Why a Typical Home Solar Setup Does Not Work with the Grid Down - <AUTHOR> https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup-does-not-work-off-grid.html <comment><USER2> A huge amount of the info on solar PV power on the net is absolute garbage. (I spent 5 years working on the most advanced solar performance optimization and monitoring system developed to date.) I haven't read all of this article, but so far, it looks dead on (you have no idea how rare that is!) Solar is not the panacea many people wish it was, simply due to the way God built the universe - and there's not a thing we can do about that. (And yes, the panels are now only a small part of the cost of a solar system, especially one capable of operating off-grid...)

<comment><USER3> Looks like I great article. I'll have to defer reading it. During a quick scan I saw a mention of the SMA technology that allows for dedicated outlets to be powered-up in case of grid failure.

I built a 13 kW ground-mount system feeding a pair of SMA inverters. I have tested this feature by disconnecting from the grid and enabling the outlets (one per inverter). I didn't quite get to the 2,000 W rating SMA claims but got close. Which means that with this size of an array and two inverters I get somewhere between 3kW and 4kW of power to run various devices while the sun is up.

Considering that we might have a couple of power outages a year on average (if that), I felt this was a reasonable investment. Going with batteries is just too expensive and not justifiable at all given the reliability of the grid. One way to think about this is that the grid is your battery. A stretch, I know.

Funny that there's a picture of a gasoline generator towards the end of the article. My guess is that I am likely to invest in a 5 kW to 6 kW generator before I ever add batteries to this system. Again, it's a matter of ROI. Also, I would not go with a gasoline powered generator at all. Gasoline degrades with time and could be a nightmare to maintain the system with sporadic use. I think a propane fueled generator might be a better idea. The fuel does not degrade. So long as you don't have leaks it'll be there ready to go when you need it.

I know way too many people who have been mercilessly duped by these solar companies who come in, hook them on some kind of a lease, install inadequate systems and move on to the next victim. Lack of understanding on the side of consumers has created a situation where solar is equivalent to magic and unscrupulous actors can take advantage of them. That part is sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Backfeeding the power grid, according to some lineworkers I've talked to, is > really not a big concern for two reasons. First, lineworkers assume lines > are live until proven otherwise. And, second, no residential system is going > to successfully backfeed a large dead section of grid. [...] it's really not > that big a concern from a technical/safety perspective.

This is wrong and dangerous. Suddenly energising a section of grid which has been isolated from all known power sources could easily kill someone working on it. Yes, lineworkers will isolate and test lines before touching them. No, this won't protect them because your inverter could start outputting after they've tested. Yes, your inverter will _probably_ overload and trip out before putting _too_ much voltage into your local section of the grid, depending on where it's isolated. No, it's not OK to bet a random stranger's life on it.

<comment><USER5> When I work on electrical wires at home, I test if they are hot after flipping what I believe is the correct fuse. If I'm right I know it won't become hot while I work on it because I control the switches and fuses.

If I worked on wires where I was _not_ in control of incoming power, then I can _not_ be sure the wire isn't hot just because I measured _once_. This is for example the case when working with stuff with big capacitors.

So my point is: can line workers really assume a wire isn't hot just because they tested it? They don't control both ends, since as you pointed out, anyone could have a) a power source or b) a faulty connection, whether it's allowed or not. So as a line worker I'd basically just not touch anything even in supposedly dead grid sections.

<comment><USER6> I recommend shorting to ground. Even if it's your own fuse. Shorting means that if you picked the wrong fuse you notice. And when your friend comes by and flips the fuse back on you don't get a spark shower (something like this has happened to me, don't underestimate people willing to flip fuses for no reason)

<comment><USER7> A common solution for this is lockout-tagout, where you physically lock the breaker open using a lock with your name on it, and nobody can flip it until you come back and take the lock off.

Used on electrical circuits as well as dangerous machines if you need to climb inside a compactor for maintenance or something.

[https://www.osha.gov/Publications/3120.html](https://www.osha.gov/Publications/3120.html)

[http://www.deenergize.com/?target=Universal_Circuit_Breaker_...](http://www.deenergize.com/?target=Universal_Circuit_Breaker_Lockout_Device_\(PSL- CB\))

<comment><USER6> That works too, though IIRC the common procedure in the industry in my country is to use a warning label/shield and hang it on the breaker box during repairs, locking the breaker box itself, then short out the circuit to ground and measure to be sure.

Locks on the breaker itself are more rare (usually for low voltage repairs where the common person might frequent the area)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article, lots of technical details. A simple answer to the 'Why' can be found in the middle under the 'Off Grid Without Batteries' headline.

> If you have a typical grid tied system (microinverters or normal string > inverters, so easily 95+% of installed rooftop solar), the system is > technically incapable of running off grid (without additional hardware). > There's no waveform to sync with,

<comment><USER9> "there's no waveform to sync with" is technically correct and _a very poor excuse_

A residential no-break has no waveform to sync with as well.

Something capable of syncing to the grid and then more or less keeping pace even if the main grid goes down should cost very little today. (And when the grid goes back it shouldn't have drifted too much unless something ridiculously big happened)

<comment><USER6> The grid isn't a fixed frequency. While on average the grid doesn't change phase, the reality is that the grid may be out of phase by several seconds most of the time.

When the grid comes back from a blackout, chances are that it browned out beforehand so your sync is to a low frequency and coming back it'll be high frequency because the grid wants to compensate for loads jumping back on.

Additionally the components to generate your own waveform are cheap, yes, but not _that_ cheap, adding them to the microinverter would increase cost quite a bit.

And you'd still need a transfer switch because if you happen to be 180 degrees out of phase, which CAN HAPPEN then your panel will behave like a dead short at double grid voltage. The current flow will definitely exceed the maximum tolerances and the magic smoke goes out.

You will absolutely need a transfer switch just so you don't fry all your devices the moment the grid comes back. Even then, syncing to the grid is a rather delicate maneuver since the grid will be constantly changing phase and it'll be simpler to shut down all inverters, connect back and have it all run back up on the grid itself.

<comment><USER9> > When the grid comes back from a blackout, chances are that it browned out > beforehand

Not really, but depends on the state of the infrastructure, if it was really because of a power overload, yes, but most likely "your circuit" (which could be your street or your neighborhood) got shut off, in this case there shouldn't be much difference

Yes, a phase difference of 180 can definitely happen but I guess most electronics can survive a 1/60s (I'd say even 1/10) switching time, which is probably enough to have the grid take over.

(Or of course you could have the grid and solar charging batteries then your own high power inverter for your house but that of course would mean $$$$$$)

<comment><USER6> A 1/10th switching time would be fine though if you change phase too much and suddenly some equipment might not like it.

And you'd still have to sync the inverter, having the inverter simply continue to run until it's back in sync with the grid, then just reconnect (as a previous comment wanted) is likely not an option for most consumers.

For that it would likely be cheaper to have a full DC stage as you mentioned.

<comment> loa-in-backup It's knowledge that people in question are lacking

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As this article touches on the solar panels are the cheap part of a solar setup. If you want to run off grid the costs skyrocket.

I live in an off grid bus. My whole electrical system cost in the US$9-10000 range with only 810W of solar. The other components cost a lot more:

* ~$900 for 3x 270W Renogy solar panels

* $1500 for 3.6kWh of LiFePO4 batteries (12 100A 3.6V cells)

* $1600 for a Victron 3kW inverter / charger

* $2000 for a Honda EU3000is generator to run my AC

The rest was the Victron solar controller, color control panel (that runs Linux!), breakers, relays, transfer switch, fuses, cable, and all the other stuff you need to hook it together.

This isn't at house scale either. The cost would go up significantly to support a house scale system.

<comment><USER11> The solar controller, control panel and miscellaneous cost you $3-4k?

<comment><USER10> The controller was more than $200, the control panel is around $550.

I didn't itemize the rest because I don't have the time to list it all. The roof rack and hardware cost around $1000. There are a lot of individual items that cost around $100, (eg starter battery isolator relay, breaker panel + breakers). Heavy gauge cables are necessary and expensive. All the small things add up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _> The only real way to get off grid power without batteries is to go with an inverter that has an emergency outlet. Some of the SMA inverters support this (they call it Secure Power Supply) - you feed the whole rooftop array into them, and they can, if the sun is shining, provide 1.5kW or so to a dedicated outlet - assuming there's enough solar power. So, from an 8-10kW array, on a sunny day, you can get 1.5kW by operating well below the peak power point. If the array can't keep up with current demand (a cloud goes over), the outlet shuts down. It's better than nothing, but this is just about the only way you can get battery-free off grid power. To get any sort of stable battery-free power, you have to run the panels well, well below peak power (30-50% of peak is as high as you can really run), and even then, you have a horrifically unstable system. If the array power briefly drops below demand (perhaps an airplane has flown over), you shut down the entire output for a while. Hopefully your devices can handle intermittent power like this. If the array can source 1300W at the moment and a compressor tries to draw 1301W while starting, you collapse the array voltage and shut down the outlet. That's really hard on compressors (and everything else attached to the outlet)._

It's not ideal, but this is so much better than what most installs are built with (nothing).

<comment><USER13> I thought there were shutoff devices that could detect a grid outage and instantly disconnect your home from the grid allowing your inverter to power your house until grid power is restored. I assumed something like this would be $10K but well worth it, as basically the whole point of battery-backed solar is energy independence.

<comment><USER14> From the article, the problem isn't the transfer switch but that the microinverters used on most systems don't work without the grid. If the grid goes down or is disconnected, the microinverters stop providing power.

It is possible to get inverter that will work independently, and batteries to buffer the load, but the off-grid system is a lot more expensive than normal rooftop solar system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Super useful. Pacific Gas & Electric (which powers much of CA) recently announced that they may pre-emptively shut off power to certain parts of Silicon Valley out of concern for potential fires. In the article I read, they mentioned that even home solar wouldn't work, which seemed crazy. I can now see why this is the case, and what folks should do (get a transfer switch and generator) to be able to power their home with their solar panels.

<comment><USER16> > Pacific Gas & Electric (which powers much of CA) recently announced that > they may pre-emptively shut off power to certain parts of Silicon Valley out > of concern for potential fires

Huh, where can I read about this?

<comment><USER17> TLDR: Power lines are a cause of wildfires, and PG&E may shut down power on some transmission lines in times of extreme fire danger.

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-PG-E- cuttin...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-PG-E-cutting- power-could-prevent-fires-save-13019005.php)

[https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/25/pge-cutting- power...](https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/25/pge-cutting-power/)

<comment><USER18> Interesting fact: years ago it was designed to build electric infrastructure above the ground because air friction addsup about 20% of electricty, free. It wouldnt be possible underground. But then, you know, whole State of amedium size country like California, would have no power interruptions in heat spikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My dad has a 7kw system with the SMA inverter with emergency power outlet for 1.5kw. Works ok, as said the main issue without batteries to buffer is stability.

I have a Magnum 3000w Hybrid inverter in my RV with 320w of solar with a MPPT solar controller. The solar controller feeds the batteries and the inverter draws from batteries or charges them with UPS grade change over. Magnum hybrids can do interesting things like if the sun is out and I am running the air conditioner off generator or shore power it will pull batteries down to float voltage and invert excess power to lower draw, I usually get about 1 amp reduction with 320w of panels. You can also dial in your shore amps and if a load needs more the inverter will step in and provide the overage from the batteries. Nice if you driveway surfing and only have a 15 amp outlet but want to run the microwave or whatever. The RV is basically a giant UPS with generator.

<comment><USER20> Having _just_ finished a 450W solar system on our RV, along with new big-ass 200ah battery, I was shocked to find out that house systems have no battery backing. Because I have had to explain to everyone that asks "can it run...?" that you can run anything you want if the battery can handle it, the solar is just a battery charger and doesn't directly run anything.

But as one who is considering residential solar, I guess there's _more_ research to do as home solar apparently doesn't work that way at all (though it probably will when I do it).

Side note: thanks for the inverter mention. That's next on the list, and the Magnum sounds to be worth a look.

<comment><USER21> I went the Victron route on my setup, primarily because they make whole systems that can talk with each other. I had originally been looking at the Magnum, though.

<comment><USER20> I guess in all of my searching when buying, I never discovered that Victron makes inverters, despite having one of their charge controllers (seems like Xantrex gets all the mentions for high-end inverters). I'll check them out, thanks.

<comment><USER19> I almost went Victron, they have a nice selection of equipment with some nice features. I was however put off with their documentation, very lacking, was not 100% sure what I needed to put the system together, they have like 3 different kinds of communications buses.

Magnum on the other hand has excellent documentation and a somewhat simpler product line that integrates well together, remote, inverter, battery monitor. Their comm bus is just RS-485 and documentation can be found, I wrote a node server to display info in realtime along with my Morningstar Tristar solar controller which uses modes over TCP.

My understanding is Victrons load support feature does not go down as far as Magnum, 10 amps vs 5 if thats important .They have a very good reputation as does Magnum, different league than cheap inverters.

Here is a video I did of the Magnums search watt function as some wanted to see, also shows how it deals with large loads and the web interface I wrote for it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_jqzY1wNDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_jqzY1wNDU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > To get any sort of stable battery-free power, you have to run the panels > well, well below peak power (30-50% of peak is as high as you can really > run), and even then, you have a horrifically unstable system. If the array > power briefly drops below demand (perhaps an airplane has flown over), you > shut down the entire output for a while

It doesn't seem like a battery or capacitor to handle blips like an airplane flying overhead would need to be very large?

<comment><USER22> No, but using a small battery means using a battery that get heavily charged/discharged by such events, and therefore has a short lifespan (less than a year, probably, if you used the kind of battery that's in a UPS.) The reason the battery banks for solar are so large isn't just to capture the entire daytime output for night-time use, but also so that they can have a lifespan closer to that of the solar array itself.

<comment><USER23> That's interesting! Is it like an SSD where you plan for a certain amount of cells to fail or does it reduce load on the cells so they last long individually?

<comment><USER22> The latter.

Whenever your battery gets super discharged, picture this happening inside it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-YbQN_twpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-YbQN_twpw)

Notice how running the current the other way will _break up_ the formed crystals, but it won't actually _re-dissolve_ them. That's what it means for a battery to wear out. (Battery electrolytes are chosen specifically to be resistant to this, so the effect is mainly visible as a thin "rust" of deposited crystals on the battery's anode, rather than the full-scale crystals seen here.)

A similar but distinct process occurs when overcharging a battery, where, instead of splitting the electrolyte molecules apart, you're reacting and bonding them together to form new molecules or molecular complexes, with the reaction usually being one-way rather than an equilibrium reaction. (For lithium batteries this process is exothermic and catalyzed by the presence of the product—thus lithium battery explosions.)

It's much better for the life of the battery if it basically just hovers around 40-60% charge for its whole useful life, since then you're just generating tiny seed crystals (on discharge) and then re-dissolving them (on charge), where those crystals are small enough that they can be fully re- absorbed.

And this is true even in battery-cell technologies that require a "deep charge cycle" to erase their "battery memory." Battery memory is basically the electrolyte causing enough crystalline rust _specifically on the anode_ to increase its resistance. A deep discharge can capture and erase this rust—but it _still_ shortens the battery's lifespan, because you're still producing non-reabsorbable large crystals within the electrolyte.

<comment><USER23> Thank a lot for sharing! That was interesting. So the desire to hover around 50% requires 2X larger batteries as would otherwise be necessary?

<comment><USER20> Yup. Though I've heard (as it concerns deep-cycle batteries) not to let them drop below 50% charge rather than keep them in a certain range. So, for example, when I purchased a new house battery for our RV, I got a 200ah battery knowing I can only make use of 100ah before recharging. Or put another way, figure out how much you'll use between charges (or in the case of solar, how much to tide you over until the sun comes up), and double it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe this applies in normal markets, but in Puerto Rico the grid is both shit-tier reliability and horribly expensive. Rooftop solar and lithium batteries in an off-grid format are both far more reliable and far cheaper than the grid, assuming a 5% cost of capital. I might throw in some LP or diesel generation capacity too, but solar plus battery is an easy choice.

<comment><USER25> Are lithium batteries the best choice here? They have superior energy density, but IIRC there are choices that are heavier but cheaper (per kWh installed), like ready-made car acid-lead batteries, or industrial Ni-Cd batteries.

What do people actually use?

<comment><USER26> Not sure for Solar, but most HAMs using field radio setups still use deep cycle marine batteries as they withstand abuse and are much cheaper.

<comment><USER27> The big benefit lead acid batteries have is that it's easy to find surplus SLA batteries from businesses, and even new cells aren't that expensive.

That said, I've started seeing lithium batteries slowly catch on in amateur radio as the price on the LiFePo4 cells go down. Especially for portable setups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've read the detailed reports for outages in the West and the North-East, and they touch on alot of the same concepts that were in this (awesome) article.

Does anyone know, what's a good resource for learning more about power generation, grid regulation, etc.? The relationship between frequency/voltage and available vs. demanded current, frequency sync, grid maintenance, etc.…

<comment><USER29> If you have a reasonable electrical background I would suggest this textbook:

Electrical Machines, Drives and Power Systems by Theordore Wildi

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is exactly why people need to explore alternative energy options other than solar. The best off-grid setup I've seen is a bunch of conductive pipes lay over the ground that heated water from the sun, that in turn was used to generate enough energy to pump water to a storage tank during the day up a large hill. At night the tank was drained and water came back down and the resulting pressure was used to generate power, supply back to the grid. It used minimal components (& simple ones), no batteries, nothing fancy but was enough energy to supply a community of several single family homes in a completely off grid system.

<comment><USER31> > This is exactly why people need to explore alternative energy options other > than solar. The best off-grid setup I've seen is a bunch of conductive pipes > lay over the ground that heated water from the sun, that in turn was used to > generate enough energy to pump water to a storage tank during the day up a > large hill. At night the tank was drained and water came back down and the > resulting pressure was used to generate power, supply back to the grid.

So, your example of energy options other than solar is solar with hydro storage? Or did you mean "other than photovoltaic" when you said "othet than solar".

<comment><USER30> Yeah, meant to say conventional PV solar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _During 2017, I saw a lot of news articles talking about how the Evil Power Companies were being Meanie McMean by not letting people with solar panels use them when the grid was down. The implication (in many news articles) was that these powerless people with solar panels could use them to power their home while the grid was down, if only the evil power company didn 't require that solar not work if the grid was down._

I don't remember seeing any articles that blame the power company for home solar not working off-grid... I do remember seeing articles saying that most home solar installations won't work if the power grid is down, but nothing that implied that the power companies were behind it.

<comment><USER33> In Florida it was popular around hurricane season after we lost power.

I'm glad I finally understand why because all that I'd seen reported was the solar systems installed must be turned off. I'd always assumed all these systems (many of which are meant to be used in a storm + lower electricity costs) had a transfer switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So much complexity to deal with synchronizing AC frequency. I wonder if DC wouldn't be a better choice for a modern power grid?

<comment><USER35> High-voltage DC [1] is being used to transport power over longer distances because it can be cheaper and there's less power loss.

Like a sibling commented here, the costs would be enormous to convert an AC grid into a DC grid. AFAIK are there two reasons that the grid is AC: generators produce AC, and AC is so easy to transform up and down. That transforming is essential since you want to transport energy at high voltages [2] but you don't want 380kV in someone's house.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- voltage_direct_current](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- voltage_direct_current) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Ad...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Advantage_of_high- voltage_power_transmission)

<comment><USER36> But, apart form installation costs, a low voltage DC power network inside homes might make sense (e.g. 12V or 24V). There's a lot of modern electronics that doesn't depend on the regular powerline voltage anymore. Unifying their power supplies into a central unit should have some benefits.

<comment><USER37> > a low voltage DC power network inside homes might make sense (e.g. 12V or > 24V).

It wouldn't work. The needed wires would be like garden hoses.

<comment><USER38> Yup, there's a reason even POE is 48 volt in a lot of applications

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My cheap and simple 15-minute UPS device has waveform generation (?) and a battery. Surely with solar you often have to have _huge_ batteries?

In hot climates you have some power use when the sun is up (cooling, pool heating,) but where I live I'd need my power most when the sun is absent in night and winter (power use is probably 80% heating). Any amount of solar power would be nearly useless if only available when the sun is shining.

<comment><USER39> > In hot climates you have some power use when the sun is up (cooling, pool > heating,) but where I live I'd need my power most when the sun is absent in > night and winter (power use is probably 80% heating). Any amount of solar > power would be nearly useless if only available when the sun is shining.

Not a subject matter expert by any means but depending on how much sun you get, there are probably better options than solar for you (solar might not be the right choice for you).

<comment><USER5> Solar is increasingly popular around here though (latitudes 60-65) which I only assumed also meant that storage was also handled with batteries. Seasonal storage is probably not, but at least generation during the day and use during the night must be.

I learned from the article that lower temps helps efficiency, so perhaps our climate with short days and subzero temps for 5-7 months is still viable because of higher efficiency?

<comment><USER40> Keep in mind that thermal storage is cheap compared to electrical, just not efficiently reversible. E.g. you heat up a block of paraffin in a tub of water and it takes a lot of energy without large temperature changes due to the phase change. The output temperature would require rather large radiators or floor/wall heating.

At this temperature you could even dump waste heat of a computer (well, CPU and GPU, maybe DRAM, not the rest) into this thermal storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm curious why a large capacitor or inductor cannot be used to provide momentary power for things like electric motor starts, and to smooth out events like a plane briefly occluding the sun.

I built an audio amplifier in college that had a couple of huge capacitors on the power supply (about the size of a can of soda). It would keep the amp running a few seconds after I shut off the power.

<comment><USER42> Fundamentally, the size involved. Your amplifier's capacitors were extremely large for the power the amplifier was using, as their purpose was to reduce the ripple voltage from the power supply.

One of those "1 Farad" car stereo caps (not the classiest example) can store 72 joules (watt-seconds). So to handle a 1kW excursion for 5 seconds, would take over 70 of them. Possible, yes. But probably not worthwhile.

The frustrating thing about this article is that it keeps conflating fundamental physical problems (like needing to store energy to deal with peaks), with the limitations of currently-productized circuit topologies. It's not hard to imagine an inverter that would do something similar to MPPT without _needing_ to pull/dump the maximum power possible, would manage a small bit of local storage (a combination of caps and abused batteries), and could intelligently load shed (with "kind" brownouts) on multiple outlets.

It's also not hard to imagine an inverter (brushless motor) air conditioner that would be a lot kinder of a load, and could even operate at variable power.

But of course with the current state of homebuilding, these are bespoke ideas better filed as "off the grid". Which is the entire larger point - an "off the grid" system fundamentally costs more in materials and also presently application engineering time, than the on-grid systems being sold to homeowners.

(Although I do have to wonder about adding a piece to the current puzzle that would generate/manage a local grid frequency, and shed excess power using off- the-shelf electric heaters.)

<comment><USER41> > over 70

This doesn't sound that bad to me. Size isn't much of an issue, houses have room for them. Prices for them seem all over the place:

[https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/1-farad- capacitor.html](https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/1-farad-capacitor.html) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00381UKD0/ref=psdc_2230642011_t2_...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00381UKD0/ref=psdc_2230642011_t2_B000701BA6)

The idea with a capacitor is they shouldn't degrade like batteries do.

The same with an inductor, which is just a coil of wire.

<comment><USER42> $30 x 35, assuming a 50% discount for wholesale [0], is still $500. This may be worthwhile, but it's certainly not negligible.

Electrolytics _do_ wear out. Lifetime hours versus temperature/ripple current is a key design parameter.

[0] And assuming stuff designed for the car stereo market actually meets its advertised specs. I just went to Youtube to verify that said devices weren't just a can with other components inside of them. A video with a freehanded jigsaw set to hip hop confirmed.

<comment><USER41> Just to be clear, the caps were bought from the Caltech EE supply desk. They weren't for car stereos. It was before car stereos became a thing.

<comment><USER42> I was just using car stereo caps as an easy-to-reference bound. (I'm not in tune with current cost of bulk energy storage caps)

As I was saying before, the main difference from your amplifier was the amount of power involved. In general, audio amplifiers have large capacitors on the power rails to smooth out the ripple voltage, and will coast for quite some time as they don't actually _need_ that much power for typical music and volumes.

Here's a similar example - high current USB charging bricks, with a power indicator LED. If you have no devices connected and unplug it from the wall, the LED will stay on for quite some time. The LED just doesn't draw that much current (say 10mA) compared to the capacitance, which has been designed for smoothing the full charging current of 10A. Also the LED will happily ride the voltage down from 5V to its junction voltage of 2.5V or whatever, using even less current. And due to the logarithmic nature of your eyes (ears), you don't fully perceive that dimming.

<comment><USER41> The caps were way, way excessive for the application, I was just having fun putting them in. And they didn't just smooth out the power, they were capable of running the amplifier for a few seconds. (It was a 125 watt Universal Tiger amp.)

I do know that caps decay over time, but have no idea how that compares with batteries. I expect, though, that long life caps could be built.

I also wonder about using inductors instead. They are, after all, just a coil of wire.

<comment><USER42> I feel like you're asking the equivalent of why we use DRAM instead of SRAM, or spinning rust instead of flash. And I don't want to shout that down because, as in the latter, constraints do change. But the current state of things is fundamentally based on a cost tradeoff.

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/42084/can- yo...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/42084/can-you-store- energy-in-an-inductor-and-use-it-later)

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/326177/energ...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/326177/energy- density-comparison-between-inductors-and-capacitors)

Perhaps in the future we'll have supercooled inductors providing power storage, and not requiring periodic changing the way say batteries do. Alas, it's just not right now.

As an aside, it's amazing how little power it actually takes to produce worthwhile sound out of modern speakers. I once wanted to test some tower speakers without a proper receiver around, so I wired up a breadboard with some stupid opamps around poorly-heatsunk transistors, powered by a lab supply. The speakers turned out to be disappointing, but not because of the amplifier!

<comment><USER41> Thanks, that does answer the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Of course, if you want to run off the grid, the first thing is to minimize your electrical appliance. Get a laptop, the laptop will serve as your TV, computer, radio, etc.

No TV, no Washer/Dryer (you will hand wash), No regular fridge, get a small 12v fridge. No microwave, use stove to heat up food. No A/C, design the space to not get hot, high windows, under the shade, facing away from the sun. Maybe a small fan. The biggest optimization begins with your appliances.

</comment><comment><USER44> We found that even a well made Honda petrol genset was highly unstable feeding volts into a UPS for a machineroom. They are good at lights. They are good at a cooker. They suck at anything which expects regulated, non-noisy volts.

Lots of homebrew 'you can plug this magick cable I made' methods to supply volts across the fence to neighbours houses when the power goes down are really bad: behind the meter is just as lethal as in front of the meter, if you get it wrong.

TL;DR if you need to read a website like this for clue how to avoid losing power, you are putting your life at risk if you don't follow code, and don't know what you're doing.

<comment><USER10> Inverter generators like the popular Hondas are not good for surges. If you run them at a steady draw they'll give you nice, clean power. If you your demand fluctuates significantly they will stall or cut out and the voltage during or after the stall may be dirty.

You have to read the specs carefully to make sure they are a good match for your use.

<comment><USER44> Fridge. Surge load. Washing machine. Huge torque surge load. Airconditioning. That's basically a fridge?

So.. "home" solar setup.. home.. like fridges, aircon and washing machines...

Do you see where this is going?

<comment><USER38> The solution here is inverter drive appliances. I had a cheapo but great thrift store inverter microwave. My cheapo junk 3000w inverter could run it off a few hundred Ah of batteries without issue, still spitting out clean power on the other outlets. A regular microwave(with a lower run wattage in theory, by about 1/3rd) would instantly blow the thing up and set off its obnoxious alarm.

With some carefully selected appliances you would probably be fine. This stuff used to be super pricey, but now even the cheaper brands are putting out inverter drive ACs for example. Not window units, but mini splits and home systems

<comment><USER44> Really, if you build from the ground up, or, if you are skilled enough to engineer it, this is a lowish burden if not a no brainer.

If you are a prepper, with your existing lifestyle and think a genset will give you tide-over-until-the-zombies-die, I think you need to think harder: a genny won't work, if you don't pre-design the load for it. Lots of things you own right now probably won't be very happy with unstable volts, and lots of things you own right now will suck hard on the generator, making it surge.

So yes. you _can_ design for it. But a _typical home solar setup_ (which is what the article was about) is not going to just work, offline, with your generator. It takes more work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There are all sorts of issues with using a regular grid-tied inverter in an off-grid situation; there are regulatory issues besides the anti-islanding (which is a complicated topic all on its own), and technical challenges too. A lot of the technical challenges go back to the inverter effectively being a thing that bolts on to the existing house wiring; I think that if they could be more of a pass-through thing (like a UPS) then the picture would be a lot simpler.

An off-grid capable inverter needs to handle several state transitions smoothly, and some of those are hard. For instance, starting up can be a lot harder when there's no mains voltage. An inverter will have a maximum output current, which is generally not too far from the maximum power output of the inverter divided by minimum mains voltage. If you have a load that presents as a constant resistance, like a water heater, then as the inverter's output voltage goes from 0 to 240V (120V for areas with weenie power) the current will smoothly go from nothing up to whatever the load normally draws, along with the voltage, and there's no problem. But! A lot of loads aren't resistive - things like computers, battery chargers, and inverter-driven motors (as newer appliances often have) will tend to look more like constant-power loads. So, once they decide it's OK to turn on, if the voltage happens to be half of nominal at that point, they will try to pull twice their nominal current. If that causes the total draw to exceed what the inverter can provide, it stops and maybe tries again. It's practically impossible to measure what the load characteristic of something like a house, from the perspective of an inverter, so the best you can do is something like guess-and-check, and that's not a great solution.

Then, how to handle reconnection with the grid; you either need to re- synchronise before reconnecting, or ensure that the intrepid homeowner first shuts off the house before turning the switch to reconnect.

Switches that can handle that job may need to be specified per-installation, and there are all sorts of regulations around how they work and where they can go. They are not cheap, as a rule. Some regions have the solar generation stuff on a separate export power meter from the import one. This means that the switch needs to be on he supply side of both meters, and that could be regulatorily complicated.

What about multiple inverters? These things all need to play nice with each other when solo, or installed with others. Perhaps you didn't design those, and they might try to start up too, then fire up their anti islanding which should promptly trip out again.

Remember this all has to work with variable input power available, and it needs to be packaged up so that installation is straightforward, and operation is basically hands-off. Oh, and inexpensive too!

</comment><comment><USER46> What I would like to know is, if there was an emergency situation and the grid was going to be down for an extended period of time (I'm thinking 3+ weeks, months, years) would there be a way of altering the system so that the home could have electricity, at least during daylight hours?

<comment><USER47> The article points out that the most cost-effective solution is to get an internal combustion generator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The solution to this is to use Hybrid inverters+batteries with a auto disconnect on the mains.

</comment><comment><USER49> Forgive my ignorance in advance; is there any viability to a system that pumps water uphill to a storage tank then it flows downhill later to let the current run a generator?

<comment><USER50> Yes, in fact they're already in use. They're called pumped storage systems, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's also not safe for line workers who think power is off to a main and get zapped by a small fleet of home solar in The neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER52> That article is TLDR for the target audience.

The end part that basically says, 'solar panels need batteries and a more expensive inverter to run without the grid" needs to be at the beginning of the article.'

The details of power curves then come for those who want more details about why.

</comment><comment><USER53> instead of shutting off when the current is exceeded- why can't you just use a current limiting device and cap it?

modern bench top power supplies can limit current

</comment><comment><USER54> Install a Tesla Powerwall. Problem solved. [https://www.tesla.com/powerwall](https://www.tesla.com/powerwall)

</comment><comment><USER55> I've been looking into backup solutions to keep my fridge and well pump [1] going during outages. Anyone tried something like the following?

The obvious approach is a propane generator. Propane rather than gasoline because we only get a small number of outages a year, and most are fairly short, but there is occasionally one that is 10+ hours. I'd want to store enough fuel for at least 10 hours of generator use, but most years would only actually use a fraction of that, and so I'd have to be constantly rotating the fuel (probably into my car, as the only other gas powered thing I have, my lawn mower, only uses about a gallon a year) to keep it fresh enough to still work for the generator. Propane does not go bad, so storing 10 hours worth of propane for years is no problem.

But both of the things I want to power (fridge and pump) are very intermittent loads. I don't want the generator running all the time during an outage, wasting fuel, just to be ready when the fridge or pump needs to actually run. Even idling the generator will be consuming fuel. I could leave the generator off except when I need to actually have the fridge or well run, but that would be quite annoying as I'd have to go outside to start and stop the generator-- and power failures are usually when it is quite unpleasant outside.

So what I've been thinking of is having a dedicated battery and inverter for the fridge, and a dedicated battery and inverter for the well pump.

When power fails, I can start watching the fridge temperature (it has a battery powered wireless temperature monitor, so I can see the temperature without opening the door). When it warms up to the high end of its normal variation, I can unplug it from the wall outlet, plug it into the inverter, and start the inverter running off the battery. When the fridge cools back down, turn off the inverter. Repeat throughout the outage.

Similar for well pump. When I run out of water, go run the pump from the inverter and battery until the tank is full.

I'd still have the generator, but now it would be used to recharge batteries, not power any house circuits or devices. Over time, I'd probably add batteries, eventually reaching a point where I have enough that I can get through most outages without needing the generator.

(Actually, I'd probably do the well directly from the generator instead of inverter and battery. When I go out to turn on the generator to recharge batteries, I'd also plug the well pump into the generator to refill the well).

I could start with one inverter and a battery or two, without a generator. This would probably get me through a large fraction of the outages. Then over time I could add more batteries, more inverters, and the generator to extend the number of things I can use during an outage and how long an outage I can get through, in a nice budget friendly way.

[1] I probably don't actually need the well pump--as soon as an outage starts I fill a couple water bottles to have drinking water, and fill the bath tub to have water for flushing the toilet, and that will almost always be good enough. Why immediately fill things instead of just leaving the water in the well tank and hot water heater until I actually need it? Because I have no idea how much water I have. The outage could have happened right after the pump finished filling the tank, or it could be just before the pump was going to start and fill a nearly empty tank. Filling the water bottles and bathtub right away lets me know what I've got.

</comment><comment><USER56> Off grid power != AC power.

Duh! Wtf do I want AC for? People think theyre all going to have a stupid fridge which opens from the side to let as much heat in as possible and with a highly inneficient compressor which is tucked _behind_ it where the heat can only escape through it. Or a giant motor to shake their clothes in (electrically heated) water! Ahahah! I swear i keep telling people the KWh is going to cost 150-300 mg of gold (0.10 - 0.20 gold $) and their eyes just glaze over; they think it sounds nuts? If they had off grid power, they might be forced to agree. So the average person will be able to afford a couple or three KWh per month. Two low-powered computers and some lights. We light the whole place with less than 5w. The mere fact that we so often use measures like _kilo_ watts is a good tell tale of the current power glut. The powergrid rate where we are is about 0.0015 gold $ per KWh, or 100 times below sensible prices.</comment>


Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html <comment><USER2> > After a much-needed break, a drawing was held. Some of the winners got a DVD > called "Helvetica," a 2007 documentary about typography.

This one really cracked me up.

<comment><USER3> I actually really loved "Helvetica" and really recommend it. Ditto for "Objectified." Both are available from Netflix Streaming

<comment><USER2> Yes, both were really awesome, though my girlfriend _hated_ objectfied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"We're all overstimulated," said Ms. Lee. "I think it's important to stop all that for a while and see what several hours of being bored really feels like."_

There's a difference? To me, overstimulation is incredibly boring. Overstimulation is the siren that tempts me to the next thing before I grasp the thing in front of me. Overstimulation is the nagging fear of missing something that makes me miss everything. I have to narrow things down and slow things down before I can engage with anything. Like alcohol, overstimulation is a depressant that feels deceptively like a stimulant, and reliably makes me stupider though it often makes me feel smarter. Maybe I'm just too slow for the 21st century.

<comment><USER5> Overstimulation isn't boring, otherwise people wouldn't seek for it.

Overstimulation is emotionally very engaging, but unfulfilling. It's a short emotional high, which people want to feel all the time, so they're searching for the next stimulus, in the hope to find the endless high.

But by doing this, they will never get into a fulfilling state, which isn't a emotional hight. It's a more settled but longing state.

<comment><USER6> Its the junk food of experiences

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sadly I can think of many instances where I encountered boardroom powerpoint just as uninteresting and pointless as that of Mr. Ward's tie collection.

<comment><USER8> IBM should host next year's. Two years ago I was forced to sit through a three-hour talk of theirs about ajax (which they thought was new) and OCRing licence plates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Then he began reciting the names of every single one of 415 colors listed in a paint catalog: damson dream, dauphin, dayroom yellow, dead salmon…and on and on and on."

I had that paint catalogue! We made a game out of trying to remember the names based on their (frequently ludicrous) descriptions. Good time killer on a long journey.

<comment><USER10> Reminded me of the moment in Stockhausen's Hymnen when the names of each shade of red in the Windor & Newtown water colour range are repeated several times in various languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's very true that most people are overstimulated, but I don't really get how people find a lack of stimulation boring. The things described in the article definitely do not sound interesting, but I can only imagine letting my mind wander off into more interesting/productive territory when confronted by them. The possibility of just wallowing in a lack of interest seems kind of lacking in creativity...

</comment><comment><USER12> This article doesn't explain how boredom is "pleasurable" or why people would want to go to a boredom conference. Could somebody explain it to me? Is this some kind of a joke?

<comment><USER13> I think this is an example of extremely dry English humor being absolutely baffling to Americans (I'm a bit of each, so I think I can get away with saying things like that).

From the article:

>Boring 2010 sprang to life when Mr. Ward heard that an event called the Interesting Conference had been canceled, and he sent out a joke tweet about the need to have a Boring Conference instead. He was taken aback when dozens of people responded enthusiastically.

<comment><USER12> But people would waste money and the entire time it takes to go to a conference, just for the sake of dry humor?

<comment><USER14> It's no waste. That's social networking gold. I'm kind of sorry I couldn't attend, really; sounds rather enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I got bored halfway through this and didn't finish it. The section on the conference itself felt so much like the Onion I think it could be copied verbatim into one of their articles without seeming out of place.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yet in trying to be boring, they ended up choosing unusual novelty topics that are relatively interesting when compared to truly dull pop culture pursuits like American Idol or Dancing With The Stars.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Boredom is counter-revolutionary"

</comment><comment><USER18> The conference actually seemed quite interesting to me (as well as some of his blog posts). But my tastes would be called boring by many.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is that there are no datacenters being used by big players in India? - <AUTHOR>

Why is that none of the global players like Amazon, RackSpace,  EdgeCast, Heroku, CloudFlare do not have a datacenter in India and the nearest is Singapore ? (No info about Akamai - I could not find a list of datacenters of Akamai)
India has approximately 137 million users which is close to Japan of 101 million. I can see the percentage compared with the population is very low and is still a developing country.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm#asia
Youtube is decently fast, Vimeo is too slow and no where close to Youtube. Since Google uses Akamai (assuming Youtube does too unless its does not have a caching server at the ISP (weird youtube urls when loading the actual video which indiciate the ISP)), search is at good speed.
I have two other questions -
1. Why are there no offerings for EC2 type services by RackSpace, Amazon etc in India ? There are few datacenter services like NetMagic and Ctrl-S which do not have the option of API calls. You cannot believe the interfaces and no easy way to evaluate a service.
2. The VPS server (I did not research dedicated servers) costs are significantly higher than a similar VPS server say, RackSpace or Linode or even MediaTemple. Compare MediaTemple and Linode, there is less significant difference in value of the servers based on the configuration offered. Is it purely business that drives these costs ? <comment><USER2> This sounds more like a question for quora which has a decent presence of Indian engineers rather the HN which reads pretty much like a US only site (if not bay area specific).</comment>


Facebook Timeline: Now Available Worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150408488962131 <comment><USER2> doesn't look like you can turn it off once you visit that page... great</comment>


Live user stats for my Android game. Thank you HN. - <AUTHOR> http://slagalica.tv/drones.php

<comment><AUTHOR> A few days ago I posted about my Android game made in 23 days, and feedback has been great:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6594521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6594521)

During development I posted updates on regular basis to LudumDare and Java- gaming forums, but I got way more traffic from HN.

I just want to thank everyone here, by giving the complete stats the user engagement for the game.</comment>


Google shuts down bank snafu Gmail account - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/28/google_rocky_mountain_bank_suit_rollls_on/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but if you're stupid enough to send sensitive information to a web- based email account, where it could be forever archived on servers you don't control, then you deserve whatever happens. This is completely ridiculous.</comment>


It's official: Path closes $30M funding round - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/04/16/path-30m-funding-round/

<comment><USER2> This works out to $7.50 per Path user. ...yyyyyeah.</comment>


Show HN: Ex-machina – Minimalist state machine in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RobinBressan/ex-machina

<comment><USER2> It wasn't immediately clear to me, but this library tracks both the state (e.g. "state1") and a payload, some arbitrary value. This already seems like two separate concerns?

As for transitions, it seems that each state has a collection of functions for every other state, which are called with the payload to determine if that state should be transitioned into. This seems error-prone - if there's no transition, is that the end or an error? If there are multiple, how do you choose?

It also seems that the state machine will run immediately to completion unless you return a promise payload. (Bluebird? ES6? It doesn't say.) So if you want a reactive document, this doesn't seem like a fit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh hey, I also built a JS state machine a while back. Nice to see other implementations around! :D - [https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/fsm- event](https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/fsm-event)

</comment><comment><USER4> Another one (but this time in python):

[http://docs.openstack.org/developer/automaton/api.html#machi...](http://docs.openstack.org/developer/automaton/api.html#machines)

Code @ [https://github.com/openstack/automaton](https://github.com/openstack/automaton)

</comment><comment><USER5> Could the OP or the Github Readme explain why this is called Ex-Machina...

<comment><AUTHOR> In fact there is no reason. I needed it quickly for another project and the common names was already taken on npm.

<comment><USER5> Thanks...makes sense now.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fear of launching a product - <AUTHOR> I work on different type of ideas and side projects. So far I have worked on around 7-8 large projects. With only 1 of them being what I call success.
One thing I noticed is that, I always have this fear of failure right before the product is finished. When this mindset sets in, I become less productive. Even though I sit in front of the PC and ready to work, my mind simply won't let me work. It lets other thoughts pass through and I get depressed. I suddenly become a pessimist losing the belief in my own work.
My success ratio is there as a good evidence for my mind. The downside with launching and failing is that if you get 1-10 users/customers, you can't kill off the project. You have to sustain support and server infrastructure, which is  an extra burden.
3 of the projects I spent months on I didn't even launch, I lost all belief in it.
Has anyone else experienced such, and how did you convince yourself to carry on with the launch? <comment><USER2> Random advice from the internet.

Maybe reframing what it means to start side project as talking to potential users (rather than writing code) might get the projects further. Talking to people is often harder because it includes the possibility of rejection.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can tell you that I am in the same boat: I have been working on 3 side projects for over a year now (and I have plans to build about 5-8 more) and I'm a little fearful of releasing them. I've been working on them since March 2016 and I was supposed to go live in June 2016, then February 2017, and now I'm pushing July 2017.

My delays aren't the fear of launching, however, as much of the time it has been life issues: from trying to make sure my lady is happy, to having to work extra hours at work, to having to spend time with family and friends, to having to fix bugs and update features (I had to update everything from PHP 5.4 to PHP 7), to running out of money to support the projects -- as I pay third parties for their API, to procrastinating and being unable to focus, to just plainly being exhausted, where I've opened up the project to work on it, and the next thing I know.. the laptop is next to me, sometimes even on my chest, and it's morning time.

I run a semi-popular website called Confessions of the Professions ( [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com) ) a few years ago that began with just 3 visitors: my mom, my girlfriend, and Google bot. And yet today, it receives about an average of 1,000 visitors. A few weeks ago, several articles went viral, and for two weeks, it was receiving 10,000-20,000 visitors a day.

I released another project, a free web app, called MyPost ( [https://mypost.io](https://mypost.io) ) that was really a test to see if people would even use something I created. With over 3000 posts created and worldwide use, I'd say it taught me a lot but gave me confidence to know that people actually would use the things I build.

These were easy to launch as I really didn't feel any pressure to "make sure everything worked 100%" and even sometimes I catch things broken.. and I just fix them, and no one complains. I think I may have had one person just let me know that something wasn't working correctly, but for the most part, I don't feel any pressure in knowing that these two projects have their minor issues. It also helps that both are free to visit and use.

However, lately since I'm working on projects that I actually charge for, I fear the launch.

My fear is not really the launch itself, but the fact that: What if I launch it and there are a ton of errors while live? What if I launch it and not a single person signs up? What if everyone hates it? Although I have done my best to test and test and even got other people to help with beta testing and there are no major issues, I still have that fear of that one error that we all didn't catch that is going to wreck me and cause me to be a failure.

I am nearly done with all my testing enough to say: Let me just go for it, at least, get friends and acquaintances to use it before I go completely public with it. I just keep convincing myself to move forward: I want to turn these side projects into a business and make a living off of them. That is what keeps me going. If I don't, someone else will.

KEEP GOING MAN! KEEP GOING! YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU GOT THIS! DON'T LOSE HOPE!

There may be failure, but if you never launch it, than how will you ever know? Besides, failure always tends to eventually lead to success. With every thing you do, you are constantly learning. Now you and I .. we just have to learn to have that confidence in ourselves to know that our products aren't that bad at all.. and other people may find them useful. If anything, at least we find our own products useful.

Good luck. Just know.. there are others out there... like me, who are going through exactly what you are going through.</comment>


Apple Patents Tech That Could Prevent You from Filming/Photographing at Concerts - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/news/66471-apple-patents-technology-that-could-prevent-you-from-filming-taking-photos-at-concerts/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is probably the scariest patent I have seen in a while. Anyone with the right equipment can prevent someone else from recording them.

That includes concerts. But also police overstepping boundaries, mafiosi, riot controllers, etc...

My suggestion is to never buy a phone that has this 'feature'.

<comment><USER2> Alternatively, if you buy one, also buy a IR filter. This seems easy to defeat, as there's no way the software will require some IR signal to be present to operate.</comment></comment>


Trout tickling - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_tickling <comment><USER2> I first heard of trout trickling when reading Roald Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World. I'm surprised to know it's actually a thing - I thought the author made it up. Of course, as others mentioned, highly illegal and discouraged in modern times

<comment><USER3> I think I accidentally downvoted you, sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've done this during survival training. I think that it's illegal in some places, because it works so well.

I got the impression that the fish thinks that your fingers are vegetation. When you're in the right position, you can grab the gills and tail at the same time and throw it onto the shore where a helper can dispatch it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not a fisherman here, so maybe someone can explain this to me:

\- If you can get your hands on the fish's belly for a whole minute, why not just grab it then and there?

\- How did evolution let something like this happen? What happens if the fish swims near the bottom of the stream for a bit and happens to touch it's belly?

<comment><USER6> It looks like it's less about "putting the fish to sleep" and more about simulating weeds with your fingers to avoid alarming the fish as you start to grab it.

[http://drowningworms.com/tickle-trout/](http://drowningworms.com/tickle- trout/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, you just need to work your hands into position and then grab it. I don't think that it's a good idea to do it if you aren't going to eat the fish, because I remember having to grab it very forcefully in the gills to be sure that it wouldn't slip away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone worried this isn't suitable for work: it's not a euphemism.

<comment><USER8> Somewhere, in some office, it is now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those too lazy to search on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VegSmoDWqdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VegSmoDWqdY)

</comment><comment><USER10> Its a form of Tonic Immobility, or animal hypnosis [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_immobility](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_immobility) There's even an entry on Trout tickling on the page.

What quite impressive is putting bigger sharks into the tonic state. Here's a pretty crazy clip from the Sharkman doco where he puts a feeding Tiger shark into tonic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HnUvXMH7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0HnUvXMH7w)

</comment><comment><USER11> The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Trout Tickling

</comment><comment><USER12> Chickens are easily hypnotized :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems less like tickling and more like gentle massaging. And if you're lucky, you may end up with a happy ending.</comment>


Free Docker: How Far Would You Go for a Blue Ocean Strategy? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getcrane.com/free-docker-how-far-would-you-go-for-a-blue-ocean-strategy

<comment><USER2> I think they are vulnerable.

If they are like most companies of their sort, their "exit" is to get bought, not to get revenue.

RHT, for instance, knows how to make money selling open source software and you'd better believe they are thinking 24/7 on how to survive and thrive in a Docker world.

I think of Hortonworks, Cloudera and all the "me too" Hadoop vendors that offer value-subtracted products that offer web interfaces for configuration that are antiquated in the devops age. Why go to these guys when you can get any of the Bangalore Bhangers to consult on "big data" projects. Maybe one of them will catch "the next big thing" (Mesos, Spark, whatever "worse is better" product is a little less worse than Hadop) and the rest will dry up and blow away.

Mongodb has had some success in terms of getting money in but that's the combination of (1) a product that people want to believe in and (2) doesn't really deliver, that brings in the bucks. (i.e. if the product delivered there would not be any need for consulting)</comment>


Just Not Sorry: Stop sending ineffective emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.justnotsorry.com/ <comment><USER2> For those who are curious like I was, the flagged words/phrases are:

just

actually

sorry

apologize

I think

I'm no expert

does that make sense

reasons are in the source here: [https://github.com/cyrusinnovation/just-not- sorry/blob/maste...](https://github.com/cyrusinnovation/just-not- sorry/blob/master/src/Warnings.js)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Sorry" is not an undermining phrase, it is part of being polite. I don't care what you learned in Alpha Male school, sometimes you really should apologize.

<comment><USER4> I assume this tool isn't meant for everyone, but rather those who feel they struggle to be heard and taken seriously when communicating via email.

Sometimes it's effective to be direct, and if you intend to be direct you might consider flagging those words and phrases. But if you are trying to either be conciliatory, or generate consensus, then you need to use phrases like "I think".

Email tone is incredibly difficult to manage, and most people fail. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to de-escalate a situation that was caused when email tone was misinterpreted as harsh, mean, condescending, sarcastic, whiny, etc.

It's to the point where my perfect email plugin would basically block the page and say "isn't there another tool you could use to communicate this"?</comment></comment>


Shtepify: Simple steps to accomplish any task - <AUTHOR> http://www.shtepify.com <comment><AUTHOR> Site currently in public beta, user feedback is highly welcome.</comment>


Video: Edward Snowden:  Why? - <AUTHOR> http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why

<comment><AUTHOR> I just want to comment that this is the most moving video I've seen since Obama's nomination to the Democratic ticket as a presidential candidate.

The irony of that is not lost on me.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you track your startups metrics? - <AUTHOR> What tools do you use to track growth? Or other metrics that gauge your projects success? <comment><USER2> Progress towards idiosyncratic milestones is hard to capture with metrics. Acquisition, activation, retention and monetization like metrics are offered by most services. Keep it simple with something like Google Analytics (or anything that collects the data) and compute the metrics periodically. You'll probably need to clean your data to make it useful; that's almost always easier once exported. That's the basis for an internal and external viewpoints for board discussions and decision making.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mixpanel

<comment><AUTHOR> I was less so speaking on website metrics and more so on business metrics. Maybe there's more to Mixpanel that I'm not aware of but does it go beyond funnels, website conversions, a/b testing, etc.?

I realize saying "metrics" is a bit broad but I imagine early stage startups track some of these like user-growth, revenue growth, subscription growth to get an idea of how their startup is performing or to help goal-set. Or is this an area where most hack together a spreadsheet that unifies data from external data sources?

<comment><USER4> For subscriptions we use [https://baremetrics.com/](https://baremetrics.com/) There is a way to add one-off invoices as well. Slack bot, forecast charts and they keep adding features.</comment></comment></comment>


Friendster Gets Friendly With Facebook Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/friendster-facebook-developers

<comment><USER2> do you think that apps should be translated before attempting to link over to friendster?</comment>


Melbourne researchers uncover privacy lapses in transport dataset - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252468664/Melbourne-researchers-uncover-privacy-lapses-in-transport-dataset <comment><USER2> > Continue Reading This Article Enjoy this article as well as all of our > content, including E-Guides, news, tips and more. > Enter corporate e-mail > address.

What an especially annoying piece of reading filter.

[https://outline.com/antxj9](https://outline.com/antxj9)</comment>


Conservative Leaders: 'Social Media Censorship' Has 'Reached a Crisis Level' - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/05/02/conservative-leaders-social-media-censorship-has-reached-a-crisis-level/ <comment><USER2> I hate the implication of this, that social media is so important to free speech that the companies that run it should try to achieve equal representation of political ideas. Create a new platform or find a different method to reach people if you hate the status quo. People shouldn't be dependent on social media to receive new information/ideas and I don't have sympathy for people that are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm conflicted on this one. I'm a huge fan of freedom of speech, even speech I don't like. As long as it's not libel or inciting violence. But I don't think the private companies should be forced to provide a platform for these things. If the conservative leaders are just urging these companies to act in a certain way then great but if they want the government to force them to act that way I'm totally against that. I'm also under the impression that most conservatives (myself included) want less government regulation not more.

<comment><USER4> I think in general social media is hostile to conservative viewpoints because most social media users are young.

There's really not much social media companies can do if someone gets downvoted into oblivion because 90% of people viewing a comment thread are under the age of 25 and more likely to be liberal as a result.

That said, companies like Reddit need to be careful that they don't automatically interpret something like criticism of illegal immigration as hate speech. Of course such criticism certainly could be framed in such a way that it is hate speech, but it's very possible to not be hateful while discussing illegal immigration and similarly sensitive issues. Yet therein lies the grey.

<comment><USER3> But even then if Reddit wants to be left leaning and censor out conservative views why shouldn't they be free do that?

I'm a conservative but think private companies should be free to choose political sides. My hope is that market forces lead them to a more neutral stance but that may not happen.

Freedom of speech shouldn't trump a private companies freedom to act as they please.</comment></comment></comment>


React.js Conf 2016 [videos] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb0IAmt7-GS0M8Q95RIc2lOM6nc77q1IY <comment><USER2> I tried submitting a reddit thread ([https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/474odi/what_about_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/474odi/what_about_reactcanvas/)), but it didn't get much traction... I think because the videos got pulled. I hope you guys don't mind if I ask this question here, and I apologize if I'm being naive in some way:

Aditya Punjani's later Flipkart talk ([https://youtu.be/m2tvYGCdOzs](https://youtu.be/m2tvYGCdOzs)) mentioned the importance of mobile web apps and 60 FPS.

Ben Alpert's talk mentioned ([https://youtu.be/-RJf2jYzs8A?t=1378](https://youtu.be/-RJf2jYzs8A?t=1378)) "React Native for the web" would be awesome.

There was even a lightning talk on react-native-web which attempts to do this using the traditional DOM ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBg2_uQE4KM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBg2_uQE4KM))

Whatever happened to Flipboard's React Canvas ([http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile- web/](http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web/) and [https://github.com/Flipboard/react- canvas](https://github.com/Flipboard/react-canvas)) being a solution to these problems? There's pretty good browser availability and although there's currently no perfect solutions for things like accessibility, SEO, or server- side rendering... I failed to se a real "nail in the coffin". Did it just never gather enough momentum?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not very familiar with this topic but you may find yesterday's Mozilla Webrender discussion interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of good talks to explore. The most entertaining one was Jamison Dance's talk on Elm. He's a good speaker and is funny

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxKx_I39a8&index=31&list=PL...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxKx_I39a8&index=31&list=PLb0IAmt7-GS0M8Q95RIc2lOM6nc77q1IY)

</comment><comment><USER4> My favourite talk was only 5 minutes long and came from Elie Rotenberg[0]. He demonstrated how React can be used to completely obfuscate the DOM tree.

In practice it seems somewhat malicious to do this, however there may be some legitimate use cases too.

[0] [https://youtu.be/n63XXHY4A7I](https://youtu.be/n63XXHY4A7I)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm watching Nick Schrock's keynote video and at 5:15 he says someone made this stained-glass window: [http://i.imgur.com/tBx7zku.png](http://i.imgur.com/tBx7zku.png)

<comment><USER5> Kind of a sidetrack, but I've always wondered, why more of these types of artistic creations aren't done with sugar... I mean, you'd have to seal it to prevent moisture/deterioration, but it feels like it would be more easily expressed in that medium.

In any case, it's a cool piece of art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't have the time to watch all the videos, here's are the github links to the most interesting projects from Day 2:

NavigationExperimental: new multi-tab-aware navigation component [https://github.com/facebook/react- native/tree/master/Librari...](https://github.com/facebook/react- native/tree/master/Libraries/NavigationExperimental) cf. previous work on in- app "paths"by TaskRabbit [http://tech.taskrabbit.com/blog/2015/09/21/react- native-exam...](http://tech.taskrabbit.com/blog/2015/09/21/react-native- example-app/)

Nuclide is an IDE for building react-native apps [http://nuclide.io/docs/quick-start/getting- started/](http://nuclide.io/docs/quick-start/getting-started/) source [https://github.com/facebook/nuclide](https://github.com/facebook/nuclide)

Realm is a mobile database: an alternative to SQLite & key-value stores. Previously iOS and Java, now works with react native too [https://github.com/realm/realm-js](https://github.com/realm/realm-js)

Exponent lets you write apps in js w/o need for iOS/Android toolchain [https://exponentjs.com/](https://exponentjs.com/)

Static site generator using React.js [https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby)

React Native for Web: A framework for building Native Web Apps [https://github.com/necolas/react-native- web](https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web)

The source code of wp-calypso, an example of a large React.js project: [https://github.com/Automattic/wp- calypso/tree/master/client](https://github.com/Automattic/wp- calypso/tree/master/client)

enzyme's shallow-DOM testing utilities for React [https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme#shallow- rendering](https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme#shallow-rendering)

react-native-mock: a fully mocked and test-friendly version of react native [https://github.com/lelandrichardson/react-native- mock](https://github.com/lelandrichardson/react-native-mock)

graphene: GraphQL framework for Python [https://github.com/graphql- python/graphene](https://github.com/graphql-python/graphene) and their hosted version [http://resolver.cloud/](http://resolver.cloud/)</comment>


Ask HN: Internship at Zynga or Hootesuite? - <AUTHOR>

I have to make a choice between taking an internship at Zynga in San Francisco, or Hootesuite in Vancouver. Zynga is appealing to me because its an opportunity to relocate to SF temporarily, but a search on HN returns only negative things. Hootsuite on the other hand seems to be on the uprise.<p>Does anybody have anything to say about working at Zynga as an intern (or full-time employee) that could be reaffirming to a university student. <comment><USER2> Why do you want to associate yourself with the scumbaggery that is Zynga? Do a google search and see why they have the bad rep.

Here's a link to get you started: [http://vator.tv/news/2013-07-07-the-good- the-bad-and-the-ugl...](http://vator.tv/news/2013-07-07-the-good-the-bad-and- the-ugly-of-zynga-under-pincus)

If you want to see and experience San Francisco, I guess you'll have to risk it. But keep in mind, San Francisco has a pretty high cost of living.

</comment><comment><USER3> Internships are highly variable and your experience depends on the team you're on, your projects, your mentors, etc.

Assuming you have been offered to join roughly the same team/role at both companies, etc. etc., I would advise you to go with Zynga. Is Zynga as a company on the way down? Probably. But putting aside Zynga's poor product performance, Zynga remains a well-recognized/assessed engineering brand, whereas HootSuite is relative less of a brand. Zynga has plenty of challenging and interesting engineering problems for you to tackle. And as you've said yourself, having worked in Vancouver before, it's an opportunity to check out SF.

</comment><comment><USER4> i would go with Zynga.

i was employee 7, lived many scumbagggeries during my tenure and am aware of many more after my departure. not much to add to what you'll find online, excpet that it might not have been the right thing or the right ways or for the right reasons but we worked our asses off building that POS, Pincus as much or more than anyone. the first year was a blast and i met tons of really, really good people that I'm still close with.

your experience won't be like that. but you'll be in SF. the start-up thing ain't for everyone (if you're interested based on how much money you think you'll have in your bank account after a few years, you probably did your math wrong), but if you want to make a go at it, i would get to SF. Zynga will probably suck, but you'll meet people there and in town and you'll get to experience first-hand the shit-show / circle-jerk / world-changing whirlwind that is "The Valley".

you don't have to. anyone can build anything anywhere. but i would.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would do Hootesuite. Zynga is not all that, like you said there are not a lot of great things happening there at the moment and Hootesuite is headed up.

You should checkout SF, but don't get suckered into thinking its amazing either. There are some great companies but the city itself is expensive and probably not all that livable. Vancouver is a real nice place.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the jobs were in the same place I would lean towards Hootesuite, but an internship is the perfect chance to checkout SF without overcommitting. I've worked in Vancouver before, but only visited SF. I just can't decide if living in SF is a good enough reason to base my decision off of.</comment></comment>


America's Top Hackers - The Geeks On The Frontlines  - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontlines#i.1hmnxoiwxdgsxy

<comment><USER2> Wow, cool design (also, it was neat to zoom into a Thinkpad W520 on this W530 that I'm browsing on at the moment).</comment>


Save my reading spot, damn it - <AUTHOR> http://dangoldin.com/2013/05/22/save-my-reading-spot-damn-it/

<comment><USER2> It's not just web sites that do this. When you open the Twitter client on Android, for example, it'll go to the top of your feed instead of to the tweet that you read last, forcing you to scroll down, reading tweets until you find one that you've seen before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I wasn't even talking about syncing across devices but yea - that Twitter behavior pisses me off. They also show me the same unread notifications on every device. The frustrating thing is that I know how easy it would be to fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree with you. I'd refine it further by eliminating all instances of "1,2,single page". If it's only two pages, just go straight to single page and don't force me to deal with something that's effectively a non-issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea - I always wondered why they even bother splitting a 2 pager into 2 pages.

I really like the trend of single page long form content now though. NPR does a great job of it that makes it a much more engaging experience - <http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/>

They also don't have to worry about ad revenue though.</comment></comment>


What is it with banks? - <AUTHOR> http://pzxc.com/what-is-it-with-banks

<comment><USER2> In my past job I was building online banking for a small Los Angeles based bank. I'm pretty sure they offer the service you seek. The online banking service I was helping build is still in beta but I think you can request to be added to the beta. Try City National Bank (cnb.com).

</comment><comment><USER3> Is that really the standard in the US? In Lloyds (UK) same-bank transfers are free and instantaneous, first time requires two-factor auth (mobile call confirmation). It works pretty well actually. Web / mobile enabled. I haven't seen a check in years...</comment>


Ask HN: How to learn to document and demo a software product? - <AUTHOR> I'm a developer and every time I want to demo my projects, I struggle to draw diagrams (functional ones) for documentation and even worse, when I show my the product, I feel that my speech is disordered, inconsistant and feels low quality.<p>Even if, according to the feedbacks, the product in its self is great.
I feel the need to learn sketching but not sure ... <comment><USER2> If you want to give a good demo don't leave it to chance. Write a script and rehearse it. Keep practicing until you are comfortable and can do it in your sleep.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you. What about learning how to present things (or sketch them) ? are there good resources to learn that ?</comment></comment>


What's the Matter with Fiction Sales? - <AUTHOR> https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/78446-what-s-the-matter-with-fiction-sales.html <comment><USER2> Amazon and Apple take all the cream, nothing is left for publishers and authors.

Books were meant to free us from printing, shopping and logistics. Instead we replaced huge physical costs with huge digital costs.

It's unbelievable that digital storefronts charge 30% of revenue just to ring a credit card and transit a few megabytes. Of course, you cannot go elsewhere since they hold a monopoly position.

It's time for government intervention to take the commission rates of these storefronts down to 10%. You will then see an explosion in actual good content being delivered to customers, instead of the deadweight losses accruing now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Netflix and HBO happened.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your current best development environment? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \- Development Environment: lightweight editor + command line rather than one IDE: Sublime + iTerm [0]

\- Hosting: Digital Ocean with Dokku (web applications) and server blocks (static website) [1]

\- Application Development: React, React Router, Apollo, GraphQL, Express, PostgreSQL [2]

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/developer- setup/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/developer-setup/)

\- [1] [https://github.com/rwieruch/fullstack-apollo-react- express-b...](https://github.com/rwieruch/fullstack-apollo-react-express- boilerplate-project)

\- [2] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/deploy-applications-digital- ocea...](https://www.robinwieruch.de/deploy-applications-digital-ocean/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You asked "my best", so, at home:

\- Xubuntu 18.04 on older i7 with 16Gb RAM and SSD, with two fullHD monitors.

\- Libreoffice and Modelio.org for the "architecture" tasks

\- IntelliJ Ultimate with several plugins for all server-side jvm development

\- postgresql for sql related needs

\- couple of zshells on multitabbed multipanelled Terminator

\- Firefox quantum with uBlock Origin for the browsing needs

\- bitbucket for source control

\- noise cancelling headphones.

( but at the day job, it's a buggy windows 10 with eclipse on a i5, single HD 1366x768 monitor, 8Gb RAM, HDD... the thing reboots for no reason twice a day. )

<comment><USER4> Why would you subject yourself to that?

<comment><USER3> paycheck... :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- GNU/LINUX

\- No heavy desktop environments

\- Getting rid of using mouse, try to be fully compliant of using just keyboard.

\- Use a tiling window manager {i3, awesome, bspwm, etc}. YMMV on which wm fits your needs best.

\- Use vim-vixen on firefox or qutebrowser for vim bindings

\- EMACS + EVIL Mode or Vim

\- There are a bunch of Terminal Emulators.. I use terminator, but you could get away with something minimal like RXVT, URXVT, or ST.

<comment><USER6> >> EMACS + EVIL

Spacemacs is a very viable alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Home office. Plenty of space, some nice bookshelves, view across open fields when I want to test my eyes, and _quiet_.

(Also a nice big monitor, and a "standing desk" built out of scrap but nice and solid).

This makes far more difference than the exact tools I'm using on a given project.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like paradise! I wish I had a setup like that. :/

<comment><USER7> Sadly, don't get to spend all my working hours in that environment. It's where I get a disproportionate amount of the actual work done, though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Windows / Visual Studio for creating a web app and supporting services and Azure for hosting it. Git/Github for source control. Slack for communication. Octopus Deploy for CD. VSTS for CI.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a data science intern, i use:

\- Python on Pycharm for crawling, cleaning, and database related stuff.

\- Jupyter lab for analyzing, visualizing, and reporting insights.

\- Bitbucket for personal private projects.

\- Gitlab for company related projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> \- Python 3 / Flask in Sublime for API development, services and scripting

\- Vue in VS Code for front end

\- DO Droplet for hosting, AWS S3/Cloudfront for static assets

</comment><comment><USER11> Are you talking tech stack? I'm a big fan of Spring Boot 2 with Kotlin for backends and React with SSR via next.js for client-side.

</comment><comment><USER12> Mac + IntelliJ for large projects, Sublime for one-off files.

</comment><comment><USER13> Atom IDE on one screen and terminal + chrome on another screen

</comment><comment><USER14> Qt creator for c++,

sublime for javascript, python and everything else.

gdb for debugging

mongodb for database

ec2 for hosting</comment>


China is Cheating the World Student Rankings System - Kilo-byte http://world.time.com/2013/12/04/china-is-cheating-the-world-student-rankings-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> Linkbait title.

The results are listed as Shanghai's results. If people are misinterpreting them as China's results, that is people's fault. In this case, Time's fault.

The truth is that China is not cheating and Time is misrepresenting the facts.

<comment><USER2> I've seen them described as results for China in the past, not just in Time. Agreed, it appears that that's not China's fault, which makes this article unfair, but hopefully Time publishing this will make publications that had previously described the results as "China's" in future describe them accurately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author is totally a moron.

"By not providing full national data, China is in effect cheating."

PISA only conducted their study in Shanghai, how can China provide full national data? By faking one?</comment>


Dutch bank predicts Europeans will buy only electric cars by 2035 - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/07/13/dutch-bank-predicts-europeans-will-buy-electric-cars-2035/ <comment><AUTHOR> As the battery and electricty car tech keeps improving earlier they are predicting the dominance of electric cars. End of 2020 I expect all car manufacturers to have $20-25k priced electric cars and by 2025 only hybrid and electric mass produced cars will be sold.</comment>


Linux hardening schemes across five popular distributions - <AUTHOR> https://capsule8.com/blog/millions-of-binaries-later-a-look-into-linux-hardening-in-the-wild/ <comment><USER2> Others have pointed out some errors with the methods employed in this report.

Still, who else is collecting this kind and fidelity of data? I found the trends very informative. First that we're still a long long way from having hardened base operating systems, but also that the trend is positive and slowly moving in the right direction.

Even just getting a breakdown of CVEs is interesting (though I would have liked better granularity than "bypass something") for both trends and to understand just how many DoS issues come up per year versus say code injections or overflows.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If the data collection is faulty, then it doesn't matter how interesting the results are or how needed they may be, because they're compromised and unreliable. Yes, this should be studied, but to be at all useful the study has to be accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Apparently this article confuses "OpenSUSE" (which there is no verion 12.4 of) with SLES and even tests an old version thereof.

There are other grave mistakes in there, so I wouldn't recommend reading it at all.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised they didn't include Fedora, considering its hardened by default stance.

<comment><USER5> Especially since Fedora, Centos and Red Hat are roughly versions of the same thing, with Fedora being the front-leader version wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yesterday's thread has some comments, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19283743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19283743)

</comment><comment><USER7> "For each distribution, we downloaded all its packages, and analyzed the hardening schemes of their enclosed binaries... Our findings confirm that even basic hardening schemes, such as stack canaries and position independent code, are not fully adopted."

Is this finding that basic hardening techniques are not applied to every available binary? I would expect some hardening techniques to break some binaries.

<comment><USER8> Binaries that break when stack canaries are added are arguably not things you want to run anyways…</comment></comment>


Arianna Huffington on a Book About Working Less, Resting More - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/books/review/arianna-huffington-rest-alex-soojung-kim-pang.html <comment><USER2> Great piece by Yasmin Nair about this book: [https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/killing-you-softly- wi...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/killing-you-softly-with-her- dreams)</comment>


Apple accused of impersonating police in effort to recover lost iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/09/02/apple-accused-of-impersonating-police-during-effort-to-recover-lost-iphone-5-prototype/

<comment><USER2> This is scary. A step closer to the future visions I saw in the movies when I was a kid.</comment>