Ask HN: What's the best Google Reader replacement? - <AUTHOR>

Now that we've had time for things to shake out, what's the consensus on best replacement for Google Reader? <comment><USER2> <http://www.replacereader.com/> has a campaign to get people to vote for their favorite Reader replacement via twitter. Personally, I've been using NewsBlur for a few months and think it's great.

</comment><comment><USER3> I built my own: <https://github.com/swanson/stringer>

Self-hosted, no social crap, no 3rd party dependencies, run it at <http://reader.yourdomain.com>, keyboard shortcuts

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the mention. It looks elegant. It also 'forced' me to use Heroku for the first time too, which helped take the mystery away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been using feedly for the past few months. So far, the experience has been pretty great. It doesn't really slow down for me, even on old computers running winxp. They are pretty quick to iron out any bugs. The UI is fairly simple and similar to Google Reader. These three factors were my test for finding the right alternative. I will be honest and say that feedly was the first one I tried out so I can not give you a comparison to others.

They are currently pulling the feeds from your google reader account, but will be transitioning seamlessly (or so they claim) to their Normandy project when Reader shuts down for good. If you do not want to take a risk with any bugs, issues, or delays that might occur, I suggest looking elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> I will recommend feedly.com, nice UI/UX , if you want a different approach, you might also check <http://www.feedsapi.org> , nice UI/UX as well and easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have gone for <http://feeder.co/> because it is very lightweight and in- browser. And in-fact I like it more than Google Reader.

I tried Feedly. It looks really shady as it adds something in the background and the UI is not good for reading.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am a long-time user of Netvibes and I'm surprised how little I hear the name as a Google Reader replacement given Netvibes' maturity and features.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been building <http://creek.io> for the past month or so, you should sign up for the beta.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have tried many as possible and find the best to me are Feedly and Newsblur. Make a try on any of this two rss/feed readers .

</comment><comment><USER11> Also if you're looking for something free that you could potentially host yourself, check out TT-RSS</comment>


Ask HN: Is it okay to copy someone else's idea? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I see a Show HN or product launch and think "wow, I'd love to do something like that", perhaps as simple as changing the target customer.<p>Is it okay, for example, to take an idea aimed at developers and build something almost identical, but selling to designers? If it's pretty obvious the author of the original idea plans to expand in that direction, am I crossing the line by jumping ahead and trying to get there first? <comment><USER2> Oh yeah... besides, the prevailing wisdom is this: execution > ideas.

Most people talk up an idea, but never do anything with it. Talk is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER3> Copying was and is one of the most fundamental processes in human culture. You have learned to speak by copying! The "intellectual property" propaganda is a relatively new and artificial construct.

</comment><comment><USER4> A number of prominent HNers would be all to happy if you copied their ideas, business models, or execution techniques. Many of them have blogs that are essentially, how to launch a business just like this in N easy steps. Some of them will even answer questions and coach you if you ask nicely.

That said, it is probably polite to not outright copy. For example no one likes the sites that mimic Stack Exchange's layout and even copy their content. Similarly if you copy someone's idea, market, and business model wholesale (without asking), perhaps expect some flak.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sure, that's fine. Don't do a wholesale copy of he execution though -- you'll never win if you're always a step behind.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google did it. Facebook did it. Then again, don't do a Facebook for dogs. Or dog-owners.

<comment><USER7> Your're right. There's too much competition in that space.

[http://www.doggyspace.com/](http://www.doggyspace.com/) [http://mysocialpetwork.co.uk/](http://mysocialpetwork.co.uk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Yes. I'd figure out a way to give some attribution to the original creator of said idea.

Check this out. [http://everythingisaremix.info](http://everythingisaremix.info)

</comment><comment><USER8> akulbe has hit a couple of important points. Just because someone thought of something, or even made a thing, doesn't mean they own the idea. If you copy their exact execution, shame on you. Otherwise, go for it. On paper, any social network is the same thing. But we don't use friendster anymore.

IF it seems appropriate to give credit to someone else for inspiration, go for it.

Just remember, the market will determine the winner. Effectively, that's really all that matters.

</comment><comment><USER9> Say I am designing / building a database for work. If I want to clone that (and make it more generic for a wider audience). Are there problems with that?

<comment><USER10> Generally speaking, yes, that's a problem. If you're targeting a _completely_ different audience and you use 100% new code, then you're _probably_ fine, but the specifics really depend on your contract and the kind of people that run your company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Copying" and "almost identical": No. Lame.

"Adapting" and "significantly different": Yes. Reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER12> It depends on the idea and how much you copy.

But it's probably moot anyways since the chance of success are so low.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course that's ok.

Nothing is ever entirely new. Everything has parts of other things in it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Forget the word "copying". Let's call it "reinventing".

</comment><comment><USER15> Just about every technology is based on previous art.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's what is evolution, no ?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a more economical way to do ingress on GKE? - <AUTHOR> I am currently using the gke loadbalancer, and it is quite frustrating to see my burn rate for ingress nearly match my compute burn, just for two static sites. The key here is reliability, and kubernetes is the easiest way for me to achieve this. In the past, I have not been able to find a way to avoid this cost, and would dearly love to find a better solution that will work simply with the system. <comment><USER2> One solution would be to have your own service (bound to a public IP) and point a nginx pod doing the routing.

You might be able to use an ingress type nginx, which might be a even better way to handle this. (not sure, because I always use the GCP Load Balancer for my ingress).

CDN, as suggested above, might work, but that has some cost and topology ramifications as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Use the CDN

[https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes- engine/docs/concepts/bac...](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes- engine/docs/concepts/backendconfig)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why are you using GKE for static sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that I am using it for a static site, I am hosting a lot of other things on the same cluster as well, but only the sites need ingress.</comment></comment>


Jam Handy olympic swimmer and educational film maker - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam_Handy <comment><AUTHOR> I recently found out about Jam Handy Organization and their documentaries for Chevrolet (how the differential steering works.

Documentaries at the Internet archive site [https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Handy+%28J...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Handy+%28Jam%29+Organization%22)</comment>


Ask HN: What job offers have you turned down and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Work/life balance issues are something I care a lot about it (in fact, I wrote a book about it: [https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)).

So I've walked away from jobs where it was clear I wouldn't have work/life balance.

E.g. one company told me: "We don't _want_ to, but we're working 50/60 hour weeks. We had everything planned out and then a big customer had a big feature request and it blew through our schedules."

Good planning involves setting goals, but also making sure you have time and resources available to deal with unexpected problems, because there will be unexpected problems. To lose one weekend to an emergency may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose all of them looks like carelessness. And I didn't want to be working long hours because of what was clearly bad planning.

(Sometimes you can catch warning signs in advance: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont- hate/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/))

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree. As I plan to find my first software engineering internship then my first entry-level software engineering gig, work/life balance comes at first priority. While it may seem untraditional or odd particularly for those working in tech, after work, I would like to do something else than sit in front of a device or even think about new technologies, code, etc. Which is not say I don't enjoy the latter. I just find life is too short to have dedicated my life to a certain job, neglecting other aspects of my life, and only to find at the end of my life that ultimately all my labor amounted to nothing.

A high school friend of mine just graduated from Berkeley this past fall. He starts a finance job in San Francisco in July, where he is working 60-80 hours a week. I haven't asked him if he cares about work/life balance but I assume he thinks this what people do. I'll have to ask him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One that stands out from some years ago:

Through my network an opportunity had come up for a "next move" in NYC.

Went for lunch with the CEO. He was less than pleasant, bordering on rude, with the waitress and left a poor tip. Both unwarranted from my perspective. I found the service to be just fine.

While the compensation and the work I had to look forward to both suited my requirements, I opted to look elsewhere after observing this red flag.

</comment><comment><USER5> I turned down an offer at a large agency in NYC after learning that they build what is basically malware for the browser. Toolbars for IE, weather widgets, etc. I thought the compensation and perks were good for a first job, and the work was full-stack which is what I had been looking for, but I couldn't bring myself to work for a company that builds products that I spent my childhood removing from friends and families computers.

<comment><USER6> What is an agency?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was offered a salary. They waited until the day I started to explain that I would be paid an hourly wage based on a 50 hour week with time and a half for the overtime. I would have to clock out for lunch. I walked straight out of there and went home.

<comment><USER8> Unless you were expecting 40, that looks like a good deal. Most places wouldn't pay you 150% of normal for overtime. They'd pay you 0% of normal and expect you to like it as a "team player".

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily; working after the 8th hour in a day you get 150%, and given a quoted annual "salary" that takes this into account, it means the regular 8 hours' pay is correspondingly lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've turned down a few.

One was an early stage YC company that lowballed me, offered me 90K + 10,000 options (or something equally worthless). I attempted to negotiate (I was making 115K + vested stock in public company at the time) and the CEO told me I was an idiot for not accepting it "because the equity was worth way more than the salary." They're still around, but as far as I can tell, not making a ton of progress on their exit. I see their job ads on here all the time. I wound up turning down the offer because it was a lowball and also because the CEO revealed himself to be a total dick. Really glad I missed that one.

Another was a company where I applied for one position. I walked in the door for the interview, they started asking me questions, and I realized they were interviewing me for a different position. At that point, I kind of mentally checked out and decided I'd use this as an opportunity to practice my interviewing skills and instead of being interviewed, I pretended I was interviewing them. Halfway through, I told the recruiter (who came to check up on me) that I had to leave early, and she convinced me to stick around for one more interview. They knocked everyone else off the list and brought in the CTO, and then halfway through that the CEO comes in and says, "Look, we like you, we want you to work for us." They made me a pretty solid offer (about 20K more than I was making at the time).. Unfortunately, it wasn't a position I neither wanted nor was willing to take. I declined politely. They thought I was negotiating, but I really had to put my foot down and say "thanks but no thanks."

I initially felt bad about turning it down, but after I declined the offer, they told me so many blatant lies about the position that I quickly realized it wasn't the place for me.

I once got two competing offers from two different companies. One of them I liked a lot, the other paid more. I countered with the first one, and he said he'd match salary but couldn't match benefits (no health insurance). He swore up and down that if I got the job, he'd get health insurance, but I just didn't believe him, so I wound up having to accept the second offer. That's not the kind of perk you spend company money on because one employee asked for it.

Finally, I got another offer from yet another company. I was prepared to accept the offer, when I heard through the grapevine that the manager that hired me had decided to quit and his last day would be the day I started. I noped out of that one, fast.

Fun times.

<comment><USER11> I'd be curious about the early stage YC company. Maybe PM me if you'd be open to discussing if it is same one I am thinking of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've turned down quite a few over the years. _In addition_ to those already mentioned I would add:

* Excessive commute

* Lack of flexible working

* Lack of remote working

* Poor office space

* Lack of free parking

* No showers (important if you cycle in)

* Gut feeling was not good

It's not usually just one of the above, but some combination of weighted factors.

Funnily enough I don't think I have ever turned down a job because of the money, or taken a job just because of the money, I'm far more interested in work-life balance - cutting out the commute has always added massively to my general well-being.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm on my first job, so I've only turned down offers once, and I had competing offers.

Ended up taking a job in Denver as a software engineer. The other options were applications engineering positions, one for Seagate and one for Western Digital.

WD wanted me to work in California for only 1k more than I was offered to be a software engineer in Denver. I countered by asking for 20% more and they said no.

Seagate wanted me to move to Minnesota, which was lackluster for other reasons, namely winter temperatures.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have turned down 3 offers so far. To this day i am not sure if they are the best decision but i am sure they are not the worst. I don't really have much mentors to guide me, most of time i have to make my own decisions. I can reach out to some folks but not some one who is in good sync with me.

First Jump.

I was with company A which offered me 9 L INR. I wanted an opportunity to work in USA or hit the 12 L INR in India.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 11L INR from B.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 12L INR from another flight ticket management company (forgot its name) (product based company).

I got 9L INR from a IT services company and they promised to process my H1B in the upcoming cycle.

I picked the H1B one.

Second Jump.

I got 105K USD from a telecom giant in USA on 2.5 year contract and my employer was a major staffing company in USA and they promised to process GC immediately after joining.

<TURNED DOWN> I got 125 K USD from a small consultancy and client would be an Airlines. It was a contract to hire position. In Texas, but i din have good reviews about the consultancy and they may compromise on visa and may not be able to take my GC thru and i had doubts if they can even pay properly.

I picked the 105K USD one.

What do you folks think, am i making good decisions of totally horrible ones?

</comment><comment><USER15> They said that they typically started their engineers out on the (assembly) line, then moved them into engineering after a few months. Um, no. I wasn't that desperate. I was looking for something _better_ than my current job.

And I found out later that this was kind of a scam, where they tried to have engineers working on their assembly line. It wasn't easy to get moved into engineering off of that line.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the last month since September I had many opportunities to work in IT- Support and local in Stuttgart positions which I declined. There were also some very interesting positions, but there's a company who actually interested in me and where I think I can get the most personal benefit from. So I mean not the money, but more the things that they're working on.

</comment><comment> table-delete I turned down an offer to work in a living time capsule.

The company was decades old and hadn't changed tooling or technology for most of that time. The senior developers were actively fighting the adoption of modern FOSS tooling. Several were still using CRT monitors.

No amount of money would have made that position look attractive.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've turned down a very interesting job because they wanted me to work 5 days a week. I had a kid (now I have two), so I wanted to work a maximum of 4 days a week.

It's sad. It sounded really interesting, and they were very understanding, and yet, for whatever reason, they wouldn't budge.

<comment><USER12> Fascinating isn't it? So much for flexible working!

It seems to me like there are many companies out there who pay lip service to flexible working, but when it comes down to it they don't really like the idea of it. I actually think flexible working is something they FEAR. It could be a control issue. It could be the notion that if they give _you_ 4 day working, then they have to give it to _everyone_!

Another thing is if you have a forty hour week and you want to work 4 ten hour days a lot of companies won't allow that either. Why? It's still a forty hour week!

It's funny because one of the most productive developers I've known only ever worked a four day week.

Would anyone from HR care to comment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was offered a job and the final "interview" after they gave me an offer, they explained in detail how their app worked. It was an old PHP app and the code looked like a horror movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, the surprise legacy skeletons in the closet. I am curious -- would you have accepted if the salary was higher than necessary, or if the social environment/work life balance (or any other benefits for that matter) were subjectively better than from other potential employers?

<comment><USER18> I would have accepted if the salary was higher. What they offered was higher than what I'm making now, but if they went even a lot higher I would have justified suffering through that pile of...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had turned down a lot of job offers till date for one/more of the following reasons:

* Poor work culture

* Lack of opportunities to learn at work

* Not a competitive pay

* Dated tech-stack

* Sensing toxic work atmosphere

* Company ridden with ivy-league grads that it boasts of during the course of interview. Sure-shot path to 2nd grade treatment should you join such place because it's not your knowledge that they see but only your certificates. [Confession: I learned this a hard way :(]

</comment><comment><USER20> The biggest reason: location, location, location and relocation...

Living in a big, private house, on a small island with only one traffic light in a multi million city, in ground heated pool, etc... and working from home...

No money/stock options can compensate for this, if I have to move elsewhere in North America...

Last offer was to move to NYC :-)

<comment><USER21> It sound awesome. May I ask where are you located?

<comment><USER20> Sorry, but I rather not say in a public forum...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They made an offer that was below what I'd given as the bottom of my range (it was about 20% lower than my current salary!) and tried to argue that the tiny equity portion outweighed that gap. When I said I couldn't take that, they said they could add $5k to the salary by reducing the equity offer by 25%. Wtf.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would like to share some information regarding online training.Maxmunus Solutions is providing the best quality of this PYTHON programming language. and the training will be online and very convenient for the learner.This course gives you the knowledge you need to achieve success.

For Joining online training batches please feel free to call us @ +91-9066638196</comment>


A cruise missile in a shipping box on sale to rogue bidders - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632543/A-cruise-missile-in-a-shipping-box-on-sale-to-rogue-bidders.html

<comment><USER2> The "affordable tech" thing is a double-edged sword. I would not be surprised at bad news on the 'neat' UAV front ...

Some nuggets on this cruise missile news also at Slashdot: [http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/27/0228225/New- Russian-...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/27/0228225/New-Russian- Weapon-Hides-In-Shipping-Container)

<comment><USER3> The last comment is the important one:

" _The article notes that a Russian defense expert said that "as far as he understood, the Club-K was still at the concept stage."_ "

I.e. there's plenty of time to deter Russia from developing and/or selling this.

UAVs are a lot easier in many ways, I'd think; a more complex overall system, but you can use civilian tech for a lot of that. Much of the harder stuff, like propulsion, is just off the shelf like turboprop engines.</comment></comment>


Wind farms killing thousands of bats every year - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-10/increasing-wind-turbine-turn-speeds-could-help-reduce-bat-deaths-new-study-says

<comment><AUTHOR> What's really sad about this is unlike birds which die from direct strikes on the blades, bats die often just from flying through the negative pressure between the blades (their lungs explode).

I just saw a thermal video of this on PBS and it shows the bats plummeting to the ground as they approach the windmill.</comment>


Apple's FBI battle is just the beginning of a reality check for the tech sector - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/21/apple-fbi-battle-technology-firms-consequences-of-actions <comment><USER2> I'm not so sure that Apple wasn't aware and perhaps even looking for a battle with the {FBI,NSA,CIA,...} when they added encryption. You don't start designing a system that makes you incapable of fulfilling a warrant without expecting and indeed preparing for those battles in the future.

In a way with things like NSL's and Secret warrants and courts the US had backed companies like Apple and Google into a wall. Post Snowden everyone knows that the Government can get information about you from them without your knowledge and you will have no recourse. It's a PR battle those companies can't win. So they did an end run. Go ahead and get your secret warrants and send those NSL's it's physically impossible for us to get you the information you want.

It forced this whole thing out into open. I can't help but think this sort of legal battle is both expected and in some cases desired by the likes of Apple and Google. They finally get to fight these battles out in the open and any loss of privacy can be blamed on the government rather than the company. It's a kind of PR win whether they win the court case or not.

Of course there is still the problem of not looking pro-terrorist in the process which is another risk to factor in. But at least it's a public debate rather than a private one now.

<comment><USER3> I suspect there's an emotional angle to this that people may not be aware of, either.

There are quite a few people active in software engineering today at major companies who grew up with the sci-fi ecosystem of dystopia stories that were relatively prevalent in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Add into the mix their observations and experiences watching the dotcom boom and bust, the first major cases of the FBI chasing down hackers and trying to deal with the inadequacies of the law to handle that class of crime by redlining all the punishments the law allowed, and the utter ridiculousness that was the war between file sharing systems / communities and the RIAA / MPAA, and you end up with a culture primed to see themselves as the smart guardians of the common person against abuse by authority. Even though they are the establishment now, they still see themselves as anti-establishment, taking a stand for little people against Big Brother. That's not necessarily a true reflection of the world (in many cases, the large software companies can themselves stand accused of being Big Brother), but it's the myth they grew up with.

And along comes clear and indisputable evidence that their governments have not only the theoretical capacity to mass-harvest data and mass-survey people, they are actually doing it and have actively breached the security infrastructure at the companies these people work for to make it happen. So people in the tech sector are mad. Seething, in fact. We talk of governments metaphorically breaking into people's houses, but it's not a metaphor for the people whose day-job it is to physically secure their houses---the people the governments have actually physically wiretapped, using Cold War-era techniques, without permission.

So if the governments want a war about who owns information, the people who work in the tech sector are excited to give them one.

<comment><USER4> Why does it matter if party A or party B is "the establishment?"

Personally I think nobody should be able to mass-surveil the entire population. And I don't trust the tech giants at all (especially on matters of privacy) but in the words of Henry Kissinger: "there are no permanent allies, only permanent interests."

<comment><USER3> It speaks to the disconnect that governments should have predicted but didn't: from one point of view, governments and big tech multinationals should be in the same boat (keeping the "users" safe and secure in their daily activities, able to go about their day without worrying about externalities that they've trusted big organizations to protect them from). But tech company employees don't generally see themselves as part of the same establishment ecosystem as the governments who want them to work together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Apple has been excoriated by presidential candidates, and backed into the > tightest of corners by the FBI: the moral case for refusing to hack into a > terrorist's phone is hard to make – particularly in the US over an Isis- > inspired attack during an election year.

I can't believe The Guardian is sounding so hostile to Apple in this context. Don't they understand the consequences?!

<comment><USER6> It's not so surprising.

A lot of people have been jealously watching on as 'fat cat' 'tech bros' eat into their industries. Now there are signs that the market will correct and that technology companies will not continue to get free passes with which to ignore government. In short, they want to see blood and will settle to see it whichever way they can.

Tech on the whole needs to wise up politically. It cannot continue to accept the negative characterisations of its members, nor can it continue to do whatever it wants without any political ramifications. Even if we believe we're doing the right thing, we'll need to redeem ourselves in the public eye and critically evaluate solutions to social problems we've been implicated in (whether or not we are the sole cause of them.)

<comment><USER7> It's odd, yesterday they had a fairly prominently displayed piece praising it (at least for the UK):

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/apple-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/apple- smartphone-personal-data)

If you look through the other articles it's all been fairly pro-Apple:

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/apple](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/apple)

It's a bit strange that a business writer has been allowed to fairly anonymously attack Apple, in what has been a pro-Snowdon/privacy paper.

<comment><USER8> pro-Snowden... but openly anti-Assange, and moving to the right of the political discourse at increasing speed (they dropped UK Labour in 2010, campaigned against the current Labour leader, and are keen to appease the US market).

<comment><USER9> The Guardian is trying to grow in the U.S. market, not appease it. If the Guardian does nothing, it's not under any kind of threat other than being ignored. You appease someone who threatens you.

/nitpick

<comment><USER8> They are appeasing the (mostly US-based) online market that is making them obsolete. See what happened to The Independent? That will happen to The Guardian as well, unless they can become a real player in the US and hence globally. I could have used "begging" as well but it would have been a bit degrading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can almost hear the Guardian's business leader writers rubbing their hands at the prospect. Which is as shameful and shortsighted as it is atypical for the Guardian. I would guess the team behind this article are acutely aware of the rate their owners are burning through cash and are anticipating massive layoffs soon. Perhaps they're looking for a lifeboat with the Apple-despising Financial Times?

<comment><USER11> > the rate their owners are burning through cash and are anticipating massive > layoffs soon.

The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group had about 1.1 billion pounds net assets, of which the vast majority are liquid, as of end of March 2015 (after they've over the last few years sold of shares in various regional newspapers and AutoTrader, shoring up their balance sheet massively).

The _sole purpose_ of The Scott Trust is to secure The Guardian in perpetuity.

There may be layoffs at some point. There may not be. But losing money for years on end is in itself not a problem for The Guardian. They'll want to at some point trim the loss down a bit to not eat to much into the capital, but at current rates then have quite literally _decades_ of runway.

<comment><USER10> See this FT article [1] (a admittedly biased competitor) from late last month. Their cash shrank from £840M to £740M in the last year, and they're planning to cut "costs" by 20%.

That's a tragedy at such a great newspaper, but it does color their analysis regarding the companies most responsible for their decline.

[1] [http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/01/25/guardian-to-cut-costs- by...](http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/01/25/guardian-to-cut-costs-by-20/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's hard being on the wrong side of prevailing sentiments, and when all this pans out I think people will be a little shocked at how the tech sector's enormous financial advantages will have carried less weight than anyone expected.

You can't win politics with money alone. You need a narrative that appeals to peoples' values. Privacy is not a winner in this regard, nor is unrestricted markets (note the leading republican candidate today is pushing an anti-free- trade message). People aren't going to reflexively favor technological progress for its own sake when they see it undermining things they care about (jobs, security, etc).

<comment><USER13> > People aren't going to reflexively favor technological progress for its own > sake when they see it undermining things they care about (jobs, security, > etc).

Correct me if I'm wrong it sounds like you are saying encryption is undermining security? It might be you have that backwards?

<comment><USER14> Like he said, it's all about the narrative. Let me demonstrate. Pretend you're an average voter who has never heard of "Hacker" News.

"Encryption is used by terrorists and evil-doers to hide their nefarious plans to harm Americans and American values. Innocent and hard-working Americans have nothing to hide. Only those who wish to harm us do. Had Apple allowed the FBI to listen on emails and conversations and text messages, San Bernardino would not have happened".

<comment><USER15> Pretend I'm the token IT guy in your friend network,

"The FBI request to unlock Apple phones will not make you more safe. Criminals will use an alternative encryption device or app to communicate, or create their own."

It shouldn't take long to disprove the government's claim.

<comment><USER12> I think even the token IT guy is wondering how the FBI's request to break specific iPhones in their possession is going to undermine iPhone security for everybody.

<comment><USER16> I'm actually wondering this, too. Is there a technological reason why Apple fulfilling this request makes their (not subject-to-warrant) customers less secure? Why isn't their private code-signing key the linchpin?

I fully buy that there are legal, cultural, and diplomatic reasons that this could make Apple's customers less secure in the long run by setting a precedent, etc.

I guess one argument is that whatever code they write to tie the "weaponized" iOS update to a particular device could have bugs.

<comment><USER17> It won't make phones less secure in any technological sense. Defeating the 5C's passcode counter is a capability Apple has today, and DOJ is willing to allow Apple to bypass it on Apple's own premises rather than providing DOJ with an image that does it.

The kind of insecurity people are talking about is a policy concern; people will feel less secure if Apple can be compelled to exploit their capability this way.

That's a valid concern, but it's not a concern that really touches on how much more the "token IT person" knows than a layperson with little technical knowledge.

It annoys me a lot when people in technology deploy special- pleading logic like this.

<comment><USER18> You're drawing a false dichotomy when you talk about technology and policy as separate issues. If you are unable to overhear my encrypted messages, were you stopped by the technology of the Salsa20 algorithm or my policy of not giving you the keys? Or were you stopped by the government's policy of not compelling their production for you? Maybe you were stopped by your own policy of not beating people with rubber hoses?

In the hypothetical that Apple did not have the capability to defeat the 5C's passcode counter, is the FBI thwarted because of a technically secure cryptosystem or because it is the policy in the United States to allow such cryptosystems to be marketed and sold?

Policy and technology do not exist in a vacuum. Apple is obviously going to close the custom image loophole in response to this "debate"; so clearly the boundary between technology and policy is fluid. But merely taping a policy out for silicon, as Apple is going to do in the next chip, does not address any of the underlying issues. Sure, in the instant case Apple "technically can" unlock the iPhone, but that is always true: we could create a law such that all phones must be backdoored for example. Assuming Apple loses here, mark your calendar, because we'll have that battle next year when a terrorist uses the new silicon.

There is a line somewhere for what is reasonable to compel. Reasonable people can disagree about where that line is, but let's not paint "people in technology" with a broad patronizing brush of "it's not technology, it's policy, therefore your rules don't apply". Technology is merely policy that's machine-readible.

<comment><USER17> I don't think any of this has anything to do with the comment I wrote. You have a strong policy opinion. That's fine. I didn't criticize it.

<comment><USER18> Specifically, my comment addressed these parts of your comment:

> It won't make phones less secure in any technological sense... The kind of > insecurity people are talking about is a policy concern;

(My comment alleges there is no such thing as a "technological sense" as distinct from a "policy concern".)

> It annoys me a lot when people in technology deploy special- pleading logic > like this.

(My comment alleges that the logic isn't special-pleading.)

I didn't intend to be read as confrontationally as perhaps I sounded. You have a minority position in this kind of environment; I take minority positions sometimes, I understand it is not always pleasant to prosecute them. If you don't want to prosecute them, I won't make you. I'm just explaining that I really did offer a good-faith rebuttal of what I understood to be your position. There may be something wrong with it, but I don't think it's off- topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unlike most comments here, I liked the Arcticle: a good summary of problems the big tech companies are having.

Personally I have huge sympathy for Apple in this case. I have less sympathy for Google and Facebook. Apple, admittedly for business reasons, has come out strongly supporting privacy and I think they should be awarded for that.

</comment><comment><USER20> WTF? Two completely unrelated stories in one. I quit the Guardian last month and this is one reason why...

<comment><USER21> You're reading a leader – in print, this would traditionally be printed all on the same page, covering a couple of issues and stating the opinion of the newspaper.

It's certainly ubiquitous and familiar in the UK (I don't know about internationally) and it's not at all unusual.

<comment><USER11> It's common in lots of countries. Some are just not used to seeing them online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a battle humans/technologists have been facing since the advent of paper and pencil.

Just for fun, the old Apple advertisement.

1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial (HD)

Video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I)

</comment><comment><USER15> The article is arguing that tech companies used to operate with impunity and are now facing tougher times.

Which company operated without consequences? Microsoft had to decouple IE years ago, and other monopolies have been forced to break apart or sell off pieces. Software patents have caused plenty of headaches and force us to walk on egg shells, hire expensive defense attorneys, or lobby congress for more reasonable laws that promote innovation.

This article is all over the place. Leader or not, it's too unfocused to make sense. It's clear whoever compiled and published it does not really understand tech.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am of a few minds about this. Firstly, I do not want to create a political environment where the government can tell people how their phones can be made (w.r.t. security, particularly). Thus, I want there to be clear limits on what federal agencies are able to do.

But secondly, I am skeptical about the way giant corporations wield their power against the government. Apple surely has its own priorities and goals, which are often at odds with mine and, separately, those of the government that represents me. While I have a small bit of influence on how my government operates I have even less influence on how such corporations operate, even though their decisions greatly affect my life. When their position re:privacy reflects mine, I am glad for it, but what happens when the issue is taxation or trade policy? My government might not be pursuing great solutions on these issues, but I don't really trust giant self-interested corporations to have a better solution.

Thirdly, though, I am personally concerned about how this debate cements Apple's power to lock down their devices even, in many ways against their users. The particulars of their security design seem to preclude users from writing their own operating systems for the phone or creating/using software that isn't directly sanctioned by the company. The same applies, to a great extent, to other hardware and software vendors (in particular, Google/Microsoft/Motorola/Samsung/HTC/etc.). I suspect this battle will end up giving us more locked-down devices in the name of security.

</comment><comment><USER24> I note that nobody was brave enough to sign their name to this article.

<comment><USER25> Maybe no one wrote it. The Graun's stock in trade hit piece editorial is so thoroughly predictable by now they probably have a perl script to churn them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well I can't expect HN to agree with this article, but let's face it, technologies pose new political questions.

I think the argument about the iPhone backdoor software is a slippery slope one. As long as the judicial system use mandates and the process is transparent, I think you can't really complain. This is what Snowden is about.

We're talking about homeland defense here, the Islamic State is on the rise, so I would be careful when defending Apple here.

Now I'm not a lawyer nor a political scientist, but I want to side with the FBI on this one. I'm sure Apple is playing their popularity card here. There are things that are more important and go beyond gadgets built in the silicon valley. It doesn't necessarily have something to do with Snowden.

I expect people to disagree with me here, and it's fine.

<comment><USER27> > As long as the judicial system use mandates and the process is transparent, > I think you can't really complain.

I completely agree that the State can compel anyone to do anything he is able to do. That's why it's so vitally important to build systems which don't allow anyone but the owner to authorise changes.

Apple shouldn't be able to install an app or update OS code without an iPhone owner okaying the change. Google shouldn't be able to read my WiFi password. Mirosoft shouldn't be able to read my OneDrive files.

If it's not possible for someone to do something, then he can't be compelled to do it.

In this particular case, the actual owner (the county) should have maintained an ability to access the phone at any time, but they didn't.

<comment><USER28> If we define ownership as "having the ultimate control" \- the actual owner of every iPhone ever sold is apple.

<comment><USER29> Not super true in newer versions of iOS where the update backdoor has been removed by requiring PIN code entry for OS updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As i understand the situation, the FBI only wanted Apple to create a operating system that lives in the devices ram that removes the wipe after 10 tries. This would not comprimise Apple's encryption since the operating system would still contain Apple's private key (and the FBI added one time use provisions, also that this could happen in an Apple Facility).

Hence the question is, Does Apple have to make a different OS (so that the FBI could brute force) to see what is contained on the particular device?

I think they will be forced to, and i don't know that i have a problem with it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Encryption is a reality check for the government. It's not going away, even if they outlaw it.

<comment><USER32> They have a hard time understanding it apparently

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/apple- unloc...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/apple-unlocked- iphones-for-the-feds-70-times-before.html?via=desktop&source=twitter)</comment>


Joker: Clojure-like language on GoLang that's really fast - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/candid82/joker <comment><USER2> It mentions that its tiny, not FAST. It even says that you should use clojure if you want a fast implementation.

Performance is not the focus of the project. However startup time is probably a lot better than that of Clojure.

<comment><USER3> Under "Project Non-Goals":

> Performance. If you need it, use Clojure. Joker is a naive implementation of > an interpreter that evaluates unoptimized AST directly. I may be interested > in doing some basic optimizations but this is definitely not a priority.

For its intended purpose, small scripts, it probably is much faster than Clojure because of start-up time of the JVM.

Title is definitely misleading. I clicked through imagining a code-code translator that produces golang code from clojure and saw the word interpreter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also: [https://github.com/chr15m/awesome-clojure- likes](https://github.com/chr15m/awesome-clojure-likes)

</comment><comment><USER5> Joker was created by a team mate and I can't overstate just how useful it is; we do a lot of our DevOps work using it, it's a linter for our Clojure code, it's just handy.

It's optimized for startup time and its scope is limited; within that scope it is invaluable.</comment>


T-Mobile sneaks "rootkit" into G2 phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/05/t-mobile-sneaks-root.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing%2FiBag+(Boing+Boing)# <comment><AUTHOR> An interesting antidote: <http://pastebin.com/cm75Z9UA>

</comment><comment><USER2> This is just disgusting, absolutely disgusting. I supported T-Mobile because they were the first to come out with an Android phone, and the first to offer lower, non-contract pricing (even though it was painful 2-hr struggle over the phone to get it).

What is it about carriers that they are so desperate to not allow users to _use_ their hardware? Why do they care _so much_ that they're willing to completely destroy their reputation to keep users from doing what they want?

On the plus side, I guess now I can switch to another carrier without a broken contract fee...</comment>


In His Own Words: Gary Kildall - <AUTHOR> https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-his-own-words-gary-kildall/ <comment><USER2> A thread from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12220091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12220091)

</comment><comment><USER3> Used to love watching Computer Chronicles growing up.</comment>


Firefox 13 Released - Homepage + Speed Improvements - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/06/05/firefox-has-a-redesigned-home-page-and-new-tab-experience-that-make-browsing-the-web-faster-and-easier/

<comment><USER2> Obligatory:

Release Notes: <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/>

Complete list of changes: [http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/bugli...](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/buglist.html)

This gotta get me some karma!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the first release with SPDY enabled by default. Once most Firefox users have updated, about half of all web traffic will be from SPDY-enabled browsers.

<comment><USER4> Citation needed! What about users of old versions of Chrome, for example?

<comment><USER3> Chrome has had SPDY enabled for at least a year now -- since around Chrome 10, I think? And according to Statcounter measurements for this month to date [1], 28.75% of all page views currently come from Chrome 19.

From the same Statcounter numbers, 17.27% of all page views are from Firefox 12. So that's over 46% of page views this month using the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. And another few percent are just one or two versions behind. So a couple of months from now, 50% of page views measured by Statcounter should come from SPDY-enabled browsers, especially if IE marketshare keeps shrinking rapidly.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww- monthly-201206...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww- monthly-201206-201206-bar)

<comment><USER5> Also interesting: according to that graph, as of June 2012, Firefox's major stable release at last surpassed IE's major stable release--just a few months shy of the 10-year anniversary of the release of Firefox 0.1.

EDIT: Ha, actually, drilling back further, looks like that's not true at all: Firefox's major release has surpassed IE9 for a while now. I was misled by IE9's slow adoption curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Opera introduced Speed Dial in 2007. I can't believe that its getting published as a major feature today.

On a side note, I find the Chrome New Tab page much cooler. We can drag and drop favorite sites at the bottom of the new tab page (where it shows "Most Visited" and "Apps") and it creates our own customized group.

Edit: Fixed typo

<comment><USER7> Well I don't quite follow this behaviour. But thanks, I hadn't clicked there before.

<comment><USER6> Yes it is quite undocumented, this is the best I could find: [http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/lqlO- zYGki4/zTT...](http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/lqlO- zYGki4/zTTYiy0cgEcJ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Discussion on "Why new firefox 13 'load tabs on demand' is bad UX.", some solutions to the problem, plus comments from a chrome developer on why they moved away from this behaviour can be found here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069535>

<comment><USER9> BTW despite what the article says this is not from firefox 13 - I've had it at least since 12, and probably even earlier.

<comment><USER3> The option was disabled by default in Firefox 12 and earlier; it is enabled by default starting with Firefox 13.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Upgraded last night. Using it today it feels slightly lighter to use, it is noticeably faster in general and has some nice UI polish that has been needed for a while. Still my browser of choice. The new tab page got disabled right away though, don't like it in other browsers and don't like it in Fx. Thank god for about:config :)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I don't like the New Tab page either.

For those reading, you can disable the interface entirely (click the grid button in the top right corner).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being able to lock the pseudo class on the inspector is pretty freaking great (though not quite as intuitive to figure out how just yet). Also, a very happy change is that the panels remember what you want to have open.

Next on the list should be further integrating the console.

</comment><comment><USER13> Also, FF 14b6 out tomorrow (I think).

14 works great, no problems with any of the dozens of extensions I use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminder: If you're like me and don't use FF anymore for anything but testing, this is a good time to open it up and apply the update. This will save you the frustration of having the update applied the next time you're in the middle of working.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you don't like the homepage/new tab thing (I don't), as there appears to be no options pane thing to disable it, do this:

1\. visit about:config

2\. Search for browser.newtabpage.enabled

3\. Set to false

<comment><USER3> You can also just click on the icon in the top right corner of the page to disable it.

<comment><USER15> Thank you - much easier :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use Firefox on a 2011 MacBook Pro/Lion and I find that memory usage constantly increases, even when very little is going on (starts at about 200MB, soon reached 500MB). Because of this, I have switched to Chrome, whose memory stays about 200MB.

My fingers have gotten used to doing command-option-shift-click which opens a new tab AND switches to it.

<comment><USER17> Unless you have a leaking plugin, Firefox is likely doing that for performance. You have a lot more than 500MB RAM, right? Why not take advantage of it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I noticed they added a "Most Visited Pages" display when you open a new tab, much like Safari's "Top Sites", and like with Safari it's turned on by default.

I wonder how many people accidentally have their porn habit outed the first time they or a family-member/coworker opens the new version? Surprise!! :D

</comment><comment><USER19> This release finally ends support for Win2000 due to the move to VC2010, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER20> They still haven't merged the tabs into the titlebar on os x..

<comment><USER21> FWIW if you switch Firefox to small icon mode, hide the addon bar (previously status bar) and the bookmark bar, then Firefox only has a few vertical pixel less than Chrome for the content area. That's how I use my Firefox at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> installed on osx; launched; still no lion scrollbars or full screen support

honestly mozilla?

<comment><USER3> Lion full-screen (<http://bugzil.la/639705>) is coming in Firefox 14, which will be released six weeks from today (<https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar>). You can use it now on the Aurora channel (<https://mozilla.org/firefox/aurora/>) and in a few days it'll also be on the Beta channel (<https://mozilla.org/firefox/beta/>).

Lion-style scrollbars (<http://bugzil.la/636564>) are still in progress. You can test them on the UX branch: [https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux- nightly...](https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux-nightly- build-of-firefox/)

<comment><USER23> I don't get Mozilla. The first OSX Lion developer preview came out in March of 2011. This kind of (very) slow adoption of platform improvements is the worst way to win users, and by extension power, to fulfil their mission of a free and open web.

I honestly can't think of an excuse for not supporting Lion specifics this late in the game.

<comment><USER17> OSX support requires OSX contributors. So don't ask Mozilla what the excuse is, ask your fellow OSX programmers.

<comment><USER23> Mozilla take in millions a year from Google. If nobody is contributing to a major platform - pay someone to. I don't even own a mac, but simply can't understand how Mozilla are failing so badly at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Chrome is faster, has great extensions, why would I use Firefox?.

<comment><USER25> Pentadactyl, Firebug are mostly the reasons I use Firefox. Also I like my privacy.

<comment><USER24> Chrome dev tools are equal as powerful, and regarding the other comment about speed. I have tried the new firefox and chrome still flows better. The reasons posted here are not sufficient, sounds like the firefox users are just loyal.

<comment><USER26> I recently started using Firefox Aurora after years with Chrome, so I'm not a loyal FF user :) What made me switch is vimperator, I really like being able to navigate with the keyboard when my MBP is docked and issuing commands by their name(e.g., I can add a page to pinboard with `:pin`), also it saves some screen space by removing the navigation toolbar. Another nice feature is macro-recording, if you are doing a very repetitive task you can record a macro and run it when needed.

Obviously FF is far from the perfect browser, I hate that it doesn't use native ui elements on web pages(e.g., the `select` html element) and I think it's a bit more resource-hungry than Chrome.

<comment><USER21> "I think it's a bit more resource-hungry than Chrome"

Depends on what you measure and your usage patterns. Firefox runs circles around Chrome with regards to memory usage and features like "load tabs on demand" can further lower the general resource usage drastically.

The lack of native UI styling of 'select' elements is a disgrace though, especially on Mac. Firefox is the last browser to exhibit this and there are no sign that this will changed in the near future. :-(</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8700K review - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/intel-coffee-lake-8700k-review/ <comment><USER2> The title's enthusiasm is completely out of whack from the actual review.

From the cons section (and this is in line with other reviews of the chip)

"Coffee Lake is the third "optimisation" of an existing architecture with no IPC improvement"

The performance gains exclusively come from the small bump in clock frequency which you could trivially get with a minor OC on the previous gen(s), and from 2 extra cores in multithreading tests (no real impact to games currently).

If you're already in the market for a new CPU and motherboard it should be on the short list. If you're not already in the market this won't make you want to upgrade.

It also means the 2- & 4- core Coffee Lake chips have no redeeming qualities over what came before, hardly a smashing success.

Side note it seems the author isn't even able to read their own charts? The author lists as a con "The 8700K runs very hot and pulls a lot of watts" but the 8700k was the lowest power consuming chip in the entire lineup that they compared it against. It has a similar power consumption to the 7700k and comes in at ~90w under load. That's peanuts for this category of CPUs.

<comment><USER3> > with no IPC improvement

Unacceptable. It's now 5+ years since major improvements. And they released a new socket too, breaking upgrade paths.

Meanwhile, my Ryzen 1600 is overclocked at 4ghz and running smoothly with 6 cores/12 threads.

Intel better release something worthwhile soon. AMD is well into its comeback.

<comment><USER4> This is a random tangent, but I've been meaning to build my first PC and was thinking of going with Ryzen.

Do you by any chance run Linux or Linux dev tools on it and if so have you experienced hard crashing issues that I've been reading about?

<comment><USER5> It was a manufacturing error they fixed on new CPUs after week 25. If you bought one now, it would work fine.

<comment><USER6> So is it a new stepping? If so that would be remarkably fast for a bug to be fixed in silicon.

Otherwise why couldn't AMD issue a microcode update to fix the issue on older processors of the same stepping?

I guess I'm not understanding how it could be a silicon fix so quickly, or how any other manufacturing defect on the package would cause such an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So... great benchmarks but they couldn't even gain more than +2 average fps in most games compared to last gen 7700.

The title makes you believe that it has some serious gains over previous gens but nope. I wonder how much Intel paid for this review...

<comment><USER8> The title? "The best gaming CPU you can buy". Not sure how that indicates "serious" gains, but you keep on telling yourself that Intel influenced them into use that title.

<comment><USER9> ArsTechnica is hardly 'pop tech'. Their technical analysis is reliably high calibre, they do excellent benchmarking and thorough testing, and they also do some stellar long-form science journalism. I can't really see how you could say that.

<comment><USER10> Think you replied to the wrong person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To call this "the best gaming CPU you can buy" is a bit disingenuous. A $379 processor which can turbo boost up to 4.7GHz is pretty impressive. It is however still limited to 16 PCIe lanes which means you get one GPU at PCIe 3.0 x16 and are very limited in the additional expansion cards you can run. Sure there are additional lanes for a single NVMe disk and the motherboard's onboard components but:

Want to add a PCIe x1 wifi card? Your GPU now runs at 8x. Want to add a second GPU? They're both running at 8x.

This is a pretty solid processor for the most common use case of single high end GPU + everything else built into the motherboard (including wifi) but that is far from the "best gaming CPU you can buy." I have friends who are going threadripper for the additional PCIe lanes, I know it belongs in a different price class but this is about the best CPU not the most cost efficient -- I suspect this processor would not land in the best bang for buck category either.

<comment><USER12> What's the difference between x16 and x8 for gaming GPU? Textures will load for 0.25 seconds instead of 0.125 seconds at startup? I was under impression that there's virtually no gain for games with x16 compared to x8.

<comment><USER11> It seems you're right, at least as recently as last year [0] the difference seems very negligible. I had read that it was in 2013 but had assumed increases in GPU speeds exacerbated the effect.

[0] [https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-pe...](https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance- impact-on-gpus)

<comment><USER13> To add on, even pcie 3.0 x4 has plenty of bandwidth for a gtx 1080.

[https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_...](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/25.html)

This is the same reason why nvidia didn't bother with HBM for the 10 series. Those gpu's do not need that much memory bandwidth and in most cases GDDR5 provides plenty of bandwidth as it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related, I wonder why the PC gaming ecosystem has always focused on the extreme high end for _everyone_. I very rarely see anyone trying to get into PC gaming considering a very reasonable $600 budget that would in real world performance get them 90% of the way to a system twice as expensive.

Back in, say, 2008 the diminishing returns threshold was much higher. But builders have never adapted to how good cheap parts are - games are being designed for the average hardware, and nowadays that is _extremely_ old relative to how it would have been ten years ago.

The real winners of Coffee Lake and Ryzen for me are the 8100 and 1200. Quad cores with, respectively, high frequencies or an unlocked multiplayer on almost all motherboards that come in under $120. These chips beat the pants off an i5 2500k and until this year that kind of performance was barely trickling down when suddenly it just windfalled as soon as AMD was competitive again.

Same way the winners in the GPU market are either the 1060 or 580. At least before the mining boom, they were both available under $200 and delivered performance comparable to $500+ cards three years ago.

The real advent of recent years has not been pushing the envelope in terms of tech - even the most ludicrous builds still cannot handle 4k and VR is still in its infancy - it has been in driving the cost of admission to great looking 3d games at 1080p down to a fraction what it was five years ago.

I'm not sure what it will take to break that 4k barrier. Maybe once we are near a _mature_ 5nm node we will be able to stuff enough transistors onto a die to push that many pixels. But until then we should appreciate how affordable PC gaming is becoming for anyone just getting into it. At least when GPU prices come back down to Earth...

<comment><USER11> I just built a PC and tried to budget as cheaply as possible while still retaining reasonable performance. It ended up costing $1200 (plus monitor, another $200). I went with a Ryzen 3 1300x and a RX580. I'd love some feedback about how I could have got the price down closer to $600 as I was disappointed in myself for only being able to get it down to $1200 + monitor. That said the performance is incredible.

[https://pcpartpicker.com/list/F87BCy](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/F87BCy) (NOTE: The GPU price isn't added into the total as they don't seem to have a value for it right now.)

<comment><USER5> GPUs are definitely overpriced right now, but just some basic arithmetic on pricing a $600 ystem would be something like:

$110 CPU + $80 mobo + $60 for 8GB ram (you really don't need 16GB to play PC games - just add some swap space if you are really paranoid, and RAM is still overpriced) + $200 for a 580 at MSRP (whenever it gets back there) + $30 PSU (entry level 450-550w bronze units often go on sales that low nowadays) + $30 case (I know at least the Coolermaster N200 sometimes hits $20-30 and is solid). You can get a budget 22" 1080p monitor for about $85-90 nowadays, and a 5 button mouse + media keyboard are usually only about $20. And there are regularly ~250GB ssds for $80 as well, so the total is just under $700 with peripherals.

I'd definitely say your mistakes were the monitor and ram. I was recently shopping for all manner of monitors and generally the following price chart applies:

22" 1080p TN for ~$90

24" 1080p TN for ~$110

22" 1080p IPS for ~$120

27" 1080p for $150

24" 1080p 144hz for $180

27" 144p 144hz for $250 (from Monoprice)

Anything beyond that is way overkill for gaming, especially 4k, which also starts around $250. The monoprice monitor I mention goes on sale for $250 often and is an unbeatable deal, but the panel quality is lackluster so it might take an RMA or two of that model to get one without a substantial number of dead pixels. If you want to avoid that hassle more reliable monitors with those specs start around $350 though.

For ram, that market is a mess too right now, but just like how i7s and 1080s are overvalued in builds, so is 16GB of ram. Especially with an ssd, _especially_ with an nvme drive, having 8GB of swap is not going to do anything to performance. Same with memory frequency - it really does not matter for gaming, especially not enough to consider spending more money for higher frequency kits.

The rest is just waiting for a good sale rather than buying everything at once, and its not like you would wait months, just watch /r/buildapcsales for a few weeks and you can pick up a whole build on the cheap.

In your build, it is just nickle and dime differences per part that add up. $20 more on each individual piece comes out to several hundred dollars total.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the detailed response, I'll definitely pay closer attention to sales on my next build. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be a great CPU if you could buy it, it is very much a paper launch, seems significant quantities wont be available until Q1/2 2018. No retailers I checked have it in stock.

[https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/damien-cox/intels- cof...](https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/damien-cox/intels-coffee-lake- to-possibly-face-shortage/)

<comment><USER15> "The marginally better gaming CPU, that you can't buy until next year."

Not as catchy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> More accurately: The best gaming CPU you _can 't_ buy.

<comment><USER16> Edit: The title was edited and "The best gaming CPU you can buy." was removed. Smart move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like an out of the box overclocked 7700k with more cores. The article says it can not really be further overclocked without liquid cooling. That does suggest it is out of the box overclocked as compared to previous chips. Does its hotness reduce its lifespan?

But that weirdness aside, nice to see the additional cores, that Intel stayed at 4 cores for the desktop for so long has been unfortunate.

<comment><USER18> > that Intel stayed at 4 cores for the desktop for so long has been > unfortunate

That's why my next cpu will be AMD: Intel needs competition to stay sharp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this remind anybody of Intel Pentium 4 Prescott?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4#Prescott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4#Prescott)

      Intel claimed that NetBurst would allow clock speeds of up to 10 GHz in future chips; however, severe problems with heat dissipation (especially with the Prescott Pentium 4) limited CPU clock speeds to a much lower 3.8 GHz

<comment><USER20> In what way?

<comment><USER21> The issue with heat.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I wonder how hot it gets when doing matrix multiplications with numpy. My i6700K starts throttling within a few seconds, with air cooling rated for 130w.

Though for gaming it is most likely a dream.

<comment><USER23> Heat dissipation has been problematic for Intel not just with the recent 2066 disaster but way before that. Most Haswell desktop processors are not that easy to keep from throttling. This is exaggerated by large temperature gradients of 15 °C and more across the cores, and obviously the hottest core is limiting overall performance.

<comment><USER24> The fact that you can significantly improve the thermals by delidding the processor and replacing the TIM is really an embarrassment for Intel, especially on >$200 chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you are buying a CPU for gaming you would be better off with i5-8400 which is half the price and performs equally well in most games. Oh, and it comes with a stock cooler (8600k and 8700k don't).

<comment><USER26> When did Intel stop including fans with some of their processors? The last processor I bought was a k branded i5 in 2012ish and it came with a fan.

<comment><USER24> It's just on the -K processors, because those are the one that are unlocked for overclocking. If you're not planning to overclock there's no point in paying more for the -K.

<comment><USER12> K series provide faster boost rate, so they are faster without any overclocking. Also overclocking voids warranty, so I'm not sure if many buyers are really going to overclock it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Haven't read yet, but did they test for gaming stuttering, too, or just synthetic benchmarks?

From what I've seen AMD's new Ryzen CPUs do better in maintaining a constant framerate than Intel's CPUs, possibly because AMD's SMT implementation and the switching between threads is better than Intel's.

Also this Intel CPU seems to run hot, which means this is a compromise Intel made to be able to "win" these benchmarks. I wonder what sort of problems that will create in the day to day use of it, or in the long term (dying more quickly?)

Finally, like someone else said, this won't be available for purchase for most people until early 2018. By then AMD's updated Ryzen CPUs should be out. Strange that Intel would give out its chips almost half a year earlier for review...

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems that most games are not cpu limited if you're anywhere under 80 fps. You really have to crack into super high frame rates to bottleneck on the cpu.

<comment><USER12> It's probably a truth, but I'm playing almost exclusively WoW and it's known that even 7700K wasn't able to sustain 60 FPS in hard conditions, limited by CPU single-thread. So for some games single-thread performance is all that matters, unfortunately and it pushed into Intel direction if you want the best configuration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Despite the similarities between Coffee Lake and Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake > requires a new chipset to function.

Shamed be he who thinks evil of it. Intel would never, never I tell you, make upgrading your mainboard a necessity, but there are just these stringent technical requirements to replace PCIe-I/O-Expander and sell some extra electronics garbage with every iteration.

</comment><comment><USER29> The more important news in my opinion is the cheapest core i3 in the price range of $105 to $125, which is now quad core and reasonable budget workstation competition for the also-quad-core Ryzen 1300X.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the biggest disadvantage to this chip is that it's not an upgrade path for us i5/i7 6600/6700 CPUs due to a change in processor socket, requiring a new motherboard.

<comment><USER31> Upgrading from Skylake to Basically Skylake is a waste of money anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's odd that, despite the big emphasis on increased power consumption in the review, the TDP is still specified as only 95W. I was expecting something much higher, at least in the 130-140W range.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_figures#Intel_Core_i7)

<comment><USER33> In measurements it is often worse: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel- coffee-lake-i7-870...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee- lake-i7-8700k-cpu,5252-12.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-8700K-vs-...](http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-8700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X/3937vs3916)

i7 benchmarks higher than the Ryzen

<comment><USER33> Except in the multicore workloads. Which is why you'd buy a Zen chip.

<comment><USER12> It depends of whether your tasks are able to fill all cores with useful work all the time. Otherwise faster Intel would provide better value. I considered between ThreadRipper and 8700K and decided to go with Intel for the time. I can make use of ThreadRipper cores sometimes (project rebuild, reindexing, heavy multitasking with launching numerous VMs, IDEs, games at the same time), but 90% load will be on 1-2 cores and here Intel is clear winner, so having those 15 idling cores won't help that much in my case. Now difference between AMD and overclocked Intel is just too huge (30% or more), but I hope that with new Zens they'll be closer and it might be easier choice (if I would give up 10% of single-thread performance for 10 more cores, I would choose otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can completely disregard the rest of the review if the reviewer does not know how to present benchmark graphs properly.

</comment><comment><USER36> Any reason to drop ThreadRipper from arbitrary benchmarks?

<comment><USER37> 8700K is mainstream like Ryzen. ThreadRipper and Intel X299 are high end workstation chips.

<comment><USER36> So why include ThreadRipper in _any_ of the benchmarks? Some include ThreadRipper. Some include 7900X, some include one or the other. Some include neither.

That's the confusing thing to me.

<comment><USER12> I think that they tested TR on some tests earlier, so they included test results if available. I guess, for gaming and workstation processors sets of tests are different, but with some intersections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> i wonder if we'll be forced to buy an iMac Pro to get this chip in a mac

<comment><USER31> I expect the regular iMac to have Coffee Lake and the iMac Pro to have Skylake-X Xeon W.

<comment><USER38> ah. the Xeon goes on the heavy workstation. got it. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "The best gaming CPU you can buy"\--if you've never heard of AMD or even looked at other Intel CPUs.

It's basically just an ad.

<comment><USER40> AMD is still at least a generation behind. They're more competitive in terms of $/perf value, but the i7-7700K still beats all the new AMD chips except in heavy-MC tasks, which gaming is not (outside of maybe GTA V).

<comment><USER39> I agree they're a gen behind.

However, my thesis statement would be, that's not that big a deal for 99% of people:

\- CPU speeds aren't increasing quickly anymore. Last gen and current gen are often like 20% different.

\- Most people (should?) care more about "Best performance I can get, for the price I can afford." You have $100/$200 in your budget, and you buy the best CPU you can when your old CPU can't run modern games. And AMD fits that quite nicely.

\- Very few games "don't run" on an AMD. Heck, a last-gen AMD even. PUBG is notoriously under-optimized and my FX-8370 runs it just fine even though my "single-threaded" performance is complete crap compared to "the best of the best" Intel has to offer.

But a company would have to be insane or stupid, to design their games to only run on CPU's that cost >$400. The barrier-to-entry is too high.

\- Furthermore, since I/we have to upgrade every couple years, I'd rather not buy a $600-800 CPU that's worth $25 in a few years. I'd rather pay $200 for a CPU that's worth $25 in a few years. You may think I'm exaggerating (and perhaps slightly) but I've literally had Xeon workstations and servers that were worth thousands and their CPU can be found... for $25 on eBay.

I think it's great that many people have much larger disposable incomes than I do. Geniunely, I'm happy for them. But spending >$600 on what will eventually be a glorified room heater / paper-weight seems very wasteful. I'm all about the best I can get, for a reasonable sum of money, and AMD (and Intel when they compete on similar models!) fits into that realm. These "enthusiest" grade CPUs are so expensive (and even worse the MOTHERBOARDS are >$300 for an i9 or Threadripper!) that they might as well be fictional. I'll never see one in real-life in the same way I'll never drive a Bughatti, so (in my opinion) they're not relevant in your usual collection of datapoints. You wouldn't compare a possible Toyota Camry to a Lambo and think "Well, the Lambo is so much faster, which is important for my calculations on a possible grocery getter car."

I currently play PUBG in 2560x1440 with my gens old, AMD FX-8370, and a GTX 1060. I could "almost" get 4K but it's only like 20-30 FPS. So if I've got eight-cores (4 of which I use to run a full Win10 VM with SQL server), using a one/two gen old CPU, and I can play the most modern games... what's the benefit? Higher FPS? Sure. But the problem is, the cost-to-benefit ratio (higher CPU $$ vs FPS) quickly goes to zero. You're not getting much more to be "ahead of the technology curve." As long as you're high enough in the curve to not be "unable to play modern games" you're set. If you spend bigger money you're not actually increasing your longevity of your workstation by much. The next gen will still make your "upper end" previous gen look like crap-- especially when you consider the premium price you paid.

It would be much better to just be patient, and buy the current gen, when the next gen comes out. My current CPU dropped to HALF the price the second Ryzen came out, and is 2nd to the top in terms of performance-per-dollar:

[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html)

My CPU has a mark of ~9000 and costs $100 and the highest i7 is 20,000. (~2x) and costs... $1,600. 16 times the price for 2 times the performance and we can still play the same games.

I'm considering (and saving for) a Ryzen build... except I'm waiting till Ryzen 1.5 (<-actual thing) and 2.0 come out. I don't need to upgrade my machine to "be cool." My machine is a tool, and as long as it does what I want, it's fine. It compiles fast, it easily runs >180 chrome tabs, and can run a VM and a video game at the same time. What's more to want? If it's video encoding, the SSD's I have are 10x more important than the CPU.

<comment><USER41> You've got the strategy I've started using. After years of frustration from cheap laptops that get hot and have poor battery life and can't really be upgraded I recently switched to a computing strategy that seems to have started well for me: Get a nice Chromebook, then use that to access a beefy PC remotely(Chrome Remote is free and pretty simple to set up with just a bit of port forwarding needed, and works fine on coffeeshop wifi).

But the "beefy PC" is actually a business SFF(ThinkCentre 715s) using the AMD A12-9800 APU, the final version of Bulldozer and a starter for the AM4 platform. The only thing superlative about it is the amount of external storage I added - a whole array of cheap USB flash, multiple HDDs, etc.

I actually splurged on that APU and could have gotten the A8-9600 for better value, but I liked the idea of "maxing out" the old architecture.

Now my upgrade cycle will probably be: wait a year and then get whatever is discounted then. By getting the APU now I already see a nice 2-4x improvement over my last laptop, and I defer a decision on getting a discrete GPU. And when I'm out the Chromebook gets me an all-day battery, local access to Android and Ubuntu apps, and 80% of the Windows experience(some network latency, and no remote audio) for productivity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn's New Look? - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin-makeover.com/2012/07/04/linkedins-new-look/

<comment><USER2> oh dear, there doing the formula:

1) get hacked 2) play it down 3) redesign the front-end as a way to plicate users

That all said when you read a article that starts of "I just accessed a client's account to update his LinkedIn profile and I was surprised to find a totally different look to LinkedIn." then you know security is not a primary aspect for many, so it will probably work for those that still have the same password in use post hack.

<comment><USER3> Do you really think that LinkedIn could completely redesign their entire site in 3 weeks? I consider that completely outside the realm of possibility.</comment></comment>


YC-Funded ScreenLeap: Screen-Sharing Doesn't Need To Make You Crazy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/21/yc-funded-screenleap-because-screen-sharing-doesnt-need-to-make-you-crazy/

<comment><USER2> It's a bit late in the day for this startup. I just had a turbotax issue, and Intuit of all people had easy screensharing with just a code.

<comment><USER3> I tried this feature when I was on support with them... Chrome crashed every time I tried to run it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this different from <https://join.me/> ? I've been using join.me with my clients and they love the simplicity.

<comment><USER5> >Conversely, competitors like JoinMe (which is part of LogMeIn) use a Flash- based viewer, which won't work on many smartphones (including, famously, any iOS devices)...

<comment><USER6> It requires Java so I still can't use it from my phone (not that I would expect to be able to show anything outside my web browser anyways).

<comment><USER7> The java screen share isn't limited to showing your browser, it'll show your entire monitor. And this code is different from joinme in that it doesn't require flash to view someone else's monitor, its viewer works with JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder why nobody speaks about <http://teamviewer.com>? I tried it and in deed just works like a charm. No need for any registration either, just download and run it directly. This took me something like 2 minutes to run it. You even not only share the screen but has also a full remote access. Yeah, it even works on any kind of OS (Win, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS).

What is so special about this new screen sharing startup which hasn't been solved already by other projects? I would even claim that Teamviewer does pretty much nails the problem of screen sharing.

[Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with teamviewer in any sense.]

</comment><comment><USER9> Worked impressively with IE 9 in my Windows phone. I usually am used to new services not working with Win phone browser. That was a nice surprise.

</comment><comment><USER10> I did a proof-of-concept that shares a browser screen to a browser running on another PC:

A) var a = body.innerHTML.split('id="'); B) foreach s in a; var id = /([^"] _)/.match(s); C) use id as key to s D) send changes to innerHTML to second browser using comet E) repeat every second or so

In second browser keep cache of all sent s, rebuild a, and set body.innerHTML = a.join('id="'); Add a transparent div and transmit mouse movements.

Works best if: _ pure ajax single page app * in page HTML is browser agnostic (e.g. you use modernizr.js, and javascript generated HTML never has difference depending on browser) * no javascript in body e.g. no onxxx="somejs();" attributes. * static css file * static image files

PM me if want more info :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the most useful applications ever to be used to by our company. Its made a huge difference to our sales and demo process. We were paying users of Glance.net and it didn't work half as well as Screenleap. Amazing. Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly the product I need. I teach evening MBA students business statistics and decision making and I've just spent the last three days trying to debug why someone's t test wouldn't work over email. I emailed everyone saying I'm willing to watch a skype screen share and the response I got back was "I'm not on Skype". I really doubt I would have had more than one or two takers with that solution, but with screen leap I can put the link on my Blackboard page with the instructions "click the giant share my screen now button and text me the code" and forget about it. I'm so glad this exists, right when I need it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion of Screenleap: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3539792>

</comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't work if a try to see my desktop from ios device... I started session under ubuntu with chrome17 browser.

<comment><USER15> Please email us at support (at) screenleap.com and we'll investigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems to end session for a viewer when I reach to second monitor in multiple monitors setup. Edit: Disconnects without leaving monitor, too.

For explaining stuff I still prefer to connect to viewers machine.

</comment><comment><USER17> How does this compare to Google Hangout ? With hangout you don't need to install any software and sharing the screen is easier compared to many alternatives I have tried.

<comment><USER18> Google Hangouts requires the Google Voice and Video install, a more substantial process than just about every other screen sharing service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems a little backwards. The viewer n a screen sharing session is usually the one with the technical knowledge and capability. You're making the wrong side easy.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a DropBox-esque opportunity.

Like internet storage, screen sharing has been around for ages, but nobody has cracked it and packaged it up for the mass market.

</comment><comment><USER21> This will be an interesting one to monetize without taking away from the simplicity.

<comment><USER22> They could monetize as an enterprise, web-based GoToMeeting/WebEx competitor. Both are awful to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very cool project. Wish it were a little faster.</comment>


Do any software development people here work from really remote locations? - <AUTHOR>

I was just reading about of the most remote spots on the planet that is inhabited, Pitcairn island in the south pacific, only has 50 people living on the whole island.
Personally I have always envisioned living somewhere remote, like this, on a small island, up the mountains or in a lighthouse - well away from other people, ideally somewhere with a moat & drawbridge.....well maybe the drawbridge is a bit far...but I want the moat! :-)
I'm a software engineer (Ruby) so in theory at least as long as I have a reliable internet connection I should be able to work from almost anywhere.
Just wondering if there is anyone here who lives / works from such a remote location & what their experience has been like? <comment><USER2> Meaning remote enough to have at least two methods of connectivity? Yes. Constantly. Even used my early windows smart phone to run performance tests through HP's performance center while on vacation in Paris (no ide, only web controls).

Being remote can be very hard for most people. It took about a year before I was able to handle discrete paid work and personal life. As a self-employed consultant, I learned some very valuable tricks and techniques for being highly productive.

Test yourself for a at least half a year if you can before deciding on something like this. As mentioned, stepping out of your normal social life in addition to changing work (where many of us socialize) is a really hard adjustment to make.

Without changing work habits, preventing procrastination and finding a sense of accomplishment without physical direction and feedback most people will fail miserably.

For remote and travel related work:

1\. Always have a spare power supply and uninterrupted source 2\. Always have at least TWO methods of connection, even if 1 is dial-up, test it frequently - know where your nearest source of reliable internectivity is and how long you need to get there 3\. Your customer and employer will only accept internectivity issue problems as an excuse once - after that they won't trust you, which will limit your options and may end your remote work, making it worse for everyone else 4\. Create office hours and keep them, regardless of time zone, at first try and match your co-workers when possible - for the first 3 to 6 months, treat your personal life the same as you would in an office - don't stop work to do laundry or go shopping "just because you're home" - especially if partnered with someone who "has a real job"...

When I got started I found it most useful to spring out of bed, start-up the computers, feed the cats, make coffee, get into sweats and get to work. I stopped for a shower and lunch and shifted gears. Over time my day ended up being over by 2PM wherever I was, getting more work done than I ever had in an office, being more creative and still have time in my day to solve problems, question the universe, garden, learn cooking and French... and excel in life.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not quite on Pitcairn Island, but I live and work in rural Vermont, and by far the biggest problem with it is precisely the lack of a reliable internet connection. Right now for me, the only viable option is satellite, which is horrible (225 MiB/day download cap, 800 ms ping times). I'm currently investigating a T1 line, which will be expensive, but (slightly) cheaper than renting an office in an area with DSL access. (Moral of the story here is clearly to not fall in love with a girl who owns a house on the end of a dirt road...) I'm sure many (though certainly not all) other remote locations are as bad; so don't make assumptions on that before you pull the trigger on a specific area.

Another factor of living in the middle of nowhere, especially after living in DC and NYC, is the technical/social isolation is pretty intense. I'm about 10 miles from Dartmouth, and there is small tech culture there, but it's not like there are monthly Lisp or Scala or security meetups. Or even a student ACM chapter, for that matter. No matter how you slice it, it's hard to replace quality in-person interactions with online. IRC and mailing lists are great and useful things, but being able to hang out drinking coffee with someone while you sketch out ideas in a notebook is pretty damn important too. (There are plenty of interesting people out here, but most programmers, especially the good ones, will of course gravitate to urban areas, so the population of tech people out here is near zero).

</comment><comment><USER4> >Personally I have always envisioned living somewhere remote, like this, on a small island, up the mountains or in a lighthouse -

(Even at the risk of sounding childish, I say) Me too!!

And you know what? At 48, I think that day is fast approaching for me. :-)

In the past decade or so, I've pulled a few (short, days/weeks) stints at it and just loved it. Some of the remote locations from where I've conducted various business activities online:

* Various Himalayan retreats (in India and Nepal)

* Cruise ship sailing between Singapore and Malaysia

* A port town of Nigeria

* Beach resorts in Goa and Mauritius

* Cruise ship on Nile (Egypt)

Although I enjoyed working from all of those places thoroughly, my personal destination of choice is the Himalayas; waiting for the day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about isolated spots, but there are at least a few people on hn who travel the world while running their startups. Lionhearted (www.sebastianmarshall.com) is one.</comment>


Ask HN: What blockchain projects are you or your company working on? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/blockchain- integration-f...](https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/blockchain-integration- framework)

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be fair to say this is the permissioned equivalent of Polkadot?

Looks really interesting. I'll follow the project as I am getting started with Hyperledger myself (more specifically Seth).

<comment><USER2> Thank you! :-)

We intend to support that use-case as well, yes, but otherwise it's more along the lines of "it's what you want it to be" through a flexible plugin architecture (which is still in the design phase as is most of the project itself). If you have any (and I mean any) comments/suggestions on the design/use-cases or the whitepaper _draft_ that's in the works, then please don't hold back: [https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/blockchain- integration-f...](https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/blockchain-integration- framework/pull/98)

Side note: If you are interested in Seth I'd also check out Besu, it looked pretty legit to me and they have been getting a lot of traction as far as I can tell.

Edit: We hang out on RocketChat as well in case you want to give some feedback there instead of directly on the Github PR: [https://chat.hyperledger.org/channel/blockchain- integration-...](https://chat.hyperledger.org/channel/blockchain-integration- framework)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is blockchain still a thing? Who knew...

<comment><AUTHOR> More than a thing...it's big and growing fast if the investments made by these companies (to name a few) is any indication:

* [https://www.ibm.com/blockchain](https://www.ibm.com/blockchain) * [https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/products/blockc...](https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/products/blockchain/) * [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/) * [https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/](https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/)</comment></comment>


Show HN:San Francisco JavaScript API - <AUTHOR>

I recently developed a JavaScript library that determines what San Francisco neighborhoods and/or districts someone is in.   The application is served from Google App Engine so if no one is using the application the server instances are shut down and your first couple queries might be slow.  But after a couple instances are spun up it performs quite well.  The example application is just an example so it's not very sophisticated or pretty to look at. For the example to work properly it must run on a device that supports the HTML5 geo location API such as an iPhone. If you get chance take a look at it and tell me what you think. I actually live in Gilbert Arizona so it's a bit hard for me to test it in the real world any input on quality of my output is appreciated. In the next couple of days I plan on documenting the API and posting on HN again.  In the meantime just look at the JavaScript code, it's a very simple API to understand.
Example Application: http://www.iamnear.com/examples/sfjslib.html
URL to JavaScript Library: http://www.iamnear.com/js/iamnear/sfjslib.js
Thank you in advance for any and all input. <comment><USER2> I am near you, in Chandler, so cannot help test SF but would be interested in PHX. After reading your JavaScript I have a question: HTML5 geolocation returns lat/lon so what are you using that isn't shown in the script to get neighborhood?

<comment><USER2> Oh I see, it passes coordinates to your rest api which returns neighborhood based on fences you have created. Cool. I can imagine this would be useful for drawing fences around businesses and making an app that changes its display of closest businesses as the user drives around town.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are correct that is how it works. I'm still in development and have about three major bugs I still need to work out, plan on doing that this weekend. And performance is bit slow due to I have not minified the JavaScript yet, also a weekend project. The goal of "I Am Near" is to associate content and services to specific geographic locations. Currently content and services can take the form of full blown applications, embeddable widgets, or SOAP/RESTful web services. The basic premise is that a user's experience should change depending on where they are. For example if a user goes to [http://www.mcdonalds.com](http://www.mcdonalds.com) in their home they would be presented with general information about McDonalds and listings of the closest locations. If a user is in the same shopping mall at lunch time they would be presented with specials and deals to help entice them to go to the McDonalds 50 yards away. If they are in an actual McDonalds they would have the ability to order their lunch and even pay for it using their smart phone/mobile device. The HTML5 geolocation API gives you the latitude and longitude but often that is meaningless. As a developer I would much rather be given information such as "user is in Old Town Scottsdale" or "user is in Store #2345" than "user is at 33.26552, -111.89116". Fundamentally that is the problem "I Am Near" is trying to solve. If you get chance please play with it. Right now it's just me so any additional developer input is greatly appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool. Any possibility of putting the source code on Github?

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan on putting the sfjslib.js in Github in about a week, but not the source code for "I Am Near".</comment></comment>


The Obscure, Legal Drug That Fuels John McAfee - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/the-obscure-legal-drug-that-fuels-john-mcafee.html <comment><USER2> I know humor is frowned upon, but come on the drug is called alpha-PHP. How can we not make fun of that.

It is very interesting what chemists are coming up with these days. I'm on the nope, not once set on this though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems speculative. Also, can't drugs with similar molecular structures have quite different effects in the brain?</comment>


Fine Local Wine, or how one hacker helps another quit his job - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaiagps.com/news/article/Fine%20Local%20Wine%20hits%20the%20App%20Store

<comment><USER2> Site crashes with and empty search query.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thans for the note... I'll tell my buddy about the bug :)</comment></comment>