, but I've experienced the reaction enough to believe it. Felix Dennis, founder of Maxim magazine and a publishing empire, also talks about this behavior a lot in his book "How To Get Rich" (tacky title, great book).

You mention that you're not a materialist. In that case, does it really matter if other people don't take you seriously, or fail to give you the respect you might deserve? Presumably, your friends should understand enough about your situation and business not to make such job offers. And if it's someone that you have to impress by handing out a fancy business card or driving a fancy car, and if they won't take you seriously without one, is that someone you want to be associating with anyway?

</comment><comment><USER3> Get some sharp looking business cards -- or any business cards at all, really -- for about $20 or thereabouts from some online provider. When your friends ask what you're doing, light up with a big smile and say "I've started a company!" and whip out your cards and start passing them out.

If they ask how business is... tell them.

As an anonymous YC founder said over the weekend: "A lot of what startup founders do is just posturing. It works."

If that doesn't do the trick, get a second set of cards that claim you're an Amway representative. Your friends will never ask about your job again. But be careful, because they may also start running away as you approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. Great business cards is a good idea. I am fairly opposed to posturing however, unless I am speaking to my customers. I prefer to not posture in front of friends -- this, I suppose, is not helping.

<comment><USER4> There's an alternative: Just don't let yourself get dragged into an argument/deep discussion of the matter. A simple, nonchalant reply that they can't get any hooks into is a good out. You may have to repeat "No thanks. I'm fine." several times. People seem to be deaf to such things if they fly in the face of their perceptions. It's a slow process and leaves people baffled but is effective over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good advice. Indeed perception is the hardest thing to overcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure where you are but in los angeles you can't tell if the person is unemployed or a rich actor by looking at them. The general way anyone can even guess is the famous guys usually have a nice ride.

If you want some nice business cards check out the metal or the nice hard plastic cards and get them custom designed.

If it really becomes annoying just tell them what you would need in $$ to accept a job offer. After that they will most likely stop trying to get you a gig.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am a native New Yorker, and it was better there. But, I just moved to Southeast Asia, which is a little more like your description of LA -- people distinguish themselves differently here -- more trophy objects.

Good idea with the high-end business cards. It might come down to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The materialism can be solved easily enough; just buy some bling. :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> What an awesome problem to have, someday I hope to deal with your troubles :)</comment>


Do you have a spare office to sublease near downtown Mountain View? - <AUTHOR>

We are a startup health 2.0 internet company looking to sublease a single 200sqft+ office for a few months (month-to-month option ideal).<p>We are an awesome group of four very socially-well adapted adults who will use the space a few days a week.
Have you got space? Know companies who are still growing into their large spaces and might have some to spare in the next few months? Please hook us up!  Many, many thanks. - Eri
blog.genomera.com <comment><AUTHOR> If you have a spare office, please shoot me an email: email@example.com</comment>


DIY Kubernetes cluster with x86 stick-pcs - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/diy-kubernetes-cluster-with-x86-stick-pcs-b0b6b879f8a7#.vdx36xv73 <comment><USER2> I get the idea of doing this for fun, or as a means of testing tools for setting up kubernetes clusters, but then the author says

> This could then be used as the ultimate continuous delivery appliance.

and I'm scratching my head about why you'd want to run important infrastructure on a bunch of underpowered, probably unreliably, stick PCs.

<comment><USER3> Author here. The plan is to get spinnaker setup on the cluster. It's a collection of around 8 microservices. Kubernetes should handle HA just fine. 20 cores and 10GB of memory for the cluster. I can build another one of these and put it in a separate room for multi-region ;)

<comment><USER2> You plugged all 5 stick pcs into a single usb hub and ethernet switch. Your definition of HA must be very different from mine.

<comment><USER3> You're right. I should go get redundant power supplies and a full rack for my little hobby cluster.

<comment><USER4> Don't think that is enough, check if your next door neighbor is willing to plug one of these in their coat closet - that gives you multi zone. Then ship one to me (or I can build one myself) and host it in San Francisco, that gives us multi region. Are you game?

<comment><USER3> Sure! Lets put one on a balloon with a battery pack and hotspot too. That is true cloud computing right there

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These look pretty neat. There are several ARM-based boards that are competitive IMO. ODROID-XU4 (pros: gigabit, big.LITTLE octa-core, Mali OCL/OGL GPU, cons: no included storage or enclosure).

Whatever the case, this is a neat project. Tie wraps FTW!

<comment><USER6> the Odroid c2 is pretty nice too, but again no included storage, but then again its emmc so you don't end up wearing out 4 SDcards per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool project.

Is that an Anker USB charger in your stack? Did you have any trouble powering the sticks with it? I have some BBBs that won't spin up plugged into my Anker and I'm wondering if I need a firmware upgrade.

Edit: have you had any problems with heat dissipation under load? You seem to have packed things closer together than I would think.

<comment><USER3> Yes it's an Anker. No problems so far.

The sticks do get warm to the touch. The case is sort of faceted like a heat sink but I'm not sure if it's just decorative. I'm planning on getting some more load and temp logging for tests soon.

<comment><USER7> I haven't gotten anywhere near as big as you, but I was contemplating hooking one of those USB powered fans up to mine when I tried to load up the devices.

<comment><USER3> That's a cool idea. I was also looking into usb powered switches so everything can run off the hub</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume-production-of-7nm-chips <comment><USER2> Wow. I still remember being amazed when micron widths came out. 7nm is close to a miracle.

Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.

<comment><USER3> There isn't any feature of the transistors taht are 7nm wide, the smallest feature IIRC is the interconnect, which is about 30n-40nm. "7nm" is marketing wankery. [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process)

<comment><USER4> Well that's annoying. How is anyone supposed to judge anything if they just make numbers up?

<comment><USER5> I think bits of SRAM per unit of area is a benchmark that some people use, as it corresponds to something that's meaningful and measurable.

<comment><USER6> The problem is even that is flawed as things are going three dimensional.

<comment><USER7> So just start measuring in bits of SRAM per unit of volume?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun stuff. I've got a key chain with an 80186 die, and a couple of the binders from Microprocessor Forum when they had dies on the cover. The features on those chips are "huge" compared to these things. I suspect a die using one of these processes that was big enough (say 100 sq mm) would just look like a mirror with chromatic interference lines running across it.

This announcement also bookends nicely with the first home made IC one ([https://hackaday.com/2018/04/24/first-lithographically- produ...](https://hackaday.com/2018/04/24/first-lithographically-produced- home-made-ic-announced/))

<comment><USER9> ICs have just looked like mirrors for a while now.

See this shot of a 14nm Vega die on the left and 28nm Fury die on the right: [https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_Previ...](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_Preview/images/rx- vega-die.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I think you linked to a flip chip---you would expect a mirror finish from the bulk silicon side.

<comment><USER9> Ah yes you're right of course. Has there been anything in the past few years made on modern processes with the die actually visible? Desktop/laptop CPUs and GPUs have all been flip chip for at least the past decade, mobile SoCs are package on package, most other stuff is encased in plastic.

<comment><USER11> der8auer did flip the Zen dies in the Threadripper over and ground them down to look what's inside.

The video gives a good impression of the dimensions of the die and the structures inside.

[https://youtu.be/N-uKQ6RfUdk](https://youtu.be/N-uKQ6RfUdk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how reliable and durable 7nm chips will be. We might start to see chip failures even after a few years of use.

[https://semiengineering.com/transistor-aging- intensifies-10n...](https://semiengineering.com/transistor-aging- intensifies-10nm/)

<comment><USER13> Good question. Node size used to have a pretty firm definition, but it's malleable these days.

Regardless of the absolute number, you can think of it as defining the smallest width of pencil you are used to make a drawing with. You can still use fatter pencils, and in many cases you would want to... shading in a large area for example. But having the smaller pencil lets you put in finer details.

Some thing just won't work if they are too small though, so even though you have a fine sharp pencil available to use, somethings will not change.

Regarding reliability over time, electromigration is the only thing I know of in a typical IC that causes degradation. It is affected by the size of conductors, so potentially things could get worse. It's a well understood phenomenon though so it's usually mitigated by design rules.

Non volatile memories have their own degradation problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note that the TSMC 7nm process is similar in feature size to Intel 10nm.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer#7_nm_process_nod...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer#7_nm_process_nodes)

<comment><USER15> Strange that there's no citation for that claim.. do you have one?

<comment><USER16> Both Transistor Gate Pitch (nm) and Interconnect pitch (nm) are same or smaller for Intel's 10nm process compared to TSMC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So one of the most important questions when producing >10nm process is _yield_. In the article I can't really find yield numbers, and the only thing they mention is the SRAM chips getting "consistent double digits" \-- so pessimistically consistently 10% yield. That's not "good" yield.

Also, IIRC SRAMs are just about the simplest blocks you can make, which means they're the simplest lithography wise. Simple blocks to make, so they're usually good candidates for exploration of new process...

7nm is hard (I've said in a previous post, but you're just fighting physics at that point, nevermind all the issues you start facing with crosstalk/etc), color me skeptical that they've really nailed down a "volume" process for doing it just yet.

<comment><USER18> > I can't really find yield numbers

This is not surprising - this is trade secret information as it directly translates to profit margin for the process. AFAIK nobody publishes process yield information other than vague handwavy percentages.

You should also expect percent yields of most processes these days to be pretty poor (numerically): each step brings its percent breakage along, so at 100+ steps for these current processes, you're losing a significant fraction of chips. (Even if all of your steps yield 99%, you're down to 36.6% yield after 100 steps, so it's _really_ important to reduce the number of steps as well as their complexity.)

For a process to be profitable it doesn't need to have a perfect, or even "good" yield though (and so-called "perfect wafers" have been vanishingly rare since about the 14nm process step). I've read documentation about _very_ old processes with yields of 60% that were considered "good" at the time, so 10% might not be a terrible overall yield at this process node (e.g. if we take our 36.6% yield example above, 10% total yield would be of 27% of theoretical - certainly room for improvement, but better than many pharmaceutical processes).

This underlines the importance for the switch to EUV - a dozen or more DUV multi-patterning steps can be dropped down to a single EUV step, which eliminates losses along those multi-patterning steps.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. About the only number I'd expect from a foundry is a defect density per unit area, which can be used to derive a yield estimate. It's die-size and design-quality dependent, so the quoted D0 is going to be a best case.

10% most certainly _is_ a terrible yield. If TSMC is kicking off volume production, then they have a mostly-SRAM test vehicle somewhere, probably 288Mb or larger, yielding at 65 pct or better on a consistent basis. A 10% wafer would be a financial disaster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's just stunning how they have been able to achieve 7nm features. With a 193nm wavelength laser no less.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, you should take the fact they're not using EUV as the tremendous boulder of salt that it is: these are actually 10nm parts. Node names continue to be washed into Megahertz War-style naming schemes.

TSMC's process lines up pretty well with Intel's published numbers for their P1274 10nm process (Contacted Gate Pitch T & I: 54 nm, Minimum Metal Pitch T: 40nm I: 36 nm, High-Density SRAM bitcell size T: 0.027 µm^2 I: 0.0312 µm^2, etc).

What we've learned out of all of this is that Intel's struggles to push tooling towards EUV have benefited the industry at wide, as everyone's spent so much effort there that existing processes and tooling has become cheaper and faster to iterate. They've certainly fallen behind their all-time lead of almost two process generations, but they still appear to be about a generation (18-ish months) ahead of TSMC by published numbers.

But, who actually cares about the numbers, Marketing says 7nm so it's 7nm.

<comment><USER21> There's a big difference when you compare making 7nm features with about 100 process steps whereas EUV are doing it in like 4 steps.

<comment><USER22> EUV is still going to be 60+ steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I assume the production is already sold out for the next year for Bitcoin/Ethereum miner ASICs...

I am wondering for how long will we be stuck with 7mm/10mm (Intel) tech; maybe we will see the last silicon-based improvements in CPUs & GPUs for the next two decades...

<comment><USER24> ASICs usually trail leading edge nodes by several years.

<comment><USER22> According to what evidence? Due to yeild tolerance, they tend to be among the first made, even getting made during risk production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This makes me hope that maybe all those chipmakers will finally move on from that extremely long-lived 28nm node. It has been heavily used since 2011-2012 and even companies like Qualcomm have been using it as recently as last year in the lower-end range of products. Companies like Allwinner, Rockchip, Amlogic have yet to release a single chip on newer nodes.

What this means is that the 28nm node has been the cheapest now for 7 years running. Usually, when new nodes came up, the cost per transistor initially was lower, while the yields are slowly improving. But after ~1-2 years, the new node was always more cost-effective then older nodes, per-transistor.

This wasn't the case with the 28nm, which stuck around for 7 whole years, and still seems to be the most cost-effective. But surely, now with 7nm available that won't be the case for much longer. Good riddance.

<comment><USER26> 28nm will be around for a long time. There are SoCs up at 130 or 180nm still because for what they need those are the cheapest way to go. 28 is as far as you go with planar transistors and single (or is it double?) patterning. The 20-22 node is not popular because it kinda sucks for both planar and FinFET designs. I think 14-16 will be around for a long time too because of the increased complexity of going lower.

While the end of scaling is a bummer, it will be nice to have the industry settle on a few common nodes that are mature and very well understood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a question - why does the fab machine lithographic printing etch out a half a chip on the edge of the wafer like in the article picture. I presume the wafers are a standard 300mm size, so is it just because the designers were too lazy to remove the half chips on the edges from their mask template designs ?

<comment><USER2> Aha I had a question too why wafers are round. The answer is Crystals form in a cylinder then sliced. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)#Formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_\(electronics\)#Formation). Sorry it doesn't answer your question but helped me. :)

<comment><USER28> You could slice a cylinder the other way. That would give you rectangles, with the short dimension varying. I'm not so sure you'd save any space, but recycling the unused portion might be more reasonable to do.

<comment><USER29> The problem is that it is a single crystal of silicon. To keep it atomically flat you cannot cut it at any angle. You must cut it across the axis the crystal grows in or the surface will be rough and the wafer will likely crack in half in a stiff breeze.

I suppose you could go for some more on-axis cuts, but the crystal planes are pretty restrictive on what you can do. You'd end up having super long and narrow pieces and such.

[http://www.crystal-scientific.com/xtal_orientation.html](http://www.crystal- scientific.com/xtal_orientation.html)

<comment><USER28> The orientation is determined by the seed crystal. You can choose whatever you want.

There will of course be long and skinny pieces. These will be much easier to recycle than the unused portions around the edge of a circular wafer; they need not leave the facility that cuts the wafers.

The end result is rectangles of a standard size in one dimension and varying side in the other dimension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did any chip vendor announce 7nm chips yet? Or is this still secret?

<comment><USER31> AMD's Zen2, which should come in or around 2019, will be on GloFo's 7nm.

I believe TSMC will use 7nm for some memory and mobile applications.

As for Intel their largely accepted equivalent to other foundries' 7nm is their 10nm, which is introduced in Cannon Lake/Ice Lake.

<comment><USER32> Also "Apple's 'A12' chip reportedly in production using 7nm"... "destined for 2018 iPhone models."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great. I hope Esperanto Technology can come out with their RISC-V chip soon.

</comment><comment><USER34> Deep into science fiction here with EUV...

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting time. This is the first time TSMC leads Intel in terms of node features if I remember correctly.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wake me up when EUV's here...</comment>


Andrew Chen: Are you a product fanatic? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2008/01/to-entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> On never using popular products:

If you refuse to use certain tools because of religious or ideological reasons then you're just narrow-minded.

If you're an start-up entrepreneur, you're in the situation of having to efficiently allocate scarce resources, ideally you should be using the best tools for the job without arbitrarily limiting yourself, no?

Luckily for them, the guys at Google decided to go ahead using boring uncool commodity hardware instead of the 'better' fancy machines.

<comment><USER3> Popular but shitty products are rarely "the best tool for the job".

Unfortunately, there always seems to be a lot of them around...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Andrew, all of your points are basically a slam in the face of this site's readers. You obviously read HN a lot so you took some headlines that hit top spots here and turned them against HN users.

Are you saying HN readers are wrong?!

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is it if you're a lawyer, accountant, banker, or surgeon who insists on precision and correctness, you're called "skilled" or "competent"?

But if you're a hacker who insists on precision and correctness, you're called a "fanatic"?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is omiting one important fact in those successful businesses : Time. Yes buddy, when Microsoft and walmart first launched they were only cool to a small group, but quite lame to the vast majority. They could not understand the value of home pc or super sized stores that cuts the local shop business in half. Maybe not so much for walmart since it provided instant gratification through cheap prices. It took time to educate the users, and the masses before getting significant traction. Google was the cool product a few years ago, today it is becoming more and more lame, but more and more attractive to users. Therefore, if you are product fanatic and you got techcrunched now you have earned the respect of the small smart crowd, but you need to educate the bigger crowd. Explain them that their vision has been imperfect and you are here to change that and this is how.... Now Personaly I don't like to work on something revolutionary (unless it could involve redistribution of wealth, world hunger or something similar), I don't want to pay for someone else's r&d, but I encourage anyone who is working on something cool to keep going, because I may sell for 5 millions in 9 months, but you will sell for 10 billions in a few years and you will be more likely to finance research for mental disease such as (greed).

</comment><comment><USER7> i like the part where you put numbered lists with bullets, it really accentuates the point.</comment>


When Random is Too Random - <AUTHOR> http://kaioa.com/node/53

<comment><USER2> Semantics pedantry: all of the algorithms he presented are random distributions. They're just not _uniformly_ random. In colloquial speech, "random" implies "uniformly random," but I think we should be precise when we're actually talking about pseudo-random number generators and probability distributions.</comment>


Y Combinator Backed Search Engine For Gadget Parts - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/05/octopart-vertical-product-search-electrical-engineers/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have a great deal of trust for startups that choose niche and vertical markets as an entry strategy (my article: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6_startup_lessons_2007.php). As a company founder, it takes an incredible amount of discipline to resist the temptation of trying to build an "everybody" product. The best way to build a company is not by going after an existing category, but by creating a new category you can be first in. Startups must focus on creating new markets over serving existing ones.

Moreover, as an Electrical Engineering student, I understand that a Search Engine for electronic components is certainly a product in much demand. To top it off, they also managed to extract specifications of the parts in .gif/pdf formats which is absolutely essential when buying IC's or Transistors.

Congratulations to the founders and YCombinator. Great work guys!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is certainly a great product, and the fact that the founders are in fact "scratching an itch" gives me confidence that they'll continue to do fine on the tech side of things.

I do wonder, however, what the business model is here. My hope is that the major parts vendors will recognize that Octopart is a good thing for them, and will play ball--both on the technical/database integration front, and, hopefully in terms of monetizing the product. Because it really is a great product.

One technical quibble, though: Octopart could improve its result quality a good bit by incorporating some semantic analysis. An example: a search for "blue led 3mm leaded" returns as its first result an SMD (i.e. non-leaded) part. What's going on here? It's matching the phrase "Leaded Process Compatible: No;" with a bit of not-terribly-deep semantic matching (leveraging the fact that part specs speak a relatively contrived and regularized language) it should be possible to recognize that "Leaded Process Compatible: No" is not a match for leaded.

Quibbles aside, I'm looking forward to watching Octopart improve, and, hopefully, succeed. We all know the competition sucks, after all.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this had existed a decade ago I might have ended up as an EE. As a kid I had just as much interest in electronics as I did in programming, but having no money and growing up in suburban hell with no decent electronics stores within driving distance, I couldn't pursue it. I think this is the most promising YC startup to date (based on what I know about them when they launch; obviously Reddit is successful with probability 1).

</comment><comment><USER4> Joe Kraus calls vertical search "top down" entrepreneurship:

http://www.ikiw.org/2006/09/18/a-conversation-with-joe-kraus-co-founder-and- ceo-of-jotspot/

These guys appear to be scratching their own itch, so I think they have a shot at least.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if this was inspired by Langley Steinert's talk about vertical search.</comment>


Kenyans will soon need a license to post videos online - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2018/05/28/kenyans-will-soon-need-a-license-to-post-videos-online/ <comment><USER3> >The punishment, likewise, is also harsh. However, it will be near impossible for the KFCB to enforce and monitor this in a scalable way.

great! now there's a crime that everyone have probably committed some time in their life which carries a stiff prison sentence. any time there's an opposition candidate that you don't like, just bring that up and they won't bother you anymore :)

<comment> nils-m-holm Every country has laws that are broad and vague and pretty much everybody is guilty of having broken them at some point. They are very practical for getting rid of dissenters. No need for the :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know I may be stating something obvious here, but isn't this bad (aka tell me what the advantages of doing this by the people who passed the law) and how did a law like this get passed?

EDIT: I mean that Kenya is a democracy and there has to be some kind of rationale behind a move by the people pushing the move that "justifies" to the Kenyan people, its not like Kenyans suddenly decided to vote in a dictator, this new law is more restrictive than China.

<comment><USER5> "Democracy" does not automatically guarantee liberties in most of the world. In some countries, "democracy" has reduced to a system to vote in their next authoritarian strongman who then dismantles all checks and balances by appointing toadies to all institutions. Their citizens are not consulted about their opinions. Russia, Turkey, Venezuela have already crossed over. Kenya and India are on the way. Hungary too.

<comment><USER6> I'd add Algeria to that list too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's some upheaval in Kenya's democracy. Based on very limited reading: A leading opposition figure was detained and, after delaying judicial review the his detention, the government deported him before he could get a hearing in court. The government claimed he lacked citizenship; he's Kenyan by birth but has dual citizenship.

Tangential but important: That's the third government I've seen (I expect there are more) use its immigration enforcement powers to avoid judicial review and due process. The others are the US and UK.

<comment><USER8> A few months ago Kenya shut down some TV stations [0] that were planning on broadcasting a 'swearing in' of the opposition leader. There was some argy- bargy about it including the supreme court ruling the shutdown illegal, but it went ahead anyway [1]

This was back in Jan/Fab

[0] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/30/kenyan- governmen...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/30/kenyan-government- shuts-free-to-air-tv-stations/) [1] [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/03/africa/kenya-tv- stations-...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/03/africa/kenya-tv-stations- shutdown/index.html)

<comment><USER9> I was in Kenya just after this, when Miguna Miguna went missing for a few days (people feared he had been disappeared,but he "just" got deported). As chance would have it, I was in his home town. Quite heavy demonstrations - <USER2> roadblocks with burning tires, and they raided a beer truck, and the police did crowd control by shooting into the air.

I was in Kenya in 2007 as well when the same opposition candidate also lost the election. That was much, much uglier. While I do sympathise somewhat with his followers (the region he is from is much poorer than central Kenya, and this follows tribal lines - they feel they are not being heard, and there is some truth to that), I do think that this candidate is a quite dangerous man to have in power. Any influence he has now is coming from the fact that his followers will tear the country up if he says so - and he did say so back in 2007.

Kenyan politics is a bit of a mess I'm afraid..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Terrible site - first the iOS "deceptive website scam", then a "iPhone user you've won $1000" full page scam

<comment><USER10> Get a mobile device and a browser that gives you control to block that stuff. Complaining about it here won't help anyone.

<comment><USER11> So it's all on the end user to go to extra steps to avoid browser hijackers, and the company allowing the garbage ads is completely absolved of blame?

>Complaining about it here won't help anyone.

Unnecessarily douchey thing to post. A nonzero amount of people will read the comments and decide against opening the article/open it in an archival service instead and bypass the malicious ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll save everyone the trouble of looking it up on google: 100,000 Kenyan Shillings is $985 USD. Pretty hefty fine for sharing a video you recorded with your cell phone.

<comment><USER13> For your average Kenyan it is ... rather large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting that it's _written_ with a seeming intent of discouraging filmmakers from making films that (perhaps) disparage or provide a distorted view of Kenyan culture, which I can sort of understand them pushing for.

But no international filmmaker is going to give a shit about such a small fine, and the KFCB is clear that this applies to individuals posting personal videos on social media.

I can't tell which of those was their real aim.

</comment><comment><USER15> Surely a lawyer will find a loophole in no time?

It might cause a drop in the number of people intending their footage be for public release, but one might expect a rise in those who intend for it to be private and then conveniently change their plan at a later point. But maybe in due course cunning Dr Ezekiel would get wise and require a licence to change intentions...

<comment><USER16> One possible hole based on interpretation is that the language refers to the "creation of a film meant for public exhibition". You could argue that uploading to Facebook with some restriction on privacy settings is not for 'public' exhibition, even if the group that it is meant for exhibition to is very large.

The document shown also doesn't specify that the actual exhibition is a problem. So, if I create a film intended for private exhibition and then later exhibit it publicly, is that okay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Honestly as a Kenyan American, its scary to see my country move in manners wholly authoritative. It seems the government is consolidating its power. As we get closer ties to China, our government gets stronger without fixong existing corruption that is rampant and widespread.

<comment><USER18> Kenya or USA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The worst outcome of this is other so-called democracies exploit incidents like this to follow suit and take away more rights from their citizens. If one looks at the fall of Rome, the first autocratic emperor was Augustus followed by the rest of the sinister characters of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. America and other countries could go that way if corrupt senators bestow emperor status on their leader. Russia is already this way, Turkey to an extent and China definitely.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this a test case? Kenya is a global pioneer in mobile money (Vodaphone M-Pesa). German publishers are seeking upload filters in the EU, with a scope that far exceeds video, e.g. Github has objected to source code upload filtering.

Upload filters may soon become EU law: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244)

</comment><comment><USER21> What of the YT Nairobi offices, then? Can't imagine YT working with the local gov't to issue licenses to creators on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER22> Apparently the proposer, (Mutua) seems to have already proposed similar legislation. I just wonder how they crack down on people with pseudonyms. They can't arrest 'joblo31'; unless they track down people's IPs and heavily sleuth around. Likely will be a tool to wield against companies to fork over data over compliance.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dey eat da poo poo.

</comment><comment><USER24> The headline is slightly inaccurate. Filming (for the purpose of public viewing) without a license is illegal, not posting videos online.

<comment><AUTHOR> But as the government body implied that "public viewing" included posting on social media, it is effectively a de facto ban on uploading videos on social media without a license. Sometimes it's not what the law specifically says that matters; it's the law's effect.</comment></comment>


Kalashnikov takes on Tesla with retro-look electric 'supercar' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/23/kalashnikov-takes-on-tesla-with-retro-look-electric-supercar <comment><USER2> Even if their products don't hit market adoption, they at least have a future in Bioshock and Fallout cosplay.</comment>


What do you feel about Software Process like CMM/CMMi ? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The goals they have are good ones. If you're stuck with more than 10 programmers of varying levels of ability, and you're taking marching orders from a client who has no idea what the tradeoffs are, they're arguably the best way to get things done.

When you're a group of fewer than 5 programmers and you're all smarter than the average bear, they're useless.

In essence, they're a ritualization of the communication and testing process that has to happen to make software good and reliable. Without some communication and testing, the software will suck; at a certain organizational size, or with programmers of lower ability levels, you can't rely on the programmers to do it themselves.

<comment><USER3> The road to hell is paved with good intentions (and bad specs).

<comment><USER2> Oh yes - I don't think CMM &c; are silver bullets.

But in the end, to build software you have to communicate. Once the group working on the software is larger than 5 or 6, unless everyone on the team is phenomenally good, you need to formalize this communication somehow. All of these formal development methodologies are ways of accomplishing that -- none of them are necessarily good, but at least they solve that problem so you can get to other problems.

Of course, this leads to other problems, such as the ISO 9001 compliant company that has all of its dysfunctional processes documented in explicit detail that must be followed. (I worked there once. It was like _Office Space_ meets _Brazil._ )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I deal with CMM on a daily basis (gov. contracting). It is a huge waste of time, money, and resources. If people spent less time writing documents and more time writing software, the world would be a better place.

</comment><comment><USER5> There was an interesting article on NASA's use of CMMI at FastCompany: <http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html>

As for me, I don't like it. I abide by it at work and it's generally a huge bottleneck for all projects. Many of the ideas the SEI proposes are good practice, and I have a feeling a lot of developers already follow them without knowing that they're part of any "process".

A bad implementation of CMMI at an organization only makes things worse. For example, the latest version of CMMI encourages us to engage in rapid feedback cycles with customers, which is great. But the system we're supposed to _track_ when and how we did that is clunky and consumes time, to the point that you don't _want_ to go talk to customers for fear of having to do more writing and documenation.

</comment><comment><USER6> These models were "invented" for non-technical types like MBA monkeys to help them feel like they are in control of software engineering process. If you look at these models closely, you realize they resemble various principles employed by mechanical/civil engineering.

So what we have here is the attempt by non-technical managers, to bring some "feel" of control over something inherently complex (software development), modeled by their semi-successful methods of management employed in traditional industries (read companies like GE).

What those guys fail to realize is that software engineering is fundamentally more complex and, therefore, unpredictable than manufacturing industry they're used to (from their business school books).

Pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the keys to CMM are perfectly valid. However I don't think there's a direct correlation between CMM level and the success of the company. You can say that by looking at the companies with a high CMM level that there is a relation, but I could argue as to whether that it is the cause or the effect.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd say successful companies applied CMM after they became successful, not before that.

</comment><comment><USER8> nausea and a vague sense of dread...

</comment><comment><USER9> It sucks all the fun out of writing software. An awful methodology. I left the company that used it after only 3 months (would have been sooner if I found another job sooner).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've also seen a bad implementation of CMM. indeed, if not implemented wisely, it adds a lot of unneeded redundancy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Such processes should be fought tooth and nail:

<http://www.fighttheprocess.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> The reson I would start a company is to get away from this stuff. It makes me sick.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> yeap, I agree...I cannot find a single case where these would be necessary. probably others use it though

<comment><USER8> not in most startups... I don't see anyone here getting into defence contracting any time soon.

Granted, there are some common sense aspects that are slam dunks (c'mon, version control, why wouldn't you use it) but a lot of it still favours _serious software_ where all the engineers wear dark suits and ties and do _big design up front_.

Most startups would run out of time and money just getting to level 2 CMMi compliance before they even started to really cut any code.</comment></comment>


Cerebral Micro-Structural Changes in Covid-19 Patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30228-5/fulltext <comment><USER2> Every time there is a discussion on Covid on HN, an army of trolls come out to pooh pooh everything. We are supposed to be better than Reddit here. It's about discussion not dissing. You don't have to agree with everything, but you also should not be ruining the thoughtful discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am reading these negative neural impacts ranging from bad to worse, and I cannot help but think, how come there is not something in nature, a virus or bacteria, on the whole planet that can do something good? I do not know help boosting confidence, making people happier, increasing cognitive abilities, maybe improving your sense of smell or direction, gain muscle... at least something, instead it is always a very long list of destruction. Sorry guys, I am trying to offset, reading this paper made me depressive.

EDIT: After reading all the answers, I remember a quote, probably answer to my question. It is not possible because we are very complex organism, and regardless how some virus or tiny bug can find flaws in our complexity, in the same way as randomly injected piece of code cannot improve application, the same way, is an equal chance that a virus will introduce positive change in our genome which will improve parameters we desire.

Quote was Hoyle's Fallacy used for something completely different: "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747"

So it seems we need to wait for few million years or to really on marvel of genetically engineering.

p.s. Thank you guys!

<comment><USER4> The intent behind most of this is to drive a constant sense of fear and worry without any rational cooldown, so expect to be depressed among other things.

Until HN wakes up from fearmongering and "doomscrolling", the beatings will continue.

<comment><USER3> It is scientific paper, not a daily news, my outcry was more as frustration with the universe than fear from pandemic or economic impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Vast majority of people recover just fine and what ever neurological structural changes are caused by the virus appear to have very little affect.

The article claims that both non-severe and severe patients get the same damage, meaning that globally we have at minimum 10 million people with this damage, probably many time more since most cases aren't tested.

But the article does very little to study if these changes actually effect people and for how long.

Evidence, as well as basic observation points to people recovering very well from the disease (we have over 4 million cases in the US but the number of people with crippling long-term effects is minimal, otherwise we'd be able to observe a massive group of impaired individuals).

The article does very little to illustrate that impact on people.

For example, people who lose their sense of smell, which is listed as symptom in this Chinese study get it back and they get it back faster than when they lose the sense of smell with other viruses:

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/thousands...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/thousands- covid-19-patients-lost-sense-smell-will-get-back-cvd/)

<comment><USER6> > the number of people with crippling long-term effects is minimal

The thousands of of reported "long haulers" is troubling. While not crippling, feeling tired and feverish every day for months does not sound pleasant. It also raises awareness that viruses in general (not just Covid) could potentially help explain long term lingering health issues.

<comment><USER7> I'm a long hauler. Caught COVID in March. Still suffering. 28 years old. AMA.

<comment><USER8> How bad was your acute phase? Was it like a bad common cold or did you require hospitalization? Also, what symptoms do persist and how bad would you say they are? In what ways is your quality of life affected?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Combine such a capability with neuroscience and imagine the possibilities!

</comment><comment><USER10> Remember, the Lancet is not a reliable source and has already gotten caught fearmongering earlier this year:

[https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-major- co...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-major- covid-19-paper-that-raised-safety-concerns-about-malaria-drugs/)

<comment><USER11> Lancet is one of the foremost medical journals. Peer review does not filter out 100% of bad papers.

For very understandable reasons, there's a huge pressure right now to get information about CoVID-19 out to the public (and to the medical community) quickly. That means that more bad papers are going to slip through right now.

But what's the alternative? Would you rather that critical results about CoVID-19 be withheld for longer, in order to more thoroughly vet results? That's reasonable, but it involves a trade-off, and the Lancet would no doubt face criticism in the opposite direction if they withheld papers for longer.

<comment><USER12> Except when the hypothesis is that COVID and millimeter wave radiation might be linked, that information is ruthlessly censoring by the publishing powers.

<comment><USER13> Because it's not a hypothesis, it's a nonsense conspiracy theory and of course medical journals will refuse to publish it.

If people want that "information" its free for the taking on reddit, 4chan and facebook memes.

<comment><USER12> If you think this is a conspiracy theory then I doubt you understand much of quantum theory and how photons interact with matter. This experiment were running with millimeter waves is dangerous, and I've yet to see the research that suggests otherwise. I just dont understand how others are not seeing this, were moving far to quickly with our usage of photon manipulation technologies and I dont see the justification for it.

<comment><USER14> Explain the spectral theorem for compact self-adjoint operators to me as if I'm an undergrad and then I'll take you seriously.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sharks Cove – Tablet Development Board - <AUTHOR> http://www.sharkscove.org/

<comment><USER2> Not quite - this might just be a board used by Microsoft as a high-powered test for shrinking Windows, but it's not the "Internet of Things" board that they've been talking about. That's this:

[http://ms-iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm](http://ms- iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm)

It's a cheaper device, and it's about $70. It runs an even slimmer version of Windows. So it's much more a competitor with the Raspberry Pi than other Windows development boards (i.e.: this $300 one.)

<comment><USER3> Right. No way I'm breadboarding this up at $300 per "Thing"

This appears to be a solid workbench device for developing add-on hardware (and the drivers to communicate with it)

The desire to compare to RaspPi is understood, especially when it plays into my preconceptions of the difficulty of Windows development. This thing is a monster.

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b-...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b--300x225.jpg) [http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE- PR...](http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE-PROMO.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More information: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_develope...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_developer_blog/archive/2014/07/26/the- sharks-cove-is-now-available-for-pre-order.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Can someone explain why you'd utilise that board in order to develop Windows Drivers rather than just a generic x86-64 PC with a serial connection for kernel debugging?

For $300 you can easily buy a fully functional PC. Particularly if you don't care too much about the spec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a small computer on a single board, but it's geared towards the high end as far as performance and features go. From the Arduinos, the RasPis, the BanPis, Beagleboards, to small but full-fledged Atom boards it's a huge spectrum.

It's absolutely great that we have so many great systems to choose from, but I'm not sure one is really a "response" to the other.

For example, the Raspberry Pi hits the sweet spot for me as far as home automation things go - it is reasonably powerful enough to run all the software I need including a full web stack, but it has a really low power consumption. For a media station I'd probably choose a Banana Pi instead. The Sharks Cove looks like a great solution if you have to run a minimal Windows (of course).

 _Edit: the title has been changed so it no longer references the Pi, making parts of this post moot. Still, I 'm leaving it as it was._

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why people even bother bringing up RasPi and its ilk here. It's very clearly targeted towards a different audience: professionals who need to develop hardware/drivers for Intel tablets. Just look at all of the headers they've broken out, the test points on the board, the LED display for bus/early boot debugging, etc. The Raspberry Pi was designed with extensibility in mind, designed so the headers are on one side of the board so it can be enclosed sensibly, no extraneous functionality, simple construction, etc. This thing is just a reference tablet board minus the touchpanel, with all of it's I/O ports exposed.

You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for. It's a terrible hobbyist board. Perhaps some one will use this board to develop a decent hobbyist Atom SBC/"NUC" \- Intel's certainly has enough publicly available documentation to make it happen now.

<comment><USER5> I "bothered" because the Pi was explicitly used as a target for comparison in the original title of this thread.

And I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from, but my point was actually similar to yours, minus the abrasive attitude. My comment was about different capabilities and use cases, and I criticized the label "Raspberry Pi" in this context - which, in case you missed it, _was in the original title of this thread_.

 _> You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for._

In no part of my comment did I remotely advocate or even hint at anything like that.

<comment><USER6> > And I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from

I'm not sure how you read hostility, but okay.

> In no part of my comment did I remotely advocate or even hint at anything > like that.

And you obviously missed the thinly veiled Star Wars reference. Perhaps next time I'll put it in quotes.

<comment><USER5> _> And you obviously missed the thinly veiled Star Wars reference. Perhaps next time I'll put it in quotes._

Your statement " _You certainly can built Quark /Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device_" was supposed to counter an argument I never made. Yeah, it's petty, but I felt the need to point that out. Obviously, this is not in any shape or form about your Star Wars reference.

 _> I'm not sure how you read hostility, but okay._

It's my impression. It may well be wrong, but here's how I read it:

You come across as hostile in a number of ways. The issue above is a good example. I perceive your comment as passive aggressive, but more importantly you drag the discussion to areas that are beside the point. It feels like you corrected me about positions I never expressed, and when I criticized this you switched yet again to something unrelated and attacked that.

What I dislike about these maneuvers is that they work. If done right, this combination of abrasiveness and well-executed straw men can get you pretty far in most forums, including this one.

<comment><USER6> > I perceive your comment as passive aggressive, but more importantly you drag > the discussion to areas that are beside the point.

And that's not what you're doing with this entire post? You keep trying to turn this into some kind of nerd fight when my comment was nothing but a statement of facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it is gut of used pc laptop you can farm on eBay (probably with a functioning LCD as a plus), for a price of shining new Chromebook.

<comment><USER8> Don't compare apples and oranges - this board is not meant as a pc-equivalent.

It's selling point are the numerous UART- and GPIO-Ports. This is a DevBoard, not some random mainboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Go figure the m$ response costs 10x more

<comment><USER10> I hear ya, but it does include the ability to develop drivers which is pretty cool.

<comment><USER9> And does support android as well as windows so I will give them that. But really they could not have done ANYTHING to bring the cost down a little bit?

<comment><USER11> That board is probably being sold _under_ cost. Look at how much stuff is crammed onto that PCB! It looks like there's a large BGA bridge chip (southbridge?) on there as well as a bunch of large perpipheral controllers. And what's with that odd chip-on-board module directly south of the Atom? It's missing from this previous picture of the board:

[http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg](http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg)

Compare this to a recent ARM quad-core A9 board, where a lot of the peripheral stuff is on the SoC (oh, and it has Wifi/Bt on board)

[http://boundarydevices.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Ma...](http://boundarydevices.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Max_Top.jpg)

(Just a small plug for Boundary Devices here, their stuff is _excellent_. This is their new Nitrogen6_MAX, $249.).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Improve your writing by having it read back to you - <AUTHOR> https://idiallo.com/blog/improve-your-writing-by-using-text-to-speech <comment><USER2> [https://www.xkcd.com/481/](https://www.xkcd.com/481/)

It's quite an interesting concept.

Using translate.google.com is one of the easiest ways of getting text to speech and definitely works better than the suggested site in the article</comment>