The Architecture  of the Burroughs B-5000 (1982) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burroughs%20B-5000.htm <comment><USER2> I worked as a test technician on B6800 systems when Burroughs had a manufacturing plant in Mission Viejo, CA. It was cool. All MSI components on PCBs plugged into a wirewrapped backplane, big squirrel cage fans for cooling, a power rack with 1" X 2" thick copper bars sticking out to supply the beast. All bolted together it was the size of an automobile.

I would wear headphones with a radio in them due to the noise of the fans, and if I tuned to an empty AM band while running diagnostics I could tell by the pattern of electrical noise if the machine was running properly or it was going to fail.

Debugging was so interesting, using just an oscillisope we would walk along the backplane and probe internals of the ALU, accumulator, memory bus, etc.

Most common failures were a wirewrap that was too tight cutting the insulation and causing a short, stray wire clippings in the backframe, and MSI components that were failing at speed.

That last one was the most challenging and interesting to find, usually requiring entering some microcoded routine to run the failing sequence of instructions, handle the exception, and loop back again, then go around and probe with the scope to find the failing component.

There were also more dramatic failures now and then, like exploding capacitors - they were the size of coffee cans and exploded like an M80 when they shorted. There were a couple of machines that caught fire, too.

Relevant to this article was the microcoding that we did when we had to write debug routines. The tagged words and stack architecture seemed bizarre to me at first, but once I got the hang of it I could whip up small routines quickly. They were entered by toggling bits via a slick test and maintenance processor panel. This was accomplished via a built in serial test scan mode, similar to IBMS's LSSD but a different implementation.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested in the old Burroughs stuff, the folks at Unisys have announced a hobbyist program for the ClearPath MCP Express systems:

[http://www.unisys.com/offerings/high-end- servers/clearpath-f...](http://www.unisys.com/offerings/high-end- servers/clearpath-forward-systems/clearpath-mcp-software/clearpath-mcp- express)

<comment><USER4> There's also an excellent open-source project with an emulator and a lot of software available to run:

[https://github.com/pkimpel/retro-b5500/](https://github.com/pkimpel/retro-b5500/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I just pulled it down. It's so amazing how small the compilers and the MCP was. Thanks very much for posting these links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone that likes the concept should look at SAFE and CHERI projects, esp SAFE. They're applying lessons from old tagged and capability systems to modern CPU design for security. Similar techniques improve reliability.

[http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html](http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html)

(See esp "SAFE: A clean-slate architecture for secure systems")

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/)

Far as old stuff, there are at least three more greats along Burrough's style: System/38 (later called AS/400 & IBM i), Intel iAPX 432, and Flex Machine w/ Ten15. Sole survivor of those is System/38 in form of IBM i. It lived up to future-proofing, reliability, and relative security its architecture intended. Like with Burroughs (later ClearPath MCP), (slow clap) "Bravo to the designers." :)

iAPX 432 and System/38 here: [http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/levy/capabook/index.html](http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/levy/capabook/index.html)

Flex and Ten15 here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine)

For availability, NonStop deserves a good mention for a series of ground-up designs that did great: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers)

Still looking for proper docs but OpenVMS's system-level decisions and clustering were so good by 90's they're still worth copying to some degree: [http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/whitepapers/high_avail.htm...](http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/whitepapers/high_avail.html)

So, there's old and new with the old stuff still being better than a lot of new stuff in integrity and availability. Makes me smirk at all the young, hot- shot coders in cloud market acting like they coded the best thing ever. I'll be impressed when they top 1960's-80's era technology at their own game. Although, I'd rather they learn the lessons and _exceed_ them given it's (censored) 2015. ;)

<comment><USER7> This is the first time I've heard i432 described as "great". What parts of that architecture do you think Intel got right?

<comment><USER6> \- Clean slate attempt to clean up mess that was x86 family

\- Microcoded for easier updates at ISA level

\- Scheduling, IPC, and memory/storage management in CPU for acceleration and protection

\- Dedicated I/O processor like mainframes have

\- Multiprocessing support early on

\- CPU-level support for and some enforcement of abstract data types (objects)

\- Capability-based addressing for its fault-tolerance and security benefits

\- Segments do POLA at high-speed and fine-granularity

\- Protected procedures via domains

\- Garbage collection support

\- Consistency in hardware and software

\- OS and apps written mostly in safe, high-level language (Ada)

Those are a few. The 75% performance drop due to bad implementation hurt it a lot. However, subsequent papers showed relatively few changes to the design would've eliminated most of its problems. Even calling it overkill, the subsequent i960 incorporated its object-descriptor architecture and fault- tolerance mechanisms into an otherwise RISC CPU. Imagine how much easier correct or secure apps would've been on either vs x86.

Yet, market forces ensured x86 won out and became dominant. Long series of problems followed. Yet, compared to its architecture, the iAPX 432 and to a lesser degree the i960 were great.

<comment><USER8> _The 75% performance drop due to bad implementation hurt it a lot._

I know a number of people who were on the team that tried to "implement" that architecture, and it's highly unfair to them to call it "bad implementation".

For example, there was this insanity:

       The instruction set also used bit-aligned
       variable-length instructions (as opposed to
       the byte or word-aligned semi-fixed formats
       used in the majority of computer designs).
       Instruction decoding was much more complex
       than in other designs.

In the available Intel fab process of the time, just the CPU portion needed to be split into two chips to be "implemented". That's not bad implementation, that's oblivious architects "playing in the sand" without any regard for the practical ramifications of their architectural decisions.

There was a reason that the successor i960 was much simpler, and why Glen Myers was brought in from IBM to bring some adult supervision to that architect's sandbox.

The point is, it doesn't matter just how forward looking or elegant or innovative the 432 was, if it wasn't possible to build it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAPX432#The_project.27s_failur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAPX432#The_project.27s_failures)

<comment><USER6> "I know a number of people who were on the team that tried to "implement" that architecture, and it's highly unfair to them to call it "bad implementation"."

"The point is, it doesn't matter just how forward looking or elegant or innovative the 432 was, if it wasn't possible to build it."

Let me be clear that I'm talking about the design decisions plus implementation. Subsequent work showed that changes to the design would've greatly boosted performance while keeping the overall scheme of things. Summary in the first link with details in other two.

[http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/432.html](http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/432.html)

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=17367&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID...](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=17367&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=742008315&CFTOKEN=45262120)

[https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings...](https://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/Fall04Readings/I432.pdf)

What are your thoughts on Colwell et al's analysis and suggestions for improving i432?

"There was a reason that the successor i960 was much simpler, and why Glen Myers was brought in from IBM to bring some adult supervision to that architect's sandbox."

I agree with you there. Colwell says i432 was a nice experiment with significant contributions that were forgotten as it failed. I can see that except that it was intended to be a _product_. Myers understood that products and experiments were two, different things. Hence, the better results with i960. _Very_ unfortunate that it was done in by politics like i860, etc.

Matter of fact, I saw a writer recently mocking F-35 because it uses obsolete, legacy i960MX's without realizing how much more advanced, reliable, and secure they could be vs 2015 ARM chips. People don't appreciate the wisdom in the past and fail to learn from it. Least SAFE and CHERI are exploring these things among others.

<comment><USER8> _What are your thoughts on Colwell et al 's analysis and suggestions for improving i432?_

You're obviously more in tune with the project than I am. I never worked at Intel, but a lot of my friends did (mostly in implementation rather than architecture).

As for Colwell's critique, Intel must have liked it so much that they hired him. :) I attended a number of Colwell's public presentations on various x86 chips, and he seemed like a smart, approachable, down-to-earth guy.

As for improving the 432, my friends were worn out from struggling with it, so they were overjoyed that the 960 was a relatively simple RISC. The only concession they needed to make to its legacy was the 33rd memory bit, the tag bit.

It would have been interesting if i960 had done better. But, even at the time, what I mostly heard about BiiN was "billions invested in nothing". Apparently the Siemens group that was initially involved wasn't their main computer people, it was some other division. So I'm sure there was lots of internal politics going on at Siemens also.

One other thing that confuses me with various wiki entries of all this is that Wiki mentions Fred Pollack more prominently, whereas the name I heard more was Justin Rattner.

 _mocking ... i960MX 's without realizing how much more advanced, reliable, and secure they could be_

Now that Intel seems to be struggling to produce meaningful improvements to the x86 (whoopie, 15% faster!), perhaps something more architecturally advanced should be considered. Who cares if it's only 25% of the performance of the x86. The tradeoffs in terms of security etc might make it worth while. At least for high reliability applications.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN)

<comment><USER6> "You're obviously more in tune with the project than I am. I never worked at Intel, but a lot of my friends did (mostly in implementation rather than architecture)."

Nah, I just read the Wikipedia articles, the chapter from the capability systems book, and the other papers I linked. I'm digging history out piece by piece like anyone else.

"As for Colwell's critique, Intel must have liked it so much that they hired him. :) I attended a number of Colwell's public presentations on various x86 chips, and he seemed like a smart, approachable, down-to-earth guy."

Oh hell! Didn't know he got hired. That's cool. Good to hear that about his character, too, because that makes him a worthwhile consultant on clean-slate chips if he's still alive and in the field.

"So I'm sure there was lots of internal politics going on at Siemens also."

Politics and trying to do everything at once from what I gather. Along with picking safe languages like Ada again with market rejection. Gotta at least support whatever is popular. Additionally, there was the backward compatibility effect: need to virtualize prior ISA so apps aren't thrown away. IBM's capability system (System/38->AS/400) was doing that while Intel's didn't.

So, a number of reasons these things failed.

"One other thing that confuses me with various wiki entries of all this is that Wiki mentions Fred Pollack more prominently, whereas the name I heard more was Justin Rattner."

That is weird. Someone should try to get to the bottom of that sometime. Meanwhile, a quick Google led to this:

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

Tells us little but notice that the patents' functionality correspond to subsystems of i432. The first 3 at least because the 4th is ambiguous. He could've been one of the bright HW people on the team coming up with the tech while Pollack led the project.

"perhaps something more architecturally advanced should be considered. Who cares if it's only 25% of the performance of the x86. The tradeoffs in terms of security etc might make it worth while. At least for high reliability applications."

You see, I agree but they've tried and failed this before. The only one you didn't link was Itanium: the third attempt to clean-slate CPU's for higher performance, reliability, and security. Itanium had enough RAS features for use in mainframe-style SMP systems and its security features _could have_ been used for very secure systems. One company did with its CTO being the Itanium designer probably having something to do with that. ;)

[https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/docum...](https://www- ssl.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/intel- itanium-secure-white-paper.pdf)

Anyway, VLIW part and disconnect from legacy meant little uptake despite around $200 million spent. At this point, Intel may have been burned too many times by the market to try too hard. The next step is to go for the legacy + accelerator model which has paid off for them with GPU's and custom instructions. Dedicated hardware or onboard FPGA's can give a performance boost while supporting legacy app.

I'd also consider mixing clean-slate and legacy CPU's in the same system where legacy app can run on one with accelerators running on other with smooth, function-call-level integration. They could have the same endianess, ABI, data-types, etc to make it easier. The rest is different for better parallelism, less bloat, enhanced security (eg pointer protection), fault- tolerance, and so on.

Many possibilities but Intel will be careful given billions invested in nothing so far.

<comment><USER8> _Didn 't know (Colwell) got hired. That's cool._

Colwell went to Multiflow first, and then went to Intel after Multiflow fell apart. He played a very key role at Intel, as the architect of many x86 chips:

       He was the chief IA-32 architect on the
       Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III,
       and Pentium 4 microprocessors.[1]

One of the talks that Colwell gave had to do with the P4, and how the marketing people forced the engineers to prioritize clock rate above all else, during the Megahertz Wars. Needless to say, that did not turn out well.

Colwell wrote a book, The Pentium Chronicles, but I can't recommend it because I haven't read it.

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

<comment><USER6> That is quite the track record. Also seems to have made all the chips the modern effort must compete with. I might try to get the book just to see what issues they encountered and worked around. Darn guarantee that next effort will run into similar problems given they'll have to do same trajectory from old fabs to mid-grade ones to cutting edge with various verification and optimizations along the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi there, is this the same b5000 that inspired Dr Kay? On the hole OOP paradigm if I remember the quote correctly he said that the b5000 almost remove the notion of data and how he wanted to duplicate this behavior with OOP.

Can anyone more knowledgeable about this step in please and we can all learn more about it.

<comment><USER10> This is the same B5000 that Dr. Kay mentions in several of his talks.

Kay has often said that he saw the same idea three at least three different times before he fully appreciated the concepts that he later labeled 'OOP'. Besides the B5000 (designed by Bob Barton), other proto-OOP systems were Sketchpad (Ivan Sutherland), Simula, and even the proto-Internet (that was known as the ARPAnet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can always start out with the Wikipedia article. Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, Bob Barton and others worked on the software.

I think the quote you are looking for is: _My best results have come from odd takes on ideas around me -- more like rotations of point of view than incremental progress. For example, many of the strongest ingredients of my object-oriented ideas came from Ivan Sutherland 's Sketchpad, Nygaard & Dahl's Simula, Bob Barton's B5000, the ARPAnet goal, Algebra and Biology. One of the deepest insights came from McCarthy's LISP. But the rotational result was a new and different species of programming and systems design that turned out to be critically useful at PARC and beyond._

</comment><comment><USER5> Holy Deja Vue Batman! I used these systems when I went to University. Thank Hoff for posting the link to the hobby version of Clearpath, it will be cool to go back over 40 years. Wonder how much Algol I really remember.

<comment><USER11> I learned Algol on a Burroughs B5500 at University of California at San Diego. I really liked programming in Algol, and I liked Pascal even more (I learned UCSD Pascal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the first machines which had segmentation existed in the early '60s, why did it take so long to discover that memory segmentation is an anti-feature?

AFAIK segments were put in the 386 because Intel thought people would like them, but they didn't. Now segmentation only exists on x86 hardware for backward compatibility, and all modern OS's essentially disable segmentation in software (basically putting all of memory into a single segment) and using paging to implement process isolation, no-write / no-execute, shared memory, and the like.

I'm not talking about 8086 / 8088 style segmentation, which was a different beast, a somewhat reasonable way to allow a 16-bit processor to access more than 64k of memory.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's so much an anti-feature as something that's just not used in the dominate ecosystems so today it is superfluous complexity. Not in IBM 360, not used as such by MS-DOS for the 8088 and Windows, which were originally designed for the 8088 and the 286, since their segments were too small, not for UNIX(TM) and its derivatives including NeXTSTEP -> OS X and other originally 680x0 based operating systems, not for anything ARM based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Old times of hardware designed both for safer Assembly coding, and support for simple OS & compilers thanks to low-level safety... like Obi-Wan would say, "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age".

<comment><USER15> Strange thing to say, since this particular system was designed specifically for high-level languages like COBOL and ALGOL-60. I don't think it even supported assembly language.</comment></comment>


Apple Knew About iPhone 6 Bendgate/Touch Disease Months Before Repair Programs - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/24/apple-knew-about-bendgate-and-touch-disease/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17145446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17145446).</comment>


GrowStrip by Grow Computer – The Future of Agriculture - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-growstrip-by-grow-computer#/ <comment><AUTHOR> For everyone interested in the future of agriculture—my company, Grow Computer, just launched the first product on our smart farming platform, GrowStrip, on Indiegogo. GrowStrip makes indoor growing simpler and smarter by allowing you to share your plant recipes, analyze your data across multiple grows spanning time and space, and code your own plugins to work with our API.

</comment><comment><USER2> Was picturing a piece of paper with seeds stuck to it that I could water and instant plant or something.

Now wondering whether I can plug 20 1U servers into that thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can certainly plug 8 into one GrowStrip, if you want to control 20 outlets you can just use 3 GrowStrips and you can tie them together as one conceptual unit on our software platform.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Switching schools to Georgia Tech worth it? - <AUTHOR> I am considering leaving my current Masters of CS program at a lower ranking school to attend GT OMSCS.
How important is a degree from a top CS school in regards to getting a job at a FAANG company?
Should I just stay at my current school and practice leetcode every day until I graduate instead?
My bachelors and work experience are not relevant. <comment><USER2> You personally are the one who will be hired or not, not a fungible Georgia Tech Graduate (or otherwise).

See if you can find out where previous graduates of your current masters ended up, and compare it to the Georgia Tech masters. If dropping out and moving on will lead to a genuine step change in your career prospects, give it serious consideration. If it will just result in more debt and more stress for broadly similar prospects (assuming you get accepted and then succeed at the new course), just focus on learning and being employable from where you are.

I'm based in Europe so I don't know what the jobs market in the USA is truly like. I have to ask though, is it really that important to get a job at a FAANG company?

Is it genuinely the case that you won't find interesting, fulfilling and well- paid work outside of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google? Are you even sure that you _will_ have a great job in one of those five places?

Good-but-not-top-tier universities routinely produce very good graduates with very good prospects. Boring companies have a lot of interesting problems to solve, and lots of them let you wear jeans to work too. Google has plenty of drudgery and office politics.

If the companies you're aiming for will not consider you unless you went to one of a select few expensive elite universities, that's probably not a great reflection on them either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I actually already went on linkedIn and checked to see how many people from my school got jobs at FAANG companies (including Intel). There were very few, and most of them have non-engineering related bachelor's degrees. Only one of them was an engineer at google.

When you look at Georgia Tech graduates on linkedIn, the opposite is true. Hence, me making this thread.

Don't get me wrong though, my school does seem to be pretty decent at getting people local jobs. But that wasn't really my goal personally. I want to escape my home town.

<comment><USER3> Is that straight numbers or percentages?

The bigger school has more people, making it more likely to have some get into FAANG. PSU is huge and some students go on to FAANG, but that wouldn't increase any individual's chances.

If you go to someplace like Stanford or MIT, then maybe those names help you get in due to the prestige, but I don't think Georgia Tech is that level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just numbers. And yes you make a good point.

I do think Georgia Tech is a top school for computer science though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's tough to give feedback because GA Tech is very selective, and about every other online program is cost prohibitive (yeah I can't afford 10k plus per year, anyone that can is an upper tier of society competing amongst themselves, we haven't reached open yet). The whole situation is not built on a real market yet. We are in the infancy.

In other words, in the Wild West, you must make your own toil.

<comment><USER5> Is GaTech OMSCS that selective?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> GA Tech will be cheaper, having GA Tech on your resumé is a net positive in a job search.

Beyond that, you're going to be starting over, and frankly the GA Tech experience isn't very good in any way -- speaking as a student that's half way through the program.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am aware of that. I have been reading about what the courses are like on the reddit and quite frankly it sounds like hell to me.

I am mostly interested in security, and not so interested in AI/ML. Robotics does sound pretty cool though.

<comment><USER6> AI4R is a phenomenal course, and it's run by a couple of great professors who actually care about teaching it.

ML4T is another amazing course that's run by a great professor who actually cares about teaching.

Unfortunately I haven't found any other courses like those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Leetcode is all that matters. Nothing else matters in this industry anymore</comment>


The Truth is Terrible - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2099162

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for hackers who want to brush up on their Nietzsche. The author, Brian Leiter, runs [http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/) and is one of my intellectual heros.</comment>


Ask HN: What octobat.com does? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hello, Octobat.com is a SaaS application that connects to your payment provider (Stripe, Paypal, GoCardless) and calculate for your the tax (VAT in Europe) when you sell online. This also creates automatically invoices for your online sells. Very practical for B to C international recurring business selling online where TAX/VAT collection is something difficult to automate internally. If you have more questions please do not hesitate, we're happy to tell you more. Wish you a great day.

Octobat Team</comment>


Stonehenge Solved: Moving Big Rocks - <AUTHOR> http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/moving_big_rocks <comment><USER2> I find this amazing... I've been interested in Stonehenge for as far back as I can remember but I'm no expert on the subject- I'm just in awe of it.

What I find interesting about this video is the claim that he "is not a scientist" - I beg to differ. I do not know his formal education background, but that should not diminish his ability to apply the scientific method which he has clearly shown. After all, he is an expert in the field of moving large objects, if there is such a field.

From wiki: "A scientist, in the broadest sense, refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy."

From the video, it's quite apparent that he applies a systematic activity to achieve his goal, that being knowledge in our case, and it's linked to a school of thought - construction, and not to mention mathematics and physics (it's obvious there's math involved here whether he knows it or not) for the application of the scientific method.

Thus, without formal education, I feel his demonstrations clearly prove he a scientist in the broadest sense- I'd welcome opinions for or to the contrary if you're interested.

<comment><USER3> _his demonstrations clearly prove he a scientist in the broadest sense_

Absolutely. And it's possible that the news just called him a "non-scientist" to play up the "random Michigan guy in his backyard" angle.

Or, he may be a person who takes pride in the non-scientist label. It's a class thing. Not every practitioner of the Useful Arts thinks that it's a particularly great honor to be deemed a scientist. Some of them would rather take the opportunity to point out that construction workers, machinists, and technicians are pretty smart and have been doing this sort of thing, quietly but relentlessly, since the time of Stonehenge.

This guy reminds me of one of my favorite engineers, Tim Hunkin:

<http://www.timhunkin.com/90_useful_arts.htm>

<comment><USER4> Technically, he is _applying_ the science, he doesn't advance it. So he's not a scientist, he is one heck of an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the main website from the guy behind it:

<http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/>

If you click through you all the pages you get some decent details on what's going on, despite the ancient technology theme extending to the design of the website :)

<comment><USER6> Ha. Makes you wonder if in 2000 years some guy will be digging up html table layouts and exposing the virtues of "the forgotten technology."

<comment><USER7> The 2000-year old language?

A Victorian Arc!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The bit at the start, with him rolling square blocks reminded me of this video of a bike with square wheels:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DLgbWu8zJubo>

</comment><comment><USER9> More important than moving the stones were the accuracy of their placement: <http://www.solvingstonehenge.com>

</comment><comment><USER10> The little rocks work if you're moving nicely symmetrical boulders across a hard, flat surface, but I can't see them working on a grassy hill quite as well...

<comment><USER11> That's the cool thing about science and technology, it only needs one person to see that something can be done to show everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool, but I would think setting up the vertical stone is the easy part. How do you get the 3rd stone on top?

<comment><USER13> Maybe raising a horizontal stone just the way he did raise the one on the video, by inserting wood underneath, a little at a time. Then, having raised it 3 meters high (Yeah I know this is a lot) he could use his technique to roll it on the side to get on top of the two others. Just a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well that is very impressive, and now I am puzzled - if Wall Street had such people, would be economy be better or worse?</comment>


Ask HN: After I update a comment, please take me back to the thread - <AUTHOR>

Thanks. <comment><USER2> +1</comment>


Glenn Greenwald keynote at Chaos Communication Congress [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqk4ItPjU5g&t=6h30m30s <comment><USER2> The huge irony with these events is that they are used as primary recruiting grounds for spying agencies.

The same people who are learning how to hack government/corporate systems on their own are the ones who the intelligence community wants to hire most. The benefits are many-fold: You get an extremely high-quality employee, and you remove them from a scene where they are capable and encouraged to cause damage, and you remove the opportunity for an opposing government to hire them.

There's some amount of philosophical resistance that these folks would have towards working for the intelligence community, but how quickly can $150-200k/year change your philosophy?

<comment><USER3> Moderately competent security/developer/etc. people do not have to work for the government to make $150-200k/yr.

I personally have no problem working for the government in certain roles, and am actually proud of the stuff I did to help the medical/etc. people in Iraq/Afghanistan. There are plenty of civilian agencies who have missions I fully support -- keeping medical records, nuclear power plants, consumer financial records, etc. safe is totally legit. I'd even do it for GS-wages instead of the 3x more I can make in the private world.

Fuck spying, though.

<comment><USER4> Fuck war, too? Right?

<comment><USER5> Infinitive wars that never end? Wars built on insubstantial concepts about who the enemy is and why they need to be fought? Wars without any specific goals or purpose?

Yes, fuck those wars. Everyone with honest thought can see how wars with those characteristics are bad, should not exist, and should booo at any politician who active contribute for its continuation.

<comment><USER4> I guess my point is this: until there is world peace, there will be spying. So if you are against spying you should work for world peace. Actually, come to think of it, even if there is world peace there will probably still be spying.

<comment><USER3> During the cold war, spying actually helped _prevent_ war. I am absolutely fine with the USG spying on foreign governments, militaries, and to a lesser extent, specific war-related businesses (arms manufacturers, potentially energy and logistics companies, etc.) -- the spying on civilian firms should be firewalled off from any potential commercial utility, and should be purely passive and primarily through open sources, but even that seems potentially legitimate.

Spying on purely private people through blanket collection is wrong, both of US citizens and foreign citizens.

I'd be comfortable with foreign intelligence services operating under the same rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another amazing talk from CCC (2011):

"Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc)

That one really opened my eyes.

<comment><USER7> That was a great one. So was this by Jacob Appelbaum from last year, where he was already saying (pre-Snowden) that the chief of NSA is probably the most powerful man on the planet:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw)

<comment><USER8> Also from last year's 29c3:

Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake & William Binney, "Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDM3MqHln8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDM3MqHln8U)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqk4ItPjU5g#t=23314](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqk4ItPjU5g#t=23314)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link [edited]

<comment><USER10> Youtube handles traffic better than ccc's site, maybe?

<comment> stp-ip ccc streaming team is great and the traffic should be fine, but better be save and provide a fallback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mods: can you change the title to make it clear the talk is over? Thanks.

Edit: or replace it with 3rd3's youtube link.

</comment><comment><USER8> Glenn Greenwald's talk is over now; loved the standing ovation that just didn't want to end.

<comment><USER11> Happened the same at the beginning, that was really cool.

<comment><USER8> To be honest I tuned in really late :) But I am sure looking forward to watching all 30c3 videos in full when they're edited and uploaded, they never disappoint. Best part of winter for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that there's a room of thousands of people watching him on Skype, and a second room of people watching video of the screen.

<comment><USER12> ~3000 people in first room and ~1500 in second room.

<comment><AUTHOR> They mentioned, just before this talk, that there are 6,000 people in the first room. edit: I guess I misunderstood, but it's still impressive that they filled the place up after just 2 years at this conference center :)

<comment><USER3> Actually, it was "6000 people at this site, today" \-- he wasn't very clear. I think they're expecting another 2000-3000 to show up over the next days at least, making it biggest CCC ever by far. I'd estimate more like 1-3k in the room itself.

<comment><USER12> Specs for rooms: [http://www.cch.de/en/organise/rooms-and-spaces/at-a- glance/?...](http://www.cch.de/en/organise/rooms-and-spaces/at-a- glance/?no_cache=1) (Hall1 and 2) that are both full.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Recorded streams from the congress can be found here: [http://wtf1.muling.lu/](http://wtf1.muling.lu/)

Please keep seeding.

</comment><comment><USER14> Missed it - is the keynote somewhere online on demand?

<comment><USER15> You can "rewind" from youtube live stream. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqk4ItPjU5g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqk4ItPjU5g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was there. It was a dense talk. Worth to watch.

</comment><comment><USER17> Brain-washing at its best.

It's like they don't realize how silly and contradictory the argument for privacy is. Defending privacy by fighting secrecy? Come on.

In 20 years, people will look back at this and realize how blind they were.

Sheeps be clappin'.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tough talk from someone who can't even be bothered to use PGP. There are lots of people doing real good out there, like Moxie Marlinspike with BitHub, the kickstarter audit of TrueCrypt, and work in the CAB forum and the W3C on SSL and browser security. Glenn is just a talking head at this point, someone who ferried a few hard drives from point A to point B. He shouldn't be respected as someone who knows squat about the subject matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's a journalist, and he's doing a great job as a journalist. He never claimed to be an expert in crypto, but he knows more about the governments' abuses of power and the media's pandering than you do.

Did you hear the applause when he talked about PGP being very difficult to use? Everyone in the room agreed with him on that.</comment></comment>


When to Stop Reading a Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/24/edge-closing-the-book-on-a-bad-read/

<comment><USER2> Our tendency to keep reading even bad books is also (to some degree) a manifestation of the "endowment effect" documented in Dan Ariely's "Predictable Irrational": Once you've forked over money for a book, you value it more simply because it's now yours. Even if it sucks, you'll have an easier time convincing yourself that it is an Important Book.

That said, I think there are cases where you should plow through a book you don't (at first) enjoy. E.g. when a book comes highly recommended by people you trust, or from an author who has delivered in the past. This is especially true for older books that were written for less attention-sapped audiences and have cultural gaps that take getting used to. I'm thinking of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov." It was highly reccomended by friends with good taste, and I had enjoyed some of his shorter works. Still, it was _incredibly_ slow getting started. But once I had ingested the multi-layered background and got a grip on Russian peasant culture, was one of the more amazing books I've ever read. And could not have been otherwise if not for the investment required to get into it.

<comment><USER3> Another example is Les Miserables. That book is fantastic. I'm at a loss for adjectives. I haven't really read anything since, but I loved that book, and I loved Jean Valjean, and hated Thenardier.

But the the book takes a little while to start, then just when it does it changes characters, and Hugo takes forever to describe things which have very little to do with the story or characters. So I bored reading when Hugo suddenly began building a new story arc at the height of the last one. Even still the ending was tearful.

Haaah, I wish I loved reading as I did when I was a boy.

<comment><USER4> I agree Les Miserables is worth finishing, and I eventually did finish it, about two years after starting.

It was my "gym book." I'd read it while on the cardio machines at the gym, and only allowed myself to read it there, so as to provide encouragement to go and to stay longer.

(This was at Caltech where reading at the gym is normal: holders for books are provided.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting ebook effect: _Having an e-book reader has made Ms. Wendell more ruthless. "I'm holding 100+ books on one device. If one isn't floating my boat, I can move on to something else by pressing one button," she points out._

<comment><USER5> The reddit of books? Start reading one article, but if it doesn't suit, or has too many pages, skip right on to the next article.

The fun bit is that she has paid for said 100 books. Amazon, on a financial level, could be quite happy for her to not read them - it saves time before she buys another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do this ruthlessly. I skim the first part of many articles, and do the same for books, which I have in almost constant supply from amazon.

I wrote a system for myself (called Mnemo) that I used to catalog and cross reference stuff. I can tag things, and search by author, keyword, whatever. This is useful not only for going back through a topic I'm interested in, but also because while I'm reading I can ask myself constantly: would I put this in Mnemo or am I spinning my wheels?

Maybe I'll release Mnemo and see if it works for other people.

<comment><USER7> _Maybe I'll release Mnemo and see if it works for other people._

Please do that ... It sounds pretty interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, entry for April 19, 1773 (Courtesy of gutenberg.org):

Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON. 'I have looked into it.' 'What (said Elphinston,) have you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, 'No, Sir, do _you_ read books _through_?

</comment><comment><USER9> What to do for the situation of actively liking a book, but getting bogged down because it's (for example) huge.

With a series, you can take a break between installments. I read the first Otherland book several months ago, and I'm just now feeling ready to pick up book 2. What about this situation in the middle of a book? Put it back on the shelf to finish later, or cut your losses and move on?

<comment><USER10> If I'm reading something huge that is seeming to go on forever, I usually put it away for a few days to a week and read a smaller, lighter book in between.

<comment><USER11> I did something similar when I read "The Powerbroker," which is 1300 dense pages. I was fascinated by it, and I learned an enormous amount of information, but I knew from the beginning that it was at least a four month commitment. (Most of my reading gets done in short intervals at breakfast and lunch.)

The last time I had read a book of similar size, density and importance, I had dropped it for six months - and that book ended up becoming one of my favorites. (For the record, it was "The Powers That Be.") I wanted to avoid doing that, so I just had a policy where I read a lighter book at home, and read the denser book when I was out. It worked great.

<comment><USER10> Ha ha, that's the book I'm reading now, and exactly the book I had in mind when I made my original post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We go to Border's or Barnes & Noble once a week, have coffee and dessert and bring a pile of books into the cafe. I read Chapter One of each book. If I like it, I buy it. If not, I put it back.

<comment><USER10> As much as I like Amazon, I still end up going back to B&N and Borders. It's really hard to replicate the feeling of browsing through a bookshelf of new books on a topic that interests you and flipping through some of them. Even though the Borders recent web interface facelift try to come closer to this, anything on a monitor is just not the same.

<comment><USER11> That's my feeling, but after not finding the books I want for several months of casually going to stores, I just ordered them on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When to stop reading a Web page. When there's a next button at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Don't eat your greens, just move straight on to dessert. Only read books you find easy and enjoyable. What could possibly be wrong with that?"

<comment><USER15> When it comes to technical books, I agree with you. I have pored over more than one dreadfully boring technical/scientific book because I needed the information.

When it comes to fiction, I cannot disagree more with your implied sentiment. The primary point of fiction is to entertain, and if I do not enjoy the book, then I am certainly not being entertained.

Some books come with side effects. Some fiction books push an agenda or try to make a political point (1984 comes to mind), but then it is the author's task to both convince me their point is right and keep me sufficiently entertained to keep me reading. Also, some books are supposed to help expand your "cultural horizons" and can increase your vocabulary or introduce you to interesting ideas.

But I find that a bad reason to read fiction. If entertaining fiction comes with a good side effect, then that is an added bonus. If it is the side effect itself that I am truly looking for then I am better off taking it in its concentrated form. If I want interesting new ideas, I will sit down with a book purely on the subject I am looking into.

In short, it is little problem if nonfiction is boring, but fiction which is boring has failed its primary purpose entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just read your book quickly, before Amazon makes the choice to stop reading it for you!

</comment><comment><USER17> Which book did you guys stop reading recently ?

I was reading "Fooled by randomness" and just could not make myself go beyond the ~25% mark..!

</comment><comment><USER18> Excellent quote: "If I'm reading a truly, actively bad book, I'll throw it out," he says. His wife will protest, but he points out that he's doing a public service: "If I don't throw it out, someone else might read it."

I think people should do stuff like this more often. Like YAGNI with real-life objects. You just ain't gonna need most of the crap in your house.

<comment><USER19> "Bad" in what sense and according to whom?

Chernyshevsky's "What's To Be Done" is easily one of the worst pieces of literature in history, but that didn't stop Lenin from being _inspired_ by it. The book's major claim to fame is the infamous list of influential people who _loved_ it, and not in that ironic "so bad it's good" way either.

<comment><USER18> According to the reader. People seem to feel guilty if they don't want to read some book. They shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I stopped on page 1.</comment>


California may mandate a woman in the boardroom, but businesses are fighting it - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/12/california-may-mandate-a-woman-in-the-boardroom-but-businesses-are-fighting-it/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm just hopelessly naive, but I really don't see most boards in corporate America purposely conspiring to only have White men on thier board. Yes, I am a member of the "underrepresented minority".

I think it may be more of a function that you choose people you know — if that's the case somehow encourage people to broaden thier search or the classic "pipeline problem". For that, I've got nothing.

Not on the board level, but I use to work for a company where out of 250 employees, I was the only Black guy. I don't think it was due to racism, but they were based in an area of TN where the overwhelming majority of people were White. I would also assume that most Black professionals who were raised and went to school in small town TN would leave as soon as possible.

When the company created a satellite office in a more diverse city, they had a more diverse talent pool.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your perspective that it's largely a problem of social bubbles.

However, I think that forcing inclusions of people outside of the usual bubble will expand the bubble over time. That's the goal of this kind of legislation, I think.

It will also potentially have side effects like under qualified people being chosen for jobs because of the color of their skin or their gender. Some people see this as an unacceptable assault on the idea of a meritocracy, while others see it as a reasonable price to pay to push society away from sexism and racism by expanding the bubbles.

<comment><USER4> It's also the fact that you can't get rid of sexism and racism by legislating a requirement for... sexism and racism! You can't get away from being sexist and racist by adding more sexism and racism.

On top of that: you keep everybody in a sex/race mindset, you create jealousy, you give the unfavored groups an actual reason to boil with fury (not helping relations here...), and you give everybody a reason to doubt the accomplishments of the favored groups.

This is toxic.

<comment><USER2> I have mixed feelings. I am against outright quotas for the reasons you state, but I'm all for expanding the search for qualified people and deemphasizing internal referrals.

I got my start because there was one company that specifically targeted internships from HBCUs. You don't have to be Black to go to an HBCU, but few White people choose to go there[1]. Is that any less fair than companies that don't look past a few elite schools?

When I got my first job as a team lead and was in a position to hire people on contract, my manager told me, that the company needed "another me". I told my manager that I had a former coworker who was looking for a job and I trusted him completely. My manager was willing to hire him sight unseen and pay him more than the other contractors just based on my recommendation. I would much rather hire someone I knew. This feedback keeps the outsiders on the outside, but from my own self interest, why wouldn't I hire someone I knew and trusted?

[1] I remember talking to a White friend of mine who told me that he was going to a (worse) college out of the city because there were "no four year schools in the city". He acted like the HBCU didn't even exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is flamebait. The legislation passed the state Senate but is not expected to even get a hearing in the state Assembly before the expiration of the current legislative session.

Even if passed, because the law specifically mandates sexual/gender preferences it will face a constitutional challenge and be suspended pending full review/appeals by the CA court system.

Finally, if it survives all that...it would apply to any business that is incorporated, HQ'd, or _otherwise does business_ with California. And would promptly get struck down by a federal court...

<comment><USER6> _"assuming the idea could survive a likely court challenge."_

...does appear in the first sentence, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question is why did anyone vote for this at all? I did see at least it was limited to public companies, but I would think you have zero understanding of business to think you should prescribe the gender mix of the Board.

This would be a massive disadvantage for companies that this applied to. The Board is an extremely limited number of people making incredibly crucial decisions based on their expertise.

You want the absolutely most qualified people on a well run Board. Imagine having a single opening and knowing exactly who you should hire for it, them agreeing to take on the position, and not being able to hire them... _Because they identify as the incorrect gender._

Why should the Board room be forced to have a specific gender balance? Why is it _gender_ specifically which should be balanced and not other factors? Why just for the Board and not for the whole company? What about any or all other subdivisions within the company?

Why target Boardrooms in particular for this policy?

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems too late for that; in the context of the sexual revolution, any human can now claim to be female.

</comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't seem like a good idea. If this passed I would think you would question if you were hired not because of your knowledge and merit, but because you filled a quota. For publicly traded companies board members also have to be voted in. What is to stop shareholders from not voting someone in knowing that this was a 'quota board member?' Would the company be at fault (ie face penalty) in that scenario if they are publicly traded?

</comment><comment><USER9> Another way to increase the diversity and quality of corporate governance would be to outlaw the practice of interlocking boards, where the same people serve as directors on multiple boards. Besides increasing the chances of illegal collusion and insider trading, this practice promotes groupthink, tends to concentrate wealth, and discourages diversity.

<comment><USER9> Would the downvote care to share an opinion? It improves discussion when there are two sides.

<comment><USER10> I didn't downvote you, but I didn't understand your proposal. Are you suggesting prohibiting anyone from serving on more than one board, or from joining a board that already contains someone who is also on a board they're already on?

<comment><USER9> The former. One person can serve on one board only. Perhaps an exception to serve on nonprofit boards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sweden is making similar suggestion, and I would like that governments first tried lead by example. The state is the single largest employer in the nation and for almost all positions there is not 50/50 gender ration. Compared to the private sector it seems to be on average worse, with many of the top 10 worst gender segregated professions being government paid positions.

I am not unreasonable, they could simply set out that by 2020 they should have a policy that any new hiring should consider how gender segregated a open position is, by 2030 a policy with active measures to correct gender segregation and by 2040 if the situation has not improved then mandated affirmative action and fines for non-compliant departments.

Currently there is not even a policy which honestly is a bit of a low bar given how much talking politicians do about diversity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yet another reason it'd be insanity to incorporate in California.

<comment><USER13> It's not even incorporating in California, merely having your headquarters there will cause your company to be burdened by this law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess the step after this is greater representation of minorities in the board room. In general there does need to be greater representation of minorities in upper management. That does not happen as much as it should.</comment>


Why You Should Try Slackware - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7502/1.html

<comment><USER2> How's the wireless support in Slackware?

To me, the distro serves only two main purposes: Hardware compatibility and package management. Community support and philosophy are bonuses too, but really aren't deciding factors for me.

That said, I believe Slackware has done wonders for linux and open source in general, and for that I am grateful.</comment>


Ask HN: Website that catalogues portfolios? Pursue or drop it? - <AUTHOR> So I've always wondered why there wasn't a site where I can just easily search up someone's portfolio or upload my own. That's why I decided to build it myself. The problem is I'm not entirely sure if it's worth investing my time in, so I wanted to ask you my friends! Is the idead a bust or should I go for it?<p>For those that are curious the little website I build is portlogue.com (Portfolio-Catalogue) <comment><USER2> Uh, LinkedIn?</comment>


Feds bust illegal streaming service bigger than Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/istreamitall-two-men-plead-guilty-to-copyright-money-laundering-charges/ <comment><USER2> The title is somewhat misleading. By bigger they mean number of movies and series--not the volume of downloading.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we design something better than unicode? - <AUTHOR> The scope of unicode is really ill-defined, in my opinion. It want's to be backward compatible (bell ring, PRN etc), but at the same time support as many writing systems as possible, including historical ones, and invented ones (e.g. emoji).<p>Can we do better? <comment><USER3> I think any alternative solution you come up with for whatever facet of localization, internationalization, and human language support you care about ... is going to be worse than: choosing decent Unicode-aware languages and libraries; choosing your own limited range of Unicode support.

</comment><comment><USER4> I doubt it. Writing systems are not mathematically systematic like computer codes. They're not even internally consistent. The "big problems" with UniCode aren't in its schemas. The "problems" are inherent in the domain Unicode attempts to encode.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh, _designing_ something is easy, no worries. (As compared to "getting adoption above 0.0001% before the heat death of the universe": how long did it take before we finally got somewhat workable Unicode adoption, even with the mess of about 5 different Unicode encodings, astral planes and whatnot - <USER2> years? 20? 25? And all the other bazillion "extended ASCII" encodings are nowhere near extinct, either.)

TL;DR: Betamax.</comment>


YC's Early Decision makes starting a company easier for graduating students - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickdaso/2019/09/24/with-early-decision-y-combinator-is-going-back-to-its-roots/#62779b90703f <comment><USER2> I am reading about economics of specific sub-section of entertainment industry:

Boy Bands (and girl groups). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_band)

Specifically the ones that are 'fully managed' by talent managers or record producers.

To me it has economic benefits/risks similar to building tech companies with graduates.

There is a lot stamina, creativity and willingness to experiment, that are not present in older/more experienced talent pool... And all, relatively on the cheap.

There are many negatives (copy cats, lack of long term, yet practical vision, lack of experience in dealing with specific business subdomains, relations stability and so on).

However, to me this is a valid business model, for certain market segments, and I fully expect it will spread even more to include participants from well outside Western culture. (and, perhaps, more healthy competition to the few VCs that practice this now).

There is a podcast [1] on boy band economics, mostly covering Korean K-Pop. [https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/what-boy-band- sensat...](https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/what-boy-band-sensation- bts-can-teach-us-about-economics)

interesting bits to me, is how culture/brand exports are incorporated into a larger story (where it is not just an individual band, but they are part of larger 'brand')

<comment><USER3> Can't wait to see the Early Decision NCT Worldwide tour. Maybe in partnership with CJ Group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's incredible to me that graduating college students, many presumably with student debt and little savings, can even consider taking the financial risk of starting a company (e.g. forgoing a salary).

<comment><USER5> > It's incredible to me that graduating college students, many presumably with > student debt and little savings, can even consider taking the financial risk > of starting a company (e.g. forgoing a salary).

When I visited the Stanford campus recently, it seemed like many students had the opposite of debt: massive savings indicated by personal electric scooters, Mercedes/Tesla/BMW/Audi in the student parking lots, combined with several FANG internships, it's fairly common for a CS undergrad to have $100K+ in savings when they graduate.

Whether it's family money or not, debt doesn't seem to be the big of a problem for these top students.

<comment><USER4> You must be kidding...

<comment><USER6> why do you imagine they're kidding?

<comment><USER7> Many students end up with 100k+ dollars in debt. How do you suppose these stanford kids end up with 100k in the bank?

<comment><USER8> Tuition is free at Stanford if your parents make less than $125K. Everything is free if they make less than $65K. 78% of Stanford students graduate debt- free.

[https://news.stanford.edu/2016/02/25/tuition-financial- aid-0...](https://news.stanford.edu/2016/02/25/tuition-financial-aid-022516/)

It's really important to understand that the elite non-profit private education system functions differently from mainstream higher ed. Elite private schools are _already_ socialist: they jack up sticker prices for high- income parents and solicit their wealthy alumni for donations so that lower- income students who get in can go free. If you get in, you will probably graduate in fairly decent financial shape, particularly considering that many local companies give good internships to Stanford students.

The folks you hear about with six-figure student debt figures are typically products of mid-tier private colleges. These organizations don't have the endowment or wealthy tuition-payers to be able to subsidize lower-income students the way elite institutions can, and so they just put everybody in debt. Then their graduates get out into the working world and are indistinguishable from any other mid-tier private college graduate, and so they get indistinguishable (i.e. low) wages.

It really pays to be elite in America.

<comment><USER9> The ones you are talking about are those who earned need based financial aid for scholastic achievements. If that's what you mean by "elite" I guess you're right in the sense that it's difficult to manage and they've done so, but that's a strange way to describe hard working students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OT: I often get annoyed at the virulent anti-advertising stance of many users here, which I consider to be somewhat hyperbolic, but this is just fucking ridiculous: [https://www.evernote.com/l/AALkcX7OpedDuYdYP28rYRX8GJ7iyLuAG...](https://www.evernote.com/l/AALkcX7OpedDuYdYP28rYRX8GJ7iyLuAGw0)

So here you go everyone, clean version of the article with no ads and no paywall: [https://outline.com/znXUsU](https://outline.com/znXUsU)</comment>


Make your own grid paper with Gridzzly - <AUTHOR> http://gridzzly.com/

<comment><USER2> Very cool, but should have an option for different paper sizes. Printing on A4 does not fit.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Also it would be nice to adjust the spacing with a real measurement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is this on HN? There are dozens if not hundreds of "graph paper free" makers on the web.

<comment><USER5> Because it has a name like gridzzly</comment></comment>


JavaScript libs usage change 2012: jQuery +11.7% Mootools -0.3% Prototype -0.6% - <AUTHOR> http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/javascript_library/all

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but I couldn't find out where their data comes from.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://w3techs.com/faq></comment></comment>


A tale of latency and broken windows - <AUTHOR> https://yenkel.dev/posts/a-tale-of-latency-and-broken-windows <comment><USER3> A simple way to include performance in the development activities without ending ib premature optimization territory is to introduce timing budgets.

Decide for each operation how long it us allowed to take. E.g. pushing this button reacts in 100ms. Make your tests record these times. Optimize when it becomes clear you're not going to make it.

There was an intervieuw with the Intel engineer that got the linux laptops booting in 10s. They budgetted, x seconds for kernel, y seconds for X11, etc. .

<comment><USER4> This sounds totally reasonable for a company like Auth0 that has a) a big engineering team and b) tons of people who are depending on their APIs not being slow.

Do you think it's easy enough to get this sort of machinery set up even for small startups?

<comment><USER5> If you're collecting stats anyway, it's not usually too hard to collect a latency metric and process it.

There's room to argue about methodology (ie client vs server latency, where and how timing probes happen), but just pick something and try to measure no more than 10 phases of the requests (timing probes have costs too), and see what happens. After you have a baseline, you can set targets and/or see how releases change your data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of a system I worked on, the devs all developed locally with all the services but in prod the services were on different hosts and the performance was terrible.

This reminds me of the system I worked on, the devs had promised a 3-tier system but delivered a 2-tier system so management had them add a middle layer and the performance was terrible.

This reminds me of the system I worked on, the devs decided a lockless architecture was the way for better performance but with the limited threads we had at the time, apart from the few people who kept hold of a thread until they were done, the performance was terrible.

This reminds me of the system I worked on, the database design was a serious bottleneck but no one wanted to fix that so the app tier tried to change their queries, the performance was terrible.

I don't know why people spend so much time optimizing the wrong thing - <USER2> happens over and over again!

<comment><USER7> Management not wanting to admit a large architectural problem, slapping a small bugfix/task on the board in the hope it will take less time before to (appear) fix before performance review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm lost on the broken windows analogy. Projects like software are constructed from these discrete elements; criminal activity is not. Bank robbery doesn't have a dependency on littering and jaywalking.

It makes more sense from the perspective of the real life outcomes of the law enforcement policy. By making an outsized response to trivial infractions a goal divorced from measurement against the desired result, finding reasons to harrass citizens became a performance target, and the policy is widely considered to be a failure in its intended outcomes and unintended consequences. Similarly, "Always Eschew Latency" as a task level target independent of desired project outcomes is likely to result in a product that performs ahead of schedule in every way except delivery date.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK the theory says littering does have an effect on bank robbery: If people see litter, you instill a mentality where caring for the neighbourhood is worthless. From that 'each for his' , 'dog eat dog' world view, the step to big crimes is smaller.

Now I have no idea if the theory is correct.

<comment><USER9> > AFAIK the theory says littering does have an effect on bank robbery: If > people see litter, you instill a mentality where caring for the > neighbourhood is worthless. From that 'each for his' , 'dog eat dog' world > view, the step to big crimes is smaller.

> Now I have no idea if the theory is correct.

The theory is correct, but the effect is smaller than proponents supposed (and seems to affect minor property crime more than violence). The poster child for the theory is the reduction in crime in NYC, but more recent analysis has shown that a larger driver was the elimination of lead from gasoline and paint.</comment></comment></comment>


Blimpocracy - Is the airship the transportation system of the future? - <AUTHOR> http://albertaventure.com/2011/09/up-up-and-away/

<comment><USER3> The return of airships would be amazing and insanely safe. To bad public opinion of airships still reflects late 1930's. With today's technology why wouldn't it be safe?

<comment><USER4> I've love to ride a blimp, but it's hard to forget the imagery of the Hindenburg. Just like Adolf isn't exactly a popular name for kids.

I'm reminded of the Archer episode "Skytanic" and the main character's failure to grasp that the blimp they're on isn't going to explode from every little spark:

\---SNIP---

Sterling Archer: Jesus! You want to blow us all to shit, Sherlock?

 _[Archer slaps the face of a man attempting to light a cigarette]_

Malory Archer: Sterling!

Capt. Lammers: For the last time, the Excelsior is filled with non-flamable helium!

\---END SNIP---

While Archer is a silly comedy, in the end, that's the mentality we'd have to face to get something like this mainstream again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another place where airships might be useful for transportation is Africa. Lots of resources that need to be moved around, (mostly) terrible road and rail infrastructure. And there the airships wouldn't have to be very high-tech to be safer than road transport.

The cost of helium presents a problem, though. Hydrogen is cheaper and provides more lift, but is combustible. <http://www.airships.net/helium- hydrogen-airships>

<comment><USER6> Hydrogen may be more combustible but either way it still highly unlikely

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the idea, but I'm afraid airships always have, and always will be, the future.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think they will not be the future? I'm not saying they will, but I'm getting very tired of people shooting ideas down without giving a reason why.

Follow the lean, rational approach that we preach for our businesses - <USER2> your assumptions with experiments and research, and don't take anything for granted.</comment></comment>


Amazon: Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.
We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.
You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.
To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect their ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.
We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.
Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team <comment><USER2> I wonder how many Silicon Valley startups use amazon affiliate program? How many generate a substantial (I use this term to mean it would make a noticeable income on the bottom line) amount from it?</comment>


How to read research papers  - <AUTHOR> http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/09/how_to_read_research_papers

<comment><USER2> How to read research papers:

1\. Read the abstract thoroughly 2\. Skim the results 3\. Read the conclusion

I'm only part kidding. The abstract will tell you if it's even relevant to your area of research and outline what they hope to accomplish. The results give you an idea how well it worked, then the conclusion ties it up nicely. By this point, you should be able to say "So-and-so did this, and it worked/didn't work". Then you can decide if it needs to be a short note in your "Prior work" section or if it deserves deeper re-reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it too silly to suggest that people check the status of of the authors and their institution or the importance of the journal that published the paper?

<comment><USER4> Sadly, this is pretty much done by the citation count bit. People that write quality papers were either scooped up by a quality institution, or could move to one. Good work is done at a lot of places, but its more visible when done at a famous place.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When are you no longer called a "startup"? - <AUTHOR>

X number of years? Profitable?  Just curious when people decide to stop calling themselves a "startup" and say they're just a "business" or "small business". <comment><USER2> Great question. It seems to be the media tends to label dotcoms a "startup" regardless of the the size of their user base or revenues.

According to the US Small Business Association, it varies depending upon the industry. Here's what they have on Service industries (though I realize many web businesses aren't really service businesses):

> Most common: $7 million > Computer programming, data processing and systems > design: $25 million > Engineering and architectural services and a few other > industries have different size standards. > The highest annual-receipts size > standard in any service industry: $35.5 million > Research and development > and environmental remediation services: the only service industries with > size standards stated in number of employees

[http://www.sba.gov/contractingopportunities/officials/size/s...](http://www.sba.gov/contractingopportunities/officials/size/summaryofssi/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's like saying "grownup".

There is no hard-and-fast rule or time.

IMO, there is some factor or ratio to where you are now vs. where you want to get to and a matter of risk and acceleration involved in doing so.

EG: if you're selling website templates and making $100K/year and want to make $250K/year and can do so mostly through basic growth with minimal risk, you're not a "startup".

If you want to get to $25M/year and you're going to take some huge risks and leaps of faith to do so at a rapid pace, you are a startup.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I get stuck trying to decide how to introduce myself or explain what I do. I feel like after being in business for 4 years and being profitable, startup isn't the right word. I've been resorting to something along the lines of "running online businesses" since "entrepreneur" seems to vague.

</comment><comment><USER4> I saw a good answer here a while back: You're no longer a startup when the supplies cupboard is locked.

</comment><comment><USER5> When your no longer searching for a business model and your done with the customer discovery and validation process.</comment>


New iPhone Images Leaked - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/06/breaking-exclusive-leaked-pics-of-the-iphone-2-thinner-design-check-different-colors-check-video-chatting-check-and-check/

<comment> a-priori I worked at RIM this past Fall. One day someone sent around this link: [http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/03/is-this-the- blackberry-9x...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/03/is-this-the- blackberry-9xxx/)

I looked at the prototype Blackberry Bold I had on my desk and laughed. I'm sure people at Apple are doing the same thing right now.

</comment><comment><USER2> A 3G iPhone running iChat would be revolutionary.

No one has a great videoconference application (i mean, Nokia, Samsung and any Windows Mobile phone has terrible ugly experience developing videochat applications, and the main driver of 3G IS videoconference)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks a lot like the existing iPod Touch.

I'd love to get one but my plan on Sprint is just too good to give up... lots of minutes + unlimited text messaging + EVDO for $30/month.

Also this phone looks pretty good... Windows Mobile but a VGA touch screen.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/03/htc-touch-diamond- shots-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/03/htc-touch-diamond-shots-and- specs-this-weeks-big-announcement/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obviously fake, why post this?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/07/loads-of-fake-apple- shots...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/07/loads-of-fake-apple-shots-hit- the-web-3g-iphone-pre-wwdc-editio/)</comment></comment>


Automatic braking system prevented further deaths in Berlin attack - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.morgenpost.de%2Fberlin%2Farticle209107211%2FBerichte-Automatisches-Bremssystem-verhinderte-weitere-Tote.html%3Futm_source%3Ddlvr.it%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter&edit-text=&act=url <comment><AUTHOR> Haven't found a better translated source yet, but this is trending in Germany. According to some other sources, the system overrides driver controls one second after a collision has occured.</comment>


With Google+ do you really need a blog anymore? - <AUTHOR> http://plus.google.com/u/0/108082478497335384404/posts/7gdiuFey2Cs

<comment><USER2> Google have reinvented LiveJournal. Excellent.

(This time I mean it seriously, not sarcastically.)

<comment><USER3> And Friendfeed⸮

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what you mean.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple repairs ask for root password - <AUTHOR>

Had an interesting experience at the apple store the other day.  Brought my 2009 MBP in because the screen was starting to have some issues.  As part of the documentation, the rep asked me to input my username and password to their report form.  Not thinking, I did so, assuming my password would be hidden.  It was not - it was right there in plain text.  Not to worry!  It doesn't get printed out.  It only gets stored in case the repair facility needs it to access my computer.  It was at this point I woke up and had a WTF moment.  Of course, I immediately changed my password, and thanked myself for not using that password for anything else.  But still seems rather bizarre behavior. <comment><USER2> I remember the authorized Apple repair shop here asked for my password as well, I asked them if I could create another account with password, they said it's fine. Just make a throwaway account and delete it afterward, no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same experience here. I suppose it's less worrying than a backdoor in the OS :-) Even so, I don't understand why techs couldn't boot from a USB stick.</comment>


Scanning Your Money to the Bank - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/scanning-your-money-to-the-bank/?ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Ok, I'm going to be an ass now.

Ha-ha, stupid Americans solving problems you don't need to have. Over in Europe we don't use checks. This entire problem goes away if every minor cash transfer happens electronically in the first place. You're attacking the wrong end of the challenge.

[Seriously, you need to pass a new law in order to be able to do this? Not only are you attacking a non-existent problem, you are also involving the inertia of politics in order to do so. This is the most stupid thing I have heard all day.]

<comment><USER3> Dude, I wish more Americans had to carry the shame of knowing that our banking system feels about circa 1982 compared to some other countries. After a couple years in Sweden and a couple months in Finland, there were plenty of times I walked out of a bank, hanging my head with shame, dreading having to go home and write on a piece of paper who I wanted to give money to, then give them that piece of paper, then they could take that little piece of paper to a bank, who would inspect my piece of paper and in a couple days, give them some money.

Sure this check scanning thing is an improvement, but it's lipstick on a wombat as far as I'm concerned.</comment></comment>


Show HN - choose a drawing winner from a tweet and or Facebook post comment - <AUTHOR> http://socialdrawing.codenimbus.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My first Nodejs app. It was a blast to build. I'm wondering about taking the code and making a nodejs for php devs tutorial.</comment>


Pros and Cons of Flat Design - <AUTHOR> http://designmodo.com/pros-cons-flat-design/ Are there pros and cons to flat design not mentioned here? Discuss in the comments. <comment><USER2> I found this insightful: "[flat design] can hinder usability because users don't always know what is clickable."

I ran into this playing with iOS 7 beta. When I'm trying to close an application in their new overlay, I expect to "tap out" of that mode. It didn't work. Turns out I had to swipe it away, and I think that would have been more obvious without a flat design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or, straight from the master: [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tablet- usability/](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tablet-usability/)</comment>