American Phrase Book - <AUTHOR> http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~guy/american/ <comment><USER2> Yup. One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer.

On a mildly more serious note, I remember well my first ever serious business meeting in the US, where we pitched a potential joint venture to another company. 30 minutes of mutual praise about the awesome potential of the idea and positive affirmations of how we're totally going to do this ensued... and immediately after we left, my (American) business partner dropped the smile, said "welp, that went badly" and stated that there was no way in hell they'd proceed. Which proved to be the case.

<comment><USER3> This is something of a misunderstanding of American culture. It's far more complex than can be summarized in a HN comment, but it's more accurate to say that American culture prides itself on accessibility, egalitarianism, and a "lack of barriers" more than directness, defined as pure unfiltered honesty, per se.

A good example to illustrate this phenomenon: in most American cities, it is considered fairly normal, even expected, to talk to strangers on the bus, in the street, in line at the grocery store. There is no mental "barrier" to overcome in the public sphere. However, one is typically expected to be polite and not overly direct while interacting with strangers.

The same activity, contrarily, is borderline verboten in German culture. The typical German will rarely engage in spontaneous conversation with a stranger, even if he/she would be extremely direct (in American terms) if such a conversation were to occur.

<comment><USER4> This resonates with my recent experience. I'm Indian, but I live in Europe, and during a recent trip to the US, I was amazed by how easy going the people were. I was able to have nice conversations with random locals. From a nice uncle spontaneously telling us about the history of Santa Cruz to a stranger helping us park the car properly in SF, to jolly waiters in restaurants, it all felt very human. I find it quite hard to make small talk in European cities. I used to think it's the language barrier, but I realize now that it might be more than that.

<comment> blaser-waffle Plenty of US cities aren't like that. You're going to get a wayyy different response talking to random people on the NYC public transit than in SF. Seattle has the infamous "Freeze", and DC has that government contractor omerta thing going on.

Santa Cruz is a whole 'nother creature too.

<comment><USER5> I'm a government contractor in DC and I'm thankful to you for teaching me the word "omerta."

<comment><USER6> Would you please explain? Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to see one of these for Australian English, although I don't think it would be possible. Aussies have a love of metaphor a simile that's unmatched in any other dialect of English, especially if you hang out with bogans (basically Australian Rednecks, for lack of a better description). It's basically the opposite of America, where instead of trying to be excessively polite, we try to be excessively offensive. The other habits of Australians are to shorten words down and add an "O" to the end, and to swear excessively.

Here's a couple of my favourites:

"Not here to fuck spiders" => Not here to waste time

"Mad as a cut snake" => Very angry

"Busier than a one armed brickie in Baghdad" => Very busy (a brickie is a bricklayer)

"Built like a brick shithouse" => A large, muscular man

"Crack the shits" => get annoyed

"Dog act" => something done to a friend that's uncalled for, e.g. skipping your round at the pub

"Stitch up" => A scam or a trick

"Sick cunt" => An outstanding person

"Old mate" => Someone who's not your friend

"Smoko" => Morning break at work

"Misso" => Girlfriend (short for missus)

"Ambo" => Paramedic (short for ambulance)

"Servo" => Service Station (gas station for Americans)

"Seppo" => American

"Pokies" => Poker machines

"Yeah nah" => either yes, or no, depending on context. Can also be used as filler in a sentence.

This leads to beautiful sentences, such as:

"Yeah nah, the misso cracked the shits at me 'cause I spent the whole arvo at the pokies"

Here's a decent sized list of Aussie slang: [https://nomadsworld.com/aussie- slang/](https://nomadsworld.com/aussie-slang/)

<comment><USER8> "Seppo" => American

Seems related to the cockney rhyming slang:

Septic tank = Yank

[http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/septic_tank](http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/septic_tank)

<comment><USER9> It is. Also as a Brit I love calling American's "Septics".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a fun list! Let me add two of my personal favorites:

"Literally", which means "figuratively".

"I could care less", which literally means "I couldn't care less".

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of- lite...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally)

[https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/01/i-could-care- less...](https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/01/i-could-care-less.html)

Edit: I feel like a party pooper saying this, but I see a few comments where people may be taking this phrasebook seriously, perhaps because it's been Published on the Internet by MIT?

It's not a serious phrasebook! It's just an MIT alumnus having some fun with us all.

In fact the author is clearly not a native American English speaker. Here are a few "tells"...

"Upon arrival it is therefore often to their surprise how many seemingly simple phrases actually turn out to mean something completely different in the US American variant of the English language."

"You might want to consider to do X."

"You might want to consider to postpone your trip until after the deadline."

"It is highly recommended that you turn in your application in time to increase your odds at being considered."

These are close, but not quite what anyone would write who grew up speaking American English. And that's fine! My goodness, the author's English is 1000 times better than my... whatever their native language is. And I'm glad they shared this fun list with us. :-)

BTW if you enjoy this phrasebook, I heartily recommend English as She is Spoke:

[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=english+as+she+is+spoke](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=english+as+she+is+spoke)

<comment><USER11> I use literally as incorrectly as I can as a joke, but I probably just sound like a moron. I think that is true of most my jokes though.

<comment><USER12> I always say _figuratively_ and try to see people's expression when they realize that's the correct word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. I think we need phrasebooks for all cultures. I'm Indian, and a Chinese friend was pissed that Indians say "yes" and never do it. I think it's a cultural no-no in India to say "no" to someone's face. I finally realised that a short "yes" most probably means "yes", and a long-drawn out "yes" probably means "no".

<comment><USER14> This is not helpful for a Dutch person like me (who are usually very direct) when the IT has been outsourced to India. You ask them to do something, they say yes and when time comes it hasn't been done. This got me so annoyed.

<comment><USER15> > This is not helpful for a Dutch person like me (who are usually very direct)

While we are at this, I think Dutch people should work on being less "direct", and also try to improve their sentence construction when writing English.

Plenty of my (former) Dutch coworkers' emails in English just came across as rude, in both senses of that word.

<comment><USER16> Hows your Dutch sentence construction?

<comment><USER17> I mean, if we're going down that road, might as well go one step back and ask how the Dutch fellow's understanding of Indian culture is.

In any case, these are things you learn once. After that, the better you are at navigating the differences, the more successful you'll be. After all, it's low probability that you'll reform (in your mind) another culture and high probability that you can improve your ability to win. So might as well chase the win by modifying the self every time.

<comment><USER16> Learning a language is hard.

This whole thread is the differences between nations who speak the same language. If they can't agree what chance has a non native got?

As a native English speaker I appreciate that I don't _need_ to learn another language. But on the other hand, the language has also become the worlds language, so its about as fair criticising the Dutch for sentence construction, as it is for criticising Australians for making everything into a question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I got bit by "How's it going / How are you?" when I first came to the USA. Turns out you're not actually supposed to answer with how you really are, and if you do so, they look at you like you've said something weird.

<comment><USER19> This is such a weird thing isn't it.

It's like this in the UK too, every conversation starts with "How are you?" "Fine, how are you?" "Fine."

It's always the same, pretty much. It's daft, it's just like a ritual that everyone is happy to partake in.

No one is actually asking you how you are, it's just a noise that both parties have agreed to start each conversation with. No actual information gets exchanged. You could easily replace those phrases with nonsense and as long as both parties are aware of the nonsense and what the nonsensical response is expected the it would work just as well.

Person 1: "Hippopatumus soup triage?" Person 2: "Triangle, Hippopatumus soup triage?" Person 1: "Triangle."

It's so strange.

<comment><USER20> It's known as phatic communication. It's not nonsense or noise: it conveys a wealth of information.

It (re-)establishes the relationship between two parties (and to observing parties). You can tell if two people are strangers, friends, or enemies by how they do this ritual.

It signals intention on part of the initiator and receptiveness on part of the responder. If "Hey, how are you?" gets a cold and abrupt "I'm fine." without a reciprocating question, then it's a pretty strong signal that the other party isn't open to further or prolonged conversation.

It's also like a shibboleth. How someone interacts in the ritual can signal how well socialized s/he is and whether s/he's an in-group or out-group member. If you ask someone you don't know very well "How are you?" and s/he immediately begin telling you about the rash on his/her belly and how s/he hate the traffic and the weather, then that might tip you off that s/he doesn't understand your society's social protocols and therefore is either a social misfit or an outsider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a non American, I sometimes just enjoy deliberately messing a bit with Americans when they utter these expressions, by doing it over the top.

Someone meeting me for some boring work related thingie: "Hi! How are you doing?"

Me: "Super awesome, thanks so much for asking! Super excited to meet you and discuss this!".

They probably think I'm crazy and/or are not sure what to make of it, so it's fun to see the puzzled looks, but I'm also just being nice.

<comment><USER22> I've met plenty of people who respond like that without it being a joke, so if you're going for over-the-top you're undershooting the mark quite a bit.

<comment><USER21> I'll try to raise the crazy a bit. Relocating to SV soon so I'll have plenty of opportunities. Umm, I mean, I'm super excited and stoked to finally be where all the magic happens!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As an Israeli this was a shock for me when I first moved to the US. Here "let's have lunch sometime" is literally "let's have lunch sometime".

The American culture is so indirect and giving direct feedback is so hard. One of the biggest prides in our culture here is that employees can always burst into the CEO's office and tell them they are wrong if that's the case :]

<comment><USER24> Same here, even after five years in the US I still had to remind myself how some phrases actually communicate the exact opposite of their literal meaning.

Wasn't surprised at all to see this phrase book was authored by another Israeli :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This feels like someone has taken the classic "Anglo EU translation guide (2011)"[1] and tried to do the same thing for American sayings. It works a little better for British sayings because, frankly, we Brits are incredibly repressed and never say what we mean if we can put our true meaning in the subtext.

[1] [https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/05/17/anglo-eu-translation- gu...](https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/05/17/anglo-eu-translation-guide/)

<comment><USER26> I worked on multiple cross European project. And my favorite time (as a Swiss guys used to try to find a middle ground solution) was when we had meeting with British, French and Polish guys that don't agree on a subject. You can really see the huge cultural divide in action. The English guys will says "hmmm interesting", the French will raise his voice (creating a huge discomfort for the British guys) and start a long speech how all of this is stupid" and the Polish guys will just tell everyone that they can go f... themselves and that they won't do it. I really miss that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They lost me on the first two.

"Let's have lunch sometime" \- Yeah, when I say that I genuinely mean it. It does NOT mean "I don't want to see you again." to me.

"Thanks for reminding me" \- Again, I genuinely mean that when I say it. NOT "Stop bugging me!".

<comment><USER10> Most people are like you or me: we mean what we say and say what we mean.

This list is not supposed to reflect how people actually talk with each other. It's just a made-up sarcastic list, put together for the sake of humor. That can be a fun thing, as long as we don't mistake for an useful phrase book that tries to describe what people actually say and mean.

<comment><USER28> This is either completely wrong or the perfect satire.

<comment><USER29> Good satire that explain the cultural meaning that would stay hidden otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Some are too cynical but pretty funny.

As a recent inductee to silicon-valley-ese I found it odd and funny how often people were "excited" about something.

<comment><USER31> Hella excited

<comment><USER9> Maybe I'm old now or too into old school rallying, but when someone says "hella" I just think of massive foglights on old rally cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember when a native American told me that saying "it's OK" doesn't actually mean that something is good, but just average. I must have told "it's OK" a million of times to partner about their work; they must have assumed that I had huge standards.

</comment><comment><USER33> > US natives will usually phrase everything in a manner that creates the least > social friction in any given interaction

This person has clearly never been to Asia, where a whole different level of this exists.

<comment><USER24> My experience (as non-American, non-Asian) has been the interaction was actually somewhat easier in Japan or China, because you don't expect a smooth communication to begin with and both sides are not speaking in their native tongue.

When you're in the US you have the false sense that you actually understand what's being said, while in truth learning the actual meaning can take a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I picked up an English copy of the Culture Shock series of books at a bookstore in Japan that was focused on the US (where I was born). Hugely enlightening. The biggest "ah ha" moment was how Americans always worried about owing people something, so they don't like to ask to borrow things or ask for help.

</comment><comment><USER35> At first I thought this was pretty garbage content for HN.

Then I realized how many people on here aren't native English speakers, and might need years of socialization to understand these nuances. Bravo

</comment><comment><USER36> As a Brit the really stand out difference here is "not bad", which for us means "good". (And our stronger "not too shabby" \- excellent).

<comment><USER37> Also "quite good", which can mean either "good" or "not good", depending on whether the stress falls on "quite" or "good".

And "with the greatest respect", which means "you, sir/madam, are a blithering fool."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is a British English version of this, which has been around on the internet for a few years.

A friend of my partner's, who works at a high level in the European commission told us that it is passed around in diplomatic circles as a (non-ironic) instruction manual.

The American/British preference for avoiding direct communication is apparently not normal in Europe at all, and causes a lot of confusion amongst people who are unfamiliar with the layered meanings.

<comment><USER33> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlAcKM5IMAAuezm.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlAcKM5IMAAuezm.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Might be worth noting that this is a private page from MIT alumni.

I saw the "mit.edu" next to the link and thought it was a study or official publication first.

<comment><USER40> As a European, I assume the page is presenting a stereotype and not the (more nuanced) truth. Personally, I've experienced problems communicating with US folks that reflect this stereotype, but at least in Tech/Science, I assume (and hope) people are somewhat more straight-forward in their communications.

<comment><USER41> I think most fluent American speakers here would agree that a few of these are true, but most of them are just humorous exaggerations.

... unfortunately, I'm not quite so sure that there would be much agreement on which ones were the true ones. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So, what would an American say when they actually do want to have lunch sometime?

<comment><USER43> "Let's get lunch tomorrow/this week/some actual date!"

Took me a while to realize this actually works, as a born and raised American.

<comment><USER44> "works" as in "gets the other person to leave me alone"?

<comment><USER45> "works" as in "the meaning of the phrase depends on whether timing is indicated."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Overall I think this is bad and completely attributed to politeness, and is even weak at that compared to other languages. Many people in the Philippines would lie in response to seemingly important questions just to seem polite. "Do you know where the {important building} is?" "Oh yes, it's just across the way over there!" (it wasn't)

<comment><USER10> It's not a serious list. It's just a bunch of made-up stuff. _Some_ of it hits close to home, as good humor should, but much of it is just there for humorous effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a Brit some of these seem fairly universal, "no offense" for example. Although my Grandparents don't say it before announcing something outrageously offensive, I just put that down to mental filters breaking down due to old age.

There also needs to be a section on Americans aversion to discussing bodily functions. "restroom", "powder my nose"?

<comment><USER46>
       "restroom"

Is "loo" any less ambiguous?

Speaking of Brits, they did point out the perils of faulty phrase books many years ago:

[https://youtu.be/bNP7uQQT-oo](https://youtu.be/bNP7uQQT-oo)

<comment><USER16> Strictly speaking it is less ambiguous.

I understood it to be a shortened corruption of lavatory and it's worth noting that the English definition of that gives toilet, and the American definition gives the sink in the toilet, which kind of reinforces my point.

<comment> denton-scratch I took "loo" to be from "gardy loo", which in turn is a corruption from the French "gardez l'eau", meaning "watch out down there, I'm tipping this bucket out of the window".

So "loo" would be from "l'eau", meaning "water"; so possibly "water closet", or WC, a.k.a. crapper.

<comment><USER16> My opinion wasn't particularly informed so ill happily defer. The only other explanation I heard was that it was a contraction of Waterloo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I often wonder if part of America's productivity can be attributed to the shortness of this list.

It's just a handful of expressions that are mildly misleading.

In other cultures, you have to get together with friends over dinner to discuss the hidden meaning of a single suspect word your boss had used that day.

High context cultures take a lot of mental effort.

<comment><USER48> Which cultures would be considered high-context? (Genuinely curious)

<comment><USER47> Not sure if everybody would agree, but here's one chart I found: [https://online.seu.edu/wp- content/uploads/795x400-Internatio...](https://online.seu.edu/wp- content/uploads/795x400-InternationalBusiness-Chart-SEU.png)

> In high-context communication, a message cannot be understood without a > great deal of background information. Asian, African, Arab, central European > and Latin American cultures are generally considered to be high-context > cultures.

[https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context- culture...](https://online.seu.edu/articles/high-and-low-context-cultures/)

<comment><USER49> Cultures that differ the most from author's require most context to be understood by author? Hardly surprising.

The quoted source is an anthropological work from 1959, a time when anthropology still wanted to be a natural science. These sort of generalizations do not go over well in contemporary cultural anthropology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Odd omission of "Bless your heart."

</comment><comment><USER17> How about "with all due respect". It means "no respect is due to you for this absolutely idiotic opinion you have tendered you insufferable clown"

</comment><comment><USER51> Many of these fall under the pattern of comedic overexpression or tactical underexpression. For example, "You're really dirty, you literally smell like trash" obviously means "you figuratively smell like trash" but the latter doesn't pack the same punch.

At the same time something like "not the best programmer" is a minimizing statement which is less mean than something like "bad programmer".

</comment><comment><USER41> In the same vein, [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6919](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6919)

</comment><comment><USER52> There's a bit of a directness/politeness spectrum, and even in the US there are different places on the spectrum, with the Northeast being more direct, the West and South being more polite. I would say we're not nearly as polite as the English--who can often get away with completely insulting an American without the American ever realizing it--but we're also not Dutch :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Seems inspired by [https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/what-british-people- say-v...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/what-british-people-say-versus- what-they-mean) \- a guide I have known to help marriages between people from opposite sides of the Atlantic.

</comment><comment><USER54> Would be nice if they added a column with 'But if you really mean to express (what is in the first column), say ...

</comment><comment><USER55> As an American I found this list funny at first, and then it made me realize how difficult it must be for people who learned English in other countries to come here.

While this may have been intended as a joke, it may actually be useful to people who want to do business in America.

</comment><comment><USER56> IMO some of those aren't american only. When I lived in Ireland, everybody kept looking at me oddly when I talked about my well being after being asked "how are you doing". Took me a while to realize they only meant "hello".

<comment><USER57> We (Irish) are very indirect too, but here we mostly avoid direct positivity as well as direct negativity

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think this isn't exclusive to Americans. Also I think this shows perfectly how there is a positive and negative perspective on everything, with which you could relabel the columns most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER59> My favorite is "literally" which really means "figuratively" these days.

<comment><USER60> It's true: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10240917/Uproar-as- OED...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10240917/Uproar-as-OED-includes- erroneous-use-of-literally.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Yup, I quite enjoy answering, as detailed as possible when someone asks me how I am, interrupting and insisting I tell my full story since they were so good as to ask. :)

</comment><comment><USER62> Definitely, this list is not something you should be proud of.

</comment><comment><USER63> Where is all this suppressed behavior coming from and what does it tell you about the country? Language is the key to the psyche of a person.

<comment><USER64> Bless your heart. You may also want to consider that there is a thing called culture that influences the typical patterns of communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm American, and I've got to say - we haven't been talking with the same Americans.

</comment><comment><USER66> In my school in India, "That's a good question" means that the teacher knows the answer pretty well!</comment>


Zune, Google Glass, and the Newton Still Have a Lot to Teach Us - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/grave-robbing-in-the-product-cemetery-923885982a97?source=rss----444d13b52878---4&gi=f23d9dc04583 <comment><USER2> Why are articles from this site being spammed so intensely on HN right now?

<comment><USER3> I think it's because anybody can write articles on Medium so that's where the majority of people go for writing opinion pieces?

Not too sure though.</comment></comment>


SQL Server 2014 Standard Edition Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2013/07/sql-server-2014-standard-edition-sucks-and-its-all-your-fault <comment><USER4> For years Microsoft-sponsored SQL Server consultancies have been telling us to use the database to its fullest extent. Use Stored Procs and non ANSI SQL features, they're fine! Logic in the database? We love that.

That's what ISVs and Enterprises are being told to do and that's exactly what they've done, at least the ones who couldn't see Microsoft's business angle. Now many are left to choose to either accept Microsoft's ever-increasing licensing costs or a high cost to switch.

I agree with @BrentOzar, time to find other options.

<comment><USER5> I see nothing wrong with using stored procs or non-ANSI features. You just need to know what you're getting into. The same goes for any database. Being database agnostic is great but so is actually finishing what you're working on and having it run efficiently. If DB specific features get you there and you're willing to accept the terms of being locked in then it's a sound decision.

For our product we use Postgres as the app's database and happen to use some Postgres specific features like stored procs and hstore[1]. The latter in particular is not ANSI at all. There is no equivalent at all in other databases and migrating usage of it to another DB would be a real pain. I know we're tied to Postgres and we're ok with that as it's a joy to use and let's us spend our time elsewhere.

You use database specific features because they're useful, not because you're forced to. Of course I'll concede the point that it's a bit apples and oranges to compare being "stuck" on Posgtres vs a commercial closed source stack.

[1]: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/hstore.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/hstore.html)

<comment><USER6> "...so is actually finishing what you're working on and having it run efficiently."

A "finished" product is usually a dead one and efficiency is relative. You've seen that incremental improvements to the entire stack can have far greater impact than fiddling with just the storage end alone after all.

A product never actually stops evolving if it's going to stay competitive and make money. But I'd say staying with Postgres is one of the best decisions you've made. Besides being a joy, as you say, you can be fairly confident that it won't suddenly become broken, become proprietary and best of all, become an order of magnitude more expensive for the same capability.

<comment><USER5> To clarify by "finished" I meant shipping a working version of a product, not being finished with all work on the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The funny thing is how Microsoft used to make fun of Oracle for being restrictive on the CPU licensing types. How "hardware improvements are for our customers' benefit". Now? You pay differently depending on AMD/Intel and type of chip. Oh hey, just like Oracle. It's hypocritical, but I guess it's also just business.

At any rate, like this post says, whatcha going to do? The ease of use of SQL Server is fantastic. As much as I would like to use Postgres (despite the HA story looking very confusing, and lack of basic things like materialized views), the tooling is lightyears behind Microsoft's. The fact that I'd truly need to become a DBA to properly use Postgres (oh great, an ini file with poorly documented settings!), whereas I can fumble my way through SQL Server... that's worth a lot.

<comment><USER8> You have to be a DBA to properly use SQL Server too.

Yes you can stumble your way through wizards and SSMS, but you will get tripped up eventually if you don't spend some serious time hitting the books and blogs. (Recovery model, what's a recovery model? Why's my disk space gone?)

<comment><USER9> (Tempdb, what's tempdb? Clustered index, what's that and why the hell do I need one? Escalated locks - what the hell? Isolation modes, why are they important?!?)

<comment><USER10> I'd be happy if the outsourced developers I work with knew what an index was, let alone whether it's clustered or non-clustered.

It would be refreshing to see seeks instead of scans in the execution plans...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if those working in corporate IT realize that they're competing with Microsoft for money.

Most corporations see IT as an expense center. It's not a place where the business make money. It's simply a place where they spend it. You can argue the validity of that idea but whether it's right or wrong doesn't matter. It's the way most businesses think.

Businesses, of course, try to limit expenses. They especially try to limit any increase in expenses. So basically there is a certain sized pile of money for IT to work with. If the costs of Microsoft infrastructure goes up, the difference is made up by cutting another part of the pile. The part of the pile that can be most easily managed is salaries.

<comment><USER12> _> "I wonder if those working in corporate IT realize that they're competing with Microsoft for money."_

Generally no, but I expect many are quickly realizing it.

Microsoft in particular has been very open about trying to sell things like Office 365 and Azure to Enterprises. They aren't afraid to be blunt and say "Hey, you can get rid of your staff if you go with this".

It's an odd relationship.

In my experience, many in corporate IT are perfectly happy to be simple facilitators - shoppers basically.

I believe the perception is "It won't be me", that being increasingly beholden to a vendor might prevent the creation of new positions or filling vacancies but will never eliminate their own positions.

The entire industry of internal IT support has hard times ahead. Anecdotally, I see XaaS being adopted surprisingly quickly. A few big VARs I've talked to have noticed this and have been realigning themselves to sell managed services instead of stopping at planning and implementation as they have in the past.

<comment><USER13> _they aren 't afraid to be blunt and say "Hey, you can get rid of your staff if you go with this"._

During the release of, I think, Windows 2008, Microsoft put out an ad campaign that showed the IT staff doing the congo and other non-work things. It was a fun, upbeat message about how it made things so much easier. Only the real, unavoidable message was to HR and the executive -- give us some cash and you can start sending out the layoff notices.

I'm not judging Microsoft for that -- they've forever boasted that if you go with Microsoft stuff you can pay your employees less -- and efficiency is good for everyone. It was just such a bizarre ad, and seemed to be like one of those dark side Skittles ads, but minus the awareness of what it really was.

<comment><USER14> Yes, once you switch to ALL XaaS and ditch your IT staff, you are forever at the mercy of your existing XaaS vendor. You don't own the software, the vendor actually has your data somewhere in the cloud, and you have no one who can even make a credible recommendation on an alternative. They got you by the balls, and BTW, the XaaS pricing is tripling next month. Muahaha !

<comment><USER12> This is all true of existing Enterprise software relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My company went through BizSpark 3 years ago. We're now running everything on Windows Azure. No complaints here. Sure, I'd like SQL Azure to have a few more features but there haven't been any deal breakers yet. C# is by far my most favorite programming language and is probably what keeps me coming back to .NET & Sql Server.

I must admit though, I'm very intrigued by a lot of cool features found in PostgreSQL. Specifically HStore.

<comment><USER8> Chances are you are not dealing with banking, insurance or medical data while running on Azure. After the last several weeks, we had to assure clients, that none of the data is stored on Azure. Plus with the standard version of SQL Server or Azure you don't get full auditing or encryption.

<comment><USER15> That's correct. I actually used to work for a company which built health information systems for hospitals so I'm aware of the hurdles there. They were .NET based too. Hospital network contracts pay very well but they are absolutely the worst customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> MS is not changing their tack because there is a vibrant big business community with budgets that depend on MS SQL and it fills the need.

Which Open Source DB does everything that MS Enterprise SQL does and why aren't you using that instead?

<comment><USER17> > Which Open Source DB does everything that MS Enterprise SQL does and why > aren't you using that instead?

I used to think the replacement wouldn't have to do everyone MSSQL does - after all, nobody uses all of the features. But getting a core subset often isn't enough either - for example, Windows Azure SQL Database supports a core subset of features and datatypes, but I still constantly hear people say it's not enough to migrate their apps.

<comment><USER8> We were skeptical of Azure before NSA revelations, but now; "Hell No!".

Besides that, Microsoft has pretty well pissed off all but the most entrenched developers.

<comment><USER18> It seems to me that the group of "most entrenched developers" is still pretty big. In real life, it's the most common kind I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 64 GB of RAM is 100,000 times more than what Microsoft used to think people needed.

:D

Seriously, Oracle's biggest point of losing customers is when it's time to upgrade from Standard Edition to Enterprise Edition ... or else pick an alternative. I imagine something similar is true for Microsoft SQL Server.

</comment><comment><USER20> We figured out we weren't using most of SQL Server's features and didn't want the mental overhead of MSFT licensing. We switched to Postgresql and haven't looked back.

<comment><USER17> How big was the application (like how many developers were involved in the migration, data size, etc)?

How long did the migration take? Was the business okay with a feature freeze during that time, or did you take advantage of the switch to rewrite it too?

Did you have multiple connected systems, like ETL processes that also hit the database for other reporting systems?

Always curious about these kinds of issues because they seem to be what's holding businesses back.

<comment><USER20> It was several smaller apps written with most logic in the app (Hibernate) and had very little T-SQL/stored procs. We also weren't using any of the add-ons like SQL reporting, etc. The big commercial DBs have the advantages when you start using their reporting services, BI/OLAP stuff...and likely when you have several different groups as stakeholders in the process...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just took my first plunge into the caustic waters of SQL Server, being forced there because my company is deploying a vendor-supplied shipping system that only runs on it. Since the data set would be growing beyond 5GB, SQL Server Express was not an option. Coming from a Postgres world, Linux, Java world, the whole subject makes me sick.

I was disgusted to discover that my 200-strong Mac shop would have to spend $7,000 on SQL Server. I was even more disgusted when I discovered that Microsoft no longer lets me run it on the server I purchased, a dual 6-core machine, because now EVERY core is licensed individually, and you are FORCED to license every core in the machine. You can't just license some of them. That forced to run it in a VM, which is just asinine. And THAT means that I also had to purchase an additional Windows Server license to run a SEPARATE VM for IIS/ASP.NET.

And THEN (and this is the part that offends me most of all), I have to purchase a CAL for _every damn machine_ that will be using the shipping system, because it's not a public website, but a private web app.

<comment><USER22> SQL Server 2012 Express allows up to 10GB databases.

Also, you should only need CALs if your private web app is using Windows Authentication to make each database request on a per-user basis.

From [http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2942/understanding- the...](http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2942/understanding-the-sql- server-2012-licensing-model/)

"you have two choices: purchase per core licenses at $1,793 or purchase a server license at $898 and client access licenses at $209 per client."

So, if everyone is going through the web app and the web app is not using Windows Auth (you certainly don't sound like you need to use that) - <USER2> should be able to get SQL Server for ~ $1107.

<comment><USER21> The minimum cores you can license on MSSQL, whether on bare metal, or a VM, is 4. Wherever you run it, you must license all cores available to the OS. Had I chosen to run on bare metal, I would be forced to license 12 cores (6-core Xeon CPU x 2). This app requires SQL Server 2008 R2, so the 4GB limit applies. But I can't buy 2008 R2 anymore directly. I have to license 2012, and use my downgrade rights.

You are wrong on the Windows Authentication requirement. This has nothing to do with anything.

For MSSQL, you _must_ license the database per core if you are using it in a public web application, because you have an arbitrary number of users. And you _must_ license all cores in the machine. The VM is the only way to license only _some_ cores, namely, as many cores as are in your VM.

If you are using MSSQL in a private web application, you may choose CALs. However, if you do so, it doesn't matter how users authenticate. Each user or device needs a license. Microsoft is very clear about this. User count is just that: the number of users using the database, either directly, or through a web application which does everything through a single set of credentials. It's not system accounts. It's users or devices.

The same applies for Windows Server licenses. It doesn't matter how the user authenticates. If they are using a web-app hosted on a Windows Server, and that web-app is not publicly accessible (a login page does not count), then you need a CAL for each user or device.

<comment><USER22> You said "...because it's not a public website, but a private web app."

So, you do not have to license it per core. You can buy the $898 standard version and a few CALs - one for your web app and the rest for db admins.

Furthermore - even if there is some wording that says "if 100 people are hitting your private web app, you have to buy 100 CALS" \- just ignore it like everybody else does.

<comment><USER21> So, your argument amounts to this: Ignore Microsoft's licensing requirements, be a pirate, and just lie through your teeth.

No, this is not what "everybody else" does, especially those who must answer to shareholders, compliance personnel, and a management team that actually cares about staying within the bounds of the law, and not paying thousands of dollars in civil penalties should we be found in violation of a licensing agreement.

This is why we develop everything we can on an open source application stack. But we can't write everything from scratch. We aren't going to spend $100K+ developing an entire enterprise shipping system from scratch. That means we must purchase proprietary solutions that will cost us much less and have a greater ROI. That also means licensing compliance.

<comment><USER22> I only said one third of that. I also said that I don't think you're as restricted with intranet web apps as you are with public web apps, but I could be wrong...

Anyway - you can lie if you want to and I certainly won't judge you - but I _didn 't say_ you should lie or be a pirate. I said ignore the license. Big difference. (From your original post, it sounded to me like you probably don't have shareholders. Do you?)

Are you aware that vast numbers of small, medium and even larger size businesses are running SQL Server without the proper licenses? Are you also aware that Microsoft knowingly allows this to happen with a wink and a nod? Just like Windows and Office...until XP/2003 when they turned to activation. They didn't do that for SQL Server or many of their other products as far as I can remember. Could happen, but we'll see...

So yeah, advising you to do what millions of other business do too - I have no problem with that. (I also have no problem bribing the locals if that's the normal course of business. Don't think of me as immoral - I'm a realist. Big businesses squeeze everybody in one way or another, so if you can get away with it - it's great advice. The risk goes up the larger your company gets, obviously...)

Also, SQL Server 2012 is 100% backwards compatible with 2008 R2. So Express 2012 would definitely work (Microsoft is legendary for their backwards compatibility. Just sayin'.)

What kind of business are you running 200 Macs for anyway?

<comment><USER21> I'm aware people lie all the time. I'm aware that sometimes they get caught. I'm aware that when you owe millions of dollars to a bank, the auditors actually check this stuff.

"I didn't say you should lie or be a pirate. I said ignore the license."

And with that you lose the argument, and all credibility.

<comment><USER22> Ummm, okay whatever you say...

Enjoy the lame Mac-based "business" infrastructure that you built. Maybe if you'd gone with Windows to begin with, like every other business on the planet - you'd have saved enough money so you wouldn't be complaining about Microsoft's server licensing costs right now.

<comment><USER21> I bow to your manifestly superior entrepreneurial prowess. Obviously, I am too stupid to know how lame Macs are. That explains why my company has maintained a paltry year-to-year growth rate of not less than 50% for the last 15 years.

Oh, and for the record: "Am I bovvered? Look at my face. Am I bovvered though?"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lcm7Vp_p0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lcm7Vp_p0)

<comment><USER22> Please, excuse me if I don't believe you in the slightest. I'm sure though, if you tried really hard, you could even attribute your imaginary profits to your use of Macs. I'd love to see some of your hipster logic in detail.

Anyway so, say you're making good money and the only product that can apparently fill your needs properly requires SQL Server....and yet you're still complaining? With all that money you have? One would think you'd be happy to even have found a product that does exactly what your business needs.

Did you wonder though why there are no products for you that run on OS X? (It's a real mind-boggler for you, I'm sure.)

I'm still laughing at the fact that you've (allegedly) spent well over $100K on overpriced Apple hardware and yet you have the audacity to complain about spending a fraction of that on some software that you actually need. Really...thanks for the entertainment :)

<comment><USER21> Your a funny guy. You ready to call me Hitler, yet?

I never said our infrastructure was Mac-based. Our user machines are Macs. Our infrastructure is almost entirely Linux/Java/Postgres. We are in the printing and graphics arts business. Hey, imagine that, a Mac-dominated field - <USER3> Macs are so lame that no one could possibly have a good reason for using them, right?

There's a reason we don't use Mac servers (aside from a file server). They suck. Apple has sucked at servers ever since they abandoned the enterprise when they cancelled XServe (which we never used), and re-focused their server product for small business and home use.

We also run Windows terminal servers, press controllers and RIPs, legacy shipping systems, etc. Our CAD team uses Windows. I've been in this industry for 20 years, and have worked with pretty much everything out there in common use.

As for attributing our quite real profits to the use of Macs - don't be a moron. Our profits are the result of a world-class management team with whom I am privileged to work.

You are excellent at stereotyping, and obviously have a vendetta against Apple, and by extension, anyone using Apple products. I'm sorry for you. We are not mind-numbed robots. We have reasons for the business decisions that we make. And we, despite your consternation, have been just as successful as I have asserted.

And hipster? Wow. You don't know me in the least.

<comment><USER22> I certainly don't need to know you or even have a "vendetta" against Apple to have a good laugh at someone complaining about SQL Server pricing when they've happily paid Apple for the privilege of running OS X.

I'm going to let you have just one more "last word" here though because that seems to be important to you. Good night, my fellow comedian :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure I wrote about the history of the Enterprise vs. Standard decision making on my blog ([http://hal2020.com](http://hal2020.com)) but I can't find the post right now. I'm one of the people responsible for the original philosophy, and I don't think it's changed much. I'll go back and look for it again.

Basically you have three dynamics going on. The reality check of course is that the competition is Oracle and IBM DB2, and to a lesser extent open source databases, and various analytics products. Check out Oracle's price list and SQL Server Enterprise remains inexpensive. And Microsoft has introduced cheaper options to keep "free" open source options somewhat at bay, though the truth is that without multiplatform support there is nothing they can do to really capture that segment of the market.

Standard Edition exists because I couldn't convince my then boss that we should bifurcate it into a couple of sensible products, one slightly lower in capability and one slightly higher. The slightly higher one would have been a "Small Business Enterprise" edition that included many of the features of Enterprise but somehow retained differentiation from full Enterprise and would have been dramatically less expensive. I had a differentiation, but I don't recall what it was. The reason the bifurcation was rejected was that Standard was the edition that matched earlier versions and we didn't want to piss off customers by forcing them into a more expensive or less functional edition. And we didn't want to complicate the world with yet another two editions. So the status quo was maintained. BTW, this is a late 90s discussion.

The next dynamic is that there are a lot of features which cause a crapload to engineer but don't increase product volumes substantially. This is the primary driver of what becomes a candidate for Enterprise rather than Standard. When you are investing $10s of millions in a particular feature's engineering then you want some way to get a return on that investment. It really is that simple. Almost.

There is (or was) a re-analysis each version of what goes into each edition. My philosophy was that you introduce new enterprise features in the Enterprise Edition, then examine moving them into Standard Edition in subsequent releases. So there is a constant stream of new high-end features flowing into Enterprise, then as they become part of the mainstream thinking you push them (or appropriate subsets) into Standard. But that philosophy was never adopted and so the effort seems far more haphazard than I'd wanted it to be. Customer and competitive pressure will result in capabilities being pushed into Standard, but it doesn't seem to happen in a rational way.

Max memory size and high-availability features were the original differentiators when Enterprise Edition was introduced as a mid-life kicker for SQL Server 6.5. In the case of memory it was an actual technology differentiator back in the mid-90s on 32-bit machines. That it has survived through the 64-bit transition is shocking. But the reality check is likely that very few servers actually have more than 64GB,despite today's hardware prices, and thus Microsoft sees it as an acceptable differentiator. High Availability should remain a differentiator, though a simple subset does need to be in Standard. That the current subset is actually deprecated is, ummm, looney.

Customer demand for capabilities in editions other than Enterprise, or competitor moves, will lead to Microsoft changing the balance between Standard and Enterprise. But it isn't a few sophisticated DBAs/developers/etc. calling for the change. Or a niche or flash-in-the-plan competitor. It is an actual shift in market dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER24> Brent, to which db flavor do you recommend people migrate? Thoughts on Postgres? Btw, loved your vlog post on scaling SO's db layer.

<comment><USER17> > Brent, to which db flavor do you recommend people migrate? Thoughts on > Postgres?

I'm not the right guy to ask on that one - I just don't have enough experience with alternative platforms. You're in the right forum though - as long as you follow the news on HN, you'll do a good job of choosing the right data storage platform for your needs.

<comment><USER25> I wonder if that was sarcasm :)

If you spend too much time on HN, you'll end porting your RDBMS to Mongo DB or Voldemort.

<comment><USER24> Hipster News. I joke I joke, right tool for the right job, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This won't change because large companies don't like open source.

<comment><USER27> At these prices it seems like you could take Postgres, wrap it in a support contract, and call it EnterpriSQL and still charge less than MS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone beat you to it: [http://www.enterprisedb.com/](http://www.enterprisedb.com/)

<comment><USER7> Actually, most of their prices are "Call us!"[1]

Looks to be at least $4000/socket/year. So, more money than SQL Server Standard, less than SQL Server Enterprise.

1: [http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/subsc...](http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/subscriptions)

<comment><USER28> SQL Server Standard is $2K per core - with > 4 cores per socket, things flip around a bit.

I'm not a SQL licensing guru; so perhaps I'm confused as well...

<comment><USER7> So let's say 4 cores @ $2L, $8K. Then you pay like 35% a year for software assurance; so you'd end up with $2800 a year.

No one buys MS servers products at the flat retail price. They work out plenty of long-term strategies to help you pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm sorry, but if you have to read a feature grid to figure out what a product does, you've already lost.

Also, isn't this when you look at Postgres or MySQL and go... licensing cost, what licensing cost?

<comment><USER30> I don't think this is a useful mindset. Grids are very handy comparison tools. Also, licensing costs are only part of the overall cost of running a service. 'Serious businesses' will not run on a piece of software that is not supported by either a vendor or their own staff. Not everyone is comfortable fixing bugs in their DB platform, or relying on the community to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder which edition StackExchange use?

<comment><USER17> > I wonder which edition StackExchange use?

Enterprise for the memory and the ability to do online reindexing. They were in the BizSpark program, so they basically got free licensing.

<comment><USER31> And they are on Software Assurance, right?

<comment><USER17> Yes, when you exit BizSpark, you can just start paying maintenance on the servers you were using during the program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> saved this post for just another reason why open source is going to take over the world

</comment><comment><USER33> 2014 Standard Edition only?))

</comment><comment><USER13> I assume that the linked blog intended to link to [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc645993(v=sql.120)....](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc645993\(v=sql.120\).aspx)

SQL Server has been getting much more expensive because their current userbase is captive (meaning the cost, complexity and risk of migrating to another database system is enormous because of a heavy integration with SQL Server specific features). I don't imagine a large number of new systems are being built around SQL Server, apart from those at shops that are _already_ captive.

It is an excellent database, but I do get a chuckle that by far the greatest benefit being pushed for SQL Server 2014 is in memory tables (which is something that SQL had -- at least for temporary tables -- back in the 6.5/7.0 era, but then had removed). While it is hardly identical, an approach we did on one team is to have SQL Server take 64GB (note that it is per instance, and most server deploys see many instances on a single server, so that isn't quite as prohibitive as it might sound) and then have an enormous RAMDISK on which tempdb would be created. Made use of the RAM, and saved enormous amounts of IO (tempdb is the weak link of almost all SQL Server platforms, as everything hits it, especially if you make use of snapshot isolation / row versioning).

<comment><USER34> All tables in sqlserver will be memory resident if there is available ram. But it happens dynamically, or is non-deterministic if you like. I assume the in memory feature allows you to force a table into ram and force it to stay there.

<comment><USER17> > All tables in sqlserver will be memory resident if there is available ram.

Right, but Hekaton introduces the option of never requiring your tables to hit the disk if you don't want them to. Think data warehouse staging tables, web session state, or data marts that are easily recreated from source data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Didn't read. Used the word Seriously in the first paragraph.

Grow up noobs. Holy fuck!

<comment><USER17> > Used the word Seriously in the first paragraph.

Actually, that was the second paragraph.

<comment><USER9> Don't feed the trolls.</comment></comment></comment>


Is developing a recommendation technology a good business idea? - <AUTHOR>

I know that there are quite a few people who work on these technologies in context of ecommerce websites and have made some strides e.g. baynote, strands, amazon (mighty) and directedge. Each of them claim to have their own secret sauce and still there is some room in the market. Do these recommendation engines consider values of a person(measurable by actions, behavior,q&a) and personality in making recommendation?<p>And the last thing is , is it a good business idea to get into? Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome. <comment><USER2> Maybe you can clarify what you mean by 'values of a person' which the recommendation engines are considering. You mention measurable by actions, behaviors. Wouldn't you consider Amazons recommendations engine behavior based. They bought the book, wrote a review, others rated the review, etc. etc.

To use Pandora as an example, they do a ton of metrics to measure what a song sounds like, however their most valuable metrics and the reason the system keeps getting better is the collaborative filtering Pandora receives from the thumbs-up/thumbs-down of users.

So, unless you can give an example of other values, I'm not sure I'm understanding that part of your question.

As far as a business idea, many have tried to sell access to a recommendation system to run on customer data. I think most of these companies fail because recommendation systems are difficult to measure, and look like a high cost to customers. There are lots of recommendation algorithms available which can fairly easily be built into most solutions.

You mention strands which I haven't looked at in a long time, and now is a 'digital log for active people'.

Take a look at echonest. they've been around for quite a while, and may be one of the better music recommendation companies out there, but I wouldn't exactly say they are hugely successful.

I think there are lots of 'good enough' implementations of a custom recommendation engine that can be made by most companies who are already creating value with products or information.

If you have an idea or a market you are looking to build a recommendation engine for, I'd suggest building the entire company, and not just the recommendation engine. Recommendations are not a unique proposition in most markets.

<comment><AUTHOR> @pedalpete great suggestion about why not build the whole company around it rather than just the recommendation system. I will seriously consider this.

Thanks, Rohit</comment></comment>


Building a blazing fast ETC2 compressor - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@duhroach/building-a-blazing-fast-etc2-compressor-307f3e9aad99 <comment><USER2> > For a 1024x1024 image, that's 256x256 blocks, where each one can > independently be one of 10 separate formats. In total, that's > 1065536 potential combinations for the encoder to search through > in order to find the best-possible-quality image.

This math is misleading. ETC2 is a GPU texture compression format, so blocks are accessed independently-- each 4x4 chunk is entirely represented by 8 or 16 bytes of data. That means there's only 655,360 different possibilities to search through, assuming each chunk is encoded independently using the best method. That works out to ~10ms per chunk for brute force, which is slow but not _completely_ crazy.

Here's a slide deck with a generic overview on what ETC2 provides: [https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/20...](https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2012-siggraph- opengl-es-bof/Ericsson-ETC2-SIGGRAPH_Aug12.pdf)

And here's one with detailed information on how ETC2 encodes blocks: [http://www.graphicshardware.org/previous/www_2007/presentati...](http://www.graphicshardware.org/previous/www_2007/presentations/strom- etc2-gh07.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an image compressor (I guess), but it doesn't use any of the words I would expect to see in an article about one: prediction, rate-distortion, residuals. Guess they haven't talked to the ffmpeg/vp8 people down the hall.

I'd complain about PSNR - optimizing for that gets you blurry/banded images - but the codec looks too simple for that to really matter.

<comment><USER4> "Prediction, rate-distortion and residuals" sounds suspiciously like you're talking about a video format, not an image format.

And this isn't just any image format, it's a _texture format_. That comes with some additional limitations that will be foreign to the ffmpeg/vp8 people down the hall. Texture formats are made to be decodable in hardware, and are usually fixed-rate and support random lookup. ETC2 divides the picture into fixed-size blocks, and each block is represented with the same amount of bits. You can't predict the block based on surrounding blocks, and you can't save bits on easy to compress blocks and spend them on the difficult ones.

<comment><USER3> > "Prediction, rate-distortion and residuals" sounds suspiciously like you're > talking about a video format, not an image format.

All video formats make better image formats than the image ones do, because people expect video codecs to get replaced faster. They just call them I-frames instead. H.265 is a better JPEG and ffv1 is a much better PNG.

> Texture formats are made to be decodable in hardware, and are usually fixed- > rate and support random lookup.

Yeah, that's the major difference, and of course it's 2D random lookup so linear pixels are a very bad choice too. I don't know much about this area, but OS X WindowServer used to store all its bitmaps RLE-compressed and handle them straight in the compositor…

> You can't predict the block based on surrounding blocks, and you can't save > bits on easy to compress blocks and spend them on the difficult ones.

There's different kinds of prediction in codecs - inside a block (intra prediction, he calls it "block type") and from neighboring blocks. I would've figured the second one doesn't happen too, but then what does he mean by "proto-block-chains"? Seems like he's trying to talk about dynamic programming for intra prediction, but actually means intra prediction heuristics.

Rate-distortion doesn't matter if you can't control rate, yeah. But "residual" exists - it's just the pixel values not guessed by prediction.

<comment><USER4> There is no intra prediction. The proto-block-chains are just an optimization to choose which encodings will be tried for each block. An alternative is exhaustive search for each block, which is feasible, but slow.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get your early signups? - <AUTHOR>

What things worked for you? What didn't? What would you recommend doing and not doing? <comment><USER2> Betalist (which others mentioned) seems to deliver at least 300ish signups for a generally useful service. Unfortunately my latest project is targeting only Heroku users who need to install SSL [1] so I needed to do something else.

The best thing I found was actually Twitter. I setup a search column in Tweetdeck that would pop an alert on my desktop if anyone tweeted "Heroku" and "SSL" in the same tweet. I'd then just @message them and ask if they'd want to try the alpha (Heroku has strict phases with increasing numbers of users you need to onboard before they'll release the add-on to General Availability).

If someone agreed to be an early tester, I'd try to "upsell" them into taking the time to do a Skype onboarding call with me where I'd just watch them in real time try and add a SSL cert to their app. This was likely the fastest and most productive thing I've ever done to rapidly improve the product, hugely benefical.

1 - [https://addons.heroku.com/expeditedssl](https://addons.heroku.com/expeditedssl)

</comment><comment><USER3> We allocated a small marketing budget for the following:

1.) Offer promo codes to increase conversions

2.) Hire a writer and get quality content

3.) Provided incentive for users with a referral

4.) Email marketing

</comment><comment><USER4> We tried a bunch of methods, getting press, cold calling, newsletters, blogs, social media, etc. We learned that the most important thing is knowing who your target first customers persona should be and why (e.g. nicolasd, in another comment here, identified their Venn diagram). The more that you can narrow and define that persona, the easier it will be for you to learn about their habits and then get exposed at those places and speak to their needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Last year we started a project (didn't work out) but we had a quit cool method to get emails and sign ups. In our case, we used the data of 500px - you can read about it here: [http://saloon.io/geek-approach-to- marketing/](http://saloon.io/geek-approach-to-marketing/)

Even if you can't use the same strategy, maybe it gives you an idea for your customer field :)

<comment><USER6> Really neat! Why did you have to shutdown the website?

Edit: I'm referring to the customer research website you guys made, mentioned in the post.

<comment><USER5> Oh maybe we this isn't clear enough in the post, but we shut down our photo- sharing-tool (didn't work out - no retention). The "customer research" tool was only build for our photo-sharing-tool to find photographers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Betalist, handful of beta and nonbeta startup directories, reddit and HN.

If its a good product that will get you +250 users (we got about 330 while we were still in private beta).

Beyond that we sank a couple hundred in ads at a $0.2 CPA to gain our beta base. Then a month later we got placement on techcrunch, venture beat and a few other major outlets while still in private beta

<comment><USER8> How did you get $.20 CPA?</comment></comment>


CSS3 Media Queries Becomes Official, CSS4 Media Queries Takes Shape - <AUTHOR> http://www.css3.info/css3-media-queries-becomes-official-w3c-recommendation-css4-media-queries-takes-shape/

<comment><USER2> The hover media feature sounds extremely useful.

I like the hover pseudo selector. I like using it to add transitional color changes, and for menus.

This will allow me to have this capability, but also design for touch devices. Brilliant.

I'm guessing CSS4 will be where we stop thinking of responsive design as mobile/pad/desktop, and more like /featureless-small/feature-full-small/etc- medium/etc-large.</comment>


Ask HN: How do people with extreme social anxiety get internships? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm a third-year Computer Science student and all my friends already have multiple internships and jobs under their belt. I want to intern but the fear of rejection is overwhelming. I know this is a very first-world problem, but do you have any advice? <comment><USER2> I just toss a lot of applications around online. What sort of engagement have you been getting so far (phone interviews, onsite, etc)?</comment>


Would you have spotted the fraud? - <AUTHOR> http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/would-you-have-spotted-the-fraud/

<comment><USER2> Given how entrenched the ATM card standards are, it will be hard to make fundamental changes to improve security. If one could replace all ATMs in existence, one obvious solution is to issue RNG cards. Perhaps, to make them easy to use, the challenge/response could be electronic ala the "Java Ring" technologies (from TI) advocated by Sun a decade ago.

What could be done given that the fundamental use of an ATM machine (put in card, type in PIN) can't be changed overnight?

On machines capable of displaying pictures, users could be shown what the insertion slot ought to look like so they could compare.

A shroud could be placed over the keypad to reduce the viewing angles available to a pinhole camera.

Could smart phones be used to provide a "have something" security model? Let's say you paid $0.25 less per ATM transaction if you used your bank's iPhone app to generate a unique pin for every visit.

What else could be done simply?

<comment><USER3> > What else could be done simply?

A simple thing that is actually being done: ATMs pulling in the card with a randomly changing speed. This makes it very hard for the skimmer to get a reliable reading. The actual reading by the ATM is done during the second phase, inside the ATM.

<comment><USER4> That's something companies like JPMC and Citi are doing. But there are tens of thousands of crappy Tranax deli-style ATMs out there that aren't going to change.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I called my bank about this annoying "feature" and was told it is for security reasons, but never understood why (and they were unwilling or unable to inform me). Enlightening. This functionality is very common in Australia, at least in Sydney.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simple answer: almost certainly not. That article inspired me to audit the last few months of my checking account. Scary.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another thought... When someone steals account information using such methods, it is unlikely the ATM owner/operator who is responsible for losses. After all, it would be really hard to prove conclusively that it was the fault of a particular ATM's lack of security that led to future thefts. Perhaps strong correlation could be shown, but the legal costs associated with reimbursement likely outweigh the efforts, at least in the short term.

Do ATM owners have any incentive to prevent thefts? I suppose those who process mostly the transactions of their own customers (BoA in SF, etc.) have the greatest incentive as the problem is their own.

<comment><USER7> I was just a victim of ATM fraud (presumably by skimmer) and according to the detective who handled the police report, there is almost no cooperation from banks and card providers. It is not in their interest that you know how much fraud there is out there. I have heard figures of over 8-10% in the US. That's a lot of overhead to be passing onto the consumer.

<comment><USER8> 8-10% of what?

<comment><USER7> Total transaction value of all ATM/credit card usage. Lots of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm always terribly suspicious of ATMs--especially those off-brand ones that pop up in random establishments that don't take debit cards nowadays. I understand some businesses just don't want to pay the fees behind accepting debit cards, but I'm increasingly becoming of the ilk where if you don't accept debit/credit I'm not shopping with you. Sure, you have folks that will handle your card and still do nefarious things with it, but at least you're not walking up to a machine prone to this kind of thing.

And for the first skimmer, I'd be suspicious of why they had to put a diagram to show you how to use what should be a universally understood sort of thing now. Slot? Card. The others, no, I wouldn't have caught those. :\

<comment><USER10> The 'diagram' was a plastic plaque designed to contain/hide the electronics responsible for storing the skimmed data.

<comment><USER9> I know. But, anyone should be suspicious of why that's even needed.

<comment><USER11> I think a slot for a credit/debit card isn't terribly intuitive, especially if the reader only accepts one orientation of the magnetic stripe, in which case a diagram is almost necessary.

There are readers that have asymmetric widths on the entry mechanism (strangely worded, but looks like [1]). This is an extremely subtle hint regarding the orientation (magnetic stripe goes with the wider part), that I would imagine the majority of people don't pick up on.

You might also look at this article [2] to see that legitimate ATMs do offer diagrams indicating the proper orientation of a magnetic stripe card.

[1] [http://consumerist.com/images/31/2009/04/041909-008-shell- le...](http://consumerist.com/images/31/2009/04/041909-008-shell-legit-card- slot-2.png) [2] [http://consumerist.com/2009/04/heres-what-a-card-skimmer- loo...](http://consumerist.com/2009/04/heres-what-a-card-skimmer-looks-like- on-an-atm.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious about the video monitoring on the machines that have been tampered with. What do these security cameras normally see? Do the perps block the camera so it can't see them installing their hardware? If so, couldn't some program be written to determine that the image of a person is abnormal (measure the amount of "whitespace"" around a subject) and trigger some sort of real-time alarm?

<comment><USER13> I don't think most of the video cameras on ATM machines are actually pointed at the machine; they're designed to capture the user's face.

I would imagine that gluing a piece of plastic onto an ATM can look just like a regular transaction - person walks up, looks at the screen while their hands are doing something below.

<comment><USER5> It likely would be difficult to do a transaction and modify the ATM at the same time however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It depends how well glued solid it is.

Ever since I read about these a few years ago I got into the habit of pushing and trying to move around parts of the ATM, like windows, the card reader, brochure boxes, etc to see if they can come off.

Also, inspect by touch for places where a camera or stray wire could hide, that are out of view, under perhaps a display sign, brochure box, on the upper part of the keypad that might be hidden from view.

Also, use other hand to cover up fingers when entering pin.

<comment><USER15> I wonder if there's a risk that some random bank security reviewer would consider this to be tampering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've started to pull and wiggle the card slot a bit before sticking the card in. From these photo's, I have the impression these skimming devices should be a little 'looser' than the regular thing. However, it may be completely useless.

My second countermeasure is screening the number pad with my hand while entering my PIN. They can probably make out the PIN from hand movements, but I'm hoping it'll be too much trouble for them and they will just move on to the next, easier, target.

<comment><USER17> I've mastered the ability to type my PIN with three fingers all hitting different buttons each time (but only one, and it differs for each number, actually hitting it hard enough to register). With the right recording and enough time I doubt it would stop a truly committed thief, but it makes me feel safer.

If they crack that, the $20 I keep in my ATM account to prevent over-drawn fees are all theirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My bank (ANZ) has new ATMs with prominent, translucent green housings around the card slot that flash when the card is inserted or removed. It's a very distinctive design, and one that I feel must have been crafted specifically to mitigate these kinds of attacks.

<comment><USER19> I've noticed some newer ATMs around these parts started doing that as well. However, is is of absolutely no use without associated customer education. The machines don't even say "here is what the slot should look like, please check it before entering your PIN." There were even reports of people calling the police thinking this security feature was a skimming device, since it looks so out of place and different from what's usually on the machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's a video that shows how easy it is for people to set these up.

<http://www.wimp.com/cashscam/>

</comment><comment><USER21> There is actually a very simple solution that a bank could use to mitigate this issue - just send a SMS everytime there is an ATM withdrawal.

I believe the bank I've just moved to (<http://www.kotak.com/>) does do this. It sends me an SMS for every transaction done so far (I haven't used the ATM yet).

</comment><comment><USER22> That scared the shit out of me, because I'm a Citibank customer, and I live in Woodland Hills. In fact, I just noticed that they just put a giant opaque enclosure around their ATMs for privacy recently, wonder if this is why.

OC, luckily, I never actually use the Citi ATMs, thank god.

</comment><comment> sid- Well windows laptops have fingerprint scanners to log you in these days. So a fingerprint scan and pin ought to be enough ?

<comment><USER23> Revocation would suck though. And I understand you leave your fingerprints everywhere you go, so it would probably be "easy" to steal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Damn.. time to change my pin.

</comment><comment><USER25> In Brazil almost all ATMs have negative inserts instead of positive ones.

<http://tadificil.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/caixa.jpg>

instead of raising the sides it usually have a insert in the middle for your fingers.

even tough the raised ones are starting to popup.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative merit/moderation systems for message boards? - <AUTHOR> This is neither a critique nor praise of any message board system, including this one.
I wonder whether any significant attempts have been made around overcoming the limits I see below. Have they succeeded or failed, and why? What are the alternatives?
Observations:
1. Anonymity: Anonymity contributed to /b/'s creativity and originality. /b/ was quite funny at some point, and there were some interesting discussions to be had. Lots of great music and book tips to be found. There was and still is no merit system. Things went to shit around the time that the idea of "newfags" came in, and when those "newfags" formed the "We Are Legion" identity, losing the original anonymity. It seems that a concentration of power, identity and ideas can arise even under anonymity.
2. Merit: HN solves merit to some extent. Points on comments are not immediately visible; the colour just changes a bit. Flagged (and thus hidden) posts deal with flamewars quite well, but at what cost? I would personally prefer accountability, and I would like to see the content regardless. Like in any competitive system, power concentrates in a small minority of ideas.
3. Moderation: Moderation on HN is quite opaque. This opacity actually seems to enforce staying in line, being "civil". Fair enough. One is never quite sure when or where the flag comes from, when or why the article ends up on the front page. HN must rightly maintain its reputation.
Ideas and questions:
How to build a moderated, unmoderated or self-moderating message board system with a diversity of ideas?
How to build a system where people can leave their egos at the door, can be open about their opinions, but also open to changes of their ideas?
Is this possible, and should it be possible?
Could ideas of genetic algorithms or other sorts of randomness be applied to perturb concentrations of power in moderation and ideas, and could this be done in a decentralised fashion, or is decentralisation necessary? Maybe what we have here is simply the most fit solution? <comment><USER2> To see the [dead] comments, you should enable "showdead" in your profile [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=0db532a0](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=0db532a0) [Warning, it's full of crap.] If you find something interesting you can "vouch" it (and in some extreme case, send an email to the mods firstname.lastname@example.com )</comment>


US factory orders plunge 14.4% as economy grinds to halt - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/fe28179fc16b9400ad837394fc8ab8aa <comment></comment>


Hiring technical people - what HR are doing wrong and how to fix it. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonantman.com/2010/03/hiring-technical-people/

<comment><USER2> Very good essay, not just on the specifics (many of which you'll be familiar with) and looking at the problem from both sides, but in this conclusion that getting it right is important now:

"[ Logic would dicate this would be an employer's market], [h]owever that doesn't mean that employers don't need to worry about making the advertisement attractive and descriptive. Actually, I'd say it's the opposite – since I know that there will likely be hundreds of other applicants, I only send a resume in for jobs that I think I have a very good chance of getting. I'm sure I've skipped over good positions just because the description didn't communicate that to me – and I'm sure I'm not alone.*"</comment>


Elsevier Awarded U.S. Patent for "Online Peer Review System and Method" - <AUTHOR> http://www.infodocket.com/2016/08/30/elsevier-awarded-u-s-patent-for-online-peer-review-system-and-method/ <comment><AUTHOR> This just makes me furious. How can the patent office be so stupid as awarding this kind of patent? In particular when the prior art is everywhere: EasyChair, HotCRP, SciencesConf, EditorialManager…

<comment> T-A Maybe they hate peer review. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best Hackintosh laptop for ios app developers? - sahin-boydas <comment><AUTHOR> Don't bother with a Hackintosh. I've spent time R&D iDeneb and custom Tony Mac OS X builds, and realize it's way easier (and cheaper, especially in terms of time) to simply buy an entry level Macbook Air or Pro (honestly an Air is fine enough if you're not doing video editing, I got by using one for 3+ years before I got a Pro).

To get the best deal you can either purchase from eBay (use cashback at TopCashback.com and no tax) or try to find a store that lets you use gift cards purchased at ~10+% discount. You can get gift cards at [https://www.giftcardgranny.com](https://www.giftcardgranny.com) and if you shop at a store like Best Buy you can probably get the EDU discount code with a fake EDU from [https://secure.californiacolleges.edu/Home/Create_an_Account...](https://secure.californiacolleges.edu/Home/Create_an_Account/Create_an_Account.aspx).

Hackintosh really not worth it unless you're doing serious video editing.

<comment><USER2> You can also get a refurbished macbook pro or imac straight from apple for less than a new macbook air [http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac](http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac)

<comment><USER3> The Apple Store matches prices, up to 10% iirc. Fry's electronics email prices are about the same 15% discount as the refurbished apple products at your link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having used a hackintosh (Surface Pro) as a secondary machine to my Mac, I don't recommend it for everyone.

* You won't be able to update to the latest patches without possibly breaking the build. There's a possibly you need to re-hack your device every year. Xcode is tied directly to Mac OS X builds. For example, you can't download 8.1 unless your own Sierra right now.

* WiFi / Bluetooth didn't work for my particular hackintosh, but it'll be better for others.

* Graphics were a bit buggy (again not a problem depending on the device).

* Login would fritz out on occasion so I'd have to boot into safe mode to fix it. Could be my particular device, but random problems are common with hackintoshs.

* When it worked it was amazing, touchscreen worked as well.

* iMessage / FaceTime will not work unless you hack it and provide it your Mac's serial number. Do this at your own risk. This could essentially break iMessage on your original mac. I think I ended up emailing them or something to get it looked into / fixed.

* App Store has some issues as well as lot of things are tied into the serial number of the Mac.

* If you enjoy fiddling and hacking on things, I'd recommend this. It was a good learning experience for me and I don't regret it, but I wouldn't want to do it again. I ended up having to modify some kernel files to get some things working. Basically a lot of tinkering from one patch to another.

Having done it once, I wouldn't go the hackintosh route again. While I enjoyed the process, the amount of time I spent to get it work wasn't worth it for me. If price was an issue, it's definitely a good route.

<comment><USER5> You don't need Sierra to run 8.1

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't recommend using a hackintosh for your professional development.

That being said, building a hackintosh rig and getting it to work is really fun to play around with!

<comment><USER7> > That being said, building a hackintosh rig and getting it to work is really > fun to play around with!

In other words, doing this will eat up countless hours so you should only by doing this if you want (i.e., have time for) a new hobby, not because you think the new MBPs lack of an Esc key is going to ruin your productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've tried many Hackintosh options out there years ago specifically to get started developing on iOS. While I think many machines can run Mac, I gave up on Hackintosh for iOS development mainly because:

1\. Opportunity cost - The time you spend on hackintosh could be spent exploring the iOS SDK. It is an extensive and amazing SDK to work with.

2\. Need to embrace the platform - I once hated the fact that you had to get a Mac to develop for iOS. But then a light clicked in my head: If you aren't willing to get a Mac, you'd never appreciate the iOS platform and always hate it for not being more open, or not supporting many languages, etc.

<comment><USER9> Why would needing to purchase the hardware somehow change your opinion on hating iOS for not being more open?

<comment><USER10> I think the idea is that the tying of the software and hardware is a cornerstone of Apple's proprietary platform control efforts, so if you're upset about that, you're likely to be upset about the other aspects too.

<comment><USER9> Right, exactly... how would I stop being upset by being forced into buying expensive hardware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've compared a load of new laptops on my spreadsheet: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nnmI9pN9rBMBJHE1gqYA...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nnmI9pN9rBMBJHE1gqYAPfbnfJiZFdA8voah8O2nmNk/edit?usp=sharing)

Compares CPU Passmark score, GPU Flops, Display gamut Rec 2020.

Might be of interest.

Hackintosh laptops though are hit and miss. I'm not sure if Apple even have kexts for modern Nvidia GPUs?

EDIT: There are no Macs packing Nvidia 10xx GPUs. So yes, there might be a problem.

<comment><USER12> NVidia has kexts available for Mac that support pretty much all of their modern cards.

<comment><USER11> There are no Macs packing Nvidia 10xx GPUs.

I had problems in the past because I was using a Hackintosh with an AMD card that didn't work with OSX at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just buy a used Mac, save some cash. I'm running a mid 2012 and the things still super fast.

</comment><comment><USER14> How wise and straightforward is it to run OS/X in a virtual machine on a Windows laptop? How recent a version can you run, and what's the best setup to use? What limitations does it have, and what kind of graphics cards can it take advantage of, if any?

For my purposes, I only need to build apps with XCode, not do anything graphically intensive.

<comment><USER15> The entire UI is GPU accelerated, which isn't supported in a VM. It's pretty painful to use for more than 2-3 minutes.

<comment><USER16> Have you used Beamoff to disable beam sync? Once it runs, the performance is drastically improved.

<comment><USER14> Wow I never heard of beam sync or beamoff -- great tip! Googling for that found some other useful vm performance stuff.

Looks like it might only work in older operating systems since El Capitan is based on Metal instead of OpenGL.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/3l3mp2/anyone_kn...](https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/3l3mp2/anyone_know_how_to_turn_off_beamsync_on_el_capitan/)

[https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/improving- yosem...](https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/improving-yosemite-vm- performance-in-vmware-fusion/)

[http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/302424-yosemite-on- vm...](http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/302424-yosemite-on-vmware- unusable/)

[http://www.chromescreen.com/disable-beamsync-at-osx- login/](http://www.chromescreen.com/disable-beamsync-at-osx-login/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I realize this is not what you asked for, but the non-touch entry level macbook pro is in apple stores now.

Go check it out before you take on the headache that is working on a hackintosh.

It's still somehow better built than dell's XPS and the space gray color is nice to boot. Since it's the "entry level", it doesn't have a touch strip and instead has a full function row, including the esc key. It felt fast from my first impressions and the aspect ratio is 16:10 (thanks for the correction), which you still can't get on windows pc other than the surface book.

<comment><USER18> That's a decent machine, but amusingly the Macbook Air has more ports and potentially a better keyboard. Depending on your actual needs, the 13" MBA may be quite sufficient for $500 less.

I wouldn't really want it as a primary computer if you're _only_ doing iOS development, but as an ultraportable that can run Xcode, sure.

<comment><USER17> Agree to disagree I guess.

I always buy hubs/docking stations anyway - you can run 2 5k displays off that tiny macbook (don't think you can with the MBA, could be wrong) and thunderbolt has good speed for all your peripherals.

For me personally the deal killer is the touchpad and aspect ratio. PC touchpads are still mechanical and you still have to click on the bottom 2/3rds of the pad to get a crisp click. Similarly, there is only one 16:10 pc laptop out there that I know of which is the surface book. A nice machine, but I personally don't like the detachable/touch screen stuff yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are a professional app developer (you make a living out of it) then Hackintosh is a bad alternative. It can get your developer account, and apps, banned by Apple. On top of that, you can get sued.

<comment><USER20> Provide sources.

Multiple acquittances have been working on custom built Hackintoshes for years without _any_ issues from Apple.

<comment><USER21> Previous success does not mean it's a good or advisable idea. This is the kind of thing companies will tolerate until they decide not too and then drop a horde of lawyers on a few 'examples'.

<comment><USER22> I guess it's just a matter risk tolerance then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would honestly just buy a used Oct 2013 15" MBP instead. A used one should run you under $1000 now that the new MBPs are coming out.

I currently have one that I bought in 2014, and I can drive a 4k display (Dell P2715Q) with a large storyboard file open in xcode, along with the laptop display itself at the highest scaled resolution. I think this is a pretty good benchmark for whether or not a system is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't know if it's the 'best' but I've got El Capitan working smoothly on my second-hand Thinkpad T440. The trackpad and display are crap compared to a MacBook Pro, but hey, it was less than a sixth of the price for similar specs.

Took about an evening of tinkering and reading the TonysMac86 forums (really helpful community) to set up and has been trouble-free since. Sleep/wake works with the lid and it even supports dual batteries. Battery life is good too.

Hackintoshing a laptop is harder than a custom-built desktop as you don't have much choice over the hardware. For example often the internal wifi and bluetooth cards aren't supported - I have to use a USB dongle on mine. However, there's some good resources on TonysMac on which laptops are the most compatible.

</comment><comment><USER25> Please, please don't kill me - I know there are people who love the Mac Ecosystem (I have a macbook too!) and don't like linux, but I switched to Mint Linux with Cinnamon Desktop, and its pretty darn great. For people who live in containers, virtualenv, node, and many other types of dev, you will feel at home in no time. I bet there is a slider of where the things you like about mac go from unix like environment to "it just works" and if you are even a bit on the "it just works" side, don't go with linux, it will be an adventure. A worthy adventure, but maybe not profitable for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you're an existing Mac user, the recommendations here to "just get a Mac" may be better, but I'll throw another possibility into the mix:

I ran OSX in VirtualBox for a good while in order to use some locked-in iOS dev tools. It was slow, but that was largely just because my underlying machine wasn't very new at the time, it was easy to install, and I never encountered any stability issues. It would free you up to get the best machine without worrying about hw compat.

Disclaimer: This was OSX Lion days. Have not tried recently. Ymmv.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, considering that all iOS devices now have P3 Wide Color displays, you'll need a computer with a wide color screen to accurately create and preview content for iOS.

To my knowledge, aside from the new MacBooks, Retina iMacs and the new Surfaces your only options would be external 10-bit-per-channel monitors, and those can be expensive.

The Razer Blade Pro has a wider gamut too but as far as I know it's Adobe RGB and not DCI-P3.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'll go against the grain here and say that I used a HP Probook 4530s as my sole development 'Mac' while I was in high school and shipped three iOS apps with it.

Was it time consuming to set it up? Yes. Did it break after most updates? Yes.

That said, when you're working as a dishwasher, a used $250 HP is much more realistic than a $1300 Macbook.

After second year of university, I bought a 2015 MBP and haven't looked back.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm getting a Dell XPS 13 9350 and will replace the wifi card with a DW1560. The guide that explains the details about installing macOS on this machine is at [https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell- xps-13-9350-si...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell- xps-13-9350-sierra.204730/)

<comment><USER30> Why replace the wifi card if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER29> Apparently the wifi card comes with the laptop does not yet work with macOS.

Both are 802.11ac capable however. I think the DW1560 is a bit slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just use the real Macbook. If you are honestly that upset about the touchbar without having seen it at all, then buy a 2015 model.

</comment><comment><USER32> As much as I love the idea of playing around with getting hackintosh-es working, does anyone else feel like it's a little backwards for software developers to use unlicensed software to produce (presumably) profitable software? I'm all for hacking for fun, but doing it to make business seems unethical. Just my $0.02...

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm considering the same. But since you need a Mac to build a Hackintosh, I decided to buy a used Mac for $500. I'll still probably build my Hackintosh, but It'll be for fun hacking reasons. And it's a NUC so I don't expect it to be too challenging.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would say a good start is tonymacx86 - Hugely valuable resource fro all things hackintosh:

[https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/laptop- compatibility.114/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/laptop- compatibility.114/)

</comment><comment><USER35> www.macstadium.com just rent one online, much easier!

</comment><comment><USER36> Buddybuild if you don't want to use OSX</comment>


Vaclav Smil: 'Growth must end. Our economist friends don't seem to realise that' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists <comment><USER2> Hint : they're not our friends.</comment>