EU brings in 'right to repair' rules for appliances - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49884827 <comment><USER5> I don't share the scepticism shared by other commenters. No matter how you look at this it's a step in the right direction. We have needed this legislation for at least ten years now. Hopefully it will be iterated on and improved if manufacturers try to find ways around it. The EU has shown it's willing to legislate in many areas for the better (and worse).

<comment><USER6> To play devil's advocate a bit:

Consumers don't want to spend more for appliances. They want cheap. That's why manufacturers build the way they do (if you want quality over 20 years you're already free to buy a Miele)

It is rare for an appliance to break down when just out of warranty, and in any case it is not possible to completely avoid.

I am glad that the new rules do not go farther then they do because I don't think there is an issue that warrant drastic action and widespread price increases.

There are plenty of ways to source spare parts and individuals are simply not able to repair themselves in most cases (and let's not forget health & Safety regulations).

Edit: Thank you guys for killing off any discussion...

<comment><USER7> > Consumers don't want to spend more for appliances. They want cheap.

The consumer cannot easily distinguish between $400(dies after 10 years) and $300 (dies after 4).

<comment><USER8> Sometimes it's more like $300 (dies after 10) and $400 (dies after 4). Why? The marketing trick to price a product higher to look like a premium compared to competition.

<comment><USER9> It's hard to disprove that it is _sometimes_ like that, but I would be extremely sceptical towards any claim that it is _generally_ like that. I think it is safe to assume that price and quality are correlated in most cases.

<comment><USER10> Only anecdotal evidence but in my experience price and quality (as in lasting) are only very weakly correlated. In the past I tended to buy expensive (in expectation of lasting). The older I get the less I tend to do so even though I have now more money at my disposal. You're getting crap all the time independent of the brand.

<comment><USER11> I've noticed quality of ordinary things has been declining for a long time now. Some things are better due to new technologies. Lot of stuff has just regressed.

<comment> denton-scratch Don't know why you were downvoted; new technologies should make things both cheaper and more reliable, but it doesn't seem to be working, at least not for white goods.

<comment><USER12> It's probably the opposite in many cases - new technologies allow to build things that are significantly cheaper, but also less durable. For example, thanks to precise numerical simulations, you can be much more precise in designing the elements so that they are as thin/light and use as little materials as possible. Before the CAD era, you just did it "by feel" and, to be safe, made things much more sturdier (and more expensive).

<comment><USER11> I have an example of that. In the late 1980's early 90's read an fluff piece in Product Design News or some such about a team of engineers at GE that got an award for designing a washing machine tilt sensor. The article then gushed that the reason this was wonderful was the tilt sensor would allow GE to replace expensive metal washing machine drum bearings with inexpensive plastic ones.

Without a tilt sensor they needed to use metal bearing because an out of balance load would break plastic bearings. But now with the tilt sensor plastic ones could be used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am looking forward to fix the warranty system: if some products are expected to have a long life, spare parts are part of the problem, warranty is another one. If a fridge is expected to work for 15 years, mandate by law the minimum warranty to 12 years for home users, not 2 years. The manufacturers will be forced to design the products to last at least 12 years or to be very cheap to maintain, whatever makes more sense. The 2 year warranty in EU is insignificant in these situations where you have products like fridges, washing machines or TV sets that you can use for 20 years.

I had from the same company several appliances. The fridge is about 20 years old and still running. The washing machine broke after 15 years and I had to replace it due to lack of spare parts. The new washing machine is 5 years old, full of rust and I already replaced the main motor, that costed 1/3 of the full price of the machine. The technician that replaced it told me it is routine now to replace the Chinese motors after 3 to 5 years, a very high number of these washing machines break now in the first 5 years, but after the 2 years of warranty. They are a multi-brand service, when I asked what brand he recommends he said he cannot recommend one as they all have problems lately.

<comment><USER14> If you want to spend more money on a quality product with long term support then buy commercial appliances.

<comment><USER15> That might not be feasible. For instance, if you want a commercial oven, that probably doesn't even fit into a normal residential kitchen.

<comment><USER14> Commercial kitchens range in size from industrial bakeries larger than football pitches to tiny pub kitchens. The ovens come in all sizes.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but that doesn't mean they'll actually fit in a standard residential kitchen space.

In the US, kitchens normally have a very standardized space for the stove/oven. It's a particular width (I don't know it offhand), and if it's outfitted for electric, it has a standardized 240V outlet. You can't just put anything there: it has to be the correct width and height, and have the correct power cord. There are fancier kitchens with separate ovens and ranges, but you can't just put those units into an existing kitchen; you'd have to redo all the cabinetry, which is very expensive.

Also, commercial kitchens generally use gas ovens/ranges. Not all residences have this available, in fact many just don't. If your area doesn't have natgas, then you have to have propane installed, and that's expensive to do, and may not be allowed where you live.

<comment><USER16> These things are extremely easy to reconfigure, and no cabinetry is not very expensive. Even utilising just standard residential ovens, they come in 600, 750, and 900 widths, and a variety of heights. There are plenty of commercial electric ovens available, I assure you.

<comment><USER15> >These things are extremely easy to reconfigure, and no cabinetry is not very expensive.

Bullshit. It's a lot more expensive than any residential stove, mainly because of the labor costs.

>Even utilising just standard residential ovens, they come in 600, 750, and 900 widths

Those don't sound like widths in inches, so that doesn't apply here in the US.

<comment><USER16> Simply not true; the average oven installed these days costs more than all the cabinetry combined... cabinetry is cheap and easy to reconfigure.

The first result in Google for 'ovens US' even has it in their blurb...

>...find single and double ovens, gas and electric ovens, 24", 27" and 30" ovens, speedcook and convection ovens...

So yes, it does apply, even in the US of A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >>Owners are usually unable to repair the machines themselves - or find anyone else to do it at a decent price

That's just a result of high labour cost in western countries though. Parts for appliances are usually pretty cheap, it's getting a specialist to come out that costs an arm and a leg. A heating element for an oven will be like £40, but good luck finding someone to come out and fit it for less than £80-100. Considering you can buy a brand new oven for as little as £200(with free delivery) the option to replace something instead of repairing it is unsurprisingly tempting. The further East you go the cheaper the labour gets, so it's normal that a repair that's completely unreasonable in the UK is actually pretty reasonable in Poland or Slovakia - the same part fitting would cost you maybe 50-100PLN(£10-20)? So actually the parts are almost always more expansive than labour.

<comment><USER18> So just ship your washing machine to Poland for repairs, I guess. Very energy efficient.

<comment><USER17> I mean, washing machines probably aren't worth it because they weigh a lot, but I know as a fact that if you need to get your OnePlus phone repaired it will be shipped by next day courier to a repair centre in Warsaw, then shipped back(I rang them up on Monday, phone was collected on Tuesday, delivered and repaired on Wednesday, shipped back on Thursday, I got it back on Friday - <USER2> was incredible). I have also done this with a speaker that broke - a local electronics repair shop wanted £60 just to diagnose the issue, I was driving over to Poland for summer anyway so I took it with me, a local shop there charged me an absolutely ridiculous for Poland 2x50PLN/hour(£10/hour) to fix it + £20 for parts = £40 total. Obviously that completely ignores the cost of driving over, but I was doing it anyway.

I'm just trying to point out that it's not some grand conspiracy to stop people from repairing stuff - here in the West labour is just very very expensive(which means our wages are also very high, so it's hard to complain). In countries where labour is cheap the same repair suddenly makes sense.

<comment><USER19> > shipped by next day courier to a repair centre in Warsaw

Don't worry, that will change next month

<comment><USER20> What happens next month?

<comment><USER19> Items being sent from the UK to Warsaw will have to run through customs twice, attracting very large tarrifs - at least in the "UK->Poland" direction. That's assuming the airplanes are allowed to fly, and the customs clearence delays will be measured in days.

<comment><USER20> Oh, because of Brexit you mean, it didn't register that the GP was in the UK.

<comment><USER19> I inferred from "local electronics repair shop wanted £60 just to diagnose the issue".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know I'm overly optimistic, but every time I see anything regarding legislation and "repair" keyword, i silently hope for a price limit on spare parts... and am always disappointed not to see one.

If a new (whole) car(tv,washing machine,...) costs 20k (...) ($,€,..doesn't matter), and you want to replace some parts, the cost of just a few parts quickly becomes higher than a whole new unit. In a modern car, just replacing a few parts costs more than a whole car (both front lights ~1k(eur), rear ones 500eur, ac compressor 500eur(+), radio/navigation unit 1k, foldable mirrors 500eur, 'smart' rearview mirror up to 1k, etc...).

If the sum of costs of all parts to assemble a car is above 2x the price of the car, someone is getting ripped off, and we all know who that is.

Same with laptops... lcd assembly on a shitty 600eur laptop was quoted as 400eur+tax here (luckily ebay exists) - and that's without labour.

<comment> kube-system > If the sum of costs of all parts to assemble a car is above 2x the price of > the car, someone is getting ripped off, and we all know who that is.

Not really. The business models are way different and have different costs.

You're paying for someone to store that part, ship it in low volume to and from a parts warehouse, market to you, tie up capital in it, and gamble on the possibility that you'd want to buy it before those models go obsolete.

If you buy 500,000 units via container ship from the factory you could get them for way cheaper too.

<comment><USER22> How convenient then that manufacturers keep their costs secret, so we cannot verify such excuses for extortionate prices.

<comment> kube-system The components and approximate values of these costs are well known; manufacturing is a well-established and stable industry.

If you want some actual values, many of these companies are public and file financial reports:

[https://www.electroluxgroup.com/en/wp- content/uploads/sites/...](https://www.electroluxgroup.com/en/wp- content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/electrolux-annual-report-2018.pdf)

Electrolux cited a 4.3% operating margin in their latest report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They need to be designed to be easier to repair too. To replace a thermal fuse in my dryer requires that I take apart half my dryer. They could have left it behind some panel in the back.

<comment><USER24> Small tidbit, but I am delighted when I find boards that still use through- hole components or chip sockets. Apart from cellphones, you often don't really need the extra space.

<comment><USER25> BGA are the hard ones and virtually not doable for a home gamer, the rest are fine.

Imo, through-hole are worse, harder to remove than SMD if you have hot air.

(edit) What is actually necessary for electronics - "schematics" and datasheets. It's quite hard and time consuming to trace stuff, esp. on multilayered PCB. Lack of datasheet is even harder to overcome in many cases.

<comment><USER26> Through-hole is easier than SMD with the correct tools. Specifically a vacuum desoldering tool (Metcal MFR, Pace SX or similar).

<comment><USER27> Until you pull a pad through on a $20k multilayer board. Been there.

Give me straight, well designed and BGA-less SMD any day. Also Metcal user here.

<comment><USER28> I think you meant 'via'?

<comment><USER15> Not really, no. It's really nit-picking, but a "via" is a (usually small) plated-through hole that is used solely for connecting traces on different layers of the board. I'm pretty sure the term isn't normally used for the plated-thru holes with pads that are used for thru-hole parts, even though the construction of the two is almost the same. The main differences are that the holes for PTH parts are usually larger, and the pads around them are larger, for better soldering. Vias don't need much of a pad around the hole because you're not putting solder in the hole, and vias are usually covered with soldermask.

<comment><USER28> Yes, really, yes. It isn't nitpicking when you're simply wrong. Via's are vertical interconnects between layers, they can be 'blind' vias which do not connect to either top or bottom layers or regular ones.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_(electronics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_\(electronics\))

<comment><USER15> If you're going to call someone wrong, then you should check to make sure you're right first. But you aren't:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through- hole_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-hole_technology)

"Plated-through holes are no longer required with SMT boards for making the component connections, but are still used for making interconnections between the layers and in this role are more usually called vias.[2]"

Even your own link says nothing about PTH, and just discusses vias for use in SMT.

<comment><USER28> Except that the context was _through hole boards_.

> "Through-hole is easier than SMD with the correct tools. Specifically a > vacuum desoldering tool (Metcal MFR, Pace SX or similar)."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not bold enough.

This regulation is part of the EU Ecodesign Directive. In fact, repairability was studied in the 2016-2019 working plan - so for 3-4 years. [https://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_MEMO-19-1596_en.htm](https://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_MEMO-19-1596_en.htm)

>>introduced for refrigerating appliances, household dishwashers, household washing machines and household washer-dryers, electronic displays and refrigerating appliances with a direct sales function.

Some more facts here: [https://eeb.org/europe-paves-way-for-right-to- repair/](https://eeb.org/europe-paves-way-for-right-to-repair/) >> \- The proportion of defective devices being replaced by consumers grew from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012 (source)

\- This may be costing German consumers €110 a month per person (source)

\- A long-lasting washing machine will generate over 20 years 1.1 tonnes less CO2 than a short-lived model. This analysis takes into account manufacturing, distribution, use and end-of-life treatment (source)

\- Electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world (source)

\- Only 35% of electronic waste in the EU is collected and treated properly (source)

\- Illegal flows within the EU are estimated at 4.65 million tonnes in 2012 (source)

</comment><comment><USER30> One thing I bet it does not include is a requirement to unlock digital devices when support ends (by providing any private keys required to install 3rd party software/operating systems). This would help stop a lot of old devices going to landfill.

<comment><USER8> Or DRM. Copyright content is often impossible to still own if the remote servers are down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this should be mostly about information. Sort of 'right to understand'. The law should compel companies that sell on EU market to release to public domain full documentation of the product. Service manuals, precise dimensions of components and such.

<comment><USER29> That's a good point, but I doubt _any_ company can just jump in and produce spare parts for a branded appliance. So where do you get the parts from?

<comment><USER32> I'd disagree. Lots of small and medium shops can mass-produce appropriately twisted pieces of metal (or _appropriately enough_ ) once you give them the specs. One just need to allow for third-party parts and repair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if there is a market for a appliance company to have easy to repair products with easy to source spares that could be done by a competent DIYer I have to replace a fridge freezer that I inherited as it occasionally leaks/defrosts, I've already out €200+ into it with a repair engineer to replace a motor but I don't want to spend more in case it doesn't work and I have to spend €1000 on a new one anyway.

When I was a teenager my dad got me to replace one of the old rotary switches on a washing machine with a second hand spare he got, if I recall correctly there were 30+ wires and I had to label them all, it worked and I was so satisfied. Now it would be a new PCB and would be difficult to source.

Definitely think there would be a market even if the initial cost was higher.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is already a thing with EU made appliances - new original parts can be sourced locally or on ebay at good prices.

As non-profesional I managed to replace dishwasher door springs or washing mashine carbon brushes. It needed some time and research - thanks goodness we have youtube and hobbists forums. At the end the family acclaim is priceless.

Unfortunatelly it is harder to fix some brands from S.Korea or China - <USER3> parts on the market, hard to open, fragile plastic, glue instead of screws, rare short lived model lines. My fridge's broken control panel costs about 1/5 of new fridge, plus I am not sure I will manage to assemble it back. This ruling definitely is going to raise a bar for imported products.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's a good thing even if I can't use it directly.

The popularity of old 2nd hand mercs in Africa is a direct result of them being fairly easy to fix overengineered gear. No need for a laptop to diagnose it.

So in a way I'm hopeful this will reduce waste indirectly

<comment><USER36> >The popularity of old 2nd hand mercs in Africa is a direct result of them being fairly easy to fix overengineered gear. No need for a laptop to diagnose it.

Labor is cheap relative to the materials in the 3rd world so they run things as long as they can get parts. What they actually use has more to do with how the second hand car market in the first world works than anything else. For vehicles to be prolific in the 3rd world they need to enter the dealer auction system en-masse at a young age but not young enough to be re-sold as certified pre-owned where they are then bought by exporters/importers. These preconditions basically mean they are bought en-masse by people (or companies) who will drive them 5-10yr and then trade them in on a new one which basically means they are bought en-masse by decently well off people. The stuff that people stretch themselves to buy and then keep until it's totally clapped out (or sell private party to maximize value) never enters that workflow.

<comment><USER35> >Labor is cheap relative to the materials in the 3rd world so they run things as long as they can get parts.

Don't think it's a function of that frankly.

I grew up in South Africa and the market down there is driven by a mentality you describe - cost consideration, pre-owned, access to parts, certifications etc. Stuff any westerner would be familiar with.

Head a bit further into ahem "proper" Africa and things changes very rapidly. e.g. My uncle living in Kenya reckoned that you could get a full transmission change done on the side of the road i.e. on gravel of the road shoulder (if it has one). That's where the old tank style mercs come into their own...anyone with mechanical aptitude and access to tools has a chance. Certified? Nobody fuckin cares - can you fix it in dust conditions with limited tools?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >From 2021, firms will have to make appliances longer-lasting, and they will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years.

10 years is not long enough - big appliances can easily live much longer.

Appliance manufacturers should make it a _core_ business to provide repair services, not think of it as "environmental regulations".

<comment><USER37> Couldn't agree with you more. 10 years is way too short.

Apple forces iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 owners to buy a new model even if they work fine after 6 years. Why couldn't a mobile phone work for 15years?

Just think of the US cars in Cuba, build in the 50s and still on the road. If I remember well, the amount of fossil fuel needed to build a car is more than it will use during it's lifetime on the road.

Changing to _Less is more_ will require either

\- a disaster (war, flooding, hunger) or

\- long endurance and perseverance against _old thinking_ by Greta Thunberg and the like.

<comment><USER38> > Apple forces iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 owners to buy a new model even if they > work fine after 6 years. Why couldn't a mobile phone work for 15years?

I'm pretty sure Apple does no such thing. They stop updating product lines after a certain point, but they don't brick them or anything. In fact, you can find examples of people using original iPhones just to compare them to the modern phone amenities.

[https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal- techn...](https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal- technology/living-with-the-original-iphone- in-2017/790062D5-748C-47CE-A515-549D1C03E6F3)

Really -- our expectations of what our mobile devices should be able to do have increased so much in the past 10 years that it's simply unrealistic to expect them to last 15 years or longer. _Maybe_ we're coming closer to a point where we can expect tech to be usable for longer due to our phones having processors that are nearly as capable as modern laptop processors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A definite step towards reducing wastage and focusing on improved functionality for products, instead of planned obsolescence and sealed units whose warranty is voided if you repair them.

<comment><USER40> Planned obsolescence should be a criminal act.

It's worse than any standard pollution offenses we have in place.

It's surprising we even let companies get away with these practices for this long. The practice is against consumer interests, socially irresponsible and utterly reprehensible as a business method.

If you still sit squarely on the side of the companies on this one, realise capitalisms current growth or bust model is entirely dependent on continual expenditure of Earth's resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It might not be they progress we are hopping for. We still have to pay for the repair. Increasing the devices guarantee from 2 to 5 years (maybe 10?) is probably better. Then it will be on producers to provide long lasting devices.

<comment><USER29> Rather people would have to pay for it, but upfront (which is more transparent).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I watched a right to repair video that suggested that if/when a right to repair law gets signed in the United States that it will cause OEMs to provide repair parts/manuals for not only that state but the rest of the country as well because it would be infeasible to maintain two separate "lines" for the same device.

Does anyone know if this holds true between continents such as Europe and America as well? IE: Because OEMs have right to repair laws in Europe they may just go ahead and furnish America with them as well so they dont have to maintain two separate product lines?

<comment><USER43> That works for macbooks where there's no difference other than a keyboard, but appliances are already quite different between NA and EU. Voltage and frequency are a big one since AC motors have to be built specifically for it. There's also differences in consumer preferences. You'll never get far selling 24" cooktops and kitchen cabinet washing machines in America.

<comment><USER42> well do you think that perhaps, setting the voltage and other continental variance requirements aside, that repair manuals for products released in EU will coinside (somewhat) for products in the USA? This could potentially be a game changer for USA repair enthusiasts as we will have SOME form of foundational documentaion to go on when attempting a repair (or at least i hope)

And on a side note: Funny how tractors and agricultural equipment were stricken from USA's right to repair and intellectual property laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Give them a build quality/repeatability scale similar to the power efficiency one.

<comment><USER44> Is there a consumer test website that measures repairability?

<comment><USER45> I'm only aware of ifixit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The main issue is that the new star ratings can only be applied to new appliances. Does the right to repair law also include a clause making it easier to repair? If my new dryer has a fried chip, how much will that chip cost me? Can the 3rd party repair service fix it for cheap? The other big issue we have other than planned obsolescence is that new electronics are chip driven and these are proprietary which means either you go to the original manufacturer and pay quite a bit for the part or throw the damn thing away.

I hope these right to repair laws are solid and also allow the manufacturing of third party parts. But what I would love to see is an upgrade system for older appliances. Like a program where you can buy newer more efficient parts for your appliances instead of buying a whole new one.

</comment><comment><USER47> Right to repair your car has been in effect for years now. [https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/right- to-...](https://www.autocare.org/government-affairs/issues/right-to-repair/)

</comment><comment><USER48> The mentioned devices are mains powered (well perhaps not led-lighting) - <USER4> can see why legislators are not eager to just let anybody mess about with that.

<comment><USER49> Why not? I'm 'allowed' to change a plug, and fuse.

<comment><USER50> It's difficult to mess up changing a plug or a fuse compared to, say, a motor in a washing machine or a heating element in a tumble dryer.

To be fair though, with modern houses being RCD protected it's very difficult for even dangerously-wired appliances to kill someone or cause a fire.

<comment><USER49> I've changed the heating element in my oven, that was simpler than changing a plug. Plus you'd be surprised by how many people would have trouble wiring up a plug.

I can understand why manufacturers wouldn't like it, it isn't apparent to me that the doom and gloom would play out. The people that attempt these repairs are likely to be self selecting, and if we look at cars or PCs, are the tinkerer communities for those less safe than the general population? I feel you could make a case for the opposite. If you have no idea about cars, that rattle is a thing to be ignored, whereas a person in the know would realise that it's an impending failure of X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Speaking of right to repair, As anyone seen the price of hard drives lately? External drives are MUCH cheaper (half price in some cases), which seems backwards when the external drive also comes with an enclosure, power supply and cables.

Leading to the term 'Shucking', where people buy external drives just for the drive inside only to discard the rest.

<comment><USER52> Do you have an example of the same quality hard drive being cheaper as an external hard drive? I find that hard to believe, and would presume inferior hard drives are being sold in external cases.

<comment><USER51> Sure, as of right now:- WD 10TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive £184.26 (the 12TB version has been as low as £180) [https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD- Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements- Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B07G364YHX/)

In the comments from the above (you'll find similar in other comments, and on Reddit & YouTube). The Harddrive inside is a WD100EMAZ (WD Red 10TB), which currently retails for £318.68 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-10TB-3-5-SATA-5400rpm/dp/B07194...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-10TB-3-5-SATA-5400rpm/dp/B0719498XY)

It's even running the same firmware. It makes no sense, the only logic I see is that customers are willing to pay more for the 'enhanced features'. If you look into this, you'll find no manufacture states the read and write speeds of their USB drives, making it a little harder to compare, so there is a little luck of the draw in what you actually get. Seagate are similar: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8thr34/seagate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8thr34/seagate_backup_plus_hub_10tb_has_a_barracuda_pro/)

<comment><USER52> Your first amazon link is for a product sold by Amazon.com and the second link (the hard drive itself) is being sold by a different merchant, so they are not comparable as the third party sellers have weird pricing for various reasons.

<comment><USER51> That's strange, Take Newegg (both instock):-

WD My Book 10TB USB 3.0 External - $185.99 (free shipping) [https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822234346](https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822234346)

WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Disk Drive $283.98 (with $3.99 shipping) [https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822231546](https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822231546)

So it's still ~$100 cheaper. Like I said before, this isn't the only example.

<comment><USER52> That's interesting, what a ridiculous way to price discriminate.

I also found this conversation while trying to find out kind of HDD it is:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8ghb0o/wd_mybo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8ghb0o/wd_mybook_10tb_shucking/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Not always plausible;

When the LS 400 was disassembled for engineering analysis, Cadillac engineers concluded that the vehicle could not be built using existing GM methods

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LS#Industrial_signific...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LS#Industrial_significance)

</comment><comment><USER54> This will not help (enough). There is a problem with regards to other EU regulation regarding warranty. Suppose my appliance breaks down after three years. The seller should organise the repair and pay a major part of the cost (function of the expected lifetime). That's EU law. However: they can choose the repair company. Large firms insource this, thus being able to set repair prices. Then this law is moot. Once I turn over my broken appliance for repair, I have to pay a fee to get it back unrepaired. So market forces cannot play since the price setting of repairs is broken. Nice that some appliances get better repairability, but this only works after the expected lifetime of the appliance. Within the expected lifetime you are still stuck with inflated repair prices.

Edit: see below. This is partially false. In the Netherlands this problem exists since they've implemented a broader warranty (2 years plus depreciation over expected lifetime) than the EU mandates. EU wide is just 2 years warranty and this law facilitates repairs afterwards.

<comment><USER55> What are you talking about? Warranty implies that the manufacturer foots the repair bill.

<comment><USER54> You are right. Problem stated above only exists in the Netherlands since our lawmaker implemented an even broader warranty than mandated under EU law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Links to the rules please? BBC didn't share a link to the legislation. Google yields nothing.

</comment><comment><USER57> Does this mean I can now repair the OS of my phone?

</comment><comment><USER58> It is a very positive step. They should also mandate releasing the source of the drivers.

</comment><comment><USER59> Veeery narrow, only for lighting, washing machines, dishwashers and fridges....

</comment><comment><USER60> Finally, some EU legislation I can fully get behind

</comment><comment> ur-whale Feel good regulation feels good until one tries to get a startup off the ground and regulation throws giant monkey wrench in the works.

This is EU bureaucrats at their worse.

</comment><comment><USER61> The result is obvious, spare parts will be available for ten years, but at crazy prices.

<comment><USER62> If those parts are standard there is no reason for them to be too expensive.

<comment><USER18> Can you build an iPhone from standard parts?

<comment><USER62> This is a law for appliances.

<comment><USER18> Nevertheless the same issue applies. You can't build everything from standard components.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is actually a restriction of consumer choice. If I am willing to buy a product without "right to repair", the government should not stop me from doing so. Many appliances are cheap enough that it makes sense to buy new ones when they stop working.

<comment><USER64> Consumer choice is restricted by default: You can only buy what is being sold. This is just the democratically elected bodies of the EU changing that selection.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk's Hyperloop gets 3D-printed to scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/22/hyperloop-3d-printed

<comment><USER2> By "to scale" they mean a scale model.

This showed up more than a week ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251077)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hyperloop technical specs here (pdf): [http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf)</comment>


Banksy's art authentication system displays top-notch cryptographic nous - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/03/31/di-faced-note.html <comment><USER2> Banksy's work poses an ethical conundrum for me. I am a huge huge fan of it, but I also recognize that graffiti is just another name for vandalism. But his stuff is just so good…</comment>


Intel Ethernet Flow Director and Memcached Performance [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/intel-ethernet-flow-director.pdf <comment><USER2> Added benefit of this article - one of the best explanations of RSS that I've read.</comment>


Don't Worry About Remembering That Password—Leave It to Your Unconscious - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/515726/a-password-so-secret-you-dont-consciously-know-it/ <comment><USER2> If you have problem with remembering a password just ask NSA. Chances are they already know it.</comment>


Introducing Nitrogen (Erlang-based Web Framework) - <AUTHOR> http://nitrogenproject.com/web/learn <comment><USER2> I have to say, I don't really think Erlang is suitable for front-end stuff. Its string handling is just not good enough for the most common web tasks.

Also, this smells a lot like .Net's datatables etc., which go against modern front-end best practices.

<comment><USER3> While Erlang is not the first choice one would make for heavy string processing, in most web apps you are doing far less string processing than people assume. For an Erlang solution you just keep the "string" as an Erlang binary and pass it around in this raw form. With the addition of unicode to the list of types that are available for processing with the Erlang binary datatype in the recent R13 release this option is becoming more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The focus on Comet and an event-driven model remind me of HAppS. Is there something about this approach that's especially appealing in pure functional languages?

<comment><USER5> Maybe not in pure functional languages per se, but it meshes nicely with the actor model that underlies most of Erlang's computational abilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting - I've long said that I think Erlang might be well suited to very ajax-intensive apps. It's not that great as a templateing language, but does ok when you're just passing json back and forth. I suppose the issue is sorting out what sort of 'model' component to use... Mnesia, CouchDB, or a more traditional db?</comment>


Update: UniFi Phone Home/Performance Data Collection - <AUTHOR> https://community.ui.com/questions/Update-UniFi-Phone-Home-Performance-Data-Collection/f84a71c9-0b81-4d69-a3b3-45640aba1c8b <comment><AUTHOR> We've seen two episodes of companies who enjoy the goodwill of the enthusiast/advocate sector committing obvious foot-gun maneuvers in as many weeks. First it was GitLab, and now Ubiquiti. Both should have known better than to hoist telemetry on self-hosted software. Doing so betrays a willful ignorance or disdain (or both) for the very reasons these enthusiasts self- host.

The good news is that in both cases, the community has been clear in its reprimand, and the companies have reversed course (or promised to do so, in the case of Ubiquiti). I'd like to see more companies realize this is an opportunity rather than a threat: an opportunity to create products and services that deeply respect privacy and market this advantage over the competition.

<comment><USER2> GitLab's CFO was kind enough to leave public evidence of his incompetence:

"I don't understand. This should not be an opt in or an opt out. It is a condition of using our product. There is an acceptance of terms and the use of this data should be included in that." [1]

In the previous thread people were referring to the HiPPO problem (Highest Paid Person's Opinion). I'm willing to bet that it's the same story at Ubiquity. But despite occasional backpedaling, there are rarely any real consequences for the irredeemably stupid managers who push for crap like this. Unfortunately, that's probably the only way to make it stop.

In my opinion, if the outcry is bad enough for a company to backpedal on a decision like this, then it's already bad enough that they should fire the manager responsible for making the decision in the first place. These aren't line employees. The company doesn't pay them more than everybody else for fun -- they're paid to understand the business well enough to know better. People in these positions tend to be natural risk takers. If there are never real consequences, they're going to continue to bet anything they can get their hands on for a shot at personal gain, and the company and their customers are going to foot the bill.

[1] [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/merge_requests/14182#no...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/merge_requests/14182#note_203849107)

<comment><USER3> Don't penalize GitLab too harshly for having public issues and discussion. The obvious fix will be to just not have all this public, which is what all other companies of non-trivial size do. I think the CFO's comment was illuminating, but not really worse than I would expect from any misc C-level in any industry.

<comment><USER2> That's a very valid point, and I don't want to go _too_ overboard in my criticism. However I don't think my assessment is wrong. If he really was the one pushing for this decision then I think he should be fired. It's not just about getting it so wrong when he should have known better, it's about ignoring all of the internal push-back from employees who were trying to prevent him from fucking it up the first place. Bullies in the C-suite should be removed.

> but not really worse than I would expect from any misc C-level in any > industry.

This is my take as well, unfortunately, but I think it needs to change. There are loads of competent people who can perform these executive jobs. The bar should be higher.

<comment><USER4> I don't think making an executive decision is necessarily "bullying." The nice thing about public comments and development is that you would see some non- hypothetical evidence of such action.

I don't think it's unnatural for an OSS product dev team to think this way. I don't like that they implemented it, but I think it's positive they rolled it back.

Firing a CEO for such a situation will result in worse software, I think. It won't make the next CEO less likely to make a dumb mistake. But it will make them less likely to be public or to roll back changes. If the consequence of a fairly minor mistake (given GitLab's history of super smart decisions in the past 10 years) is firing, then management will make sure nothing is ever considered a mistake again.

<comment><USER5> >then management will make sure nothing is ever considered a mistake again.

but it's ultimately the customers who decide if something was a mistake by switching to different products... hence _company foots the bill_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Still not enough. Needs to be opt in. As others have stated, crash dumps are pretty much data leaks.

By pulling stunts like this you force all operators to review the contents of every update. You actually reduce security across the ecosystem because you reduce the likelihood individuals will update.

> For any further questions related to this, please review our EULA, Terms of > Service and Privacy Policy.

May as well be: "For more information, please re-read."

Come on.

<comment><USER7> _For any further questions related to this, please review our EULA, Terms of Service and Privacy Policy._

As someone who was literally about to order a whole set of Ubiquiti gear for his business this month, having never been a customer before: no, I don't think I will.

Ubiquiti, you blew it once by trying to push this out in the first place. Now you've blown it again, by thinking some token opt-out button was enough to fix the problem, instead of realising that what you're dealing with here is a major trust issue and you're fundamentally on the wrong side of it. You don't get a third shot. I need to protect the security of my business data, and I need to be confident that the professional gear we're buying isn't going to actively undermine that.

<comment><USER8> While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if you want proactive support. Claiming they need to dump the feature entirely is more than a bit overly dramatic.

The option to disable it was absolutely the right move for them to make and it should've been there from the start. Everyone claiming they should not have any phone home at all hasn't spent much time in the enterprise hardware world...

<comment><USER7> _While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if you want proactive support._

No, they don't. We work with some clients who are in a very similar area, on the development side. Anyone who thought this was a good idea would get bounced out of the room so fast their feet wouldn't touch the floor until they were in the corridor. It is absolutely not the norm to upload data from within the customer's network without their knowledge or consent.

<comment><USER9> Read more carefully.

Almost all of your enterprise vendors do this today. Some of them even give Sales Engineers real-time access to performance and utilization metrics. It's a great way to get competitive intelligence about other companies.

<comment><USER7> You misunderstand. My business develops software, including software that runs on networked devices, and we have never had a client ask for phoning home like that. In fact, it has often been a requirement that the device could operate with no Internet access at all, because a lot of security-conscious customers such as those in finance or healthcare have strict rules about this.

<comment><USER8> Can you name one?

IBM

Cisco

Dell/EMC

HPe-Aruba

Arista

All phone home. Who is this magical enterprise company that has no phone-home?

This farcical: claiming there are issues with healthcare and finance is complete rubbish. They aren't phoning home patient data, they're phoning home telemetry and health status of the hardware. I can tell you with 100% certainty that both segments have literally hundreds of thousands of hardware devices phoning home to their respective manufacturers without ANY issue.

<comment><USER7> There is nothing magical about it. If you were correct and no-one made enterprise networking gear without phone-homes, quite a few of our clients' customers wouldn't have a network, since they are strictly prohibited from buying any equipment that does. You seem to be extrapolating from limited experience, possibly of a few specific product ranges or licensing models, and assuming that the whole industry works the same way. It does not.

<comment><USER8> That's an awfully long-winded response without actually listing a single vendor. It would lead me to believe you don't know what you're talking about.

I've worked with basically every vendor in the space and phone-home is table stakes which is why your story doesn't really hold water...

<comment><USER7> You've worked with basically every vendor in which space? Surely not enterprise-level networking, where there are hundreds if not thousands of sources for numerous different types of device?

<comment><USER8> Let me bring you back since you seem to be trying to change the discussion now that you're stuck in a corner. We're talking about vendors that provide wireless networking hardware. Your claim was that any wireless hardware networking vendor that had phone-home wouldn't fly in hospitals or finance. I can literally walk into any hospital in the US and prove that wrong, so I asked you for a list of these magical vendors. There aren't hundreds, there aren't thousands, there are dozens at best at any given moment. Name one that is an enterprise wireless networking vendor that doesn't have phone-home.

<comment><USER7> _We 're talking about vendors that provide wireless networking hardware._

You might have been, but the comment that I'm replying to is the first one in this thread to include the word "wireless". Ubiquiti make various other kinds of network equipment as well, and enterprise networking is a vast industry all of its own, of which wireless is only a small part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused how they keep saying this is in compliance with Grpd when auto opt in is not allowed.

And the idea that they force everyone in, and will add an opt out button later seems like they are gaming the system.

If they don't opt everyone out they didn't ask to opt in as a default, their actions to me seem hollow.

<comment><USER11> Anonymous data is _not_ subject to the the GDPR. See recital 26. [0]

IANAL, but as far as I know, companies can collect _anonymous_ data ("what versions are our customers running?") without involving the GDPR.

> This Regulation does not therefore concern the processing of such anonymous > information, including for statistical or research purposes.

[0] [https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-26/](https://gdpr- info.eu/recitals/no-26/)

<comment><USER12> I bet they will not actually be GDPR compliant. They will likely get away with it because enforcement is lacking, but anonymization is hard to get right and I would be surprised if they did get it right.

<comment><USER13> Is there a way to file GDPR complaints? Enforcement might be lacking but with enough data and support surely it would be possible or be sufficient to make Ubiquiti move to opt in.

<comment><USER14> contact your local DPA[1] and file a complaint. There's plenty of info on the original thread[2] on what they're doing wrong.

[1] - [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/refo...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/reform/what-are-data-protection-authorities-dpas_en)

[2] - [https://community.ui.com/questions/UI-official-urgent- please...](https://community.ui.com/questions/UI-official-urgent-please- answer/14259289-e4c3-4c5e-aaa0-02a5baa6cbbe#answer/f0f5de22-396c-4cb3-aad5-9d6038539980)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Contrarian opinion/question: Out of the software developers reading the comments here: Who is offering an op-out (much less an opt-in into) from their crash reporting solution they have included in their software?

And of those who do actually offer an op-out: Who is annoyed about not being able to debug an issue because the crash they know is happening only seems to be happening on clients who have opted out?

And my second question to all the non-developers out there: Who here is annoyed about crashes on their machine that "never seem to get fixed" as if the vendor "didn't care about getting crashes fixed" in software that offered and explicit opt-in and they didn't opt into "spying" by the vendor? Who remembers not opting in and remembers to rectify that when the crash happens?

It's very easy to stand on the hill of righteousness and yell at a vendor implementing crash reporting, but before doing so ask yourself: Are you collecting crash reports? Do you wish you had crash reports? Are you unhappy about crashes on your machine not being fixed?

If any of those are true, then you better not complain about a vendor adding crash reporting to their products.

Do I think this should be opt-outable? Of course. Do I think crash reporting needs to be opt-in? No. Absolutely not because next to nobody will opt in and when crashes happen, nobody will remember their decision.

<comment><USER16> Make it easy for your customer to get a crash report when one occurs. Make it easy for them to contact your support, whether it is a Github issues page or a professional phone support desk.

Make the report readable by a simple text editor. Let the users have a look at the content inside. If you do need the report, ask them to check it then send it through trusted and encrypted ways like Firefox Send.

There is no need to make an crash report automatically sent to you. No need to fix crashes for users that never cared for reporting them to you. Orient your bandwidth to users that care.

<comment><USER15> _> Make the report readable by a simple text editor. Let the users have a look at the content inside._

how do you explain the concept of a backtrace to an end-user so they can make an informed decision whether it's fine to submit the data or not? How do you do the same with a a full memory dump (if you need one?). How do you expect users to analyze the memory dump for potentially compromising data?

 _> If you do need the report, ask them to check it then send it through trusted and encrypted ways like Firefox Send._

this works for you and me. It doesn't work even for my coworker. Also: What is the advantage of going through the extra hoop of Firefox Send compared to over plain SSL when you intend the recipient to be able to read the dump anyways?

 _> No need to fix crashes for users that never cared for reporting them to you_

Judging from metrics available to an app I'm working on I would say that users are much more likely to stop using my app completely rather than even bothering to press the "report this issue" bug.

It really depends on your target audience.

But in case of UniFi (as opposed to their AmpliFi line), asking for individual reports to be reported could possibly be feasible given the product audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This has already been added to the excellent host block file of StevenBlack.

[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1083](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1083)

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been saying for several years that, eventually, we will all end up having to put in "default deny" rules for our _outgoing_ traffic, just as we do today for incoming traffic.

(Either that, or hosts will have to be configured without a default route and will need to use a proxy server for all outgoing connections.)

When every piece of hardware and software you use is spying on you, blocking everything by default and only allowing explicitly whitelisted traffic will be your only option to stop it.

<comment><USER19> I think we're already there.

Site I manage run separate VLANS for admin (switches, APs, etc) and Internet- of-Things, and both of those VLANS are default deny on outbound. That rule blocks a fair amount of traffic.

I wonder if part of the answer is better tools in firewalls for this sort of thing. Easily tagging "unstrusted device" or something perhaps.

<comment><USER20> Pihole, a router that forces anything on port 53 back to the Pihole and careful device selection seems to be very much required already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For engineers reading this who work at a tech company, or well, any company. Watch this keynote talk by Patricia Aas.

It's called Embedded Ethics. And it is crystal clear many of you need to watch it.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> Opt out is good. But I just want to weigh in for the statistics that I have almost zero concerns about anonymous crash reports. I worry a lot more about whether products requires internet connections to their manufacturers to work ten years later, than whether they send home crash data.

If it's clearly indicated and has an opt out I'm fine with it. I'd go so far as preferring it over opt-in, because I want my product to have the improvements of as many crash reports as possible.

Obviously, by "crash log" I hope they gather call stacks - not memory content, since memory content could contain data that I wouldn't want collected.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm glad they will add the option, but considering their user base background it was really naive to don't foresee this was going to be detected and that it was going to be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if they've announced the same thing for their EdgeMAX gear?

This is really dumb, these are the kind of shenanigans that people buy non- consumer gear to get away from.

<comment><USER25> Safe assumption is they'll add it eventually to all their hardware. But given the reaction they got here, they'll get the opt out setting done before they spread it to other devices.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for your thoughts. I'm hoping that the more "serious" bent of the EdgeMAX stuff (much of the functionality requires dipping into CLI) will cause them to hold off there. I'm assuming most businesses would find this unacceptable. But maybe you're right.

<comment><USER25> Well, I think the amount of CLI config required, means most EdgeMAX users won't think much of having to add a "disable telemetry" command in their configs: They already have to add like _all the basics_ manually to begin with.

But the other thing is, since UNMS devices like EdgeMAX and AirMAX are intended for mass deployment by ISPs, there's a decent chance UNMS will reveal and aggregate that telemetry data and allow UNMS users to see it themselves for their own troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes.

<comment><USER24> Neat, thanks again, you clearly have dug more into these devices than I have :-) I haven't tried UNMS (mostly for multi-site deployments/massive overkill for home use?) but hopefully that means that it'll be fairly easy to disable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Power outage corrupts Mongodb in the UniFi Cloud key. They won't fix that.

There is no option to remove the dead/unplugged devices from the device list. The only way to remove is to reset and reconfigure everything from scratch.

<comment><USER27> > Power outage corrupts Mongodb in the UniFi Cloud key. They won't fix that.

The Cloud Key 2 has a battery inside it and shuts down gracefully if you pull the power.

So that's a _kind_ of fix. Although it does involve buying a new device.

<comment><USER20> Avoiding dedicated hardware and running it on a machine with a UPS is another way. I can recommend Docker, Synology and a small UPS. And that's how the equipment cost got multiplied by 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Their "protect" camera software doesn't work properly without it being able to connect to the net. It won't let you login on the localhost!

Now this. What is a good alternative for AP's and cameras?

<comment><USER29> After trying several inferior solutions, including the Unifi cameras, I switched to Blue Iris in combination with high quality Dahua cameras (IPC- HDW5231R-Z). It's been very reliable and overall just works great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I posted this as a reply to a comment, but I will repeat it here,

If they transmit crash logs, and those contain partial memory contents (core dumps), chances are actual content from network packets are transmitted to UBNT as well, and those contents may contain PII (IP addresses, MAC addresses, usernames, passwords, real names, addresses, credit card information, etc.), meaning they're most certainly violating the GDPR by making it opt out.

The GDPR doesn't care how you came by the PII, it only dictates how you should behave when you handle it.

Edit: I should clarify before somebody trips over their pitchfork and sets the house on fire, the GDPR cares a lot about how you come into possession of PII, and also if you should have that information in the first place, and also cares about how long you hold on to it.

When it comes to protection of those data though, it doesn't care if it was collected through telemetry, emailed to you (yes, also the spam folder), or it's an old archive of core dumps on an old server somewhere. The same rules apply to how those data are handled.

<comment><USER31> This is simply not true. Opt in is only one of many ways to be compliant with GDPR covered data.

Legitimate interest is the obvious way to not require opt-in and while I'm sure the regulators are getting tired of seeing ad networks claim that exception a _router_ company claiming it for crash support seems like something that will likely be deemed in bounds. Especially if that company has made a good faith effort to show its not repurposing that data.

<comment><USER30> >This is simply not true. Opt in is only one of many ways to be compliant with GDPR covered data.

And yet, Article 32 ([https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679of) the GDPR states:

        Silence, pre-ticked  boxes or inactivity should not  therefore constitute consent.
        Consent should cover all processing activities carried out for the same purpose or purposes.
        When the processing has multiple purposes, consent should be given for all of them.
        If the data subject's consent is to be given following a request by electronic means,
        the request must be clear, concise and not unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is provided.

It is of course also possible that UBNT is fully GDPR compliant if they can guarantee that the don't send PII. The problem is we don't know.

<comment><USER31> You are misunderstanding. You only need to collect consent via opt in if consent is your basis of collection.

There are several other basis as well including 'legitimate interest'. You can see all of the basis in article 6(1).

If you use a different basis you don't need to collect consent _at all_ whether opt in or otherwise.

Hardware data from crashes used just for cause analysis and properly stored/secured is a fairly straightforward 'legitimate interest' argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone else observe hourly connection attempts to "unifi-report.ubnt.com" from their Unifi Controller? I'm running the controller locally with all cloud features, error reporting and live support disabled. Not sure what other options user-facing options I can turn off to stop this from happening.

</comment><comment><USER33> The biggest concern for me is not opt-in vs opt-out, and not even data mining. They create another side channel which can and eventually will be exploited by the party they can't imagine now. They weaken the security of their otherwise good products.

</comment><comment><USER34> "transmitted using end-to-end encryption"

Technically correct but sounds either ignorant or misleading.

<comment><USER35> In other words: over HTTPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For "enterprise" hardware/software I would expect them detailing exactly what metrics they collect and what could be in a dump that gets sent.

How do you anonymise a dump with user info especially for a routing device? Like that requires some sophistication, you'd imagine they'd love to talk about it to generate blog clicks.

But it seems that some keen user will have to try reverse engineering their data collection to actually give the users information of what is leaving their network.

As a user of their products, it has really soured me on their product. When supposedly if they're so "GDPR compliant" they just need to explain themselves to win people over.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's unclear from the post, does this impact the firmware on my unifi devices, or is this part of the controller software? ie. is my raspi phoning home, or are my wireless APs phoning home?

</comment><comment><USER38> Most likely a follow up on this posted 22 hours ago on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430997) (Ubiquiti adds phone-home to the access point firmware)

</comment><comment><USER39> I do not understand how somebody at UBNT thinks the data is worth the hassle. They are taking a reputation hit, risking getting PII and getting rolled over by the GDPR steamroller, angering some of their best customers (corporations with strict security rules). What for? Is the crash data _really_ so valuable? Do they intend to pore over every report with dedicated manpower? (they really should if it matters so much).

I would say they should first get their basic support to work in a top-notch manner, carefully reading, thinking about, and responding to every bug report. Then get into automated data collection, and then ASK FOR USER CONSENT. This isn't difficult. No "opt-out" crap or corporate lingo, TELL ME CLEARLY WHAT YOU NEED, WHY YOU NEED IT, AND ASK ME IF I AGREE.

</comment><comment><USER40> "If you do not wish to participate/provide this data, we will add an opt-out button in upcoming versions".</comment>


Show HN: 300x288 pixel clock using HTML5 canvas and Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://coding.pressbin.com/files/122-pixelclock.html

<comment><USER2> Nice. I've got a minor obsession with alternative ways of displaying the time of day. I've made a canvas clock or two of my own, and I used <http://www.let.rug.nl/kleiweg/abclock/> glued to my root window for the longest time.

I like that your clock simply displays the time of day as a visual ratio of time elapsed to time remaining. Of course, at the one-second-per-pixel scale, getting the precise time of day at a glance is a little tough.

Have you considered using color to earmark blocks of time? If it's 300 pixels wide, then a row is 5 minutes. Have you tried maybe some pinstriping on each sixth row to show hour marks? Maybe wider, like 2-hour blocks? I think it would give a lot more information in a single glance.

Do you think turning it 90 degrees and having it progress left to right would be easier or more intuitive? And what about the size? 300x288 has its advantages, but have you played with other aspect ratios?

I'm not trying to pick apart your work, I'm trying to suggest different ways to take it because I like what you've done. If you want to return fire, I made <http://slumberheart.com/things/clock.html> earlier this year and would love to hear some suggestions.

<comment><USER3> Quick & dirty hour marks:

      --- pixelclock.html.orig	2011-12-06 16:40:56.000000000 +0000
      +++ pixelclock.html	2011-12-06 16:39:43.000000000 +0000
      @@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
               var inpos = (y*width*4);
               for (var x = 0; x < width; x++) {
                   var color = (y*width)+x < elapsed ? low : high;
      +            if (y % (3600/width)) { color = (color+128)/2; }
                   imageData.data[inpos++] = r;
                   imageData.data[inpos++] = g;
                   imageData.data[inpos++] = b;

<comment><USER3> With hour stripes, labels and adjustable width (see source).

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/136288/pixelclock.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat! Here are some pedantic suggestions:

<!DOCTYPE HTML> is necessary to let IE9 work without whining

imageData is slow and I'd avoid using it. In this instance you can accomplish the same effect with calls to fillRect.

As it stands right now, you are setting the fillStyle of the arc each time but only need to set it once since the fillStyle never changes. In fact, you probably don't even have to recreate the path each time, since the last path ought to still be there, so the only thing that needs to be in the loop for the arc is `ctx.fill();`! (Haven't tested, but that ought to be the case)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. My plan is to next render a 270x365x320 brick in a similar manner.

I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that will represent.

</comment><comment><USER5> I found this oddly depressing.

<comment><USER6> It's like realising that most people get around 4000 weekends for their lifetime, and then realising how many weekends you've already had.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure it's worse (or better) to think "I'm halfway to 4000 weekends" than "I'm half way to 76 years"?

<comment><USER6> For me personally the 4000 weekends has more of an impact, because I can realistically picture what I would get done in any given couple of days.. 76 years seems a bit too much of a 'big picture' to really comprehend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone please explain what makes this particular canvas experiment so interesting, especially because there are more interesting, complex and beautiful demos available showing the power of canvas with JS?

</comment><comment><USER9> ooh - make a yearly one!!!

colours could be used to mean different things! day, night, summer, winter, full moons etc... cant think of a use for it right now, but I'm sure one will 'spring' to mind! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://minimalissimo.com/2011/02/1px-clock>, check out the comments too

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems to force quirks mode in IE9, which prevents the pixel clock from displaying. Perhaps the missing DOCTYPE.

Lots of things like this don't seem to have even been tested in IE9, despite the fact it's (subjectively, to me at least) a decent browser that finally supports Canvas.

<comment><USER12> There's a good chance that someone having fun with canvas does not run a system which supports any version of IE... which might explain the lack of testing.

<comment><USER11> A missing doctype shouldn't have anything to do with the system, though, assuming that's what the problem is. Clearly other browsers are more forgiving.

<comment><USER12> I didn't mean it from the code standard perspective. In a live product, invalid html is bad regardless of a system and it should be tested in all browsers.

But for one-off interesting thing, you'll probably check it in browser(s) you have installed only, or maybe even only your favourite one... and it's unlikely that IE will be that browser. Just a reflection on the setup of an average webdev interested in canvas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It used to be I only thought the day passed slowly. But now I can _visualize_ it.

... I hate you.

</comment><comment><USER14> It would be cool if you could change the start and end times. So instead of 00:00:00 and 23:59:59 I could do something like 09:00 - 16:59:59. Just another tool to get through the day!

</comment><comment><USER15> cool but might be more useful if it's used as a timer rather than a clock or maybe with custom checkpoints. i don't particularly care about 12am-12am. i DO care how much time i have left at the office. or how much time i have till my bedtime. how far along i am in a task or in my own day, say there's a 9p-5p block, and 5p-11p block and a 11p-2am block. when i'm asleep i cant watch it and it could be excluded.

</comment><comment><USER16> At initial glance I thought it was too lo-fi. Then I noticed the visual representation. This is nice inspiration, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER17> What, no leap seconds?</comment>


19 years old, Warwick University undergrad on his second company. - <AUTHOR> http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2010/01/07/jean-malissard/

<comment><USER2> Not really worth the read; if only because it's confusingly written and reads mostly like the writer copy/pasted from the guys website.</comment>


As hackers, can you scrutinize my analysis for a start up? - <AUTHOR> http://sitecollab.com/results-of-collaboration-tools-survey/

<comment><USER2> The write up sounded great right up to the point when I started reading the comments.

It reminded me of the saying by Henry Ford "if I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse".

All those people are looking for a faster horse.

What worries me is that you don't mention if you have a Model T in mind.

My suggestion read those responses than destroy all record of them, they will be there somewhere in the back of your mind and that's ok. But build the first thing that comes to mind that was a real pain in the ass for you back in you agency days.

Good luck

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please - I am dying for some feedback from this community on if this strategy is productive.</comment>


Hybrid Warfare and Big Data's Role: China and India: A Case Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.news18.com/news/tech/hybrid-warfare-and-big-datas-role-understanding-how-and-why-china-tracked-over-10000-indians-2875181.html <comment><USER2> Things just got interesting. Will be interesting to see India's response, considering India's position as a leading software giant.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hybrid Warfare and Big Data's Role: Understanding How and Why China Tracked Over 10,000 Indians</comment>


Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 - <AUTHOR> https://segwit2x.github.io/segwit2x-announce.html <comment><USER2> Note: this is not supported by the current bitcoin developers. It is a fork promoted by Barry Silbert, supported by the large miners and the many bitcoin companies he has funded.

(I have my opinions, but more important to warn people who may be mislead by the title)

<comment><USER3> Note: Rusty Russell is an employee of Blockstream. Blockstream employees have for years been extremely vocal opponents of increasing Bitcoin's block size, and Blockstream employs many of the "current bitcoin developers" Rusty is referring to.

<comment><USER4> There's a common misconception that Blockstream showed up and started hiring bitcoin developers. That is not the case: Blockstream was founded by developers that contributed to bitcoin for many years before starting a company together.

> Blockstream employees have for years been extremely vocal opponents of > increasing Bitcoin's block size

Yes, for many years, years before Blockstream even existed!

Edit: note that these very same developers are also pushing for segwit, which doubles the block size and the on-chain transaction capacity of the bitcoin network. It's quite odd to say they're "opponents of increasing Bitcoin's block size" given that they want to double it. What they're really against is _specific proposals_ for increasing the blocksize, proposals which break compatibility and introduce a chain-split risk for no good reason.

<comment><USER5> That was talked over like thousands times already.

1) segwit is not "doubles the block size", effective increase is ~1.7x _AFTER_ full adoption and switching everyone to the new tx format (which is impossible for next few years). Also, it's one-time bump, can not be repeated if necessary

2) they're "introduce a chain-split risk" precisely by going against community. Without this shitshow almost zero risk upgrade was expected

<comment><USER4> 1) The 1.7 figure is outdated, the latest one from a research by BitFury in November 2016 is 2.1MB [0]. It's probably somewhat higher now. Yes, it does require wallets to upgrade - but most of them (and all of the major ones) already have segwit implemented [1]. In addition, once a few of the major players that produce lots and lots of transactions upgrade, the fee pressure will level down for everyone, even these who did not upgrade for SegWit.

Yes, it is a one-time increase, but one that is sufficient for now. Let's start by doubling the block size first, collect more data, then decide how to further increase the blocksize as the need arises.

2) I'm not seeing that they're going against the community. The technical, business and wide bitcoin community are all looking forward eagerly for segwit's activation.

Edit: also, in the case of a hard-fork, users who don't upgrade gets cut off the network entirely. is it not preferable to keep them a part of the network, with somewhat higher fees but a functional wallet otherwise?

[0] [https://www.weusecoins.com/eli-segwit/](https://www.weusecoins.com/eli- segwit/)

[1] [https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/](https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/)

<comment><USER5> 1) Still, a lot lower than required. Blocks became full like a year ago (see [http://i.imgur.com/d7fwVnd.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/d7fwVnd.jpg) ) and after that moment fitting transactions within 1MB limit means someone's stopped using bitcoin (me included :( ). +500kB is not gonna change that anyhow ( +1.1MB x 50% adoption). even +1.1MB not nearly enough.

> but one that is sufficient for now

not really - see above.

2) > The technical, business and wide bitcoin community are all looking forward eagerly

Do they understand segwit activation provides zero benefits at moment of said activation?

3) Overall, we're in the stage of planned bitcoin deconstruction. Gladly, there are no way to kill cryptocurrencies - even if bitcoin going to die, someone else will take it's place (related: see "bitcoin market share" chart)

P.S. We're talking about wrong problem. "How exactly 2MB blocks should be implemented" is surely wrong direction of talks. Yet we're here for like two years and counting. Whole ecosystem could be progressed by a lot during this time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my point of view (a strong Bitcoin Core supporter) this is an attack on Bitcoin by most of the big miners that increases centralization of the miners even more.

The sad part is that if that if they do what they are signaling, the difficulty adjustment of Bitcoin will take many months, and only 2-3 blocks will be mined every day until then.

<comment><USER7> Not really sure I follow your argument. Bitcoin Core has wanted to push Segwit and the miners agreed to it as long as a 2MB hardfork was also forthcoming. The 2MB adjustment is all part of the plan. Segwit has locked in, which while being a "soft fork", already breaks compatibility with the original "Bitcoin".

The remainder of the miners who don't agree with this plan have likely already moved to mining Bitcoin Cash, which has no Segwit and 8 MB blocks. I doubt there will be anyone interested in mining a Segwit/1MB fork, it will be technically obsolete.

<comment><USER2> It's not true, sorry. The core developers wanted segwit, and refused to agree to another size doubling as well.

The miners did it anyway. The bitcoin reference client is not supporting this, and claims that 90% of miners will split are completely unverified (and, to be fair, unverifiable).

<comment><USER7> My mistake, I was under the impression Segwit2x was approved by Core.

I still think this is a good thing. The Bitcoin Core developers have restricted the Bitcoin network for too long. Perhaps this will serve as a wake up call.

Personally I still think Bitcoin Cash was the right move. Segwit adds a lot of complexity and technical debt, bigger blocks were really all that's needed as evidenced by how quickly BCC dealt with the transaction backlogs. Unfortunately the market didn't agree.

<comment><USER4> > I still think this is a good thing. The Bitcoin Core developers have > restricted the Bitcoin network for too long.

Restricted it how?

<comment><USER7> By not doing enough to increase network throughput. We could have had a 2-8MB fork years ago and not had to worry with the transaction backlogs caused by the 1MB block limit we're now stuck with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title is misleading. This is not an "upgrade", its a new altcoin that's being pushed forward without wide community consensus, just like BCash.

Recommended read: [https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-bad-governance- model-97b8e52...](https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-bad-governance- model-97b8e521e751)

<comment><USER8> This comment represents a rather slanted view on the entire situation. Large, significant portions of the ecosystem have very different interpretations than those represented by the Core developers and r/bitcoin moderators. I'm too tired to write out a summarized overview, but it isn't hard to find evidence of this (many other comments here give some indication).

<comment><USER4> The lack of support among the technical bitcoin community is very glaring: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Developers](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Developers)

And very few companies signed that New York agreement. Most of the prominent exchanges and businesses have not agreed to the 2x portion of segwit2x: [http://nob2x.org/](http://nob2x.org/)

Where is the large portion of the ecosystem that supports 2x? Where it 2x's community? r/btc had already moved on to Bcash. There's no one cheering for 2x, just an agreement that people signed in the hopes of getting segwit activated. Segwit is activated now, they're just still stuck with the agreement for now.

<comment><USER8> My main reason for posting was your description of Bitcoin Cash and Segwit2x as "just another altcoin", which any sober analysis would find to be a large mischaracterization of the situation. These forks are a product of many years of intense, relentless debate on scaling, and as we have seen quite clearly today, have legitimate economic backing.

The situation is fairly complex, and I'm not completely unbiased. I don't know exactly what is going to happen. But Bitcoin Cash is very clearly not some generic altcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From another comment on reddit:

This is not an "upgrade", and the Bitcoin project has outright rejected it, [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support)

2x doesn't even have an accurate spec and only release 'candidate' software is released for it, created by basically a single relatively inexperienced developer.

Unfortunately, the S2X developer is going around posting notices of a "bitcoin upgrade" and not making any mention of the serious opposition or the major technical risks.

</comment><comment><USER10> "The November 2017 upgrade to 2MB blocks is a >>hard-fork<<, but necessary changes are trivial to perform". Pull your coins out of exchanges that day my friends.

</comment><comment><USER11> @dang/mods, it might be appropriate to re-title this as:

Controversial Bitcoin Upgrade Attempt Planned for November 2017 at Block 494,784

This "upgrade" has not been agreed to nor has it been ratified by the majority of the community.

edit: adding a source, [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support) which has a column for Segwit2x

<comment><USER3> The original title is fine. This upgrade has been agreed to by >90% of Bitcoin miners as well as many prominent Bitcoin-using businesses including Coinbase (YC S12).

There is opposition, yes, led by another company, Blockstream, which employs the most vocal contributors to the Bitcoin Core project. However as for "the community", there is no good evidence to support a majority opinion on either side.

<comment><USER11> It's a meme that Blockstream leads opposition; the opposition to SegWit2x is actually pretty decentralized.

See the Blockstream team[0] and cross reference it with dissenting developers[1].

Alex Morcos has written a good take-down on why even if prominent companies like Coinbase are willing to fork, it doesn't really matter[2].

Personally, when Barry emailed one of the organizations I founded the messaging was as Alex put it, bullying. There was no room for discussing or changing the proposal, just, "my way or the highway". We opted not to sign the letter because of that, among other reasons.

My beef with the framing, and hence suggestion to re-title, is because this type of bullying aims to disenfranchise users. When Facebook rolls out an upgrade, as a user you are more or less along for the ride. Bitcoin is a participatory technology where everyone can have a real voice and influence, every user gets to decide if they want to opt-in to this upgrade attempt or not.

[0] [https://blockstream.com/team/](https://blockstream.com/team/)

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support)

[2] [https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-bad-governance- model-97b8e52...](https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-bad-governance- model-97b8e521e751)

<comment><USER3> That wiki page is not independent evidence, as it is maintained by luke-jr (a Blockstream employee and borderline radical Segwit2x opponent) and hosted by Theymos, the guy who enforces strict censorship on the largest Bitcoin forums. Please cite a more independent source.

<comment><USER11> That's a pretty serious character attack and insinuation of misbehavior.

I can attest at least that my own entry is accurately represented and I have not been in contact with any other developer who has expressed that they have not been able to add their own entry or that luke-jr or Theymos have otherwise misrepresented their entries.

Have you heard from anyone having such difficulties listing their opinion that this is not a good source for developer sentiment on fork proposals?

edit: At the very least, it likely suffices for the purpose which I suggested, which is to cross reference blockstream employees and non-blockstream employees?

<comment><USER12> > That's a pretty serious character attack and insinuation of misbehavior.

I guess this is the point where you play the victim. Anyone familiar with Theymos and Luke-Jr. knows that Theymos engages in excessive censorship of /r/bitcoin and every other forum he controls.

Luke-Jr. has openly said he believes the sun revolves around the earth and has proposed that max block sizes actually be REDUCED to be only 300KB, which is of course ridiculous for any number of reasons.

The OP was being generous, don't try to pretend anything different to confuse people unfamiliar with these two.

<comment><USER4> The censorship claims are pure nonsense being blown out of proportion. r/bitcoin engages in standard moderation, not different from what I would expect to see in any other subreddit. Their job is more difficult than normal, though, due to all the voting robots and narrative manipulation that the bitcoin community has been suffering from in recent years [0].

[0] [https://medium.com/@shesek/observing-forced-narratives- and-m...](https://medium.com/@shesek/observing-forced-narratives-and- manipulation-of-public-opinion-on-r-btc-847f0c65f802#11ea)

<comment><USER12> This is pure, unadulterated nonsense. Go there and make a post about increasing max block size, bitcoin cash, or any other obviously relevant topic that doesn't suit their narrative and see how long your comment lasts. Theymos was clear from the start that he was going to use heavy handed censorship to force their narrative to people new to bitcoin.

Their moderation logs also aren't open so they can hide what they actually do censor. They also reorganize threads that don't go their way by most controversial, so they can further hide anything that doesn't say what they want. Claiming there is no censorship on /r/bitcoin is absolutely absurd, and if you really don't think it is true then you need to educate yourself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson: Why Do You Want To Invest? - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/10/why-do-you-want.html

<comment><USER2> "I know a lot of investors who invest in something because they "need a play in that market sector" or because "they like to follow xyz investors in deals" or because "it's a hot company, we'll make a lot of money on this one".

To my mind, those are not great reasons to have someone invest in your company. When things go awry, and they always do, those kind of investors are not likely to hunker down with you and figure out how to solve whatever problems you are facing."

such a great point.</comment>


Ask HN: Questions on the HN Spam filter - <AUTHOR>

A while back I put up an Ask HN, which did not get any replies. The post slipped off the "new" page in a matter of minutes. I figured it was probably a bad time to ask, so I posted it a second time (because I've seen others do it). Exactly the same thing happened. I'm not sure why I posted it a third time. Maybe just morbid curiosity. Same thing.
I forgot about it till I saw a comment today from samwillis telling me that my submissions were dead. My comments seem to be alive, so it appears that I am not banned. However, the three posts seem to have been either flagged manually or were caught in the HN Spam filter. I've seen the words "shadow banned" and "hell banned", but not too sure what they mean and whether they apply to me.
Since the post was an Ask HN with no links to any external site, (not a show HN) I presume the text of the submission is what flagged it down. Could it be the words in the title? I had to use the short form of words (difference and between) because the title could not hold all the characters. Could that be the reason?
Any ideas?
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==
My Three submissions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608288
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6555632
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6539637
Comment reply from samwillis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608446 </comment><comment><USER2> Per the guidelines: [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

      Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g.
      to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or
      complain about moderation). If you want to say something
      to us, please send it to email@example.com.

Get in touch and we can figure it out. You're not banned.</comment>


Ask HN: If Facebook went away tomorrow, what would you miss about it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Personally, nothing. (Perhaps if others have the same answer, they can reply to this to keep the top level interesting.) But I'm curious...

</comment><comment><USER2> At this point, the only thing I use it for is to get tour dates of a few bands.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing. Quit using it 7 years ago. No instagram account either.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd miss the gravitational effect it has had on normies and boomers. I don't want those people joining Mastodon and stinking up the place.</comment>


CSS3 Grid Layout Module (Draft) - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/

<comment><USER2> The HTML/CSS version of Java Swing? Seems sensible. Surprised it has taken this long. Java had something like this as a multi format, multi resolution, multi device layout model ~20 years ago.</comment>


Testing the Trix Editor with Capybara and MiniTest - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/eighty-twenty/testing-the-trix-editor-with-capybara-and-minitest-158f895ad15f <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this quick tutorial and would enjoy any feedback you all could offer.</comment>


The Redis Community Survey - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/post/redis-community-survey.html

<comment><USER2> I didn't end up filling out the survey because all of the questions are oriented towards how we currently use redis, to which the answer is "barely, almost not at all" even though there is huge potential for us to use it in the future. Since I know antirez keeps up with these discussions on HN, I'll leave my feedback here instead. ;)

We used redis for some really intensive stuff for a short while at Grooveshark, but we were bitten by some really nasty issues related to writing data to disk and handling getting over the amount of memory available (redis was using 2x amount of memory needed for data every time it wrote the data set to disk because of broken copy-on-write)...those issues have long since been solved, but by the time they had been, we had thoroughly tested and switched over to mongo.

We haven't had the time to re-evaluate modern redis or the inclination to switch back since mongo is working OK for the most part, but I really do miss the advanced data structures and the atomic operations that can be performed on them, so I'd love to see us switch back some day.

The things I'd love to see in redis (keep in mind I haven't kept up with redis so some of these may already be there) are: -master/slave replication -sharding -automatic failover like mongo/mongos -ability to store more data than fits in memory, with a sane degredation in performance when data not-in- memory is being accessed, rather than just going into swap death -a way to write out data to disk without blocking/locking the whole server even when we're talking about 80+GB of data/RAM -the ability to start redis with a large data set in a predictable/sane period of time -memcached style psuedo-LRU eviction so redis can be used as a cache

again, no offense intended if these things are already in there and working well, this is just what we'll be looking at if/when it comes time to re- evaluate our "nosql" storage solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Redis' Lua scripting pretty heavily, because it's amazingly useful, and here are the features I would like most:

1\. LuaJIT. The extra speed would open up a lot of new possibilities for doing fancy things with Lua scripting. A big enough quantitative difference in speed is a qualitative difference.

2\. The ability to add on third-party libraries. The modules that come out of the box are great, but there's a lot of other good code out there.

3\. More convenient ways of writing a logging statement than redis.log(redis.LOG_DEBUG, "Hello, world!"). I end up needing to look up the syntax for that one more often than I'd like to admit.

Finally, a request that doesn't involve Lua: several times, it would have been very convenient to be able to iterate through all the keys in a Redis database in constant space. The "KEYS *" command doesn't stream keys; it buffers them up, which may explode on large databases. My alternate approach was to parse the RDB dump file offline, but that's tricky and kind of slow with the tools that exist now.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried just replacing redis' Lua dependency with LuaJIT yourself? LuaJIT 2.0 should be a drop-in replacement for Lua 5.1, it has the same headers and even builds the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 20\. Would a Redis support offering you pay for be useful to you?

I think they mean, "Would you pay for Redis support?"

<comment><USER6> While awkwardly worded, it's correct

> Would a Redis-support offering-you-pay-for be useful to you?

is how I interpreted it, but it did require a second pass.

<comment><USER7> that's definitely the correct meaning indeed. The idea is to understand if users believe commercial support for Redis is valuable or not.

<comment><USER8> What you just clarified is a big improvement. "Would commercial support for Redis be useful to you?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would love to see redis diskstore back. I haven't found a disk based LRU cache that persists to disk that is as easy as the diskstore was.

<comment><USER7> It's not 100% what you want, but with 2.6 DUMP/RESTORE commands you can pretty much do a good deal of what Diskstore used to do inside your application.

Well also add to the mix a bit of RANDOMKEY plus OBJECT IDLETIME. If you want to know more reply to this message or write to the Redis ML and I'll provide some detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On many of the questions I gave relatively conservative answers because more aggressive Redis use is in the planning stages.

I love Redis because it has helped me replace intra-process concurrency with inter-process concurrency, which I feel is a superior model for the problems I'm trying to solve. Thank you so very much!

<comment><USER7> Thank you :) We are getting an awesome amount of submissions for the survey, very very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My answers were based on planned future use, as it is still experimental in my projects.

Hopeful some form of VM will return in the future, more for handling bursts than for long term storage.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have to go for official Redis HA support. Restart time is painful when your Redis instance is large.

<comment><USER11> How big are your datasets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A self-updating feature in redis-cli? Sure, why not. All the cool kids are doing it .. (=>in: 2007) ;)

<comment><USER7> Could you please describe how this would be exposed to the user? Thanks.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure op meant it in an humorous way.

I also think it's a weird non-feature. That's certainly the one item of the survey that made me tick.

<comment><USER7> The idea was just to make sure that after a "make" you get some warning if this is not the latest version of Redis. An upgrade is a cost, so maybe to get a warning before deploying may be a good thing after all.

Another simpler thing can just be redis-cli --latest to output the latest version of the Redis server.

<comment><USER13> I think redis-cli --latest is surely the best way. It polls the redis server, tells the user. Then maybe redis-cli --latest update-cli could do the actual update ..

<comment><USER15> This feature exists at distro-level package managers. Why should Redis solve this as well?

<comment><USER14> I don't get it either. As I said, that's a non-feature.

In a typical production scenario, you deploy a specific version of Redis and you don't care if it's outdated or not. That's the tested and production-ready version at Company X.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>