My Business Card Runs Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-card-runs-linux/ <comment><USER2> Wellington Ma's business card was a rectangular slice of pink synthetic quartz, laser-engraved with his name, 'The Ma-Mariano Agency,' an address on Beverly Boulevard, and all kinds of numbers and e-mail addresses. It arrived by GlobEx in its own little gray suede envelope while Rydell was still in the hospital.

"Looks like you could cut yourself on it," Rydell said.

"You could, many no doubt have," said Karen Mendelsohn, "and if you put it in your wallet and sit down, it shatters."

"Then what's the point of it?"

"You're supposed to take very good care of it. You won't get another."

<comment><USER3> I get serious Snow Crash vibes from this.

<comment><USER4> It's from Gibsons "Virtual Light", a vastly better book than Snow Crash. Highly recommended!

<comment><USER5> > a vastly better book than Snow Crash.

I've yet to read anything by Gibson that approaches anything by Stephenson

<comment><USER6> Other than the ending of every book Gibson has ever written, compared to the ending of any of Stephenson's works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loved the article, but loved even more to learn about MicroPython.

As an amateur programmer that has never actually physically handled hobby micro-controller type boards, but has read a lot about them, it was amazing to be able to try out the emulator at [https://micropython.org/unicorn/](https://micropython.org/unicorn/)

Make the leds blink, see how servo control works etc, all in the browser without having to actually buy any hardware! I had never seen anything like this.

Would love if others could point me to more advanced emulators of hardware micro controllers (if there is such a thing!)

<comment><USER8> MicroPython is fantastic for education and rapid prototyping with hardware - definitely try it out! It can be difficult to make complex long-running applications because of post-GC memory fragmentation and frequent dynamic allocations by the VM, but the Python syntax makes it all worthwhile. It also has a supportive and friendly community where it's easy to get support, and the official 'PyBoards' are great.

MakeCode is also similar to what you describe - check out Adafruit's Blockly/JS simulator:

[https://makecode.adafruit.com/](https://makecode.adafruit.com/)

Note that CircuitPython is Adafruit's fork which focuses more on education than industrial prototyping. So even within the embedded Python ecosystem, you have options.

Embedded development is so easy these days, it is just fantastic. The barrier to entry, in both cost and complexity, is so low now that just about anyone can apply physical automation to the problems that they see in their life and community. I'm excited to see what emerges in the next couple of decades.

<comment> m-ee We've made some pretty capable hardware at my job on top of the pyboard/micropython. We've outgrown it in certain cases but it's really powerful being able to build something for potential critical business needs (like one off testing platforms) without spending weeks rewriting drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me it's truly mind-bogging that a tiny $1.42 chip contains almost everything needed to boot Linux: a 500mhz cpu, 32MB SDRAM, 2D GPU, SD/MMC support, and USB controller, all packaged inside a 10mm x 10mm chip? It makes me really want to get into embedded development.

<comment><USER10> Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of 'running light without overbyte', because it's so comically capable.

My first PC had 66/33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

<comment><USER11> Oh geez I can't imagine how long it would take to compile Linux on that slow of a processor.

<comment><USER12> I once read somewhere that the time to compile Linux from source on high-end desktop hardware has remained remarkably stable over the years.

<comment><USER13> I'm convinced that compiler speed is all a matter of how it was initially designed.

Take for example Delphi which can compile millions of lines of code in under a minute or something ridiculous. Then we have D, Go, Rust, and such, they compile rather large codebases that would take C++ a good 30 minutes on high end hardware of today in shorter spans of time (not as familiar with how fast Rust compiles, but I know Go and D do pretty nicely, especially if you enable concurrency for D), which probably takes those same 30 minutes on high end hardware from about a decade ago.

Sadly from what I have heard C / C++ has to run through source files numerous times before it finally compiles the darn thing into anything meaningful. Facebook made a preprocessor in D to speed things up for them, it technically didn't have to be coded in D, but Walter did write the preprocessor for them, so he gets to pick whatever language.

<comment><USER14> Rust doesn't compile very fast unfortunately, but it's being worked on. General wisdom says it's about as fast as Clang but comparing compile speeds across languages in a meaningful way is difficult

<comment><USER13> Fair enough, thanks for that, I wasn't sure, all my Rust programs have been small enough to where I havent noticed. I wonder if it would of made sense for Rust to consider this earlier on in the same way that Pascal did. I believe I heard Pascal was designed to be parsed easily by machine code.

<comment><USER15> Parsing is not the reason why it takes a while to compile.

<comment><USER16> "Parsing" was probably not the best choice of word on the GP's part, but they meant that Pascal was specifically designed to be implementable with a naive single-pass compiler; of course that would exclude many optimizations we take for granted these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's fantastic. I don't typically hand out a physical business card often. So the recipient would be someone that I would feel would generally find the project exciting and intriguing, and it provides a great conversation piece. It's simple enough to discuss it briefly and mention that for any security-conscious individuals, they can check out the GitHub that's stated on the card and see the code and still have the same insight if not more than if they had just plugged in the device. For anyone else, the information they need from a business card is all still nicely stated, in a design that's enticing even without functionality. The production cost is easy to justify with the chance of achieving whatever your goal may be, whether it be securing a job offer or generating new business.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe I'm twisted but my first thought if that if I were a pen tester I would want business cards exactly like this. And yes, they would run Linux... and some other things. :-)

<comment><USER19> Ha someone on Reddit suggested this. See the thing is, they have my contact info printed on them, so I'm really easy for the police to find after everything is hacked!

<comment><USER20> If I were a pentester, I'd hand them out with your name and readme on it ;)

<comment><USER21> If he only hands out a few, they'll still lead back to you, but you'll make the police work for it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While it's a fascinating project I'd have some security concerns about plugging someone's USB business card into my computer.

<comment><USER23> Well, it is appropriate as a business card for an embedded systems engineers, not so much for a system security one!

More seriously, I never managed to understand the "obsession" with ROHS (this here is just an example):

>I made sure to have a lead-free process—the boards, parts, and solder paste are all RoHS—so that I wouldn't feel bad about giving them to people.

I mean, you are creating something that (besides being very nice) is not _needed_ , that very likely will end soon in the trash (and that contains anyway a few grams of "far from clean" materials) and you worry about the tiny amount of lead in the solder tin?

<comment><USER24> I don't get this lead-free hatred on internet forums. People say they can't solder with lead-free, and that it is terrible, and that joints look dull. So much hatred that I actually tried it out. And I found the process is basically just the same and there is nothing to be afraid of. Just set the solder iron temperature a bit higher and that's it. Works like a charm.

<comment><USER23> My note was not at all about lead-free hate, actually, since several years, everyone in EU (and I believe in US as well) has been using lead-free solder (ROHS is 2003, if I recall correctly).

As you say it is just a matter of slightly increasing the soldering iron temperature, but it doesn't end there and there may be issues further on (JFYI):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_\(metallurgy\))

It seems like lead-free alloys tend to be more problematic in these - fortunately rare - cases.

But because it is more than 15 years that ROHS came in force, I read in 2019 "and I made it lead-free" like I would read "and I buckled my safety belt" or "I put my helmet on", etc. I see it as "the normal" way, nothing worth a mention (nowadays).

<comment> GuB-42 I took a quick look at a rework station in an aeronautic company in France, all leaded solder.

<comment><USER23> >I took a quick look at a rework station in an aeronautic company in France, all leaded solder.

Very possible, there are a number of (pretty much wide) exemptions even in the last version:

[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rohs-compliance-and- guidance#wha...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rohs-compliance-and- guidance#what-is-covered)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I'm impressed by how low the bill of materials is, I can't but put into perspective the kind of skills the authors of the post has, and how mindbogglingly expensive they must be. Contrary to what the media says, it seems that the digital era has made (some) human beings more essential than ever ...

<comment><USER26> After reading the post, i was under the impression that the author really did some shopping for major components and assembled everything into a fun shape. Obviously i know nothing about electronic board design, so could you explain which extraordinary skill this required ?

EDIT : ok, i missed the part where he actually designed the whole board, obviously..

<comment><USER27> Embedded systems engineers are (usually) paid a lot less than full stack engineers.

Edit: I seem to be getting (a lot!) of downvotes on this. I thought it was quite well known, but apparently not.

Full Stack Engineer salary: $93,598 [1]

Embedded Software Engineer salary: $74,758[2]

[1] [https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Full_Stack_Engineer...](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Full_Stack_Engineer/Salary)

[2] [https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Embedded_Engineer/S...](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Embedded_Engineer/Salary)

<comment><USER28> Don't know why the downvotes either. Its not intuitive, but a sad fact of life and just the way supply and demand works.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, maybe it's a "I don't like this" vote. I tend to agree - I find embedded software engineering skills quite intimidating. Nevertheless, the market demand just isn't as high.

<comment><USER29> Where's the mystery? Someone looks at what this guy did for his business card and, to paraphrase, says "Wow, look at this guy's skills. He must charge a very, very non-average amount of money for them."

Your response to this is "But actually, according to payscale.com, an average embedded software engineer only makes X."

1\. Nobody likes but-actually posts.

2\. Quoting average salary when someone is commenting on how non-average a guy's skillset is isn't really relevant.

<comment><USER27> I get the "but actually" thing, but I don't think it was that.

The OP said the skills are "mindbogglingly expensive". From personal experience they aren't (I worked in a team with embedded engineers with similar skills to those required for this).

I thought this was well understood - it's been discussed here a number of times.

I added the average salaries _after_ getting voted down to -2 and that turned around the voting.

While there are a number of issues with average salaries I think it's notable that no one is claiming the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I rarely keep business carts, typically I scan them with my phone and throw them away but... If I hadn't read the article and someone handed me that business card, my jaw would have dropped all the way to the other side of the earth.

</comment><comment><USER31> My eyebrows went up when I saw the processor was so cheap, but then I went and found a datasheet for it and...

$1.42 buys

\- ARM926EJS core at 900MHz consuming 54mA when on and idle

\- 32MB DDR RAM

\- 720p H264 @ 30fps hardware decode

\- Audio DAC capable of 192kHz over I2S

\- USB OTG (not full host)

\- LCD RGB (FPC) interface at either 1024x600 or 1280x720 @ 60fps

\- Touchpanel I/O

Sources:

[https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano- cheap-...](https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano-cheap-sd- card-sized-linux-board/)

[https://linux- sunxi.org/images/b/ba/F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.p...](https://linux- sunxi.org/images/b/ba/F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.pdf)

\---

My version of this would have a tiny LCD, buttons, and a Wi-Fi interface. I know all of those exist in incredibly inexpensive formats. _Adds to todo list_

<comment><USER32> But can it run doom?

<comment><USER33> With 900MHz and 32MB RAM it is more powerful than PCs when Doom launched (around 50MHz and 8MB RAM), so I guess it should be capable running Doom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My first thought is that literally billions of people already do something similar every day. They use a card that runs its own small, programmable computer, that is portable, energy efficient, and can be powered 'wirelessly.' It's called a universal integrated circuit card (UICC) -- or the chip used in credit cards / sim / ID cards.

The OS these cards run is often referred to as the "Java Card Platform." The OS has many of the same features you would expect from a modern operating system like support for multiple programs, I/O, and very strong crypto primitives. It even has features you wouldn't expect (because some applets give you access to APIs that aren't currently open source available outside that environment.)

<comment><USER35> JavaCard is hilariously weak though, as far as Java is concerned. Support for "int" datatypes is optional, and there's no such thing as java.lang.String.

To your point though, it's pretty amazing to see the sheer number of devices with it deployed, and the things that can be done with sim card applets (mobile banking, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I really appreciate this write up. I didn't know about JCL and their assembly prices seem very reasonable. I also usually order my parts from Newark but their shipping is kind of silly on small orders ($8 for anything under 2lb).

Yesterday I started a small electronics project (Bluetooth connected tachometer for my motorcycle), and want to use ESP32 chips for it. I am the kind of masochist who in the past soldered SMD components by hand, but with these new services at my disposal could do so much better with that. Time to build a reflow oven?

<comment><USER37> You don't really even need to build one. Buy a $20 toaster oven, turn it on, and put your board in. When your solder paste reflows, turn it off. There is a reflow waveform to follow, but for small runs and personal projects is hardly worth the time and money. Check out YouTube four specifics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I really want to learn being able compile and solder an embedded system but I don't know where to start. Assuming I have the parts, tools and materials, how can I learn where to put capacitors/resistors etc in a custom design? What kind of simulators are good at testing these ideas without needing to waste expensive components? What was missing in my Computer Engineering curriculum which paints those circuit parts (except the cpu) completely alien to me?

<comment><USER39> Start with a simple, known-good design, then figure out why each part is there.

After you get some experience reverse engineering existing designs, start trying to build something simple. Thinking blinking lights without a processor.

Warning: Embedded tools are _not_ user friendly. Because most people who use them, use them all the time.

Eagle has a free tier. I think it's the EDA tool we used in my CS/CSE courses.

There are open source alternatives, but they had even rougher edges a decade ago when I was using them.

[https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-board- layou...](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-board-layout/all)

<comment><USER40> These days KiCad does a good job, especially if you're just starting out.

Some CERN developers started working on it a few years ago and it's been much improved since then.

<comment><USER39> You might have inspired me to give it a retry! I remembered the name, but wasn't sure enough to recommend it to someone new.

Apparently there are browser-based options too.

[https://www.circuitlab.com/](https://www.circuitlab.com/)

[https://www.falstad.com/circuit/](https://www.falstad.com/circuit/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Your business card is CRAP! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk)

</comment><comment><USER42> Very cool project! It would be neat to incorporate WiFi into the next version instead of USB. Then you could publish a mobile app to communicate with it. It would be fun to play with at parties. [https://www.gridconnect.com/products/esp8266ex-tiny- wireless...](https://www.gridconnect.com/products/esp8266ex-tiny- wireless-802-11-b-g-n-chip) .

<comment><USER43> > instead of USB

And how would you power the card?

<comment><USER9> I wonder if tiny solar cells covering the entire surface of the card would be enough to power it. Not sure if the wifi module can be powered with < 1 watt of electricity though.

<comment><USER42> How about a combination of solar and an ultra thin lithium ion battery? Finding a small, thin solar cell cheap enough is the trick I think... [http://www.phdenergy.com/products/rechargeable- batteries/ult...](http://www.phdenergy.com/products/rechargeable- batteries/ultrathin-battery/) [https://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/powerfilm-inc/MP3-...](https://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/powerfilm-inc/MP3-25/1996-1023-ND/9559473) I haven't done any calculations to see if these would provide enough power or not...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is cool as it showcases his embedded engineering prowess.

Years of startup meets[1] have left a bad taste in mouth for the business cards. I've seen people exchange business cards ceremoniously, only to give a missed call to each other immediately.

Business cards are a waste of money, paper and I don't want to get started on the plastics. I honestly thought that proliferation of NFC in smartphones would help to change this behaviour, but with Google shutting down Android Beam(its reasoning: no one is using it) and newer, cheaper smartphones without NFC; I think that ship has sailed.

At-least, in WhatsApp countries; people share contacts via WhatsApp.

[1][https://hitstartup.com/honest-startup- meet/](https://hitstartup.com/honest-startup-meet/)

<comment><USER45> I find that business cards are still helpful to get the spelling of people's names right - otherwise you have to either hand your phone over to the other person and have them type their name into your phone, or at least have them text you the spelling, which can be awkward to ask for and anyway has more friction than accepting a business card.

Also, sharing WhatsApp contacts makes me uncomfortable. There's various fields that people can store in their private contacts system which is inappropriate to share without permission - birthdays and home addresses at least. When you share a contact, you have to remember to sanitize the contact before you send it. A business card only consists of details which are pre-approved to share with strangers, so business cards don't have this problem.

<comment><USER44> I agree with you on both the points.

One more concern for me is the utility of a business card is just once, if you want to contact them in future you'll store the details on your phone and when you put the card in the pocket it likely directly ends in the trash.

As for WhatsApp or other chat app 'contact' sharing it is not limited to business/professionals and so it has become a norm in several countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Waw, I wasn't expecting the components to be _that_ cheap. That said I haven't bought such components in a very long while.

<comment><USER47> It is an unusually cheap system, and OP clearly did some thorough research on finding a really well integrated SoC that is available for super low piece part prices. I'd guess Allwinner targets that part at some ultra high volume application and some AliExpress sellers managed to capture some trays of excess parts to sell individually. I wouldn't be surprised if the unit price there is lower than what Allwinner quotes for volume.

<comment><USER48> Very good point.

And this one of the dangers of basing your supply chain on AliExpress. I've had to caution clients that just because they found some normally expensive component dirt cheap on Amazon or AliExpress, doesn't mean that they'll still be available in 6 months when you need 1000 more.

Base your BOM on a manufacturer-approved supplier. If you can find the same parts for less elsewhere (assuming they're not counterfeit), go for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am astonished just reading this, what have been some reactions handing these out?

<comment><USER19> Author here. It's a really good conversation starter. I've given a couple of them out and the reaction is always that I bought it somewhere, and I have to explain that no, I really did the entire design from start to finish!

<comment><USER50> Really loved the look of your website... Is it designed by you?

<comment><USER51> It is nice! Congrats on your career/YC. I really liked "The art of being Disagreeable" because I've found that to be quite accurate in my experience.

<comment><USER49> I assume the parent comment is talking about op's website but thanks! I have been trying to write about all the things I wish I knew when I started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't miss the "Designing my Linux Business Card" post

[https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/designing- my-...](https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/designing-my-linux- business-card/)

Edit - I find it amazing that the CPUs for these are sold for $0.90 on Taobao, without needing a bulk discount or anything.

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe in the next 10 years there will be a business card running a JVM.

<comment><USER53> Your SIM cards, credit/debit cards, GPG smartcard, Bitcoin hardware wallets, etc. already do (probably) run Java :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Here is another very similar project with full details;

Epaper based Business Card : [https://www.paulschow.com/2016/08/epaper- business-card.html](https://www.paulschow.com/2016/08/epaper-business- card.html)

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice work! MicroPython is nice as well although I prefer C for now, but that's probably just because MicroPython would not be very feasible at the moment for projects we do.

I have been dreaming about making our card (see my profile here if interested) run a real (well embedded but) OS; we had a version which could run some embedded OSes but to cut on material costs, we had to remove a mcu which got us down now to less than 23kB of workable memory. It is possible to run 'an OS' in that like computers from the 70-80s; the speed of the current mcu matches more with that era as well.

I like this kind of thing, but I would want a display on it and maybe no USB (just a radio circuit communicate with it for updates etc).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm amazed he did this for $3. I've been struggling to get my cheap electronic Christmas ornament under $15. I guess I need to find an alternative toolchai that's cheaper

</comment><comment><USER56> The author: did you think about creating a course on embedded hardware and software design and launch a funding campaign on Kickstarter. I would definitely help fund it.

<comment><USER19> I have thought about it and I am writing one entitled "Mastering Embedded Linux." Its goal is to take you from zero to expert with hacking embedded Linux systems.

[https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/08/mastering- emb...](https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/08/mastering-embedded- linux-part-1-concepts/)

Hopefully the next installment will come out today. The holidays are letting me catch up on writing.

<comment><USER20> Both the card and the article look cool, thanks for making this. Do you have a mailing list for article updates?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Very impressive stuff! There are so many stupid comments here.

</comment><comment><USER58> Kids today don't appreciate that in the 1990s, if you wanted a bootable business card (BBC), you had to satisfy yourself with a CDROM, cut to "business card" form factor, which would boot, but _you had to supply your own computer_.

Immortalised as the Linuxcare BBC:

[https://archiveos.org/lnx-bbc/](https://archiveos.org/lnx-bbc/)

(@schoen here, among others, will be ... extraordinarily familiar with this.)

Hilliard's solution here is the 2020s variant.

This is also a testemant to the fact that it's not just ICs which are now cheap (as opposed to, in the 1990s, static data archives), but entire SoCs.

The main limitation is now power supplies, though the prospect of parasitic OTA power extraction is becoming a possiblity, perhaps also thin-film PV and small-scale power storage systems.

Which means that peel-and-stick computing is well within reach, if not a present reality. I suspect Hilliard's BoM would fall by 25-50% in bulk, and given technological advances, should be halving every 18-24 months, which means that $1.50 systems are available now, $0.75 in roughly two years, and only a few more halvings before the 1995 Dilbert Unix user advice, "here's a nickle, kid, get yourself a better computer", will be a practical reality:

[https://assets.amuniversal.com/6b08abb09fbb012f2fe600163e41d...](https://assets.amuniversal.com/6b08abb09fbb012f2fe600163e41dd5b)

Applied to packages, this means that shipments can report their own progress. Applied to a vehicle, these will permit covert tracking on the cheap. Applied to arbitrary surfaces, indoors or out, surveillance of a given location (audio, video, or other sensors). RFID tags will give way to fully-capable computers, integrated into inventory and pricing stickers. Applied to a drone or glider, an integrated surveillance-and-flight-control package (combine with very small body and lightweight electric motors for power-gliders deployable _en masse_ , not individually threats, but capable of close-up, large-scale monitoring and guidance for more capable systems). Applied to windows, tapping of conversations inside. Likely tapping (or hacking) into available wireless comms nets.

The devices will be well within reach of white hats and black, as well as numerous shades of grey.

Decreasing costs mean that activities not presently viable, many of which won't benefit the common weal, will come into viablity, much as email, fax, pop-up, and phone spam over the past three decades.

Power, sensors, and antennae are likely the biggest limiting factors at this point, though all are also rapidly miniaturising.

</comment><comment><USER59> I remember when only the distro would fit on a business card:

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

[http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/about_damn_small_linux.ht...](http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/about_damn_small_linux.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> Impressive work. But I'd ask for a few leds with some easy to use method (can they be a device, like dev/led1 ?). The Arduino has one in port 13 (usually), and it is very useful for useful for minimal projects, like a blinking led.

(Bonus points for a few leds, so you can show the Knight Rider animation, or a 7-segment display.)

</comment><comment><USER61> According to the spec sheet, the CPU supports H264 decoding at that price. And MJPEG encoding. And has full-fat DACs for audio playback too.

[https://linux- sunxi.org/images/b/ba/F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.p...](https://linux- sunxi.org/images/b/ba/F1C100s_Datasheet_V1.0.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER62> Don't forget to look at the more detailed companion to this excellent article!

[https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/designing- my-...](https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/designing-my-linux- business-card/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Tech- and designwise, very neat.

And then there's the occasional sourfaced old party pooper like myself. Two seconds in, and I no longer see the sweet wizardry or the polished black surface; I only see _@gmail_ , internally translating to " _someone who doesn 't really care_".

<comment><USER64> You can't take care of everything - there are only so many hours in a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This is brilliant. I'm an embedded systems engineer by training (and interest - I still occasionally solder things to bend them to my will!) and absolutely love the implementation. It's aesthetically pleasing and functional in both interesting and fun ways. Very slick.

</comment><comment><USER66> I love this! And while it's well suited to the person (embedded engineer), it could be realigned to someone else by changing the tagline. For example, "This card runs vim!" for developers, or "This card runs Linux containers!" for devops, etc.

<comment><USER67> It is a gimmick, the value is that he designed it himself and no one else does it. If you just buy a computer card and install your own software, it is just a really impractical waste of resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The links from that page leads to [https://wiki.sipeed.com/en/lichee/nano.html](https://wiki.sipeed.com/en/lichee/nano.html) which is a Linux computer in form factor similar to a SD Card

<comment><USER23> Which reminded me of the good ol' matchbox web server:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000620180950/http://wearables....](https://web.archive.org/web/20000620180950/http://wearables.stanford.edu/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000617162718fw_/http://wearabl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000617162718fw_/http://wearables.stanford.edu/hardware.html#webserver)

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR This is a very cool project. I know very little about embedded engineering. I have a question: Why would MicroPython be needed? I thought it was useful only for simple chips, and this chip runs a full Linux, so couldn't you run CPython on it?

<comment><USER19> OP here. CPython is very heavyweight on small systems like these, with multi- second imports, multi-megabyte stdlib, and limited library availability (cross building native extensions is tricky).

MicroPython dodges all this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Very cool. Back in 2004 I used to have business card-shaped CD-ROMs that booted Tiny Core Linux. They were always eye catching. In fact, one of those was a factor that landed me a job in a small startup in Palo Alto called VMware...

</comment><comment><USER69> Great and a cool project.

It looks promising for someone to share their personal profile and their Resume.

For business, The best part will be to have cards received into the System and transfer them to their CRM or contacts or some other application they use.

</comment><comment><USER70> I remember installing Coherent from a bunch of 5 1/4 inch floppies onto my third computer, a 286 (or perhaps it was onto my fourth computer, a 386 sx).

Coherent had a really nice cover on its manual.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is pretty cool.

What's the time spent on bootup? Hardware POST? I remember seeing some Linux can boot in under a second. It would be cool to see the business card come to life instantly.

<comment><USER72> You might know this and use it as a short hand, but just in case: ARM doesn't use a BIOS of any sort, so there is no POST, just a bunch of vendor blobs (burned into the chip) that do bootstrapping then jump to your bootloader.

The biggest problem in his case is probably the 8 MiB serial flash; that is going to be rather slow to load from.

<comment><USER71> Good to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> overheard (year 2045) "can you believe this guy? His business card doesn't even run linux! It was one of those retro paper only cards."

</comment><comment><USER74> Hey @rcarmo - So you're gonna sell these right? Bc I'll take way more than I ever previously thought I would spend on business cards.

<comment><USER75> Buying these would defeat the purpose though.

<comment><USER74> @paxys - Not sure what purpose you're referring to. Sure, purchasing them would defeat the purpose of making your own business card, but not the traditional purpose of having a business card that's cool & which doesn't immediately get tossed in the garbage after you give it out.

I imagine these aren't for sale, but I'm just throwing it out there that I would prly buy them if they were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Staggering that this $3 "business card" has substantially more computing power than my $6,000 original IBM PC.

(Today's US dollars.)

</comment><comment><USER77> interesting idea but the system is pretty much not able to be used for any task and this type of thing will end up as landfill.

<comment><USER78> Like most business cards, you mean. Actually, if I got one of these I'd probably keep it around just for novelty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Awesome project!

However, practically do anyone use business card these days? What does it do which a LinkedIn or GitHub profile wouldn't?

<comment><USER80> Makes the author stand out a lot more than yet another GitHub or LinkedIn profile will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> A business card I'ld pay to get. Also a realization of the futuristic "disposable computer" concept.

</comment><comment><USER54> Excellent and Ingenious work!

I hope to do something like this one day by myself (have to build up my Electronics background first :-)

</comment><comment><USER82> If you set aside the security concerns for a moment, this is a great way to make the first impression.

</comment><comment><USER83> Can you start a company around this? I would love to have one. You may use KickStarter

</comment><comment><USER84> Interested why the author would fuzz out the phone number on their business card?

<comment><USER19> It's only fuzzed in the pictures. The actual card has the phone number. I just didn't want a ton of people from the internet hitting my phone directly! Email is fine, however, so that's un-blurred.

<comment><USER85> You do then link to the GitHub repo which has a PDF of your resume with all of your contact info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Given the site name, I wonder if he is a fan of Kurt Schroeder's books.

<comment><USER19> OP here. Bingo! Karl Schroeder is fairly obscure unfortunately... I love Ventus and Lady of Mazes. I picked this handle mainly because it's unique everywhere I've tried to sign up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I want to see the USB-C equivalent of this.

:(

<comment><USER51> Older usb specs are the serial ports of this era

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Idea for a next project: an fpga that runs Linux, on a business card.

</comment><comment><USER89> very cool. but I would never plug your card into my machine.. Especially if it's a work machine.

Perhaps if I have a dedicated sandboxed machine. Is that setup common for embedded folks?

</comment><comment><USER56> This is one of the coolest things I have seen on HN this year !

</comment><comment><USER90> This is a beautiful piece of art and engineering!

</comment><comment><USER91> Okay, but... you could have gotten a better email address at least? Random numbers after your name is barely a step up from "at yahoo dot com"

</comment><comment><USER92> wow, 900MHZ CPU and 32MB was my first PC I bought more than 20 years ago for more than 1000$

</comment><comment><USER93> How well does this survive a static-prone coat pocket during the dry winter months?

</comment><comment><USER94> What fun! Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER95> Most credit cards run Java(Card), another very interesting technology

<comment><USER96> On that note, the platform had a bunch of (medium) vulnerabilities early this year [0][1], but I haven't managed to find a follow up.

(Which isn't unusual - this is Oracle. Knowledge of patches is precious information.)

[0] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/22/oracles_java_card/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/22/oracles_java_card/)

[1] [https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2019/Mar/35](https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2019/Mar/35)

<comment><USER97> Before Oracle there was Sun, which managed Java Card just the same way, and there is the consortium as well.

Given the December 12th release, I expect those issues from March, to have been fixed already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Let's see Paul Allen's card.

</comment><comment><USER99> The tasteful thickness of it...

</comment><comment><USER100> If only they'd invested more into a professional looking email address. Pretty cool nonetheless!

<comment><USER101> That makes no sense. This guy isnt advertising his mad "registering firstnamelastname.com" skills, he's advertising his mad embedded engineering skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> How can I upvote this twice?

</comment><comment><USER103> 901, I live in the same city as this guy!

</comment><comment><USER104> But isn't masking the phone number kinda defying the purpose?

Extremely impressive

<comment><USER105> The censor is only on the picture.

Clearly you've never been called 20 times a day for 2 weeks straight during looming deadlines about Extended Car Warranties!

<comment><USER104> Correct!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> I wonder what world would we be living in if people like this fellow were actually focusing on automation and not on making business cards that run Linux.

Maybe we wouldn't be living in such a lowly automated reality, using concepts from the previous centuries. Robotics might even make sense...

<comment><USER107> I have worked on some industrial automation stuff. In my experience, it's genuinely really hard to do in a way that's actually better than manual systems, or very narrowly-scoped and simple automation. The number of edge cases and failure modes is mind-boggling. I'm skeptical that there's much room for effective solutions between extremely simple and dumb automation, and near-human level AI.

<comment><USER108> > _I 'm skeptical that there's much room for effective solutions between > extremely simple and dumb automation, and near-human level AI._

That's literally my job, and there's a ton of room actually. You just have to be able (and willing) to have the ability to fall back to humans at any point in the process. Like real world "fix-and-continue" debugging...</comment></comment></comment>


The problem isn't that life is unfair – it's your broken idea of fairness - <AUTHOR> http://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-problem-isnt-that-life-is-unfair-its-your-broken-idea-of-fairness/

<comment><USER2> Yes, many people have irrational and perhaps simplistic ideas about fairness which break down in face real world circumstances. Even so this article is over simplistic nonsense which was (poorly) designed to support the author's premise (such that it is).

1: Life does include competition but it is not solely competition as the article suggests. Advantage through cooperation is found throughout a broad spectrum of sciences including animal behavior and game theory.

2: "You're judged by what you do, not what you think". Well yes, but you are also judged by your skin colour, the language you speak, the accent you speak it in, your sex & orientation and dozens of other factors. Moreover it's well documented that these factors often take precedence over other more 'logical' factors such as previous accomplishments and current engagements.

3: Our idea of fairness is often skewed by self interest but isn't _entirely_ self interest. Honestly, it's like the author has never had any contact with any form of sociological research whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER3> The illustrations are fun and the explanations are skillful.

The core idea is more of a starting point. It's reminding us that we shouldn't expect things to be "fair", but it's avoiding the whole topic about how fairness sometimes shouldn't always matter when you want to be happy.

It's not really meant to discuss a recipe for happiness, but at the same time it features people being frustrated about perceived unfairness, which makes them unhappy.</comment>


Ask HN: Where should I study abroad? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the third year of my undergrad CS degree, and it's only recently occurred to me that I should study abroad while I have the opportunity. I'm a native English speaker and I understand 90% of Mandarin Chinese conversations, though my Chinese speaking skills have withered away. I'm open to learning an entirely new language. Where do you think I should go? <comment><USER2> Analogy:

>If you ever do find yourself working for a startup, here's a handy tip for evaluating competitors. Read their job listings. Everything else on their site may be stock photos or the prose equivalent, but the job listings have to be specific about what they want, or they'll get the wrong candidates.

>During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of job descriptions. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork every month or so. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had a live online demo, was look at their job listings. After a couple years of this I could tell which companies to worry about and which not to. The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting to sound like a company where the technical side, at least, is run by real hackers. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried.

If you're on HN and state plainly that language is no obstacle, I assume you have an interest in meeting driven, energetic individuals like yourself. Whether that's because you're interested in meeting others who will help you grow intellectually/emotionally/spiritually/etc. or because you're interested in meeting the Larry to your Sergey will help guide your specific choice, but either way you'll be able to apply the above principle. Whatever you do, pick a place with high barriers to entry. How high? What kinds of barriers? Depends on what kinds of people you want to meet. If you want to meet other students who, unlike yourself, were unwilling to learn a new language, study abroad in the UK or Australia. If you want to meet some ballsy-ass motherfuckers, study abroad in Shanghai. Etc. You get the idea. (Really though, I met a couple who just came back from 3 years in Shanghai, and they both said anyone and everyone there who spoke native English was somebody worth getting to know.)

This isn't to say there won't be many, many other factors involved in your decision. Certainly, all other things being equal, cities with tech industries are preferable to cities severely lacking in tech, cities with angels/VC's are preferable to cities without, etc. But if you just weigh things like that, you may as well "study abroad" in SF, no?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're worried about your Chinese withering away, you should definitely study abroad in China (e.g., Shanghai).

If you want to go to a different/interesting/pretty city, study in Kyoto. I've met folks who studied at Kyoto University. There's a tech industry there, since Nintendo is in the area (and small game startups have grown up around senior folks who have left Nintendo). Or you could live in Tokyo or Osaka (big cities with tall buildings).

</comment><comment><USER4> With classes in English but really solid technical courses, you might want to consider one of: Budapest Semesters in Mathematics Aquincum Institute of Technology Math in Moscow

The first two programs are both in Budapest, and the second one focuses on computing while the first one is (obviously) more focused on mathematics. If you have a theoretical bent these are good choices.

</comment><comment><USER5> I spent a month traveling throughout Europe this summer after graduation- it really is so easy to travel about in if you want to see a lot. This would be a list of cities I try to study in (obviously depends on the program you choose) but you can't really go wrong with any: 1\. Zurich / Rome / Prague 2\. Berlin / Amsterdam 3\. Paris / Budapest

</comment><comment><USER6> Come to Israel. You can meet world class professors at Tel Aviv U, Hebrew U, and of course, the Technion in Haifa. And check out: <http://mappedinisrael.com/> for a list of startups in Israel.

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun This is a mostly a case of personal taste, isn't it? :P

I would love to travel to both Japan and South Korea, but I'm sure they're not for everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all! I've lived in the same state for my entire life, and I'm open to suggestions from those of you that are more well-traveled. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little biased but I'd say buenos aires :)

<comment> saiko-chriskun I have an Argentinian friend and will probably visit at some point in the future :). How is it?</comment></comment>


Post your ads here - <AUTHOR> http://tagpila.com/register <comment><USER2> FYI...

Opera says: could not verify authenticity of certificate - website may be trying to trick you, etc. When I clicked on Opera's [show certificate], it promptly crashed.

Been on Opera/Linux for about 3 weeks. First time it crashed on a site.

<comment><USER3> IE also complains about the certificate.

<comment><USER4> Chrome too.</comment></comment></comment>


Is this the perfect save icon? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@etchuk/is-this-the-perfect-save-icon-9651129bda85#.tabfyo29c <comment><USER2> I remember MS-Word classes where they told the students to click on the save icon and to say it looked like a TV Set. It was really a floppy disk but the instructor said TV set in case students didn't know what a floppy disk was or what it was used for. This was before Office 2007 and the ribbon interface. I think it was Word 97 and at the time most people saved files to hard disks instead of floppy disks.

I remember people used to customize the toolbar and replace the icons with different icons as well.

I guess the new generation of computer users will not know what a floppy disk was used for, in the age of where USB drives replaced the floppy drives. They know it is the Save icon, but not what it was used for.</comment>


Robot arrested by Russian police at political rally in Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-17/robot-arrested-by-russian-police-at-political-rally-in-moscow/7854764 <comment><USER2> This article is based on a very poor translation of an announcement put out by _owners_ of the robot on social media site.

As per the russian news site that covered this:

\- robot was hired by the campaign to "agitate" (e.g. play loud political messages) for the candidate to passers by as they exited a subway stop in moscow.

\- police arrived on scene and asked the organizers to move the robot farther away from the path of the people.

Based on above, the owners put out a press release claiming the robot was "almost arrested" and announced that between the original "escape from proving grounds" 2 weeks ago and this, the robot "must now be destroyed ... because it got too smart".

Pretty good marketing campaign, but definitely not an AI breakthrough :)

edit: format

<comment><USER3> Ha ha this makes more sense. In fact, I didn't even read the article nor watched the video, but immediately upon the load of the page I noticed the name of the robot: _" Promobot"_ and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that either the article or the incident was some sort of PR. It reminded me of the film "I, Robot" [1] where a AI-powered machine supposedly breaks the three laws of robotics [2]. I wonder if this will happen in the not-so-far future.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_%28film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_%28film%29)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Police have not confirmed why they detained the machine named Promobot, but local media was reporting the company behind the robot said police were called because it was "recording voters' opinions on [a] variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team"._

Here's the perp's website: [http://en.promo-bot.ru/](http://en.promo-bot.ru/)

Anyway, this is so much BS.

I didn't see any handcuffs being use in the video. The thing has arms but don't appear functional except to hold press releases.

Very poor choice of words. The police don't "detain" your camera or your computer when they seize evidence.

Up next: Local police arrest Corolla for to many parking violations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Handcuffs?

Are these police being paid by the company? Most robot manufacturers only dream about this sort of publicity.

<comment><USER6> What do you think the Robot was sent for to the rally in the first place?

<comment><USER5> Having read the article it seems that the robot was hired by the rally organisers in order to poll and influence the attendees.

So the company likely sent it there in order to complete a contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Right after another robot disarmed a suspect in LA [0]. Our robot future is here.

[0] [http://www.laweekly.com/news/an-inattentive-gunman-got- his-r...](http://www.laweekly.com/news/an-inattentive-gunman-got-his-rifle- snatched-by-a-robot-cops-say-7392372)

<comment><USER4> _The department announced this week that the robot approached from behind and took the suspect 's rifle as he was lying down on his belly to face a battery of SWAT team members assembling to take him down._

The robot was being controlled by an officer like an RC car. This makes it sound like the robot acted autonomously.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the reality of the story isn't nearly as good as the headline. Also, the guy wasn't holding the gun at the time. Still, great headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not the first time: [http://piratetimes.net/plastic-pirates-put-into- prison/](http://piratetimes.net/plastic-pirates-put-into-prison/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure we're at the point where you can hold the robot fully responsible yet.

</comment><comment><USER10> What a great business opportunity! Tele-presence for social activism.</comment>


Everything I knew about food was wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/cdc7633cde64?utm_source=TwitterAccount&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=TwitterAccount <comment><USER2> Yep, there are a few errors in there but I like the general idea. In fact I'm just starting to try the method Steve Gibson of security now described. Basically, cut down sugars and grains (most processed food), and add more healthy fats. For some reason people that go this route are highly attracted to double bacon butter cheeseburgers, etc... bad idea.

Olive, canola, avocados, and nuts are sources of fats that are much better on the heart. Tons of veggies, fruits, and lean meats will serve you well. This is what I've done in the past and have been very healthy, now focusing on bringing the sugars down and will see the results.

Another thing he mentions I'd be wary of is the coconut oil. It's full of saturated fat, and though proponets are now pointing to properties that mitigate its effects, i'd be cautious. I was not able to find much evidence of that or many studies at all on the subject. In absence of better info I'd avoid foods rich in saturated fat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Totally agree with the gist of the article.

But it's interesting there is so much mythology in there.

Just because bees create honey, it's still just sugar by a different name. Bees aren't magical fairy's.

And similarly Preservatives, Toxins, nitrosamines , anti-biotics (Irrelevant to personal heath from eating) are not relevant.

Even nutrition is totally irrelevant except in small cases. Our issue is eating to many harmfully foods like sugar and highly processed flour. It's not lack of nutrients in the 1st world.

<comment><USER4> Another example of magical thinking;

> Nitrates are also used as fertilizers in agriculture. Now ask yourself, is > that something you really want to be eating?

Water is used to irrigate in agriculture. Are you sure you want to drink that?

<comment><USER5> Dihydrogen monoxide can be dangerous depending on the quantity and how it is acquired and imbibed. Don't get it in your lungs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "... during the clarification process all of the milk fat is burned off"

Ghee _is_ milk fat. The clarification process removes the water and protein from the butter.

</comment><comment><USER7> The main ideas are good, but most specifics are unscientific at best.

Nutrition is one of those fields where knowing what to do is easy, but actually doing the right thing is hard, so people tend to fall prey to promises of superfoods and silver bullets (Acai are just berries, ghee is just butter, gluten doesnt harm you unless you're allergic,...).

Also, don't micro-optimize the details (e.g. which kind of fat to eat), but get the most important big things right (e.g. don't eat too much fat). There's little agreemnt of experts about the small details of nutrition anyway.

For me, the important points about nutrition are:

\- Don't eat too much

\- Avoid smoking, drugs, too much alcohol

\- Drink enough, mostly water

\- As much fruit and vegetable as possible, as little pure fat and sugar as possible.

\- As fresh and unprocessed as possible.

\- As much variety as possible.

I'm sure there's plenty of rules I could add - but I won't, since the small, simple set of rules above is easy enough to remember and follow, and will get you 90% of the health benefits compared to the diet of someone who obsesses over healthy nutrition.

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you think celery salt is? It's just sodium nitrate from a celery source! [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery_salt>]

</comment><comment><USER9> This is too short to be worth reading. Instead, buy McGee's _On Food and Cooking_ , and read a random page or two when you feel interested.</comment>


Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz - <AUTHOR>

I know a little of Lisp. Not much, never went much far than 4th, maybe 5th chapter on PG's book. I did some exercises and I understand the power that Lisp brings. Maybe not fully, but I can see the potential. Before you ask, I used Lispbox to set it up, which gave me e-Macs with a Lisp extension, but which implementation I am not sure, although I know it is not any Scheme one.
Now, I am following all those articles posted here today about the Lisp's problems and they look to me quite similar to the Linux distro's problem, in that everyone has one that (s)he likes and disses (if not plainly hates) all others.
This, on the Linux world has prevented it from becoming the mainstream OS it should be, and gave Windows an undeserving and lasting afterlife. It could have died with the Vista fiasco, and it nearly did so, but now it is posing a serious comeback with Seven. Linux failed to seize the moment and Lisp is doing more or less the same.
Now, answer me these, since my knowledge of Lisp is severely lacking to make sense of it. If I am completely wrong about something, be merciful.
As far as I understand, Lisp has some 'low level' functions that are some sort of axioms on whom the implementations are built onto, right?
If this is true and everything on the language are built atop of those, or atop of stuff built atop of those (in n-levels), how can different implementations possible be incompatible?
If everyone is aware of the Lisp's problems, why isn't anyone moving to fix them?
Why, when one tries, the answer must always be another implementation with 'more' features instead of creating the cleanest possible implementation with 'the least' features allowing maximum compatibility?
I have more questions, but I need to understand these first if anyone has the patience to answer.
I am most grateful for your time. <comment><USER2> Which lisp are you talking about? For example, Common Lisp and Scheme are both languages of the lisp family, but they are rather different.

The PG books are about Common Lisp. CL is defined in a _very_ good ANSI standard. Where implementations of CL really diverge is in the areas which are not covered by the standard, e.g. networking. Not that it is an enormous problem in practice: there are good portable libraries around ("portable" means that they work on different CL implementations).

edit: thinking about it, if you are using Peter Seibel's lisp in a box, then it's CL that you are playing with

<comment><AUTHOR> I never tried Scheme so you can assume I am talking about CL if that helps, but since I don't know the difference between them, the question is directed at both.

In fact, if they are both 'Lisp', why do they exist at all? Why there ARE differences? If CL is a 'very good' ANSI standard as you say, why people use Scheme? Arc is also CL, but why does it exist at all? What does it has that justifies it being created, increasing even more the noise? If I wanted an implementation of strict CL, which one would be it?

<comment><USER2> Common Lisp was an effort to create an unified, "industrial strength" version of Lisp, because at the time there were many. For this reason the resulting standard is very large and complex. Scheme has been designed with a different agenda (cleanliness, elegance, etc.) and it is more used in the academia ; for example, scheme is the dialect used in the famous SICP book.

If you choose CL, the choice of implementation is not very important while you learn it. Different CL implementations have different strength, e.g. in unicode implementation, compilation speed, treatment of certain kinds of numbers etc., but it is not relevant for a beginner. A popular open source choice is SBCL, but there are others.

Also, there are free/opensource implementations and commercial implementations. The commercial ones are costly (but trial versions exist); they give a more complete environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> And even though Scheme was designed to be clean and elegant, CL has to be backward compatible and thus cannot be 'cleaned', right?.

Is there any 'cleaner' CL standard, or at least a 'best practices' guide to code in a cleaner way, avoiding the worse pits that had to be kept in the standard due to backward compatibility?

I can give you a simple C++ example of what I mean. In C, you had those *parameters that had to be matched by &args when the function was called. C++ brought some self-referencing &parameters that were passed normally and worked the same way than the former but were (saidly) less error-prone.

Is there any similar effort being made in Lisp?

<comment><USER2> The "backward compatibility issue" means simply that the Common Lisp is a very large language, so it is slightly more scaring at first. Also, some things are strangely named for historical reasons.

Regarding scheme vs CL, I don't want to start a flame war, I like both languages. It seems to me that CL is more dirty-hands, product-oriented and agnostic, while Scheme is sort of a beautiful thought experiment, meant to teach things. [Yes, I know you can code practical things in scheme too]

CL gives you more rope to hang yourself with macros. Which is a things that most hackers appreciate, anyway.

There aren't many style guides on CL, but Peter Seibel's book is a good start. But in the end I think you should try to play more with code and worry less about lisp theology :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I am trying to do. but I am hearing all those omens about Lisp but I sense I need to understand it better before I dive myself into it. There is absolutely NO market for it where I live so, if I would learn it, it would be for personal gain. Not that it is a problem, but without a market compass, I feel like I need a map.

Thanks for your answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal. I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise".

Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms. I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac app and CCL has this wonderful cocoa bridge. If i had to do any java stuff or interface with java, I would probably be using clojure.

If you are interested, I recommend continuing PCL and the lispbox.

If everyone is not moving to fix the problems that you mention, it might mean that they disagree about what the important problems are.

Arc exists as a research effort in thinking about what the next version of lisp should look like, and there are those that feel it is a possible answer to some of your questions.

Scheme is a very essential (e.g. minimalist) implementation of Lisp that is often found in teaching environments.

Don't let the variety scare you--just dive in if you are interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may not be for you, but it was for me in the beggining.

I already went through 3 distros - Kurumin, Suse and Ubuntu, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition is to play some games that I couldn't (or didn't bother to) make work under Linux. I can tell you, the bar is very high to start. Ubuntu made it lower (and lower at each version) but it is still too high for mainstream.

And it need not be. The whole problem is always understanding the differences. If I pick that distro or that distro, what changes? What do I lose? What do I earn? Unable to find answers, one doesn't choose lest one chooses poorly.

Lisp implementations are the same.

Thank you for your answers. Allow me to add just two more. If one says Arc is not CL, but a whole new kind of Lisp that tries to solve some of those problems, what exactly are the differences? What does Arc advance as a Lisp standard?

<comment><USER2> 1\. choose your lisp dialect: do you want to learn CL, Scheme, Arc, ...?

2\. randomly pick an implementation of your chosen lisp. It really makes no difference as a beginner. I speak from experience. You can always switch later in a painless way.

regarding CL, choose an open source implementation if you don't fear things like emacs. If you prefer a more polished IDE, choose a commercial implementation.

<comment><AUTHOR> CL on Lispbox is what I have now. Which means I use (use being a overstatement) e-Macs with a Lisp extension.

<comment><USER4> 'emacs', please!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you write C, you can be reasonably sure it will compile with a decent C compiler. There is no way to write 'Lisp'. Each Lisp dialect has different goals. A person might as well think of them as completely different languages belonging to the Lisp family. It might be analogous to think of Perl, Python and Ruby as being high-level dynamically typed interpreted languages as being part of the same family, but having completely different ways of going about things.

As an aside, I really like clojure. Their attitude towards concurrency and transactions (ie: they actually thought about it) is refreshing. Add to that great library support and good performance and I'm a pretty happy guy.

<comment><USER6> C, C#, C++, Objective C, C with extensions, ...

<comment><USER7> lispm, sophistry and propaganda are near impossible to fight on the internet :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your questions are reasonable ones given your experiences, but their nature makes it unlikely for people to expend much energy answering them -- questions like "why isn't anyone moving to fix them?" may be perfectly reasonable to you, and inspire eye-rolling in others.

Nonetheless, you'd be able to answer most of them if you tried to make a few of your own knock-off programs in lisp. ;) To do that, you'd have to decide on a lisp, installing a few and trying them out, and then decide on a project -- hopefully, something small and manageable. Perhaps a visual "hello, world" program. Or a code-golf exercise. My personal "hello, world" for learning a new language is usually a basic 1D cellular automata.

Once you've written your hello world, you'll have answered many of your questions. Next, rewrite it! Is your code idiomatic? What are some common idioms, and why do they exist? Could you make it shorter?

Next, extend it. Can you use it from the web? What would it take? What about letting people customize your helloworld? etc etc. See what it feels like to develop in the new language, even though the entire "project" cycle could conceivably be done in a single day. (Disclaimer: not by me. It takes me, at least, two months of part-time hacking to feel affection for a language).

After that kind of a learning process -- which isn't terribly onerous; it's the sort of thing you end up doing with almost any interesting language -- you'll look back at these questions and laugh.

And, if you aren't willing to go through that sort of "learning lite", why bother asking the questions?

( If you're looking for enlightenment about the process of actually using Lisp, in book form, I recommend _Practical_ _Common_ _Lisp_ , which is available as a free pdf ).

</comment><comment><USER9> You should also look into Clojure, especially if you're interested in getting into concurrency and functional programming. I recommend using Enclojure+Netbeans for a user friendly introduction to a very powerful new Lisp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Java is not really my field. However, I have half a mind to learn F#.

<comment><USER10> I think we need a linkbait article about whether or not F# is an acceptable Lisp before I seriously consider it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really care if it is an acceptable Lisp when I decide if I will or will not learn something. :P

BUT, I will use that excuse on my teacher on the Calculus class.

<comment><USER11> F# is based on ML not Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Read the bipolar lisp programmer, it's quite an interesting insight. <http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm>

<comment><USER13> Wow. That's exactly me.

I'm a self taught(obsessed?) programmer, barely finished high school, quit collage the first month. And I just started with Arc Lisp. It feels so right and has improved my programming in other aspects. The good thing is that now I'm in nerdvana doing what I love for a small but cool company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The axioms you refer to is Church's lambda calculus, the seminal material may be found on John McCarthy's website: <http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc>. The stuff is like 1960's !

There are basically two main camps, Lisp-1 and Lisp-2 and consequently two divergent major families, Scheme and Common Lisp. From my recollection, the "Lisp Wars" started with hardware implementations, Symbolics vs. Lisp Machines, et al., see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics>.

My take is that the hardware implementations came at a time when CPU speeds and memory capacities where not up to the demands of integrated Lisp environments. By the time speed and memory were sufficient to host Lisp, the world of IT got preoccupied with x86 architecture and Windows. Neither of these being suitable (in 1980's) as a production Lisp hosting environment.

In the hands of an expert Lisper, any version of Lisp quickly becomes extremely productive. The issues of libraries (FFI) and compilation are addressed in different ways, it's like you have a choice! It's like asking a guitarist why there are so many brands of guitars? Why don't they all use ____ (insert your pref. brand).

To research further, I suggest looking-up "John McCarthy", "Guy Steele", "Richard Gabriel", "Symbolics", "Lisp Machine" on Wikipedia and Google.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think you have a valid analogy of Lisp to Linux, but you you should finish the PG book before you make any final judgment. The power of Lisp comes from its "simplicity", its extensions, and the magical Aha moment you get while coding in Lisp (it's like obtaining zen only to realize new and bigger doors have opened before you and there is a vast ocean of new knowledge to gain) - the Aha moment is rather special, to the point that I don't know how to describe it, that's why you should try to have it yourself. Like other comments have mentioned, Scheme and CL have different purposes (Scheme is mostly used in academia and is very simplistic while CL was geared to enterprises mostly). I really don't know why Lisp flavor wars arise, I suppose is the price we pay for being among passionate people, it can hold back a technology for sure, but if that war can be turned into a logical debate of merits, great things can come out. On that note, I do like Windows 7 a lot, but I will stick to Linux because I have learned so much (shell scripting, network administration, socket programming) ever since I started using it that it's not even funny, and there is some fun in being able to fix something yourself instead of having to report a bug to MS and wait for them to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why, when one tries, the answer must always be another implementation with 'more' features instead of creating the cleanest possible implementation with 'the least' features allowing maximum compatibility?

This was said in 'The Next Lisp'

<http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/nextlisp(1).htm>

</comment><comment><USER17> "If this is true and everything on the language are built atop of those, or atop of stuff built atop of those (in n-levels), how can different implementations possible be incompatible?" You cannot build i/o atop of axioms. It would always be a foreign thing that you have to deal with, incompatibly of using a long spec.

<comment><USER18> Details matter, and ultimately the code needs to run on a machine. Hence the implementation matters.

<comment><USER14> Implementation is where theory and practice collide in a conflict! In GNU tradition, guile (a Scheme) is widely available. Personally, I've found newLisp (<http://www.newlisp.org/>) to be small, fast, portable across all main platforms, good if you want to deploy web-apps, not so good if you want to write full-featured GUI apps.

As for the Linux comparison, once you really know (i.e. can use command line, the shells, awk, grep, sed, etc) one Linux distro, you can work your way through the others and even AIX, the various BSDs, HPUX, Mac OS/X and Solaris.</comment></comment></comment>


GitHub Sponsors for Projects - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/changelog/2019-11-13-github-sponsors-for-projects/ <comment><USER2> Asked for this 9 days ago, so happy to hear it's now a thing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21445928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21445928)</comment>


Jenkins X: Pipeline automation, built-in GitOps and more - <AUTHOR> https://jenkins-x.io/ <comment><USER2> Jenkins-x is actually not bad. I've been working through various options available to provision kubernetes clusters and employ CI/CD and although it's still a little rough around the edges, it's bringing together all the tools I independently identified and was trying to bring together.</comment>


"tydy" is a functional programming language implementation as a Python library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cyrus-/tydy <comment><USER2> More developed alternatives:

[http://coconut.readthedocs.io/en/master/DOCS.html](http://coconut.readthedocs.io/en/master/DOCS.html)

[https://github.com/i2y/mochi](https://github.com/i2y/mochi)

<comment><USER3> I find Mochi to be an interesting language but unfortunately it appears to be abandonware. [https://github.com/i2y/mochi/pulse/monthly](https://github.com/i2y/mochi/pulse/monthly)

<comment><USER2> Last month activity often doesn't indicate the bitrot-ness of a project. "Graphs" paints a better image of its health. In this case, it does show the project is abandoned. Regardless, I think coconut is the more developed project out of the two.</comment></comment></comment>


Indiana has seen a quiet whirlwind of education reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21560570

<comment><USER2> Besides the several numbers included in this interesting article, there is this statement: "Indiana's philosophy of promoting choice has also extended to making it possible for students to apply to any public school—including those outside the school district in which the child lives."

For more than twenty years now, all public schools anywhere in Minnesota offer open enrollment to all students anywhere in the state, up to the limits of the capacity of each school district to receive students.

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

State funding of each school district is of course based on enrollment.

<http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf>

More students means more enrollment, so school districts make efforts to provide attractive programs that will bring students across district lines. This competition among school districts has promoted innovation in programs and resulted in a fair amount of interchange among students who live in different neighborhoods.

<comment><USER3> It's the free market at work.

If people have a choice of providers of a service, then the resulting competition creates bottom-up innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Detractors argue they drain finance from public schools and "privatise" > education.

Why do detractors say this is a bad thing?

If a private school is doing such a good job that, given the choice, parents are willing to send their kids there rather than public school, how is it a bad outcome if people can send their kids there, at no cost to taxpayers above and beyond what public schooling would cost?

> Another concern is that vouchers can be used at religious schools and > therefore erode the barrier between church and state.

This is sort of like saying that tax exemptions for religious nonprofit organizations erode the barrier between church and state. They would -- if those exemptions were provided exclusively to religious institutions the state wished to promote. But in fact, the nonprofit tax exemptions apply to organizations of any religion or no religion at all. Since the IRS treats every organization on an equal basis, regardless of religious footing, they definitely are in the spirit of "separation of church and state."

Likewise, the education vouchers presumably are usable at schools of any religion or no religion. Since the vouchers treat every organization on an equal basis, regardless of religious footing, they definitely are in the spirit of "separation of church and state."

</comment><comment><USER4> This article would be credible if it had some numbers in it. How many children that attended private school on a voucher did well, compared to those that attended public school?

Another thing: parents who decide to use vouchers are a self-selected group. How about those parents who don't even know how to be involved with their child's education?

Considering that health visitors and community nurses are a program that works well it might be worth trying the same kind of outreach program in public schools. Who knows, a trial might even show that it works better than school vouchers.

<comment><USER5> I agree that more convincing data is needed. The only evidence offered that this school is more effective is that some public schools have created advertisements and use Ipads. Considering the fact that this is a Catholic school, I also wonder about what students might be alienated or rejected due to religious prejudice.

<comment><USER3> > Considering the fact that this is a Catholic school, I also wonder about > what students might be alienated or rejected due to religious prejudice.

The key here is student choice.

Since the students themselves (and their families) select the school to go to, presumably if the students end up being alienated due to cultural factors at a specific school, the parents can pull them out and send them to another school.

But under the existing system, if a kid was socially isolated at a public school for whatever reason, and his/her parents thought that starting over at another school would be the best, their only options would be to move, or pay out-of-pocket for a private school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am interested in the name of the high school: Pope John XXIII was baptized Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. Of course, some Catholic high schools are private, i.e. not subsidized directly by parish or diocese. Not quite of course, but still true, I have nothing against such schools, having attended one myself. Yet I wonder whether The Economist produces a different impression by not specifying the probable alignment of the school.

<comment><USER5> "Roncalli High School is an interparochial archdiocesan Catholic high school. The term interparochial refers to the fact that the school receives financial and pastoral support, along with the majority of its students, from the 14 parishes that comprise the South Deanery of the Indianapolis Archdiocese. The school is named Roncalli in honor of Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, who, upon being elected pope by the College of Cardinals in 1958, took the name of Pope John XXIII."

<http://www.roncalli.org/about></comment></comment>


Here's Why 200+ Record Labels Just Vanished From Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-stholdings-pullout-2011-11

<comment><AUTHOR> _NPD Group conducted a study that suggested subscription streaming music services like Rdio and Spotify are discouraging other forms of music buying._

I'm a long time Spotify subscriber exactly for this reason. I used to buy several albums a month and now I buy nothing except very infrequent special editions or things that aren't on Spotify. $16 a month beats $50+ a month ;-)

I'd always wondered how this could continue long term. I guess we might find out soon..</comment>


Funconf III - register to be alerted when tickets go on sale - <AUTHOR> http://funconf.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Each year we hear "Aw, didn't know tickets were on sale".

Most of our past Funconfers tend to hang out on HN, so I thought it might be worth letting them, and their friends know.

If you've not heard about Funconf, this pic is fairly representative:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10164/funconf-wtf.jpg></comment>


King's College London breached GDPR sharing list of activist students with cops - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/05/kings_university_breached_gdpr_by_sharing_list_of_activist_students_with_cops/ <comment><USER2> I don't know much about this particular case, but speaking as someone who has experienced _serious_ lapses of data protection in the UK university sector, there needs to be stronger enforcement of data protection laws, as the universities just don't care. They make a huge fuss about privacy to students, but will just randomly hand out PII without a second thought. I've personally seen spreadsheets of people's enrolment and disability status sent to entire mailing lists by mistake, egregiously violating data protection law. I've actually called the ICO before when I realised that literally hundreds of high privilege SU accounts had the same password (these accounts were used to handle expense claims for thousands of students, and had years of bank records). There was no enforcement action as far as I'm aware.

I doubt that the administrators who provided this information to the Met even thought about the students rights for a second.

<comment><USER3> According to the article the administration knew there were privacy concerns.

> In response to a request for the dates of birth of the protesters from the > Met Police, an email from KCL read: "We've taken their details from our card > security which does not have DoB. I would have to go to student services > which would raise flags and cause chatter so would rather not as this is a > sensitive around student freedosm!!! [sic]"

<comment><USER2> Oh dear... That sounds like a security team bending over backwards to accommodate a police request knowing that it's against data protection policy...

<comment><USER4> The police hadn't even requested the data. It's the security team _going out of their way_ to bend over backwards in hope of pleasing the police despite knowing that it's against data protection policy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You shouldn't need a law to tell you the "sharing the names of activists with police when they haven't committed any crimes" is wrong.

<comment><USER6> But apparently you need a law with punishment swift and severe for this kind of activity.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, how's that working out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why did this university have a list of "activist" students curated anyways? The article doesn't make it clear whether the police asked the uni for a list of students involved in x and y organizations or whether the uni just handed over a list of people on a watchlist. Either is disturbing.

The student organizations that these activists belonged to don't really sound that extreme, depending on who is asked of course.

Action Palestine, Cut the Rent, Justice for Cleaners, Intersectional Feminists and Climate Strike

<comment><USER9> They had the list because they've had problems with some students occupying buildings in demonstrations around pay and conditions of cleaning staff. Often cleaning is sub-contracted to a different company, and the cleaning staff have terrible pay and conditions.

Police requested the information, but did so informally. Police didn't specify specifically what information they needed. [EDIT: This is bad! The uni should have asked for a formal request, and then done a privacy impact assessment. This is mentioned in the report linked to below]

Ignore the Register, which is hopeless, and read the report which is also hopeless but at least it's mostly factual. [https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/statements/bush-house-security- re...](https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/statements/bush-house-security-report.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't an informal request be more concerning than a formal request since it is more likely not to undergo the normal scrutiny?

<comment><USER9> Yes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's flip this around. If these were 'nazis' would you feel the same way?

In the US, alleged nazis are doxxed and given to the press, police, and anyone else and nobody seems to care. I don't think I've seen on complaint here on HN.

My point is that we should care about everyone's privacy..not just the people that you agree with politically.

<comment><USER12> Do these groups include, in their core beliefs, the idea that _others_ should have no rights or worse?

No?

Nazi do. They aren't going to extend the same olive branch to talk things out if they have the power, but will hide behind "but your tolerance! DEBATE ME!!!" when they don't.

The only thing I'd extend to them is the right to due process and innocent until proven guilty - but walk around with Nazi paraphernalia or slogans and you're getting punched.

<comment><USER11> Well, We see the tolerant left strikes again. Thanks for proving my point.

<comment><USER12> Tolerance needs to go both ways. When the other side's core belief do not allow for "live and let live", there's no space for tolerating them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would recommend reading :- [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to- data-protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/exemptions/)

This will enable a better perspective about GDPR and exemptions, which would be most relevant in relation to the cops/police/security services/government/.......

</comment><comment><USER14> At least the GDPR turned out to have one good use...

What the hell was the uni doing trying to suppress activists to begin with? That's kind of a hostile school/student relationship.

<comment><USER15> The clue is perhaps in the name, it isn't called "The Students' College".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sharing data with LEOs even voluntarily isn't a breach of the GDPR, this isn't an ICO finding the ICO will come back to Kong's Collage and say nope you didn't violate the GDPR.

<comment><USER9> I agree it's not a violation of GDPR. I still think the university is wrong to just hand over the data.

The university isn't covered by RIPA (I don't think so anyway, maybe I'm wrong), but the police are and I'd be interested to know if this police request was RIPA compliant.

<comment><USER17> Curious why not? Legally required sharing would be covered, but this doesn't appear to fall under that?</comment></comment></comment>


Detecting CSS Animation and Transition End with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://osvaldas.info/detecting-css-animation-transition-end-with-javascript

<comment><USER2> _the user could accidentally buy what they did not intend to_

This is _absolutely_ the wrong way to write front end code.

What the browser renders should only ever be a representation of the state of an internal model (eg the basket in this case). You should update the state of that model and then render what it's changed to if that change is successful. In the case of an eCommerce app that change should involve a round trip to the server to update the session. Querying the HTML to find out the state is bad enough (it's slow) but relying on a CSS animation to complete in order to remove something from a user's cart is just about the most stupid thing I've seen in 20 years of web development.</comment>


Cleaning the Ship's Cargo Hold (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is4cqxLM-N4 <comment><USER2> There's a story at the end [0] where he talks about a country whose ports ask for $5000 bribes to pass cleaning inspections. Comments in the video suggest it's Argentina, and I found a this [1] article supporting that theory.

I was half expecting it to be my own, honestly.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/is4cqxLM-N4?t=397](https://youtu.be/is4cqxLM-N4?t=397)

[1]: [https://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/case-study- view/maritime...](https://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/case-study- view/maritime-anticorruption-network-argentina-collective-action)

<comment><USER3> On the chemical tankers, we often check empty compartments for cleanliness before certifying suitable to load sensitive industrial chemicals.

Especially after they imported some of those nasty food grade commodities.

This requires more than just standard laboratory methods.

Turns out I am one of the pioneers of this.

Haven't chemically sampled compartment walls myself in years, but it's dark down there with only small access openings in the deck overhead, climbing down a very tall vertical ladder with your gear then back up with your samples. You need a safe, reliable industrial operator with explosion-proof equipment, and very judicious sampling approach.

For decades I've heard that cleaning and testing delays are easily overcome in many parts of the world where the presure to expedite the movement takes form in ways which would be considered irregular in my port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friend has a business descaling ships with his own device. The device consists of a "pressure washer" "robot" that sticks to the side of the ship with combination of magnets and suction.

The motor+pump for "pressure washer" is about the size of minivan and resides on it own trailer. The "pressure washer" (if you made it a single nozzle) will cut through an inch of steel. The magnets are arranged in a pattern called a Halbach Array that concentrate the magnet force on one side of the array.

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

<comment><USER5> Halbach array AKA fridge magnet.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe this is true at all. Educate me though, I'm wrong a lot. :-)

<comment><USER5> You're not wrong, I'm just saying they're synonymous. [https://www.hsmagnets.com/blog/halbach- array/](https://www.hsmagnets.com/blog/halbach-array/)

<comment><USER4> Ah, thanks!

"Halbach arrays now have many applications and are used in a range of systems of varying complexity. One of the simplest applications of Halbach arrays is in refrigerator magnets. In this case the one-sided flux properties are exploited in order to boost the holding power of the magnet. Variable arrays of magnetics rods can also be combined to create simple locking systems. If the magnetizations of the rods are arranged so the field is maximised above the plane and minimised below it, the flux confinement can be flipped by rotating each rod 90 o."

<comment><USER4> And yes, I _was_ wrong.

As we say in my household: "You were right. I was wrong. You are the superior being."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the guys I know who works for customs. Once we were sitting in family setting a guy started saying well you guys can afford these lavish parties because of bribe income in customs job and his wife was like "those rich men make too much money, if we take a part of it, it doesn't affect much".

But little did she know that big guys in export import business can afford to pay bribes but it over the time results in small guys finding it hard to compete.

The guys who paid bribes usually got the value of goods lowered so ended up effectively paying less import duties compared to the guy who were not asked any bribe because they were too small.

<comment><USER7> We have a joke about customs workers:

A group of customs workers discuss a birthday present for one of them. One suggests, a car. Nah, too small, say the others. Another one, an apartment. Nah, too small... What about letting him work one shift alone? Now easy there, tiger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for this channel. Whiling away the hours at my high-tech, well-paid but fundamentally pretty unromantic desk job, I often indulge my inner boy's fantasies about running away to sea. Here's another sea-cargo-themed channel I have watched almost every video from: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGpdSarF_FdCygiA1tOl6Cg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGpdSarF_FdCygiA1tOl6Cg)

<comment><USER9> Have you though about joining your country's naval reserve?

<comment><USER10> Well, that would be all that, plus military life and military pace of operations. Think twice, and go for it, if that's for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are robots for that now.[1] They're not intelligent, just mobile pressure washing nozzles that can climb steel with magnets. So, instead of a fire hose from far away, you get a pressure washer up close to the surface. Seems to be used more on dirty holds, where you need more pressure to blast the gunk off.

[1] [https://youtu.be/C4PQKSaHT6I](https://youtu.be/C4PQKSaHT6I) [2] [https://youtu.be/R2lmDWU2BXU](https://youtu.be/R2lmDWU2BXU)

<comment><USER12> This is pretty cool, but actually looks even more tedius than manually hosing.

<comment><USER11> It does. It looks like it's for dirty holds where manual hosing from a distance isn't enough. Somebody or something needs to get a pressure nozzle up close and personal to the dirt. On a vertical surface in a moving ship, that's better done by a robot that can use magnets to climb steel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So where does all this dirty water go?

<comment><USER14> In the sea, of course. We all know the solution to pollution is dilution, and that the oceans are infinite so they can take infinite amounts of it before we have a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So ... What country do we think he's talking about at the end of the video, which is extorting all cargo ships at port?

<comment><USER16> The YouTube comments suggest it's Argentina. They also suggested Google'ing "Argentina Cargo Hold Bribe".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe a more ideal strategy would be to have the ship carry progressively dirtier and dirtier loads, so that the cleaning can be postponed to the last cycle to get it back to "clean". Instead of having to wash and alternate clean-dirty-clean-dirty.

<comment><USER18> Even if your cargo is "dirty" that doesn't necessarily mean you're okay with impurities (i.e. waste from whatever happened to be in the holds last). It's just dirty because it tends to leave more residue behind and that residue might be harder to clean off. Someone hauling coal or silver or something isn't going to be any happier having corn husks mixed in with their material than the recipient of a big load of corn would be to discover there's silver mixed in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was wondering about the heavy machines, such as excavators, being used to offload the food. What about oil and hydraulic leaks into the food? Feels somewhat unsanitary but is there something mitigating that?

<comment><USER20> It looks like they don't use those types of machinery to unload food. The shot showing some kind of grain being loaded was using a chute and not a bucket or excavator. I assume they use a vacuum system to unload food as it is cleaner and faster.

Though, it is wild to think that the grain in your bread was sitting in a cargo hold which previously could have been filled with coal or scrap metal covered in greases, oils, heavy metals, paints, fluids, etc. I hope they really do clean the hell out of them.

<comment><USER21> Ever changed the oil in a car, then cleaned up and made dinner later with the same set of hands?

We're really good at cleaning things.

<comment><USER22> You wear shop gloves I assume?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Learned about Argentina too!

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know why these types of ships don't use the standard 20/40ft containers like regular cargo ships?

<comment><USER25> I don't know if this is the reason but it'd take a lot longer to fill and stack then unstack and empty 200 containers than it does to fill one cavernous space.

Then you still have to clean those containers just like they are cleaning the ship.

<comment><USER24> I was thinking filling it would be faster, but unloading the sand they way they did, scoop by scoop, seemed like it'd be slower.

Also, I was thinking that if they used containers they wouldn't need to clean the ship (or at least not to food grade) since each cargo would be in its own compartment.

<comment><USER26> The shipping industry offers a transportation service to its customers. In the bulk area, not leaving your customers to clean hundreds of containers is part of the service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>