iPad Air - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/apple-unveils-redesigned-9-7-ipad-air/ <comment><USER2> I really, really dislike how much hate there is in this thread. I feel like someone always ends up making similar comments every time there's a new launch from Apple/Microsoft/Google/whomever, and there is never any change. Do you guys get psyched about _anything_?

On the one end we have "Oh man, iPad air only has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash, how stupid" and on the other end we have "iPad hasn't cured cancer yet; would have expected more from Apple under Steve Jobs."

Has it occurred to people to like, take a step back for a moment and think about how amazing it is that we as a society have advanced to the point where we can even have something like iPad? The iPad, and devices like it, have done so much to enrich so many people's lives, and isn't that what we're about in this community? We're all trying to make people's lives better with computers, and Apple is as much a part of this mission as any of the people on this site.

Maybe it's easy to get karma by ranting and raving, especially on a site like this where controversy drives more upvotes than downvotes simply because more people have upvote-only privileges. But I want us to be better than this; I don't want this to be the norm for discussion in this community.

<comment><USER3> The iPad to enrich people's live...

Sorry, but the iPad/tablets are mostly used for browsing, creating photos and using apps and games.

That's not really "enriching" life as i see it, it's a consumer device, not a production device... If you really want to make it enriching, make it non- obtrusive.

And i would feel sorry for those whose life really is enriched with a electronic device.

<comment><USER4> My dad is 79 years of age. He could never adjust to the digital world.

Something as simple as checking a hotmail account was out of his reach.

With his iPad he is able to:

\- keep on touch with my expat brother

\- see pictures of his grand kids on FB and emails

\- catch up woth long lost fire do on FB

\- read magazines without his glasses

...in general: just take part in the modern world as opposed to being an outsider.

If you pity him then your pity is misplaced because he is massively grateful to have a tool that enables him to commune with his kids and grand kids and to commune with us online.

<comment><USER5> Ditto. 88-year-old Dad finally got himself an ipad, after decades of wondering whether to get a PC (I got him an HP laptop a while back that he and my mom never quite took to).

Now he's an avid user. The tablet is a miracle of innovation. And the Kindle has enabled my mom to read again, with her macular degeneration.

Tens of millions of ordinary non-techies out there have transformed their lives by means of these gadgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the more interesting aspects of this is that they're keeping the iPad 2 at $399 (compared to the Air's $499). I can't imagine the value proposition for a new iPad 2 is at all attractive at that price point (I bought mine used for ~$250 last summer.)

<comment><USER7> This is definitely for enterprise and school purchases. We have an educational app, Kodable, and a huge number of our users are still on iPad 2s. When you buy in volume, that extra $100 goes a long way, and, for better or worse, schools and enterprise don't always want cutting edge tech.

<comment><USER8> My 5 year old really loves playing Kodable. Congrats on creating a educational game.

<comment><USER7> So glad to hear it!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain to me the obsession with "thinner"? This model is 2mm thinner and it's touted as taking "years of work". Lighter, I understand. Thin is a good goal, but 2mm is pretty pointless when you're just going to put a 5-10mm thick cover/case on it anyway.

<comment><USER10> I've wondered this for years as well. I would much rather see improvements in other areas then constant boasts about "thinnest" XYZ product.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I have a thin Nexus 4, but I have to carry a chunky extra USB battery because a) no replaceable battery and b) thin built in battery doesn't last long enough (yes, this is also Android's fault but that's not my point)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it slightly odd that Apple goes into a decent amount of technical detail on the processor in the iPad - calling out the number of registers and transistors - but still doesn't ever disclose how much RAM is in the thing. This is especially vexing, as my biggest complaint with my current iPad is that it doesn't have enough of it.

<comment><USER13> Thats also why the Ipad1 now crashes on almost every app now - just has 256 megs of ram.

<comment><USER14> The iPad 1 still runs a surprising number of modern apps. My son plays newish games like Angry Birds Star Wars 2 or Asphalt Heat 7 without crashes or minimal lag. Not bad for a 4 year old device with only 256 Megs of RAM.

I'm not sure what apps you're running, but I haven't had the same experience. If the app can be downloaded from the store and doesn't prevent you from opening it on older devices (ex: CSR Classic) it'll run just fine.

<comment> grey-area The browser on my iPad 1 crashes constantly now (running the newer OS). Are you running iOS5 or the OS it came with? Do you do much web browsing on it?

<comment><USER15> Me too and this is frustrating. With 64bit processor we would expect bigger ram since data grow it's size. 1GB seems too small and I fear I'll hit the memory size wall again too soon. May be the next iPad will have a bigger ram.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No TouchID? Surprised they'd introduce a new feature on their premium phone and not include it on the (currently) premium iPads, especially since the other 5s hardware (motion coprocessor, 64-bit architecture) has been carried over.

I would have thought they'd want to build a basic foundation for the future, e.g. "all devices better than the 5s include 64 bit, motion, and TouchID". When you vary on a feature (like TouchID), you discourage people from building cutting-edge experiences that require it.

<comment><USER17> Touch ID sensors are supply constrained and putting it on more things than the 5s wouldn't help.

<comment><USER18> Probably the most logical answer to the question. Sometimes in the midst of all the speculation we forget about the simplest explanations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So their new commercial for the iPad focuses on the fact that so many people use it for productivity, so why can't Apple create a decent, first-party pressure sensitive stylus, so we don't have to deal with expensive, clunky, third-party solutions.

<comment><USER20> Steve Jobs said it best: "if you see a stylus, they blew it."

<comment><USER21> Maybe Steve Jobs was wrong.

Ship it without a stylus. Require that all apps be usable with fingers. Make a sweet pressure-sensitive stylus available for extra precision. Everyone wins.

<comment><USER22> Plenty of third parties already filling that space - I don't think Apple sees the need to move in that direction.

<comment><USER19> They are doing a piss poor job of filling that space because all they can do is work within the limitations of the capacitive touch screen and/or the wireless capabilities of the device. If Apple implemented a proper digitizer, it would be far better than any third party solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lighter. Faster. More magical.

Sigh.

Disappointing. What happened to doing something revolutionary? Where is the the text input? Apple are driving by creatives. When can I write my book on my Apple tablet?

And what's with the 16gb model. As they said, it has been almost 4 years now. And the 16gb model persists.

<comment><USER24> My, how entitled we are! Your priorities may differ from the tens of millions who have bought these, the most popular tablets in the world. Apple is making safe, welcome changes to their products, which is something you can do in times of plenty. Personally, I will be happy to have an iPad that lasts longer, doesn't take ages to turn a page in a high-rez PDF, and is half a pound lighter.

What happened to doing something revolutionary? Lord! Do it yourself! Who says you can't write a book? And why do you have to do it on an iPad? Why not a Surface or whatnot, if that's your priority? Why not a MacBook Air or ultrabook? Your complaints infuriate me!

<comment><USER25> Making small, iterative upgrades to a product is fine, but then you shouldn't post it on Hacker News like it's something important.

<comment><USER26> a) Apple didn't post this, an interested user did. b) It's interesting to hackers and has plenty of upvotes. c) To a lot of people using this site, it is something important.

<comment><USER25> a) Never claimed they did, b1) that's debatable b2) my comment tried to say that maybe it shouldn't be upvoted c) each to their own

<comment><USER27> a) No, you merely insinuated it, b1) no, the 210 [at time of writing] make it a substantiated fact, (b2) who do you think you are to suggest whether or not some votes for a article. It's how the set works. Don't like the article, don't click the link it really is that simple, (3) absolutely. It would've helped if you'd applied tha before posting first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Okay. Looks good.

Recently, Apple seems big on iteration and small on innovation. Miniaturising an existing product is definitely a _good_ iteration, but when I see Microsoft experimenting with touch covers and the like, I do wish Apple would try one or two new things again.

<comment><USER29> I think TouchID and the new Mac Pro are quite innovative in their functionality and design.

<comment><USER30> The Mac Pro is over a year old now. And touch id has been around in some form for years. Both are nice, though neither is very revolutionary.

<comment><USER31> Huh? The new Mac Pro isn't even available for sale yet. That revolution design was only announced at WWDC a few months back. Are you sure you are not confusing it with the MacbookPro?

<comment><USER30> Erm, yup. You're right; I was thinking of the Macbook Pro. I think I've put a mental block on the Mac Pro, but that's due to my use cases for a computer having no intersections with the Mac Pro's use cases.

That said, calling it revolutionary seems a bit much - the form factor is certainly new and unique, but none of its components (or its roles) are distinct from that of the previous Mac Pros. Certainly not on the scale of differences between the original iPad and its competitors at the time, or the iPhone, or the iPod.

It could safely be argued as a simple iteration on the PC's form factor.

<comment><USER32> If your bar is so high that the new Mac Pro's case is not called "innovative" I don't know what to tell you. It is almost self evidentially a out-of-the- box, non incremental approach to how to design the case of a desktop machine. You can decide you don't like it, but it's clearly innovative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How can the iPad 5 have x2 the graphics power over the iPad 4, when the iPad 5 has the same A7 as the iPhone 5S - rather than an A7X, as they've done previously.

Have they just stopped using the A7X style name? Have they just x2 the GPU frequency? (seems implausible, but it's Rogue, which is apparently extremely efficient, and maybe could handle x2 frequency?).

 _edited above for clarity_

BTW: The anandtech iPhone 5S review ([http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the- iphone-5s-review/7](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the- iphone-5s-review/7)) noted that the A7's rogue G6430 is more powerful than was utilized in the iPhone 5S:

      At 200MHz that would give the A7 twice the peak theoretical performance of the GPU
      in the iPhone 5. And from what I've heard, the G6430 is clocked much higher than
      that.

If 200MHz is correct, I bet the iPad 5 just doubled the GPU frequency to 400MHz.

<comment><USER34> The iPad4 doesn't pack an A7.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A6X](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A6X)

<comment><USER33> True, but I don't follow how that's connected to my comment... maybe I should explain the background of my comment.

      The iPhone 5S (A7) has x1 the graphics power as the iPad 4.
      The iPad 5    (A7) has x2 the graphics power of the iPad 4.

So... how to get double the graphics power out of the same SoC (A7)? That was the puzzle (likely ans: x2 frequency)

<comment><USER35> You may be incorrectly assuming all A7 SoCs are identical. The Apple TV has an A5, but it's only single core, unlike it's dual core phone and tablet brethren. Maybe they just dropped the X moniker.

<comment><USER33> If you have a look at my original comment, I suggested that: "Have they just stopped using the A7X style name?"

<comment><USER35> oh, right. I think that's the answer.

<comment><USER33> You could be right, but have a read of the review I linked above, search for the text I quoted, and read around that. To me, it's compelling that the iPhone 5S's GPU is severely underclocked, leaving headroom for reuse in the iPad 5. And of course higher-clocking is usual in iPads, with their larger battery.

BONUS: for next year, the G6630 gives 50% performance increase + the expected node shrink allows a further ~30% overclock. 1.5*1.3 = 1.95 ~ 2.0.

For the following year, they could go for G6630MP2 (the 6 clusters can be multicored as a whole). Next (three years from now), they could go G6630MP3 plus another node shrink. By that time, there could be 8/10 clusters available G6830, G6A30 etc, and an entirely new architecture in the works, though probably not yet available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Where is the mac mini update?

This is really what I want to see. An updated mac mini with Haswell would be really nice.

I hope they just update it even if it didn't make it to the main announcements.

<comment><USER37> They haven't announced a Mac Mini refresh in years. It'll slip out quietly at some point.

<comment><USER38> The mac mini was refreshed a year ago (in fact, to the day, Oct 23)... Bumped to IV-B CPU, Bluetooth 4, Thunderbolt1 and dual drive bay

<comment><USER37> Sure, but they didn't talk about it. I'd say it'll be similar this time round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Apple is going for even higher margins, and it will still sell well since who doesn't want a lighter iPad?

* SoC: A5X was 165mm^2. A6X was 123mm^2. A7 is only 102mm^2 with a 64-bit memory interface instead of 128-bit. They can do PoP memory too for even smaller PCB area. So much cheaper. * WiFi/LTE: same chips probably used on iPhone 5c, 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini. Simpler inventory and buy in even higher quantities. * Screen: same screen as all previous retina generations likely. * Battery: much smaller since the GPU is more efficient. More cost savings.

<comment><USER37> > * SoC: A5X was 165mm^2. A6X was 123mm^2. A7 is only 102mm^2 with a 64-bit > memory interface instead of 128-bit.

This was pretty inevitable; the A5X was _absurdly_ large for a mobile SoC, and they only did it because they had to. Even the A7 is on the hefty side; it's about the biggest of its process node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why does Apple depart from the series numbers with the iPad?

New iPad, now iPad Air... seems silly?

<comment><USER41> If you look at the back of the iPhones, the iPhone 3GS was the last one to name itself. Recently an Apple store employee wasn't to happy that I kept saying iPad 4.

I suppose in a world where change is frequent and incremental rather than dramatic and rare removing the version number is appropriate to minimize consumer confusion.

What strikes me more about this iPad Air is the price points. $499 16GB wifi only is a very hard sell to the mass market when a Nexus 7 16GB comes in at $230. Size matters here, but I can see Apple being in big trouble when Google's tablet is half the price and has a handful of more advanced features. I guess that is why Apple hired that Burberry executive last week. They can sit right next to the Vertu store.

<comment><USER42> The Retina Mini is $399. So, yeah, it's more than the N7, but it's not twice as much.

<comment><USER43> Close enough. $230 vs $400

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> With all due respect, I really hope HN doesn't end up turning into an Apple fanatic site as was the case on certain tech blogs a few years ago.

Also 2mm thinner warrants the "Air" title? I seriously think Apple are parodying themselves sometimes...

Disclaimer: I am not any sort of "fanboy", I own an iPad and an android phone because they seem to be most suitable for me in those areas, I just feel as though HN is getting a bit caught up in the "hype" of Apple today.

<comment><USER45> They needed to change the name, and have been trying to get away from the numbering scheme. Remember how they tried to call the iPad 3 the "New iPad" but it failed to catch on?

<comment><USER46> Well, where do you go from there really..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know that not everyone uses a keyboard case, but I am saddened by the fact that the new one is too small to support a usable keyboard case.

When I purchased a Clamcase Pro, I started using my iPad for pretty much everything, from term papers to code. While it was still pretty small, I could comfortably type about 90wpm on it, which is only about 10-15 less than I normally type.

For everyone else, this looks like pretty good upgrade.

<comment><USER47> Too small? Logitech makes a keyboard cover for the mini [1], they'll surely do one for the ipad air

[1] [http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/ultrathin-keyboard- min...](http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/ultrathin-keyboard-mini)

<comment><USER19> Just because they make something, doesn't mean it works well. Only someone with relatively small hands will be able to type accurately and comfortably on that thing. It's also not the kind of keyboard case that works well on your lap.

The Clamcase Pro, on the other hand, did a pretty good job of converting my iPad into a MacBook Air that runs IOS. I'm curious to see if they'll manage to come out with a usable solution for the new one. If not, I don't really need to upgrade my iPad 4 for another year or so anyways.

<comment><USER48> I use this logitech keyboard every day and absolutely love it. The overall package is thinner than the Clamcase Pro, too. I basically use this iPad everywhere not my desk, and can't go back to lugging my laptop around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> " I can't imagine the value proposition for a new iPad 2 is at all attractive at that price point.. "

Its interesting how most people here assume that the world at large makes same choices as themselves. Consider iPhone pricing: Apple has been selling previous years models for $100 less than the latest version, yet they sold millions of outdated iPhones even in the US.

Not everyone wants the latest gadget or cares about the greatest tech specs as long as they can extract the desired utility at the least possible price. There are laggards in the adoption curve who are more price sensitive than the early adopters.

I'm a victim of this fallacy myself. I used to wonder who on the earth is clicking on those ads displayed next to Google search, why don't everyone just install AdBlock on their browsers? Yet Google raked in billions of dollars as people clicked on those ads that I considered spam.

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone know what the airplane game they're showing here is? [http://images.apple.com/ipad- air/features/images/performance...](http://images.apple.com/ipad- air/features/images/performance_hero.jpg)

I'd like to get it.

<comment><USER51> It's Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy by Namco. Here's the App Store link: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/sky-gamblers-air- supremacy/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/sky-gamblers-air- supremacy/id505730036?mt=8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Sadly, one thing it doesn't appear to have—at least, not yet—is a gold > casing.

Can't tell if sarcasm or not.

<comment><USER53> Given that the gold 5s was incredibly popular at launch, would it really be surprising that someone wants an ipad with the same option?

<comment><USER54> And given that it was widely made fun of, would it really be surprising that he was joking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1lb! finally a reasonable weight for the full size iPad, I was worried they'd lower it back to the same weight as the iPad 2 rather than make a dramatic change like this.

</comment><comment><USER55> Article has little info, is this just a rebranding of the "big iPad" line?

<comment><USER56> Yep, lighter faster version. Realistically, they probably realized that people want to be able to tell what version it is from the name. The previous two iterations were just the "new iPad".

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Looks nice. I'll be ordering one (my daughter accidentally destroyed our old iPad2).

The only thing that bugs me is that they're still able to charge crazy money for more internal storage. $100 for going from 16 to 32GB, seriously?

</comment><comment><USER58> From Apple's tech specs, the only differences I can see between the Retina Mini and the Air is the weight and size of the screen (the resolution is the same). So the extra $100 is for bigger heavier pixels?

<comment><USER59> Basically, yes. I personally will be buying the Air because I like my older iPad's size vs my iPhone. The mini is a great product, but it's just a little too small for me to fit the bedroom/travel entertainment category that I'm looking for. Plus, playing board and light-3d games on the 10" screen is really a joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Interesting, not sure if its enough to make be upgrade but still. Weirdly when the 'ipad air' moniker leaked I figured they were going to a do an iOS version of the Macbook Air to capture the 'appliance laptop' market that the Chromebook and Surface 2 are gunning for.

The graphics and cpu boosts are nice (and nice that they are accompanied by a run time boost) but what about the camera? What about the sensors? Looking forward to the full appraisal post event.

<comment><USER61> The 'appliance laptop' market is too similar to the failed netbook market for Apple to approach or care about, I think. If Apple were to come out with an new or hybrid category I don't think it would resemble an 'appliance laptop'.

Afterall, the MacBook Air wasn't a competitor to the netbooks - it was a competitor to the ultrabooks being touted by Intel et al. The iPad was the sleeper competitor to the netbook and killed that market (with help from Windows and Intel desperate to not have the PC platform not go that far down market).

If Apple comes out with something to address the 'appliance laptop' market I expect it to be an official Apple design and manufactured keyboard for the iPad line* and not an entirely new product.

I've not seen it mentioned anywhere yet, but the "iPad Air" and "iPad Mini" monikers leave room for the simply "iPad" moniker to eventually refer to something entirely re-imagined or ultra-premium. At the least it leaves room for a larger "iPad".

* What is the state of the art in usability in the 3rd party iPad keyboard market these days?

<comment><USER42> "Afterall, the MacBook Air wasn't a competitor to the netbooks - it was a competitor to the ultrabooks being touted by Intel et al."

This is backwards: the original MBA was introduced in 2008, and Intel only introduced the "Ultrabook" branding several years later. The MBA was largely panned as a far-too-expensive Apple attempt to cover their flank from the inexorable advance of the netbook. It was only when the iPad and competitive Android tablets put paid to netbooks that Intel came around to the design.

<comment><USER61> Ah, thank you for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Revolution and innovation don't happy everyday, that's what makes them special and amazing. Expecting one company to be revolutionary and innovative once a year is expecting too much, once every ten years is probably expecting too much. Good incremental steps is not only expected, it's probably all that's possible.

Most people go through their entire life without thinking up something innovative, much less making it.

<comment><USER63> True. Nonetheless, I find myself a bit disappointed. At this point, the only thing iPad has is a first mover's advantage aka the App Store. There are very compelling alternatives available in both 7 inch and 10 inch range with interesting experimentation - Surface Blades for example. Nexus 7, Lumia 2520, Surface can match the build quality.

<comment><USER64> Interesting experimentation doesn't mean a more useful product, and those devices do not match the build quality.

Whereas a 30% weight reduction and 100% performance improvement makes the iPad air far more useable _in every situation_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Interesting that it's also getting the new M7 motion co-processor. It's good to see the market for always-on motion sensor computing increasing.

<comment><USER59> I really need to get more creative with my personal apps now that someone can be carrying an iPhone 5S and iPad Air, both that can be iBeacons and accurately track motion. Ugh, there has to be something there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> The performance and weight are exciting, but does anyone else prefer the old thick bezel? I always loved that about the original iPad design, that there was seldom any concern about accidental touches and where to put your thumb(s).

<comment><USER67> Still as thick on top and bottom. It's just the sides that are thinner. I guess it depends how you hold it most of the time. Personally, I mostly hold it in landscape view, so I will have the thick bezel most of the time. There are just a few apps that make use of the portrait view and of course there are the eBooks I read, but that doesn't happen to often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Is there really enough here to persuade a current iPad owner to upgrade? Not for me. Apple's really going to have to push developers to crank out resource- intensive apps.

<comment><USER69> > Apple's really going to have to push developers to crank out resource- > intensive apps.

Why? I would say Apple is more interested in having developers crank out _great_ apps, rather than resource intensive. It just so happens these are usually more resource intensive.

<comment><USER68> I disagree that great apps need to be resource intensive. To borrow from another industry, "12 Angry Men" is still a great movie despite a complete lack of whiz bang special effects. A great app is about the story, not the photo-realism.

At least for the upgrade market (of existing iPad owners), Apple does not benefit (much) from great apps that run fine on an iPad 1 or iPad 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know how Apple does it. I want one of these.

</comment><comment><USER70> > Apple says is 8 times faster and has 72 times better graphics performance > than the old processor.

I am always amused by this.

<comment><USER71> That was with respect to the original iPad compared to the iPad Air _.

_ I may have misheard. I had the video minimized while working on other things.

<comment><USER72> [http://www.apple.com/ipad-air/](http://www.apple.com/ipad-air/) says 2x for both CPU and GPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I really hope Apple can make these products: iMac Air, iPad Pro & Macbook air Retina.

Sent from iphone air pro.

</comment><comment><USER74> Apple keeps disappointing me

</comment><comment><USER75> At this point they are not even trying anymore. They put up the same tactic as with the iPhone 5C (marginally cheaper, definitely worse device than the top line just to make the step to the high-end device seem more reasonable and will be taken faster whilst getting rid of their old iPad supply), made everything a bit thinner, did some software updates and upgraded the hardware components.

So, enjoy your time waiting for the NEW IPAD AIR 2014, TWICE AS LIGHT, NOW WITH FINGER PRINT SCANNER. RETINA MACBOOK AIR 2014. You can say anything you want, but this is nothing new. Gimmicks, I tell you. Which is absolutely fine if it weren't for Apple to market this stuff as revolutionary, insane new concepts beating the competition at every point. They are basically scamming customers and they don't even care as long as they get an Apple logo with it.

To those Apple zealots down voting me: do you really need to suppress criticism this bad? Maybe it is because you are in denial or something? Feel bad, because it hurts to know you are being scammed?

<comment><USER76> Why is this comment at the top? I don't know what else people want. You can't rewrite the script every year, iteration after iteration apple has improved this device and it only gets better. There is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER75> >Why is this comment at the top?

People tend to upvote valuable and truthful comments around here, so it seems.

<comment><USER64> That's why that comment has now sunk to the bottom.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want a promotion?  Think like an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/27/pf/job_promotion.moneymag/index.htm?iid=HP_River <comment><USER2> I would have trouble doing any of this, because If I'm going to come up with a new profitable niche, I don't want .0000001% of the profits.

It's probably why I didn't get promoted much while I was working for other people. I would do my job and all other energy was spent working on my own company and ideas.</comment>


Show HN: I built an all-in-one customer support platform - <AUTHOR> https://noorahq.com <comment><AUTHOR> I built Noora because I wanted a plug and play customer support platform that could handle the whole user journey - whether it be people asking for help, them requesting new features or announcing new features to them.

The advantage of integrating all of these customer interactions together is that Noora can start to automate a lot of the stuff that just doesn't happen with a busy customer support team - such as delighting someone by following up on a feature request when it actually ships.</comment>


Possibly GDPR-compliant ISO standard - <AUTHOR> https://www.iso.org/standard/71670.html <comment><AUTHOR> I've read a few posts about how this standard is sufficient for GDPR compliance (and other regional regulations, like Brazil's LGPD). Might be useful to the HN crowd.</comment>


Patchmap: Memory Efficient Hash Tables and Pseudorandom Ordering - <AUTHOR> https://1ykos.github.io/patchmap/ <comment><USER2> I'm fond of using interpolated search on hashed data. I've never tried it on data with dynamic insertions/deletions.

I would have anticipated the cost of maintaining the sort making it not a winner. Interesting to see that it can actually work out in practice!</comment>


Ask HN: Should I take a Data/ML job at a startup that doesn't yet have data - <AUTHOR> After 7 years of frontend web app experience, I'm switching careers to ML/DataScience and looking for that first job to get my foot in the door. I recently spoke to a founder of a very early-stage startup. (I don't have any experience working with startups either.) They seem to have their frontend work outsourced to a team in another country but their core product will eventually depend entirely on a recommendation engine that will need to be built by new people. If I take the job, I'll be the first Data person, but also the first in-house tech guy so I might end up with leadership responsibilites later on.
My question is whether it makes sense at all to join as a "Data person" when the data will likely be insufficient for the next 12+ months. They won't even launch the app until January.
I worry that I will get caught up in mostly doing urgent frontend work and putting out fires and it will be at least a year before I even begin to look at the data.
Thanks for any advice and for pointing out my naivete! <comment><USER2> Just throwing this out there... but worry more about the company/team/funding first. Their claims may or may not be true... but you should make sure you're good financially first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Honestly at the moment, i'm financially somewhat secure and so i'm open to a riskier venture. If the startup failed in a year but I've gained considerable Data-engineering experience, I would still think of it as a win.

But you're right. The company/team matters and the viability of the startup matters. Though I have no idea how to estimate how their funding will turn out in the future...

<comment><USER2> If you are financially stable... the go bigger. You can afford to really look for the right gig. Find a solid headhunter, and find your perfect gig... it will take ~3-6 months but it will be worth it.

Other option, start a biz on the side that utilizes the exact skills you would need later.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are important climate science opensource projects? - <AUTHOR> Considering that climate research might be somewhat stalled because of new U.S. administration I wonder what are the best ways to help it continue. I'm a software engineer and I don't know much about climate science besides basic physics, so helping with software is my best chance. <comment><USER2> I used to work at GFDL and I know that they provide some code on GitHub, including at least one climate model (MOM6). Also, the Flexible Modeling System (FMS) is core to the work they do, but you'll have to put your Fortran hat on. You might also look at PCMDI's repo. They provide tooling that helps standardize climate data for the international community for use in the assessment reports. For something more on the distribution and analysis side (which may be more accessible and interesting to people who aren't climate scientists), take a look at the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). Hope this helps!

[https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov](https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov)

[https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL](https://github.com/NOAA-GFDL)

[https://github.com/PCMDI](https://github.com/PCMDI)

[https://github.com/esgf](https://github.com/esgf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not involved in climate science, so I'm hardly an expert, but this is something I've heard a bit about. It seems to be pretty popular / widely used:

[http://climate.apache.org/](http://climate.apache.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> There is this crypto currency called gridcoin where you lend your machine's processing power for researches like climate change,cancer research... Very intersting projects there

<comment><USER5> I mean its a nice idea, but how does that work - wouldnt the spare cycles use energy and contribute to climate change?

<comment><USER6> Depends on your locations power source: nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro don't cause co2 emission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This from a little over a year ago was very informative:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/UV-CDAT](https://github.com/UV-CDAT)

This is a really good project. The guys that work on this also work on PCMDI and ESGF.</comment>


What Shape is the Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://noahveltman.com/internet-shape/ <comment><USER2> [http://internet-map.net/](http://internet-map.net/)

<comment><USER3> Cool, but misnamed: it's actually a map of the Web. Here are some others: [http://www.wired.com/2015/06/mapping-the- internet/](http://www.wired.com/2015/06/mapping-the-internet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Building-size model of the internet in Brussels:

[http://media- cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/9d/71/72/f...](http://media- cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/9d/71/72/filename-atomium-todayout.jpg)

<comment><USER5> that's actually a unit cell of an iron crytal. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's clearly box-shaped with an LED on top: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's like the shape of a typical manifold drawn in a topology textbook. Weird amoeba looking things.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess this is why they call it "the cloud".</comment>


Bad code plagues business applications, especially Java ones - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/bad-code-plagues-it-applications-especially-java-ones.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

<comment><USER2> I don't know if it is any more prevalent in Java apps or not. We probably experience and notice it more in Java apps because there are more lines of it out there. It would be east to work the numbers to come to that conclusion.

In my personal experience the worst technical debt that I have seen is in organizations that brought the wrong guy in the door, as the first technical person in the org or worse yet promoted the most technical person in the office or a nephew into the position. These organization have always taken the biggest payments on technical debt to rectify. The most important technical decision an organization can make is the first technical hire, unfortunately usually no one in the organization is qualified to make the decision.

As a side note, I have always thought there would be value in a technical guild that people could call on to find these type people. Not your typical head hunter but a network of good developers that are connected. So if I am in Orlando, have a buddy that moves to NYC and starts a company, but I don't have a network in NYC, he could call me, I could contact a guild member in NYC and be comfortable that the member will give me a recommendation of someone who is reputable.

How you design that guild to be effective has always stumped me, it would have to be exclusive that much I know, and generally those of us that are 10x'ers form a group of 10x'ers that stick together, but that is regional. I struggle to figure out how one group in Orlando can bridge the gap with NYC and know that that group is reputable. It would be a powerful organization if it could be built, just based on the fact that it could keep a lot of companies from taking on a lot of technical debt up front, by the wrong choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> FTA: " _...the oldest applications in our sample...have likely undergone more extensive remediation for security vulnerabilities over time..._ "

I suspect the age of the codebase correlates better with their metrics than the implementation language. The worst-performing languages are also the ones with the most recent code. They're not finding a Java problem or a .NET problem, they're finding problems in fresh code, which is no surprise.</comment>


Kickstart the GNUstep Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/203272607/gnustep-project <comment><USER2> Finally.

I have been extolling the virtues of Obj-C and Apple/NeXT's Cocoa's APIs and its legendary user interface design since I first saw it. When I found out about GNUstep about a year ago, I kept asking myself why nobody else had picked it up.

I realized that the people who liked Obj-C and Cocoa just used OS X. GNUstep was a pointless waste of time for a Cocoa developer, but with OS X quickly seeming like the replacement for Windows on the desktop, I'm glad it's finally picking up steam.

But, as we said prior, the people that care _just use OS X._ Their target platform is OS X. The Linux users are happy with WINE and GTK+. There's nowhere for the project to go, and I fear that this Kickstarter will be a failed effort.

I'm putting down my cash for this. I want to see it succeed. I know it probably won't.

If it does, well, the rest is history. Maybe it will jumpstart Obj-C x-platform like Mono did for C#.

\</comment><comment>

also, for those interested in the NeXT-style look and feel, the Window Maker (GNUstep WM) LiveCDs have had consistent snapshots and are always updated; based on Debian testing: [http://wmlive.sourceforge.net/](http://wmlive.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER3> It's not about NeXT or WindowMaker or anything like that. I don't care about the NeXT look and feel and as you can see from the video and the screenshots GNUstep has moved away from that look.

I should point out that there are anumber of companies who have moved their products to Windows using GNUstep. THIS is the point of GNUstep, to allow both development of new projects and porting of existing projects to other platforms without the need for much code change. There are two examples of companies which do this today:

[http://www.testplant.com](http://www.testplant.com) \- Testplant ported their EggPlant app (a testing app which is script driven) which is the core of their company to Windows. NOW the revenue from the Windows version makes up more than 2/3rds of the company's revenue.

[http://www.apportable.com](http://www.apportable.com) \- Got an Android? Got an android that runs any game which is familiar to you from iOS... well, guess what... chances are these guys probably ported it... and they used GNUstep to do it. GNUstep is currently running on _millions_ of devices out there.

So the sentiment "just get a mac" in this context, makes absolutely no sense at all and, in fact, completely misses the point.

Greg C.

<comment><USER4> Using GNUstep to develop Android apps is a HUGE win. You really should push this angle more. Look at the success Xamarin have with their 1 language for multiple mobile devices solution. You have the same thing going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry to be a downer, but there needs to be a reality check, because future open source projects can learn a thing or two from this.

This project is unlikely to be successfully funded. In fact, "unlikely" is a mild word for just how unlikely it is to succeed.

Problem #1 - No clear value demonstration to the end user. The video is... not very good. The primary reason it's not very good is because it's asking people to read. People react instinctively to faces, to the sound of a person's voice, and to feeling connected with them. It's no coincidence that virtually every successful Kickstarter campaign contains monologues by their campaign creators. Thus, while there may be a value proposition embedded somewhere in the video, it's probably lost on most people who watch it because they just aren't really identifying with what is being presented.

Problem #2 - a $25 minimum price point. The gamedev industry has repeatedly proven that by enabling people to contribute $5 and $10, you reap about 20-40% more income than you otherwise would have. This truth isn't restricted to the domain of gamedev. The evidence for this is that virtually every successful Kickstarter project has low-tier contribution levels, often contributing a significant amount to the bottom-line of projects that aren't going to deliver a tangible product. E.g. this may not be so important for projects like Soylent, where the end-user will receive something tangible, but it's pretty important for most projects that weren't set up with the goal of taking preorders.

Problem #3 - Too high of a threshold for funding. $50k is not reasonable when the value proposition is so unclear. I could see this project reaching $5k or maybe even $10k. But it's not reasonable to calculate how much it would cost you to work on it, and then use that as the funding goal. "What would the crowds be willing to pay?" takes priority over "How much would this cost me in terms of my time, and what is my time worth?"

<comment><USER6> > Problem #3 - Too high of a threshold for funding.

I looked at this and had the opposite reaction. $50K is between 50 and 75% of a full-time developer's salary in NYC for a single year (I believe it's similar in SF). Are we expected to believe that that's _all_ it would take to get Cocoa libraries running seamlessly on GNU?

Granted, I've never dealt with Cocoa at all, so maybe I'm overestimating this, but it seems like a _lot_ of work.

I mean, how can you take a 15-year, multi-person project, and then assume it's going to be completed with a single person-year[0]?

[0] I don't mean literally a single person - I'm referring to a person-year being a unit of "work" (ie, the theoretical work equivalent of one person for a year).

<comment><USER7> I'm also skeptical, but I think the comparison with regular dev salaries overestimates the money that would be needed, at least for some projects. There are many volunteer contributors to open-source projects who would be willing to move to working on them full-time, or at least more-time, for much less than market rate. For example one of the SBCL devs did a _lot_ of work on the compiler for only $16k ([http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sbcl- threading-2011](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sbcl-threading-2011)), and the Git-Annex Assistant guy worked on it for a whole year for $25k ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex- assistan...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant- like-dropbox-but-with-your-own)).

Granted, if you have to hire devs not already part of your project at market rate, things will go way up from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still really sad that the Etoile OS project died out. ([http://etoileos.com/etoile/](http://etoileos.com/etoile/)) Maybe it can start up again if GNUStep catches up to 10.6.

<comment><AUTHOR> Étoilé svn is actually rather active. I suspect the reason the site has languished so badly is that the focus largely shifted away from the desktop environment and towards producing a development platform with tighter involvement in GNUstep's own development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gregory Casamento, the Kickstarter author, is Chief Maintainer of GNUstep: [http://www.gnustep.org/developers/whoiswho.html](http://www.gnustep.org/developers/whoiswho.html)

<comment><USER2> It's worth noting that this is the author of the _campaign_ , not the author of the entire _company_.

<comment><USER3> I am the chief maintainer of GNUstep. I wrote most of AppKit and all of the InterfaceBuilder equivalent Gorm. I run the GNUstep free software project, I was appointed as it's lead by Richard Stallman.

Please read: [http://www.gnustep.org/developers/whoiswho.html](http://www.gnustep.org/developers/whoiswho.html)

Gregory Casamento

<comment><USER2> Gorm keeps giving me segfaults when I try to drag files from it to ProjectCenter (or vice versa). Even when I open any interface builder file in Gorm, it segfaults. I run Debian Wheezy.

<comment><USER3> Ouch! I'll test this and see if I can recreate/fix it. One thing to make certain of is that you're using GNUstep from subversion. The debian packages are almost always about a year out of date, unfortunately.

<comment><USER2> Ah! That seems to be the problem. I'll try the SVN repositories; I just downloaded the development packages from apt.

Thanks for your help. I see that the project has already reached 10% of its goal... maybe we can make this happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had my first exposure to Objective-C using GNUstep on a Linux box in about 2002. I am grateful that it existed and it was there for me to be exposed to it; I was pretty young and probably could not have afforded a Mac in those days.

As objc and Apple itself has gained so much steam over the years, it's kind of funny to have learned it long ago via a clone of NeXT stuff. Most folks working in the language have no idea that it could possibly exist outside of Apple and tend to think of all the framework underneath them as a black box. I think maybe some of these folks would learn something by looking at an open source re-implementation of these NS* classes, or attempting such an endeavor themselves, even if on a small scale.

Also: objc is just too interesting for Apple to hog it all for themselves, or for it to be a one-implementation language.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Cocoa is the most productive environment for desktop development. It is unrivaled.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if I'll go quite that far; I'm not going to put on objc blinders to the point where I'm unwilling to see what other platforms do well.

But man, seeing objc and comparing it with its peers across multiple decades... In a world where most people were doing C++ and doing it badly[1], or doing Java and doing it badly, it was very eye-opening to see this tiny little runtime that adds objects to C and doesn't do a bad job of it.

[1] and I'm talking the pre-STL, pre-C++11 at that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My biggest problem with GNUstep is that there is never any mention of an OS X build.

There was one, but it is pretty broken and answers to inquiries were basically answered with "why would you even want to do that"?

Quite simply: for testing purposes! Most Cocoa applications are developed on Macs, so being able to build them with the "other" framework on the same machine would help alot.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I'm glad to see the effort to enable more cross-platform application development, I wonder why the open source community doesn't produce its own cross-platform toolkit to rival those made by Apple and Microsoft. It seems that far too often the vision behind open source projects is limited to copying successful closed-source projects. I understand it's much harder to launch an open source project in an altogether new category, but it's that much more exciting when it does happen. How can innovation be encouraged in open source? It seems somehow there needs to be a greater potential for financial reward to encourage such developments.

<comment><USER14> Loads of radical innovation takes place as Open Source. Git (the software and the philosophy it embodies) being a really good example.

As to innovation in software frameworks, it is not going to take place on the Desktop, it's taking place in the browser—where every major burgeoning framework is Open Source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The video says Elegant, then a picture appears and all I see is "old". Then the video says Simple, and other qualities, and all I see is pictures of something appearing "old".

I mean, I was there 15 years ago, and Windowmaker on Debian 2.[0|1|2] was my environment of choice. I loved it.

But as I write from my new MBPr, I see pictures of something appearing "old".

That's why I hope the campaign is funded, but I know that it can and will be funded mainly by developers. And developers not caring much for that part of the UX which we call look & feel.

Unless of course somebody is doing a better video with more modern screenshots while I'm writing.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've backed this because I'd like it to succeed. However, I think Cocotron had a far better chance at succeeding with their philosophy of using Xcode and cross compiling to other platforms. This drastically reduces the barrier to entry for the majority of Cocoa developers and lets them use Apple's (excellent) developer tools. It's a shame there isn't more collaboration between the two projects but I understand this is down to licensing differences.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know how close it is to 10.6? I havent looked at it in years but this seems like a big job and a low price.

<comment><USER18> The projects lead's website mentions that 10.5 API completeness is already close. Here is the reference: [http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2013/06/gnustep- mythbusting....](http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2013/06/gnustep- mythbusting.html)

He certainly doesn't quantify this on either his blog, nor on the kickstarter campaign though.

<comment><USER3> Allow me to get this straight... you would like to see a complete analysis of everything that's missing between the current state of GNUstep and 10.6? I can produce that, no problem but it is very boring and not worthy of either my blog or a kickstarter campaign.

<comment><USER18> No, it certainly wouldn't be worth posting in either place, but a link would be cool, even if it was to a mailing list archive where it was previously placed.

<comment><USER3> I did do one which outlined which classes were missing, I'll find it and post a link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> GNUStep has been stagnant for years, it is obvious that nobody finds it interesting. I understand that developers are willing to put up with some anachronisms to make money off iOS/OSX , but they clearly opted away from them for open source. I don't see how money is going to change its appeal.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does GNUstep support any languages other than Objective-C?

<comment><USER21> "GNUstep features a cross-platform, object-oriented development environment. Like Apple Cocoa, GNUstep also has a Java interface, as well as Ruby, Guile and Scheme bindings."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUStep](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUStep)

<comment><USER22> Also note that Smalltalk could be/is supported:

[http://etoileos.com/dev/docs/languages/smalltalk/](http://etoileos.com/dev/docs/languages/smalltalk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are able to get WebObjects 4.5.1, then you can take a glimpse of how GNUStep should've been done on the Windows.

Sorry, but detachable menus, while great (and I love them in Autodesk Maya, but they start out as regular ones) would not make lots of people happy. Even Apple more than 15 years ago realized that, and their menus on Windows looked like Windows.

This is what for example ActiveDeveloper, an IDE based on WebObjects looked like:

[http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/a/activedev...](http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/a/activedeveloper-88285-1.jpeg)

</comment><comment><USER24> It might be worth looking at how pypy does donations .. the donations are towards specific subprojects (eg numpypy, stm).

This isn't listed on the front page of the project .. (and the Donations link, just goes to a wiki !? )

</comment><comment><USER25> TL;DR: It would be great to see GNUstep catch up with Cocoa, the guy who run the campaign IS the project lead, but the only thing that may prevent the campaign to succeed is the very poor marketing level.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is the estimated man-hours required to complete this project?

</comment><comment><USER27> What does "Darling integration" mean? Darling already depends on Gnustep, doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER28> LiveCD?

</comment><comment><USER29> It's dead, Jim.

</comment><comment><USER30> What about TideSDK?

[http://www.tidesdk.org/](http://www.tidesdk.org/)

<comment><USER31> How does that have anything to do with GNUstep?

<comment><USER30> From what I can understand (which I wanted to also note -- half the time I'm really not sure what GNUstep is -- correct me if my understanding of what he's trying to achieve is wrong), he's trying to make extremely portable code that will run identically in any OS right?

TideSDK has made pretty good progress on that front, by leveraging web tech. He could maybe save a heck of a lot of time by porting TideSDK to cocoa and then pushing that

<comment><USER11> If thats all it was you may as well have linked to Java Swing

<comment><USER30> so looking at this page:

[http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html](http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html)

I think my point still stands. He wants to bring cross-platform cocoa, partnering with an existing product might be a better way to do it

<comment><USER32> I think you're misreading the emphasis there. GNUstep is driven by an interest in objective-c/cocoa, not in making yet another cross platform framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am sorry but I don't see the point of this.

<comment><USER34> Because there's something inherently useless about it, or because you personally don't care about the NeXTStep/Cocoa APIs? If it's the second, then it's totally irrelevant to the discussion.

The point of this is:

1) to have a working Cocoa port on Unix, Linux and Windows platforms.

2) to provide a way for programmers creating ObjC/Cocoa apps (and with iOS and the Mac App Store those are hundrends of thousands) to port their apps to Linux/Windows.

3) To move the GnuStep project forward.

4) To provide an additional set of nice, modern APIs on Linux. E.g. GTK3 is nowhere as good or feature complete as Cocoa (even 10.6 Cocoa).

5) To eventually give the possibility for cross-platform development of Mac/iOS apps (e.g games).

<comment><USER35> The kickstarter page doesn't explain why those things are all worthwhile, or why one system will solve all of them.

If they want to raise a moderately large amount of money they probably need to speak to more than just people who already totally understand what they're doing and why.

> 1) to have a working Cocoa port on Unix, Linux and Windows platforms.

OK but why? That's not a reason in itself.

> 2) to provide a way for programmers creating ObjC/Cocoa apps (and with iOS > and the Mac App Store those are hundrends of thousands) to port their apps > to Linux/Windows.

This may make sense, but there are important subsidiary questions:

\- Will you cover enough of the APIs that a substantial number of apps can be ported? \- Will the coverage be sufficiently high-quality? For example, can you do animation through GNUstep that's as good as on platform native APIs? \- Will those app authors care about porting to Linux/Windows? \- Is this easier for them than just writing a frontend to the native API, as they currently do?

> 3) To move the GnuStep project forward.

This is a tautology. Why does that matter?

> 4) To provide an additional set of nice, modern APIs on Linux. E.g. GTK3 is > nowhere as good or feature complete as Cocoa (even 10.6 Cocoa).

OK. Will one guy part time for a year overtake GTK3 to get to parity with Cocoa? What does "nice, modern" mean and why is GnuStep better? Providing the best API on Linux seems in tension with providing fidelity to Apple APIs.

> 5) To eventually give the possibility for cross-platform development of > Mac/iOS apps (e.g games).

This seems basically the same as #2, except if you explicitly mention games then covering 3d and input APIs at high quality seems even more important.

<comment><USER33> I think you pretty much covered relevant points. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paul Vixie thinks more people should be running their own DNS servers - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/internet-pioneer-paul-vixie-privacy-security-dns-server-2019-3 <comment><USER2> More people should be running their own mail servers, their own web servers, their own _IRC_ servers, etc.

But I don't think we are ever going back to that direction. The arguments and benefits for running one locally are not enough the trouble as well.

Performance? Due to DNS caching at the resolver level, it is probably faster to use Google's 18.104.22.168 or CloudFlare's 22.214.171.124, than anything local (where all dns requests are a MISS).

Privacy? With DNS over TLS/DNS over HTTPS, your ISPs can't see what you are doing. If you run DNS locally, they can. Yes, they will see all the requests your resolvers are doing to the auth DNS servers.

Security? Some _good_ resolvers, like Quad9 or CleanBrowsing will block malicious domains. CleanBrowsing will also help blocking adult content if you have kids. I don't think maintaining such control is practical for most people (pi-hole helps, but still hard to keep it updated and find good enough databases to use).

I would love a de-centralized web, but it is pretty hard to go back.

<comment><USER3> Single data point, but I've been running a home DNS server (bind) for many years; it's set to be authoritative for the .local domain and caching for everything else (except for major tracking and advertising sites, which it blackholes).

For hits that are in the cache (the usual case) it's obviously faster than going out to the 'net,. The black-holing combined with ad-blockers mean browsing is a _lot_ faster and considerably more peaceful.

In terms of maintenance, it's no real effort other than updating every few years (being behind NAT the security risks aren't huge) and it means the entire household sees the benefit (plus access to webservers/wiki's etc on the .local domain).

Obviously the downside is it needs to be on something that runs 24x7 and a modicum of IT skills are required to set it up. One other catch is that your ISP might block you for not using their DNS; BT (UK ISP) did this, but it is possible to turn off this 'security feature' via a rather obfuscated web page (may have changed since I last did it).

<comment><USER4> Did you change DNS using the BT Hub?

Mine forces me to use their DNS, would love to turn it off at a router level. I know I can buy a new router but I can't justify that right now.

<comment><USER5> The work around for this (unfortunately) is to use another device to dish out DHCP. I have setup my Pi Hole to serve this and my DNS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ironically, the instructions linked to in this article for running your own DNS server[1] suggest configuring it to forward all non-local queries to your ISP or Google DNS.

(It's not clear to me whether Vixie is more bothered by the loss of privacy in using Google/Cloudflare/OpenDNS/etc and/or it's the loss of privacy.)

If you're going to do that, you might as well use dnsmasq or just use your ISPs servers directly. If your concern is privacy, you need to configure BIND to operate in recursive mode instead of as a forwarder (dnsmasq is a forwarder only, but you could use unbind if you don't like BIND). But note that your ISP could in theory still snoop your recursive DNS queried. It all depends who you trust the least.

You could also, per my sibling comment, run dnsmasq locally and then run a recursive DNS server on a cloud server, using either a VPN or DOH in-between. That would give you a local cache with your own recursive DNS that your ISP can't snoop. But do you trust your cloud provider? (Also make sure if you do this that you configure edns0 client subnet or your video streaming may break.)

[1] [https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/configuration/how-...](https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/configuration/how- to-make-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-dns-server/)

<comment><USER7> well there is dnscrypt. i use a local cache for fast revisits. ya i'm not sure everyone having full dns servers would be a good thing or even practical.

<comment><USER6> DNSCrypt only provides authentication, not confidentiality, and it's only between the client and the recursive server. So it doesn't address either the performance or the privacy concern of routing all your DNS through someone else's recursive servers.

Edit: apparently it encrypts traffic as well:

[https://dnscrypt.info/faq/](https://dnscrypt.info/faq/)

So it's comparable to DoH which prevents your ISP from snooping but per my other comments here doesn't address the privacy concern of now having to trust the upstream resolver.

<comment> ryan-c Are you sure you're not thinking of DNSCurve? It doesn't provide confidentiality, but AFAICT DNSCrypt does.

<comment><USER6> You're right. I went of the Wikipedia page for it which says:

 _DNSCrypt wraps unmodified DNS traffic between a client and a DNS resolver in a cryptographic construction in order to detect forgery. Though it doesn 't provide end-to-end security, it protects the local network against man-in-the- middle attacks._

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

But according to dnscrypt.info it's encrypted.

<comment><USER8> DNSCrypt and DNSCurve both provide confidentiality (and are very similar to each other). The thing that doesn't provide confidentiality is DNSSEC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree with Paul Vixie. The internet, IMO, is not a playground for large corporations.

What originally made the Internet amazing was the participatory nature of it. As it started 'standardizing' or 'accruing', autonomy was lost in the pursuit of efficiency.

Today, 2-3 corporations are just trying to own the internet, and this needs to stop. I favour a participation in the Internet than what it is today.

Okay, so how can we make it happen?

\- Make a decent DNS Server in Go/Rust/<Any-Clean-Coded-Implementation>.

\- Make this embeddable in routers/open stacks, maybe in OpenWRT.

\- Make it easier to define top level zones/domains in a modern, easy data format (maybe JSON/YAML). Make this an overlay/augment format.

\- Publish bootstrap corpus of data for such independent DNS servers; No, they do not need to have all the root server content updated as frequently. It could be easy to sync this periodically with a git pull. This should be an internet-wide mirrored effort, like Bitcoin.

\- Isolate oneself from people, arguments and organizations who want to use AWS/Google/<Insert-Popular-Provider-Of-Choice> because they work at scale and are cheap. One should know that to have an independent internet, the change starts with the self.

\- Run the DNS server at home, production, *cloud and protect the Internet.

<comment><USER10> What's wrong with opkg install unbound? It's robust, doesn't require maintenance, and already available an an optional install in OpenWRT.

The reason people don't use it is probably just that it isn't default. Some captive portals mess with DNS resolution and it's probably easier for OpenWRT to just let them.

<comment><USER11> > _What 's wrong with opkg install unbound? It's robust, doesn't require > maintenance,_

Good joke. It's written in C, so in addition to typical protocol/logic flaws, it'll have its share of security and memory leak problems. No maintenance? Have a look at [https://nlnetlabs.nl/svn/unbound/tags/release-1.9.1/doc/Chan...](https://nlnetlabs.nl/svn/unbound/tags/release-1.9.1/doc/Changelog) and its security advisories... Regular updates are necessary.

<comment><USER12> Here is a list (and some discussion) of the 4 CVEs that unbound has had starting in 2011:

* [https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/security-advisories/](https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/security-advisories/)

Nothing there looks particularly scary to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Then he should have made it a lot easier to do so. The whole problem with DNS is the finicky configuration, it is about as tricky to set up properly as a mail server in spite of the outward simplicity. Mail, DNS and also WWW servers are the ideal components of federated systems but the degree to which you have to be a networking guru, security guy and systems administrator to keep all three up and running without issues over a longer period of time is such that many people will simply not take the trouble.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that more a problem of the implementations then the DNS standard?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/sRDJv](http://archive.is/sRDJv)

[https://outline.com/fDZwD7](https://outline.com/fDZwD7)

<comment><USER16> Ironically my ISP is using their DNS servers to block archive.is

<comment><USER17> Sure sucks to live in New Zealand right now, doesn't it?

<comment><USER16> The block is a minor inconvenience. I'm okay with it as long as it is a temporary thing.

<comment><USER18> I'm not. It tells me I can't trust my phone company to reliably provide the internet access I pay them for: who knows what they'll try to block next? I made a complaint, and got a response that quoted the terms of use which say they can mess with traffic if they want to. I know that, and my position is they shouldn't half-assedly try to police content. So, I installed a VPN on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have my own home server on a standard consumer Comcast internet (cheap plan at 60mbps) running c0d3.com, and the students that are learning how to code on it never had any issues with stability (except that one time where I had a power outage at home).

I also have my router configured to use our server as a DNS server and the speed is incredible. Since I'm hosting my sites at home, when people in my WiFi network use my sites it feels almost instantaneous (because network request resolves locally)

3 of my students were inspired to set up their own servers and they love the experience so far. Finding people who run their own services is so rare, I hope more people do it.

I am concerned about security implications though. Could people hack into my home server, then hack into the router, and then launch a man in the middle attack?

<comment><USER20> If you're serving your website from your router as a webserver (dumb), this would be a concern. Serve your website(s) from a webserver running in a VM/container, and you're doing okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I ran my own DNS servers in the past (and email servers). It's not too difficult to setup (email is significantly harder), although you'll probably have to run at least two DNS servers in order to use it with a domain because most registrars won't let you change the nameservers unless you have at least two.

I think it's a worthwhile thing to do since it demystifies how DNS works (similarly with running your own email servers), but if you're running everything on cloud infrastructure I don't see much benefit aside from the educational aspect.

<comment><USER22> There's a nice and free secondary DNS service available at [https://freedns.afraid.org](https://freedns.afraid.org) \- so if you trust that service, you can get away with running just one master DNS yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I learned recently that my home router runs a forwarding DNS server. I suspect many people are already doing this and don't know it.

<comment><USER6> The article is partly about the performance issue of not having a local server and partly about the privacy loss of sending all your DNS queries to Google. Even without a local dns server there's still a stub resolver on your OS that provides some degree of caching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think we are approaching another tipping point towards decentralization. As more and more people become aware of the privacy and other abuses from Google and Facebook there will be a growing migration towards anyone who offers alternatives and more choices.

I remember the great excitement of those early days when the internet first started to become a mass public phenonema. It was going to change everything, become the great leveler. Those huge entrenched monopolistic corporations would have trouble competing against small quick startups. And for a while that happened, entire industries were changed by tiny startups in garages, like Google. But as it became bigger Google changed for the worse.

I think this is going to be a continuing cycle. But one great thing is that we will be creating new tools such as blockchain and will have a clearer roadmap of what to do when somebody amasses so much centralized power that they start to limit our choices, to enrich themselves.

Another thing, today people are walking around with enough combined computing power in the phones in their pocket to dwarf the resources of even Google, Facebook, and even the CIA and NSA and I know we have enough hackers that would consider it a challenge and even fun to organize all that power to counteract any serious abuses.

For instance many phones these days have at least 8 processors around 4GHZ and it now is possible to add a 1 Terabyte SD Card. That is more than enough to use it as a DNS Server.

Soon we will be seeing more and more peer to peer mesh networks, decreasing the need to use an ISP. I think more and more local Co-ops will be formed with people networking together their computer resources. And these Co-ops could network together themselves. For example they could form an online buyers club with all purchases going through a specific IP Address and no transaction being able to be traced to individuals. And a small percentage of the purchase price can be earmarked to pay people running the DNS or other services or pay them for any useful specialized software they have developed for these uses.

</comment><comment><USER25> For an end user, a resolver only DNS server is probably one of the easiest services to run as there's really nothing to configure. I run my own resolver only DNS server at home. The configuration is minimal and I haven't had to touch it in years (about every five years I update the root zone to pick up new root servers if any).

I also happen to run DNS for my domain (as well as email, web, gopher and qotd) and that is a bit more involved than just resolving only, but it's by far easier to manage than an email server.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have been serving myself a custom root.zone for almost 20 years now.

I use tinydns for this which I think has always been the ideal choice for personal use. The author from the beginning recommended users not to use third party DNS and that advice has proven to be more and more prudent over the years. tinydns stores records on disk and has never been limited by RAM as would be something like nsd, for example. Today, I manage to fit all the data I need on tmpfs anyway.

I am certainly not the only person to serve their own root.

There used to be a project called ORSC that started around 1998 when there were people actively protesting ICANN management of domain names. ORSC ran their own root servers, as a service for others, as an alternative to ICANN. I remember seeing a page -- it may have been associated with ORSC -- showing how to run an alternative root. The software used was tinydns.

I also remember a former head of ICANN who said he ran his own local root.zone. Not sure what software he used. This was years before any "expert", e.g. Cricket Liu, even admitted running a local cache (nevermind a local root) could be a good idea.

Managing DNS for myself I noticed a few things over the years.

The amount of DNS data I will need for all internet use in the course of a lifetime -- subtracting all data for ad servers -- is relatively small. With today's computer equipment it can easily be stored locally.

Within that subset of DNS data the amount that is changing constantly is also relatively small. The Mockapetris DNS is premised on handling dynamic data but I manage to meet own needs with almost all static data. Further, the sampling I have done kept showing that most data stored in the DNS as a whole was not very dynamic.

Serving the data I need via authoritative servers like tinydns or nsd reduces the need for a cache, let alone one shared with others (who could possibly poison it... thereby reducing need for more complexity to protect against such poisoning).

As mentioned in the article, Vixie's problem was with _Google hardware_. Something like not being able to edit /etc/resolv.conf. Several solutions exist.

What happens when the _ISP_ is redirecting all queries to port 53 to their own DNS servers? Imagine where the ISP has made its resolvers authoritative for everything, where it modifies the answers and you cannot access any other remote DNS server on port 53.

What is the solution? Multiple possibilities. If the needs are only for a relatively small amount of mainly static DNS data, then one option is to prefetch the data in bulk via FTP/HTTP. If the user wants a DNS cache, then another option is to set up own remote cache listening on a port other than 53 then forward queries there. VPN seems like overkill when the only issue is DNS traffic.

As such, "running their own DNS servers" could involve more than just using a RPi on the local network.

<comment><USER27> I have, also.

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/services/djbdns.html#D...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/services/djbdns.html#Default)

* [http://cr.yp.to/dnsroot.html](http://cr.yp.to/dnsroot.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Back when I was on 1.5mbps DSL, one of the biggest performance gains in all the things I tried wasn't content caching via a proxy. It wasn't ad blocking (although that helped!) It was running my own DNS. Web pages got _snappy_ again. I'm on a fast internet connection now, but I still contemplate running my own DNS just to get that snappiness back.

</comment><comment><USER29> How hard is it to make a personal use raspberry pi dns server that assembles a local database using the consensus of a bunch of major sources?

<comment><USER30> That's not really how customer DNS works, so you're talking about a custom monitoring project. It doesn't seem very hard to monitor the consensus - get a stream of domains and run "dig" against the known endpoints.

But if you want an actual server doing that, I don't think there's much point. You'll get differences for various valid reasons. Entries changing, different anycasts getting different geo responses, etc. It's a bit like "a man with a watch knows the right time, a man with two watches can never be sure".

So the answer is really - why do you want to do this? Different reasons here lead to different approaches.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for sharing. I don't understand DNS as well. I wasn't sure they could disagree for valid reasons for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Quick, name a non-niche dns server that is easy to configure and maintain that hasn't had a major vulnerability in the last six months.

<comment><USER32> dnsmasq's last CVE was in October 2017 [https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=dnsmasq](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=dnsmasq)

despite that "safety record", I am probably going to switch to [https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust-dns](https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust- dns)

<comment><USER33> Thanks for the shoutout to trust-dns.

I would take the fact that there have been no CVEs on the server with a grain of salt, as I don't think it's seeing a lot of use. The embedded resolver is getting a lot...

Feel free to open any issues for features you'd like to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been running BIND9 on a raspberry pi powered off of a usb port on my wifi router. Sure 220.127.116.11 and 126.96.36.199 will know some of my households queries, but not how much they are being queried. It's actually surprisingly busy with redundant requests. Request that google et al know less about now.

It's also handy to review the DNS logs. I found out my off brand wifi cameras were phoning home to china every minute. Blocked that domain in a hot minute!

</comment><comment><USER35> That seems like a bit much. I think getting people to run a raspberry and pi- hole is a much more realistic aim in terms of usefulness and creating awareness.

Plus it's been pretty eye opening. I'm running uBlock Origin and Privacy badger...and still the pi-hole filter 25% of my traffic. A full fkin quarter after adblockers...

<comment><USER36> Pi-Hole is great as a caching mechanism and is easy enough for non-techie friends and family to use (just make sure you have it auto-update for them, or do it yourself once in a while).

Bind9, a true dns server, doesn't provide the privacy enhancements that pi- hole does and it is much more opaque for normal users. I think you're right - it's much easier to look at targets that are a little easier to hit rather than suggesting a bind9 setup to everyone. I have the know-how to do both, and I prefer pi-hole anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I run dnsmasq at home talking to Google DNS via DoH. I've been thinking about running my own recursive resolver but that theoretically lets my ISP see all my DNS lookups.

I think as a compromise I'll run my own recursive DNS on a digital ocean droplet and point my local dnsmasq instance at that.

<comment><USER37> So you're cool with Google, a company whose primary business is tracking people, seeing all your DNS, but not your ISP, whose primary business is delivering network access, notwithstanding their bumbling efforts to branch out.

Now, Google does claim they don't track DNS requests. But consider why that is? Once upon a time they didn't scan Gmail content either, but that was before GMail dominated the webmail space.

What do you think is going to happen once DNS becomes centralized? If it's taken too far we won't be able to go back. And it can easily go too far. Chrome and Firefox are ubiquitous enough that if they succeed in removing local resolvers from the loop it will mean that the entire ecosystem will have transformed to accommodate them. Software stacks, configuration policies, etc will have all evolved to disfavor niche use cases and favor Google, Cloudflare, etc.

ISPs can already see the IP address we're all connecting to, and the correlation between domains and IPv4 addresses is more than strong enough to provide the necessary information for commercial profiling. IPv6 will virtually make it 1:1. (So Encrypted SNI likewise provides little benefit.)

The shift to TLS accounts for 90% of the potential capacity for avoiding ISP snooping, short of VPNs or TOR. That last 10% comes with a _huge_ price tag.

<comment><USER38> Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on DNS or Gmail.

> Now, Google does claim they don't track DNS requests. But consider why that > is? Once upon a time they didn't scan Gmail content either, but that was > before GMail dominated the webmail space.

You seem to assume that it's a singular organization with a unified agenda, but this really isn't the case. It's the same thing about when folks assume Google looks at your Drive files to recommend ads to you -- it isn't true, there's different motives there.

Drive: we want to sell you storage, your data isn't scanned (except for viruses). Google DNS: speed up DNS, which improves load times, which improves the overall web experience. Photos: Ditto, we want to sell you storage.

Performance is a feature, and most ISP resolvers are junk. Worse, many of those resolvers like to inject their own NXDOMAIN pages. :\

You could argue that Google DNS does positively impact Ads, but only in the respect that faster DNS resolution helps ads load faster too. Overall, I see it as one of those "long term greedy" (my own words) strategies.

As a privacy-conscious Googler myself, I've taken a look at Google DNS to convince myself that it's what it says on the tin. As far as I can tell it is, but I don't expect you to take my word for it. What logging exists is extremely temporary (short-term debugging.)

Re: Gmail, this isn't true either. Sure, there's still processing of your emails (we receive your email, scan it for spam), but it isn't used for Gmail ads. The public perception of this was so bad and the incremental improvement in ad quality so low, that now ads just use your general ad profile. No email scanning involved.

> Software stacks, configuration policies, etc will have all evolved to > disfavor niche use cases and favor Google, Cloudflare, etc.

This is a different matter entirely, but this isn't _always_ a bad thing. I'm thinking of TCP here, which has almost entirely been ossified by middleboxes. Same for TLS -- TLS development has been hamstrung by these same kinds of middleboxes and "protocol accelerators." This kind of incredible technology position has allowed for the acceleration of HTTP/2 and the development of QUIC (and therefore HTTP/3). Overall, Google has been incredibly open with the development of these and worked to include everyone. I'm sure it's not always that way. Can you bring up some examples where "niche use-cases" have been locked out by Google-driven software stacks and configuration policies?

<comment><USER39> "Google DNS: speed up DNS, which improves load times, which improves the overall web experience."

Oh, just stop.

It's even more disappointing to consider that _you believe this to be true_.

<comment><USER40> As a counter-anecdote to your disbelief, I've enjoyed internet on an ISP whose DNS servers were very slow. Slow enough for me to spend the effort to find out what's the holdup between enter key and first paint. DNS responses were about 350ms, compared to 184.108.40.206 sub-20ms.

Edit: I should add that the slowness wasn't a peak hour thing, it was consistent, all day, for several months.

Switching made my subjective experience better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> More prorocols should be designed such that random willing individuals can contribute to the core infrastructure? DNS was made in an era where just anyone can run a DNS server for the public,hence the design choices.

</comment><comment><USER42> I live in NZ, and run my own DNS server. It's just unbound on pfsense, super simple. The good thing is when my ISP started blocking websites after the Christchurch attacks, I didn't even notice. (They were simple DNS blocks.)

<comment><USER43> Whats the difference between personal dns server, vs using google, and opendns? Arnt u resolving to that?

<comment><USER44> DNS protocol is largely a single UDP packet. In China the packet can be sniffed and dropped according to its content.

So even if you switch to 184.108.40.206, your ISP can still tamper it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I run my own dns server (and a bunch of other stuff), but as secondary dns with a hidden master. It lets me configure records how I want but with the benefit of using my provider's international dns server network.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is this the Paul Vixie of Vixie Cron fame?

Edit: To answer my own question. Yes it seems

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

</comment><comment><USER47> well basically running your own dns server, might be better for privacy, however security might be worse if you are lazy. if you do not keep your stuff up to date you will be more in trouble and have probably less privacy. (the same with mail servers, etc..) of course the more tech savy and time you have the less of an issue will it be.

</comment><comment><USER48> Did this for over a decade. Kinda easy but also pointless. I'm switching Google Cloud DNS.

</comment><comment><USER49> This site is a paywall no matter if I go incognito or use the web link. Am i missing some ninja magic? Is it ok to be irritated by this?

Haven't been able to read the article but is it referring to this Nov 2018 tweet?

[https://twitter.com/paulvixie/status/1063843157668970496?s=1...](https://twitter.com/paulvixie/status/1063843157668970496?s=19)

<comment><USER50> It's ok to be irritated by this. I ended up reading it in links[0] initially, which is usually my go to. After reading your comment I decided to install Firefox 66 (which I've been meaning to do anyway), where NoScript is apparently still at thing. No Javascript, no annoying popovers.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_\(web_browser\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Isn't there a distinction between a DNS server and a DNS resolver?

</comment><comment><USER52> Paul probably has really nice internet access.

Most people in the USA have really poor access for running services. I have constant problems with Comcast myself.

One day when we have fiber and static ipv6, then we can run mail, IRC, Http, dns, etc.

</comment><comment><USER53> Whatever DNS you have, the Government like South Korean one will tap, monitor and censor it as it wants to.

</comment><comment><USER54> The article is behind a paywall for me. Will somebody post the full text?

</comment><comment><USER55> Isn't there something as a decentralised DNS client?</comment>


What is Electricity? - <AUTHOR> https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-electricity <comment><USER2> Electricity is a myth.

Everything is really run by blue smoke and your cables are tubes to move it around. The wire inside the cable is just for strength.

You can see this is true when something shorts. The resulting hole in the system allows some blue smoke to escape, and the machine then stops working.

<comment><USER3> Everything goes downhill once you see the magic smoke come out of an IC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would understand the material better if it were presented as an armadillo analogy. [http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3892](http://smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=3892)

<comment><USER5> Feynman explaining electricity as mentioned [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS25vitrZ6g&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS25vitrZ6g&feature=youtu.be&t=8m17s)

Tragically lacking in armadillos though. Maybe he could have got further if he'd included a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a story (perhaps apocryphal) that a student at Cambridge [?] was asked this at an exam many years ago.

He said "I'm sorry, I did use to know, but I've forgotten".

"How very unfortunate," said the professor. "In all of history, only two people have known what electricity is. One the creator, and the other yourself. And now one of the two has forgotten."

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I daresay that student did poorly on the exam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like Dave Barry's explanation of electricity (e.g. [http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/Misc/electricity.txt](http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/Misc/electricity.txt) ) including

"the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact, the last year any new electricity was generated was 1937."

and

"AMAZING ELECTRONIC FACT: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting."

<comment><USER8> Its actually worse than that. You keep the same electrons, the electric company just wiggles them back and forth and then bills you for it.

As my prof used to say about AC, "you don't pay for the swing, you pay for the push".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it possible for signals to propagate as waves, without the electrons moving between atoms? Kind of like in this gif, but without them hopping along?

[https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/9/5/6/1/4/519fcd42ce395f804c...](https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/9/5/6/1/4/519fcd42ce395f804c000000.gif)

<comment><USER10> Yep! These are called plasmons[1]. They are sort of like sound waves for electrons, in that they are compression (i.e. longitudinal) waves.

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

<comment><USER9> Sweet, thanks. I see in the "possible applications" section of that wikipedia article it is stated that:

"Plasmons are being considered as a means of transmitting information on computer chips, since plasmons can support much higher frequencies (into the 100 THz range, while conventional wires become very lossy in the tens of GHz). However, for plasmon-based electronics to be useful, a plasmon-based amplifier analogous to the transistor, called a plasmonstor, first needs to be created."

So yeah, to all those applied physicists in the audience, hurry up and unleash the plasmonstor! (does anyone _really_ call it that?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bit of a tangent, but reading this was really interesting in the context of the book I'm reading now, "Ra."[1]

It takes place in a modern day world where "magic" was discovered decades ago and is now a formal science with graduate programs right up there with engineering and physics. It has rules, and in fact one character just created a magical quine (which was apparently thought to be impossible).

If every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I wonder what the turning point was when people stopped thinking of electricity as magic and instead thought of it as science.

When you get into talk about electrons, how they flow, how they transfer between atoms, and how we end up harnessing them, it is very easy for the D&D nerd in me to mentally replace "electrons" with "mana".

Absolutely fascinating world we live in.

[1] [http://qntm.org/ra](http://qntm.org/ra)

<comment><AUTHOR> So true. If the Egyptians could see what we play with every day, they would be amazed. I imagine there is quite a bit of shock for people in deep jungle/desert tribes that still live in huts when they are introduced to "modern" technology. Magic is probably the best way for them to explain it initially. Of course, "magic", usually just means, "something I do not understand".

<comment><USER12> Yeah, but that's driven by familiarity not understanding. A median western marketing executive has no better understanding of electrodynamics than your amazonian tribeswoman, yet isn't surprised by the radio in his phone.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's also worth clarifying that familiarity doesn't mean or lead to understanding. Sometimes quite the opposite (hint hint: newer generation using smartphones, social networks, etc without understanding them at all and then some from older generations remarking how they can be dangerous and upsetting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Electricity is being in love. Feynman possibly agrees? [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand- ord...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/you-dont-understand-ordinary- people.html).

<comment><USER10> Wow, one of my favorite scientists dissing one of my least favorite. Thanks for the link!

<comment><USER5> That's quite funny. I see from Wikipedia Feynman was on Wolfram's PhD thesis committee. He can't have been too impressed with Wolframs people skills.

<comment><USER15> That skills are legendary [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8l3bq/wolfram_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8l3bq/wolfram_and_lisp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My EE professor said to me once:

"Quantum electrodynamics and shit. I'm not a physicist."

I wasn't all that impressed with that answer until many years later after reading Feynman lectures.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered about the design choice for the shape of batteries. It seems like the shape would indicate the current is flowing the opposite way than it does. Something about the positive terminal just says to me "I'm shooting electrons this way"

<comment><USER18> I got the impression from somewhere that plus and minus was defined long before they could track actual electrons, and thus discover that they had them backwards.

<comment><USER19> Yes, Benjamin Franklin was the first to assign positive and negative, and got the sign wrong. It looks like it took around another century to figure out that detail.

<comment><USER20> [https://xkcd.com/567/](https://xkcd.com/567/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great little intro to electricity. SparkFun has some good educational tutorials.

</comment><comment><USER21> is electricity any different than ionized hydrogen?

<comment><USER22> Absolutely. To be called "hydrogen" (or any element really), a nucleus must be involved. Electron-free nuclei maintain their elemental identities, they're just positively charged and willing to take on electrons. "Electricity" involves moving electrons, which doesn't always require a nucleus (hence "free electrons")

<comment><USER21> Ok, but hydrogen's nucleus is only a proton...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > A negative charge has an inward electric field because it attracts positive > charges. The positive charge has an outward electric field, pushing away > like charges.

If this was true, then why does a negative charge not attract other negative charges?

<comment><USER24> Electric field forces are drawn as if you were placing a small positive charge in the field. The wording is awkward. If convention used a small negative test charge, the language (and diagram arrows) would be flipped. "inward electric field" is only with respect to a positive charge, not to all charges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Couldn't read much past the statement:

"Electricity is briefly defined as the flow of electric charge, but there's so much behind that simple statement"

Electricity is the force not the flow. The flow is the current. The term, "Electricity" in every college course I had on it in getting my degrees is always the EMF (Electromotive Force).

Sorry to nit pick but I just have a real problem when articles are written from sense of authority (An electronics company) and don't get the details correct. It can kick off a cycle of incorrect learning and confusion if you're relatively new and getting into electronics.

<comment><USER26> I disagree with the nitpick. Electricity is not a technical term. In its common usage, it encompasses many effects and broadly invokes many technical concepts, i.e. among them EMF or voltage, current, electromagnetic waves, etc. etc.

This article is not written for physicists, engineers, or anyone else so technically trained. If it were, it would read as follows: "Electricity is a vague term used to variously refer to the many aspects of electromagnetic phenomena."

If you want to keep that sentence, and cover your bases, you could reword as "the flow of electric charge, the potential to cause the same." And in any case, the escape clause already exists as "there's so much behind that simple statement."

<comment><USER25> What proof do you have the article wasn't written for physicists, engineers or anyone else so technically trained?

This is the basis for not agreeing? If it is, then it seems you drew an assumption then formed an opinon that is contrary to many college level courses, texts, and teachings I've sat through where electricity is carefully described as the force alone.

<comment><USER27> > What proof do you have the article wasn't written for physicists, engineers > or anyone else so technically trained?

It's defining the term 'electricity', for a start.</comment></comment></comment></comment>