Introducing Firebase Hosting - <AUTHOR> https://www.firebase.com/blog/2014-05-13-introducing-firebase-hosting.html <comment><USER2> I've been using Firebase for a couple of months now for an iOS app I'm building for a client, and it has been a fantastic experience.

For anyone who doesn't know, it's main selling point is that it automatically syncs with the server so you can focus on the data instead of the communication protocol or replication. Its nosql data store looks like a local filesystem, so you can save trees of data to it as JSON. It also has server- side rules written in javascript that enforce constraints on data and read/write permissions per user. They also have a free test account for developers.

"What about merge conflicts?" was my first question, but luckily it has transactions on an individual node (and its subtree) that perform an "optimistic-concurrency transactional update" which basically means a compare- and-swap where you review the current value in a callback and decide whether to try to commit that value (or a new value, say, for a counter) or give up. For most other writes, you're usually just saving status updates where there is little or no danger of being rejected or encountering merge conflicts. If in doubt, it's possible to get a callback with the final value.

So when it's all said and done, I can totally see writing a full-featured app using it without a single line of server-side code. I used their hosting while it was in development to store images (like a CDN) and it's very simple to use from the console, so if you have a build script, it could push to production with a single call. After an exhausting ordeal battling iCloud for a different project, Firebase is so profoundly better that I will never go back.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi HN, I'm the lead developer on Firebase Hosting and the post's author. We're trying to build something that's both simple to use and a serious production grade product. We think we're pretty close to the mark but we'd love to hear how we can improve it. Let us know in the comments (or email me at email@example.com).

<comment><USER4> Can you provide any background on Firebase's thinking for where this, strategy-wise, fits into the platform?

For example, is this supposed to be more of an add-on service for folks who already use Firebase or intended to woo new developers?

<comment><USER5> Firebase gives you the ability to create dynamic pages with no backend requirement. This left a really small gap that the developer still had to host that HTML/JS page somewhere. So Firebase already supplied the backend now they also supply the hosting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would someone here kindly be able to comment about the usability of Parse vs. Firebase vs. AWS JS SDK? I've looked into all three. They seem comparable because they are "no-backend" solutions and NoSQL stores.

It seems like the AWS JS SDK is the youngest, least mature (there are surprisingly few results on Google), and perhaps most difficult to use, but it's sure nice that I can manage my _existing_ AWS stuff with a client-side JS SDK, now. If you use AWS JS SDK with DynamoDB, isn't it as if you've built your own Firebase?

<comment><USER7> I've used both Parse and Firebase extensively and I love them both. Parse is far more mature. Not only has it been around for longer but it's owned by Facebook so it has the resources to continue adding amazing stuff, like Cloud Code. Cloud Code is a huge differentiator in my opinion because it takes care of the last mile for BAAS' (back-end(s) as a service) - custom server-side data validation and manipulation.

However, Parse's SDK follows a very Backbone-like syntax with setters and getters which I'm not all that thrilled with (as an Angular developer) and has no real-time functionality to speak of (outside of push notifications). That's where Firebase shines. Firebase is newer but is maturing very quickly. Their system is solid and pretty much "solves" realtime for all intents and purposes. They don't have a Cloud Code equivalent and search is pretty much non-existent at this point but those are solvable problems I'm sure they will tackle in the not-so-distant future.

What it comes down to is what type of app you're building. And by the way, there's no reason you can combine them to get the best of both worlds :)

<comment><USER8> Firebase may not have Cloud Code, but since you have use their npm module and deploy to a free hosting service like Heroku, I actually think its more powerful. The big win: once you are in a full node.js environment you can leverage the power of all the npm modules. Parse's Cloud Code is very isolated from the entire ecosystem.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Heroku free tier is a production ready solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Building with Firebase was always a bit of a pain since I had to use at least two services (Firebase + S3). This is really great. I've got a dozen or so static page apps that could use this right away.

Non-SNI device support & naked domain support are _awesome_ features. I'd like to see a bit more customization around the routing / DNS still. It would be nice if I could host different versions of my app on different subdomains (staging, etc). Apex hosting is a nice touch too. Overall this is a great entry to the PASS space.

</comment><comment><USER11> One nice thing about Firebase Hosting is that they're the only static site provider I could find that will render html in response to a POST request. When you make a Facebook Canvas app, they expect you to serve your site via POST. If you host on github or something, you just get a 400 error.

</comment><comment><USER12> Firebase is a revolutionary tool, and this is the last piece that was missing from the big picture. It's hard to imagine a Firebase-driven world today, but in 5 years developers will need to quickly deploy and iterate on real-time applications, for which a system like this is ideal. Lay out your database, set up login and security rules, and deploy your application, all through the same service.

However, the lack of benchmarks is a bit disconcerting. Hosting and SSL are great, but if the page loads are slow I'd rather pay money to host them elsewhere.

Also, there is the single-point-of-failure problem, which materialized yesterday when Firebase went down. Although the outage was only for a couple minutes (a lot faster than it would take me to troubleshoot a downed Rails app), it made me realize the dangers of relying on a single system for all of your web application's needs.

Overall, I think Firebase is just going to get better and better. They still need to integrate payments, file upload, and the ability to make API calls to external services, but by adding hosting they are demonstrating a desire to provide services for the full stack. Also, there is a brilliant team of people behind Firebase, so I'm sure that my ideas for Firebase are only the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER13> Have to agree with this. We built Webhook.com on top of Firebase, and it's been transformative. We built a CMS system similar to Wordpress that loads on a single cms.html page that loads off a static server. Its just, well, I never thought it'd be possible.

Service has been excellent.

Doing everything through JSON was initially a little different. There's a lot of times when you really want things to be relational and although you can come up with interesting ways to do it, most of it is tedious. That's really my only complaint and is pretty specific to what we're building. Other than that I really do see this model of storage as the future. Really, really impressive stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Brilliant work guys. Choice of initial features seems right on for a developer focused hosting service. At first I was a bit confused by the SSL offering for custom domains, until I saw that firebase actually acquires the cert and configures it. That's a huge pain point, bravo.

</comment><comment><USER15> What about bots (search engines, social media bots, etc.)? If a web app has both static content and dynamic content (based on data in the firebase db) how can bots see a rendered version of the page. Do you have a way / plan for users to install middleware to check for bots and if so return pre-rendered content. ( Middleware details: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8k8JuuU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8k8JuuUs9SoJ:https://prerender.io/how- it-works+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) ). Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER16> Great question. This is a very real pain point with dynamic content in today's world of bots / crawlers. Many sites right now are completely or partially invisible to crawlers.

As you point out, pre-rendering content is the prescribed way to solve this and there are some existing solutions (prerender.io, brombone, etc.) that are a good start, but this is still a confusing / hard problem for people to solve when they'd like to focus on building their app instead.

So we're keenly looking into how we can best integrate with these sorts of services or provide our own solution as part of our hosting offering. Stay tuned!

<comment><USER15> Ok. Great. Glad you are aware of the problem and evaluating solutions. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Upvoted solely for the description of how modern web-apps should be developed!!! So many people have legacy, server-side attitudes... JavaScript is treated like a special cousin that can raise alert boxes and things...

<comment><USER18> It's all cyclical, and I've seen enough cycles now. The trend always oscillates between heavy clients and heavy servers. They each have their strengths:

Heavy Client: simplified backend management

Heavy Server: clients all run the latest software (no versioning)

There is (and will never be!) a silver bullet. Development is always tricky.

<comment><USER17> Not buying the latest version argument for a web app... But I am sure you're right that it is cyclical from a wide view. It seems to me that all human endeavour is. Additionally, all choices have a benefit and opportunity cost - everything in life is a trade-off...

Seems to me, in the case of a world where bandwidth is scarce and processing power is ubiquitous, that the fat-client, thin-pipe model is where it's at. :)

How many cycles have you seen? Are they really comparable? Doesn't each one need to be treated specially and considered independently?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is neat. Thanks for making and sharing this.

So far I have been using site44 ([http://www.site44.com/](http://www.site44.com/)) to accomplish this already. I see that you guys have built some node apps to make deploying and rolling back easy, which is smart. I have found the way site44 works (it's a dropbox app that updates what's being served automatically when the dropbox folder contents change) to be very convenient.

It may be interesting for you guys to consider doing something similar.

Take care.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the feedback! Now that we've got the core deploy / rollback tooling in place, we're definitely looking for ways to plug into other common workflows (git, Dropbox, etc.). Stay tuned!

<comment><USER20> A git deployment would be great. Similar to heroku I guess.

<comment><USER21> Git integration is on our roadmap. However, you can also set this up yourself now by adding your own git hook that calls 'firebase deploy' on push. For more information, see the documentation for the commandline tool here: [https://www.firebase.com/docs/command-line- tool.html](https://www.firebase.com/docs/command-line-tool.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hey Firebase team, I really liked how you did the [https://www.firebase.com/tutorial/](https://www.firebase.com/tutorial/) !

<comment><USER16> Thanks! We worked hard to try to make a tutorial that communicated the simplicity and power of the API. Glad you liked it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why are connections always the selling point for these real time services? Are they actually the most expensive thing to scale or just the most required therefore most profitable?

Edit: The surcharges for going over the limits seem a bit high. (Candle Plan: $0.25 each additional connection). Get some spike in traffic that causes 2000 visitors to your site for an hour and pay $500 lol

<comment><USER12> Billing is based on 95th percentile usage, so you wouldn't have to pay overages if you exceed the limits for a couple hours (e.g. you got front-paged on TechCrunch, HN, or Reddit)

From [https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html](https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html):

> Because we use 95th percentile billing, you won't be charged for your > overages 5% of the time (about 1.5 days each month).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats Firebase team! I've used Firebase hosting while it was in beta, and had a great experience. Very easy to setup and follow even for someone like me who has very little experience with servers/deployment.

They're also super friendly to their community and always responds to questions fast :-) would love to see more awesome stuff coming from them.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've built some client / server syncing code for a while, and never wondered to check for papers on that subject ( since i did it in a wqy specific to my model each time). What those guys are doing seem quite generic. Are there any famous algorithms for multi end-point data syncing ?

I suppose it's related to the ditributed database research field...

<comment><USER26> Paxos is a good place to start, as it's well-regarded and fairly accessible.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_%28computer_science%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_%28computer_science%29)

<comment><USER25> Thanks, i already knew about this one. I was looking to something more specific to single server / multiple clients that need to sync. It seems a bit different to the type of algorithm used when trying to reach a concensus between multiple servers upon a read request ( or is it ?)

Edit : when i said related to ditributed database, i related more to things like log shipping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am building a financial services app and was using Angular and Firebase. I absolutely loved my development time with Firebase. It really complements Angular nicely and helped cement (in my head at least) what the role of the server in a modern app should be.

That being said, I decided that Firebase is not quite ready yet for my own app's requirements (for financial data I need data-at-rest encryption and on- premise hosting for my clients), but I wish them all the best and highly recommend them for anyone whose apps do not have the same constraints that mine does.

FWIW, my Firebase-like alternative is Node.js + SockJS + MongoDB. I'm looking into Feathers.js as well. It doesn't seem to be very widely used, but looks like it will provide some of the basics (service hooks, event hooks, etc.) on top of Node/SockJS that I will need.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isnt $0 - $49 quite a large gap in your packages?

</comment><comment><USER29> We're building a single page app. Is it possible to use Firebase Hosting only for SSL and static assets and our own servers(exposing REST APIs) for dynamic content?

<comment><USER12> Yes, although the real-time database that comes packaged with a paid plan wouldn't be used. If you're looking to fully utilize Firebase you could add a live chat feature or real-time commenting to your existing website, while maintaining your existing API for dynamic content.

You can make everything Firebase-related happen at the JavaScript level (which is why hosting is valuable to Firebase users in the first place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This solves a major headache for me. I have a production app built using Angular and Firebase and I was up until this point using Amazon S3 hosting to host my static assets. It was a beautiful thing - I don't have to maintain any server side code. But it was annoying having to deal with Amazon and their stale, obtuse documentation. I will definitely be moving my static files over to Firebase. It's one less service I have to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is great. I have a site completely powered by Firebase but hosted on S3/cloudfront, which tbh is overkill for it.

I'll be switching to Firebase hosting it tonight!

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://www.divshot.com/](http://www.divshot.com/) \- provides similar hosting for the static sites.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why firebase doesn't provide pro-rated refunds on downgrades or refunds? It seems indirectly that locks an unhappy user in. Not cool.

[https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html](https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great. I am using Firebase for my app [https://remoteinterview.io](https://remoteinterview.io) . And yes my current build/deploy system is a bit long due to FTP. Will try this out.

<comment><USER33> This is unrelated to the parent topic, but I like your app!

I was planning on designing something similar for an upcoming hackathon, but it definitely would not have been as good as what you already have.

<comment><USER20> Thank you :) Yes it has grown out of hackathon size hack now. But we built the initial prototype within a weekend. Firebase really helped in speeding up things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do integrate business logic on the back end ? Do we implement EventSource / Server-Sent Events protocol and have a server on our back end that is basically the logic server ?

Also have any one done a C# wrapper for your REST layer ?

<comment><USER35> [https://github.com/ziyasal/FireSharp](https://github.com/ziyasal/FireSharp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've hosted my FB apps on Github up to this date but am very pleased to see they have added the features that a go beyond a simple static site deployment. I'm especially excited about the SSL support.

</comment><comment><USER35> Very cool! I just built and deployed a real-time voting app in literally 10 minutes.

[https://crackling-fire-7227.firebaseapp.com](https://crackling- fire-7227.firebaseapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER37> For my app i use other databases (MySQL) along with Firebase. Does firebase hosting allow me to host MySQL or connect to a MySQL instance on another hosting provider like AWS?

</comment><comment><USER38> It seems like firebase is good if you're making a CRUD app. But if yours is media heavy with pictures and video, using something a little lower level is needed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Just deployed my first app and WOWOW that workflow is NICE.

<comment><USER40> Thank you! We put a lot of effort into making it simple and providing real- time feedback as things are moving along. I'm glad you liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Hi i'd be interested to know what kind of db your using under the hood,just curious are there any technical articles about it? thanks.

<comment><USER37> MongoDB i believe. [http://www.mongodb.org/about/production- deployments/#cloud-i...](http://www.mongodb.org/about/production- deployments/#cloud-infrastructure-hosting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It looks like the actual hosting is done on top of SoftLayer. The CDN is Fastly.

</comment><comment><USER43> Unlike other hosted db offerings it supposts SSL by default, awesome

</comment><comment><USER44> Does it support IPv6? www.firebase.com has no AAAA records.</comment>


Why isn't there a social network only for video? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are many.

Tiktok. YouTube. Take your pick.

<comment><USER3> Social on youtube is cancer. Tiktok is cancer entirely.

<comment><USER4> There are good groups on Youtube and bad ones just like any social platform. Humans can be cancer is the right observation.

<comment><USER3> What is groups? You mean channels?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because Twitter killed it

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)#Discontinuation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_\(service\)#Discontinuation_of_Vine_service)

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't that Instagram?

</comment><comment><USER7> Snapchat?</comment>


The Cost of Caring - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver <comment><USER2> I have also faced a situation like this, even living in America. I have been required to send money home (a poor region of the Midwest) due to an extreme family circumstance involving potential child abuse, a bitter and drawn out custody dispute for one of my siblings, and a slow-moving criminal case that would affect the custody dispute, as well as some mental health issues for involved parties.

For a long time it required me to work jobs in which I was treated horribly, and I had to forgo any extraneous personal consumption and give up life goals like ever owning property. I went through many years in a row in which I couldn't even afford to fly home for holidays because the ~$750 plane tickets represented money that had to go to legal fees.

It damaged my personal relationships with friends and romantic partners, embittered me towards employers who delighted in my lack of negotiation power because of the situation, and led to a lot of youthful years gone by in which I accomplished none of the goals I had.

And, this was just for basic protection -- protecting a minor from a potential source of criminal harm. I will never recover from that financial loss, and we're not even talking about affording an extreme luxury like a college education which the article's protagonist worked to provide.

I wish I was so lucky as Emma that the problem I had to solve, and in doing so go years without even seeing my family, was to pay for college, instead of paying for basic legal protection from serious abuse.

It has really disillusioned me with America. I have always worked unbelievably hard and sought to work intelligently and efficiently. I have fancy credentials and have worked well-paying, sought-after jobs. But it's all hollow and empty. I feel American style corporations are one of the primary sources of harm and suffering in the world, and that in America there is no such thing as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Your hard work is irrelevant.

At any rate, I sympathize with the article's story, but I wish that it wasn't seen as something that happens to "other people" ... the same kind of long suffering hardship and unrecognizeably ascetic sacrificial life style can happen to anyone, from any place or background, if you are unlucky enough.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you 100%. The institutions we participate in are amongst the most harmful institutions in the world. Just because the harms are more indirect and hidden from view than the typical warlord does not make its participants better people.

There's this attitude in America that if you can maintain a bubble of ignorance around the consequences of your lifestyle that you're not responsible for the harm it causes. It's sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Although her employers paid her in cash, Emma, like many of her friends, paid taxes, so that she would be in better standing if immigration laws were ever relaxed."

How does this work? Do they apply for SSNs and then file? How does this process not cause undocumented workers (possibly overstaying visitor visas) to be deported immediately?

<comment><USER5> My understanding is (I'm not from the US) that the IRS doesn't really care where money comes from as long as you pay what you owe which is why the tax return forms have boxes for illegal earnings.

They aren't (again iirc) classed as law enforcement so they largely don't care.

Also and this speculation who better than the IRS to know how much of the US economy depends on undocumented workers doing the jobs that native workers don't want to do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Online Supermarkets? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any successful online supermarkets? I mean places where you buy groceries and have them delivered to your door. The major supermarkets all have 'online stores' but they're slow, hard to use and not worth the time. Do any of you think its possible that a 'Webvan' started today has a chance of being successful, such as AmazonFresh. Or is the business model not scalable? What do you think the possibilities are, the problems, pitfalls etc. <comment><USER2> <http://www.relayfoods.com/> is pretty neat, but only locations in VA right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here in the Netherlands we have Albert (www.albert.nl), the online version of the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands (Albert Heijn). They seem to do a good job, especially in places like Amsterdam where a lot of people don't have a car.

When I was in France this this summer, I noticed an E.Leclerc supermarkets where you could purchase your groceries online, only you had to pick them up yourself at a drive-through counter. The groceries were already packed in bags, so I can imagine you can save some time there.

I did not try these services, though, I like to see/smell/feel my food before I buy it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots in the UK, you regularly see delivery vans from the major brands driving around London. That's said online grocery shopping only makes up around 4% of the market (~$8bn) at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> Korea has a really great system where you can shop for 'virtual items' while waiting for the subway. The items are then gathered at your nearest super market and delivered to your door.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVoYsBym88>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking for an online store from United States(I'm from another country) to scrape the prices of fresh foods/produce: fruits, vegetables, grains, meat...

The stores I have found only publish packaged foods.

Could anyone point me the right way?

</comment><comment><USER7> In Australia our 2 major supermarkets also run pretty good online versions. I doubt anyone could successfully compete with them here (they have a duopoly currently).

</comment><comment><USER8> Freshdirect.com in Nyc is pretty great</comment>


ShellShocked – behind the bug - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/09/shellshock

<comment><USER2> "NetBSD has disabled auto-importing of functions by default in Bash, and so has FreeBSD, choosing to provide this as an opt-in function when invoked with a newly added --import-functions option."

For me this looks like a very good choice and I wonder how much it would break on the major Linux distributions?</comment>


Resveratrol found to activate ancient stress response - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/scripps-scientists-discover-how-resveratrol-provides-health-benefits?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=17e23a1f61-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-17e23a1f61-281895037 <comment><USER2> Interesting. I'd read a little about resveratrol some time back, but never tried taking it. I recently had a heart attack, and when I last saw my cardiologist I asked him about a few supplements I either had been taking, or had considered taking, including fish oil, co-enzyme q10, and resveratrol.

Regarding resveratrol, he said he wasn't sufficiently familiar with it and/or didn't think there was enough clinical data, for him to recommend for or against it. Both he and my GP did, however, recommend against starting a wine habit just for the resveratrol, if I wasn't already a wine drinker (I'm not).

So... I'm debating if I want to give this stuff a try or not. So far almost everything I've heard about it has been positive. Any fellow HN'ers have any thoughts?</comment>


Coronavirus spreads quickly and sometimes before people have symptoms, study - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200316143313.htm <comment><USER2> The DOI link doesn't work. but I think this is the pre-print? [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.19.20025452v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.19.20025452v3)</comment>


Highly Available MySQL Clusters at WePay - <AUTHOR> https://wecode.wepay.com/posts/highly-available-mysql-clusters-at-wepay <comment><USER2> I wonder why they went with something like this rather than a cluster like Percona's XtraDB Cluster that uses Galera replication? You could hang some read-only replicas off of the masters and achieve a similar system?

<comment><USER3> IMHO, it depends, I assume they mention about NDB Cluster not InnoDB Cluster. If their query using very less normalization, me myself also would choose MySQL Cluster instead.. their concept of auto partition + auto sharding did improve compare to other RDBMS. Plus I believe they should really understood the benefit of Index Condition Pushdown concept which really help a lot on complex query. Just remark, im not from MySQL but already tested several POC comparison on both DB, still MySQL Cluster did stand out a bit yet like i said depends on your transaction design back

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting post.

You mentioned issues with HAProxy (needing to patch / reconfigure, etc)-

wondering why you stuck with this rather than something else?

e.g. other tcp proxy or an SQL aware one

or did the original issues resolve themselves?

<comment><USER4> Ah.. just saw the later discussion of ProxySQL..

but still would be curious

<comment><USER5> The feature is very new and marked experimental but Envoy Proxy just gained support for MySQL proxying. The documentation [0] has an example of using in combination with Envoy's RBAC model to restrict access to particular tables.

0\. [https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/ne...](https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/network_filters/mysql_proxy_filter.html?highlight=mysql)</comment></comment></comment>


EMM386 and VDS: Not Quite Working - <AUTHOR> http://www.os2museum.com/wp/emm386-and-vds-not-quite-working/ <comment><USER2> I've always found DOS esoterica --- and how it behaves with Windows (from Windows/386 up through the 9x line) very interesting in that it's one of the examples of how virtualisation can be a powerful tool. Windows could multitask DOS applications by effectively virtualising the hardware, and the whole VXD driver model was based around the notion that DOS applications --- and even Windows ones via userspace driver libraries --- could continue to be written as though they accessed the hardware directly, but the virtual device driver (VXD) that runs in ring0 would catch the accesses and manage sharing the physical device between different "virtual machines".

Of course it wasn't perfect in practice, but I thought it was a rather elegant solution to the problem of both backwards compatibilty and performance (since virtual devices often only needed to handle multiplexing the physical device, which could be as simple as saving and restoring state when switching between VMs, there is no additional API layer and applications could still act like they access hardware directly.)

<comment><USER3> OS/2 was supposed to be a better DOS than DOS but suffered these glitches in the article.

Windows 95 ran WWIV BBS better than OS/2 at the time. You had to write in OS/2 routines to make use of it which is what WWIV did later.

DOSbox is what I use now for DOS programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seeing terms like EMM386 and DesqView conjured up some strange flashbacks from the late 80s for me. Thanks for that!

<comment><USER5> Then check out the rest of the site this article was posted on.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

This is practically explaining what was pure magic to me in my childhood. I can't stop reading this blog

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Virtual memory manipulation maybe making it look like magic. I would verify in a good emulator with complex, conditional breakpoints that the page tables weren't being modified and TSS wasn't being switched within one of these API calls.</comment>


At Stripe, a Rethink on Recruitment - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36219003 <comment><USER2> News discussion: [https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own- team](https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team)</comment>


Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronklein.com/2011/12/wikipedia-begging-for-handouts-and-building-schools-in-africa/

<comment><USER2> This FAQ is linked in the comments of the OP, but I thought it bears rereading. It's not just conflict of interest, it's also privacy, and the fact that the community just plain doesn't _want_ advertising. In fact, Spanish Wikipedia already forked once, out of concerns that Wikipedia would become too commercial.

[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_doesn.27t_Wik...](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_doesn.27t_Wikipedia_use_ads_for_revenue.3F)

It's true that other projects manage to combine collaboration with some traditional revenue sources such as advertising. But, rightly or wrongly, this is the community's choice, and it seems to be how the general public feels about the site too. There's something about a mission to promote knowledge that people want to keep mentally, physically apart from commerce. A friend of mine (non-techie, non-wikipedian) describes Wikipedia as a "sacred space".

Finally, and this is my own take on it, I think there's something valuable about having the reader community take ownership in something, rather than just be eyeballs to be packaged.

Disclaimer, I work for the WMF, although not on fundraising.

<comment><USER3> except they are running ads right now.. of an ugly guy's face

<comment><USER4> You may substitute "commercial ad" every time you see the word "ad" in discussion about this, if you'd like to be picky.

<comment><USER5> I HATE non-commercialism. It's like saying that a charitable hospital can ask for money, but can't run a cake-stall to raise it. Charities end up spending a huge amount of money soliciting donations. Wikipedia's lucky, because they can nag everyone on the internet for essentially no fee, and even partly deny service (by offering a gimped service). The Red Cross can't give disaster victims a nag message before helping and hope to make any more money, nor can they do it with a good conscience; so they have to spend all their money asking for donations from rich people who don't currently need their help.

It can go too far the other way, though. I heard that some of the "Pink" products gave a fixed fee to breast cancer, so buying their stuff wouldn't give any money. Others gave a tiny portion.

I'll concede that it's a good model for wikipedia - spend nothing, and nag users for donations. But it's not a great model in general. But it only works as a replacement for micropayments, and that's where unobtrusive advertising works better.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of issues with putting advertising on a site dedicated to providing unbiased information to the public. Advertising is, I think you'll agree, very unbiased information.

You can argue that users will be able to distinguish between the ads and the content, but Wikipedia serves a very diverse community -- children, the elderly, people who can't read very well, people who are more-or-less computer illiterate. If even a small percentage of them are confused by the ads, Wikipedia will have failed in a small way.

(FWIW, I've seen technically-literate peers get confused by the current banner too, thinking the person pictured was the person the article was about.)

<comment><USER6> <http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the best things about wikipedia, some might argue _the_ best thing, is that it is free from all the conflicts of interest invited in by money changing hands in exchange for services.

This applies to all free culture, including the OSS world. It would be a tragedy to change it.

(Obviously in the OSS world, people do pay for services, but the important thing is you can always choose not to. Just as you can choose not to send money to wikipedia.)

<comment><USER8> I don't know Wikipedia's donor requirements; how do they avoid that same conflict of interest via donations? Is there some maximum donation per individual, reporting requirement, etc. that prevents corruption any more than using an automated ad network like AdSense would?

<comment><USER9> As far as I know, donators don't get any special treatment, and there aren't any conditional donations (e.g. I'll donate if you delete this article), so why would donations cause a conflict of interests?

<comment><USER10> Say if Facebook donates a million dollars a year, Wikipedia would be incentivized to treat Facebook favorably.

Obviously this doesn't happen, but that is one of their arguments against advertising.

<comment><USER11> Right, and one of the reasons this doesn't happen is that Facebook doesn't get any benefit out of donating all that money, other than the (potential) control they could get by threatening to stop funding Wikipedia.

Businesses have an incentive to buy ads, and users have less incentive to donate to an ad-supported site, which means that the funding would be skewed drastically in favor of advertisers. With donations, yes, you can have large donors using their clout, but you don't automatically skew the pool of money towards a few particular interests.

Ads also have problems in that they are juxtaposed with the content of the site. That can create an implicit sense of endorsement of the ad by Wikipedia, and vice versa. People manipulate content providers all the time, by mentioning to advertisers that their ads are juxtaposed with some objectionable content, and even threatening to boycott those advertisers if they don't remove their ads. By only accepting donations, you are supported by people who are much more likely to be dedicated to the free exchange of information that is your mission, and you aren't putting their name up next to content that they might object to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ask for money. If this model works for them (it seems to), then there's no reason to change it.

Also, by having "sponsors" you open yourself up to "change this article to be like this, or we'll pull our support from Wikipedia." This may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but unless you only use the ad revenue for _extra_ income and don't depend on it _at all_ , you are vulnerable (no matter how many levels removed you are from the advertiser).

It's also extremely difficult to have a steady source of income and _not_ become dependent on it (like ads). My point being that even if they did run ads, they would have to still depend only on community donations if they didn't want to be held on the puppet strings of the capitalist dollar, which is a hard thing to do.

Note that I'm not _against_ capitalism, but once you depend on it for your income, you and your free speech are at its mercy.

I completely agree with Wikipedia for not running ads. It would open a door that once opened is very difficult to close.

<comment><USER13> > Also, by having "sponsors" you open yourself up to "change this article to > be like this, or we'll pull our support from Wikipedia."

Why can't the people who donate money do the same thing--that is threaten to stop donating unless an article is changed to their liking?

<comment><USER12> They can...but the difference is that most people reading Wikipedia _enjoy_ the fact that it's unbiased. I can imagine many more scenarios where a company/corporation would NOT enjoy this.

There are also many more readers of Wikipedia than there are advertisers. This makes gathering donations a more distributed means of paying their expenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of a time I saw Craig of Craig's List on a forum in the mid 2000s. People asked him why he didn't put ads on the Craigs List. With negligible effort his company could profit hugely.

He politely pointed out that most of the companies that tried to maximize profit that way went bankrupt in the recession. Meanwhile his company was chugging along, free to do what it wanted, delivering a product its customers loved to a global audience with minimal staff, costs, or conflicts of interest.

People don't give you money for nothing.

Note to the original blogger, statements like "Capitalism won, try it," when referring to one of the most successful projects on the net, don't make them look bad. They make you look like you missed something. But that's just my perspective.

<comment><USER15> This argument doesn't make sense since Craigslist is already a vehicle for advertisement. People pay for advertisements placed on Craigslist. They don't pay their operating costs through donations, they pay by having people give them money to provide a service (in this case, advertising).

<comment><USER14> Argument?

I said it reminded me of something and described it.

Anyway, try looking for similarities. Anyone can find differences between things, but what do we learn from that? We already know no two things are perfectly identical.

I find we learn more from similarities in things we expect to be different.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps argument was the wrong word.

As a personal note, disagree about what you think we learn more from. I find differences far more interesting. If the universe was all the same it would be immensely boring. It's the differences that make us question everything else that has been the same before.

Metaphysics and all, and quite useless practically. But it's fun to discuss :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is it that people automatically equate "Capitalism" with "doing whatever it takes to get your dollar", instead of "producing a better product than the competitor"?

If competition is essential to capitalism, and if "capitalism won", then why doesn't the author create a competing service? Certainly, if Wikipedia is doing something so obviously wrong, then it should be trivial to out compete them in the marketplace, no?

Ok, maybe the author doesn't have the time to put in the effort that would be required to create a competing service. In that case, maybe we can ask the nice people at the Encyclopedia Britannica to help? Oh, or maybe the people that work on Google Knol? I think maybe they could shed some light on how "capitalism won"...

<comment><USER9> This was obviously an abuse of the term, but I think I know what the author means. Presumably, the author is just talking about free enterprise and voluntary exchange, which tend to be important in a capitalist economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
        Capitalism won, try it.

I don't think this is true here at all. The obvious real-world analogy is news. I would much rather listen to NPR or the BBC than watch CNN or a local broadcast station -- I don't care if the latter has "won" by making money, I care about the quality and editorial independence of the content.

<comment><USER18> NPR makes most of its money from private foundations and corporate sponsors, both of whom it acknowledges by name on the air. That is a type of ad. Wikimedia Foundation could raise a ton of money if they just did something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagree with others making the conflict of interest argument. I don't see how it would create a conflict of interest if they applied a hands-off, self- serve (call it laissez-faire if you must) advertising strategy -- in fact this would create much less of a conflict of interest than accepting direct donors.

But that point is moot. The true risk you run is alienating contributors. The beautiy of Wikipedia is that they have (almost) completely eliminated the influence that Wikipedia itself has on the content. It set up the rules and lets the crowd do the work, and lets the crowd be incentivized by the contribution it is making to society, like most other crowd sourced projects. It has created (or is striving to create) an autonomous encyclopedia.

If Wikipedia were to have ads, even if it weren't a for-profit company, it feels like contributors should receive something in return, a la BleacherReport.

Bottom line: It's not about conflict of interest, if Wikipedia accepts advertising it starts to feel like a business, and the incentive of contributors to keep contributing is greatly lessened.

</comment><comment><USER20> These ads serve a secondary purpose of reminding people that Wikipedia's wealth of information originates by public knowledge. A lot of people tend to take knowledge for granted, and I personally feel humbled and grateful for Wikipedia from their ads.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've said it before, I think they should just get _one_ sponsor per year and be done with it.

Just stick a permanent "Powered by Coca Cola|Microsoft|Whatever" banner in the footer; Coca Cola and friends surely won't mind to cover the operational costs of Wikipedia (and then some) in return.

In order to prevent a sponsor from becoming too influential they can simply make it a rule that the sponsor must be cycled annually. They could even have the community vote on the sponsor for the next year.

Sponsors would certainly wait in line for this ad-spot and personally I'd prefer it over the constant begging on every page.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know what the answer is for wikipedia. But I do know that I use dictionary.com less frequently because of the ads.

An extreme example of how far this goes was the Apple iPad ad that ran on yahoo.com a week or so ago. It WAS the upper fold of the front page. Fixed in place at 974px by 500px just below the search bar and logo. Bam. Here I am. Buy me now. No doubt paid some bills but made me think "this organization has a price."

My impression is wikipedia values the way users interact with its content and would rather not introduce distractions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ads that ask for money: the readers are wikipedia's customers.

Ads that make money: the readers are wikipedia's product.

Incentives matter.

<comment><USER24> A good reminder to always pay attention to who/what is actually the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wikipedia competes with other companies not just on market share and money, but even more on attention from people actively supporting it by editing the information. I see no immediate gain they could get in market share by making money with ads as they are already having the biggest share of any encyclopedia with their current way of working. But I'm rather certain they would lose a lot of editors and would even give a competitor a chance to gain those people. As little as many people might care about seeing Google-ads, no one helps Google for free. Swarm driven websites have to care about attention from people far more than about money as long as they are able to cover their costs (and they are able to do that as long as they have the swarm behind them).

</comment><comment><USER26> Wikipedia should absolutely not run ads that make money. Even if they put the strictest protections in place to prevent advertisers interfering with the content it would still cast doubt in the eyes of those using the service.

If Wikipedia were to become dependent on a revenue stream generated from advertisements for products then over time they would become beholden to those interests.

</comment><comment><USER27> This question is a litmus test. Anybody who is unable to correctly answer this question, and articulate the reasoning for the answer, is not equipped to operate successfully in the age of free culture.

</comment><comment><USER28> They should place one ad in the sidebar, with a "request for comments" link right above it. Run that for a week, post the results, and let the community decide.

<comment><USER27> If you follow the history of Wikipedia, ads have been discussed many times. The consensus has always been "no, absolutely not."

If the WMF put even a single ad on Wikipedia as an experiment, there would be a community uproar and probably at least one fork (much as the Spanish Wikipedia forked years ago under threat of ads, and didn't rejoin for years, even though the ads themselves did not persist.)

Personally, I think that's as it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do we really need an explanation about why a public reference resource should be free from potential conflict of interest?

Capitalism isn't even involved. It's not about making money, it's about keeping the resource available and valuable. There are all kinds of "just do this and you'll make tons of money and no one will get hurt" ideas. But they truly don't matter. They all devalue the service. And frankly, it's kind of embarrassing for humanity that we can't modestly fund our most valuable information resource and that there are many complaints of wikipedia _nagging_ its users.

Servers ain't free, developers ain't free, freedom ain't free. You use wikipedia? Buck up and spend $10. Think about how the free market isn't about companies finding money faucets. It's about voting with your dollars. So go out and fucking vote.

</comment><comment><USER30> You can't run ads that make money while at the same time expect people to believe you are completely impartial.

<comment><USER31> Google did it. Aside fom the normal skeptics, your average person trusts the organic results to be truly organic.

<comment><USER32> Google is very unusual as ad-supported businesses go.

Most ads are distractions from content. At Google, because you are actively looking for something, people are much happier to get ads. Especially relevant ones, which Google has invested a zillion dollars in being able to do well. Google also has incredible power to shape the market, so they can get away with forcing ads to be in a form that users like, rather than one that advertisers love.

Google has a further advantage: people generally trust them, even thought they don't know how things work. The general public is much more skeptical of Wikipedia, partly because it's so open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've always wondered why Wikipedia doesn't include affiliate links to Amazon on all their book and movie articles.

I think their current logic is that affiliate links force them to choose which online store they want to support, which is something they appear loath to do.

Look at the page they send you too when you do try to buy a book in an article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0802130984> . It's so large and completist that it has two tables of contents, and it's so obsessively non-preferential that it does a good job of hiding the one amazon.com link that most people are probably looking for.

Personally, I've bought 100s of books and DVDs after reading their Wikipedia articles, and I'd be happy to let the WikiMedia Foundation get my affiliate dollars.

<comment><USER34> The point is that the information about the book might not be completely objective when money is involved. It's that tiny bit of bias that might get injected in the article, by someone who is affiliated, be it Amazon employee or someone from Wikimedia. When this might not be a real issue, no one can be sure, and the trust in absolute objectivity is lost.

<comment><USER33> You're right, but money already is involved in these articles. Authors and actors (and agents, I've suspected in a few cases) _are_ keeping a biased eye on their articles.

I think it would be difficult for Wikipedia to be corrupted by money. There's too much transparency, and there's too large of a community. The admins have already discovered with dealt with large-scale attempts to game the system.

What's actually at stake here is the _appearance of objectivity._ Affiliate links, which are nearly universal across the web, should be minimally objectionable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Imagine Google made a live read-only Wikipedia mirror, with AdSense advertisements. Then, donated all resulting revenues to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Would that action be lawful evil or chaotic good?

What if it multiplied the WMF budget by 20X or more while reducing server expenses?

What if Bing did it? Blekko? DuckDuckGo?

Does it help at all that by the CC-SA license, the preferences of the Foundation or community really shouldn't matter: this is a completely legal tactic? (Could that help solve the potential financial-motivation-crowding issues: the fact that such a bonanza occurred "against the community's wishes"?)

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to donate to the fund, but ever since I saw their budget that doubles every year (now it's around $20 Million), I started having reservation on giving. I don't mind supporting Wikipedia service, but I feel the money is now being spent on some other initiatives.

<comment><USER37> This is actually what I was thinking too. The fundraising pitch they're currently running says something like "We have 6000 servers and only 95 paid staff". I'm not sure 95 paid positions + servers cost 20 million a year, but then again, Wikipedia does deserve to be well-funded and not have to worry about making budget year-to-year. I'd like to see a more open transparent accounting of the funds right there on the fundraising page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wish they had an opt-in ad program so people who don't want to donate can still help.

</comment><comment><USER39> There is another issue here as well that isn't being considered.

If you look at the 2010 Financial Report that lists contributors there are a few foundations that give wikimedia more than 1 million. And there are 6 that give between 100,000 and 999,999. And then even more that give other varying amounts. As well as obviously individuals.

That's money that isn't going to other non-profits and potentially non-profits that _wouldn't_ be able to sell advertising and raise money that way. They can only rely on donations and foundation money to support their cause.

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011....](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011.E2.80.932012_fiscal_year)

(pdf:) [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_SHIP_spreads_15dec11_72dpi.pdf)

<comment><USER29> Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?

<comment><USER39> I wouldn't say greedy is the right word. But they are disadvantaging another charity simply because they like the look and feel of their community being free from advertising. Maybe selfish is a better way to put it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This article reminds me of the developer who simply couldn't understand why open-source people "willingly work for free".

</comment><comment><USER41> The question is pretty simple. The question is whether you want Wikipedia to be beholden to its users or to corporate interests.

</comment><comment><USER42> Both, ads that make money while asking for money.

This plea brought to you by Encyclopedia Britannica, please support Wikipedia with a donation.

<comment><USER43> This would actually be one of the better ways to do it. The link would only lead to Wikipedia donations, and the business would be essentially paying for public goodwill, a hefty sum of it.

Just imagine Coca Cola making a big donation to Wikipedia just to have its name figure on the donation ad for the "Soda" category. I'm not sure how the community would react to this, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well, they could do both. Adverts imply a non-impartial editorial stance so I totally get why they see that as the thin end of the wedge I respect that totally, which is why I'm happy to donate now and then.

Why not?</comment>


If your iPhone is slow, try replacing the battery - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_slow_try_replacing_your_battery/ <comment><USER2> I bought my iPhone 2 years ago (iPhone 6, new) -- it's since been plagued by slowdowns that are incomprehensible to me as a software developer. How can something go from completely responsive to absolutely useless in 2 years with virtually no major changes to the OS?

Scaling the CPU down with battery capacity seems like a great way to hand-wave away planned obsolescence accusations.

I was curious about the results my phone would receive, so I bought the Geekbench app mentioned in the reddit post. Indeed, my phone scores max out at half of what it claims the iPhone 6 should benchmark at.

I'm pissed.

<comment><USER3> In the Reddit comments somebody claims this is actually a software fix for the 6s battery problem that was causing shutdowns when battery level fell below certain level.

There's a free battery replacement program for the models affected [1].

My phone was one of the affected, but never got around to take it to repair shop because I thought the few random shutdowns were the only problem.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/](https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/)

<comment><USER4> The problem is, there are other people in the thread claiming their iPhone 6 or iPhone 7 were also performing poorly according to Geekbench. Surely iPhone 7 isn't / shouldn't be affected by this batch?

If this is true that apple throttle its performance due to battery Cycle, I will pissed too. Apple should have noted to me within iPhone that i should get a Battery replacement in the Apple Store, or I will be bringing my own Battery Pack when I am out.

<comment><USER4> After 24 hours and putting lots of thoughts into it, I could not even argue for Apple.

Out of the bulk load of Energy Usage, CPU is not even the primary area where energy are used.

40%+ is the Display 20%+ are the Network Connection, WiFi or LTE. 10%+ are RAM, NAND, etc.

I am guessing around 20% is the CPU and GPU. So they lower this and try to save 10% more battery in response to lower battery cycle?

And they have an Financial interest to slow your phone. This makes me sick.

And I consider myself an Apple Fan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a decades-long meme that Apple purposefully slows down older hardware to push people to buy completely new hardware.

Interesting that this effect may be a byproduct of automatic scaling the CPU frequency based on remaining battery capacity, rather than the newer OS versions being purposefully poorly optimized (like most people assume)

<comment><USER6> I used to think that was a joke, but since updating to ios 11 my 6s+ has been completely unusable. A bunch of the apps are now unresponsive for 5-10 seconds after they launch, the input lags and the standard ios animations are dropping a ton of frames. Battery is also sometimes draining 20-40% in a span of 15 minutes.

<comment><USER7> I have a 6s plus and had the exact same thing. Phone was totally unusable. But I did a full backup and reinstall and it's gone back to normal speed. Feels like a new phone. Give it a try.

<comment><USER8> 6s plus here too. So just backup, total reset, then restore? No battery replacement?

If so, I'm in for a try.

<comment><USER9> A common approach on Android. Nobody really seems to know exactly why, but evidently crap accumulates, either from old apps or from sloppy in-place OS upgrades. A full reset clears all the crap, and you start anew.

I prefer to skip even the backup step, instead relying on cloud sync for contacts etc, and manually dumping a couple apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can you imagine the number of devices that get needlessly replaced because of this? Talk about taking planned obsolescence to the next level. Battery wear is as certain as death and taxes in a mobile device, and this feature converts obvious battery wear into ambiguous device wear.

I would not be surprised if this were class action lawsuit material.

<comment><USER11> I did some googling and the level of public outrage at this seems to be very low! Given the shit storm after they dropped the headphone jack I expected more of a reaction to this news... Maybe news outlets haven't picked it up yet?

<comment><USER12> One word: Shareholders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found a more permanent solution. Instead of replacing it with a new battery, I replaced it with a Samsung S8. There are some things I miss about the iPhone, and maybe I'll consider it again in the future..but after 3 iterations of iPhones I got off the hype train when "it just works" became "it just doesn't work". I also had issues with backups and lost data...

My wife got the iPhone X (yes...I know, $1000) and she's encountered a few bugs/crashes. I make fun of her for it. I find the usability of my Samsung not as good as iPhone when iPhone was at the peak, but I'm ok with it beacuse I'm not buying a device that touts itself as 'it just works'...plus I got it for 1/3rd the price after massive discounts.

<comment><USER14> Are you saying that Samsung phone batteries don't go bad over time?

<comment><USER15> I think the issue here is CPU performance being tied to battery degradation as a method of planned obsolescence, rather than a complaint about iPhone battery life.

<comment><USER16> It's not really planned obsolescence, they made the trade off of CPU speed instead of battery life when the battery gets old. This is more reasonable than you might think as deep discharges use up batterie life faster. The other option is for the phone to not keep it's charge for nearly as long which would likely be more annoying.

In either case it's a ~40$ repair to replace a phones battery and IMO a good idea at ~2-3 years old on all phones. Assuming you keep your phone for 4-5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Last week, I replaced the battery for my iPhone6s, because the old battery has almost died. After that, it becomes much faster than before. The old battery often shuts down even though there is 50% left. My phone is on the recall list but I can never book a slot for replacing the battery in any Apple store here in Hangzhou, China. They are always full. Very disappointed with Apple's service. Then I bought a third-party battery on Taobao for less than 20$ and replaced it by myself. When my phone turns on again, I feel it's so fast and smooth. Then I realized iphone drops cpu frequency when battery dies. The new battery is 2200mAh, 550mAh larger than original. Now my phone can last a whole day under normal use.

<comment><USER18> I wonder if Android does the same thing. My understanding if batteries is that @ 100% charge they are going to sit around a certain voltage. They will never stay at the maximum voltage under use though. Is it possible that the OS needs to drop the CPU freq due to the voltage requirements (which maybe a 70% healthy battery could NEVER hit), and ultimately stressing/draining the battery quicker at higher frequencies.

<comment><USER19> LiPo batteries generally supply from 4.2V to 3.7V from a fully charged state to a fully discharged state. Modern CPUs run at under 2V. If the battery was directly connected to the CPU, the CPU would fry.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter)

That being said, it's conceiveable that a worn out battery might not be able to supply enough power to run the CPU at higher clock speeds.

<comment><USER20> Not to nit-pick, but 3.7v is the nominal cell voltage. They can supply power down to 3.3v safely. Fully discharged is around 3.0v.

<comment><USER19> Ah yes, thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One tangential weird experience: My iPhone 6s plus battery went obviously bad, as in reduced battery life and really big jumps down from 100 -> 70 and then from 40 -> 10 from minimal use. After months of dealing with the bad battery, hooking it up to my mac & running Coconut battery showed it was 46% good.

So I took it to the store for an official replacement (I decided I would pay for it). The genius ran a diagnostic which showed the battery as fine (green, he called it) and almost immediately started to tell me why it may be something else in the phone and started pointing me towards buying another phone instead of getting the battery replaced.

But for some reason their diag tool is worse than coconut battery or just wrong? If my battery were 60-70% good and they had lowered thresholds that's one thing, but my battery was long gone and they told me it's fine. And of course I insisted and the phone is fine now with a new battery.

I know there's probably a decent explanation for it but it certainly felt like they really wanted me to buy a new phone, and that their diag tool perhaps isn't the most truthful right now when it comes to battery health.

<comment><USER22> The 6S's had a bad batch or two. You might want to check if your serial number falls into that range: [https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/](https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/)

<comment><USER21> Yup, I did and mine was fine. I mean I used the hell out of the phone since it came out and I knew the battery was bad just based on the cycle count and my heavy usage.

I believe the tech checked as well right when I brought it in. What was weird was they told me the battery was fine and something else was wrong. And the phone has been fine since the replacement.

And I think coconut is pretty reliable. We ran it on a couple of coworker phones before bringing my phone in, and mine was by far the lowest. Everyone was up in the 80s and mine was in the 40s. It ran multiple times with the same result.

The apple tech told me green means it's in the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I replaced an aging battery on my 6S Plus a few months ago myself and installed iOS 11 at the same time (figured it was a good opportunity to do both together).

Immediately I noticed my phone was basically unusable, incredibly slow, everything was crashing or locking up completely, I couldn't believe it. I thought iOS 11 was the culprit, and even did a complete reinstall without restoring any backups to no avail. Finally, I noticed a slight dark spot on the LCD - the brand new battery I had bought was already bulging and in bad shape.

I sprung for a better quality battery from ifixit and immediately the phone was running like brand new again. I thought the cheap battery had been supplying an unstable current, but perhaps there is indeed an issue with the software itself.

One key thing I realized - ANY battery work done outside of Apple's official repair means they will never work on your phone again. So if you care about having Apple do any kind of work on your phone (even if totally unrelated to battery), you will have to get it replaced by them.

<comment><USER24> It's very hard to get quality batteries outside of Apple which kind of sucks for iPhone repair. Yeah the 3rd party ones usually suck.

<comment><USER23> Actually I feel almost any component in general sadly. I had to replace the front camera assembly as well and after trying almost four different parts from multiple vendors and none match the quality of the original.

Another thing I learned is that Apple would replace the entire display and front assembly (front camera, earpiece, speaker, brightness sensor, proximity sensor) for only ~ $150. However, due to the third party battery they couldn't work on it anymore.

<comment><USER24> Yeah the displays and touch panels are also sometimes inferior. That's a real shame about your phone sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, does this not show up when the phone is plugged in? If the iPhone is plugged in, does it still throttle the CPU?

<comment><USER26> iOS does not adjust battery-related throttling (whether low battery, low power mode, or battery wear) based on if it is charging.

Same as recent macs.

So yes.

<comment><USER25> Thanks - that is really interesting. So Apple designed the system in a way that definitely hides deteriorating performance due to throttling from the end user? Can you point to any documentation that validates this?

<comment><USER26> Apple doesn't officially document that, but see various support discussions:

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4468165](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4468165)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is certainly a solid correlation, but I'd want to see the same device with the old battery again (or even better another device of the same model) to prove that is the cause. Disconnecting the battery resets things that aren't reset by other methods.

<comment><USER28> Reddit OP made an edit indicating he tested the old battery again and found the same results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> After a while my iPhone 5 battery started swelling. It swell so much that the screen popped out. I took it to an Apple Store, paid the fee and got a refurbished new one. With iOS 10 it's really responsive. The only complaint I could make is about storage. In the age of spotify and bloated applications, living with 16G of storage is not pleasant.

<comment><USER30> I have lots of devices for testing apps/games and four 5/5s generation iPhones/iPods. All of them did the same lithuim-ion/swelling with the battery within 2-3 months where the screen pops out and you can see inside on the edges.

This is heavily common and prevalent with that generation I found out. iPhones/iPods both had it happen.

It was a little bit twilight zone like before I looked into how common it is, bought them at different times.

If you aren't constantly using a device turn it off because LiB batteries they use only last about 2 years / 400 charges and overcharging ends up swelling.

<comment><USER31> 400 charges would be a little bit more than 1 year for most people. Do you have any links that show most cell phone batteries only last that long?

<comment><USER30> There are lots of articles on it but here is one from 6S/7 regarding 300-400 cycles [1]. You can look for Apple battery swelling and nearly every gen since 5 has some issues with it, it seems related to overcharging. Even iPhone 8 is having issues with swelling. [2]

[1] [http://bgr.com/2016/11/30/iphone-7-vs-iphone-6s-battery- drai...](http://bgr.com/2016/11/30/iphone-7-vs-iphone-6s-battery-drain/)

[2] [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/01/apple-looking-into- ipho...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/01/apple-looking-into- iphone-8-battery-failures/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very interesting train of thought. Kind of an expensive thing to try if it fails though.

<comment><USER33> Shouldn't be very expensive. I run a chain of independent repair shops — most iPhone batteries are $49-$59 to replace and take about 20 minutes. Apple Store charges $79 for most iPhones.

<comment> w-ll A friend of mine went to a repair shop to fix their battery, it was half the cost of Apples repair.

But the issues that ensues were whenever they went to speaker phone massive amounts of static seamed to be sent to the mic. If you where on the other end of the call it would be very annoying. To the point we joked about being 'Brain Hacked'

Mobile phones have vastly changed in the last few years from once you could replace a battery very easily, to today where it seams you needing $100k equipment to do it properly.

My current phone is the 6 SE which up till the last few months has been able to give me a solid 48hrs on a charge, but I've been diligent with making sure I get a full battery cycle. Coupled with no touch ID and only face ID on iphones im a little lost. The pixel doesn't seam like its for me. Maybe I will go back to Motorola, at least they have new expansion slots which remind me of my Compaq Windows CE phone with a PCIe slot.

I don't know what im going to do when it starts to crap out. I'm gonna give an official battery replacement a try before I buy something new.

But still I feel we have peaked and are tracing back down in mobile phone quality.

<comment><USER34> >but I've been diligent with making sure I get a full battery cycle

Do you mean that you ensure that the battery fully discharges down to zero every time? Because if so, that is one of the worst things an average consumer can do to a Li-ion or Li-poly cell over the long term life of their device.

<comment> w-ll Im not an EE but i've always heard that full battery cycles are best to preserve its life. If not going from 100% to 0% and then charging fully to 100% is the best behavior please inform me.

<comment><USER35> Fully discharging a battery was only necessary with nickel-cadmium cells that suffered from a severe memory effect. Nickel metal hydride cells didn't, but could be affected reversibly by a minor drop in voltage from repeated partial discharges. Most rechargeable battery technologies in use today are significantly harmed or completely destroyed by a complete discharge. Devices using lithium ion cells all turn themselves off long before the cell is completely empty, as a protective measure.

<comment> w-ll Again, I'm not versed on the chemistry behind this, but friends who got new phones around the same time and plug them in to charge every chance they get have had their batteries fail earlier than me. I guess my data is anecdotal, but doing full cycles has allowed me to get 40+ hour standby with 10+ hour screen over the last one and half years. Where my friends cant even get more than 10 hour standby.

<comment><USER36> As someone who builds battery systems (yes, I'm "that battery guy" that shows up in HN battery threads) wtallis is correct: full discharges harm modern batteries, although every battery protection circuit has a cut-off voltage set to prevent discharging them too far (at which point your phone will turn off.)

The practical applications of those two facts, however, are much more nuanced. Ultimately, the biggest killer of batteries is heat. Charging your phone and using it battery-intensively (max brightness/lots of processing stuff) are the biggest heat-causing things that come to mind. Another thing that can happen is heat buildup: you might not be using it very intensively, but if you use it for hours on end the heat can eventually build up and the phone will get hotter over time.

It's entirely possible that your method of using your phone actually does cause less stress on the battery. However, this is 100% dependent on what you and your friends do with your phones, before and while they charge, as well as the kind of phone, its charging circuitry and a million other factors.

At the end of the day, all I can say is "batteries are basically magic, use less power, and don't let your phone get too hot." The only universal recommendation that will guarantee better battery lifetime - with every battery chemistry - is to draw less current from the battery (on a phone: turn down your brightness, turn off things you're not using, etc etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The title should be "If your iPhone or MacBook is slow, try replacing the battery."

My MacBook Pro became so slow that I spent days trying to figure out why, only to discover it was my bad battery.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for this.

Would you know whether boot camp windows would also be affected by this?

<comment><USER37> From what I've read I'm fairly certain it is not affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Knowing the issues with fixed in batteries these day, I purchased myself an LG G3, one of the few good smartphones with a replaceable battery. The idea is that once it goes bad, it'll be a simple switch.

The problem nowadays is that it's almost impossible to get an original battery. On Amazon, everything is a fake. In stores, the battery does not exist anymore or is super expensive. It seems LG doesn't care, maybe they speculate people will just buy new phones.

In a way, my approach to have replaceable batteries failed.

<comment><USER40> ZeroLemon batteries have worked well for me for the last 3 years. I now use a gigantic 10,000 mAh battery with included custom back plate for my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if any consumer protection laws will come into place. Particularly, those in the EU.

While I see any argument for Apple doing this (helps keep the battery life high), this is not a disclosed feature. It's intentionally limiting the product's capabilities from what's marketed.

People expect batteries to become worse with time - there is no getting around the fact that the chemical reaction becomes worse with use. A CPU, though, that should never see significant scaleback unless it's faulty.

<comment><USER41> CPU running at max speed requires a lot of power. Degraded batteries have a higher internal resistance, which lowers the amount of power they can provide. So when the CPU draws a lot of power, the voltage on the battery drops. If the voltage drops to low, the battery protection circuit will shut it off.

What people here don't seem to understand is that capacity, battery health, and max power output are related.

Old batteries just can't provide the current that the phone needs.

Battery replacements are cheap, and when your battery is degraded you should just swap it.

Consumer protection laws won't help you here. Apple is not pretending to sell a phone that doesn't need service; on the contrary, they even strongly advertise their "protection plan" that would cover degraded batteries.

<comment><USER42> I think the biggest issue here is that your phone will do this silently. I think a better solution would be to notify the user and _ask_ them if they want to go into the reduced power mode.

I have an S7, and when the battery level gets really low it does exactly that (although it can actually take it even further if you want, switching off the radio, making the display monochrome etc).

<comment><USER41> Low power mode is something different, and iOS has that too.

The problem here isn't that iOS isn't just trying to conserve power to last a bit longer. At some point the battery physically can't deliver the current required to run the CPU at max speed.

At that point, the phone battery settings screen says something like "Battery Service Required".

For some reason a lot of people get annoyed when their phone needs service. It's understandable, but I really don't see what Apple should do about it.

When a car's battery needs to be replaced, people don't go complaining how their car is suffering from planned obsolescence, they just replace the battery.

<comment><USER42> > they just replace the battery

Is it even possible to replace an iPhone's battery though?

I would guess if Apple offered battery replacement as a service, at a reasonable price (not very Apple-like, I know!), people would use it.

<comment><USER41> Apple offers iPhone battery replacement for around $80, third party repair shops will do it for $30, and if you do it yourself you can order a kit (battery+required tools) on Ali Express for under $10

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I bought an 8+ over an 8 hopping typing would be more accurate and faster on the larger screen (it's not) thinking I would return it in the "no questions asked" period if not, but stayed for the incredible battery life.

Before this, I had forgotten what it was like to be able to use your phone all day even after forgetting to plug it in the night before.

Apple can make batteries that have awesome run times - they just choose not to so the phone can be x% slimmer. Bummer.

</comment><comment><USER43> So what's the rationale for poor performance even when plugged in?

</comment><comment><USER44> Does it affect only 6(S)?

I'm thinking about getting SE as I have small hands and it looks like a perfect fit but I think it's kind of pointless to get a new iPhone with so serious, known and most likely impossible to fix, bug?

SE is expensive to me as it is, I don't want to replace battery every year or so (I'm a heavy user).

<comment><USER45> Both my wife and I have three year old 5Ss, but our experience with iOS 11 has been completely different. For me it works just as well as 10, maybe even slightly better. For her it has turned her phone into a complete dog, even opening a contact in Messages takes seconds.

Recently her battery has started to show signs that it is wearing out, such as jumping instantly from 5% to 30% when plugging it in to charge, so it looks like this behaviour is a software 'feature' on all iPhones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If that were true, wouldn't plugging in the phone alleviate the problem (while plugged in)

<comment><USER20> See other comments. iOS appears to ignore the charger state and scale frequency based purely on the battery capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How do they even detect that? Monitoring voltage drop on current spikes to determine internal resistance?

I had a phone with a faulty battery and it would simply turn off on a large current spike (think camera with flash taking a picture) presumably since the voltage crashed.

<comment><USER48> The device could track the battery's capacity pretty reliably by measuring inputs during charging and outputs during use. The necessary data is even available to third party apps on both iOS and MacOS (Battery Life, and Battery Health are two examples)

It sounds like the idea is that the OS is throttling the performance to extend the battery life of a battery in poor condition, more than it sounds like it is limiting current draw to avoid "brownouts".

I can see why this is a good idea and a bad idea, in that many people simply want a full day of being reachable on the phone more than they want smartphone features, but others who are considering replacement would like to know that a $100 fix would make their phone less frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Had massive issues with my 6s during the last weeks. Upgrading to 11.2 significantly improved the laggy behaviour issue. However the Geekbench 4 results are interesting. Benchmark numbers for my iPhone 6S: Compute: 5551 / Multi-Core: 1732 / Single Core: 1045 versus "normal" 6S Benchmark numbers (taken from the app): Compute 10143 / Multi-Core: 3994 / Single Core: 2376. In summary my iPhone 6s is SIGNIFICANTLY (~2x) underperforming in this benchmark to where a "normal" 6s should be. How trustworthy are the benchmark figures in the app? Any other ideas? For the time being this seems to justify the suspicions.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'd actually be comfortable claiming that everyone's slow iPhones are actually faulty. Because mine (5S) was really slow and not even a clean reinstall would help, and I went to the support service for my carrier and they sent it for service and after a few days sent back a new iPhone because the old one was broken. The new one was much faster even thought it was the same model, and had the same OS version. So, people, get it checked out, it might be faulty, for example the NAND flash memory might wear out or the base firmware might've been corrupted, or hey, the battery might be bad...

</comment><comment><USER51> Damn my 6S is doing exactly this, loaded up CPU DasherX and it's showing it at 1200mhz instead of 1848mhz the 6S is supposed to be at. Just setup a service through Apple at the local BestBuy in an hour. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER52> Curious if this is the case on iPads too (can't see any reason why it wouldn't). I have a lot of iPad 2's at work, and they definitely get slower with age. OS upgrades are a bit problem; after iOS 6 (I think) performance decreased very noticeably (and I have the luxury of being able to compare side by side with other units). But recently the unit I've been using with ios6 has started to slow considerably. I figured that it's an ageing flash memory issue, but this is another contender.

</comment><comment><USER53> I used the AnTuTu benchmark app as I am cheap... and I found out my IO have scored lowly. Turns out having only a few hundred megabytes hinders the performance a great deal. After wiping 3GB of photos and videos the phone's gone back to it's snappy self. Though I'm still on iOS 10.3 or so...

</comment><comment><USER54> Just replaced the battery on an old MacBook Air and it feels 10x faster (even when it's connected to the power adapter).

</comment><comment><USER55> It works! Replaced my battery now after this post and my score went from 810 to 1455, with a huge noticeable performance improvement and lower app loading time.

</comment><comment><USER56> Let me share one experience that was neither a battery problem nor a faulty iPhone.

After my iPhone 6 (ios 10) got stolen, I've bought a brand new iPhone 6s (ios 11) on the official apple store.

It was totally unusable, all problems people shared I've had as well. It would take several seconds for an app to open, the phone would freeze for one minute, volume controls on the lock screen wouldn't work, my Bluetooth range was literally less than 10cm, sometimes when I called the phone would mute my voice.

I've tried resetting the phone twice. No luck. Then I've downgraded to iOS 10 and all problems went away; performance was similar to my previous phone.

So, no battery problem, no buggy phone, just a very very buggy operating system (or an OS that purposefully slows down on older devices).

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if Android has something similar?

</comment><comment><USER58> Makes a guy lament the loss of removable batteries because marketing is all about thin phones...</comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use for your company knowledge base? - <AUTHOR> Also, is it any good? <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of keeping it simple.

Markdown docs in a git repo, throw gollum in front of it and you have a wiki anyone can browse and technical people can keep offline copies, even edit offline and push changes later.

</comment><comment> a-saleh We have github repo with a ton of markdown files. Helps with reviews and it is nicely portable.

We also use jira (i.e. quite a lot of information might be stored in deploy notes for particular issues), confluence (mostly product feature discussion/specs) and google-docs (mostly for meeting minutes), but for anything there that is not ephemeral (i.e. just this release/meeting/feature), we move it to our repo.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this isn't relevant, Can you tell what are the knowledge base enterprise level softwares available in the market that are widely used?

</comment><comment><USER4> We just installed openKB, modified it to our needs and deployed it to Heroku in a click - great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> The knowledgebase in ServiceNow & Altassian Confluence are two I use on a daily basis.

<comment><USER6> Curious to see how you create your "space" in Confluence. I've got the stock one, and I'm having issues trying to delete it. Not sure what to put in its place, but I wanted to remove the stock stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> we use media wiki and confluence.

I don't like confluence, it's slow.

media wiki is ok, but it's hard to discover content.

</comment><comment><USER8> we use WordPress and a plugin called wp knowledgebase. fits the purpose and its free.

</comment><comment><USER9> A JIRA Wiki.

Could be better</comment>


UT Austin provides free access to more than 22,000 images of library materials - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2015/06/29/open_access_reveal/ <comment><USER2> Kudos for having their hearts in the right place.

No kudos for presentation. I've tried to look at two works, typewritten MSS by Vachel Lindsay and Sara Teasdale, and the text display is awkward. The initial presentation is too small to read. Looked long for a zoom control. Finally tried "full browser" link which does display the current page with a zoom control and the ability to drag that page around in a small frame to read it.

While it is nice that UT is doing this, it is sad that each uni has to do its own thing. Can there be no one virtual repository where all such collections -- or at least their catalogs -- could be amalgamated? It's like the bad old days of physical libraries: the scholar has first to find out which collection has the thing she needs, and may never learn that it exists. If they don't want to deal with google books, how about using TIA as a front end?

Edit: ...and then I looked at the URL, hrc.contentdm.oclc.org and thought, huh, that doesn't look like UT or EDU... turns out oclc.org is something like I was just asking for, a front end content distribution platform for multiple libraries. OK then. TIL and all that.

<comment><USER3> It always irritates me when these sorts of sites decide to implement their own often quirky document-viewing web app and hide everything behind it instead of just providing a direct link to a PDF or similar. I mean, if you're going to have this material freely available anyway why not make it easy to access?

IMHO archive.org is a good example to follow; I know their recent redesign is somewhat controversial, but they have not changed the fact that it is _easy_ to get to the content directly, and their URLs are also mostly descriptive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My university does something similar with its Digital Library and its related projects. The main repository hosts around 140,000 objects which can be accessed alongside metadata and in multiple formats here:

[http://digital.library.unt.edu/](http://digital.library.unt.edu/)

The Django app and libraries running the site are built and maintained in- house, and are open source:

[https://github.com/unt-libraries](https://github.com/unt-libraries) (the Django project/app itself is 'coda')

</comment><comment><USER5> This library is famous, I had often used it online even years ago. When I left the US I donated a lot of material from Asia gathered over a decade or so to their excellent map collection [http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/](http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/) (much of which is digitized) since shipping anything _out_ of the US is ridiculously expensive.

<comment><USER6> Technically, the Perry-Castañeda Library and the Harry Ransom Center are only loosely related, if that. (The HRC is the big fortress/vault-looking building at 21st and Guadalupe and the Pickle is the warm and welcoming architectural monstrosity at 21st and Speedway.)

But the HRC, it's forbidding exterior notwithstanding, is pretty nice, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool! Looks like they're free to use with attribution.

Direct link to the collections: [http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/#nav_top](http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/#nav_top)

<comment><USER8> Nicely done -- they admit that they don't have a copyright where appropriate, and ask for attribution, without requiring it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> UPEI has digital library system called Islandora[1] that does this sort of thing. I worked for them for about 6 months. It's a set of Drupal modules that interact with the Fedora[2] Repository (not the OS). They're pretty successful, with hundreds of installations all over the world. They have been scanning hundreds, if not thousands of books, newspapers, and maps so that they can be stored digital and accessed freely.

One example I think is pretty interesting is Island Newspapers [3] where they have scanned every issue of a newspaper in PEI, Canada called the Guardian going back to 1890.

[1] [http://islandora.ca/islandora- installations](http://islandora.ca/islandora-installations)

[2] [http://fedorarepository.org/](http://fedorarepository.org/)

[3] [http://islandnewspapers.ca/](http://islandnewspapers.ca/)</comment>