Fallen out of love with LinkedIn? - <AUTHOR> http://www.swiss-miss.com/2011/08/zerply.html <comment><USER3> I still use LinkedIn b/c well it's the market leader.

However I do have one thing to vent about: LinkedIn uses a phishing technique after you're logged in by showing you your email address and then a password field which makes it very easy for you to mindlessly input your email password (as they want) so they can spam all your contacts.

I've been saved from this mistake many times by having different LinkedIn and Gmail passwords, but this really shouldn't be acceptable...

<comment><USER4> I deleted my LinkedIn account several months ago because the value is gave me, as a professional, did not outweigh the buggy site with its highly dubious strategies. I've received one job offer through the site in the years I've been on it, but I've also been spammed to death by emails that I couldn't turn off and had made something like a hundred connections to people that I mostly will never actually need to be 'connected' to ever again.

I think there is value to be found in a professional networking / career site, but for me, LinkedIn did not cut it.

<comment><USER5> I'm also considering deleting my Linkedin account and just moving the same biographical info to my own web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zerply may be the best thing since sliced bread in its design, but _I'm_ not going to be the one to spam all of my business connections with yet-another- social-network.

If I started getting lots of invites from people I trusted, then I might consider joining. But I'd never even heard of them before reading this article.

LinkedIn goofed up ONCE in allowing your face in ads when you have some connection to the company. That's nowhere near as slimy as Facebook putting your face on ads you'd never even CLICKED on (famously a woman saw her HUSBAND in a picture advertising a singles site...), and that's just the tip of Facebook's privacy betrayals.

And since LinkedIn has a totally dominant market share (and mind share) in "business connections," it's going to likely take a lot more than a better design and easy import to dethrone them.

It looks like the hook is "use us to host your online resume! We'll make it pretty!" That approach has some potential; I'll keep my eyes open for a Zerply-hosted resume moving forward.

<comment><USER7> Are you referring to this advert where a husband saw his wife's picture advertising a singles site - <http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/facebook-dating- ads-2/>

In this case, it was not Facebook who put that picture there, but an advertiser, who got and used that picture in a way that was against Facebook's Terms of Service, and Facebook then blocked that advertiser.

<comment><USER8> But this is the internet, where anything which in any way involves Facebook is Facebook's fault, and, furthermore, was completely intentional and malicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this an obvious marketing play by people behind Zerply?

edit: Look at the one line positive comments that appeared straight after posting this article. Really funny.

Besides the general attention that an article like this gives this is also a perfect SEO tool.

Personally, what I think that these dudes are doing is building a linking pyramid that passes on the famed Google juice from Y Combinator (PR 7) via the blog article (contextual links, a big thing after the Google Panda update) to their own site.

Anyone can find person X to write a semi-beliveable article about their service or tool and submit it here. Clever stuff but not clever enough.

Actually, kind of dumb, because sooner or later, people running this message board will have to rethink what types of articles can be linked to.

<comment><USER10> LOL. Welcome to the Internet. Guess you've never heard of Swiss Miss before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone actually get any value out of LinkedIn? I've had an account for years and the only thing its done for me is sell my email to recruiters.

<comment><USER12> I sit around hoping that they'll sell my email to recruiters. Y'know, for a job I actually want.

I've only had _one_ recruiter approach me in several years on linkedin (and even he didn't have anything more interesting to sell me than DE Shaw, who had already collected my resume for their "Hey look how many people we reject" pile).

<comment><USER13> LinkedIn is like dating sites in that a small fraction of the candidates get a majority of the attention.

<comment><USER14> I think the key is having experience at a major corporation (Dow Jones 30 or equivalent profile). After I listed that, I went from no contacts to once every month or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone else have a problem with their T&C? Essentially, "you post it here, we get to do whatever we want with it":

> "By placing any information or other material on such publicly accessible > locations on the Website (including but not limited to posting messages, > uploading files, inputting data or engaging in any other form of > communication), you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such > content has expressly granted) to Zerply a perpetual, royalty-free, non- > exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, > sublicense, reproduce, distribute, redistribute, modify, adapt, publish, > edit, translate, transmit, create derivative works of, publish and/or > broadcast, publicly perform or display any materials or other information > (including without limitation, ideas contained therein for new or improved > products or services) you submit to public areas of the Website (including > but not limited to chat rooms, forums and bulletin boards) alone or as part > of other works in any form, media, or technology whether by any means and in > any media now known or hereafter developed and to sublicense such rights > through multiple tiers of sublicenses."

<comment><USER16> The key phrase that makes this T&C fine is "... [that] you submit to public areas of the Website". This is a standard clause that means "don't sue us for copyright infringement when we publish the content you asked us to publish." IANAL.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that's what it means... I've read many T&C (IANAL either) and some of them state, to the effect of, "your stuff stays yours, even if you put it on our site". That, to me, would be closer to "we're not responsible for your copyright infringements."

Just because I post something publicly doesn't make it publicly owned (or in this case, owned by the host)—I want to retain the copyright to my works, and this T&C says "nope, we own whatever you post here."

In the end, it was too much for me, and I didn't complete the signup process. If I'm completely wrong about it's meaning or intent, well, _shrug_ , they should write T&C that you don't have to be a lawyer to grok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> LinkedIn is like my credit score. I have no use for it now, but I might need it one day, and having it ready for One Day requires less than 30 seconds of thought/week.

</comment><comment><USER18> I went to zerply, clicked on a url in one of their testimonials, saw a page where I had to scroll waaaay down to get past all the huge header text and pointless graphics to read a few small snippets about the person. Then I clicked on the person's link to linkedin, and immediately got much more information about them, without pointless "I'm so hip" graphic over-design.

LinkedIn isn't perfect, but I use it for the following purposes:

To find out about companies (who do I know who works there? how big are is the company? what sort of people do they employ?)

To find out about potential co-workers (job applicants, or interviewers when I'm on the other side of the desk, or people I meet other ways): who do we know in common (maybe someone I know who's worked with them can tell me how they were), what else have they done, etc.

Some of their discussion groups are interesting, some are useless.

I haven't yet used them for job hunting, but I expect eventually I may. I have used them for background research on a company I was already considering working for.

I don't go to LinkedIn for the "beauty" of their design, I go there for information. I don't need "profile pages themed by world-class designers" for that.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Zerply 404 page is a wonderful example of why details matter.

<http://www.zerply.com/foobar>

Poor spelling shouts "limited resources and lack of professionalism" loud and clear. If you're asking people to trust you with their data and put time into profiles, you need to show that you're big and serious.

I don't use LinkedIn because it's the coolest kid on the block, I use it because I need to find people to hire, network with, and in the past I've needed it to find gigs and jobs.

I'm going to go where the most people are, and where I feel most confident that my data will be managed professionally.

I'm not going to jump ship for a startup just because LinkedIn is requiring me to opt out if I don't want my picture to appear near an ad. That's not Armageddon, it's just a minor, and ultimately inconsequential, annoyance.

<comment><USER20> If you're referring to "Oh noes!", that's more of a meme than poor spelling.

Personally, I think there aren't enough sites with a personality and sense of humor. I get the point that the very serious career types will not appreciate this, but they might not be Zerply's target audience. I'll also point out that the home page looks fine, nothing silly there. It seems they are just trying to diffuse tension on an error page with humor.

<comment><USER19> I'm not referring to "oh noes," I know the difference between intentional colloquialisms and misspellings.

I'm referring to the repeated use of "your" instead of the correct word, "you're."

<comment><USER21> Which appears to have already been fixed. I wonder if LinkedIn would fix that in < 45 minutes if you found a typo and posted about it here on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> LinkedIn is the surprise of the year for me-- I had pretty much written it off a couple years back, but it turns out that LinkedIn is incredibly helpful for connecting with my company's technology partners, potential hires, and business advisors.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've recently found LinkedIn quite valuable as a tool for doing Customer Development. There's a wide range of people on it, not just techies and designers, many of whom (I've found) are pretty open to helping someone out who isn't trying to recruit or hard-sell them.

</comment><comment><USER24> LinkedIn definitely has its good and not so good parts, but overall it's an excellent tool for startups. It's great for business development, seeking out strategic partnerships, and reaching out to other professionals in your industry. It's also a great reality check for web startups with little experience in their specific verticals; you can almost instantly communicate with experienced professionals to measure demand, get feedback and even new customers. There's nothing out there that can match it for now.

Also, where else can you find so many "Social Media Marketing Experts" in one place ;).

</comment><comment><USER25> I hate LinkedIn with a passion, always have. It just seems like an old, kludgy online dating site (like Match). I never use it unless I have to, and I _still_ can't figure out how to turn off their damned weekly emails - <USER2> have no easy unsubscribe option and I've gone to their "notification management" (or whatever it's called) area in my account several times, without any clear option to turn off the emails (wtf?!).

</comment><comment><USER26> Another LinkedIn alternative worth mentioning is Xing:

<https://www.xing.com/>

No affiliation, I have an account, and use it more than LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't use LinkedIn very often. I just keep it updated with my info just in case someone is looking for someone with my skill set. It's a pretty good idea I think too for stuffy business types, and they are constantly surprising me on their use of HTML5 and great startup/founder posts.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is LinkedIn anything more than just craigslist for resumes? For whatever reason, the virtuous circle of recruiters and resumes settled on LinkedIn. You don't go to LinkedIn because it's good; you go there because everyone else goes there.

</comment><comment><USER29> What always irritates me about linkedin is its patching https support. Looks like it's completely absent on Zerply <https://www.zerply.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I was never in love with it to begin with. In fact having had an account there for years, with various biographical details, I've gotten very little value out of that site.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love the video about everyone having to be on LinkedIn but they can't answer the question what it does for them.

</comment><comment><USER31> LinkedIn is on track to become the MySpace of professional networking.

</comment><comment><USER32> Time to change my LinkedIn picture to lemonparty.

</comment><comment><USER33> Zerply is LinkedIn for creative people. Suits and propeller-heads won't like it.

It'll do well.

<comment><USER34> That's my #1 criticism of LinkedIn: everything about it screams corporate, from the design all the way down to the behaviours it encourages. They need to really simplify the design and make it sleek and visually interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Zerply is totally AWESOME.

</comment><comment><USER36> People really use these web sites?

<comment><USER37> Yeah, quite a lot actually. You might also want to check out broadband and wi- fi, also very popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Really love these guys, the endorsements have so much meaning compared to connections. Keep up the great work team Zerply!!!

<comment><USER39> Agree that endorsements are extremely valuable in a professional network. And, making it much easier to weigh in on endorsing someone should increase this activity. I also might not be willing to endorse every aspect of a person, (so would be unwilling to write out a paragraph of endorsing them), but I would be willing to endorse the one aspect of their professionalism I am willing to put my own name behind.

<comment><USER40> In the same vein, I'd rather endorse a particular ability or skill someone has than an entire position they held like LinkedIn makes you do. In an economy where we have periodic high unemployment, your skills are more important than how long you have held a particular job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am looking forward to seeing what Zerply can do now that they have our attention.

</comment><comment><USER41> I got tired of the constant email updates about who is connected to whom and people that I should be connected with (yeah, I know you can turn that off, but ehh *linkedin offered no value to me) so I closed my account.

I must give them koodos on how easy they make closing an account.</comment>


How to Ace a Startup Engineering Interview Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://stdout.heyzap.com/2012/07/25/how-to-ace-a-startup-engineering-interview-part-1/ <comment><USER2> The people who matter aren't going to comment on this, but I'm out celebrating, so what the hell. I was actively looking for a job until about 6 hours ago. I read lambda calculus papers for fun. Hayzap, and the class of companies hayzap belongs to, is not even on our radar. Hayzap does not have hard problems and does not need a team who can ace this interview, and those of us who can ace this interview are uniterested in you. We don't want to take your worthless equity and we don't want to take a 50% pay cut for the privilege of working for your startup.

<comment><USER2> (parent again) even though my comment seems popular by votes if not comments, i wish i had checked my tone more carefully, i blasted it off from my phone from a restaurant. i'm just reflecting that there's just an awful lot of startups--perhaps with an interesting business challenge but straightforward technically--who talk about how they only hire A players and how difficult it is to hire, when really they need a competent ios or rails guy, and the contracting market is swimming with them, and they're making a ton more money contracting than the type of startups i'm familiar with wants to pay. the devs who know lisp and haskell aren't building apps, they're architecting enterprise integration contracts or building databases.

*i don't have a relationship with hayzap and i've never worked for a CMS company.

<comment><USER3> > architecting enterprise integration contracts

As a soon-to-graduate who knows both Lisp and Haskell, I'm curious what exactly this means.

<comment><USER2> EI is when you take existing large systems and you make them work together, and its really hard because the systems aren't designed to work together, and made harder because bigco internal teams aren't exactly known for the quality of their infrastructure.

Relevance is one famous company that staffs world-class engineers and does EI[0]. They also write databases[1]. and languages[2].

[0] <http://thinkrelevance.com/clients> [1] <http://www.datomic.com/> [2] Clojure

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Pure functional: Lisp, Scheme, Erlang etc_

Wha???? You didn't even mention Haskell under pure functional languages, but listed three that aren't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Added Haskell

<comment><USER4> Lisp, Scheme, Erlang are functional languages, but they are not pure functional languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: I meant to say functional not pure functional. Blog post changed.

<comment><USER3> I question your qualification to advise people on interviews if your own theory knowledge tops out at "casually skimmed a wikipedia page."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing new here. These are just someone's notes on hiring (the post does not at all deliver on the title). It's all been said before, and in better ways.

Also I'm tired of the "learn C" mantra. You don't need to know this language to understand pointers and their difference from references. Or the different approaches to memory management.

<comment><USER6> I've yet to interview anyone that didn't know C or C++ but correctly understood pointers and references. Of course that's not necessarily bad since it's not a useful distinction in some higher level languages.

<comment><USER7> >I've yet to interview anyone that didn't know C or C++ but correctly understood pointers and references.

Clearly you haven't interviewed any Lispers. The concept is innate to cons cells and how they're constructed.

<comment><USER8> I think the stock of people who are comfortable with Lisp but know nothing about C has dwindled to be almost non-existent.

<comment><USER7> I sorta know both, but I'm generally more comfortable speaking in terms of Lisp than C and if an interviewer forces me to speak in terms of C I'm likely to be less cogent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually laughed out loud at:

"Improve your Theoretical knowledge" ...followed by... "Learn C"

I obviously have a completely different idea in mind when it comes to computer science theory than the author does.

<comment><USER10> One of my favorite interview questions is do binary search when the function prototype is this:

int bsearch(int *values, size_t len, int term);

By the time we finish going through this exercise. I have a pretty good idea how they do with basic algorithms and indirection (pointers). In fact, pointers are a great way of testing a candidates ability to deal with indirection.

You can come up with simpler C pointer questions that also do not require tricks but this does the trick for me.

And yes, everybody gets binary search wrong, but that's okay. I learn a lot about a candidate when they are doing the exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bland, generic, and inaccurate advice on what to learn/practice before interviewing.

The comments here have corrected several problems with your understanding of functional languages, which leads one to believe that you have dabbled with them, but really don't know them all that well.

You are attempting to target a more experienced demographic of developer, but your article is catering to newbies. Masquerading as a guide to 'Ace a Startup Engineering Interview' is just salt in the wound.

We don't need any more guides on preparing for interviews. There are several good ones that exist, the advice that already abounds isn't going to expire anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER12> It always amazes me how people keep recommending CLRS as an interview preparation material. If you haven't studied Algorithms before it will take months to go through material in this book, leave alone making exercises. It is a serious textbook with strong mathematical rigor. If you have studied algos, granted, you would know what book to pick as a refresher and chances are - CLRS would be on your table. I think Sedgewick's book would be a more practical choice as a first book to learn some data structures/algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think these are applicable to any engineering interview. The key to every tech interview is most of the time is less about your actual answer but how you get there. If you code something that clearly would never work in any language, you won't get the job. If you code something decent, have a great thought process and in general communicated what you were thinking about the problem, you will most likely get the job. Remember the more you can demonstrate about yourself during the interview the better. The interviewer has a couple of hours to make a decision that can affect their bottom line pretty heavily. The more information you have (Github, Resume, references) the easier it is for them to feel comfortable with you and the easier it is for them to give you the yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. The thought process is very important. Will mention that in part 2 for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i dunno... you can get pretty far as a Data Scientist with two stock answers: (i) look it up in a hash table or (ii) look it up in the literature... I think I'll ask the next guy how to train a neural net to make that decision. ;-)

<comment><USER15> but at what point does that alone make them a scientist? (NB: I actually froth at the mouth over the weakening of the word scientist, when the way in which many folks do "data science" is not in accordance with any scientific principles.)

<comment><USER16> Same thing for engineers IMHO. Where I come from the title is regulated, so it requires a bachelor's degree with a specific list of courses and 2-3 years of work experience as a junior engineer in the specific field to call oneself "engineer". But in the country where I work, there are plenty of people with no programming experience who can setup a wordpress site or grab a Microsoft certification and instantly become "system engineers"...

<comment><USER15> Thats why my card says "Computer Scientist". :-) People ask what that means a shockingly often fraction of the time! They ask "so what do you?", I say "computer science", they then ask "what parts?", I reply "all of it". Thats of course ignoring the conversations where they then ask what computer science is or how thats different from programming or setting up a web server. those chats are tough :)

<comment><USER17> In general, it is highly inappropriate to title yourself a scientist without a PhD. A 20 year old undergraduate with an enthusiasm is not a biologist. You claim to hate the dilution of the title, yet have upgraded yourself without earning it by either mastery produced via a doctorate or via a proven professional track record.

Maybe you should consider titling yourself software engineer or program developer until you've produced something that shows mastery to the world.

<comment><USER15> you're making claims based upon social convention, but I do not see any evidence that you have authority with respect to making such claims.

The issue with the phrase "data scientist" is that it is overused, is highly ambiguous in what people mean when they say it, and when someone identifies themselves as such does not communicate any clear lower bounds on expectations of relevant background and skill.

This is not an appropriate fora for getting into an argument about what formal training vs autodidactism (i have plenty of both) is sufficient for being a scientist of one sort or another.

I am open to hearing reasoning that isn't based upon institutional validation. There are many scientists whose work is not in the domains which they had formal training, eg Oded Schramm, Cosmo Shalizi. They could be considered amazing scientists, but surely they were scientists by intellectual inclination even before they did their great work, and likewise successfully defending their phd's didn't make them scientists, it merely gave them the title of doctor!

Calling oneself an engineer of software is misleading in my mind, because in many countries engineer is legal certification of reliability.

Calling myself a program developer would be a gross misrepresentation of what I do, so i do not call myself that. I solve hard problems and build better tools for solving hard problems.

As for showing mastery to the world, I care not, open source is great, but ability to self publicize, or have great open source projects, have absolutely no relationship with being a good computer scientist, though they work synergistically together in a wonderfully positive way.

At the end of the day, everything is some sort of social convention, and the folks who I respect would consider me a computer scientist, and thats good enough for me.

have a great rest of your day on the internet good sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Launch your own startup instead.

<comment><USER19> Well said, why not learn one framework and high level language and launch your own startup. In the beginning Facebook needed only php, twitter needed only ruby before moving to Java. Instagram is 98% python. When you begin to gather traction, you will employ the alpha geeks who use C, some of them are in Facebook and Twitter today. So just focus on building a product that succeeds with one or the only single backend language that you know in addition to some javascript and then use twitter bootstrap for design.

Why burn all that learning time to get a startup job, probably with reduced salaries and equity that might amount to zero if it fails. This is thesame risk you will face with your own startup but the difference is that the upside or equity is bigger if your startup takes off and you are doing it with the one language you know.

<comment><USER20> _the alpha geeks who use C_

Wow. That just made me feel old and sad. Wasn't it just a few years ago that _everyone_ had to know C and C++?

<comment><USER21> Ever since C++ got switched out by the major universities (in the US) for Java (circa 2001), there have been fewer and fewer people who learn/know C/C++ and who can then also understand pointers and other C related knowledge. It's not completely unused but for the most part it has been relegated to game programming and systems based work where speed is important.

I am sure there are exceptions or other reasons to this, but I feel that once the universities switched over to Java, C/C++ went on a big decline.

<comment><USER22> I love the freedom I have with C/C++ and although it's true I used a lot more Java than C at university, when speed is of relevance I usually go with C/C++ (usually a weird mix of both). And if it's not, my first choice is Python.

Though it's generally true that most of my friends prefer Java over C/C++. I might be different because I learned programming in high school and started with C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This link gives an alternative hiring perspective that eschews unnecessary loops. [http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/07/overfocus-on-tech-skills- co...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/07/overfocus-on-tech-skills-could- exclude-the-best-candidates-for-jobs.html)

Check out the hackernews discussion on the subject: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4275140>

</comment><comment><USER23> One key skill that is needed in a startup is how quickly can you learn and adapt.

We try to figure out how quickly a person can learn and be productive by giving a small problem in an area that the candidate is not strong at. We then give them the complete internet access and a development environment and ask them to write code for the problem. We also pick a problem that is highly relevant to the day to day work, not a theoretical one.

</comment><comment><USER24> I really appreciate this post. As a job seeker, I like reading this kind of tips. What is more, it has told me that all the things that I'm doing just for fun and for the passion that learning new things give, is being useful also for this purpose. Indeed, I think that the opposite direction is the weird one, since I can't see the point of learning C, algorithms,... just for the job seeking intention. You really need to enjoy that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER25> great post!</comment>


Name for OpenSSL fork released - <AUTHOR> http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/

<comment><USER2> "LibreSSL (the OpenBSD fork of OpenSSL)" In case anyone missed it on first read as I did.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know of a maintained git clone of the CVS repo somewhere on the web? It'd be nice to be able to browse actual commits, rather than changes to individual files.

<comment><USER4> Some of the OpenBSD CVS repos as Git repos: [http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi- bin/cgit/](http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi-bin/cgit/)

Or DIY:

[http://cynic.cc/blog/posts/working_with_cvs_via_git/](http://cynic.cc/blog/posts/working_with_cvs_via_git/)

Does anyone know where LibreSSL source lives / will live?

Edit: Found it: src/lib/libssl/src/ssl/

Edit 2: here it is

[http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi-bin/cgit/openbsd- src/tree/lib/l...](http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi-bin/cgit/openbsd- src/tree/lib/libssl)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. The link I want to remember though is

[http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi-bin/cgit/openbsd- src/log/lib/li...](http://anoncvs.estpak.ee/cgi-bin/cgit/openbsd- src/log/lib/libssl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "LibreSSL". Oh dear lord, that'll irritate RMS.

<comment><USER6> Luckily RMS has GnuTLS available, which doesn't use any heathen licenses.

<comment><USER7> Interestingly, there was a rift between GnuTLS and GNU a couple years ago: [http://lwn.net/Articles/529522/](http://lwn.net/Articles/529522/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not OpenTLS?

<comment><USER9> Taken.

[0]: [http://www.opentls.org](http://www.opentls.org)

<comment><USER10> Seems like a dead project, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was hoping they'd make another fish pun like they did with CARP.

</comment><comment><USER12> Or BSDTLS... Libre grates as a prefix for software.</comment>


Why you should move away from AgileBits - <AUTHOR> https://blog.goodstuff.im/dont_use_1password <comment><USER2> I have the same issue, therefore one question: Which password manager will be your next one?</comment>


America's sex recession could lead to an economic depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/americas-sex-recession-could-lead-to-an-economic-depression.html <comment><USER2> Thought the sentence near the end about specifically AI having a strong effect on decreasing interest in sex was odd, seeing as basically none of the technology mentioned in the article is AI related.

<comment><USER3> I suppose recommendation algorithms may keep people glued to entertainment more vigilantly than before, and filter bubbles can create big gaps between two people's viewpoints who might have had more in common pre-news feed. That's my guess...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sure there are some good nuggets in there but the overall article feels sloppy and without much direction.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eating popcorn could lead to bleeding from the eyes. Or not.

<comment><USER6> We'll just eat popcorn until we need eyeglasses.</comment></comment>


Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Makes First Glide Flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/10/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-makes-first-glide-flight/

<comment><USER2> FTA: "The VSS Enterprise was a real joy to fly, especially when one considers the fact that the vehicle has been designed not only to be a Mach 3.5 spaceship capable of going into space but also one of the worlds highest altitude gliders" Siebold said after the flight.

That quote is just awesome. It's one thing to make something cool, but another altogether to make it cool -and- fun to operate. I just have to respect that.</comment>


Ask HN: My Nursing Reference App is Helping Poor Clinics, Losing Money - <AUTHOR>

I just wrote this Android app as a solo portfolio piece without carefully considering how to monetize it. At the time, I was more concerned with learning new APIs like Google Volley and also with creating an interesting side project to advertise my app development services.
Now, I have entire clinics in poorer countries like the Philippines and Nigeria which depend upon my free, ad-supported app.
I will soon pass a request limit and need to start paying API fees to Pearson which are quite a bit greater than my Google AdMob advertising revenue. If I do not find a way to gain more paid subscribers or earn more ad revenue, I will start losing a significant amount of money.
I want a way to keep my app alive for clinics in poor countries, but to hopefully also meet the break even point. Does anyone have any advice for a solo developer?
Thanks!
Here's the app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.colintheshots.nursingguide&hl=en <comment><USER2> Grants might help fund it. If your software is genuinely helping third world clinics, you can probably get some funding for it. Talk to a nonprofit grant- writing organization specializing in third world health care.

You might also be able to negotiate a special rate (or even free) from Pearson as a charitable contribution. If their software costs are what threaten your financial stability, and it's for a good cause, they might be willing to write it off.

So talk to Pearson, and talk to nonprofit health care grant specialists. Those would be potentially more effective than trying to figure out how to monetize.

<comment><USER2> As for monetizing... if you can stabilize your app financially so it's at least self-supporting via grants/charity (ooh, get Pearson to sponsor it!), you could then leverage that success into a for-profit startup targeted at the money-rich American market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you can find a way to charge for it in richer countries, while keeping it free in developing countries?

People might feel more likely to pay for it if there as some nominal, charitable aspect to it: "Buy now and help support women's health clinics in Nigeria", that sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> I like the idea you mention. Sounds like it can be used for many endeavours.

OP, do you have any traction in developed nations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the top country for my customers is the United States followed by the Philippines and Nigeria.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can look for collaborators/co-founders who may able to help you [http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> What about have users register their own api key and let them insert that into your application?

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that they closed off generating new API keys. It's possible that this is because they created their own iOS app and could be working on an Android one.</comment></comment>


Infinite JavaScript alert() prank gets 13-year-old Japanese girl charged - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/japanese-police-charge-13-year-old-girl-for-infinite-javascript-popup-prank/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of another article from a bit back about a guy who "hacked" a government website by accident to download what was supposed to be private files, by simply incrementing a query string integer in the URL.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16853203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16853203)

It scares me a how seriously this was taken. This wasn't a mistake or miscommunication, they actually are going to take this person to court where he could be given 10 years of prison time.

The police claimed "There's no question, this was not someone just playing around" while the convicted of course said what the rest of us are already thinking "I didn't do anything to try to hide myself. I didn't think any of this would be wrong if it's all public information. Since it was public, I thought it was free to just download, to save". There was no warning or sign that any of this publicly accessible information was not meant to be publicly accessed.

The fact that you can "hack" anything by complete accident, without malicious intent, because of someone else's shit software is mind boggling to me. In the the OP article it's mobile browsers being shit not bothering to deal with popups properly, and in the article I linked it's the Canadian government's website security being shit.

Ultimately I believe we need to make laws regarding hacking much more clear, or else any person using a computer is more or less at risk. I'm almost certain if someone was looking over my shoulder all the time and was identifying any "illegal hack" I accidentally did, I would be facing jail time by now, at least by the extremely low standards presented in these articles.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I was a kid I used to do this to the computers at Costco, writing a similar script in Batch and inserting it into demo computers' autoexec.bat. It was like four lines and I'd live-code it right in the store. (Mondo bonus points if I was able to do it on the machine with the cloned screens). It was fun to see which adults knew the CTRL+BREAK trick... very few did :P

Also, Mac OS has had text-to-speech since forever... it would even cuss for you. So why not open TextEdit and unleash a string of obscenities after about a paragraph of commas and periods? Don't forget to turn the volume all the way up!

Never got me arrested... did get me banned from the school computer network on multiple occasions though...

</comment><comment><USER4> This is bizarre. A real lack of understanding applied here.

</comment><comment><USER5> MFW not

        while (true)

<comment><USER6> FWIW

        for(;;)

is idiomatic in C, for example</comment></comment>


Clasp 0.4 – Joining Common Lisp and C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drmeister/clasp/tree/0.4.0 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10607035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10607035), which is on the front page at the moment.</comment>


Lthread is a multicore/multithread coroutine library written in C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/halayli/lthread#readme <comment><USER2> So, last time this was posted I commented that I was interested, but couldn't use this at work because of the GPL license.

Since then I implemented my own M:N userspace:kernel threading library (which is what lthread boils down to) based on Russ Cox's BSD-licensed libtask. You know what I found?

1) Many libc routines require a surprisingly large amount of stack. 64kiB was the smallest power of 2 I could find where I wouldn't overflow the stack somewhere in a libc call. (This isn't a problem with stack-copying, but it is a problem if you have dedicated per-lthread stacks).

2) It was slow! Just dropping the M:N library and using blocking network I/O with 200+ kernel pthreads was vastly faster.

3) Many pthread-functions get very, very confused if they are used from different pthreads (same logical "lthread"). (This happens when a userspace scheduler swap happens between matching operations.) For example, pthread mutexes don't like to be locked in one pthread and unlocked in another pthread (same "lthread"). I ran into other things that match this category, but can't remember them off of the top of my head.

I ended up scrapping it and just using a pool of kernel pthreads. It works, the code is pretty clear (blocking IO! whatever, man), and it's fast enough.

Edit: By "fast enough", I mean "can fill 2x 1Gbit pipes from disk" (without any perf-focused work thus far).

<comment><USER2> Since I can't edit this post anymore, here's the relevant code:

<https://github.com/cemeyer/taskmn>

(Buyer beware: this is basically a snapshot of it at the point we decided to drop it entirely; I poked it enough to get it to compile under GCC / linux, but haven't verified functionality at all.)

More edits:

4) Re: Stack-copying; I found that without any attempt at optimizing memory use, my "light" threads were consuming on the order of ~600 bytes of stack (when de-scheduled); with a stack copying approach and a run-time stack of 128kiB, calling large-stack-using libc functions was fine.

5) Re: per-task dedicated stack memory; the default amount of memory allocated per-pthread on our platform is 128kiB, so 64kiB isn't great savings. I detected stack corruption at 32kiB and below by setting a canary value (at the top of the allocated stack) in the scheduler before running a ready "lthread."

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing your code and experience.

600 bytes per de-scheduled thread sounds excellent; It makes a million mostly- dormant threads feasible in less than a gig of memory -- I think that's the use case lthread-style threads shine in. You wouldn't be able to do that with blocking kernel threads (you'd need 64gig of ram just for stack, and that assumes the kernel scales well enough to handle that).

I think overall lower efficiency per thread, even if it's 50% slower, is acceptable in such a use case, given the memory requirements reduction.

<comment><USER2> No problem :-).

Re: "lower efficiency… is acceptable in such a use case": Maybe — it really depends on your use case. In the case you describe, sure. In my particular (specialized) case:

1) My clients are connected by 1Gb or 10Gb switched ethernet, and they are typically on firewalled local networks. I don't worry about trickle-style DoS attacks. (In other words: my threads are mostly-active, not mostly-dormant.)

2) My clients really only care about sustained streaming throughput. So, if they can max out the underlying disk with 20-30 simultaneous connections, they won't bother throwing 1000s of connections at my server. pthread-per- connection works great for this circumstance (with a pre-allocated thread pool).

Use the right tool for the job ;-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trouble with this sort of C coroutine library in my experience is portability. Lthread seems to have taken the "write a bit of inline asm" approach, which means it's x86/x86-64 only. If you avoid the assembly and try to do things only with C library functions, you end up with something like QEMU's coroutines, which have four different backends: makecontext/setcontext based, win32 fibers, the nasty sigaltstack trick used by GNU Pth[1], and a last-ditch fallback using a separate GThread per coroutine. Multiple backends means more code, and the less-used backends are more liable to bitrot and undetected bugs, which is the last thing you want in a key bit of infrastructure.

Also some libc implementations don't take kindly to programs messing with the stack pointer behind their backs. Early Linux NPTL implementations put thread- local-storage just above the stack and used "round ESP up to 2MB boundary" to access it, which meant you had to switch back to the libc-created thread stack before calling just about any libc function. I hear at least one of the BSDs still does something similar.

All things considered I'd really rather just use threads...

[1] <http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/rse-pmt.ps>

</comment><comment><USER5> Previously posted on HN 50 days ago, there are some interesting critiques in the comments, especially regarding the GPL license, the consensus being it is ridiculous for a library like this and probably a good reason it's not as popular as it could be:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3661038>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't seen the earlier discussion. I'm more interested in the approach than in the specific code, so GPL doesn't concern me terribly. It seems to be a significant block for others, though.

       -----

halayli 50 days ago | <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3661584>

I am not married to the license. I noticed several complaints, so I am going to reconsider it. :)

       -----

Halayli: Any further thoughts on licensing?

<comment><USER6> and done!

<comment><USER2> Cool! Thanks.

Edit: looks like you missed COPYING; it's still GPLv2 (whereas LICENSE has BSD-looking text).

<comment><USER6> fixed. Thanks for catching it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how this library compares agains Apple's Grand Central Dispatch.

I guess they don't contain 1:1 functionality, but both libraries seem to be meant to make threading easier. I guess GCD is a more complete solution due to the addition of queues.

<comment><USER2> They're different beasts entirely. One key distinction is that GCD requires kernel support, while lthread and friends simply sit on top of any pthread- compatible system. As I understand it, GCD is based on an old systems idea (1991):

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduler_activations>

It also has some auxiliary stuff (compiler-level support for C closures (Clang blocks), etc…) to "make threading easier," like you say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any thoughts on this HP research paper

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2004/HPL-2004-209.html>

"Threads Cannot be Implemented as a Library"?

That paper states that library-based threading implementations that don't also involve the compiler can't guarantee correctness of the resulting threading.

<comment><USER9> Not relevant here.

The paper talks about correctness for parallel kernel-level threads. In contrast, lthreads are about concurrency. These user-level threads are about software architecture, because they are more elegant than an event-loop. Parallelism (exploiting multicore hardware for a speedup) is a secondary goal, but it is much easier to parallelize a user-level thread program compared to an event loop program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I saw this repost, I thought the license had changed. Too bad it hasn't yet.

<comment><USER11> What's wrong with the BSD license?

<comment><USER6> I changed the license to BSD one hour ago after I was reminded by this post :). The comment was made before the change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is previously submitted to HN several times. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3331474>

</comment><comment><USER13> See also State Threads:

<http://state-threads.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER2> According to SF, it was last updated in 2009 (is it actively developed?). I don't see much in the way of examples on the SF page, which is a bit off- putting. I guess I'm curious about the model it uses and how it performs, but my best guess is that it's not radically different from lthread or any other M:N userspace threading library. Do you know more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat.

I wonder what happens if you use swap/get context?</comment>


Chivalry Isn't Dead, You Just Don't Know What the Fuck It Is - <AUTHOR> http://bettermyths.com/chivalry-isnt-dead-you-just-dont-know-what-the-fuck-it-is/ <comment><USER2> Well, this is very funny indeed. Bookmarked the site.</comment>


What should I do with my life? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/66/mylife.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's evil the amount of energy and resources that go into creating unnecessary desires in people in order to cultivate a consumer class. It's time to reap the benefits of our technological advancements, by working shorter weeks, finding less expensive ways to build shelter (houses), and becoming more proficient in local food generation.

<comment><USER3> Ways to do these things have been around for decades, but it's not in the interest of the producers of homes and employers to do them.

Look into some of the inventions by R. Buckminster Fuller. He invented a house that cost thousands, easily transported, made of aluminum, and sturdy, but it never caught on. Probably because he didn't spend time marketing it, but the mobile home and large home manufacturing companies did.

Evolution contradicts the desire for smaller. Consider Peacock tails, the longer they are and the fuller they are, the more likely they are to mate, because peahens like them -- even though rationally, they increase the likelihood of death to predator. Turns out the offspring are in fact stronger, because it takes a lot of strength to maintain those long tails.

Similarly, it takes a lot of "strength" to maintain a large expensive home and accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff and the chicks dig it. A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.

It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to analyze the male by the female means the males could die.

Thus, it is a mathematical certainty that the world will continue towards excessive shows of strength rather than the rational conservative opinion that leads to storage of wealth -- which usually only happens after a mate is found.

tl;dr -- The world will continue getting dumber.

<comment><USER4> "A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.

It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to analyze the male by the female means the males could die."

This presupposes that women are selecting specifically for intelligence - or, said slightly differently, that maximizing (rather than merely satisficing) for intelligence is a better evolutionary strategy. Is that true in practice?

<comment><USER5> Women heavily select for intelligence when choosing egg donors. Eggs from high SAT donors go for many times more than normal. Then again, choosing an egg donor is much more cerebral than choosing a man. Not nearly as hormonal as sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling ! after great difficulty ...the catfish farmer used to be an investment banker, the truck driver had been an entertainment lawyer, a chef had been an academic, and the police officer was a Harvard MBA._

Hmm, I think there might be some inherent bias here. These people were so interesting because Bronson _chose_ the interesting ones (he says he selected 70 out of hundreds).

<comment><USER5> Ya, seriously. I'm pretty sure most farmers, truck drivers, and police officers didn't start in lucrative careers first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oooh. Po Bronson is probably my favourite author. There's something about his writing style that pushes my buttons.

It's probably worth nothing that he used to do a lot of writing for Wired magazine (eg <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/hotmale.html> ) and his second novel, The First $20m Is Always The Hardest, was about a startup ( <http://pobronson.com/index_first_20_million.htm> ).

His site has lots of excerpts and monologues worth reading (eg <http://pobronson.com/The%20Cooks%20Story.pdf> is totally awesome).

He's also has the distinction of being the author of my favourite novel. Here's the first chapter: <http://pobronson.com/filth.htm> (love that first line!).

<comment><USER8> I also loved Bombardiers. Great book that didn't get a lot of traction - highly recommend it for anyone considering a career in finance.

<comment><USER7> It came out at the wrong time - people didn't want to believe that the financial industry was screwed up. If it got re-released now (or if someone finally made a movie of it) people would probably be more receptive.

Pointless anecdote: went to see him give a talk a few years back in London. I bought his new book, got him to sign it, and then whipped out my first edition hardback of Bombardiers that I picked up in Oz years previously. He seemed surprised(/touched) to see it, we had a little chat, and then he wrote a genuinely nice message in the book.

He's totally a class act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the general idea of making stuff which makes people spending _less_ time at a computer, not more. Like giving the information they need and can use in daily life.

This approach excludes working on most social network stuff or things built on the top of it just for the sake of being another 'social' thing.

Cmon people, what's 'social' is happening behind the scenes in our lives, not in teh networkz.</comment>


Doom3 in Ada - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/104228556547212920341/posts/CthXvwFKax7

<comment><USER2> Nice to see someone using Ada in HN.

<comment><USER3> Like is to see some D coder saying this! ;]

<comment><USER2> Pascal family of languages have a special place on my heart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be very interested in a port of this (or some other) game engine to Rust, once the language becomes more mature. I think that would be an excellent showcase for the language.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if anyone will start a Pascal / JavaScript port</comment>


National Debt, Weak Economy? Lower The Price of Gas - <AUTHOR> http://joerussbowman.tumblr.com/post/7386226328/national-debt-weak-economy-lower-the-price-of-gas

<comment><USER2> "It seems to me that there are 2 big problems in the US right now. We have a weak economy that's not helping to create new jobs, after several years of a major increase in unemployment. We also have a huge national debt that's adding fuel to the fire of a weak economy."

From what I've read, we have a strong economy that's not helping to create new jobs. Businesses are doing well, and we're fully (if technically) out of the recession. Business is finding less and less use for excess labor.</comment>


Intel Unleashes Its First 8-Core Desktop Processor - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/08/29/intel-unleashes-its-first-8-core-desktop-processor?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> Even the 5960X, the $999 8 core part, has a maximum memory size of 64gb, unchanged since Sandy Bridge E.

That's disappointing, because while the CPU will likely remain close to state of the art for quite some time to come, you'll most likely max out the memory on day one and be stung by an inability to upgrade.

Of course, this was probably by design, so that they can sell you another, virtually identical 8 core processor in two more years for another $999.

[http://ark.intel.com/products/82930](http://ark.intel.com/products/82930)

<comment><USER3> You could buy a slower Xeon for around the same price if you really needed more than 64 gigs of memory.

[http://ark.intel.com/products/75269/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/75269/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-2650-v2-20M-Cache-2_60-GHz)

And it supports ECC.

<comment><USER2> The Xeon isn't overclockable, which is a big part of the niche this processor sits in.

If you read my post again, I'm not saying that 64gb is too little right now. It's probably the right match for the processor for most workloads, today. 32gb would seem weak with 8c/16t (I have that much in my 4770 system), and 128gb could be excessive.

But in two years, swapping in 128gb would be the no-brainer upgrade to this thing. That this is being ruled out ahead of time is not a good thing.

(Barring an Intel microcode revision, as is being speculated by the sibling commenters. But I'm not holding my breath, as Intel Ark is pretty definitive.)

<comment><USER4> Idk... I'm struggling to see why an average user in the overclocking/high-end pc market would run into the 64 gig limit assuming the high end market has a relatively short part lifetime. I mean if you're in it for the video editing then the sky is the limit but for an average user? A user could ram-cache 4 hard drives with a 4gb buffer each, power up the entire adobe suite including Illustrator, Photoshop, start a browser session with 100 tabs and 10 video streams, torrent client, email client, backup client, vpn, a couple modest ftp and web servers, a transcoding media streaming server AND crysis 3 and still likely have 10-20 gigs to play with. I think if you need much more than that running concurrently you probably should be starting to think about server hardware.

If you think 64gb will be an easy limit for an average user to hit in the near future I would love to hear your envisioned use case.

<comment><USER5> I think it's going to start becoming reasonable to package up applications in VMs and distributing the VMs "appliances" to run instead of installing software directly in the OS. I think this is going to start happening regularly in the consumer space sooner rather than later (and already has in some cases like with XP Mode). This is pretty much modus operandi in the service space today.

There's lots of really good reasons to do this (sandboxing, ease of installation, compatibility, snapshots/state saving, etc.) and VM tech at the consumer level is good enough for most applications. Doing so also enables you to distribute the same application for different host architectures relatively easily (swap out the virtualization core with an emulation core).

VM technology basically will allow consumer software vendors to start treating your computer like a set-spec videogame console instead of worrying about millions or billions of possible complications from how your computer is set up. Once VMs in the consumer space get good enough to really run high-end games, imagine everybody just writes to some Valve defined Linux spec that just happens to match some Steam Box, but you can install the VM for that game on your Mac or Windows or whatever and get to gaming.

If this happens, VMs will chew through RAM faster than just about anything out there.

So instead of installing and running Adobe Suite, you start up the Adobe Suite VM and boom, 8GB of your RAM vaporizes. Fire up your web browser VM and boom, there goes another 4GB. Your e-mail client annihilates 4GB more and now we've eaten up 16GB of RAM to run a handful of applications. Open up an MS-Office component and there goes another 8-16GB. Run a non-virtualized legacy app? Why those all just get sandboxed into an automatic "old shit" VM so the virii keep out.

This isn't inconceivable and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this wasn't already on the drawing boards somewhere.

<comment><USER6> This was what was revolutionary about Quake III, no? It ran inside some iD VM...

<comment><USER7> He is talking about using VMs for real arquitectures (SO + apps).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Intel's disclaimer says at the end of the page: "products do not contain conflict minerals (tin, tantalum, tungsten and/or gold) that directly or indirectly finance or benefit armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or adjoining countries."

</comment><comment><USER9> Anandtech review: [http://anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu- revie...](http://anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review- core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested)

<comment><USER10> and the recently discovered errata that cripple TSX instructions.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx- instru...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instructions- erratum-found-in-haswell-haswelleep-broadwelly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And where did they unveil this new processor?

At _Penny Arcade Expo_.

Times really have changed.

<comment><USER12> Too bad this processor is pointless for gaming. Maybe they should have announced it at IBC.

<comment><USER4> 4real dog hardcore gamerz only use arm procs. Angry birds4life.

Seriously though, what are you talking about?

<comment><USER13> if you can find a game developer who cares enough to split their game's logic down more than just "render thread" and "logic thread", then maybe an 8core would be useful

<comment><USER14> I seriously doubt if this is still true. Multicores have been common for more than a decade now.

Edit: first Google hit to satisfy parent, since replying is disabled. Valve goes multicore [2006] [http://techreport.com/review/11237/valve-source-engine- goes-...](http://techreport.com/review/11237/valve-source-engine-goes-multi- core)

<comment><USER15> And yet I notice you didn't provide an example. Honestly I can't think of one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also, Parallax has just open-sourced theirs!

[http://www.parallax.com/microcontrollers/propeller-1-open- so...](http://www.parallax.com/microcontrollers/propeller-1-open-source)

8-core microcontroller in 2006, not bad. They're releasing a better one later this year, so they've opened the verilog design for the current one.

<comment><USER17> This is awesome, but off topic. Give me a few days to refresh my Verilog, and I can design you a 16 core CPU; this of course says nothing of the quality and performance of that CPU.

I don't mean to bash Parallax but to make a point that making an N-core processor is itself not impressive. Making an N-core architecture that performs like this is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could someone give me a simple explanation of what exactly hyperthreading does? They tout 16 logical cores and 8 physical cores in this new chip. I've read the Wikipedia page on it, but it gets too technical.

I do molecular dynamics simulations with LAMMPS, and I've noticed performance on my laptop is best with 4 cores. Using all 8 "virtual cores" is actually quite a bit slower.

<comment><USER19> A core is a mostly independent processing unit within a larger package. Some hardware resources (like the memory controller, at least in non-NUMA devices) are shared between all cores, but many are duplicated for each core. Some examples of core-local resources would be their separate integer, floating point, and sometimes vector execution units (boxes that you can stick some data into and get a result out some number of cycles later), and some (but not all, depending on the chip) of the various layers of caches that sit between each core and main memory.

In hyperthreaded processors, each core can be further split into two "threads". These threads share most of their hardware resources; you can think of them as a thin veneer over a single core. These threads execute simultaneously, making use of whatever resources their partner isn't using at the moment.

Some examples (assume a single core processor with 2 hardware threads for each): Imagine you're running a thread, and it needs to access main memory before it can continue. Depending on the chip, this will take hundreds or even thousands of cycles before the thread can continue. Hyperthreading is one way to make use of this time; the other thread can run at full steam while the first is waiting to get its results back from memory.

Another positive example: you're running some floating point DSP code (perhaps your music player's equalizer) at the same time that you are compiling a new build of a program. The DSP code will make use of a mix of integer and floating point resources, while the compiler will probably not need to use the floating point units at all. Hyper threading allows the music player to use those resources that would otherwise be idle while the compiler is running. The DSP code _will_ slow down the compiler because it is competing for things like integer resources (which are needed for pointer arithmetic, for instance), however there will still likely be an improvement over normal multitasking on a single hardware thread.

Now, for a negative example: you are running two very demanding threads. These threads are painstakingly programmed to use almost every resource they possibly can at any moment, they very rarely need to stall to access memory, etc. In this case, the two threads will only waste time fighting over the same resources, kicking each other out of cache, etc, and it would ultimately be more efficient to disregard hyper threading and run each thread sequentially.

Another negative example: you are running two instances of the same thread. This will result in good utilization of some resources (such as code cache, because each thread is executing the same program) but practically guarantees contention over the execution units, even if the program isn't that demanding.

To sum it up, hyperthreading is usually a net positive for desktops where you have a very heterogenous (and often not anywhere close to optimally programmed) mix of programs that need to run at once, and usually a net negative for high performance computing programs like your molecular dynamics simulation where every thread is executing the same extremely demanding program at once.

EDIT: And to go a bit further and explain what makes GPUs special, they're basically the inverse of a hyper-threaded CPU, great at running a _lot_ of homogenous threads. Instead of having independent threads sharing the same resources, they have the same _logical_ thread (many designs sharing the instruction pointer amongst many hardware threads, thus causing each to execute the same instruction at any given moment with different inputs) shared across cores that have their own indepedent execution units.

<comment><USER20> That is a great explanation, ill be saving tht one next time someone asks me! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why just "client"? Why not use it in a server? What am I missing?

Cost per operation? Can get an AMD 8 core processor, 125 Watts, 4.0 GHz clock, for about $180. So, $1000 for an Intel processor with 8 cores with hyper threading stands to be cost effective? In what sense?

<comment><USER12> The server version is called Xeon and it's the same chip with ECC uncrippled.

One Haswell core is equivalent to two AMD cores. But yeah, AMD is dramatically cheaper than Intel for equivalent performance.

<comment><USER22> That leads me to a question that I was going to ask: what is it that justifies the massive markup on Intel chips vs AMD? Is it just the name? Is there an advantage in intel performance or power usage? If so, does it really make up for the price? Because as someone considering building a computer from scratch (I haven't in quite a while), that AMD price tag is very appealing.

<comment><USER4> I think many people would agree that the price discrepancy does have a lot to do with branding and marketing strategy.

Intel is a larger wealthier company and they assumedly pour a lot more money into R&D than AMD. If you go purely by market capitalization, Intel is about 50-60 times larger and AMD. That's not necessarily a fair measure and ignores a lot of variables but it does help shed a little light on the situation. In addition, AMD's business model has them focusing a lot of their attention on niches that intel doesn't seem as interested in. For instance AMD continues to develop new ARM technologies that could provide a very important market edge for them in the future as small "internet of thing" like devices start to emerge and become a part of people's daily life.

Here's a decent article on the subject: [http://analysisreport.morningstar.com/stock/research?nav=no&...](http://analysisreport.morningstar.com/stock/research?nav=no&ProductCode=mle&t=AMD)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really don't keep up on this stuff much, but why is this still Haswell based? Why not just do this on Broadwell?

<comment><USER24> Intel has a pattern of releasing variations of microarchitectures with higher core counts after their immediate successors have been announced/launched. Think Sandy Bridge-E after Ivy Bridge, Ivy Bridge-E after Haswell, and now Haswell-E.

They probably do this because it's probably to easier to manage the larger die size and greater complexity as the process has matured and yields have improved.

<comment><USER25> Also, these are essentially rebadged Xeon's. Xeon's have higher requirements for maturity, testing, stability, et cetera.

<comment><USER26> And a lot of the time, many of these CPUs are almost identical to one another. They will take a single CPU and brand it in 10 different ways depending on how it does during manufacturing testing.

For a given CPU that comes off the production line, the max frequency it can run at will vary from chip to chip. As well, if there are dead cores on that chip they can just disable them and sell the chip at a lower price (though, intel may not do this; nvidia has in the past with graphics chips).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Intel's first client processor supporting 16 computing threads and new DDR4 > memory will enable some of the fastest desktop systems ever seen.

Not necessarily -- as AMD fans (I'm one) have seen, the entire "more cores is better" is not always true -- it _heavily_ depends on the workload, and frankly, most games and programs are not utilizing these cpu's fully (yet). Now, put something like a 2 x 16 core Opterons in a server and you have yourself quite a powerful virtualization platform.

With that said - I'm interested in seeing it's price point and performance compared to AMD's offerings.

<comment><USER28> How well commonly quoted benchmarks (passmark, geekbench, cinebench etc) measure a processor as a VM host? Obviously single core benchmarks are somewhat representative, but miss things like cache sizes at different levels and hyperthreading. Are there benchmarks that would take those into account or would otherwise be good for planning VM host use case?

<comment><USER27> For VM hosts -- the number of cores (plus their respective resources like cache, etc) are more important than how performant each core is individually. Usually for hosting companies, density is more important than raw performance, making 32 cores in 1 physical host very attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This thing supports 8 DDR4 slots. Finally we are moving beyond 32GB RAM limit.

<comment><USER30> X79 Socket 2011, which this is the successor to already supported 64GB with 8 DIMMs so nothing has changed yet. They've yet to announce a socket 1150 successor, most likely it will have 4 DIMM max., however, I expect 16GB DIMMs to appear in DDR4 soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm both excited and not. This is more power in a CPU and that's great progress, but for a desktop? I mean servers, games and graphical applications would be faster but the majority of our waiting time when using a computer is on a single-threaded calculations. As someone who doesn't game a lot and uses GIMP only for the most basic of purposes, I would much rather have an improved dual core CPU that produces less heat in total (compared to 8-cores) and can be clocked higher because of that.

<comment><USER32> Well, yeah. This is their _very_ highest-end processor, and costs more than the entire desktop+monitor+peripherals that most people need. Not sure what point you're trying to make. Do you think companies shouldn't continue pushing the envelope of what's possible?

Edit: " _very_ highest-end processor" should read " _very_ highest-end PC processor". I'm excluding the workstation-class Xeon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd still rather have 6ghz 4-core but I guess that isn't going to happen (anytime soon for a reasonable price).

</comment><comment><USER34> Why didn't they do this sooner?

AMD already has an Operton 16-core processor. I'm not saying that AMD is any better, but I thought Intel would have started selling these from long ago, judging based on the pace of the computer industry.

<comment><USER34> I take that back, I see that Intel has ten-core commercial processors on the market already.

<comment><USER35> More, in fact.

[http://ark.intel.com/#@ServerProducts](http://ark.intel.com/#@ServerProducts)

But your original point is a valid one: AMD introduced desktop 8 core processors a couple of years ago, while this is intels first 8 core desktop processor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Intel is getting disrupted by the book (they keep moving upmarket now). The funny thing is they _know it_. But they can't stop it at this point. So they just go along with it.

</comment><comment><USER37> this is a pretty naive comment, but it's really intended to be totally serious: what's up with cores? like, why do we really need cores? is it really fundametally better architecture to have a RISC sitting at the front of the instruction pipeline to distribute x86 instructions to some internal set (particularly wrt. to power consumption), or do we in fact just have cores in order to increase fab yield [/ootbcomp.com-bootcamping]

<comment><USER12> Are you proposing a 32-issue processor instead of eight 4-issue cores? One problem with that is that most software doesn't have enough instruction-level parallelism to use such resources. Such a complex processor would also be likely to become bottlenecked on central control structures like the issue window (which can be solved with clustering, but then you're almost back to multicore). But check out EDGE/TRIPS/E2 for some ideas in this area.

<comment><USER37> I'm talking about something I don't understand....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if Apple will announce anything that uses this processor in the Sep. 9th event? I could possibly see it being used in a refreshed Mac Pro or iMac.

<comment><USER39> This alongside with two high end NVIDIA chips (Geforce Titan) in a Mac Pro would be insanely good. Not sure whether it's possible thermally though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How does this compare to a 3.0GHz 8-core Xeon E5?

<comment><USER12> About 5% faster than a E5 v2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Of course HP will now include it in a desktop with half the features disabled, and no option in the BIOS to enable them.

</comment><comment><USER42> And the FX 8120 eight core CPU ??

</comment><comment><USER43> 5yrs late

</comment><comment><USER44> Finally!

</comment><comment><USER45> Title Caps And "Unleaches". Intel Unleaches 8-Core Paralel Marketing On News.Ycombinator</comment>


If Weed Is Medicine, So Is Budweiser - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-weed-is-medicine-so-is-budweiser-11547770981 <comment><USER2> Indeed.

That is a true statement. However, the scope of applicability for alcohol is fairly well understood compared to that for cannabis.

Given we make a statement like this, with the intent of better normalizing use of things we've criminalized, yeah. Great! More research plz. We all will benefit.

If it's to somehow better promote the well over promoted booze? Meh.

</comment><comment><USER3> drinking alcohol has been used as a medication(lessens pain) in the past so not to far off the mark.</comment>