Apple releases software fix for MacBook Pro slowdown - <AUTHOR> https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/07/apple-releases-software-fix-for-macbook-pro-slowdown/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be working as expected. Here is a graph [0] of the Intel Power Gadget while I ran Cinebench. They are not the same length because it took longer before the update and I cut out the parts before and after. Pretty striking difference IMHO and it never went below base clock after the update. I was worried about my i9 but I'm not anymore. Also if anyone is wondering it went from 780cb -> 860cb but I wouldn't put too much stock in that since I've got other apps open (same apps for both tests) and 3 external monitors attached. Some people report 1100cb score after the fix.

[0] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/y30x13mi6ozhg0k/10.16.3S-Fix.png?d...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/y30x13mi6ozhg0k/10.16.3S-Fix.png?dl=0)

<comment> white-flame But how do the temperatures differ before & after the update?

<comment><USER3> From what I've read, it's stable at ~92°C.[0]

That seems damn high to me, but then I'm most familiar with desktops and servers, where you can cool far more aggressively. So is long term ~92°C hard on CPUs?

0) [https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-macbook-pro-speed- throttling...](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-macbook-pro-speed-throttling- patch-tested/)

<comment><USER4> My old MacBook Pro I had for more than 5 years is 90% of the time around 100C. Whenever I'm working or playing. It's still working good.

<comment><USER5> 100C is the boiling point of water.

<comment><USER6> I hope there is no water whatsoever in your chips.

<comment><USER7> Does liquid cooling count

<comment><USER8> That's not in the chips. The liquid in a cooling loop doesn't get to the temperature of the actual die if it did it wouldn't actually be cooling the die any more. Also the temp reading are down in the die itself and there's a gradient between the die -> heatspreader -> cooling block (air or water) -> 'cooling medium' (ie air/water).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we've > identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts > the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy > thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today's macOS > High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to > any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new > systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% > faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as > shown in the performance results on our website.

Any idea what "digital key" could mean here?

<comment><USER10> I don't see how you can get more cooling with a firmware change when the fans are already going at full speed.

Does that mean the whole unit will now run hotter before it starts to throttle? How is this going to impact some of those bad solder joints MacBooks are famous for?

<comment><USER11> > _I don 't see how you can get more cooling with a firmware change when the > fans are already going at full speed_

It's not about what you do when the temperature if at its peaks and the fans are going at full speed, it's about how you avoid getting there.

> _How is this going to impact some of those bad solder joints MacBooks are > famous for?_

When did MacBooks became famous for "bad solder joints"?

<comment><USER12> > When did MacBooks became famous for "bad solder joints"?

There has been more[1] than one[2] case where GPUs in MBPs stopped working because of bad solder joints. And ifixit has a guide about how to fix your mac by putting it in the oven[3] to reflow the solder joints.

1: [https://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?product...](https://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?products_id=813)

2: [https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro- videoissues/](https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/)

3: [https://ifixit.org/blog/6882/why-i-drilled-holes-in-my- macbo...](https://ifixit.org/blog/6882/why-i-drilled-holes-in-my-macbook-pro- and-put-it-in-the-oven/)

<comment><USER13> That was an nvidia problem. All their laptop chips were affected that were in one family. Dell replaced my motherboard four times over it.

If MacBooks are famous for it, so are all laptops with an nvidia gpu.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, most of those other laptops aren't made by a company that's famous for meticulously stressing details and restricting hardware configurations so that consumers won't need to research or worry about internals.

The PC vs Mac hardware dichotomy is best summed up as, "Apple gives you less choice so that they can exercise more quality control."

<comment><USER15> That PC vs Mac dichotomy really doesn't carry into pre-built PCs and definitely not into pre-built laptops and other portables. Both have a responsibility for quality control.

<comment><USER14> I agree in principle, but there is still a difference here.

Dell sells way more PCs (in much more varied configurations) than Apple does. They're generally more repairable, and they're generally cheaper. They're also willing to let you max out specs and build weird configurations; configurations that arguably don't always make much sense. That range means they also sell a few objectively cruddy laptops, so you need to be careful and read reviews and do comparisons before you buy.

Apple positions itself as different from those companies. The comparison I'm making above isn't something that only self-building PC nerds understand; the same explanation is what I give to regular consumers who are trying to decide whether to go with Windows or Mac - people who will never try to build their own stuff.

"Should I buy a Windows PC or a Mac?"

"Do you want to spend a lot of time researching brands, reading reviews, and thinking about hardware specs?"

I think the point still stands that Apple is positioning itself in a different category than companies like Dell. If not, I'm gonna have some complaints about that $3K price tag.

The closest comparison is something like the Microsoft Surface - an expensive, premium device, with low repairability and configuration options, but (theoretically) increased reliability with a streamlined experience that "just works" out of the box. When the Surface line has problems, I put more blame on Microsoft than I would put on a company like Dell in an equivalent situation.

<comment><USER16> There is no correlation between how repairable a laptop is and its failure rate.

You've just made this up and now are criticising Apple/Microsoft for it.

<comment><USER14> There is a correlation between how repairable a laptop is and whether it uses a custom build process, single-body design, or if you're directly soldering chips onto a motherboard - all of which _can_ help with reliability. Fewer moving parts and less build complexity means fewer places where things can go wrong.

I wasn't criticizing Apple or Microsoft for anything when I said their laptops weren't repairable, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that some of their engineering decisions around repairability are made for good reasons.

I don't think that's a particularly controversial idea. I mean, no one is seriously going to argue that they _are_ repairable. So assuming there's a good reason for that, this is the standard explanation that I and other people would give to someone complaining about repairability - that Apple optimizes for other things.

Heck, it's _the_ explanation that Apple gives: "Our devices are more reliable when we're the only people messing with their internals."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Happy to see Dave2D at the forefront of this. He gives solid advice and puts out crispy 4K content on YouTube.

Link to his channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYamHliCI9rw1tHR1xbkfw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYamHliCI9rw1tHR1xbkfw)

<comment><USER18> I feel bad for the other famous YouTuber who published a video basically saying that everyone are overreacting.

<comment><USER19> For every internet action there's an equal and opposite overreaction.

<comment><USER20> The 3rd Law of Emotion.

<comment><USER21> The 3rd Law of Emoticon

ftfy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dave (the guy who Apple mentioned working with to find this issue) already tweeted that the performance is "soo much better". Source: [https://twitter.com/Dave2Dtv/status/1021817313555755009](https://twitter.com/Dave2Dtv/status/1021817313555755009)

<comment><USER23> Has he tried setting it on his bare legs during the test?

<comment><USER24> Why would anyone put a high end laptop on their legs while doing a prolonged intensive task such as video rendering??

<comment><USER25> Isn't part of the definition of a laptop that it should be able to be used comfortably resting on the user's lap?

<comment><USER26> That's why they're _explicitly_ not referred to as laptops but notebook computers. It's the reason Apple calls them MacBooks only and not laptops.

<comment><USER27> You have to be kidding.

What you're referring to is a branding tactic. It has nothing to do with some subconscious direction on how to use the device. It's not only reasonable, but expected, that customers will use the device in their laps... no matter what the naming convention. Come on.

<comment><USER26> Not kidding at all. The entire industry made a huge hard stop and turn on the terminology around 2001/2001 after Dell was sued because a man claimed that his "laptop" burned his thighs/penis when the CPU/battery heated up and the fans didn't turn on. The courts ruled that "laptop" implied that the machine was safe to use in that manner and the guy was awarded damages. After that, it became exclusively "notebook" or "portable" computer industry-wide. I haven't really put any thought into it recently but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any manufacturer referring to their machines as "laptops" now.

Edit: It was a Dell Latitude that burned the man's penis: [http://ftp.compal.com/Download/NB/NCL50/User- Service%20manua...](http://ftp.compal.com/Download/NB/NCL50/User- Service%20manual/NCL50%20user%27s%20%20manual%200430.pdf)

<comment><USER27> >I haven't really put any thought into it recently but I think you'd be hard- pressed to find any manufacturer referring to their machines as "laptops" now.

Oh, really? Let's see.

Dell: [https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell- laptops/sc/laptops](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sc/laptops)

HP: [https://store.hp.com/us/en/cat/laptops](https://store.hp.com/us/en/cat/laptops)

ASUS: [https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/](https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/)

Lenovo: [https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/c/LAPTOPS](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/c/LAPTOPS)

Toshiba: [http://laptops.toshiba.com/computers- tablets/home/](http://laptops.toshiba.com/computers-tablets/home/)

Acer: [https://us-store.acer.com/laptops](https://us-store.acer.com/laptops)

Samsung: [https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows- laptops/](https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows-laptops/)

I will stop there, because it's obvious that 'the entire industry' did not make a 'huge hard stop and turn on the terminology'. Stop being a fool.

<comment><USER26> I'm not being a fool. The lawsuit must have worked out in their favor or they appealed. I worked for 2 separate computer manufacturers during that time where we were explicitly told not to refer to any of the portable computers as "laptop" computers in any of our outgoing communications or marketing. I had associates at other manufacturers that were told the same thing.

If that's not the case anymore, then that's just because I haven't bothered to keep up with the industry as I no longer work in comms for PC manufacturers. As I said, I haven't put any thought into it recently. I'm neither being a fool nor am I lying, as you seem to be implying. Times change and I prefaced my statement to admit that the info might be outdated.

I can't even believe you put all that effort into collecting those links. That literally does not change the fact that there was an industry-wide aversion to using the term "laptop".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Shouldn't there be performance testing for common tasks (rendering video) like what Dave2D did? For a company like Apple that has a lot of resources, wouldn't it make sense to have that department that does just that, performance testing on specific apps. The testers can just focus on Apple software for ex (iMovie, Final Cut) and they could have caught this "bug" earlier.

<comment><USER29> There is and they should. But bugs tend to find a way anyway.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, but... let's be honest. This kind of integration flaw is a very... well, let's just say it's a very "Hewlett Packard" kind of bug, and the kind of thing we've come to _not_ expect from "Apple Computer".

<comment><USER31> They're a small upcoming company, they're doing their best, let's cut them some slack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice, I was going to buy the lowest spec CPU version of the 2018 yes or yes so seeing that the thermal issues are getting improved just affirms my decision. I think the 2018 might be the new 2015. Apple MacBooks are like classic wines, some years are better than others, but you'll pay through the nose for every vintage anyway ;)

My 2008 alu worked without a hitch for 10 years until a bad third party battery started to give problems together with the keyboard a month ago and I decided not to try to fix it anymore: that wasn't a bad investment.

<comment><USER2> That's my hope as well, as soon as I saw the iFixit report on the silicone cones on the keys I pulled the trigger on the 15" i9 32GB RAM 1TB SSD and I love it. This throttling issue worried me a lot but after the fix I am seeing it not fall below clock [0]. I came from a late-2013 which was a great laptop (though I know the 2015 was the sweet spot, I was going to upgrade to that if the 2018 didn't address my top issues but it did so I went for the 2018).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17603760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17603760)

<comment><USER32> That's sweet. I wasn't sure this fix would be able to tame the i9.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm glad it was just a software bug. It still seems like Apple's quality control has gone way done over the last few years. My hypothesis is that there has been a change in culture as the company gets bigger with less emphasis on rigorous testing of the code?

It would be interesting to get some perspective from a longtime Apple employee on this.

<comment><USER34> _It still seems like Apple's quality control has gone way done over the last few years._

I doubt it. They've had problems for years... bulging batteries, bad solder, bendy iPhones, etc.

But, is the quality really going down, or is Apple just an easy target? I tend to think it's more of the later. I've had Lenovos and Dells for work and they've not been perfect.

<comment><USER33> That's a good point, for me it's more that I perceive that the quality of Apple quality control used to be very high, and now it's coming down to earth. It's this shift that has people upset I think not the fact that Apple products have more issues than those of other vendors.

<comment><USER35> A friend had one of those white G3 iBooks. It got replaced about five times, and I think they eventually gave him a successor G4 one. Apple's never been perfect.

<comment><USER36> My mom had one too. They put the GPU right under the wristrest, so that you'd crack the solder just by typing. Eventually they added a plastic collar around it but that only moved the stress to the motherboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great to see Apple address this so quickly. The throttling issues didn't effect me and my workload (iOS and Android development) but it clearly caused bit issues for those doing video editing.

I have installed the update and so far so good. I have only had this 2018 model for a little over a day but I am loving the keyboard changes and TrueTone display and performance for me is superb.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks Apple, now back to keyboard and Touch Bar.

<comment><USER38> They did (quietly) roll out improvements[1] to the keyboard, though time will tell if they actually help enough...

1: [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/7/19/17590100/a...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/7/19/17590100/apple- macbook-pro-keyboard-membrane-dust-problem-fix-leaked)

<comment><USER39> They need to improve the key travel. If I wanted to type on a flat board, I'd get a Yoga Book.

[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/android-tablets/yoga- bo...](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/android-tablets/yoga-book- series/Lenovo-Yoga-Book/p/ZZITZTOYB1F)

<comment><USER40> I for one am much happier with the newer keyboard and now the old one feels weirdly mushy and gross.

I reckon keyboards are a matter of taste ultimately.

<comment><USER41> Yes, I like the 2017 keyboard. I'm not ecstatic over it but definitely usable for me. I also like the touchbar. Maybe I'm just weird.

<comment><USER42> TouchBar is quite amazing once you know the gestures, too. Tapping and holding the volume/brightness key and sliding it for super-precise volume or brightness control is an amazing feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Does this impact all macbook pros with the touch bar, or just the 2018 models?

<comment><USER44> Only the recently released ones were affected.

<comment><USER43> OK, thanks for the answer instead of the downvote :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Possible details on what went wrong: [https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/91256u/optimal_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/91256u/optimal_cpu_tuning_settings_for_i9_mbp_to_stop/)

TL;DR The CPU is stuck in a cycle of switching between minimum clock frequency and turbo speed.

</comment><comment><USER46> I didn't follow my own advice and I bought a new top spec i9 MacBook Pro. I've an iMac pro with a persistent issue that causes kernel panics. Apple is gathering information about the issue and I've had a few calls with an engineer. So far it isn't fixed.

When I got my i9 mbp I noticed the fan was quite active and it was fast, but not significantly better than my 2014 mbp quad core. I just updated with the fix this morning and so far I notice way less fan usage and it did seem to be a bit snappier. I will run some benchmarks later and see where it lands. If it isn't working I'm about ready to abandon platform. Sucks because my entire music studio is Mac based.

</comment><comment><USER47> It says the fix is for High Sierra. For everyone running Mojave on the new MBP, will there be a fix for that as well, or was it previously patched in Mojave already?

<comment><USER48> As Mojave is in beta right now, I don't think Apple feels obligated to rush out a Supplemental update like they did for their production OS. Also not sure how they would have already patched in Mojave if they hadn't had it fixed in HS when the hardware was released.

I expect the next Mojave beta release to resolve this, but don't expect the next release to come faster due to this bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> works ok for me after the update. Cinebench 1020 and CPU clock speed stays at 3ghz under load. Ran it several times and it's the same each time. 99fps for the GPU in cb opengl test, though that drops a couple of fps each time you run the test.

Temps still high, up to 95% during cb but I guess that's expected with this type of laptop body under extreme load and can be somewhat mitigated with external fans.

I was going to return this but will keep it now.

<comment><USER50> so still slower than older 2.6GHz i7

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Other reason for thermal slowdown: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16689070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16689070)

</comment><comment><USER52> Well that's quite nice

<comment><USER53> If they are on the up and up and that really is the problem.

I hope it is though. I was getting really depressed at the idea of switching to something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Congrats to Apple for handling this correctly: not suing the guy. The bad news is this escaped your QA process. That never would have happened 10 years ago.

<comment><USER55> > That never would have happened 10 years ago

The Macbook Pro from 2008 _literally_ had a thermal issue. It made some units not boot at all. And it required a logic board replace, not just a software fix.

[https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/MacBook_Pro_15%22_Unibody_Troubl...](https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/MacBook_Pro_15%22_Unibody_Troubleshooting#Section_Thermal_Sensor_Issues)

"If the fans run at high RPMs, but the computer does not boot, there is probably an issue with the thermal sensors.

Late 2008/Early 2009 models feature a thermal sensor on the heat sink. First, ensure that the thermal sensor on the heat sink is plugged into the logic board. If it is, try replacing the heat sink. If this does not fix the problem, the logic board most likely needs to be replaced."

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is this really a software bug or are they now going to have heat related failures by voiding Intel's specs?

Just running an already hot laptop hotter can't be good.

</comment><comment><USER57> Even with the fix, I'm afraid you're still shilling out a lot of money for top hardware that can't be used to its maximum extent. Because of the thin form factor limitations, insufficient thermal design and possibly even something as silly as not using the best thermal paste.

And the system as a whole will still run quite hot for high CPU+GPU loads, so who knows how that affects the electronics and battery life longer term.

Please, Apple, just make it 1mm thicker already.

<comment><USER58> People bought them knowing that they were making tradeoffs in performance, but the real problem was that the computers were not even hitting their advertised specs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I had a serious slowdown issue on my 2010 MacBook Pro that took me a few years to figure out. It started after I spilled tea on it. The system appeared to function normally, but was very slow. When I ran top as root, it showed that kernel process was always using one core (>100% out of 200). I tried reinstalling the OS, changing options and upgrading, to no avail.

Apparently, the OS does this to prevent thermal damage. It perceives that the CPU is overheating, so it sends one core into an idle loop to prevent it from doing real work.

Finally, I took it to an Apple repair shop whose diagnostics determined the CPU thermal sensor was not working. That didn't immediately help. After much web searching, I found that a fix for this it was to completely disable the power management profile by deleting it. Now the machine works perfectly normally in terms of everything - heat, fans and performance. The machine seems to work identically to its original behavior, so I am puzzled at what function the power management profile performs.

</comment><comment><USER60> "could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads"

So now it just don't give a shit and fires away at the highest clock, without a care in the world about temperatures?

The clock speed should go down under "heavy thermal load", that's not a bug...

<comment><USER61> The CPU itself had plenty of thermal headroom, but was overdrawing the power system - which then thermally throttled itself way more aggressively and in a less-controlled manner. The update changes the curve to ensure that the CPU doesn't draw more power than the power system can handle for extended periods. The CPU will still downclock itself as needed if it experiences its own thermal overload.

<comment><USER60> Are you saying Intel CPUs now can adapt to power loss, instead of just not working? I doubt that very much. The CPU got too hot(easily reaching 100C) so there was definetly not "plenty of headroom", in fact, there was no headroom at all.

<comment><USER62> It's not a powerloss but voltage goes down. Modern VRMs can also signal their power capabilies and reserves.

If the CPU draws more current than the VRM can handle, this is usually okay within bounds for a very short time, after than you'll get dropping voltage when the VRM starts to self regulate and the CPU will downclock in response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I doubt if this patch will decrease the lifespan of MacBook. Because for silicon chips, 10 degree Celsius rise in operating temperature will roughly decrease life span by half. If Apple relax the temperature constraint by 20 degree Celsius (e.g. from 50 degree to 70 degree), it is expected that the lifespan of some component will decrease by 75%.

<comment><USER50> Except macbooks almost never see 50, and rarely 70 degrees, its 80-100 all day when actually using cpu.

<comment><USER63> Oh my god. That number is unimaginable. Even if my full power desktop i7 can't reach this number. Chips will die very quickly in this temperature. I think Apple is having a real trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Apple used an inadequately cooled VRM that's incapable of sustaining the power required to run the CPU at full speed. See the link below. [https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/91256u/optimal_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/91256u/optimal_cpu_tuning_settings_for_i9_mbp_to_stop/)</comment>


Best programming language for high performance (January 2017)? - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/2017/01/16/best-programming-language-for-high-performance-january-2017/ <comment><USER2> The whole thing looks quite a superficial overview to me.

So many statements are debatable...</comment>


Show HN: My static blog/site generator: "Shithead" - <AUTHOR> http://teh.oarsum.com/posts/shithead_released.html

<comment><USER2> I come from a background where swearing, loudly, is considered ok. Think Samuel L. Jackson in "pulp fiction" except my language has, I reckon, a metric ton more swearwords.

First time I worked in a team of people of different language I ended up involuntarily teaching them a lot of them because I was swearing a lot while coding.

But honestly, I don't understand the choice to use vulgar words in naming your project.

EDIT: but +1 for using WikiCreole!

<comment><USER3> I suspect it is the same reason why the authors blog is called "Teh Oarsum".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why didn't you go for hyde? I think it's the best solution now as far as python is concerned.

Worth watching is lighting [1]. Its main feature is the incremental building which looks really promising.

[1] <https://github.com/borismus/lightning>

<comment><AUTHOR> Because they're too complicated! If I want to get started with them, or extend them, there's a large learning curve.

For example, take a look at [https://github.com/lakshmivyas/hyde/blob/master/hydeengine/f...](https://github.com/lakshmivyas/hyde/blob/master/hydeengine/file_system.py) or <https://github.com/borismus/lightning/blob/master/lightning>

What does all of that stuff _do_? Why does lightning need YAML _and_ pickle? Why does hyde need to mirror the entirety of python's os module, including os.walk, for both Files and Folders?

Now compare that to my version: [https://bitbucket.org/anthonyb/shithead/src/8a8e5787cf6a/blo...](https://bitbucket.org/anthonyb/shithead/src/8a8e5787cf6a/blog.py) , which is essentially the entire engine, file system handling and building code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few bash scripts does it for me (the Web site is not a blog).

[http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/publish-a-web-site-with- bash-s...](http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/publish-a-web-site-with-bash- scripts.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I become very angry, when I don't find a RSS feed for a blog I like.

<comment><USER7> I agree. The lack of RSS is inexcusable. RSS feeds can easily be implemented without the using know they're there.

<comment><AUTHOR> "inexcusable"? Your sense of entitlement is underwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but I would never use this, nor recommend it to anybody.

You make it sound like you left out features, because you wanted to keep it simple, but that really just comes off as you being lazy.

RSS could be implemented, without the user of your application knowing it's there.

Besides, on <http://teh.oarsum.com/>, the links don't work. They're going to /posts\article-name.html, not /posts/article-name.html as they should.

Another thing is you're talking about simplicity, yet you include Bootstrapper.

I realize that Bootstrapper is probably not included by default and is something you added in the template, but it just emphasizes the fact that you have mixed goals.

Besides, you don't really use anything from Bootstrapper other than the spans. On top of that, you haven't bothered to edit the LESS files to fit your needs, instead you just overwrite that with another CSS. That is not simplicity, that is just laziness.

And last, but definitely not least... Quirks Mode. Just no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug report on the paths. I was relying on os.path to generate the urls, which obviously doesn't work on Windows or Mac.

The rest of your issues seem to be with the template - you're free to develop your own if you don't like mine, or don't like bootstrap, or whatever.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Monopoly Hangover - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/microsofts-monopoly-hangover/ <comment><USER2> I am a big fan of Office 365. We currently have no Windows machines in our home but for macOS and Linux, Office 365 provides great value also.

Microsoft 365 is probably a good idea, but Microsoft is missing one consumer product: a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other Windows devices. Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly working together is something that I now insist on. For now, this makes me an Apple customer because iPhone/iPad/MacBook devices work really well together. If Microsoft had a fantastic phone with handoff, they could compete better. (BTW, I briefly owned a Windows 10 laptop a few years ago - bought it just to play with Windows 10. I thought Windows 10 was quite good.)

<comment><USER3> Microsoft strategy with Windows 10 was to encourage developers to write UWP apps so they could eliminate the app gap in Windows 10 Mobile.

Good strategy in theory, but looking at the Windows Store today, it seems like developers are not that interested in UWP and frankly, who can blame them?

If you want to write a tablet app, you target the iPad because it's the best product in that category. If you want to write a phone app, you target Android and iOS because that's where the money is today.

Is there good money to be made writing UWP at the moment? In my opinion, UWP apps on desktop are inferior to "classic" Windows apps. Windows 10 Mobile is pretty much dead at this point, so what's the point of UWP, what's the true benefit?

<comment><USER4> This is probably where Windows 10S (pushed in education) comes into play. It's a version that offers "secure & superior" performance over normal Win10. Since 10S can only install from the Store app, devs are `forced` to port their app.

Only time will tell how effective this strategy is. I for one would love for this to succeed if it means better security for users (especially on older, technologically challenged folks)

<comment><USER3> Well, I don't see how Windows 10S helps push adoption of UWP since you can already distribute Windows Forms, WPF, or Win32 desktop apps on the Store today. At that point, why bother making a UWP app?

Also, Edge only have a handful of extensions. If they want to compete against Chrome, they have to do something about that, otherwise people will just use Chromebooks.

<comment><USER5> Win32 apps run with full thrust, instead of the actual UWP container, so ideally one should migrate to a proper UWP app.

But we all know how users and many devs, actually value security.

<comment><USER6> The devs may value security but they need the tools to actually build a working app. From what I have seen UWP is way too limited for a lot of apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With so many major vendors of professional software switching to the software rental model, I'm hoping for an open source renaissance from the bottom-up.

<comment><USER8> I very much doubt it. This is akin to "hoping" that there would be renaissance of of VPS/Dedicated hosting.

Open Source typically requires people to manage everything themselves, including update.

For those who see IT as cost-center/necessary evil, they want to have as less investment and as short-term as possible.

<comment><USER9> OSS lags behind in the UX category because we frankly just don't have UX designers in abundance. Then tend to follow the other UI/US designers.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure this is a major issue. End users are mainly concerned that when they wake up in the morning, lots of stuff hasn't moved. What it looks like and where it is to start with doesn't seem to matter as long as the UI is discoverable to some extent.

<comment><USER11> End users are also concerned with not being frustrated at every corner with arcane and weird UI choices or a user experience that plainly mirrors the implementation choices underneath. Worrying about whether features have been moved around the UI usually comes after they've already used a program for a while. There's lots of open-source software that, for non-technical end users, doesn't get to that point because they've ditched it already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Post monopoly business model reminds me of RIM holding back BBM from iOS and Android devices before Whatsapp and other inter-operating system messaging platforms ate their lunch.

Would be interested in seeing companies that similar to IBM as Ben mentions, kept similar assets, but built new business models around them to accommodate a changing marketplace.

<comment><USER13> Which is a shame really... Blackberry could have been much larger if they'd released a paid app tethered to their services on the backend for Android and iOS, provided the app was at least as good as the BBM experience to their users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I knew Gerstner pulled off a minor miracle at IBM, but I had no idea that he also basically described AWS years before AWS (see the footnote at the end of the "IBM's cloud miss" section). That's another corporate what-if for the ages; IBM must still be kicking themselves for letting him go.

<comment><USER15> Occasionally I like to reread the introduction in the Corbato, Vyssotsky Multics paper from 1965. It's amazing how long these kinds of ideas were around.

"Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is a comprehensive, general-purpose programming system which is being developed as a research project. The initial Multics system will be implemented on the GE 645 computer. One of the overall design goals is to create a computing system which is capable of meeting almost all of the present and near-future requirements of a large computer utility. Such systems must run continuously and reliably 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in a way similar to telephone or power systems, and must be capable of meeting wide service demands: from multiple man-machine interaction to the sequential processing of absentee-user jobs; from the use of the system with dedicated languages and subsystems to the programming of the system itself; and from centralized bulk card, tape, and printer facilities to remotely located terminals. Such information processing and communication systems are believed to be essential for the future growth of computer use in business, in industry, in government and in scientific laboratories as well as stimulating applications which would be otherwise undone."

<comment><USER16> There are some amazing ideas from that era. In 1985 Jim Gray described how to create hardware and software with a MTBF of decades, yet other than the few people using Erlang those ideas have been ignored ever since.

[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf)

<comment><USER17> I gotta point out that Jim was roughly one era after Multics. His career ramped up during the mass replacement of navigational databases with relational solutions.

Industry and academia were pretty terrible about giving the navigational people credit, or even citing/preserving their work (try getting a copy of a paper from the CODASYL proceedings to see what I mean).

Gray strongly disapproved of all that, so I doubt he would want credit for the previous generation's contributions.

Anyway, the old hierarchical/navigational/codasyl stuff was mostly forgotten, then reinvented (poorly, at first) as key value stores turned into document databases, etc.

Something similar happened with containers, etc. I think the end product of the current generation will surpass the old stuff in most ways, but it is painful to know the history and watch train wrecks of obvious implementation mistakes.

<comment><USER16> Reminds me of Bret Victor's Future of Programming talk.

[https://vimeo.com/71278954](https://vimeo.com/71278954)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Micropoly!

[https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.microp...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.micropoly.com:80/micropoly- board-med.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Wow I'd never seen this. They should have gone a little bit further though (who builds "houses" in IT? Just turn them into "apps", with hotels turning into "servers" maybe).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> MS culture changed in some ways for the better (their support for Alliance for Open Media is one such example), but in others it remained as bad as it was before (DirectX lock-in, Windows tax and etc.).

</comment><comment><USER21> This is exactly why I think monopolies are awful, but at the same time not a concern for legislation. Monopolies only persist in the long term - i.e. exist as _true_ monopolies - when enforced with the force of law.

<comment><USER22> ...Excepting of course, Natural Monopolies - which are probably rarer than you might think For example - "Gas" delivery might be considered a natural monopoly - but I know people (in fact, pretty much everyone I know) doesn't care about having a Gas Hookup - they just have someone carry large containers of gas into their kitchen. The things last forever.

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

<comment><USER21> I'm not even sure most of those count. Look at energy distribution as an example - I grew up in New Zealand, the country cited. If the monopolist drives prices too high, that'll just encourage people to abandon the grid for alternatives like microgrids.

<comment><USER22> Right - like I said, even "Natural Monopoly" is less frequent that you might think. Though, in a dense urban area - you don't have a lot of choice over who delivers your power, water, and removes your sewage. Very difficult for competitors to come in and add new distribution lines for each of those in heavily built urban areas (unlike Comms, where lots of ability to add new fiber, new RF, etc...)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/29/the-lairds-of-learning/ <comment><USER2> Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging.

As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote or review academic literature (in fact I think it should be law that they have to).

A very simple solution would be for authors or institutions to make copies freely available on their websites. I can only assume that they are not allowed to, due to copyright imposed by the journals.

It's ironic that the invention of the www was driven by the need for an easy way to freely distribute and share academic literature.

P.S. There's also a strong case for privately funded research to be made public too. Companies who make product claims based on privately funded research for example absolutely must make this research ("research") available for the public to review. It is notoriously hard to get pharma firms to cough up the papers which support their claims for the latest wonder drug.

<comment><USER3> _I can only assume that they are not allowed to, due to copyright imposed by the journals._

This is probably true. Whenever I have published articles (I am a mathematician), I have been asked to sign some long agreement which I only skimmed. We have some rights to publish and distribute our work... but not unlimited... something complicated...

In practice, I just put copies of all of my papers on my website where anyone can download them. I have many colleagues who do the same, and many colleagues who are more scrupulous about following the journals' rules. In any case, I don't know of any scholars who have gotten into trouble for distributing their own work.

<comment><USER4> What's the advantage over just using the arxiv? A bit better typesetting?

<comment><USER5> Credibility. Reading a mathematical paper takes a huge amount of effort, and people won't go through that unless there is a high chance to believe the paper is good/correct. Usually this is determined by 1) The author is famous 2) The journal is respected.

<comment><USER4> The ArXiv includes a link to the actual (usually gated) journal article. And the text of that link is the journal name and citation.

My question isn't "why do people submit to journals?" it's "why post the actual PDF from the journal on your webpage (thereby taking a slight risk of getting in trouble) rather than just linking to the ArXiv version?".

<comment><USER5> Ah, sorry I misunderstood your question.

To answer your actual question, I personally do it because I almost _wish_ the journals would do something nasty to me. Then, I would tell everyone I meet at every conference about that for the next few years and would hasten the decline of the current status-quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I heard an interesting argument from my advisor (a very famous mathematician). I strongly disagree with it, but it is the only argument I have heard for keeping this system in place.

His argument was the following: In many fields such as laboratory science, research is expensive; one has to apply for grants and then spend the money, and these departments have large budgets, and this all looks good to deans. If a department is going through a lot of money, then it must be prestigious, important, and doing good work.

I heard a joke once that mathematicians are the second-cheapest academics to hire because all we require is a pencil, paper, and a wastebasket. But, in fact, we require online access to all these journals, for which we have to spend a ton of money. Spending all this money makes us look good to our deans, and lends prestige and the look of importance to our department, and allows us to compete with other departments for resources.

I think it's a bunch of BS, frankly, but it's the one time I heard the existing system defended, so perhaps it's worth bringing up.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure about that. If you pump out a tonne of great research, but use relatively less money, wouldn't that make you look better? Or is the academic world that far removed from the rest of the economy?

<comment><USER7> It's really sad that this is the case, but in the lab I worked for at a UC many of our costs were complete BS made up so that we could use up the full amount of our grant. The system encourages this behavior. The logic is completely flawed: If you don't use the money, then you obviously don't need it. Next time you won't receive the full amount from your grant. When your grant is millions of dollars over a few years, you end up having a lot of very nice dinners paid for with money that was meant to be used for research and education.

<comment><USER8> _If you don't use the money, then you obviously don't need it. Next time you won't receive the full amount from your grant._

That's exactly, word-for-word, what professors have told me here. Sad indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the time I wanted to read Chadwick's 1932 paper "Possible Existence of a Neutron" in which he mentioned the discovery of the neutron.

<http://blog.jgc.org/2008/09/dear-nature.html>

<comment><USER10> Academic publishing seems to be messed up but I'm not sure this is a good demonstration of that.

Of the three links that you cite to online copies two no longer link to the article. So while your $32 doesn't buy you anything you can't already get elsewhere the availability (at a price) from Nature does at least supply a degree of permanence to the article. That may be more important with less prominent items.

<comment><USER11> The illegality (or quazi-illegality in the case of the links from the edu sites) of the mirrors is what's keeping them from being hosted permanently on a free site.

If the copyrights were clear, there would be repositories like arxiv.org that would ensure high-availability free access. The paper isn't on arxiv.org currently because Nature uses its copyright to ensure that it's not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't have to be this way, and individual fields can break away (to a greater or lesser extent). For instance:

In Natural Language Processing / Computational Linguistics, the professional society (Association for Computational Linguistics, ACL) was its own publisher, with no profit motive, and so authors for its conferences and journal never signed over copyright (merely granted permission to ACL to publish the work). For years, it was quite standard for nearly all of the authors to post PS or PDF versions of their papers on their own websites. Then ACL started accepting PDF instead of camera-ready, and just posted the PDFs themselves; and then they started scanning the back-catalogue.

The result of this is that the vast majority of all NLP/CL papers ever written (excluding only those published elsewhere, e.g. in AAAI, and a very few missing proceedings from fifty years ago) are available online, for free, in PDF, at <http://aclweb.org/anthology-new/> .

This is how science should be.

</comment><comment><USER13> One possible disrupter is the open-access model used by the Social Science Research Network, <http://www.ssrn.com>, which was founded in 1994 and seems to be extensively used in the legal academic community.

SSRN makes posted PDFs available for free download. The Wikipedia entry says that "In economics, and to some degree in law (especially in the field of law and economics), almost all papers are now first published as preprints on SSRN and/or on other paper distribution networks such as RePEc before being submitted to an academic journal."

Quality and prestige metrics: SSRN ranks posted papers by number of downloads, and it also compiles citation lists---if I successfully find Paper X at SSRN, I can look up which other SSRN-available papers have cited Paper X. (Sounds like a job for Google's PageRank algorithm, no?)

According to SSRN's FAQ, it's produced by an independent privately held corporation. I assume that means they're a for-profit company. I don't know how they make their money, other than that they will sell you a printed hard copy of a paper, presumably print-on-demand.

<comment><USER14> From that same SSRN FAQ page, <http://www.ssrn.com/update/general/ssrn_faq.html>:

" _We have entered into a variety of relationships with the publishers to provide access to their fee-based research through the SSRN eLibrary. These papers are identified by this icon: Incl. Fee Electronic Paper (a red dog- eared page with a "$"). If you are purchasing a fee-based paper, you will click the 'Add to Cart' link and be linked to your Shopping Cart._ "

So they run as affiliates for paid-for papers.

They also run a job listings service.

You noted already the ability to get a printed and bound copy of a paper on demand.

Edit: without looking in detail it seems those running the service are probably supported by academic institutions [for other work that they do?].

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> But surely, one might think, that some of the price goes to offset the expensive costs of peer review?

The author neglected to mention that peer reviewers work for free, and that the editorial boards are also made up of scholars who work for next to nothing. (edit: see reply below, this was in the article and I missed it)

It used to be that it fell to the publishers to typeset the articles, but with the advent of TeX they don't have to do that either. (in my field anyway)

Speaking as an academic, these companies do nothing for us. The sooner we agree on an alternative model which doesn't go through them, the better.

<comment><USER15> _Speaking as an academic, these companies do nothing for us_

Start the revolution at home. Put PDFs on your university website. Ask your collegues to do likewise, ask the rest of university to do likewise. Start the ball rolling.

<comment><USER16> That doesn't really fulfill the "quality signal" aspect of journals, though -- the replacement would be some sort of open journal that still had peer review.

There was an Elsevier math journal where the entire editorial staff got fed up, quit, and then simply founded a new journal on the same subject. _That's_ the sort of thing most likely to bring the big journals down, not self publication by individuals. (Well, that or direct government intervention.)

<comment><USER15> You're probably right that there's a good value add to come from journals. However the internet works well, and that's a pile of individual pages/web sites, so I think it'll all work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The obvious negative this has on folks outside of research-level academia is a significant contribution to tuition prices, which seem to be rising at about 5% per year.

But a less obvious - and personally very painful - consequence of greedy publishers is the inability to do serious academic research outside of academia/industry. I have the ability (math PhD) and the will (have published a few papers post grad school, though it's hard to find time), but I have all but given up due to lacking access to books and articles behind these paywalls. Yes, you can find a decent chunk of articles online -- but very often there are one or two (or more!) key papers you _need_ to read to be at the front of a field, and one of those will be behind a paywall. The worst part is that I never know how truly useful an article will be before reading it, so in the few cases where I've payed I find that only a small percentage of the time was it worthwhile.

In short, this system essentially kills research outside of academia / industry.

<comment><USER18> I guess you don't live near a decently sized university?

<comment><USER17> I do, and they require $500/year for library use by non-students/staff.

Even if some people are lucky enough to have university library access, the problems caused by a broken publishing system still pose a barrier to many independent people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The reason is that the big publishers have rounded up the journals with the > highest academic impact factors, in which publication is essential for > researchers trying to secure grants and advance their careers(16). You can > start reading open-access journals, but you can't stop reading the closed > ones.

This is the only problem standing in the way of open access publishing. While the arXiv doesn't offer peer review and so doesn't negate the need for journals, the ecosystem would quickly adapt to open peer review. Unfortunately the implied reputation of being published in certain journals is still something that's too ingrained in academia. It's getting better slowly but it's going to take at least a generation to go away at the current rate.

<comment><USER20> _Unfortunately the implied reputation of being published in certain journals is still something that's too ingrained in academia._

It's worse than that: this isn't just a matter of old fogies (who will eventually retire) clinging to out-moded ways.

The problem is, academic career progression is dependent on publication. And these days, it's also contingent on citations. Your work is more likely to be cited if it's in a prominent journal. So by gaining a lock on the high academic impact publications, the big publishers have got a stranglehold on the career ladder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> University libraries are still mostly money grabbers aswell, but are slowly changing.

In the 1830s Ireland was mapped to a great detail (for tax purposes) of 1:6500ish. These maps would still be very helpful for OpenStreetMap, and are obviously outside copyright. A few Irish universities have them (e.g. Trinity Map Library, a copyright deposit library for Ireland & the UK), however they charge €50,000ish for a copy of the digitial scans of the full set. Other libraries are similar.

Universities really are not pro-sharing

<comment><USER14> Presumably somewhere like the British Library has the scans for the maps on disk. They're a government institution aren't they so would a Freedom of Information Act demand supposedly liberate that data ... just a thought.

When I'm Prime Minister I'll instigate a government run academic library as the repository for all data originating from tax paid research with free access for individuals and paid access for profit yielding institutions; something along those lines anyway.

<comment><USER15> These maps are usually on microfiche.

Freedom of Information is a good idea, however the orignals are out of copyright (being 150+ years old). Just scanning a page of a book isn't a creative work, and hence you technically can't claim copyright on it again. Some mapping agencies like the Ordnance Survey of Ireland who have copies, scan and then join images up together, and rectify them so they work on google maps. This 'stitching & rectifiying' is a creative act, and hence they can (and do!) claim copyright on the new item. So this map from 1833 is Copyright 2008 OSi. :(

However a lot of libraries claim copyright on just a straight scan, even though they can't really. A FoI would get you the map, but probably something with a copyright symbol on the corner. If you want to use them (for OpenStreetMap tracing) the onus is now on you to prove you can. In short, they don't want to share them out to everyone. :(

<comment><USER14> > _This 'stitching & rectifiying' is a creative act, and hence they can (and > do!) claim copyright on the new item._ //

I was trying to find the caselaw on a related point the other day. I remember there being something to do with, I think the British Museum or similar, taking high res scans of old paintings and claiming a renewed copyright term on that then ferreting away the original. Do you have caselaw to cite? AFAIR the act is supposed to be transformative to create a new work, stitching doesn't appear to be tranformative to me. However I also seem to recall the the "sweat of the brow" argument was made to support a new copyright in high res scans, that a large amount of work had been done and that this somehow earned them a new right.

It seems this sort of manoeuvring is within the letter of the law but not at all within the spirit of it. Very underhand for those who are supposed to be managing works owned by the country for the country itself using public money.

If one can get a copy of the original then it could be leaked to wikileaks ... the onus is not on the copier to prove they have a right but on those suing to show that tortuous infringement has occurred. The demands of OpenStreetMap may be different however.

<comment><USER13> > _Do you have caselaw to cite?_

Try _Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp._ , 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), summarized in the Wikipedia article [1].

The court's opinion [2] surveys the relevant case law beginning at paragraph 19.

The court states its conclusion and summarizes its reasoning in paragraph 25: " _In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances._ "

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

[2] [http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.ht...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm).

<comment><USER14> Thanks for that, the Wikipedia page has some useful links and info on the relevance to UK copyright law. The case I was remembering is almost certainly this one - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_copyr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_copyright_conflicts) concerning use of photos of images in the National Portrait Gallery on Wikimedia pages, the case dating from 2009.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We forget the value of curation.

Why can a boutique shop sell a $50 dress for $200? Taste. One could simply walk into that boutique, confident that 20 minutes later a cute, fashionable and well-fitting dress would be acquired.

Why can top universities charge so much for tuition? Every year, %s University generates a curated list of individuals, and many hiring processes (not to mention ad-hoc interpersonal filtering processes) emphasize individuals in that list. Like boutique shopping, this is an expensive strategy that often excludes superior talent, but is fast.

Is it worth $200,000 to have one's name on that list? Apparently.

Is it worth application fees and an iron publishing agreement to have one's paper published in Nature. Apparently.

</comment><comment><USER22> A professor emeritus recently sent me an article to publish on my web magazine. The turnaround time was around 18 hours and he replied to express his surprise at how quickly his piece was published. In contrast, he has had an article pending at an academic journal for three years now.

<comment><USER4> Usually this kind of long turn-around time is because it is held up by the referees, not the actual publishing process. That process is too slow (sometimes as much as a few months, but usually more like a few weeks), but it's not 3-years slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm buying into his thesis, but heck, I really expected to see some causality explained. The title began, after all, with "how did...."

It would be great if somebody could provided an insider's account of why the academic publishing industry maintained those margins from 2000 to 2010. Did nobody propose legislation to stop them? Were there no criminal investigations? Who are these people connected with politically? What sorts of causes to they contribute to? Just how is the status quo maintained? The guy made a point I was already predisposed to agree with, then kind of went on a rant about how bad it all was. Hey, I'm with you. I'm just not sure my useful knowledge of the issue has increased any.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree with All the points about hiw government sponsored research (including all public school research) Should be free or near free.

The unanswered question is "Why is the market failing?"

A couple unmentioned ideas:

\- Until recently, tuition hikes went unchallenged.

\- Faculty have a vested interest in maintaining the system. (If my publishing in Journal X marks my competence, what happens if it goes away?)

\- An alternate system for rating a very hard to measure topic would be needed. Counting scarce publishing, and references in scarce journals is imperfect but nothing else has beaten it.

I don't have an answer but perhaps a couple bright entrepreneurs could figure out a better equilibrium, and find a way to cross the chasm to get there. Geoffrey Moore would say pick one vertical or academic discipline.

<comment><USER12> > _"Why is the market failing?"_

There's an easier answer to this question: because it's not a "market". There is no part of this whose pieces are fungible. Not the researchers, not the ideas, not the papers, not the journals. For "the market" to do its thing (to the extent that we can even say that), it requires the goods for sale or the people providing the services to be substitutable and commodified. That isn't (and pretty much _can't_ ) be true of academic publishing.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for the comments. I appreciate your insights as an academic living through this. Even still, I have to respectfully disagree.

I'll grant that the economics in most textbooks starts with the assumption of homogenous buyers and sellers. Economists have found ways of breaking down this assumption without giving up the concept of a market. Granted you lose "Perfect competition" but that's ok.

Let's look at an analogy...

Rather than academics, let's talk about programmers. There is as much variety in programmer performance as senior faculty performance. The firms that hire these programmers have not been able to create a monopoly. Yes - Google, Microsoft and Facebook have some high margins, but all of them are looking over their shoulders for the next competitor. The technology firm graveyard is filled with former near monopolists. (Excite? Altavista? Compuserve?)

I'm sure that there are reasons for the market failing, but I think it's more than a lack of homogenous products and vendors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting article. In 2011 there is no practical hurdle to web-based publishing portals. Given that papers are already peer reviewed on a volunteer basis, the middle man and its administrative staff has a high cost and a low benefit.

The system could keep volunteer-based peer review, and establish a (perhaps private) forum-like interaction for the authors to improve their article.

Google Scholar has solved many of my article search problems and often gives me directly a link to the PDF of (sometimes just a preprint of) the article. However the problem remains for the libraries, which might well be the largest contributors to publishers, and which may find it hard to cut a subscription and suggest its users to use Google scholar.

</comment><comment><USER26> A lot of it is that academics are the most atomized and individualistic group of people that you'll find. If there's any part of society where "Aproi Moi Le Deluge" is the slogan, it's academia.

Cornell has about 18 libraries and is slowly implementing a "Fahrenheit 451" plan to eliminate them. First they eliminated the Physical Sciences Library, next the Engineering Library, and they'll eliminate most of the others, one at a time, until there's nothing left but a remote storage unit, lots of computers, and a few pretty library buildings for show. Since it's happening slowly and only affecting one community at a time, they'll avoid a general uproar.

If I blame anything, I blame the institution of tenure, which can be seen more clearly as a cause of moral decay than ever.

Workers and capitalists alike will fight to the death to protect the interests of groups they are a part of because shifts in the rules can cause their personal destruction. A man with tenure knows he can't be ruined, so he's got no reason to ever take a stand.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is simply a consequence of the fiscalization of academic values, and doesn't just apply to libraries. Professors need "high-impact" papers to justify their grants so they can get more grants. The fiscal imperative to acquire grants is very strong, because grant overhead is a major revenue stream for the host institution (probably THE major stream.) It's much easier to have a high-impact paper if you publish in a famous journal, so everyone shoots for _Science_ , then _Nature_ , and on down the hierarchy as their field sees it. And they will eat just about any kind of shit to get published there, including having their papers locked behind a paywall. Because they are plugged into a system where getting grant money takes priority over advancing knowledge. Don't get me started on how this skews research priorities and experimental designs...

</comment><comment><USER28> Given that PLoS is only 8 years old, I think it's too soon to draw any meaningful conclusions from the fact that the open access movement "has failed to displace the monopolists". I think more important is that the trends are moving in the right direction: some high profile journals (like PNAS) have an open access publishing option, and it's unusual for new journals (at least in biology) not to be open access [1][2]. We aren't where we could be 20 years into the World Wide Web, but we're getting there.

[1] <http://www.hhmi.org/news/20110627.html> [2] [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/gsoa- gln06211...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/gsoa- gln062111.php)

</comment><comment><USER29> Articles like this make me sympathize with Aaron Swartz a little more. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813870>

</comment><comment><USER30> Academic journals are gatekeepers of academic promotion, the prestigious old journals are the only ones that count today, and they are owned by Wiley and friends.

To make matters worse, academics are among the most tradition bound creatures in the universe, especially when there is no clear criteria for truth (which is like all of the social sciences and humanities). The only thing they have to calibrate against is consensus, and consensus favors institutions already in place.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is not quite right. The NIH does, in fact, maintain a Public Access Policy:

<http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm>

which states that all NIH-funded research must be placed in this database ("PubMed Central") within 12 months of publication. I do not know how widely it is obeyed, but I know that the several labs I've been in regularly deposited their papers there.

<comment><USER32> Since the article mentions this, in what way is it not quite right?

"The National Institutes of Health in the US oblige anyone taking their grants to put their papers in an open-access archive(17)."

<comment><USER31> You're right, I mis-read this line. Still, it deserves more than a sentence. The NIH _does_ require all NIH-funded research to be made publicly available. What more should/could they do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> See also discussion in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2373030>

</comment><comment><USER33> This is in line with the True Cost Economics Manifesto: <http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/truecosteconomics/sign>

<comment><USER15> I cannot see how a critique of mainstream economics is relevant to the fact that most scientific journals is very expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The military-industrial complex! Done, next question?

Why would a government want to remove the middle-man when the middle-man is making enough money to lobby the government to protect them? -_-'</comment>


Google, UK ISPs and Gov Battle over Encrypted DNS and Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/04/google-uk-isps-and-gov-battle-over-encrypted-dns-and-censorship.html <comment><USER2> Remember when we used to worry only about countries like China, Kazakhstan and Turkey abusing the DNS system for censorship? Those were the _good days_!</comment>


Video Games in East Germany: The Stasi Played Along - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeit.de/digital/games/2018-11/computer-games-gdr-stasi-surveillance-gamer-crowd/komplettansicht <comment><USER2> Note that the "GIF" at the top of the article is an actual embedded C64 emulator, where you can play "Raid over Moscow", took me a bit to recognize that.

Also interesting IMHO:

\- the Stasi's hilarious German translation of English game titles (Samantha Fuchs - Entkleidungspoker)

\- the fact that at least some people in the Stasi weren't complete technological dummies, this is a pretty good prediction for 1988 (which in "GDR technology years" is more like 1978): "In the future, he wrote, software would no longer require any physical medium to be disseminated. Which in turn would mean that it could no longer be intercepted during border controls. "

\- the fact that freely exchanging software in the GDR was completely legal, because copyright did not apply to software: "The Leipzig District Court had ruled in a landmark decision in September 1979 that it considered software to be "neither a scientific work nor a creative achievement."

Lot's of other interesting and well researched details I didn't know about even though I grew up in the GDR and learned programming in a computer club there similar to the ones described in the article.

<comment><USER3> It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

-Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

-Copies of foreign software were sold in stores;

-There wasn't much variety in terms os cars (4 brands and few models) or home appliances;

-Buying foreign currency legally was restricted.

<comment><USER4> > It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

> -Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply > (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

Where can I find more information about such Brazilian computer clone designs? (if necessary, I can also read such texts in Portuguese, even though English or German texts are much easier for me)

<comment><USER5> here are some stories about these period

[http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/comput.htm](http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/comput.htm)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/business/brazil-s- prickly...](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/business/brazil-s-prickly- computer-policy.html)

This video about the game scene that developed because of the politics is also interesting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU29Wqg_BVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU29Wqg_BVo)

In the beginning of the 90's our economy opened and our then President cited our slow computers as one the main reasons for doing so (just PR talk, but it is interesting to note this)

<comment><USER3> The reason the IT policy failed in Brazil, IMHO, is because they did not do enough to spread knowledge and make the machines cheaper.

The UK had a marvelous project that put micros in every school (BBC Computer Literacy Project). You could see people use 8 bit micros in all sorts of applications (I remember a Master Compact kit being sold to handle magazine and newspaper subscriptions).

The Brazilian Sharp MSX (Hotbit) came out in 1985. It cost something like US$400. That same year, the Amiga 1000 came out. It was vastly superior, but it also cost 3 times as much. So I think the real failure was not putting to good use the technology Brazil had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 'One game that the Stasi did actively seek to keep out of circulation was the strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher Fata Morgana Games. In "Kremlin," the player takes over the role of a Soviet politician who then fights others to become the head of the party. One Stasi file notes that the game "contradicts the interests of the GDR due to its anti-Soviet statements."'

<comment><USER7> I hope that readers will realise more things than just how ridiculous every day life was in a red country.

When state security dominated everything, everything that it didn't like became a security issue, and everything it liked too! Think of a brand of children candy being labelled "counterrevolutionary," a design of apartment called "communistic," and there was even a "state security conscious way to drive a car."

For few Western people that ventured into bloc countries, the experience was just mind breaking. I remember from some memoirs, one guy lauded why in the world a state security officer has to review and issue "state security licenses" for owning a toy air plane, buying a typewriter, or reasons for his child to go through "state security exam" to attend a club.

Think just how petty the state security dominated state was, and then think if the currently forming political establishment in the West went by further.

\- Terrorism tax [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for_uncooperative_tech_firms_over_terror_content/)

\- "national security tax" \- well, that one was shot down

\- Rapescan scanners on public transit

\- Three letter agencies having nothing better to do than snoop on facebooks of teenage girls

\- Being jailed for owning nitric acid

\- Being detained for making a clockwork, or, well being effectively jailed for life for owning a "terrorist wristwatch"

\- Being denied boarding a flights for owning a "terrorist radio"

\- Havala being called "terrorism banking"

\- the very term of "cyberterrorism"

\- "Chador tax" in Europe

\- TSA and DHS tearing down laptops, and stealing "not-state-security- approved" purchases from Chinese dollar stores. Not to mention, any radio gear from abroad.

\- All kinds of "terrorism experts," and three letter agency bureaucrats having the best time ever gaining promotions in Western countries

<comment><USER8> The focus on type writers was quite common for a long time in dictatorships. Not as bad as a spirit duplicator but still a possible tool for agitation.

<comment><USER9> Well the whole idea of samizdat was based on the access to a typewriter. Not necessarily at home, my mom was a librarian and she would use the typewriter in her office to type books.

<comment><USER10> And the reason for typewriter control is that typewriters are somewhat unique; all the typewriters used to be registered (i.e. the security services have their writing samples together with the owner/location of the device) so that if a particularly unwanted type of samizdat (e.g. actual political agitation) was detected then they could and would determine that this was typed on the typewriter in your mom's office and go in and determine who participated in making these copies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole GDR computing scene is fascinating: not just the software, but also the hardware. Because of the economic blockades, there weren't many 'western' computers or even computer parts available. They reversed engineered a ZX spectrum, stole plans, bribed businesspeople to 'lose' their computer, etcetera.

For a state that prided itself on their technological marvels they failed miserably, trailing behind western countries by years (they first developed a megabit chip in 1988, 2 years behind IBM).

[https://www.deutsches- museum.de/fileadmin/Content/040_BN/PDF...](https://www.deutsches- museum.de/fileadmin/Content/040_BN/PDFs/Prismentexte/Megabit_Chip_.pdf)

<comment><USER2> From today's point of view, it wasn't such an obvious failure though. It took about 3..4 years to 'copy' the Z80 (it wasn't a straight copy, but a reengineered version with bug fixes), but only 2 years for the "megabit chip"), so the process was (arguably) speeding up.

And at least the 8-bit computers (KC85/2../4, Z9001, Z1013) weren't simple clones of the ZX Spectrum even though some ideas were definitely "borrowed" (later on there was a CPC clone called KC Compact though).

The video capabilities of the 85/2 were quite a bit more advanced than the Spectrum (unfortunately the CPU speed was half of the ZX), and the operating system (CAOS) even had some very interesting ideas not found anywhere else.

The 100% cloning mainly happened for office hardware where software compatibility with standard CP/M software was required, and also for the software itself where usually only the original copyright messages were replaced with some other strings.

You'll also have to consider that the tricky/expensive part wasn't the design, but the factories and clean room production lines to manufacture the chips (AFAIK the first of those were also brought in under 'suspicious circumstances' from the West via proxy companies that had been founded in Western Germany just for that reason, and which conveniently went bankrupt shortly after acquiring modern production lines, and those 'vanished' somehow only to show up in Eastern Germany a few months later).

Back then I'd thought the GDR is at least 15 years behind in computer technology, but in reality it wasn't quite that bad, at least for the few areas that were picked (of course the West had _much_ broader spectrum of _different_ hardware and software popping up everywhere).

<comment><USER12> Notice how everything is a clone or stealing western tech, and nothing you said was pure innovation?

What would their computing have looked like without the west?

<comment><USER2> I think the whole point of the effort was catching up quickly through cloning (much the same strategy as Japan after WW2, or more recently China), and not creating incompatible technology which would ultimately be a dead-end. For instance, a home-grown, incompatible CPU that's only used in one country didn't make sense back then just as today. That's also the reason why the Z80 was chosen over the 6502, it was all about enabling compatibility with CP/M software.

But although the basic chips were cloned, at least some of the actual computers that were build with those chips were not clones of existing Western computer designs, partly because many Western home computers had highly integrated custom chips to make mass production cheaper, which was out-of- question for Eastern computer designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In terms of the modern surveillance state, East Germany and the Stasi have probably been the best studied example.

Fortunately, that surveillance didn't scale well, despite the stereotypical German attempts moving towards industrial efficiency.

In fact a number of articles were produced around how the Orwellian surveillance state didn't scale well using the East Germany/Stasi example. It required far too many full-time and part-time humans at too high frictional cost.

So I wonder how we will look back in a generation at North Korea(if it falls/opens and can be studied) or more scalable Chinese social scoring and surveillance systems(as well as western systems).

I've seen enough exponential abundance charts to last a lifetime.

But I have not seen a chart with an anticipated date for when price/performance makes total surveillance viable.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's an excellent German TV series called Deutschland 83 that aired:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83)

Followup series is Deutschland 86 and then hopefully Deutschland 89.

In Deutchland 83 there are a few interesting scenes around early gen compputer hardware and storage mediums that's good for a quick laugh.

A really solid(and I presume accurate) portrayal of the look/feel of the period leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

</comment><comment><USER14> There even was an East German gaming machine called Poly Play ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play)). You can actually play on one of these in the Computer Games Museum in Berlin (really worth a visit). But of all East Germans that I asked, nobody had ever heard about this before, so probably was something produced in very low quantities.

<comment><USER4> > There even was an East German gaming machine called Poly Play > ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play)). > You can actually play on one of these in the Computer Games Museum in Berlin > (really worth a visit). But of all East Germans that I asked, nobody had > ever heard about this before, so probably was something produced in very low > quantities.

An interesting trivium for arcade nerds: A common theory concerning the "conspiracy-surrounded" arcade machine Polybius

> > [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polybius_(urban_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polybius_\(urban_legend\)&oldid=868914964)

is that its name was actually some misunderstanding/derivation of "Poly Play". Indeed, according to the German news article

> > [https://de.sputniknews.com/panorama/20180113319038539-psychi...](https://de.sputniknews.com/panorama/20180113319038539-psychische- > kontrolle-computerspiele/)

in 1985, about one thousand instances of the Poly Play machine were confiscated in Portland for copyright reasons (which fits the "men in black who took the machines away after a few months" part of the Polybius conspiracy theory). This theory is also mentioned on

> > [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/polybius](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/polybius)

"The best answer if it's fake (IF), is that it was based off an obscure, and rare German arcade cabinet called "Poly-Play" which was a collection of eight games including a puzzler and space shooter."

<comment><USER15> It's since been discovered that Polybius is a hoax perpetrated by the maintainer of coinop.org, an arcade-machine info site, in 2000 or so in order to drive traffic to his site.

Poly Play may have indeed been an influence in the creation of the hoax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your a stasi department in charge of monitoring the activity of privileged children (able to afford and get smuggled goods which from what I'm told was something most stasi family could afford to do) whom many probably have parents above your pay grade... what to do?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone have a good source for their prior scene? I know _of_ the KCs, but never saw a lot of what was done with and to them.

These end-game GDR computer clubs seem to have completely switched to western Commodore products.

<comment><USER2> There's a fairly active hobbyist scene around the East German 8-bit computers, and most of them seem to hang around here:

[http://www.robotrontechnik.de/html/forum/thwb/index.php](http://www.robotrontechnik.de/html/forum/thwb/index.php), I think you need to ask for access though.

You can check out some of the games running in emulators here:

[https://www.lanale.de/kc85_emu/KC85_Emu.html](https://www.lanale.de/kc85_emu/KC85_Emu.html)

...and in my own emulators here (not as complete as the above link though):

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/)

Oh, and there's also:

[http://www.kc85emu.de/](http://www.kc85emu.de/) and [http://www.mpm- kc85.de/](http://www.mpm-kc85.de/) with lots of scans of old manuals, also information and photos of the hardware.

<comment><USER18> Also, I was amused that the recent article here on the "tiny emulators" (browser based) featured both KC85 and Robotron Z1013 emulators [https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/) \-- I imagine the author must have some GDR connection as those are pretty obscure elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Submissions on the "Show" section - <AUTHOR> How can I get my submission show on the "show" section? Earlier today I submitted my Open source project but it is not showing under that section, is there a way to move my submission to that section? This is the submission, by the way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591391 <comment><USER2> See the Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

> "To post one, simply submit a story whose title begins with "Show HN"."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. How can I move the submission I already made some hours ago? Do H-N have moderators for this?

<comment><USER2> Yup. You can email the mods via the Contact link in the footer. They can help you out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will, grzm, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just make the title start with "Show HN:"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, how would one go about for existing submissions?

<comment><USER3> Better to resubmit, as older submissions are less likely to get noticed and upvoted.</comment></comment></comment>


All the data on all the trials, linked - <AUTHOR> http://opentrials.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Blurb from the website:

OpenTrials, a collaboration between Open Knowledge and Ben Goldacre (Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford), will aggregate information from a wide variety of existing sources, and aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the data and documents on all trials conducted on medicines and other treatments around the world.</comment>