Teaching My Daughter To Code - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/mik/2008/01/20/teaching-my-daughter-to-code/

<comment><USER2> I installed scratch for my daughter, when she was 5. She did a lot of simple things that were like Flash animations. Now that she is 7, she is creating some more complex games, and tons of ideas for games. We've been messing around with Google App Inventor for Android as well, which uses the same framework. She does a lot of MS Office work in school, including Excel formulas, but they don't seem to tackle actual coding early enough.

Our next projects will probably involve doing some web development and then perhaps Mindstorms.

My first experience in programming was reverse engineering the programs that ran on the TRS-80 we had at school to change the names of the characters in the exercises to be other kids and teachers and allow me to get the high scores on the games. It's a little harder to imagine people starting that way with the complexity of a lot of the software that we interact with, but I tried to give her a flavor for that by modifying some of the image files that came with the games she has installed.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a good strategy to start with something like Flash. Personally, as I was learning to complement my design skills with programming skills _, Flash was a great entry point because it was fun.

It's much more motivating if, by writing a couple of lines of code, you can make a ball bounce - than, say, publishing text or solving math problems.

(_at the not-so-tender age of 23)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first (real) programming experience was with PHP when I was 14. Before that, I fiddled around with a bit of flash and ActionScript. I found it so much easier to learn by actually having a project and working out how to make it a reality as opposed to just reading about it in a book.

<comment><USER5> I'm 15 and using PHP. It is very satisfying to use, especially after the depression and boredom of school.

I wish I had started younger, the way some of these other kids did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A long time ago, I also made these kinds of programs. That was on a PET 2001, and I didn't have the luxury of bitmaps back then. I would use the PET's graphic characters as 'actors', and POKE them to the video memory. It started with simple balls, but soon my 'actors' grew into sprites made up from multiple characters (with a square, a few line graphics and a ball you could make a little fellow). POKEing all these characters from BASIC became a bit slow, and that was the moment I started learning machine language ( _necessity is the mother of invention_ ), and from then on I wrote my PET games in 6502 assembly. That made them blindingly fast! (And very prone to crashing, too ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of Turtle Graphics from Logo ( <http://el.media.mit.edu/logo- foundation/logo/turtle.html> ). Interesting that programming at this basic level has been unchanged for so long...I guess that means we got it right at the beginning!

<comment><USER8> I have fond memories of using Turtle in primary school. It had much more of a positive impact on me than re-typing code from a book into my Amstrad CPC-6128!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me the story that my deceased father told me. Once upon a time when the c64's reigned in Turkey, He asks me to write down some of the programs distributed with Commodore magazines. Yes, these magazines consisting of 5-6 pages full of GW-Basic code and which are mostly incorrect or incomplete :) And he adds, "Than you who never stands up from the desk did not touched the computer at least a month" :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Brad Fitzpatrick says in "Coders at Work" that his father taught him to program when he was 5 years old.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is cool. My son is 8 and I'm trying to get him interested in learning code, but right now he can't draw the line between code and the games he plays.

<comment><USER12> Find a game where you can easily edit a save file, map file or high score table and let him poke about in it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was learning C when I was six years old. Definitely helped that my older brother (then 11) was the one teaching me— I wonder if having young children learn from older children might be good advice in general?

<comment><USER14> I first coded when I was about the same age, but at that point it was mostly type out programs from magazines and making minor tweaks (this was in Atari Basic). When I was 9-10 I was writing my own simple games in Amiga Basic and later CanDo. When I was 13 I started learning K&R C and then later Quest-C (A VB like tool for C).

I remember there was one other kid in my year at school who was better at C than me at the time, so I don't think I was that unusual.

I think it easy to underestimate what kids are capable of.

<comment><USER12> I was typing out BASIC programs when I was around 6, got to love growing up with the Spectrum/C64 and the wonderful BBC Micro. I think it worked well; I still remember it being so magical (a since overused word sadly), and a lot of my early tweaking was PEEKing and POKEing around in games to cheat.

The OP has it right -- if you're doing something you want (building a Dr Who game, changing your high score, turning all the baddies into strawberries, making a spider run around the screen to scare your mum) that's the best, dare I say only, way to learn.

Having said this, nobody at my school could program at all (despite the BBC's best efforts). I didn't learn "real" programming until university; web scripting and PHP before that. Maybe that's why I'm such a hacky coder even now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyRL80h...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyRL80hQAAIJ:blogs.kent.ac.uk/mik/2008/01/20/teaching- my-daughter-to-code/+http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/mik/2008/01/20/teaching-my- daughter-to-code/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&ie=UTF-8)

</comment><comment><USER16> Should of used dependency injection</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any studies on if and how are dark or light themes better? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yes, a Google Scholar search provided some experimental results:

* "The impact of color combinations on the legibility of text presented on LCDs" ("Dark text generally leads to greater legibility when contrast ratio is greatest."): [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000368701...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687014000696)

* "Night Mode, Dark Thoughts: Background Color Influences the Perceived Sentiment of Chat Messages" (not directly applicable, but interesting: "Those who rated the messages against a black background perceived them more negatively than those who worked against a white background"): [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-67684-5_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-67684-5_12)

There's probably more, but I'd guess it's highly dependent on personal preference, vision, and ambient lighting, among other things.</comment>


Oldest Viable Laptop (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/01/23/oldest-viable-laptop/ <comment><USER2> 2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly.

I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

<comment><USER3> T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours.

If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a couple of times to discharge all capacitors etc, otherwise you will blow a microscopic fuse (I did!) and it's near impossible to replace it. I just soldered a bridge between the contacts! I just can't do anything wrong again or I'll fry something.

<comment><USER4> Huh, odd. Even my old, quite run-down battery (9-cell) gets me 5-6 hours. Back when it was brand new, it got me anywhere between 7-10 hours. This is on Linux. Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.

<comment><USER5> > Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.

It is most likely due to poor quality batteries. The "cells" in a 9-cell battery are 18650 batteries, which vary in capacity from 3400mAh at the high end, to counterfeit ones that are labelled to have 1200mAh capacity, but in reality have only a fraction of that. Lithium-ion batteries also have a limited shelf life, so even good quality aftermarket batteries will have a fraction of the rated capacity if they have been sitting in a warehouse for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most 8-10 year old laptops are perfectly fine if you put an SSD in them. I just upgraded a 2011 mbp from 4GB and spinning disk to 8GB and SSD. The difference is remarkable. It wasn't usable at all (as in trivial things like logging in could take minutes) and now it's snappy. Old laptops without such upgrades aren't really viable these days unless you work all day in a terminal.

<comment><USER7> > ...Old laptops without [RAM+SSD] upgrades aren't really viable these days > unless you work all day in a terminal.

Huh, I don't think this is correct. A lightweight Linux distribution such as Debian can make very good use of even a spinning-rust HDD, as long as it has enough available RAM that it's not hitting disk all the time. As I've mentioned in a different comment, even 512MB RAM can be more than enough _if_ you have no need for a web browser.

<comment><USER8> I have some Dell D430 ultralights that max out at 2GB. Usually once a day the OOM Killer slaughters the file manager or GIMP or sometimes X itself. It really is too chancy now for serious use, I'd suggest 4GB minimum.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a software problem to me. Put Debian on them with a Xfce/LXDE/i3wm session, and 2GB should be more than enough. 4GB is outright plentiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really understand how we've all been shocked by this. From [https://www.maketecheasier.com/why-cpu-clock-speed-isnt- incr...](https://www.maketecheasier.com/why-cpu-clock-speed-isnt-increasing/):

> "Thanks to the limitations of physics and the current transistor material > designs, increasing clock speed is not currently the best way to increase > computational power."

In around 2006, the CPU industry became a commodity industry & innovation has since come in the form of Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) rather than the engineering of faster CPUs. That shift is responsible for your 10+ year old laptop still being viable.

<comment><USER10> Forms of ILP have been around much longer than 2006 e.g. branch prediction. The main industry "event" that concluded the "frequency wars" was the commercial flop of the Pentium 4. Modern high-performance CPUs are not a commodity industry - due to the requirements for a high IPC, only Intel, Apple, and AMD can really claim to have "industry leading" products.

<comment><USER9> > "Forms of ILP have been around much longer than 2006"

You're absolutely right, but what I'm trying to get across is that the CPU design problem has largely shifted from being capacity-based to being efficiency-based, and this happened pretty silently in 2006. Sure there is still innovation capacity in the CPU industry, but it's qualitatively not the same kind of approach which evolved the Apple 2 into the iPhone.

Personally I look at the energy efficiency of the human brain and think there's a lot of performance improvement to be done for synthetic processors, I just don't think major developments will be as easy, fast, or predictable as they were before individual CPUs kind of stopped getting faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My daily driver is mid-2012 pre-retina MBP. It's entirely adequate. I fear the day it dies because there are no more non-glossy MBPs, and I'm either going to have to make the choice to give up a matte display or give up macOS.

It did recently go down and I pulled out a 2008 MBP. Mostly adequate, lag does start to show, though. My guess is that it's an issue of constrained memory (max 4GB?) as much as processor. Tops out at El Capitan, though, so it won't be viable too much longer. Linux seems to be the slow lane of the upgrade treadmill.

<comment><USER12> Recent-ish (10.7 and later) versions of macOS tend to fall apart under memory pressure with traditional hard disks-- more so than previous versions did or than Windows does on similar hardware. My hunch is that they changed something in their virtual memory subsystem to takes advantage of characteristics of SSDs that isn't quite so friendly when your drive has significant seek times.

A consequence of this is that an SSD upgrade in machines of that era can be quite dramatic, especially if you're memory-constrained. Might not be too helpful in the 2008-era machine (an SSD might be bus-limited there, not sure what generation of SATA those machines have), but the impact on a 2012-era machine (if it shipped with a traditional hard disk) can be huge.

<comment><USER13> My 2009 iMac, though not a laptop, benefitted from a swap to an SSD from the HD. At the same time I added more ram to total 8 GB. It works very well for me.

<comment><USER14> That's also my experience with a 2009 MBP. Swapped out the HD for an SSD, maxed the RAM, and put in a new battery, and had an adequate machine for most daily tasks.

It showed it's age and lagged a lot with more intensive software like Fusion 360, but overall was a pretty good machine for 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> /tpg/ on /g/ is probably my favorite aspect of 4chan besides /prog/

Thinkpads are wonderful machines with lots of upgrade options. A T61 with an SSD and ram upgrade is quite usable for most everything except high quality video playback .Performance on win10 is ram dependent but with i3 and debian installed ram usage at idle is so so so low (sub gig)

<comment><USER16> I watch a lot of video so streaming + local 1080p+ (or even 4K) playback is a must for me at high bitrates. What's the oldest Thinkpad device that can handle that I wonder?

<comment><USER15> I would link to /tpg/ but i cannot currently. if you ctrl f /g/'s catalog for '/tpg/' there should be a link to a wiki that gives a great rundown of every model.

If you have a complete aversion to 4chan, any model that has a 1080p screen would be a good quantifier, I am not sure how many pre IBM sale thinkpads exist with that requirement though. The W series tends to have the best graphics processors as well. The T series being their general line and the X being their portable smaller laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Middle management at my $FORTUNE_500 was the opposite, and I'd been using a 10 year old laptop for development with the exception of an SSD upgrade a wonderful IT dude gifted me when he saw that the mandatory malware scanner was eating 100% of the drive bandwidth almost all the time. So if your workplace is good to you with new systems be thankful. I didn't get mine until IT was outsourced and the outsourced guys couldn't figure out how to buy the right SODIMMs for my ancient lappy to get it to 16gb.

<comment><USER18> Feel free to ignore if you don't want to answer, but why do you put up with this? Why not go to another company that isn't so ridiculously stingy with hardware?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, you're basically causing more problems than you're solving if you're stingy with hardware to that degree. My company is smart about it, IMO - cheapest new MBP 13 variant (no touchbar from 2017), but maxes out SSD and RAM. It's light, thin, and has great battery life for office work and plugs into a provided thunderbolt dock at a desk.

<comment><USER19> For the price of the 2017, 13 inch, non-touchbar with 16GB ram and 1TB SSD you can get the base model 15 inch, with 3x as many cores and DDR4, not LPDDR3 ram. Doesn't really make sense.

<comment><USER16> Well we have 512gb SSD not 1TB (forgot the base model offered that) and our workloads aren't core heavy - we have AWS instances for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My Vaio FE11s from 2006 also still works well. I'm not really surprised. Especially when you do text based stuff. During the time I wrote my MSc thesis (in 2005) in LaTeX, I used a very old Toshiba Satellite (it looked like this Toshiba Satellite Pro 420 from 1996 [0]). It had a 2GB hard drive so I had to carefully select the software packages that Slackware wanted to install. But it worked a I wrote parts of my thesis on it (blackbox window manager, nedit as editor iirc), I probably still could.

But it's getting harder and harder to find 32 bit images. I like Ubuntu Mate 18.04 32 bit though, I recently installed it on my Eee 1000he (2009, Intel Atom CPU) for my son. I could even stream Netflix in Firefox. Not smoothly though. I wanted to fit it with an SSD... but I believe there are no PATA SSD drives :) (at least not in my possession currently.) Not sure if it would make a difference also given the speed op PATA.

[0] [http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/23468/Toshiba- Satelli...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/23468/Toshiba-Satellite- Pro-420-CDS-810/)

<comment><USER21> +1 for Sony. This comment is written on a 2009 VAIO FW-4xx series w/big beautiful 16.4-inch FullHD screen, HDMI, dual-band wifi, SD slot, VGA, Bluetooth, dedicated GPU. Upgraded to USB 3.0 via the PC Card slot (eSATA too). Amazing keyboard and touchpad. Yes I've upgraded RAM and added an SSD (both upgradable without opening the case).

Best part of my VAIO: it runs Win7 Pro. Compared to a 2015-era Dell Latitude running Win10 Pro, it is more stable (Chrome crashes regularly on Win10, seems 8gb RAM is not enough for Win10), better touchpad (new ones lack edge scrolling), quieter & less active fan, way less behind-the-scenes activity (updates, unwanted services, malware checks, etc), Aero's look & feel is so much better than Win10. I really, really, can't understand Microsoft's strategy in removing so many of the good things about Win 7. Does anyone prefer the Win 10 UI over Aero???

The (very minor) cons of this 10-year old laptop: Blu-Ray drive no longer works. No sound except through headphones. The manual "wireless" switch no longer deactivates wifi/BT. Battery life was never very good, the machine is pretty much useless if I am not near a plug.

Really wish Sony was still in the laptop game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Either laptop improvements are well into diminishing returns, or progress in > hardware has stagnated, or both.

Sort of. The part about diminishing returns is arguably true, but hardware didn't stagnated.

What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

When a Microsoft OS requires _less_ resources than it's predecessors (like early Win7 compared to early Vista), you know upgrade cycles will be much longer than before.

Unless you're handling high definition video or playing AAA games, of course. But for any other "mundane" task, the only reason to upgrade from a 5 or 6 years old machine would be an un-repairable hardware malfunction.

<comment><USER23> > What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a > balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

Is that true though?

Windows might have gotten more efficient but I think overall most software has gotten worse from a performance perspective. With the prevalence of Electron everywhere, performance doesn't even seem to be a priority anymore. And "native" apps using WPF, etc. aren't as optimized as old school WinForms, MFC style apps (though there are other benefits to be had).

<comment><USER24> It doesn't strike me as true either. I was just thinking about how my Intel MacBook came with 1GB in fall 2006 (stock was 512 MB, iirc).

Granted, that wasn't a professional machine, but I'd say expected memory for a machine has grown 4x in a dozen years.

<comment><USER25> My first desktop was a Compaq Presario CDS 520, in 1994. It was a 486/66, and came with 4 MB of RAM and a 450MB HDD. I want to say my parents paid $2,400 for it, but would have to double check to be sure.

A dozen years later would be 2006 - if memory serves, a decent laptop in those days would have run you about $1,200-1,500, and would have come with a Core 2 Duo @ ~1.2Ghz, 2GB of RAM, and a ~40GB HDD.

That's a _lot_ more than a 4x increase in specs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bet if somebody held a gun to my head, and I was at least allowed to dial in via modem to a *nix server with node.js on it - I could probably do my current job, to a certain bare-bones level...

...using my TRS-80 Model 100.

Don't get me wrong - it would be a nightmare and no fun, and some things just wouldn't be possible.

Though that's definitely not what the author had in mind...

<comment><USER27> Someone needs to make a modern day equivalent of a Model 100. By that, I mean a highly portable instant-on computer one can do remote terminal work on with seemingly endless battery life.

The first programming job I was ever paid for, I did a large part of dialed in through a modem over landlines. Emacs was fantastic for that! (Because it's an OS masquerading as an editor.)

<comment><USER28> iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard?

[https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/12/brydge-pro- keyboard/](https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/12/brydge-pro-keyboard/)

The OS has a lot of limitations on doing local development work, but if you're connecting to a remote server you get a great quality screen and remarkably long battery life. Apple lists "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music."

Keyboard has its own battery (default connection is bluetooth, you can use a USB-C cable if that's not reliable enough). It's not clear to me if it can use its battery to charge the iPad or not. Either way, you can always carry a USB-C battery pack to extend the iPad's life even further.

<comment><USER27> I have an iPad mini with a Microsoft folding keyboard that I rather like. I guess I could buy a really stout Otter case with my iPad mini and refresh the battery (getting old) and it would serve fairly well in that role.

The thing about the Model 100, was it was pretty robust. Not mil-spec, but pretty darn good for a consumer device. I've read about it being used by researchers someplace like Antarctica. iPads are pretty good that way, but they do feel like a luxury device.

I'd like to see more "consumer-level stout" devices. Give me plastic: much more robustness without added weight, and let me just not worry about knocking the thing around.

<comment><USER28> I actually like the "put a case on it" approach for robustness. It lets the devices be smaller, while leaving the degree of protection and bulkiness up to individual users. Case in point, I have a very slim case on my iPhone SE and tend not to drop it, but a lot of people I know with larger phones put the 2-layer rubber + plastic Otter style cases on them because they get dropped a lot. Others have smaller or no cases, but use pop-sockets and finger loops stuck on the back to make them grippable.

On the iPad side of things you have options like the Rugged Book Go from Zagg: [https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/07/ipad-ipad-pro- get...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/07/ipad-ipad-pro-get-new- cases-from-zagg-with-rugged-book-go-slim-book-go-messenger-folio)

Apple's phones have turned into absurdly priced luxury items, but the $800 starting price for an 11" iPad Pro feels pretty reasonable for what it is.

EDIT - admittedly the hardware is overkill for running terminal sessions, something more like a Chromebook would be a cheaper fit if the battery life and screen were of similar quality

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have a very old Thinkpad X40 convertible which I use occasionally as pretty much a dumb terminal. It runs the latest i386 version of xubuntu. CPU is a single core Pentium M something, 1.5GB of RAM, 40GB hard drive.

[https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X40](https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X40)

It works totally fine for SSH sessions and a web browser interface to not- very-complicated intranet tools accessed via a VPN, such as ticketing system, network monitoring software, etc.

If I want to leave a monitoring display of something running, I fullscreen it in a browser, rotate the thing into its tablet mode and prop it up against something on my desk.

<comment><USER30> I wonder how a $150 chromebook would compare.

$150 is in the territory of "Drive to store and buy in an emergency".

<comment><USER29> Probably a lot faster, in terms of cpu and ability to render resource intensive webpages inside firefox v65. But this was also $40 four years ago.

Having a normal xubuntu environment does give an advantage of being able to install a much wider variety of software compared to the chromebook OS, unless we're talking about replacing the chromebook OS with debian + xorg + your choice of desktop environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For reference, a 2007 era Apple laptop would be one of these:

\- [https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook- pro-core-2-duo-2.4-15-santa-rosa-specs.html)

\- [https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook- cor...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook- core-2-duo-2.16-white-13-mid-2007-specs.html)

And you'd be able to run up to 10.11 (El Capitan) on the Pro or 10.7 (Lion) on the MacBook.

<comment><USER32> You can hackintosh some old Macs to run Mojave using [http://dosdude1.com/mojave/](http://dosdude1.com/mojave/)

<comment><USER33> This isn't really a Hackintosh, since you're running the OS on genuine Apple hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I found the most interesting part at the bottom where he said he got his MacBook back and is still using his old 2007 ThinkPad more than the Mac now.

<comment><USER35> Not at all surprising. Mac keyboards have been coming down in quality, and Thinkpads through the x20 series have absolutely incredible keyboards.

If your primary use is typing (coding), you'll probably prefer the machine that's better to type on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Heh, there are quite a few people on /r/thinkpad who thinks "something about this machine that causes me to favor it" \-- aye, there is, quite a lot in fact. And yes, even the X61 is usable today and the Sandy Bridge based X220/T420/T420s being the last factory machines with the classic keyboard have something of a cult following. As I mentioned many a times before here, from Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake IPC have only grown 20% and while power efficiency has grown significantly it's been negated by switching to 15W CPUs instead of 35W so it's no wonder the performance is vaguely similar. [https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i5-2520M-vs...](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i5-2520M-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7200U/m29vsm153577) Edit: and as a comment below notes, since ThinkPads are typically bought in fleets, any ThinkPad older than three years is typically very cheap on eBay. Buying cheap old ThinkPads instead of similarly priced new laptops at retail outlets is one of those "lifehacks" I suppose. Their ease of maintenance and parts availability combined with the stalled CPU speed growth makes this a very viable strategy.

The best ThinkPad of course is the 25th Anniversary Edition having 2017 hardware with the classic keyboard. That's what I am typing on right now. The next best is a hackfest: take a T430s with an i7 iGPU, for some demented reason Lenovo put a Thunderbolt 1 controller in those (also the S430 and then the next ThinkPad with Thunderbolt is the P50 w/ TB3 four years later). Now comes the hacking: add the classic keyboard and also the high quality full HD screen from the T440s using a Chinese converter kit -- the 30 series used LVDS, the panel uses eDP so you need a converter. I have a T420s with that hack. Thunderbolt 1 is obviously slower than Thunderbolt 3 but still, any TB3 eGPU enclosure will work. As the T430s can have two 2.5" SSDs and an mSATA SSD, you can add quite an amount of solid storage to this -- much more than the TP25, the TP25 maxes out at 2.5TB currently, while the T430s can do 9TB. The NVMe disks are of course faster in the TP25 (even though one is x2 the other is x1) but the feeling in everyday tasks is not going to be vastly different -- the big jump is in HDD to SSD. You are also limited to 16GB RAM vs the 32GB RAM in the TP25. And the CPUs are even closer: [https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-3520M-vs...](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-3520M-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7500U/m50vsm171274) Your battery life won't be awesome, alas.

<comment><USER35> Good point on power dissipation and efficiency-- a T480 might not be substantially faster than a T430, but it's half the size and the battery lasts longer.

<comment><USER37> They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on multi- core tests.

Not to mention they cruise along on things that use the newer extensions for things like video playback, plus the integrated graphics hardware is much much faster

<comment><USER36> > They're much faster. 50-60% on the single core stuff and 300% faster on > multi-core tests.

[citation needed] 50-60% is absurdly large for single core, the reality is 20%, and 300% is crazy. The T480 uses a 15W quad core on the same 14nm process as the 15W chip in the T470 and because it's slightly more power efficient there's a little gain, about 25-30%. So the difference between the Sandy Bridge T420 to Kaby Lake Refresh T480 is perhaps 50% in multi core.

Here's my favorite Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake IPC benchmark collection: [https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_v...](https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_vs_sandy_bridge_2600k_ipc_review/4)

<comment><USER37> I'm just going on Cinebench scores I've done on my own machines.

        T480S i5 141
        T460S i5 105
        X220  i5 100

Not much of a jump in the _4 generations_ from the X220 to the T460S but quite a jump going to the T480S.

Double the score of the X220 and quadruple the score of the T480 and you're going to end up about 575 to 205 for multicore, which is almost 3X as fast.

This doesn't even bring GPU or SSD performance into the picture. Just raw CPU.

I love my X220 but Windows 10 will regularly bring it to it's knees, even with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. And that's not even doing anything, I'm not sure if it's updating or what. Not to mention it's not exactly a thin machine, the 1366x768 screen is mediocre...The 1080/2K IPS screens coming to the Thinkpad line finally made them usable, IMO. Even the old IPS screens in the X220 tablets were still dim, low-resolution, etc.

<comment><USER36> Isn't Cinebench multicore? This is in line with what I would expect for multicore results...

<comment><USER37> You can run it either way. Those are single-core results

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm assuming OP is running Ubuntu 16.04 since 18.04 lacks support for 32-bit. Sounds like OP is a very casual linux user so maybe would rather not invest any effort into it, but Fedora still supports 32-bit and makes an amazing desktop experience. Highly recommend trying it out. It might render the software complaints moot since a lot has changed in 3 years.

<comment><USER38> The standard CPU in the x61 is a T7300, which is a 64 bit CPU. I really don't understand the need for 16.04 at all.

<comment><USER39> Yup, I have an X61s running Xubuntu 18.04 quite nicely. 2Gb and a cheap 64Gb SSD.

<comment><USER18> oh haha, I stand corrected, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Not sure it's really true that a 1997 laptop would not have been OK for 2007. I nursed a PowerBook G3 "Pismo" along until at least 2007. It had Rage 128 graphics and 1024x768 display just like this ThinkPad. Yes it had an upgraded G4 CPU and replacement batteries, but the X60 on which I am typing this message has a $$$ SSD in it, too.

<comment><USER41> I used a 12" PowerBook G4 daily up until a couple of years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> As I mentioned in a previous thread [0], I upgraded an old X61 with a custom mainboard produced by a group of enthusiasts in China 1.5 years ago and never looked back.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273305)

<comment><USER43> I'm the author of this blog post. Soon after I wrote it, I got an X62 and did the daylight LED mod on it: [https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/](https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/)

<comment><USER44> Damn the bezel around the keyboard is so sexy on that machine. That's exactly what I would want but no one sells something like that off the shelf with a warranty. I still rock my X230 but the display is garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A related question that is also interesting:

What is the oldest laptop that can run an up-to-date, internet connected OS (i.e a museum device with the same OS from 1991 doesn't count). It doesn't have to have a fancy desktop, but it does have to support connectivity to the internet, and run all the latest security patches and updates.

This is different than the article because optimizing productivity isn't an objective, just how long the device can be updated before it becomes impossible to do so anymore, analogous to vintage car maintenance.

<comment><USER40> I've got a 486-class machine with 32MB of RAM running an up-to-date unix as my firewall. It really depends on what you want the machine to do for graphics and javascript and whatnot.

<comment><USER46> Which unix?

<comment><USER40> It evolved from a stripped down Debian originally to Core Linux today. It's just a firewall, so it hardly needs any software.

<comment><USER46> Whether Linux is "a unix" I suppose would be a big debate. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A majority of the bottle necks I've encountered have been ram. Maybe battery life secondarily. This is from a performance perspective. For software development work flow. Not trying to run the entire environment on my laptop. Barring of course something like constant video encoding or high cpu usage. Past that we're seeing improvements in weight, and display.

I've used thinkpads for a while. Starting off with a T430. With a quad core, and 16gb of ram and three SSDs. The two pain points were the display and weight.

I upgraded to a T440s, which fixed the screen and weight. But the ram became a deficit (12GB max). I worked around this by RDPing into a dedicated server I colocated. This offered a beefier desktop on demand (32GB ram + hexa core). But this also faltered because of poor internet connection outside of my home generally. The thin client works very well, as long as you have good internet. But good internet is very difficult to find.

I upgraded to an A485, most recent ryzen. It clocked in around 1200 after upgrades. All my older thinkpads were around 200 total. It's not worth it.

It's not just the core components. The dock was an extra 200. I picked up older thinkpad docks and carried the same model for several generations. I got them used I think for under 50. I had one at every junction of my house. Dock to the media center, desk, bedroom, etc.

From what I've seen the next thinkpad line is going to be even less upgradeble. Which is a real shame. That feature really extended the life of any business model.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have my ~2008 T61 as my pfsense router now. I was using it until about 2-3 years ago, but I felt it was barely usable anymore. I think anything with a Core 2 duo is past its useful life. Anything just slightly newer with Nehalem? I think would still be usable today.

<comment><USER49> I have a Core 2 Duo machine running Elementary I break out once a month or so since it has some cool synth software on it. It's totally usable for me, and that's with a pretty bloated OS compared to alternatives.

<comment><USER48> Sure, for specific applications, almost any computer could still have a useful purpose (hence me reusing my T61 for a router) but we are talking about a daily driver here. In my case, browsing the web became noticeably slower, especially watching videos. I began to suspect my CPU/Intel GPU lacked native support for decoding some newer video formats, but I don't know for sure. This is where its age really began to show though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is the machine journalists (going up against state sponsored entities with unlimited money and resources) use. It's because it's the last machine where the intel chip doesn't have that remote upgrade feature put into them since.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just a few months ago I replaced nearly the same laptop (Thinkpad x61 in my case, with SSD and 4GB RAM upgrades).

It has served me well for 6 years (I bought it secondhand), but it started to definitely show its age.

It started to have difficulties playing youtube videos and the like, these consuming a lot of CPU, and consequently battery life started to drop to below 2 hours (plus the aging battery didn't helped), and fan noise started to get somewhat annoying. It also had some scars like marks on the screen or partially broken keys (I've not necessarily treated it well, compressing it in bags or having dropped it on more than one occasions).

It is still usable, and I will convert it for other uses (mpd server probably). But it was time to replace it with a newer laptop, the new one is a secondhand Thinkpad x250, and it's definitely an improvement, quiet, more powerful, 6 to 8 hours autonomy. I hope it will last about as long as the x61 that served me so well.

</comment><comment><USER32> I see making computer work as long as possible an environmental cause. It took awhile, but I got my company to switch from a ridiculous 2 year cycle to a 6 year and in some cases longer cycle.. At first the higher ups were very skeptical about it. It took a lot of convincing, but we got approval to try it and everyone is still as productive as ever.

Mind you, when I purchase, I try to "future proof" them as best we can. The last batch we bought for our general office users, where i5's with 16GB ram and a 512GB SSD. For our devs, I generally set them up with a super-fast ultra-portable(think mac air or dell xps13) as most of their heavy lifting is off-loaded to our private cloud. And so far everyone report very high satisfaction with the setups provided.

</comment><comment><USER52> 2010 thinkpad x201 user here. Archlinux + XFCE4 setup. Everything works pretty smooth. Sometimes i am using software like Blender3D that requires decent hardware. Everyting works fine as a hobbyist.

As long as it does not fall and break apart, it is gonna work forever. But hey, it is thinkpad so...

</comment><comment><USER30> Battery life is necessary to do my job, and is pretty much the only reason I get new hardware now.

<comment><USER53> Ah, well you need TWO old laptops. When I go babysitting and know that they aren't going to come back when they said they would then the second laptop in my bag comes in handy. Of course I could take the power adaptor instead but a second laptop weighs about the same.

Sometimes a bit of time spent with no mains supply makes you value electricity that bit more and how big your carbon footprint really is. You can also decide to dim the screen a bit and do some real work as playing some rubbish video will bring that power meter into the red way before the parents come back.

Also it is a good way of finding out how long the battery actually lasts. One imagines there will be four hours or more but then that isn't necessarily so, particularly if running Ubuntu with the bottom of the machine so nice and toasty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's wondrous to me how viable an old laptop can be. My daily driver is a "Ship of Theseus" Dell D630 from 2008 and it's perfectly usable for the sysadmin work I do. The lack of USB 3.0 is maddening, but that aside it's fine for my day-to-day document prep and admin, scripting, mail, and web browsing. Installing an SSD added years to the machine's life. I'm on my third keyboard and second lid (hinge failure) but both of those are, arguably, wear items. >smile<

(I've had a brand new Latitude sitting unused for over a year now. I just can't get excited about getting used to a new keyboard or rebuilding my entire software environment on a new machine.)

</comment><comment><USER55> I SSH into VMs and write email all day. I could get by with a text web browser at a slight loss of productivity during the steep part of the learning curve.

I could do my job on a laptop from the 90s if I really wanted to. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER56> Welcome to my world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Still rocking T60p, with the NMB keyboard. If you haven't touched an NMB Thinkpad keyboard, you haven't actually used a proper Thinkpad.

One thing I found absolutely necessary to make my machine usable in 2019 was upgrading all the specs to the max.

<comment><USER5> > If you haven't touched an NMB Thinkpad keyboard, you haven't actually used a > proper Thinkpad.

All these years as a Thinkpad user, and I had no idea of NMB vs ALPS vs Chicony. I thought the variation in the keyboard feel in the machines I own and have used was due to wear alone. Thank you for opening up an entirely new horizon of Thinkpad snobbery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> 2007 doesn't seem that old. I've got a desktop I built in 1999 that I continue to actively use. The only upgrades its ever gotten was a cable tuner card, fuck knows how long ago, a second hard drive and some extra RAM around 2007 or so. It runs ubuntu server now, but for a long time i had a full desktop running on it. Xorg is still installed if I really need a desktop environment for some reason.

It would take a long time to do things, but there's no reason i can't do pretty much anything I do on my current laptop on there.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm using an i7, mid-2010 17" MacBook Pro at work, its been upgraded to 16Gb of RAM and an SSD installed but otherwise its stock and works great.

I am a software-programmer and use ColdFusion builder, SQL (Azure Data Studio), and various other tools like TextWrangler, RDP, Firefox, Chrome, etc. The only complaint I have is that it won't run Mojave so no "Dark-mode" but that's ok--having used this laptop for a year now, if I can squeeze another year out of it I'll probably qualify to get a more recent model.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm genuinely surprised it doesn't have a touchpad. I don't think I've ever seen a laptop without one, and I used laptops back in the early/mid 90's.

<comment><USER60> It has the TrackPoint, which is sort of a famous love/hate feature. (I love it.)

The ThinkPad is my favorite all-time laptop design. No surprise to me that the author is still using it after getting his MacBook back from the shop.

<comment><USER61> The TrackPoint is the Vim of pointing devices. Need a couple thousand hours to get proficient and then everything else is inferior.

<comment><USER62> I have a trackpoint on my HP EliteBook G7, but they didn't include a middle button. So there's no way to scroll without using the scrollbar. I have to wonder if there's a patent reason or something because it seems like such a huge oversight.

<comment><USER63> The Dells at my work have a terrible Trackpoint with middle-button scroll, but it sucks badly. You have to hit the middle button, then scroll, or perhaps the other way around. Ultra-frustrating, and probably bad firmware or driver design. I'm sure the Trackpoint is a third-class citizen for Dell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> With meaningful innovation slowing down, I expect older laptops will become increasingly viable.

<comment><USER65> As long as vendors don't put crappy parts in them - keyboards being the obvious one currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> T430 owner here. Even if it's a Ivy Bridge CPU, the machine works amazingly well. I love it.

In maintenance terms It's almost a desktop. I have replaced the dual core cpu for a quad core, double the RAM, switch the hdd for an SSD, get a better battery, remove the CD drive for a 2nd caddy, added a 5GHz wi-fi card, and still have the possibility to upgrade to a IPS Panel, backlight keyboard and other gimmicks. All with a phillips screwdriver, and official lenovo guide and my thumbs.

And don't make me start talking about linux support, it's basically MacOS plug and play (in Windows you have to install a Lenovo App for the drivers).

With all the upgrades I guess you can make the case, that will all that money, I could buy a better laptop. But I don't know, there is something charming about using the same machine for a long time, and have little improvements over time, with little to no downtime and re-learning workflows.

Makes me sad, that when the time comes to replace the machine, I will not be able to repair it or upgrade as much.

</comment><comment><USER67> I just got a refurbished Thinkpad x230 and it work great with an ubuntu 18.04 install. It has 16GB of ram, a 512GB ssd and a Intel Core i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz x 4 and cost $350 on newegg.

The difference between this machine and a $1500 latest model machine strikes me as marginal and it's silly to drop four times as much money for something that is marginally faster.

<comment><USER68> I had to look that up. Looks great, but screen is a little smaller than I hoped. [https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=9SIA5WM5R10...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=9SIA5WM5R10355)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Last year during Christmas I visited my mother for a day and she still uses my MacBook Pro from early 2008. It doesn't hold much of a charge anymore (it's on it's 2nd replacement battery) but it works delightfully for web browsing, terminal use and I'm sure that I could do most of my daily SRE work on it.

<comment><USER70> Up until last year i was rocking a 2007 black MacBook. It did fine for occasional browsing and terminal work. It would've rocked even longer if the JS heavy web wouldn't cripple the web browsers. Also Google stopped supporting Chrome for it. Now it lives as a terminal running Arch Linux.

Beautiful hardware. No issues other than chipped palm rest which Apple replaced out of warranty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This laptop is an Asus dual core from 2009, initially released with Windows 7, currently running Windows 10, maxed out to 8GB and an 1 TB SSD.

Still quite fit to run VS, Eclipse, Android Studio.

Only issue that the fan has already seen better days.

No wonder that PC makers cannot sell enough machines nowadays to keep investors happy.

<comment><USER72> I have an Asus (Model UL50V) from 2009 with an Intel Centrino- 4 GB RAM. It's my everyday machine. It is getting slow at many things (but a recent hack to Thunderbird settings helped a little). I dual boot Linux Mint 17.2 (Ubuntu 14.04 IIRC), although I haven't actually booted windows in years. I have a Toshiba Satellite for travel, windows 10, and in virtualbox I have a Mint system that basically recreates my work environment (which is usually Fluxbox).

The one good thing about about using the old system is that using Virtualbox isn't annoyingly slow.

I am looking forward to upgrading my work box to a linux-native desktop (System 76 or such) and joining the modern age! I was hoping to outwait Spectrum/<forgot other name> but now that is looking hopeless?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I do my gaming on a Desktop from 2011. It's a Core i5 with 12 GB of Ram (one bay is dead) and a Nvidia GTX 960 card.

I'm running Linux and Proton/Steamplay, and play a few AAA games from 2016. I'm not really confident that my framerate would improve much if I bought a new PC.

</comment><comment><USER74> Good ol' Thinkpads. I have a T410 running Linux that is honestly fine for most of the work that I do day to day. If the screen was better I honestly couldn't come up with many reasons to get anything else. The keyboard alone makes it worth it.

In light of apple becoming less and less of a viable option, I have been wondering if we are going to start seeing a wave of these older machines come back into play. There's already a pretty healthy mod market out there, maybe our needs are so niche that we need to build our setups out ourselves? These older Thinkpads are modular enough that it's certainly possible. The nerd in me is excited about the possibilities. The pragmatist is a wee bit terrified. :)

</comment><comment><USER75> I have the x61s. Up until about 3 years ago I still used it quite a bit. It was always my travel companion too. Mostly I just don't use computers at home much, otherwise I'd probably have used it more.

It's a bit fragile now, dropping it a few times over 7 years can do that. The dual core core 2 duo and 4GB of RAM, and 9 Cell (160GB 7200RPM drive) battery meant that it was good enough for just most things for a very long time.

Of the computers I've had, it rivals the 2015 MBP Retina with being a favorite of all time. I'd possibly give it a slight edge over the MBP due to size and keyboard.

It was also nicer than the later X2xx series, IMO, which is why I went with macbooks later.

</comment><comment><USER76> Still running a Thinkpad x230t here. Outside the screen resolution while not docked, it has been great! It even survived a hard tumble down a flight of stairs 3 yrs ago; the only damage was a small gap along the seam of the external battery.

</comment><comment><USER77> My dad is a moderate laptop user, but gets easily frustrated with poor performance, sometimes he uses PCB applications for hobby projects.After his last laptop died, we evaluated new vs. used laptops and we found a nicely taken care of T440 with a 3rd gen i5. I've had some additional RAM laying around and a new SSD (totaling 8/128) and the thing flies, he is very satisfied. For the money I don't thing we could have bought a machine with comparable performance from the store. Even the battery holds about an 60-90 minutes which is ok for him. He needs it portable, but not autonomous.

<comment><USER78> > 60-90 minutes

That's really, really low for a *40. Unless you mean like 90 minutes of full CPU usage.

<comment><USER77> Quite true, but considering the age (I'm not sure whether the battery is original or not), it does the job. The laptop was used, it's not new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> My first development laptop was an 1984 IBM model. It's screen was black-n- white only, and it weighed like a bag of bricks. However, I wrote an amazing amount of Borland C++ on the road with that beast. (rest-in-peace)

</comment><comment><USER80> I have a laptop which is 6 years old (not a thinkpad) which I was on the verge of tossing because I needed a new keyboard for it. Except for the broken keyboard, it's still a great machine, but the unavailability of parts was a problem.

Luckily I was able to find one and had it shipped from China. 10 minutes later it's as good as new. I found others on ebay, but they weren't actually available any more.

I had a similar experience recently for a cellphone, but instead of hardware it was software. I can't get security updates for it anymore. Except for that, it's still a great phone.

</comment><comment><USER81> My 8 year old Samsung Series 9 Ultraportable. I still far prefer it to my much newer ASUS. Best laptop I've ever owned. (essentially a macbook pro spec machine... and beautifully designed)

It'd be my regular travel lappy if I could bother getting a new battery for it. Still great to code on, and the screen is far far better than the ASUS. Lighter too. (although no discrete graphics)

But battery life is a killer. ASUS lasts up to ten hours, and the Samsung barely does 2 hours now. With a power point, that's not an issue, but it's nice to have something with a bit more go.

</comment><comment><USER82> I've been using a mid-2010 Mac book Pro as my main laptop. Since 2010, the changes I've made are to bump up the RAM from 4GB to 8GB (its max), and replace the power brick. The battery now only lasts for about half an hour, so that needs replacement as well. There are also some big bad black dead spots on the display.

In terms of speed and performance, I can't complain too much, at least for my use.

I think we've hit a point where peripherals and batteries wear out sooner than the performance slowdown hits us.

</comment><comment><USER83> Maybe the failure of moore's law will finally make manufacturers diversify in form and features. It'd be nice to be able to buy a laptop with a 4:3 screen and a clitmouse.

</comment><comment><USER84> And here I am using a HP elitebook 8440w from 2010-2011 as my main computer here .__. Though laggy sometimes, I use it daily with an avd + vscode without many issues.

</comment><comment><USER85> Gotta love my 2.5kg W520. Once I get the spare dosh to replace the ram and maybe HD, it'll be good for another 4 years, and I got it secondhand in pristine condition. My old X60, which was second hand, got used 3-4 years, and got resold, yet again! These machines aren't beasts, they're leviathans before which apples cower to their core, shedding their to-some-shiny, -seductive red skin.

</comment><comment><USER86> I'm simply not interested in where laptops are going. I'm a healthy adult male, so a few hundred grams of weight is not an issue. I also find thin laptops very uncomfortable to use in certain positions where you balance it against your body.

I really should buy a 'clunky', 'heavy' laptop before they all disappear and all that's left are wafer thin machines with soldered-on everything.

</comment><comment><USER87> I use a 2012 Dell XPS 15 daily. I got it as a warranty replacement when my XPS 14 broke. I've given it an SSD and swapped a new battery once. Otherwise it does everything I ask of it except having more than 2 hours of battery life. I've wanted to buy something lighter (the XPS is 5+ pounds) for years but I can't justify it when the 7 year old laptop still works fine.

</comment><comment><USER88> Huge fan of Geoff's post. His X62 post is what inspired to build my own. Though we should probably put a 2017 year stamp on the title.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've kept a 2008 MBP running by upgrading the RAM and putting in an SSD. But I'd never buy another one since (at least according to Apple's website [1]) the last upgradable model was released in 2012.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201165](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201165)

</comment><comment><USER90> My 5 year old MBP is still awesome .... So much so that I feel bad I bought the latest MBP. It's not "much" better.

I often recommend people buy a ten year old full-frame dSLR. Quality photos are more dependant on the photographer and maybe the glass... Megapixels aren't that important with a full frame sensor made in the last 15 years...

<comment><USER91> A $300 Canon 5D with a fast lens like a 28/1.8 or 35/2, in good light, outperforms most of what you can get today in any similar price range.

<comment><USER8> The 5D uses an old battery format that is increasingly difficult to source. It also is becoming difficult to service. So that $300 bargain might have to be disposable.

I usually recommend the previous generation old for DSLR. At phase-out Canon manufactures enough spares for an anticpiated five to seven years of servicing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I have my parents (in their early 70's) using a 2008 MBP 15". Mostly for importing and organizing photos, email, and a bit of web stuff. They upgraded it to El Capitan - the latest MacOS it would take - without any difficulties. They'll likely use it for another couple of years until I donate my 2015 13" MBP to them.

</comment><comment><USER93> I used an old SGI Fuel (700Mhz, 2GB Ram) as my daily driver @ work until 2013. I would rdesktop to use heavy websites, but other than that it rocked.

Stopped using it because I graduated and I didn't want to pay the electricity bill or keep a jet engine running at night (light sleeper)

If anyone here had successfully converted an SGI to a fanless SSD unit, let me know!

<comment><USER94> You might check on [https://forums.irix.cc/](https://forums.irix.cc/) .

I have an Origin 300 rackmount with upgraded Noctua fans, and it's quiet enough to not be a bother.

<comment><USER93> Thnx. Now that Nekochan is dead I'm really lost in the Irix world.

Btw, do you know if there's a way to make the boot drive a network drive (not the install drive)? I thought I remembered the post-doc in the lab keeping a half dozen O2s alive w/out replacement drives. But I might be wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I have a ~2003 iBook still going strong.

</comment><comment><USER96> I use that same Thinkpad X61s as my personal laptop. Got one used for $100 and added a big drive and it's good-to-go for linux work. The keyboard's great and I actually like the 4x3 display. Best thing, if anything happens to it, it's a _cheap_ laptop, so not so bad.

</comment><comment><USER97> > I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, but there's something about this machine > that causes me to favor it.

The keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER98> +1 on a Thinkpad. I have a T420s that's almost a decade old now, and it still works pretty well (the beast still has a drive bay!). I swapped that out for a SSD that's configured to be the main boot drive few years ago. I think it'll last at least another 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER99> At work we get new corporate PCs every few years and I've rejected the offer twice now because the build quality of my Elitebook 8560w is better than the modern alternatives. I put in an SSD and lots of RAM so now I don't want to deal with the hassle of a new one.

</comment><comment><USER100> I daily a 2010 Lenovo T420s. Replaced the disc drive with a solid-state drive and the CD drive with an auxiliary battery pack. Maxed out RAM. Runs Debian 9.x with dwm.

Perfectly adequate for software development. On the odd occasion I need more, I shell into a virtual private server.

</comment><comment><USER101> > Ubuntu 16.04 doesn't have a built-in dictionary or thesaurus

What OS has build-in dictionary? There is no need to preinstall all the programs. Even if it had one it would be just one more thing to remove and install another dict (everyone has different needs).

<comment><USER102> NeXTSTEP came with the Digital Librarian, which included a Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and a thesaurus. Beginning with Mac OS X Tiger, macOS has shipped with dictionaries. I make heavy use of the Japanese dictionaries.

Unfortunately I've had a difficult time finding offline dictionaries for Windows and Linux. Microsoft used to offer offline dictionaries (Microsoft Bookshelf had a dictionary, and I believe there was an Encarta dictionary as well), but last I checked, Microsoft no longer offers an offline dictionary. It used to be possible to buy a CD-ROM version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but last I checked there is no longer an offline digital version of the OED. As far as Linux goes, the dictionary software that I've seen largely relies on either public domain dictionaries (such as the 1913 Webster's dictionary) or open source dictionaries (such as Wiktionary), but I'm unaware of any Linux dictionaries that use commercial dictionaries.

I'm willing to pay for good offline dictionary software for Windows and Linux (bonus points if I could find good Japanese dictionary software); that's one of the things that keeps me on the Mac, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> I have a 2008 MB (first of the unibody models) and it would be OK if not for hardware no longer being supported by the newer versions of macOS. This means I am unable to install .NET Core 2.0 or some of the newer Node versions which is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER104> I have replaced the battery and the HDD by an SSD in two old thinkpads, and they work very well. In particular, they have a nice key layout and type a lot better than my 1600 dollar Dell XPS, which is more important to me than a full HD screen.

<comment><USER105> Older laptops tend to be very serviceable and repair-friendly. I use my VGA ports, USB, SD card, and Ethernet ports all the time. Newer laptops, from what I've observed, fall into two categories: either a)they are not shy about imitating a MacBook Air, or b)enter the size/weight class of a Toshiba Qosmio[0] from 2007.

[0] [https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1683411...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114635)

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I frickin' love my 2010 ThinkPad T510. It was my workhorse for about eight years, until I got a desktop PC to use as a daily driver. The ThinkPad is still a secondary machine, and it runs NetBSD now.

</comment><comment><USER107> Not a daily driver, but still use my Dell XPS from 2011 and it holds up relatively well. Planning on putting in an SSD and replacing the thermal paste to give it some extra life.

</comment><comment><USER108> I got rid of my 2006 MacBook pro Core 2 Duo in late 2012 because Apple was dropping support for it in future MacOS versions. I kept my replacement longer with much less issues.

</comment><comment><USER109> Nothing quite illustrates the death of Moore's law quite like this does. I brought out an old thinkpad for a similar reason and was able to do everything I needed to do.

</comment><comment><USER110> One killer feature that recently appeared in notebooks is a Thunderbolt 3 port for eGPUs. They have the potential to lengthen the lifetime of the notebook.

</comment><comment><USER111> Simiarly, I still have a 2009 Macbook Pro laying around that I sometimes use and it's just fine. I mean, it's not _fast_ but it's fine.

</comment><comment><USER45> An related question that is also interesting:

What is the oldest laptop that you can install an run a recent open source OS on. It doesn't have to ha e a fancy desktop

<comment><USER112> 2006 would still be very usable and wouldn't require any special desktop or distribution. I think that as you go back further it will be web browsers that cause pain before Linux itself does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> As a former ThinkPad owner, I knew ThinkPads came with those red TrackPoints, but I didn't know you could get them _without_ track pads.

</comment><comment><USER114> My wife uses my old ThinkPad X60 from 2007 from day to day, for office work, web browsing, email, video. No problems at all with Debian stable.

</comment><comment><USER115> 2010 thinkpad t410s, alas the screen hinges have broken so I don't take it on the road as much as I'd like.

Works fine with ubuntu 1604

</comment><comment><USER116> As far as I have anything that could be called daily work laptop it is ThinkPad X200s with maxed-out RAM and cheap SSD.

</comment><comment><USER117> 2010 Dell latitude. Runs just as well as it did when I first got it. Mind you it looks rough around the edges.

<comment><USER118> Same here. I got a E5510 when I started University and upgraded it with an SSD and a new battery a few years ago. I really like all the connectors (RS232, VGA, separate microphone and headphone jack, full-sized Ethernet port), and dread the day I have to replace it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> funny thing. i downgraded to an iphone se this past weekend to remedy the fatigue of carrying the large-in-comparison iPhone XS. It is not only perfectly functional for my daily needs, but it is also easier to use thanks to TouchID!

</comment><comment><USER120> X220 still is my small collection of computers, could easily use it daily still

</comment><comment><USER121> I still use an ASUS A6000 from 2006.

</comment><comment><USER122> Hey, did anyone hear about Spectre?</comment>


The Economics of Building Knowledge Bases - <AUTHOR> http://blog.diffbot.com/the-economics-of-building-knowledge-bases/ <comment><USER2> This is a compelling article, but then when you try to see what the product is, you have to submit your email / request a demo. In my experience, hiding your product behind a demo is a bad sign that the product has flaws. It also puts you in contact with a salesman or account manager which is typically geared towards a high pressure sale event of the product. I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences with this model, though.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes with products like this one the value that it provides to the customer varies significantly depending on a use case and it's hard to put up pricing without either cutting out a long tail of smaller users or losing money on the big deals.

I have an API that market research and medical customers are willing to pay 100x more for than consumer social, at the same time the consumer companies have 100x the volume.

<comment><USER4> Find a way to segment that into two markets based on features or volume. Don't try to do it by making your customers take a phone call before telling them anything about the product. That's a move that even Oracle sales would think twice about...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Freebase was not just "shut down" out of nowhere. A data dump is still available, and some of it was merged into Wikidata but overall the resource was found to be of poor reliability. It may have had very accurate data _on average_ , but this was not enough for many Wikidata use cases.</comment>


Pony Performance Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> https://www.ponylang.org/reference/pony-performance-cheatsheet/ <comment><USER2> I'm disappointed (in pony) that one suggest is to use tuple instead of a class, and in general avoid naking little clases.

One often overlooked benefit of c++ (and I am sure other langyages) is that I can wrap one or two ints in a class, add some constructors and little member functions, and be fairly confident the whole lot will get inlined and compiled away.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, this is a good document for Pony (and a lot applies to other languages like OCaml as well!) but it shows what programming in a language like Rust or C++ that has many zero-cost abstractions gets you.

In Rust I can _always_ use wrappers, aliases and union types, and idiomatic error handling. And since the abstractions are either zero-overhead or will reliably be optimized away by LLVM, I don't have to worry about sacrificing performance.

<comment><USER4> This is not 100% true, just see the efforts of Google in optimizing string allocation on Chrome.

Just because a language offers zero-cost abstractions, doesn't mean performance comes for free, one needs to know how to use them properly.

And be clever to chose libraries that are also designed with performance in mind.

<comment><USER5> In Rust or C++, you can make the abstractions zero-cost with some effort. I'm many other languages, you can't, no matter the effort.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but that "some effort" also has a development cost, which might be worthwhile or not, depending on the use case.

Going a bit off-thread, Ada, Object Pascal, Active Oberon, D, Nim, Modula-3, Swift also offer such capabilities.

C# also has on their roadmap plans to adopt more features from System C# and Midori, specially when coupled with .NET Native and CoreRT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I only got as far the string concatenation example. That languages like Pony, C++ and no doubt many others, make programmers go through these performance hoops for common-case scenarios is unfortunate.

<comment><USER7> The problem is inherent in the imperative style.

The programmer SPECIFICALLY ASKED for all the partial results, and it turns out that doing what was asked is sub-optimal, to the tune of O(n) allocations of O(n) each and O(n^2) runtime as opposed to the optimal O(1) allocations of O(n), and O(n) runtime.

It is extremely hard to make the compiler transform the sub-optimal version to the optimal one in the general case. Sure, one can special case strings (or std::string, or whatever) and do that without changing the semantics -- Python, for example, does that with string appends. However, none of Python, C++ or Rust will do that for a user-defined type.

The right thing is to make sure that idiomatic way to concatenate strings is, in fact, efficient - Python does that by making the idiom "seperator.join(string_list)", which is as efficient as it can be.

There's a lot of performance gains to be made by transforming unreasonable code to reasonable code, which is why compilers still do it; and unreasonable code just as often results from mountains of abstractions as it does from programmer unawareness. But IMHO our goal should be that the norm is that programmers are expected to write reasonable code, not that compilers are able to optimize unreasonable code.

<comment><USER8> >"seperator.join(string_list)", which is as efficient as it can be.

If you store strings in array, it is not efficient to concatenate it at all. Strings could be implemented as an arrays or strings internally, so none of (insert, delete, append, prepend) series would impact performance so much. Editors actually do that, and your text buffer is not a single string that memmoves every time you type a char.

Strings as they are today almost everywhere are simply of bad design.

<comment><USER7> Depends on your use case. If you use a rope or tree representation (like most editors do these days), random access is O(log n) at best, in many implementations typically O(sqrt n) or even O(n), whereas concatenation string is O(1).

I don't think that it is bad as a general compromise between editor buffers (lots of inserts and deletes and concats) and symbols (immutable after created), the vast majority of which are under 200 chars (file names, urls, actions, text fields).

Sure, life would be better if every standard library supported a variety of string types for specific uses. But they don't, and I suspect that it is mostly for cognitive overload (that is, it is a PEBKAC, not a technical issue)

<comment><USER9> Not to disagree, but you can barely perform random access on a utf8 string. You need to explode it out to utf16 or utf32 which isn't what most languages have built in. Rust and go largely work with utf8 while c and c++ love them byte arrays (not sure I've even seen std::wstring in the wild)

<comment><USER10> This is misleading. UTF-16 doesn't actually provide random access, because codepoints outside the basic multilingual plane are encoded with two UTF-16 code units (4 bytes). UTF-32 guarantees 4 bytes for every codepoint, which is quite wasteful, but even then, random access by codepoint is generally a bad idea because codepoints and graphemes aren't synonymous.

> but you can barely perform random access on a utf8 string.

This really isn't true, or at least, isn't a problem in practice. If you need indices into UTF-8 strings, then you can record them by decoding the string. This is sufficient for most string related algorithms except for the "give me the first N characters" variety, which actually turns out to be a relative good thing since "give me the first N characters" should require applying Unicode's grapheme algorithm, which is never amenable to random access in UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32.

<comment><USER9> > random access by codepoint is generally a bad idea because codepoints and > graphemes aren't synonymous.

That's a good point.

>If you need indices into UTF-8 strings, then you can record them by decoding the string.

Sure but the context is that I was responding to "If you use a rope or tree representation (like most editors do these days), random access is O(log n) at best, in many implementations typically O(sqrt n) or even O(n), whereas concatenation string is O(1).".

Decoding the string is O(n); not O(1) (if GP meant "concatenation string" as in a string where the text is concatenated into a single buffer - if GP meant "concatenating a string in a rope or tree is O(1)" then I'm off on a wild tangent).

<comment><USER7> But you only need to decode it once (or otherwise receive those indices without even deciding) whereas random access to a rope/tree is always o(log n) or o(n).

Use case is everything.

<comment><USER9> >Use case is everything.

amen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They talk about profiling at the end -- it would be nice to see numbers for how much faster or slower each of the code snippets is. It's hard to tell how much you should care about "boxing machine words", for example, especially when the faster version makes your code less maintainable. Is this only something to worry about if you have millions of items in your array?

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds like a good argument for having macros in the language.

Also, how hard is it for the compiler to optimize these cases? Why are they zero-cost in C++ and not in Pony?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a great summery of performance-oriented tips that in many cases are generally applicable, even beyond the specific context of Pony.</comment>


The Hangman Cheat (Computer hangman game that uses statistical guesses) - <AUTHOR> http://hangmancheat.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't really see any cheating in this. It just works the way you would expect, right? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Some people would say that using a dictionary is cheating -- but really, this is just another demonstration of Norvig's maxim that "more data usually beats better algorithms".

This isn't a very _smart_ hangman-playing program, but it has enough data at its disposal that it really doesn't need to be smart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried it three times and won twice. Are my word choices too obscure for this simple-minded program? This is funny because I'm not a native English speaker, so my vocabulary is limited.

(For the record, I won with "cryptology" and "xenophobic". Of course those are in the dictionary now.)</comment>


Talent vs. Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16503235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16503235)

</comment><comment><USER3> This has interesting implications for organizational dynamics: the more you can allow people across the organization to innovate, rather than relying on promotion and formal recognition to pre-pick winners, the more likely the company will benefit from future luck. And it may be more valuable for a company to hire a bunch of people who are just "good enough" than one person who is a super-genius, because it makes it more likely the company will get lucky.

<comment><USER4> I always find it interesting how employers pay you for your labor, yet they implicitly also have an option on any significant innovation you produce. In a truly competitive labor market, employers would have to compensate for this option value (ie. employees who are more likely to have breakthroughs, as separate from any incremental project work).

<comment><USER5> This is a fascinating point. Perhaps the cleanest way to fairly treat your option value is to not compensate you in expectation, but to allow you to "sell" your idea internally when you have them. Employees could get a royalty, say, for a successful idea. Pricing the royalty is difficult, but it's still an interesting idea.

As I write, I realize this must have been tried somewhere. I know at one point Sandia Labs allowed employees to start spin-offs using tech developed there, but that's not quite the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you read this and think "luck is all that matters, how can I be successful?" the solution is proactively creating optionality.

Basically giving yourself the chance the get lucky.

Things like: putting your work online, meeting new people, living in a big city, not buying a house, etc.

<comment><USER7> >not buying a house

How does this help with luck, exactly?

<comment><USER8> Not buying a house may decrease mobility for some, especially single people. But folks who have spouses and/or kids tend to be more anchored to the community regardless of whether they rent. They have jobs and schools and friends that are hard to move away from.

Also, buying a house can be an opportunity itself. Although the new tax law makes it somewhat less tax-favored as an investment, it still offers the ability to escape capital gains taxation on up to $500k (married) of gains. There are other federal and state benefits that can make the overall purchase decision attractive.

So for some folks, yes a house can be an anchor. For other folks, they're already pretty much anchored, and the tax benefits can outweigh the downsides of incremental anchoring. Also, you can't get evicted...

<comment><USER7> > buying a house can be an opportunity itself. Although the new tax law makes > it somewhat less tax-favored as an investment, it still offers the ability > to escape capital gains taxation

This is what I was thinking. There's nothing stopping a person from moving and keeping the house and renting it out, often at a profit over mortgate+fees+repairs+etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A bit of a tangent but here's something I stumbled on recently:

Vox: A statistical analysis of luck vs skill in sports. They interview the author of The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNlgISa9Giw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNlgISa9Giw)

I've been trying to get into hockey lately and I doubt It'll last because there seems to be too much randomness to it. I feel like I would enjoy it more were it 4-on-4. I think I would also enjoy it more if each side were given 1-2 free powerplays per period. Hockey fans in the youtube comments say that there's more parity in the NHL than other sports leagues and that's skewing the calculation for luck vs randomness.

[http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/the-psychology-of-terror-a- fo...](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/the-psychology-of-terror-a-former- enviro-minister-defends-coal-and-making-hockey-fun-again-1.3325278/free-the- game-the-case-for-4-on-4-hockey-1.3328057)

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember Nassim Taleb wrote a paper with a similar hypothesis a few years ago. If I recall correctly it was about why smart people shouldn't go into trading: the role of luck is so great that even if you're one of the most skilled traders in the world you'll probably be outdone by someone less skilled but much luckier.

It makes you wonder though: where does luck matter least? Probably in something like a trade that you turn into a business. There you get enough customers that the effects of luck probably cancel out over time.

</comment><comment><USER11> In his inspiring book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big", Scott Adams places much emphasis on the seeming randomness of luck. In describing his approach to success, he says "I pursued a conscious strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me." His strategy includes focusing on systems rather than goals, and developing moderate skills in multiple areas. It's a very good read.

www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591846

</comment><comment><USER12> I think being smart or being hardworking can have normal distribution. But being smart and hardworking not. Introduction of paper states that qualities are distributed normally but they do not say anything about combinations.

Though I do not underestimate role of luck because luck can change outcomes of people in a huge way. Still you get lottery winners ending up badly. You still get top athletes ending up badly because they did well on one type of talent, but other types of talents like staying away from drugs not.

So as armchair philosopher/sociologist I believe that combinations of talents are more important than luck. If you have strong combination it saves you from bad luck, and helps get a lot more from good luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> I never had financial success without being lucky. Without luck my talent is not worth a dime.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. If I read this correctly, they chose to let talent affect lucky events but not unlucky events. I wonder what the rationale is for that and if it changes the results significantly to allow for probabilistically avoiding unlucky events.

<comment><USER15> > they chose to let talent affect lucky events but not unlucky events

Could you explain that a bit more please? The paper says, "We propose a model... of people influenced by lucky or _unlucky_ random events." So unlucky events are being considered too. But it's possible that I'm not understanding what you mean.

<comment><USER14> From the paper:

2\. A lucky event intercepts the position of agent Ak: this means that a lucky event has occurred during the last six month; as a consequence, agent Ak doubles her capital/success with a probability proportional to her talent Tk. It will be Ck(t) = 2Ck(t − 1) only if rand[0, 1] < Tk, i.e. if the agent is smart enough to profit from his/her luck.

3\. An unlucky event intercepts the position of agent Ak: this means that an unlucky event has occurred during the last six month; as a consequence, agent Ak halves her capital/success, i.e. Ck(t) = Ck(t − 1)/2.

Note that the equation for lucky events includes talent, but unlucky events do not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >It is very well known that intelligence or talent exhibit a Gaussian distribution among the population

Why should we assume that intelligence in the total population is Gaussian distributed, even if you assume that you can measure 'intelligence'? A Gaussian distribution of a metric emerges solely for the reason that there is nothing else influencing the out come of the variables (no one way boundary transition conditions) and as a result, there is just a random, scattered cloud of noise around where the values are. Pareto distributions emerge when there's an influencing factor which forces a change (businesses collocating next to each other to reduce costs, people buying things from people/businesses they know) Given that there are are events/phenomenon that will clearly break independence of an intelligence result (child suffers head trauma, exposure to chemicals while in the womb, Malnutrition) I remain skeptical that 'intelligence' is Gaussian distributed.

<comment><USER17> Intelligence cannot exhibit a Gaussian distribution, not unless you make certain assumptions about what intelligence is.

Is the OP's definition of intelligence limited to academic or intellectual intelligence? If so, that's the problem.

There just isn't a single kind of intelligence. Nor is intellectual intelligence superior. It's just unique, like other forms of intelligence.

Also, different people excel naturally in certain fields, or even when it comes to learning in certain fields, or learning through certain methods, such as through watching something happening, doing it practically, listening to an explanation, or even just reading about it, and so on.

Because of this, I'm skeptical that there's even an element of randomness. There isn't, not when you take into account all of the life circumstances that shape individuals and their ability to cultivate and make proper use of their innate skills and abilities.

Many people are hampered by society from ever discovering their true calling in life, so to speak, in various ways, whether it be bias towards intellectual intelligence, bias towards what suits the needs of our corporation-dominated society consumed by the need to work for money almost all the time just to survive, etc.

In a work-orientated society that takes up the majority of people's time, stress them out, etc, most people never get the chance to discover their talents, to cultivate them, etc.

Just a bit of unstructured rant, because it's early in the morning and I haven't yet had my coffee, but had to type this while it was still fresh. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was a write-up about this paper in MIT Technology Review: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so- smart-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why- arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/)

<comment><USER19> The writeup title is also a bit wrong though. Because "smartness" or even "aptitude" are not the sole filter between relative success and relative failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it often boils down to this: people who have more resources are allowed to test their luck multiple times, fail and try again until they succeed. People who don't have resources (a large inheritance say, no college debt) even if they are smart, might only get to try once. Invest their time, energy, money into one venture, fail and they could be screwed.

So in other words, looking back a particular instance of success might look like luck, or a coin toss. But some people just have more coins to flip than others.

You can also factor persistence in there as well, and make not just about money. Say those that fail have enough stubbornness to get up, get to toss the coin again, and again. So perhaps sometimes the limitations are self-imposed not just external resources that are limited.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Chance favors the prepared mind"

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to mention the distribution of talent is also a matter of simple luck.

People tend to ignore this when they are trying to justify how the talents they have make them "better" than others or that it means they deserve more... for that matter, "having more" is a false success metric anyway, but that's another story.

<comment><USER23> > talent is also a matter of simple luck.

There's no proof to this [0]. For many of us, talent is a matter of hard work and dedication.

[0] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-innate- talent-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-innate-talent-a- myth/)

<comment><USER24> What if the ability and dedication to work hard also the luck of the genetic shuffle? I started seriously thinking about this when reading up on autism a few years back.

(I don't have any answers, just a nagging suspicion that pretty much everyone is getting these sorts of moral questions wrong. I mean, if I don't get any credit for working hard to create a modestly successful very small business, why should I get the blame for anything I do?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My answer: neither

Persistence has been far more important for me than either talent or luck.

<comment> benji-york [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/gro...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/growth- mindset-replicates.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It could be that the magnitude of successes tends to result from the multiplication of several factors, talent being one of them. Luck and location are two other candidates.

If the factors are roughly independent and normally distributed, the output could be approximated fairly well with _Log-Normal Distribution_ which often appears very similar to Power Law Distribution given certain assumptions.

<comment><USER26> Correction for above: Each factor needs not be normally distributed, just independent.

Evidence that suggests Log-Normal is at least as plausible as Power Law as a model for wealth distribution:

"Using recently developed empirical methodology for detecting power-law behaviour introduced by Clauset et al. we have found that top wealth values follow the power-law behaviour only in 35% of analysed cases. Moreover, even if the data do not rule out the power-law model usually the evidence in its favour is not conclusive – some rivals, most notably the log-normal and stretched exponential distributions, are also plausible fits to wealth data."

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0212.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0212.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I Wonder if gaming models (like strategic game simulations) can help to visualize what we mean by luck. We can improve our luck or chance by education, taking chances, and etcetera. This is so easy to show in games (you stay passive you will be eaten by opponents, you go too aggressive the same result).

</comment><comment><USER27> Any way to create randomness?

<comment><USER28> You can, at the very least, make sure that your prepared for the random, lucky opportunities that come your way! Be in a position to seize the opportunity.

I also don't see why you couldn't increase the number of opportunities that you do come across. For example comparing someone that explores their field talking to different people versus someone that does the bare minimum.

<comment><USER29> > For example comparing someone that explores their field talking to different > people versus someone that does the bare minimum.

In social situations, talent (via extroverted personality, lack of shyness, being presentable) can appear to be a way to make your own luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> tl;dr: Intelligence ("talent") has a Gaussian distribution, but money ("success") follows a power law. The difference might be "luck", and they use a simple agent-based model to simulate intelligence+luck to get power-law success. "The most talented people [almost never] reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals."

Some interesting policy analyses, too. "[I]t is evident that, if the goal is to reward the most talented persons (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success - already reached - at the moment of the distribution."</comment>


A new approach to fitness apps, your thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://www.lynxfit.com <comment><AUTHOR> I would love your thoughts on this approach to getting more people fit. Turning fitness apps on its head, the long and short of it is that fitness experts should be who we trust when downloading an app for fitness, not download counts, and so I'm piloting a tool to let any fitness instructor build challenges or programs and allow anyone to request coaching from a phone. What are some pitfalls you see with this approach that I don't see?

<comment><USER2> 1\. One of the critical roles of a fitness instructor is technique. Not being able to correct it is a hazard.

2\. There's no clear value for a fitness instructor. Selling phone workouts for $0.99 in the app store is unlikely to be as profitable as 20 regular clients paying $50/week for personal attention.

Ultimately, fitness instructors provide personal services. A few outliers, e.g. Richard Simmons, can brand and sell in bulk as celebrities. But most have to focus on client relations and high touch sales.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Perhaps the focus should there by be on the service and not merely the content. Good feedback - thanks.

<comment><USER2> I suggest talking to prospective users rather than people whose larger passions include typing text into boxes. No matter how much I project my mental model of my sister and brother-in-law [they are into the physical culture] into my response, it's just my mental model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Make a Webcam Intruder Alarm with Mathematica - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/11/10/how-to-make-a-webcam-intruder-alarm-with-mathematica/

<comment><AUTHOR> The real news here is the CreateScheduledTask[] and related functions.

"...I could use an infinite loop, but that would lock my Mathematica completely. I might want to run overnight computations at the same time, or have other events happen periodically, so instead I program a scheduled interrupt _(another new capability)_ that will suspend any running Mathematica program, run this command, and then return to the program."

Mathematica hasn't previously had a way to manage a long-running process by itself. For a long time this would have been accomplished by calling Mathematica kernel from another program using a linking library. Not very difficult but it still would have been another step. Now it's built in. Cool.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is sort of off-topic because it's not using Mathematica, but this[1] is another really neat intruder detection system that I've found that's surprisingly accurate.

It's based on a technology[2] created by the guy who made Palm.

And here's a guy trying to fool it and mostly failing.[3]

[1] <http://vitamindinc.com/>

[2] [http://www.numenta.com/htm- overview/education/HTM_CorticalLe...](http://www.numenta.com/htm- overview/education/HTM_CorticalLearningAlgorithms.pdf)

[3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXtaZSHs77A>

<comment><AUTHOR> Not off-topic, as the submitter appears to have already brought up Vitamin D, Numenta, and Jeff Hawkins (guy who invented Palm) earlier in this thread. ;)

Bonus points for the hilarious example video.

<comment><USER2> Ah. Well that's embarrassing. I could have sworn that comment wasn't there when I posted that ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not important, just a bit funny. It's refreshing to know that I'm not the only one whose heard of this software. The HTM-based video software is interesting but it seems like its still waiting for its killer app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pfft.

Webcam intruder alarms don't need Mathematica. Here's a hacky Python one I came up with (I don't know Python, but it only took a couple of hours): <http://pastebin.com/zXexPwSi>

Basically it shrinks each image, turns it monochrome and then compares it with the previous frame, with some allowance for noise. You do need to edit the MONOCHROMATIC_MAX_VARIANCE for day vs night.

</comment><comment><USER4> Last summer I bought a webcam with a built-in server. I was going to do something like this, but never found the time. Thanks for the reference link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your webcam has a built-in server? Wow. Which is this?

I wasn't as interested in the security cam aspect as much as how much Mathematica can do with relatively little code, but I'd like to point out a couple of things about actually using this:

1) Not sure what kind of camera/server you have, but it would probably have to run this not yet released version of the Mathematica kernel, which you would have to buy. If that works, great.

2) If that doesn't work, there is another company called Vitamin D that has released software that works in a similar way. <http://www.vitamindinc.com/> A single-camera version is free.

(Fans of _On Intelligence_ author Jeff Hawkins might note that this technology is directly based off of his theory of how the mind works. Cool stuff.)

<comment><USER5> We sell video cameras with built-in linux servers at <http://cam.ly> . They are commonly known as IP cameras.

Without a service plan, they start at $150, and they run busybox.

Ours already do intruder/motion detection on the cameras.</comment></comment></comment>


High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program: Alaska's Area 51 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-08/mf_haarp?currentPage=all

<comment><AUTHOR> Pics: <http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/haarp-2/>

<comment><USER2> That link has pics at the top in the typical web arrangement - a big picture with thumbnails below.

Why is it that if you go to a nice small blog, the thumbnails below would be triggered by OnMouseOver and update the big image really quickly. On a reasonably modern site, the little thumbnails would have OnMouseClick events and update the image in an AJAX-y near-instant fashion.

But at wired.com, they're multi-second full page reloads. Don't they _notice_ how much less pleasant it is? Don't they see they're supposed to be a cutting edge, high tech magazine more than most magazines are?</comment></comment>