Worst gadget ever? Ars reviews a $99 Android tablet - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-ever-ars-reviews-a-99-android-tablet.ars

<comment><USER2> i bought one to play with. it wasn't quite as good as the reviewer said, although i briefly got the wireless working. My run time was about 20 min before dead batteries. It took 45 minutes for Walgreens to figure out how to refund my money, and in the end could only refund it within $2 on my creditcard with the rest in cash

</comment><comment><USER3> I pity all the uninformed consumers who buy this, or even worse, people who receive this as a gift from those uninformed consumers...

<comment><USER4> Devices like these can be very harmful to Android's image in the public, especially if their only feature/selling point is "powered by Android".

My brother bought a Samsung Galaxy cellphone (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy>). The half-baked combination of hardware and software, with no updates available, made him soon regret the purchase. He was angry at Samsung and Google/Android for "producing such crap". Somehow he managed to return it and got an iPhone instead.

This experience made him to not buy an Android phone again. More of such bad examples/devices could become a really big problem for Android.

<comment><USER5> Conversely, the Samsung Galaxy S class of phones (I have the Captivate from AT&T) is a wonderful device. The only limitation is that it is still on 2.1, but it is supposed to be upgrade "sometime". That's AT&T's fault, though.

<comment><USER6> It is not entirely carriers' fault though. Samsung is yet to roll-out the update even in out countries like India, where carriers don't interfere with it at all.

To top it all off, they've disabled OTA and need a Windows only desktop software (Kies) to update the OS. The latest version of this doesn't upgrade even minor upgrades of the firmware.

A HN user suggested a workaround on another thread by downgrading the version of Kies. When I tried it, it didn't even show that a minor firmware upgrade was available.

While Galaxy is wonderful on the hardware side, it has miles to go with its software.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but that's generally true of hardware companies. Intel's software (other than their compiler) is terrible. I wish hardware companies would just agree on a standard and let the software companies (Apple, Microsoft, etc.) handle synchronization.

Yes, I know it is isn't as easy as that, but it would have to be better than the ghetto that is hardware company-supplied software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> BBYOpen, Best Buy's API team, found some other interesting uses for the $99 Android tablet... :)

[http://bbyopen.com/2010/11/maylong-android-tablet-more- versa...](http://bbyopen.com/2010/11/maylong-android-tablet-more-versatile- than-you-think)

</comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of when one of my good friends came back from China with a knockoff iPhone. I bought his extra one off him for $50 out of sheer curiosity. Everything this article said about the knockoff tablet vs. the real thing was true for the phone--it was billed as a touch phone and yet came with a stylus, because using it with your fingers was impossible; in fact using it with the stylus was almost impossible too. It had the look-and-feel of an iPhone, but all the apps were clearly just cheap, badly translated knockoffs that were just truly awfully made. The wifi would "connect" but never worked. The screen was scratched after two days of use.

I ended up sending a few text messages with it (it took me 15 minutes to compose each one because of the awful interface) and after messing around with it for a while got so frustrated that I promptly "lost" it.

It was a great conversation starter though--"Hey, want to see my Chinese iPhone?" It always got a laugh out of people when I showed them.

<comment><USER9> Quality for Chinese products varies, though. A friend of mine uses as a main phone a chinese one, mostly because it can take two sim cards (i.e., two phone numbers). It's good enough for daily, intense use, and as a bonus and laugh factor it also has an antenna and TV included.

That said, my experience with Chinese products and parts has been less then satisfactory. I guess we don't really have any way to discern good products from bad... no "brand recognition" to speak of. It's too bad, because I bet there are a lot of good companies out there making good products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bought one for my girlfriend's two-year-old to watch Sesame Street. It works for that, and if she decides to throw it on the ground (which she's still learning not to do), hey, at least it wasn't an expensive cell phone or something.

Mostly I agree with the article's assessment on the touchscreen. I haven't had any trouble with the wireless on mine, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> "No applications can perform this action." just replaced "lp 0 on fire" as my all time favorite error message.

It's like you asked it to solve the halting problem, or violate one of Asimov's laws.

</comment><comment><USER12> I learned about the Nook Color over the weekend. It has the potential to be a really good Android tablet ($249, 800MHz A8, 8GB storage). Only thing is that it's restricted to running apps approved by B&N, and it's running 2.1.

<comment><USER13> I wonder how long till it's rooted?

<comment><USER14> Not long at all, hopefully.

[http://fineoils.blogspot.com/2010/11/nook-colour-root-is- nea...](http://fineoils.blogspot.com/2010/11/nook-colour-root-is-near.html)

They got it to boot from an sd card, which is a step in the right direction. When it gets rooted, it will be one hell of a tablet for its price. Is this a loss leader for B&N? It seems very cheap for its build quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My favorite part - "anyone looking to buy one would get more bang for the buck by setting it on fire for warmth. "

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I'd be tempted to use one of these as a device which simply displays a custom written webpage which fetches and displays information. Once you've got it running it does nothing other than display a webpage. Put it on the desk, plugged in constantly. It could show my calendar or weather/traffic data.

<comment><USER16> What's a small LCD panel cost instead?

<comment><USER17> Generally more. And they don't come with integrated WiFi or enough CPU to display anything on their own.

I'm trying to figure out if one of these would be useful as a wireless display for data that updates once every 5 minutes or so.

I live at a retreat center in the Cascade mountains, and we've got all sorts of diagnostic data about our hydroelectric generator and furnaces that would be useful to show.

<comment><USER18> I'm interested in info on this retreat. Is there anything available online? Does the retreat have a name?

<comment><USER17> <http://www.holdenvillage.org/>

I'm presently the IT Coordinator, which is an odd mix of Windows Systems Administration, Network Administration, and Website maintenance. (Sooner or later maybe some web development.)

<comment><USER19> Oooh, I was wondering what that was on the map! I spent a bunch of time last summer adventuring up the Suiattle River, just 10 miles due west of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _The lag is slow and inconsistent, forcing you to always wonder if you need > to hit something again or whether the M-150 is just trying to figure out if > you hit S, A, or D._

I almost missed this journalistic easter egg!

Also… did you see the thumbnail they are using to link to this story? They photoshopped in some, er, _brown froyo._ [http://static.arstechnica.net/assets/2010/11/m-150-list- thum...](http://static.arstechnica.net/assets/2010/11/m-150-list- thumb-140x78-17884-f.jpg)

I still can't get over the IE icon showing up on an Apple-imitating "dock."

<comment><USER21> Sometime in the last year, ArsTechnica picked up a really good artist for their article art. There are times I'll read articles there just to see the images this person creates. I get a laugh out of them pretty frequently.

<comment><USER22> Agree. I like the one they made for this article: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/10/tri-screen- cpu-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/10/tri-screen-cpu-monitor- ars-reviews-the-12-core-2010-mac-pro.ars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised no one has asked this yet:

How easy is this thing to hack? At $99 for a small ARM system with a 7" screen and battery, this is a damn good deal compared to getting a similar setup with a BeagleBoard.

<comment><USER24> _How easy is this thing to hack?_

Easy-ish. It's a Wondermedia WM8505-based tablet, so there are a bunch of other relatives (same Android port, AFAIK) like the Eken M001.

Here are some resources:

* Teardown/serial console: [http://projectgus.com/2010/06/eken-m001-teardown-serial-cons...](http://projectgus.com/2010/06/eken-m001-teardown-serial-consol/) (disclaimer: that's my blog.)

* Debian port (forum is offline atm, though): <http://www.slatedroid.com/eken-m001-debian/>

* Open source kernel from scratch (work in progress): <http://groups.google.com/group/vt8500-wm8505-linux-kernel> <http://gitorious.org/linux-on-via-vt8500>

* Kernel released by Wondermedia (dog's breakfast): <http://github.com/projectgus/kernel_wm8505> (That last one is a link to my github copy of their tarball release, with a couple of tweaks.)

 _similar setup with a BeagleBoard_

It's worth pointing out that similar ain't really similar. The CPU technology is two generations older (ARM9), connectivity is more limited, open source availability is more limited, and hardware quality is significantly worse.

It is a good bit cheaper, though. :D

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the links! Reading threads like this ([http://groups.google.com/group/vt8500-wm8505-linux- kernel/br...](http://groups.google.com/group/vt8500-wm8505-linux- kernel/browse_thread/thread/aa349f150baba222)) definitely makes the BeagleBoard look like a good value in comparison.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, if you get a kick out of reverse engineering then it's a plus.

If you don't, then you're better off with something like the BeagleBoard where the TI OMAP3 technical docs, BSP + libraries are all published and have well- supported open source around them.

EDIT: It's worth pointing out that the linked thread is about reverse- engineering the RGB565 graphics mode (for Android) and some of the other esoteric graphics chipset features. Graphics in X11 work fine at the moment, both with Wondermedia's kernel release and with Alexey's open source one. Support for most "normal" WM8505 functions is present in one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There seem to be a few sub-standard Android tablets around at the moment. A high-street clothing retailer in the UK recently released one for £180, which was also entertainingly panned by the press:

"All in all, a disastrous piece of gadgetry." [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/10/a_cutprice_tablet_computer_whatev.html)

"If this were a car it would be roughly in the category of a Robin Reliant from a couple of decades ago." [http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/10/next-10"-tablet- rev...](http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/10/next-10"-tablet-review/)

A common concern is that these products will damage the reputation of Android as a platform, and I suspect that's true.

</comment><comment><USER26> If Google were smart, they'd come out with their own Android tablet. That way people would stop being enticed by this absolute crap.

<comment><USER27> Will Google also sell it at Walgreens? Because if not, the people who are enticed by low-end gadgets sold at Walgreens will not know about it.

<comment><USER26> People will buy it because it says "Google", in the same way products are bought because they say "Apple".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When people talk about the problems of Android fragmentation, its this low end where things get really scary.

<comment><USER14> It is also at the low end that things get interesting. Most people get caught up in this fight over Android and iOS, so they never see that they are completely divergent platforms. Android will achieve ubiquity over the next few years. Toasters to phones to tablets to GPS units to military handhelds will all run it. The only thing that has been holding back such ubiquity so far has been Google's refusal to license the Market to devices which do not contain a "phone". If and when that changes, things will start to heat up. We already have decent $130 handsets running 2.2. How long do you think before Android is the new Symbian, with people buying "dumbphones" with Android without realising they've got it? Fragmentation be damned, it is a by-product of ubiquity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> These devices really are cheap and nasty. I have an Eken M001 and an M003, which are the same WM8505 chipset and (AFAIK) the exact same Android port.

However, if you're stuck with one then it's worth loading one of the alternative firmwares from <http://www.slatedroid.com/> on it. People have done quite a lot with the closed source Android port to make it more usable.

They also make for good tinkering/reverse-engineering on a budget. I'm actually just winding up a (very hacky) early stage Android 2.2 port to this chipset. although it isn't showing signs of being very good to use, it's been fun to hack together.

<comment><USER29> So alternate firmware really doesn't help that much? The hardware is too rough to salvage?

<comment><USER24> It's really hard to make convincing generalisations about this.

A lot of people seem to be happy with their cheapie tablets as a e-readers, tinker boxes, light web browsers, portable video players, etc.

Noone who really wants an iPad equivalent is going to be happy with one, though. Different leagues.

Like all technology, it comes down to what you want to do with it. I'm not a very good measure of that, because I originally bought an M001 to hack on (I originally wanted to use mine as a cheap robotics controller, however it developed a hardware fault that makes it difficult to power on so it's not really a good candidate any more.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I played with one last week. It ranks slightly below the CueCat in usefulness.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is exactly why Apple don't lease their software to device makers. If you want to be known for quality you _have_ to curate the whole experience.

Android is certainly achieving an amount of ubiquity but that also means they will be associated with these horror stories. Obviously, not true of Apple.

</comment><comment><USER32> So does anybody know of a decent cheap android tablet? I'd really like to have one so I can browse the internet in my bed before I got to sleep and I don't want to pay ~600€ (iPad,tab) for that (and I don't live in USA where this is "pocket change") ...

<comment><USER33> I haven't tried one, but the archos 70 is capacitive, 7" android 2.2 (I believe, even though the web page says 2.1), 1ghz, 8gb, hdmi. For $275USD and it's shipping now (though in limited supply). It seems to be getting decent reviews by android folks.

<https://store.archos.com/archos-internet-tablet-p-5004.html>

There is also a 10" version (the 101) that seems to be newly available in some markets for ~$400USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how other companies making quality Android products feel about this. I'm not sure how ubiquitous the term "Android" is in the cell phone market (obviously the more informed consumers know, but what about more casual users?) but it seems like a lot of the commercials for the phones in the higher end mention that the phone runs Android.

Can the casual consumer differentiate between a terrible device that runs Android and a great device that runs Android? Would one bad experience with Android on a horrible device preclude that person from buying another Android product, even if the other product provides a quality UX?

</comment><comment><USER35> The price still amazes me even after hearing how bad it is.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm having the exact same experience with the $150 Android Tablet from KMart - the Augen. Wireless works, but the touch screen is really hard to use, and the battery dies fast, even when off, so every time I turn it on I have to plug it in.

</comment><comment><USER37> I saw these things being sold all over Shenzhen about a month and a half ago. The were really cheap (after haggling, of course), but the quality was terrible. Oh and in Shenzhen they were actually being sold as "iPads".

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd almost be interested in getting one to be an internet radio gadget. But that's about it.

<comment><USER38> Except for the bit where the only app that can get online is the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Well, at least it has a webcam.

</comment><comment><USER40> There are crap copy-cats from china all over the place. go to dealextreme and you will find 200 models of windows mobile tablets!

i have one to run GPS in my car. cost me $50 and has a 7in screen! works perfectly... for the price.

but the first ones where just crappy. unusable. slow. battery was as good as that one. look for some old reviews.

With that one it will be the same.

As soon as there is real competition in the android tablet/netbook market the chinese copy-cats will start to show up some really good products.

mark this: android will only be a HUGE hit when those devices that does not goes out of their way to prevent hacking start to hit the market. and it is starting

The little android momentum had so far was a mistake on the part of manufacturers. they by accident let android be hackable. and are fixing it, for android loss.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't litter because I don't want to make that Indian cry, but this will make him put a shotgun in his mouth.

Manufacturers should be forced to properly recycle such garbage.

</comment><comment><USER42> Competing with Apple on price alone in a market they essentially created. Great strategy..

<comment><USER43> Seems to have worked for some chaps in Redmond, at least since 1995

<comment><USER42> You're comparing Microsoft to the guys who made this tablet? Yikes..

<comment><USER44> There was a veritable Cambrian explosion of different personal computer designs in the late 70s early 80s before the PC came along that existed contemporaneously with the Apple II.

Pretty much all of these were evolutionary dead ends.

<comment><USER43> Yes and in 1995 one of them made an OS with pretty pictures and clicky mousey thing that looked very much like someones elses pretty pictures and clickey mousey thing.

Except theirs cost $99 or free with your costco computer - while the other guys meant you had to spend $1500+

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd guess there were similar reviews of Altair 8800 in 1975/76 ;-)

<comment><USER46> Well, the Altair was the first of its kind. Despite its flaws, it was a revolutionary product that sparked an entire market. This tablet, on the other hand, comes after the iPad and other less shoddy Android competitors. If there's innovation in the tablet space, it's not going to be kickstarted by cheap knockoffs.

<comment><USER45> It was the first cheap computer. Cheap enough for the unwashed masses in US. And tablets like this one are the first computers cheap enough for billions of ppl in Asia, Africa and Latin America. And for many, many, many other purposes.

90% of the time innovation in IT is kick-started by cheap knockoffs ;-)

<comment><USER47> 90% of innovation in most fields comes from low end products working their way up - hasn't anyone here read Christensen's _The Innovator's Dilemma_? In fields from steel, backhoes, and IT most innovation starts with something that isn't quite good enough and works its way up quality. The tablet discussed in the original post may be just a cheap knock-off that isn't going to have any effect. But then how did they get the cost that low? Maybe there is something there to build on too? Only time and a bit more work will tell for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow, unabashed apple fluffer arstechnica finds and reviews cheapest example of shenzhen style knockoff tech with expectations of terribleness, and confirms they don't like it a bit, no sir, not at all.

In other news, there is a lot of water in the pacific ocean.

<comment><USER48> I disagree, Ars Technica is one of the least biased tech blogs I've found. If anything they're biased against Apple.

Like it or not the products sucks and runs Android.

<comment><USER33> ars? biased against apple? surely you troll.

<comment><USER49> Ars Technica's most notable Apple reporter, John Siracusa, still holds a grudge against Apple for nearly every way in which Mac OS X went with a NeXT- style user interface over a Classic Mac OS UI paradigm.

They do a good job of producing informative articles, but you have to watch out for anything subjective, because a lot of it is quite unreasonable, and it's quite common for their conclusions about an Apple product to be invalid and useless for anyone living in the real world. The apparent bias in any given article can be all over the map, but on average, they seem to slightly prefer being unfair to Apple.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are PhD Students Irrational? - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/phd-students-irrational/ <comment><USER2> We are currently in the middle of a college bubble. Colleges are slow to increase professors, and with good reason. Tuition costs have skyrocketed over the past 3 decades, and attendance rates have steadily climbed. This is mostly easily attributed to the baby boomer mentality of, "I want my children to have a better life, and that means a college education." While not necessarily wrong, it won't continue forever.

The bubble is already started to deflate. There are repeated calls for more focus on trade-based education. Or self education with online resources, as dubious as that may be. But this is not the financial industry, and it will not pop overnight.

Giving a professor tenure is not like hiring an employee. Colleges are locked into supporting that professor, and their research, for 30+ years.</comment>


8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship - <AUTHOR> https://www.chess.com/news/view/8-year-old-refugee-wins-new-york-state-championship <comment><USER3> As someone who had the unfortunate label of "prodigy" applied to me in my youth (chess master at age 10), I'd like to offer a perspective.

It almost goes without saying, but huge respect to the kid for being able to persevere through massive adversity and achieve such a result. What I want to suggest without hopefully ruining the "feel good" party is that the adversity and the success here aren't just a striking coincidence but are in fact two sides of the same coin. This kid is winning not (just) due to his natural talents, but because he is more motivated than the other kids. His opponents are playing to win a cool trophy and impress their parents. He is playing for a chance to have a future.

I say this because I had the same drive to win in the early days, although not for the exact same reasons. I wasn't homeless, but my success at chess competitions was directly linked to the emotional stability of my home environment, which cycled between dysfunctional and abusive. When I won tournaments, my mother showed me love and affection for a period of time afterwards. When I lost, it was bad. As a kid, you learn pretty quickly to dig deep and do what it takes.

I know a fair amount of chess prodigies from back in the day, including some who are still active and top players on the professional circuit. To this day I have not met a single one who didn't have to deal with major adversity during childhood - broken home, missing or abusive/alcoholic parent, etc.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't bring kids into competitive chess, or celebrate their accomplishments. I have always loved the game, and still do, despite its relationship to my massively dysfunctional childhood. But I think we need to look deeper into the dark side of competitive scholastic chess culture, most of which comes from misguided parents who view their kids' success as an extension of their own. We should reward things like integrity and sportsmanship in addition to raw intellectual performance.

For this refugee kid, I hope his gift brings him joy and success, even if he doesn't go all the way to become the youngest grandmaster. And I hope his story will inspire a conversation about values in the larger competitive chess community.

<comment><USER4> I recently read Searching for Bobby Fisher and Joshua Waitzkin's childhood seemed intense, but not broken. Would you consider him an exception or is that level of intensity itself dysfunctional in your view?

I do agree that integrity and sportsmanship - along with the game's beauty - should be placed higher than defeating opponents and that it often isn't. At some point this may just be the nature of competing at the highest levels, but early scholastic chess shouldn't be that point.

Perhaps part of it is cultural. I grew up playing in Russia as a kid (I showed promise, but didn't go nearly as far as you). Chess was deeply woven into the culture and into my family. I have warm memories of an inspiring game that only encouraged development of integrity and perseverance. I've been hoping my child gets into it. He did, but watching chess in the U.S. leaves me cold. Obsession with ratings, winning, trophies, pragmatism, and plain cheating at ages when these kids should be imagining themselves as honorable warriors is disheartening. I try to guide him through it - and point out the exceptions - but it always feels like swimming against the tide.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget that Searching for Bobby Fisher was written by Waitzkin's father and almost certainly is bending the reality to the story he wants to tell/image he wants to project.

<comment><USER6> 'The art of learning' is written by Josh himself and didn't leave me with an abusive childhood impression.

Josh seems very balanced, it's a great book as well, highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read this kid's story in the times and as a native of NYC it just helped to strengthen my conviction that NYC, despite all of its problems, is truly a microcosm of what makes America great.

I was a latch-key kid growing up and can clearly remember hopping on the train after class (with my free student pass) to Manhattan and killing some time at some of the best museums in the world (also free for students) and being exposed to so much.

We must continue to invest in our kids and in social infrastructure like transportation and libraries to spark the next generation.

Kudos to this kid, I just really hope he can make it through. There is unfortunately a huge disparity in what we can expect him to achieve because of his circumstances.

<comment><USER8> The best part is that is they uplifting one youth is exponential they help their family and they in turn help their children / siblings. This is how class mobility happens. Thanks for such a positive comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got whooped by a 10 year old girl in a local tournament. And I didn't make any gruesome mistakes, she just out thunk me. Of course it was one of the last games of the day, so there was a big crowd around the board.

Kids like these should be kept to their own age class ... to protect the fragile egos of patzers like me.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can find Top 100 lists at [http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Item...](http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371/) and his play history at [http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?16649696](http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?16649696) .

It is almost precisely a year since his first tournament game so there is no exaggeration. Going to 1473 in one year is extremely impressive especially since early tournaments show loses so it isn't like he excelled but simply wasn't rated.

For reference, Magnus Carlson played since 5 (though not too enthusiastically) and was ~900 at age 9. But he was a 1900 a year later.

<comment><USER10> Who is Magnus Carlson?

<comment><USER11> Typos or not, in a Chess thread, there should be enough context to recognize who is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He won the State Championship for children in his age category. If he had won New York State Championship for all ages, he would have been indescribably far advanced.

I think Bobby Fisher won the NY State Championship at age 19 - New York holds many of the strongest US players, naturally.

<comment><USER13> Fischer won the US championship for adults at the age of 14. He then went on to become the youngest candidate for the world championship in history at the age of 15 - a distinction he still holds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A year after learning to play chess he has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds.

Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw[0].

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." \- Stephen Jay Gould

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess- cham...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess- champion-8-year-old-homeless-refugee-.html)

<comment><USER15> > #27 in America for eight-year-olds

The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

<comment><USER16> I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the US. There are age ratings and regional divisions in different sports, and it both makes things more fair and opens up more opportunity to compete.

This is a significant achievement and the boy is undeniably an elite chess player.

Edit: s/soundbagging/sandbagging/g

<comment><USER17> What (if anything) stops people from cheating in online tournaments (by simply asking a computer for the best next move, given the current board arrangement)?

<comment><USER18> After game analysis. When someone picks the computer best most from a position you can ask how likely it is they came up with that on their own. Expert chess players recognize computer moves fairly accurately in a lot of situations (this is easy to test, just take a bunch of positions, show the last move and ask if it was human or computer). From there human judges look at the game and decide how likely it is someone cheated.

Of course if you only cheat once you get away with it as nobody will be sure. However cheating once isn't enough to change a game - in fact it will probably change it for the worse on your side (without knowing what the computer intended you follow a bad line after the otherwise good move). Thus you can look at a series of games and concluded if the player cheated or not. From there you take after the fact adjustments which mostly means recalculate everyone's score as if those games didn't happen.

Interestingly enough, chess masters generally will score alpha zero moves as human not computers. It will be interesting to see how online cheating progresses once better AI based chess computers become available.

<comment><USER17> I see, that's interesting. Although I also wonder if players cheat in other, more subtle, ways such as to just prevent blunders; not necessarily to choose the best moves.

<comment><USER19> Yes, they do.

The result is that time controls have shortened accordingly. It's a lot harder to cheat convincingly when you're playing bullet chess, whereas it might be easier to do so when you're playing 10 or 15-minute time controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> NYT's Nicholas Kristof (the first to tell the story) announced a GoFundMe campaign to help Tani's family: [https://www.gofundme.com/just- tani](https://www.gofundme.com/just-tani)

<comment><USER21> A very successful one: currently at $193,339 of $50,000 goal, in 4 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How can we, as a society, support our future during its most vulnerable time (childhood)? How is it possible that we still have homeless children in a country with so much wealth?

(I'm seriously asking. I want to know how many other similarly bright minds aren't being supported to their full potential due to circumstances not their fault, and what public administrative techniques have been proven to work or not work and why.)

<comment><USER23> > How can we, as a society, support our future during its most vulnerable time > (childhood)? How is it possible that we still have homeless children in a > country with so much wealth?

The argument goes like this:

> Because why should I care for someone else's child and why should I shell > out money because someone decided to have children even though they > shouldn't have ?

<comment><USER24> The counter-argument goes like this:

Prudent or not, the deed is done; the child is here now and has real needs now. Get over punishing the child for being born and do the right thing.

<comment><USER25> The counter-counter argument is that not giving someone your money isn't "punishing" them, it's just retaining consent over your finances which everyone should have a right to do, without shame.

<comment><USER26> How much of "your" money is an indirect result of previous generations' sacrifice so that you can have a better life?

<comment><USER25> I don't think previous generations were particularly altruistic toward the poor. In general people "sacrifice" for their family or themselves, not for others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the little fella.

<comment><USER28> Talent is nowhere near evenly distributed. As this boy shows.

<comment><USER29> Evenly distributed not in the sense that everyone has an equal amount, but that every way you can cut up demographics (age, race, sex, nationality) will have the same bell curve of talent. But that is not necessarily so with opportunity.

<comment><USER30> No offense, but it seems preposterous to suggest the talent distribution within any demographic category is uneven, but if you compare two demographic categories, they are the same. Take a look at the top marathon runners, and tell me that the long distance running talent is distributed equally in Bolivia and Kenya.

<comment><USER29> Well that's more of a question on what defines "talent" \- and if such a thing exists. Genetic predisposition certainly is a thing in sports, and genetics and ethnicity are obviously closely related.

The context we we're talking about was specifically taken in terms of intelligence. Or "potential". If you want to make the argument that intelligence potential is affected by your ethnicity, you are free to do so, though I doubt such ideas will be well received :)

This idea of talent being equally distributed may not be factually accurate. But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about.

<comment><USER31> > But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about.

This is fine so long as you are judicious about what actions follow from such beliefs. If it motivates you to seek opportunity and encouragement for all, that is wonderful. If it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly meritocratic organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their beliefs, that is less than wonderful.

<comment><USER29> > it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly meritocratic > organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their beliefs

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Can you give a specific example of a witch-hunt like this?

I imagine you're talking about something where (for low-stakes example) a video game competition is typically dominated by 20 year old white males. Someone stirs the boat and tries to make changes so that 50 year old hispanic women place better, despite worse objective performance.

Obviously that would not be a great thing to do! However, let's not assume the makeup of meritocratic organisations is always as fair as we think.

In the video game example, the inconsistency with the makeup is not necessarily because 20 year old males are, by nature since birth, better at video games. But for mostly social reasons, having had more exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> NYT Article [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess- cham...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess- champion-8-year-old-homeless-refugee-.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Imagine the potential this kid has if he was able to achieve this while his family was homeless... I am both impressed and jealous!

<comment><USER33> Flipping it around, imagine he grew up in a stereotypical middle class suburb and, instead of pursuing chess, he spent his idle time watching YouTube videos of influencers unboxing toys on his iPhone.

<comment><USER34> Ah, apparently you have met my son and all his friends. Getting any of them to be passionate about anything but YouTube and PlayStations seems all but impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Title is very misleading as it implies he was competing against adults. "8 year old refugee better than any other 8 year old" is a far less interesting story than the implied chess prodigy.

<comment><USER36> I don't think so - if I read about an 8 year old winning a tennis championship, I'd assume they're playing with other kids.

The interesting and impressive part comes not only from the achievement itself (winning the championship) but doing it despite their situation and past (refugee, homelessness, etc)

<comment><USER35> Tennis is a physical sport where it would be virtually impossible for a preteen to beat an adult. Chess is an intellectual exercise.

<comment><USER36> Still, I don't think the title is misleading. If he was playing against adults, I'd explicitly include that in the title because it's majorly impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Title should say "New York State Chess Championship".

</comment><comment><USER38> In his age category.

<comment><USER39> He's 27th in the country out of his age range and he's up against a lot of kids with every advantage in life.

That's damn impressive any way you cut it, just under 1587USCF meaning he's playing at about the grade of an average active adult chess player (and far beyond an average player)...at 8 after a year living in pretty grim life circumstances.

Little dude is inspiring.

<comment><USER18> At 9 years old most kids have not been playing long. It wouldn't surprise me if he studied more hours than everyone else in his class (homeless implies no other toys to play with) which begs the question why are the other 26 better than him with less study. Note that wouldn't surprise me doesn't mean much - <USER2> have no clue how much study he does.

<comment><USER40> Studying more then the other competitors is definitely to one's credit, arguably more so then any innate talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am curious how they funded the tournament play. It tends to cost about $10/rated game.

<comment><USER18> Most tournament directors are nice people and will find an exception or sponsor for someone who is really poor to afford the fees.

Anyone who is good gets noticed quickly in the chess world. There are rich people in chess who will sponsor kids. All great kids in the US will get a free chess coach to get them better (I'm not sure how great you need to be to get this). Many other countries have similar chess sponsors.

If you read the article you will see that his school chess club waived their normal fees and even found him a coach (before he would qualify on the national level)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't hurt to put chess in the title.

<comment><USER42> (www.chess.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This story radically changes my world views. Eye opener.

</comment><comment><USER44> But no, let's keep making it harder to get a Visa.

<comment><USER45> this is news _because_ of how rare it is. its a classic underdog story.

<comment><USER46> Yeah. It's rare in every category you put people in whether it's nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> We are post peak-chess. The interest fell sharply after Kasparov's loss to DeepBlue. I was a member of a chess club, that went from 30 tables to 5 in a span of couple of years.

<comment><USER48> Speaks to the fragility of the human mind. The human collective organism, as it were, instead of rising against the challenge from the machines, decides to shift focus elsewhere. Chess is nowhere close to being a solved game, yet we're already treating it as such.

<comment><USER49> Out of curiosity, when would you consider chess, or any game of similar complexity for that matter, "solved"?

<comment><USER50> When it's possible to predict the winner from an arbitrary board position, given optimal play by both players. Checkers, for example, is solved. Chess and Go are not (even though computers can outperform human players).

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> He only won his age group (K-3), for kids at his age. And there were kids with a rating of 1400-1700 already. Everybody knows that young immigrants play much stronger chess than US kids. So not really newsworthy at all. It would have been if he would have won the real New York State Championship, such as the young Japanese boy Harimoto who beat all the world champions right and left aged when he was still 15. (table tennis). Also an immigrant (from China). In a much harsher and openly racist society.

</comment><comment><USER52> Edit: Yay for the kid. He's awesome. I was trying to be clever about demonstrating how the _journalist 's_ selection among alternatives narratives influence our perception of reality, but it was too much wrongthink.

<comment><USER53> What the hell is this supposed to be?

<comment><USER54> It's _supposed_ to be clever, I imagine.

It just comes across as churlish, though.

EDIT: Even the fact that the comment was edited from some stupid pseudocode, into something that cries "wrongthink" plays thusly...

<comment><USER52> My definition of "wrongthink" is suggesting that facts support confirmation of a narrative, regardless of what the facts are, when that narrative has become socially unacceptable. For example, in Chinese society, to suggest that religious minorities are being mistreated by the government is "wrongthink" regardless of what the facts are.

If this kid had been from a Uyghur family in China and his father had been killed in a Chinese internment camp it would not be "wrongthink" for a western newspaper to say "8-year old fleeing from religious oppression in China wins New York State Championship", though it would be "wrongthink" to print this in a Chinese newspaper or even an Indonesian newspaper. A presidential candidate in Indonesia recently declined to comment on China's mistreatment of muslims for example.

<comment><USER54> That's fine. I even agree with that definition.

The thing is, literally _none_ of the words you used in your pseudocode are "wrongthink" _here_.

This was straight-up, "person says awful thing, catches flak, and cries oppression."

EDIT: That's not oppression. It's disapproval.

<comment><USER52> An awful thing can be a socially unacceptable narrative regardless of what the facts are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting the "ship it" idea into developers stubborn minds: some links - <AUTHOR> http://licorize.com/users/ppolsinelli/shipping

<comment><USER2> The 'shipping' problem isn't caused by programmers. It's caused by architects. Or lack thereof.

Management asks for a product, sometimes even hires someone to design that product. The programmers are then tasked to code that product, including all the features asked for and code them without bugs or flaws. Then they are given an artificial deadline.

When the deadline approaches, they are then given different instructions... They have to either code quickly (sloppily) and ignore the flaws/bugs, or leave out features because it's no longer possible to meet the deadline and do their job properly.

They should -not- be making that decision. Management should be telling them what features to code, letting them get them right, and then giving them more features to code. Create the product incrementally, instead of waiting until the end to force a deadline.

Yes, that sounds an awful lot like Agile, but there's no reason it can't be done in Waterfall. It's a matter of proper planning and responsibility.

If your developers are saying they aren't ready to ship, it's because you've asked too much of them. (Assuming they aren't incompetent, since you should fire them if they are.)

No developer worth his salt wants to ship a product with bugs. To ask them to do so is to ask them to violate their personal ethics. At least, for known problems. Unknown problems will always exist due to the nature of the beast.

<comment><USER3> You can't always give developers a list of features and wait until they think it's done. Management should give developers a feature/bug list, developers should then estimate the items on that list. Then management can pick a subset of items for the next release. If there are features that really need to be done and there isn't time, management can negotiate the scope or design of the feature with developers (but never the estimates). Sometimes it's better to ship a simpler feature now, than wait to ship a feature that's "right".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not just list everything in one html document? This is a bit annoying to navigate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this:

<http://licorize.com/users/ppolsinelli/shipping?list>

<comment><USER5> That just shows an empty white box for me (FF 3.6).

The right arrow button to look at the different links has poor discoverability. The first link is shown twice on the main page, and there's no real indication that there are any more links. [edit: slowness was caused by twitter being open in another tab!]

Licorize is an interesting idea, but I feel needs more work before being unleashed on the general public.

<comment><USER6> Don't know why but refreshing fixed this issue for me.

Btw, it's the 2nd or 3rd time i see a link to something on licorize but every time i feel its interface it's a bit hard to "get" and a little confusing (it could be me). What about removing the image list at the bottom (it ruins the layout imho), making the page preview clickable and use more identifiable icons? My €0.02.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on the layout of Licorize booklets - updates will be online soon, including hand picking which images to show.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oregon outlaws use of so-called 'cyanide bombs' - <AUTHOR> https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/05/oregon-outlaws-use-of-so-called-cyanide-bombs-as-advocates-move-to-take-ban-nationwide.html <comment><USER2> So basically a land mine.

You ever read an article about something being outlawed and find yourself wondering _why they were legal in the first place_?

<comment><USER3> I had the same reaction when I realized I could just _buy_ a fucking flamethrower.

Like, on the one hand, awesome! I can own a flamethrower. But on the other hand, society just trusts me to have a flamethrower?

<comment><USER4> It's called a high-trust society. It is the gift granted to you by your forebearers.

Use it wisely, and preserve it for those after you please.

<comment><USER5> This type of society worked back in the pre-Regan days because we had institutions and unreasonably violent/crazy people would get carted off before they could get around to hurting others.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's true. People who are mentally ill commit violent crimes at about the same rates as their neighbors. Also, crime rates are lower now than when Reagan took office.

My theory is that what really changed our levels of trust was the invention of 24-hour news. People didn't used to have someone in their ear all day reminding them to be afraid. But tons of other things have changed too, so I may be off base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly enough, the use of toxicants for animal control was made illegal on federal lands in 1972 by Nixon [1] (Executive Order 11643) and then later amended by Ford in 1975 (to specifically allow cyanide bombs) and finally revoked entirely in 1982 by Reagan.

[1] [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/legal/upload/Proclamations_and_...](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/legal/upload/Proclamations_and_Orders/Proclamations_and_Orders_Vol_II/8_Executive_Orders.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would be interested in seeing all traps outlawed. As someone who hunts, I see traps as a cruel method to reducing animal populations. They can harm or hurt many unintended people & animals. They're also often not well maintained.</comment>


Two New YC Partners: Justin Kan and Aaron Harris - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/two-new-yc-partners-justin-kan-and-aaron-harris <comment><USER3> From outside it feels like YC is becoming a frat house. I think it will help if YC steps out and brings in some unusual partners.

Of course it's easier said than done. If you're busy running YC it's hard to have the occasion to meet and find people who are not part of the same frat house.

<comment><USER4> What would an unusual partner be?

<comment><USER3> I wish everyone from Google, Facebook to YC followed the model CRV has been using [1], _" Each member votes on a scale of one to four how confident they are in the investment, with one being least confident and 4 being highly confident. A majority of votes in either the least or most confident category is considered a troubling sign."_

I think the issue with YC now is a bottom up issue. It's hard to bring outside partners if you have no working experience with them. Those that you can work with, are mostly YC alums who were vetted through the YC culling process which often breeds the same people.

So YC might want to use a similar approach as CRV. If everyone is so confident about a team then maybe they are picking the same old people. In contrast if there is a strong dispute, that might be a good sign.

At least you bring diversity and maybe some unusual bets into the YC and ultimately in 4-5 years end up with a more diverse group of partners.

That being said, this might mean a big change in the application process, as the current early round filtering process by the alums will most likely eliminate diversity.

[1] [http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattlynley/how-a-boston-venture- capi...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattlynley/how-a-boston-venture-capital-firm- grew-into-a-silicon-valley)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have never seen as many pivots as Mr. Kan. Regardless of what you think about his products/services, he sure knows how to stay in the game. And I respect that. I'm still amazed that socialcam got schooled by vine. I thought he was on time and on the money on that pivot. I never saw vine coming. I imagine he didn't either. He's like the Steve Nash of SV. A play maker. So this is probably a good step for YC. Congrats.

<comment><USER6> > _And I respect that._

I'm not sure I respect the ability to convince people to keep trusting you after repeated failures, eventually culminating in a position of oversight over other people's start-ups. Between this, Loopt, and "tutorspree", it's starting to seem a bit like "Those who can't do ... have a privileged position from which it really doesn't matter anyway"

Upon reflection, these resumes might actually be perfect for YC -- these are founders that convinced people to invest in their high-risk ventures, repeatedly, without actually ever having to deliver the goods.

In this world of over-inflated valuations and empty bubble companies, that's a very valuable skill-set to have.

<comment><USER4> I guess I'll defend myself...

None of the companies I've started has lost the investors' money (yet). Some of them weren't that successful (Kiko) but still sold for a small profit.

Twitch / Justin.tv is a 120+ employee company that makes money and supports over 100 full time broadcasters who make their living on our platform (and has hundreds of thousands of casual broadcasters). Over 45 million people look at Twitch videos every month. While there are many more successful companies, I don't think you could call that a failure.

Socialcam was a spinoff of Justin.tv that was acquired for $60m on less than $2m raised capital.

The jury is still out on the Exec / Handybook acquisition, but I think the online-to-offline home services space is a growth space.

I think I've earned a few investors' trust and I think I have some experience with founding early stage tech companies.

<comment><USER5> On his two large pivots - turning Justin.tv into Twitch, and then spinning off Socialcam in time to be there with Vine - Mr. Kan has clearly shown that he can be in the right place at the right time. As with having the foresight to sell Exec, an interesting, but troubled space from the get go (as you can see from their internal moves from Exec'ing anything to the more profitable cleaning). I really believe that people who work 'in the trenches' amid both failures and successes, have a lot more to teach than those that win straight out.

I went to a Paul Haggis speech where he said that when asked how to become a successful film maker, his response was 'Make a movie and have it win the Oscar for best picture - that's how you become successful.' So true, and yet so false. I'd rather have people who fought and struggled give me advice - <USER2> so I think Mr. Kan is a great choice, probably the best choice in that realm.

Besides, it appears to some extent that YC is bringing him on siloed in his marketing prowess. PG seems continually impressed that Mr. Kan self broadcast for as long as he did. It's not the first time I've heard PG mention it, but it's not what Mr. Kan is best at. He's best at seeing the angles in the game. Like I said, he's a play maker. My only concern would be that he would push too many pivots on young, unproven companies. But we all have biases that need to addressed, in our actions and in our advice.

Myself, I take too many long bets, and would probably encourage others to do so as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aaron is a great and smart guy but why does having a failed tutoring service make him an ideal partner?

<comment><USER8> Get to know him and you'll immediately realize why.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately that's not an option for most people reading this.

<comment><USER10> Fortunately his qualifications are largely irrelevant for most people reading this. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats to both, and the execs that work with these guys.

Some VCs come with banking backgrounds. I like the ones that come as entrepreneurs first. Their advice is hard earned.

<comment><USER12> Fortunately, the market has the same preference as you, and the entrepreneur- VCs are taking over.

<comment><USER11> In the VC world it seems to be happening. Less so when you move up to PE.

<comment><USER12> True, though I think that has a lot to do with the personal preferences of successful entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that puts YC at around 19 full time and part time partners. I'd bet S14 is going to be the largest yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to Justin and Aaron!

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Justin and Aaron!

</comment><comment><USER16> Wondered what Justin would do after Exec. Congrats to both.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was an exec customer for house cleaning. they would come every two weeks. i relied on them.

exec was sold/acqui-hired to a company called Handybook.

so Handybook kept the regular scheduled appointment. they came once and it was terrible. they came a second time and it was terrible again. so i cancelled the service.

that was a few weeks ago, i have yet to replace them.

so right about now, my toilet is starting to become disgusting.

i get a disgusting toilet, and Justin gets a partnership.

<comment><USER18> > i get a disgusting toilet, and Justin gets a partnership.

The difference is that most people, including Justin, would likely clean their toilet instead of griping about it on an internet forum.

And if you're physically disabled, there are plenty of maid services aside from Exec.

<comment><USER19> Homejoy is pretty solid - and they're away cheaper.</comment></comment></comment>


Typesafe and Mesosphere Launch Distribution and Support for Spark on Mesosphere DCOS - <AUTHOR> http://m.marketwired.com/press-release/-2029586.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a press release but I think this is an interesting industry development given IBM's announcement today of 3.5K developers on Spark projects.</comment>


Harvestman - Quick and dirty web crawling - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mion/harvestman

<comment><USER2> Not to be confused with the python project of the same name: [https://code.google.com/p/harvestman- crawler/](https://code.google.com/p/harvestman-crawler/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Didn't know about it, sounded like a cool name for a web crawler: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones)</comment></comment>


Guacamole is an HTML5 + JavaScript (AJAX) viewer for VNC - <AUTHOR> http://guacamole.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> This is ridiculously awesome.

I had a laptop die on me while traveling in South America this winter, and spent a month developing through Remote Desktop from internet cafes to one of our servers back in the US. It involved configuring a VPN on a sketchy box to pull off, but at least it got me running the IDE.

If I'd had this set up, it would have cut out pretty much all the pain from that scenario. In fact, it would make a good case for simply leaving the laptop sitting in the cage at the datacenter, so as to have it available to work on, but unavailable for nightbus thieves.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will be cool if individual applications can be exposed via VNC and each mapped to its own URI. We can see some seriously interactive apps (maybe killing Flash at the same time!)

<comment><USER4> That can be huge for virtualizing legacy applications. A few months ago I was going to build a similar web app, but with X11 (legacy X sucks, but XRender is better than VNC for this IMO), and with the virtualization/"web-enabling" back-end infrastructure to use for an application at work. That didn't pan out, but I think making an easy to use, easy to manage web-app virtualization backend is a big opportunity. Having this VNC client available provides the web-browser half of the solution. I have a few hours a week available, anyone want to work on this idea together?

<comment><USER5> You just about described Skytap Cloud to a 'T'. Although, it does do a lot more than just that. Check it out at <http://skytap.com>.

(note: i was their sr. program manager and primary ui developer from 2007-2009).

<comment><USER4> That goes way beyond my idea, which would make sense, since the Skytap target market is a lot larger and more profitable than what I was thinking of. Kudos to them. I'd like to hear more about how they got started - are there any articles or interviews you can recommend?

<comment><USER5> Sure thing:

Series A, stealth mode:

[http://www.npost.com/blog/2007/06/04/interview-with-david- ri...](http://www.npost.com/blog/2007/06/04/interview-with-david-richardson- founder-of-illumita/)

[http://www.nwinnovation.com/interview_with_steve_brodie,_ill...](http://www.nwinnovation.com/interview_with_steve_brodie,_illumita/s-0010800.html)

<http://www.seattlepi.com/business/327068_illumita10.html>

Launch:

[http://virtualization.com/news/2008/04/10/illumita- renames-i...](http://virtualization.com/news/2008/04/10/illumita-renames- itself-to-skytap-launches-skytap-virtual-lab-and-appoints-scott-roza-as-ceo/)

Series B:

[http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/03/16/cloud-computing- fir...](http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/03/16/cloud-computing-firm-skytap- scores-7m-more-from-ignition-madrona-wrf/)

[http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/03/Skytap_taps_7_milli...](http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/03/Skytap_taps_7_million_41218827.html)

Regarding the founders: Dave Richardson went back to school to finish his Ph.D. Hank Levy is now the Chair of the Computer Science department at U of Washington. Brian Bershad is now the Site Director for Google in Seattle.

<comment><USER4> Cool. Thanks for the links!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone try it on an iPad?

</comment><comment><USER7> This would be great for KVM server consoles!

</comment><comment><USER8> not sure how solid this is, but it's a wicked awesome concept.

does compviz work?

can i remote into a windows machine? can i remote into a windows machine running IE to do IE6/7/8 testing?

<comment><USER9> Well, presumably you can connect to anything with a VNC server attached.

I'm skeptical that the client would be fast enough for Compiz to work reasonably, but you should be able to use VNC on a thing running Compiz -- the effects will just be choppy and useless and probably annoying. It might be fast enough I guess, but you'd need a fast connection anyway, probably something local.</comment></comment>


Capacitor but no 'nuclear reactor' found so far in Northwest side man's garage - <AUTHOR> https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/12/05/emergency-crews-investigating-report-possible-small-nuclear-reactor-ohio-garage/2625141001/ <comment><USER2> > Depending on the evaluation and further investigation, it is possible the > man will be criminally charged with inducing a panic, Martin said.

That's bullshit. The panic was caused by the 911 operator being cautious, taking no chance in case it was something harmful.

The guy burned himself and needed medical assistance.

<comment><USER3> This whole reaction deeply saddens me. People should be encouraged to experiment, make their own stuff, and tinker. People are so easily scared these days of anything they don't understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Assuming every third word in this article is probably incorrect, I would love to hear the actual 911 recording.

Yeah, it's possible the guy is clinically insane, but it seems more likely to me he called in trying to explain he got a bad electrical burn and was terribly misunderstood by the operator.

<comment><USER5> Why is it more likely that the operator heard a bunch of arcane terms that weren't actually said?

<comment><USER6> A small hobby cyclotron that produces some alpha radiation is that uncommon of a project, and would be consistent with many words he said ("particle accelerator" and "alpha waves").

I mean, probably a crackpot, but it's not impossible that someone who got some electrical burns from a slightly exotic experiment gave 911 too much information and made them freak out.

<comment><USER7> Basically every CRT tube is a particle accelerator for electrons. Given that these run at 10 kV, of course burns can happen (and states of confusion)...

<comment><USER8> I was originally going to reply and also point out Microwaves as well, but while double checking that my memory served me correct, I discovered that 3d metal printing can be a use for electron guns as well [1]. Heck that can possibly involve Vacuums and metal powder as well... good times!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron- beam_additive_manufac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron- beam_additive_manufacturing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Only one injury was reported: a firefighter in a hazmat suit was injured > when he unepectedly came off a curb and twisted his ankle"

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems somewhat less impressive that the story that immediately came to mind. David Hahn built very radioactive neutron source whilst trying to make a breeder reactor as a teenager in the '70s. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is what happens when a country has a febrile mixture of money and paranoia. Crackpot scientist phones up and starts spouting random technobabble, neighborhood summarily evacuated while the state verifies that yes he is indeed a crackpot. If this guy had claimed to be Bashar Al-Assad would they have sent police to arrest him for war crimes?

<comment><USER12> No. They would pay to fly him back to Syria, then send in Navy SEALs to assassinate him 10 years later.

The U.S. does not recognize international law. The country would look a lot different if it did. Shortly after 9/11 the Taliban had captured Osama Bin Laden, however Bush let Bin Laden slip through because the Taliban wanted to try him at the Hague.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For more of these stories, head to fark.com</comment>


* cures (or causes) cancer - <AUTHOR> http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/ <comment><USER3> I made this - thanks for voting it to the top of HN!

In case anyone's still unclear, it is a tongue-in-cheek dig at the Daily Mail's reporting of cancer stories. It's most definitely not a medical resource. I could probably have done the same with almost any newspaper, but the Daily Mail is uniquely deserving of opprobrium.

You can get the code and a database export on GitHub if you're interested: <http://github.com/threedaymonk/kill-or-cure>

I wrote the whole thing one Sunday night and tweeted about it at midnight; by midday the next day, I had successfully crowdsourced the analysis of all the articles. If I'd known how successful it would be, I'd have written a better, more detailed crowdsourcing process.

<comment><USER4> I'm truly unamused by your lame thingy.

Sure, you can take a poke at this or that not entirely proven cancer association. But your "tongue-in-cheek" site definitely facilitates the devaluing of the many and subtle cancer associations that have been demonstrated - it is not a constructive contribution to the discussion on this subject. For example, while the case automobile pollution causing cancer might not be air, do _you_ have proof that it doesn't cause cancer? Having "incorrect" as the alternative for each assertion on the Daily Mail is seriously problematic.

<comment><USER5> Either you believe what you wrote - in which case you're a total idiot - <USER2> your sarcasm is seriously lame; I really can't tell which.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amazing how many food sources listed in their raw form aren't themselves guilty, but the industrial manufacturing processes and additives used to enhance them are.

Edit: I can't help myself. Some examples:

Bacon causes cancer: _"High doses of inorganic phosphate salts – which are used to enhance the texture and flavour of processed meats..."_ [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives- used-bacon-ham-chicken-make-cancers-grow.html#ixzz0t25HbiG7)

Eggs cause cancer: _"The chemicals, residue from drugs given to chickens..."_ [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-50995/Cancer- chemica...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-50995/Cancer-chemicals- eggs.html#ixzz0t24TLlCF)

Rice causes cancer: _"Cotton production relied heavily on arsenic pesticides. It left residues in the soils which are still there and is being picked up by the rice."_ [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-444222/Rice- tainte...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-444222/Rice-tainted- arsenic-raises-risk-cancer.html#ixzz0t26OAqiA)

Spices cause cancer: _"...foreign producers are colouring spices to boost prices and profits."_ [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-347287/Cancer- chec...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-347287/Cancer-checks- spices-new-food-dyes-alert.html#ixzz0t26rTZjr)

<comment><USER7> What really pisses me off in general is adding useless stuff to things that make said things worse. For example coloring agents in food, but the same goes for superfluous features in software.

<comment><USER8> _"Anthropomorphic paper clip software assistants linked with cancer..."_

<comment><USER7> They definitely raise stress levels, and raised stress levels are definitely linked to cancer (I should think).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did they add the site's tagline after most of these HN comments were made? It clearly reads, "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail's ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it," which makes it pretty obvious that they're poking fun. Everyone here seems to be reacting as if this site is claiming to be a reputable source of information about cancer-causing materials.

EDIT: Oops... looks like acangiano beat me to it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1495362>

We even both used the term "tagline," which is kind of interesting, since it could just easily have been called a "subtitle" or something.

<comment><USER6> Sure, The Daily Mail, just like any other mainstream news source creates sensationalist headlines to shock you into reading. That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate. Nor should it prevent us from having an on- topic conversation about something more in-depth.

<comment><USER10> >That doesn't make the studies cited any less accurate.

No, but it does make it statistically more likely that they are inaccurate. It's known as 'study selection bias'.

<comment><USER4> Statistics should only be applied to fairly uniform and understandable phenomena.

Applying statistical likelihood in this instance is stretching the bounds of statistics considerably more than The Daily Mail stretched them.

<comment><USER10> No, applying statistical _methods_ to this instance is unreasonable. Observing that selection bias skews the probabilities involved is perfectly reasonable, and indeed almost necessary to rational discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "We've cured cancer so many times in rodents, if I were a mouse, I'd take up smoking unfiltered Marlboros while working at a nuclear waste disposal site in the Ukraine."

JunkDNA, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1020444>

</comment><comment><USER12> For those of you not familiar with the type of articles printed by the Daily Mail, here's Dan and Dan's Daily Mail Song:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI>

(Scaremongering cancer headlines near the end here - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI#t=1m51s> )

</comment><comment><USER13> Related: The Daily Mail Oncology Ontology Project <http://thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com/>

<comment><USER12> And a continuation of it here: <http://dailymailoncology.tumblr.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, this is a deliberate stab at the Daily Mail, not an actual sorting of factual information.

<comment><USER4> Uh ...

In the same way as the Daily Mail, the BS headlines is problematic regardless of the valid point available when you read the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of comments here missing the point... The Daily Mail is a tabloid that is exploiting people's (evident even here on HN) love of hearing about cancer cures/causes regardless of evidence.

<comment><USER16> Looking at one of tcdent's links (bacon!) it seems pretty well balanced and plainly reported to me:

"However, experts urged caution over using the results of the trials on mice to predict the effect of phosphates on humans.

Professor Stephen Spiro, of the British Lung Foundation, said: 'The authors claim that in mice with lung cancer a diet high in phosphates increases lung cancer growth rates.

'While this may be a relevant observation, it has never been assessed in man. Further study would be required to ascertain any link in humans.'

Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK added: 'Smoking is by far the main cause of lung cancer and quitting is the best way to reduce the risk of this disease.'

Read more: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives- used-bacon-ham-chicken-make-cancers-grow.html#ixzz0t5faaogP) [link added by copy-paste]"

They stated the limitations of directly applying the result to humans, they interviewed 2 professionals in the field. Stirling. If you're right this must be an aberration?!

<comment><USER17> Most Daily Mail readers are incapable of reading past the headline, so stuffing balance near the end of the article usually elicits the desired effect.

We have an acronym for this sort of thing: FUD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This site is quite hilarious. Now can we get a iPhone app that lets me take a picture of an object and tell me my probability of getting cancer according to the daily mail index by using this object?

</comment><comment><USER19> It would be really cool to have this parsed to determine which data came from controlled studies and then create something like this with the results: [http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil- supplem...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/)

edit: The above would have to assume the data from the site is reliable, which we can't assume based on the source being Daily Mail.

<comment><USER20> Wow, I love this. Time to look into beta glucans! :)

<comment><USER19> Vitamin D is also really important for immune health. Especially for knowledge workers, who don't normally get enough sun. Recent studies have found that Vitamin D actually _activates_ your T-cells, so without adequate levels, your immune system will act like a depressed dog during a home-invasion and just lay down.

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/vitamin-d- its-...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/vitamin-d-its-not-just- another-vitamin.html) [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another-r...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another- reason-vitamin-d-is-importa-2010-03-07)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Scraping real scientific data from journal articles/headlines published in PubMed would be a lot more interesting and noteworthy.

Not to mention "causing cancer" is a bit of a misnomer. Cancer typically arises when genetic mutations cause a cell to exhibit uncontrolled and sustained division. Our cells experience thousands of mutations a day, most of which are fixed. Some of these inanimate objects may upon being metabolized or coming into contact with a cell, cause mutations. With more mutations, you are at a higher risk for one to go unrepaired and lead to something other than cell death. Colloquially, I understand we refer to certain things as causing cancer but I think the idea of grouping everything into discrete boxes isn't really something worth pursuing in this case.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you read the about page <http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/about>, you will see that the source is the Daily Mail and the explanation seems rather tongue- in-cheek.

</comment><comment><USER23> This makes me want a version for actual peer-reviewed papers.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Daily Mail causes cancer.

<comment><USER25> If you burn it and inhale the smoke, probably!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yzbxwxWUz0>

</comment><comment><USER27> Please note they used _Daily Mail_ as the source. Daily mail is notorious for made up or inaccurate stories.

<comment><USER28> I didn't even realize it was an attempt at a serious story. "Age causes cancer" sounded like a spoof. Not to mention saying alcohol causes AND cures cancer.

<comment><USER29> Age is a huge factor in cancer. By a certain age, virtually every male has prostate cancer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have long wanted to see someone attempt to live their life following every piece of advice on how to increase your longevity that appears in trashy current affairs tv shows, bad newspapers etc. Would make a great blog.

<comment><USER5> Only briefly - until their head exploded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Reheated spaghetti bolognese 'prevents cancer'

Now I have a legitimate reason for making way too much spaghetti bolognese, well _beyond_ it being my favorite meal of course.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cigarettes seem to be conspicuously absent from the list.

Then again, I guess the link's been well established already.

<comment><USER32> Hmm, on second thought--I didn't realize these were all daily mail links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if immigrants cause cancer.

</comment><comment><USER34> My bet is that someday we will realize that viri cause cancer.

<comment><USER35> People deliberately mis-spelling "viruses" causes high blood pressure, which causes cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Partially true information can be just as misleading as completely false information.

For example, I looked up "Cannabis"; only 1 entry saying it causes cancer. But I know from other articles on other sites that there are properties that fight cancer. (I don't know if it "prevents" cancer though).

Needs more data?

<comment><USER37> They're only using Daily Mail articles

<comment><USER36> I know

<comment><USER12> Why cite "other studies on other sources" and claim it "needs more data" if you know the point is present data from one source? Not to present an objective look at cancer studies, but to present a filtered look at _Daily Mail articles_ on cancer studies?

<comment><USER36> As an exercise or function in doing something with data, sure, do as you please.

But if this were to have practical application, and the potential to solve problems via the crowd, why not improve it and give it better data?

<comment><USER38> Your version sounds like a great project! Post a link when it's ready!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Three tips to Improve Attrition Rates in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrmprocess.com/2014/01/14/three-tips-improve-attrition-rates-2014/#.UtbLq0qYWu-.hackernews <comment><USER2> I'll give another one:

\- Don't set your options/stock pool to vest on 6 month increments. If your company is not performing well, you're going to lose senior employees every 6 months like clockwork.</comment>


Ask HN: Does your team do code review? How? Why not? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to learn a little more about how different development teams do code review.<p>Does your team actually do some form of code review? If not, why not? If so, how do you do it? Face to face? GitHub? Other tools or services? <comment><USER2> I've worked with several companies and the successful ones do code review somehow. Before I go into them, let me preface with we have always required 100% code test coverage. If even one test fails, it doesn't go out. We have also used Github everywhere I've worked. The primary flow is that a developer writes code, submits a PR, the code gets reviewed, then it gets merged and deployed.

That said, there were two major strategies that we used:

Strategy 1: Gatekeeper

The project lead heads up the code reviews. She is the gatekeeper that determines whether code is good enough. For minor bug fixes and small changes, one extra set of eyes is generally sufficient. For larger changes and new features, she often recruits one or more developers to assist with the code review. All code review takes place in Github, with face-to-face meetings if there are any nuanced discussions that need to happen.

The major upside to this is that the lead knows what the big picture is. She knows if Joe has worked on this feature and should be consulted or not. She knows that Sarah is very familiar with this technology and should be consulted. She knows that this feature can't go out until that feature is. She knows that this bugfix might affect Henry's feature. This means that she can properly coordinate releases throughout the team and make sure everyone's on track.

The major downside is that there's a single point of failure. If the project lead isn't thorough, bad shit can slip through. Doesn't happen often, in my experience, but enough that there should have been more failsafes.

Strategy 2: More Eyeballs

Nobody "heads up" code review. Each pull request requires two people to approve it. Any number of people can comment and review it, but the minute the second person says "Looks good to me" or "+1" or whatever, then the PR is allowed to be merged.

The major upside to this is that you get more eyeballs on the project. You'll have a couple of different perspectives, so there's a greater chance that everything has been thought of.

The major downsides to this are: no birds-eye view, choosing the reviewers, and coordinating fixes/features. A big hurdle to this is choosing the reviewers. If you have 6 people on the team, and 2 people need to approve it, who do you pick? How do you pick? Randomly? Round-robin? Imagine that you know that Joe is a lax reviewer and Bob is a strict reviewer, and since you're tired of working on this feature, you give it to Joe so that it will go out sooner with less hassle. Big problem.

Furthermore, imagine that Sarah pushes a PR to a feature that was previously built by Mike, but she selects Joe and Henry as reviewers. Even though Mike worked heavily on this feature in the past and is probably the expert on it, it is entirely possible with this system that the feature could make it into production without Mike even being aware of it.

\----

Those are the two strategies I've worked with. It's probably clear which one I prefer. That said, Strategy 2 has a lot to recommend to it. If your team is small enough, it's probably a good idea. For larger teams, I recommend either Strategy 1 (gatekeeper) or mixing the two (gatekeeper + 1-2 other approvals).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detail! My personal experience is generally in strategy 1 as you outlined, especially in being that lead person. I know a lot of people like the appeal of strategy 2 (myself included) but like you mentioned, there's a number of ways that critical code can fall through the cracks. It's great for a general "good work, I like the way you did that" or "what about doing it like this" kind of review but beyond that doesn't provide many safeguards. That being said, I've heard a number of complaints about the organizational/cultural aspect of strategy 1.

In full disclosure, part of the reason I'm asking is to do some research for a product of mine: [https://pullapprove.com](https://pullapprove.com). Currently I feel as though it serves as a fairly flexible platform that can accommodate either (or both) of the strategies in various ways, and just want to make sure things are headed in the right direction. As you mentioned, the process for choosing reviewers could be handled several different ways and I wonder if there's room for some tools to assist in that. An interesting one to me (which PullApprove doesn't yet support) is automatically choosing reviewers based on git blame information ([https://github.com/facebook/mention- bot](https://github.com/facebook/mention-bot)) -- which could get at your last point.

I feel like there's a ton of value in doing code review that, I personally, drastically underestimated for a long time. I'm interested to hear more about the kinds of problems different groups have with code review and trying to figure out if/where/how a tool like PullApprove can alleviate some of the pain and make it an easier process to adopt.

<comment><USER3> Cool tool! I run a GitHub code review app myself ([https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io)) and have a similar feature built-in to customize the completion condition: [https://github.com/Reviewable/Reviewable/wiki/FAQ#can-i- cust...](https://github.com/Reviewable/Reviewable/wiki/FAQ#can-i-customize- what-makes-a-review-complete). The main difference is that you took a declarative approach, which I contemplated but discarded after checking with my users and discovering how much variety there was in their approval algorithms. I'm running user scripts on AWS Lambda instead: [http://blog.reviewable.io/your-code-my-app-no- worries](http://blog.reviewable.io/your-code-my-app-no-worries).

I'll be curious to see how your project works out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I actually contemplated going that route as well, but obviously decided not to. Cool use for Lambda though. Do you find that people are using that feature?

<comment><USER3> Some people are, but mostly just a hardcore few who are using protected branches on GitHub. I expect usage to tick up as I ramp up (in app) marketing for the feature and move upmarket into larger companies with more formal development workflows. But also, this was an investment in infrastructure that will allow me to offer other deep customizations later on.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Books TSMC's Entire 5nm Production Capability - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsmcs-entire-5nm-production-capability <comment><USER2> Apple does not want to run it's own manufacturing lines, however they have long been known for buying the manufacturing equipment needed for their manufacturing partners to make exactly the parts they want in the volume they need.

For instance, this deal from early in the Tim Cook era:

>Apple today announced that it has reached long-term supply agreements with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to secure the supply of NAND flash memory through 2010. As part of these agreements, Apple intends to prepay a total of $1.25 billion for flash memory components during the next three months.

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/11/21Apple-Announces- Lon...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/11/21Apple-Announces-Long-Term- Supply-Agreements-for-Flash-Memory/)

If you go back to the time when Apple was looking at single sourcing their SOC production at TSMC you'll find some interesting comments in the press.

>The world's leading foundry chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is considering operating single-customer wafer fabs, according to chairman and CEO Morris Chang.

Chang, speaking to analysts on a conference call to discuss the company's second quarter financial results, said that the market is tending to produce fewer higher volume customers and some are so large they need their own dedicated fabs.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120728040723/https://www.eetim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120728040723/https://www.eetimes.com/electronics- news/4391104/TSMC-says-single-customer-fabs-make-sense)

<comment><USER3> If Apple makes other company to be their sole provider, isn't that effectively a way of tax avoidance? For example in a smaller scale, if you hire a company that needs to do a project for you under your direction, you have to pay that company as if they were your own employees. In the UK this is called "IR35". Seems like for all intents and purposes TSMC is an Apple Fab?

<comment><USER4> Only for this process node. TSMC make a lot of chips for other customers too.

<comment><USER5> And per the article only the first year of production or so. There's also the question of whether Apple actually got any actual exclusive deal for the first year, or whether they simply outbid other companies for the production slots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not a big fan of this article. It doesn't 'work out well for everyone' that AMD are a node behind Apple. In fact with Apple moving into more general compute I would say it's less 'work out well for everyone' and more 'existential threat'.

Also, the shift from desktop CPUs to mobile CPUs as leading the shift to smaller nodes sounds less like a massive revelation, and more like the innevitable result of mobile CPUs out-stripping traditional CPUs in volume & margin.

<comment><USER7> Apple will never be an existential threat unless they make a drastic change to their strategy. They're a premium manufacturer that produces desktops and laptops that only run MacOS. Apple has chosen high profits and a locked down platform. They have one or two options to meet customer needs.. That lack of choice will always mean a substantial number of people will choose something else. If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices.

It's a very similar situation with the iPhone. Apple makes a great phone in many respects, but they're one company and they can't meet the wide variety customers demand. That's reflected in their market share.

It's also too early to say that Apple Silicon is a threat to anyone. Apple Silicon in the iPhone and iPad is a low power & low performance chip compared to AMD/Intel. They have a huge challenge scaling that up to compete on desktop. Their first chips are going into their lower performance products. I'm sure it'll be decent in that role, but Apple likely NEEDS 5nm just so that it makes a respectable showing compared to AMD/Intel.

<comment><USER8> You are of course aware that Apple is soon selling computers with their own processors, I hope. I don't think Apple is struggling with performance in their chips at all.

> If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices.

And none of them work reliably.

<comment><USER9> > And none of them work reliably.

That is absurd. Last year I built a PC with off the shelf components that I spent about 30 minutes picking out, and all I had to do was stick the windows installer into the USB port to get everything set up perfectly out of the box. I have never had any reliability issues and I only reboot about once per month for updates. I used Apple products exclusively for a decade, but a contract role last year required me to use a Windows dev environment. I was holding my nose going in, but using WSL has been a joy and my MacBook is now collecting dust in the closet. In my experience most Mac purists that turn their nose up at commodity PCs haven't used one since MacBooks became the standard hip startup dev machine. Things have changed a lot in the last ten years.

And let's not pretend that Mac hardware has been perfectly reliable lately. In fact, of my hand rolled desktop PC and my 2017 MacBook Pro, the PC has had far fewer hardware reliability issues. Apple's declining hardware quality and increasingly unjustifiable retail prices have pretty much chased me off the platform after 10+ years of fanatical loyalty.

<comment><USER10> Your statement is ridiculous. The last 10 years? When was the last time you used a windows laptop provisioned by a company with a big enterprise style IT department? You know, the ones bogged down with tons of endpoint security crap, Citrix daemons, compliance daemons etc. Its still a shitshow that you have to use Linux or MacOS to escape in many places.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately that is no longer reserved for Windows. JamF policies lockdown, DigitalGuardian, CyberReason Activeprobe, and various forced Firefox/Chome extensions are now causing slowdowns and crashes on "enterprise IT managed" Mac too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sensationalized article. The real story looks like all of TSMCs 5nm capacity for 2020 is booked by Apple, not all 5nm for all time. That said, TSMC is the world leader in process these days, and cimoetion between customers has been fierce to book it. But if there was any serious risk AMD could be shut out for all time from 5nm you would have heard about that at their last investor call, not from an enthusiast website.

Here's what seems to be the original source? [https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200917PD210.html](https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20200917PD210.html)

<comment><USER13> This is huge. Why pretend it isn't??

<comment><USER14> Its not huge. Apple booked all of TSMCs 5nm production for _the next 3 months_. They are still ramping up the process too. Apple is going first. Interesting but not huge.

<comment><USER15> I keep forgetting that we're running out of 2020.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Remember Apple are about to ship 50M+ A14 in the next quarter of course it is going to be fully booked. And TSMC has been producing them since May / June.

These sort of headlines make people think Apple is taking over all the capacity and AMD / Nvidia cant gain much from it. And it will inevitably lead to either blaming TSMC or Apple. Which I know it would be something the Samsung PR / Marketing team likes to play with once their Foundry business is up to scratch.

The age of Internet.

</comment><comment><USER17> It appears that Nvidia produces all Ampere GPUs in Samsung's 8nm process.

Company with the highest profit margin can pay most, so Apple gets first choice.

<comment><USER18> The A100 is on TSCM 7nm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nitpick: I'm annoyed at sentences that capitalises every word just to make them look more important than they are. I was wondering what Apple Books (the app) was doing, and what the verb in the sentence was. Is there a name for this capitalisation trend?

<comment><USER20> It's called Title Case. It's been popular in the US for decades. In the UK we often just use sentence case for titles.

<comment><USER21> It would be nice for HN to have a consistent style actually. I vote for sentence case.

<comment><USER22> ThAt WoUlD bE nIcE, wOuLdN't It? i VoTe FoR cAmEl CaSe BeCaUsE iT's A bUiLt-In GaTeKeEpEr.

 _/ S_

Frankly, it's still much much better than most other social media platforms out there in terms of thought put into sentences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This explains why Samsung was used in the 3080 released by NVidia.

<comment><USER24> That's probably better explained by TSMC 7nm capacity rather 5nm capacity. I'm sure Nvidia would have preferred even TSMC 7nm over Samsung 8nm.

<comment><USER25> Nvidia used TSMC 7nm for the first Ampere chip, the GA100 used in the HPC- focused A100. The density vs. the Samsung 8nm manufactured GA102 in the RTX 3090 & 3080 is drastic. 65.6M / mm² vs. 45.1M / mm².

Either Samsung gave Nvidia a hell of a deal or TSMC's 7nm was booked up.

<comment><USER26> Could also be a bit of both. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's mainly Samsung giving Nvidia a great deal. For years it's all over town that Samsung seems to have the best wafer prices in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why can't/doesn't Apple buy TSMC entirely?

<comment><USER28> The simple answer is that TSMC is a national strategic asset of Taiwan, and as such, is not for sale to anyone at any price.

<comment><USER29> > The simple answer is that TSMC is a national strategic asset of Taiwan, and > as such, is not for sale to anyone at any price.

Ahem. ARM.

Seriously, though. Take a look even at TikTok. I was pleasantly surprised that it's not for sale, either. Why does every tech company has to be HQ'ed in the US?!

<comment><USER30> The Taiwanese aren't as moronically short-sighted as the British.

<comment><USER31> Also ARM is not a significant fraction of the UK's gdp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Makes me wonder, why doesn't TSMC demand 30% of Apple's profits? :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> " TSMC will build 5nm chips for the iPhone 12, iPad Air, 5G iPad Pro, and any future MacBook or iMac systems Apple launches with its own custom ARM silicon. In 2019, Apple is thought to have accounted for about 20 percent of TSMC's monthly revenue, making it one of TSMC's largest customers."

<comment><USER6> >Apple is thought to have accounted for about 20 percent of TSMC's monthly revenue, making it one of TSMC's largest customers.

Well, top 5 atleast.

<comment><USER33> TSMC had about $35b in annual revenue in 2019. Is there another customer who might be ordering more than $7b of chips from them annually? I believe Samsung fabs their own processors, so I'd assume it'd need to be a Chinese OEM?

<comment><USER34> Yes, yes, no

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Listing all the marketing numbers without mentioning the actual feature size, or densities, of the processes in the comparison isn't a good practice. For example, TSMC 5nm is far less than 4 times the density of Intel's 10nm. Even though a credulous reader might assume so.

It is fascinating to consider that Apple has enough pull in Taiwan to get exclusivity on their most advanced technology.

<comment><USER36> Well I mean all it takes is a better offer, and all you need for that is more money. Wouldn't necessarily call it influence but yeah, it's still crazy either way.

<comment><USER35> TSMC isn't a purely monetary profit driven company, though your right usually they do business as if they were. Because 100% of something is much different than 99% in B2B and at this scale. Though of course TSMC is a bit special because they are comfortably ahead on something that the only possible competitors are even more unlikely to do exclusivity.</comment></comment></comment>