Triplebyte expands its recruiting platform beyond YC, signs up Apple, Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/triplebyte-expands-its-recruiting-platform-beyond-yc-and-signs-up-apple-and-facebook/ <comment><USER2> Having interviewed with TripleByte, I think this is a bold and poor decision.

Upfront, I didn't pass a TripleByte interview I had (one of the few companies I haven't passed).

My interviewer showed up late initially, then took a break and showed up 10 minutes late after the break. Further, the interviewer nit picked super irrelevant details, and acted exceedingly smug and condescending. Some of the stuff he told me I was wrong about was related to my research. Even after attempting to explain it several times, he just said, "No, you're wrong, you don't know what you are talking about."

I then literally brought up the paper and sent it to him, before he said something along the lines of... Oh, well I guess that is right.

Overall, it was one of the worst interview experiences I have had, and I don't believe they are good way to recruit. Hell, I even passed all their coding questions with flying colors. It was the silly video conferencing interview with a smug engineer who really made the interview fall apart.

<comment><USER3> I had an interesting experience with triplebyte which wasn't as objectively bad as yours, but it also makes me skeptical of the company.

First round was multiple choice questions, relatively straight-forward. Second-round was skype-call and just felt incredibly subjective. I was asked questions around building out memcached to support arbitrarily-sized values, and I got the same "smug" vibe you sensed.

The interview style was very "Him: How would you do X?" "me: Well that's not a simple problem, there are a lot of solutions each with tradeoffs." "Him: Okay so name one" "Me: So you could do X" "Him: BUT THEN Y [GOTCHA!]" "Me: Yes, that's one of the tradeoffs of X"

It wasn't clear to me what the heck he was even looking for. Was he hoping I'd list race-condition problems? Had he not even considered race-condition problems? Was he looking for a theoretical solution or a real-world solution? Also he kept going on random tangents ("That brings me to an interesting question, how would you shift a gigabyte of memory 1 bit?"). He seemed very concerned with efficiently bit-packing the header in this problem, which seems silly to me when we're talking about storing gigabytes.

My understanding was that triplebyte was seeking to be the SATs of engineering, however SATs do heavy validation with test-retest reliability and such, I had no particular reason to suspect triplebyte's interview was any more objective than any other company's.

<comment><USER4> We actually put a bunch of effort into consistency/repeatability checks. Every interview is recorded (video), and we re-watch and re-grade a percentage of them to measure the consistency. A long-term experiment we're running is comparing qualitative scores (code quality, good process, how good did the interviewer feel the candidate was) with quantitative features (which tests passed, how long did it take, what design--picked from a decision tree--did the candidate take). We calibrate the qualitative scores with the recorded interviews. So far, quantitative scoring is winning (when judged against predicting interview results at companies). We're waiting, however, until we can see which better predicts job success.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like your ability as an interviewer is pretty poor. There are several examples of the same smug behavior. What sort of training have you gone through to ensure that you're actually an appropriate and qualified person to be interviewing?

<comment><USER6> I'm his co-founder and this comment is unnecessarily personal. Ammon has done over 900 technical interviews ([https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/5y95x6/i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/5y95x6/i_am_ammon_bartram_and_i_have_done_900/)) and there's one negative reference to him specifically on this thread.

<comment><USER5> Nah, you can't use forum threads as proof. You need to do the analysis scientifically, which based on the feedback, it sounds like you need to do. You don't bother quantifying the ability of you and your interviewers, you just assume you're great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I avoid Triplebyte like the plague. I passed their "online interview" and was marked as exceptional.

I mailed the guy (forgot who he was, but his email address showed up on one of the pages) since I had some questions. He responded once and never again.

Then they had the audacity to email me again a few month later to schedule a call to give feedback for their platform.

Yeah sure, I am going to take extra time from my day to provide you feedback for no return. If they had sent it as a web survey, it would have been probably better.

Finally, they can only schedule interviews on two days a week. Really?

</comment><comment><USER8> As a general reply to a variety of the complaints in this thread: don't underestimate the task that triplebyte has in selling you to companies, especially since they have focused on candidates who might not even get an onsite interview at companies on their own. Their process also involves helping candidates skip a lot of the interview pipeline at several companies at a time, so that you can get better offers. This means that companies have to place a lot of trust in their assessment, and my personal experience (having gone through the process and gotten a job through them) is that they have to be very very rigorous to sell companies on their model.

My interviews with triplebyte were definitely some of the hardest ones I had during my search, but they also focused on things I consider important in developing software in a way that no other interview pipeline I've been through has. It may be that my overwhelmingly positive experience with them is not reflective of most, but I think that's unlikely given the amount of work they put into standardizing their process.

Being on the side of engineers in the hiring process does not mean they can take it easy on interviews, and my experience would suggest that whatever personal intensity you may feel in an interview with them is very likely to be outclassed by any decent sized sample of interviews at a big company.

I'm definitely bullish on their model, and while the process isn't perfect I'm really excited to see them moving the needle on interview quality in the industry. I sincerely wish them the best with the expansion.

<comment><USER9> I'm in Triplebyte's pipeline right now, and have had nothing but a great experience. The interview questions have been... not unusual? If people are complaining they're too challenging, I think I must have gotten lucky, because they seemed fairly normal to me. I believe my interviewer even told me that rather than finishing the whole programming problem, they were looking to see how far I could get and how I develop code.

It's been a great experience so far, even though several of my favorite companies in the pipeline have gone incommunicado before I could even talk to them :-/!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been interesting working with larger companies through Triplebyte. When we started, we were mostly working with smaller startups making early engineering hires. The challenge for these them is letting engineers know the company exists and why it's interesting.

Bigger companies like Facebook don't need to let engineers know they exist, a huge number of engineers have already applied to them at some point. What they've realized is the way to hire more is to find the good ones that are sitting in the resume review stage of the hiring process, not getting looked at because they don't have stand out credentials.

One thing that's struck out to me in a surprising way about the average startup hiring process compared to larger companies is speed. We've found the larger companies are actually faster to move on the first step of booking a call to speak with our candidates. This completely reverses when it gets to bringing someone onsite and making offers though. Bigger companies take longer to do both and this is where startups have a hiring advantage.

<comment><USER10> A year or so ago you guys published the post _Who Y Combinator Companies Want_ ([http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies- want](http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want)) and _A Taxonomy of Programmers_ ([http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of- programmers](http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers)), both of which were quite interesting and insightful in terms of data.

How do the types of engineers Apple or Facebook want compare to that?

<comment><USER4> So, those are not (unfortunately!) the primary way that we match engineers with companies. It comes down to questions about how important it is that engineers are strong in academic CS (some organizations think very, others think it's useless fluff), how important programming speed is (some companies think very, others want to see careful testing and think speed is sign of shallowness), or whether it's important that engineers are strong in http / web systems (some think this is the core of what most engineers do, others want problem solving and intelligence and think web programming is teachable). Some companies want the best engineers, regardless of english level. Others value communication over engineers. It's simple stuff. But getting the data is HARD (companies themselves don't know how much they differ), and matching engineers on these criteria significantly boosts pass rates.

<comment><USER10> That sounds excellent. What's the best way for an engineer to share their own values with respect to these attributes? For example, is there a way for me to say, "I prefer cultures which emphasize code quality ahead thoroughness and with an above average communication style"? (I haven't used Triplebyte yet.)

I totally understand if this is part of the secret sauce and the answer is "just use it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I interviewed with Triplebyte I had applied to actually become part of their staff. I was told I'd go through the standard process and then afterward we'd talk about what Triplebyte does in-depth and what the responsibilities would be. Guillaume was kind, engaging, and interested in how I approached a problem. The Australian dude (Buck) took over toward the end and he was very dismissive - he didn't seem to care what I said. It was kind of a let-down because I had crawled his online presence when researching Triplebyte and I was interested in asking him about his charity contributions. I had a good time talking to Harj about buckling-spring keyboards like my beloved Model M in the in-between moments.

I found out later I didn't pass the interview because my solution to the coding exercise didn't work at the end of the hour. We had continued past it and I thought I was safe because I was complimented on its organization and straight-forward interpretation. I finished it that night:

[https://github.com/blitmap/coffeescript- snippets/blob/master...](https://github.com/blitmap/coffeescript- snippets/blob/master/connect-four.coffee)

[https://github.com/blitmap/coffeescript- snippets/blob/master...](https://github.com/blitmap/coffeescript- snippets/blob/master/stock-prices.coffee)

I had fun but I felt like they got more out of it than I did.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a recruiter that is technical (js engineer) based in NYC. I don't see what TripleByte is doing that is that different from what a good recruiter can offer. Matching at very selective companies doesn't seem challenging.

I don't work with Apple or Facebook, but in the past four months recruiting part-time I've had 15 placements. Over 65% resume submission to on-site rate. And over an 85% offer close rate (close counts if I get 3 offers for someone and they choose one). I can match relatively well without needing to put candidates through a day of tests and I save candidates time by sending them to selectively chosen companies (safety, fit, reach). And I spend a ton of truly understanding each unique process of the companies I work with.

What makes Triplebyte actually unique? What are they changing about the industry? Are they actually reducing bias or is this a gimmick? Are they that different from a recruiting firm with strong lead generation?

<comment><USER13> the draw they have for engineering talent side is that you do preliminary interview with them and then move straight to on sites with companies they recommend you to. It means you can have 10 on sites without having to do 10 phone screens

<comment><USER14> This sounds like it's optimizing for the wrong component of the interview process. I've never had issues with spending time on phone screens because they are one of the main ways in which I screen companies I'm interested in.

It's the technical interviewing portion that's a pain to have to re-do over and over again. Especially if it involves travelling across the country to do. Engineers are ultimately looking at company and engineering culture to choose between.

The other thing is that for some engineers, they might perform well in one on- site versus another for many reasons such as the questions asked, interviewer rating, or something as trivial as mood. Seems like Triplebyte giving people one-chance makes this difficult.

Ultimately, I feel the main crux of hiring/interviews/finding the right talent is training. If the industry is over-fitting on people who can pass whiteboarding, then why aren't there more startups focused on this aspect? Not just passing interviews (e.g. outco.io), but actually focused on training systems design and algorithms. Universities don't do that in undergrad or grad school.

<comment><USER15> I very much agree with all of this. To me, the main draw of Triplebyte was "no whiteboarding." I suck at whiteboarding, so I went through the project track. And, yes, there was no whiteboarding, but what do they replace it with? Live coding. Yeah, like that's going to go any better. I'd have been better off at the whiteboard where I could at least fudge the syntax a little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My experience with TripleByte is worse than I have had with recruiters emailing me.

I tried going through TripleBytes process and answered the programming quiz. Then TripleByte changes their policy stating that I must do a project before I can proceed. I stopped the process there.

Then after awhile when I try to login and try again after a few months it says that I am in some kind of pending state which I can't get out of. I gave up on the service after that.

</comment><comment><USER17> > The screening process happens background-blind

I don't get it. If someone's done has an incredible body of work behind them, why do you want to hide that from yourself?

Isn't it a great way to pick the best people out of the pool of applicants? 'Ah this person designed the new IR in Google's V8 - we should definitely talk to them'.

When I speak to potential hires the first thing I ask is 'tell me about the projects you've worked on - what have you built in the past'. Am I doing it wrong? Someone could be great at general programming and pass a coding test, but if they have no experience in my field what are they going to do for me?

<comment><USER6> Previous work and achievements definitely carry valuable signal - we don't disagree with that. And relying on them makes sense for companies where the time of hiring managers is constrained and you need a quick way to identify the (likely) best people within a population.

Relying solely on those signals though acts to the detriment of skilled people whose best work hasn't been done at prestigious, name brand companies.

Our approach to removing credentials from our screening process is to prevent ourselves being biased by them and forcing ourselves to build a process that can find strong engineers who don't look good on paper. This is a win for the companies we work with as it expands the pool of talent they can hire from.

<comment><USER17> But for some things either you know how to do a job or you don't.

If I need someone to build me a compiler, there's no point sending me any number of job applications who did brilliantly on a coding test, if they have never built a compiler before.

(Of course sometimes it's great to build someone up from scratch, but you can't do that for an entire team all the time).

<comment><USER4> We work less well with very specialized positions. However, the approach of identifying strong general programmers, and then matching the ones who want to work on compilers with compiler jobs works surprisingly well (still often results in higher offer rates than the approach that companies themselves take of filtering first on compiler experience, and then checking technical strength)

<comment><USER17> > We work less well with very specialized positions.

Ah, all makes sense then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I failed the 3rd round interview because I hadn't studied garbage collection. C# handles it for me, I could have learned, I just hadn't prioritized that yet and folks want to say now you aren't very senior. I was told I could apply again, but haven't been offered a chance to even after a couple of follow ups. The problem that ultimately stumped me in the 3 round was the exercise of drawing a spiral in a console window. Sounds easy, but when you are timed and nervous, almost impossible. After I bombed the 3rd round knowing the rejection was coming, I ended up successfully implementing it in Excel and VBA. Good coders are like a snowflake and I think TripleByte doesn't have a business if they buy that.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had an awesome video-interview with Triplebyte in January but they didn't decide to move forward. No complaints though as they gave a solid heads-up on what to expect, my interviewer was super positive (I felt like he was actually rooting for me), and they gave me solid feedback on my strengths and what concrete actions I should take if I choose to reapply in the future.

These guys are the real deal, so it's pretty neat that they're expanding out to big-names! I wish them the best!

<comment><USER20> > they gave me solid feedback on my strengths and what concrete actions I > should take if I choose to reapply in the future.

I applied through their project track. It was described as a low-pressure way to write your code ahead of time and talk about it in the interview.

The interview was, instead, about making changes to my project while Ammon watched. (Also, there was a request to derive a formal proof while Ammon watched. I didn't get it.) After which I got a rejection saying that my project was great but my interview performance was so poor that they wouldn't move forward.

I complained that this wasn't actionable feedback, but the only way they ever responded to that complaint was "I stand by that", from someone other than my interviewer. Am I wrong to consider "you do poorly in interviews" hopelessly vague?

They contacted me, much later, to ask me to be a test subject for a new interview. New interviewer asked me about hash tables, and I responded to his questions with this information:

\- Hash tables are the generalization of an array to being indexed by "whatever you want" rather than an integer; they have similar performance characteristics to arrays.

\- If a hash code is larger than the size of your hash table's backing array, you would generally handle that by storing the item at index (hash_code % array_size).

\- When two objects have the same hash, one strategy is to store them in "buckets", linked lists of everything present in the table at that hash key; another strategy is quadratic probing (where when the index you want is full, you repeatedly square the index until the space you're looking in is empty). Quadratic probing has the downside that when you delete an entry from the table, you have to leave a placeholder in the backing array saying "something used to be here".

\- If a hash table gets too full, you generally create a new backing array of double the size and rehash everything into the new backing array. The size doubles rather than increasing by some constant amount so that the amortized time requirement for inserts will be constant.

\- Amortized time complexity for a set of operations is the average time complexity per operation (not in expectation, but as measured after the operations have happened).

He also asked me about red-black trees. I could say that red-black trees were a self-balancing binary tree with the property that the length of any path root-to-leaf in the tree was within a factor of two of any other path, and that I wouldn't be able to write a red-black tree off the top of my head.

New interviewer, believing that I would be interested in reapplying to triplebyte, did give me feedback on what concrete actions I should take in order to do so. Specifically, he said I should focus on studying red-black trees (OK, fair enough, I guess) _and hash tables_. I thought I had pretty good coverage, purely within the interview, of hash tables. Is that wrong?

<comment><USER21> _New interviewer, believing that I would be interested in reapplying to triplebyte, did give me feedback on what concrete actions I should take in order to do so. Specifically, he said I should focus on studying red-black trees (OK, fair enough, I guess) and hash tables. I thought I had pretty good coverage, purely within the interview, of hash tables. Is that wrong?_

Your hash table knowledge is perfectly fine. So is your red-black tree knowledge. Roughly zero percent of programmers implement those during the course of their job, so knowing their characteristics is more than enough.

<comment><USER20> My question was more along the lines of "there's a lot about red-black trees that I could know, but don't. What does he expect me to know about hash tables that I hadn't already told him?"

<comment><USER21> It's helpful to remember that nobody knows how to hire good candidates (it's an unsolved problem) so everyone has their own favorite, ineffective techniques. This results in a lot of puzzling behavior, like being told you need more red-black tree knowledge.

There's probably no way to know what they were looking for, short of asking them directly. But you have at least two options: (a) roll your eyes at anyone who tells you that you need more knowledge about red-black trees or hash tables to be an excellent engineer, or (b) realize it's a game, and play it with a passion.

Both routes are perfectly valid, and personally I prefer route (a). But if you're deciding to do route (b), you could study as much as you can on the subjects, quiz yourself on various trivia related to red-black trees, look up related interview questions, etc.

This is a bit of a tangent, but from a motivation standpoint, I've found it's optimal to think of interviews as a lottery ticket with 10% chance of winning regardless of your ability, rather than an as an obstacle that can be failed due to lack of ability. There's no reason to be discouraged when someone rejects you in a world where people reject engineers for reasons that are essentially random.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> CURRENT CANDIDATE REVIEW

First Round: Online quiz: pretty easy, very intuitive questions. Different languages, but concepts are language-agnostic.

Second Round: Onsite (I live close by). One OOP coding question, Lightning round of very basic college CS concepts, and debugging session.

First Round Matches: The company tries to match you with 10 companies; I got 5. All the companies were either YC or top-vc funded. I received responses from 3 companies; the startups move very quickly -- onsite within a week. However, I've interviewed with 2 of the 3. Did not get an offer from either (qualification and mismatch in culture-fit).

PROS: \- The team moves VERY fast when it comes to companies (really tough to think of PTO excuses) \- Responsive - each candidate is assigned to a single talent manager \- After the initial matches did not fit my liking or yield any results, my talent manager immediately started looking for new matches.

CONS: \- Initial matches were not what I was looking for/interested in. (hopefully being fixed).

So far, the experience has been positive. Personally, the lack of stress of finding places to submit to is a huge plus.

<comment><USER6> Yep signing up more companies to work with is how we can improve the likelihood we'll find enough matches that are both a technical skills fit and interest fit for every candidate. That's what we're working towards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We've been using TripleByte (in addition to career fairs, etc.) at Expo for a few months and find it really good. Every candidate from TripleByte we've interviewed has been knowledgeable about many facets of software engineering, and it's been great to work with the one we've so far brought on board.

One effect of using TripleByte is that we've been able to focus our interviews more on engineering design and seeing how someone thinks. Since we've found TripleByte's interviews for programming skills and knowledge to be quite good, we get to spend more of our time and the candidates' time on areas other than coding questions.

</comment><comment><USER24> My experience working with Triplebyte has been great. I found them through hackernews from a post about visualizing the timeline for a job search [1].

Unlike most people in this thread, I thought their interview process was much more relevant and tangible to real engineering applications than most companies I've interviewed at. I was not presented with any gotchas or arcane algorithms questions.

Finally, the big draw to them as an engineer is that it significantly cuts down on the amount of time you spend on the phone with other companies before going on site. I'm still holding a job (hence the anonymous account), so looking for other opportunities was somewhat prohibitive to me.

[1] [http://kellysutton.com/2016/10/20/visualizing-a-job- search-o...](http://kellysutton.com/2016/10/20/visualizing-a-job-search-or- how-to-find-a-job-as-a-software-engineer.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> The phone number validator on the signup page does not work correctly. Doesn't recognize or validate my valid Swiss phone number in any normal variation although it does correctly change the little flag to Switzerland.

<comment><USER26> Ah good catch! Can you email me your phone so we can test and fix it: firstname.lastname@example.com

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish they expand the process to recruit remote and outside of the USA.

<comment><USER28> They don't hire remote? I remember they have a strong bias to recruit for Bay Area companies but I remember being asked if I'm looking for remote work too. So maybe they do.

<comment><USER27> Last time I started the signup process (2 months ago maybe), when I selected the "remote" option, there was a message informing me that they didn't recruit remote. Same with location (USA only).

Nice UX informing it so upfront anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Have you guys considered working with Udacity? They have a "plus" version that does offers placement guarantees or a refund. There might be a synergy there.</comment>


An Introduction to Matlab Metaprogramming - daniel-levin http://daniel-levin.github.io/2015/05/16/intro-to-matlab-metaprog.html <comment><AUTHOR> In this universe, that is called symbolic computation or functional programming.</comment>


The Necessity of Nuclear - <AUTHOR> https://reasonstobecheerful.world/divest-update/ <comment><USER5> Is nuclear waste even still a problem? We have been storing nuclear waste for more than 60 years in 'temporary facilities ' while we're looking for permanent solutions. As far as I know, nothing happened in that time. Let's just drop the 'temporary' label, keep doing what we're doing and stop worrying about hypothetical scenarios where society will collapse and some farmer 1000 years from now will get radiation poisoning.

<comment><USER6> I'm a good few miles from Sellafield, but well within the "you're screwed" radius in the event of major leak.

On waste it depends what you call "still a problem". Sellafield still has pools storing the spent Magnox fuel resulting from running Britain's nuclear stock flat out through the 1973 miners strike. Those are decaying "nicely". Risk of fuel fires has been mentioned more than once. Sellafield is a reprocessing plant, that hasn't yet touched the 45 year old waste.

Yes I'd say nuclear waste is still a problem. I'm far enough outside London that politicians probably think it's perfectly fine.

Photos: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafie...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield- nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears)

<comment><USER7> > Yes I'd say nuclear waste is still a problem.

Can you elaborate on what the problem is? I see a photo of a pond with the sun shining, grass growing and seagulls bathing. Authorities say it is safe.

I have friends who live next to an explosives manufacturing plant. They are at a much higher risk then it sounds like you are. I don't see nuclear fuel as being different from any other hazardous industrial material we deal with.

Those are tiny ponds, by the way. I reckon they could have a 2nd set as a backup somewhere near by if it came to it. You should see the size of a mine tailings pond, when they fail it causes real problems.

<comment><USER8> Authorities lie, seagulls get cancers too, and there are superfund everywhere you find a nuclear industry.

Temporary storage on site is a very bad idea. Leaks, non uniform site security, drums that were designed for a few decades now being called to serve for a century.

Either have long term storage, or drop nuclear. There's no in between

<comment><USER7> > Authorities lie, seagulls get cancers too, and there are superfund > everywhere you find a nuclear industry.

So based on information that you don't have but assume exists there is a problem? There is actual evidence of known problems that nuclear solves. Like air pollution from coal.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, the government does lie and I also subscribe to a couple of out-there conspiracy theories. It is just there is a lot of evidence that the nuclear threat is way overblown.

> Either have long term storage, or drop nuclear. There's no in between

You could move them in to new decade-long storage once a decade. As mentioned, those are small ponds. The world is not made up of absolutes.

<comment><USER6> We do have evidence, and we have a distinct pattern of behaviour from the many public inquiries and investigations into the standard of management at Seascale / Windscale / Sellafield / THORP.

To be glib, that's why there were so many renamings. To bury the inept history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I absolutely love Brian Eno's music. Apollo and The Pearl are engraved in my memory and will stay with me until my last day. But I really don't see why I would take Brian Eno's ideas on why we need nuclear power any more serious than some sports person talking about politics or a computer programmer talking or writing about the finer bits of mechanical engineering.

This whole 'famous person speaks about subject they have little knowledge about with authority' thing goes right past me, it's weird how we seem to project all kinds of magical properties onto those who manage to get name recognition. As though fame somehow automatically bestows instant expertise on a hundred unrelated fields on the famous.

I'd love to hear Brian Eno write and say more about music though, like Vangelis, Tomita, Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Doldinger he managed to make electronic music sound organic, which was - given the tools at hand - <USER2> magnificent accomplishment.

Renewables are sorted out, massive deployment is more of a political problem than a technical one. Better batteries would be useful but windpower doesn't need batteries as much as solar does. Better transmission lines, that would make a big difference.

Creating more nuclear power plants is a dead end economically, the power produced is going to be more expensive than the same amount of power produced using renewable energy. On top of that you will _still_ have to deal with the waste and the eventual decommissioning, assuming you get the license to operate the thing in the first place and your budget overruns won't kill the project.

So regardless of what - insert favorite famous musician - who was against nuclear power for all the wrong reasons and now is pro nuclear power - <USER3> for all the wrong reasons - thinks we are on a different path now and just maybe it will be possible to get through the eye of the needle without relying on nuclear technology. And if it has to be nuclear, then let's hope that fusion will finally be delivered, that would be a game changer.

<comment><USER10> Where did you see that "renewables are sorted out"? Or that windpower "doesn't need batteries as much as solar does".

What if you don't have wind? Sun? Is that also sorted out?

<comment><USER9> I've worked on a number of renewable energy projects and these hold true for any scale. We can make turbines rated > 10 MW now, and solar panel production at scale is a solved problem. We're looking at logistics issues now, not at manufacturing, reliability or basic physics issues.

As for why wind does not need batteries: Wind power fluctuates on short time scales, these are not a good match for batteries. There are some interesting solutions to these problems that involve superconducting material (in actual production, not lab level stuff).

For solar with a 24 hour cycle batteries are much more important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is an abject failure of our amplification systems, notably HN and Stewart Brand's Long Now, that we are listening to two Baby Boomer musicians debate energy policy. Who cares what Eno and Byrne think about nuclear power?

</comment><comment><USER12> > I am now pro-nuclear—at least as an intermediate technology until we really > get renewables, and, as you say, BETTER BATTERIES, sorted out.

> An argument I haven't seen before is that no other clean energy source can > scale up as quickly as nuclear—IF the reactors are standardized.

Isn't this why we _won 't_ get nuclear power? It's always been my impression than nuclear is more financial challenging than technical, it takes forever to recoup the initial cost of the reactor and by the time it does, we will want to move onto 'cleaner/safer' renewables.

Perhaps if public perception changed considerably and we were willing to have our base energy load (what coal & natural gas* provide today) come from nuclear. I just don't think nuclear makes financial sense currently if it's only intended to be temporary.

<comment><USER13> So far, we don't have any technology even in design phase, much less in the deployment stage, to deal with the storage problem. For our current needs, lithium batteries simply will not do, and we do not have enough viable sites or water for pumped storage either. There is nothing suggesting we're going to solve the storage problem in our lifetimes, so nuclear is really the only viable solution to get off fossil fuels completely.

<comment><USER14> Flow batteries, thermal salt storage and simple overcapacity + long-distance transmission are all possibilities.

There's an 800 MWh / 200 MW Vanadium flow battery being built in Dalian, China, for example. Thermal salt storage is already coupled to thermal solar plants in Spain, but could be run with a heat pump, using any power source.

There are actually several promising technologies. It's not as dire as you're suggesting.

<comment><USER15> You could just keep the combined cycle peeking plants around for a while while figuring out the load cycle and storage. It's pretty simple since they are already built.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TLDR: Extrapolating current trends in renewable power generation, by the time we're able to complete construction of new nuclear plants those plants won't be necessary.

There are six significant flaws in most recent pro-nuclear arguments I've read. To me, these flaws undermine the pro-nuclear case.

1\. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years).

2\. Authors focus on the percentage of energy production contributed by clean sources (solar, wind, etc.) TODAY, but ignore the growth trend (which matters since reactors take so long to bring online).

3\. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years.

4\. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted.

5\. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient over time).

6\. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under- reported.

[1]: [https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a- nucle...](https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear- reactor), "Quora"

[6]: [https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ](https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ), "Chernobyl Podcast"

Edit: added TLDR. I'll update with references for points 2-5 later. Slow internet connection now.

<comment><USER17> > 1\. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 > years).

Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand, e.g. it takes multiple years to build a pressure vessel but this production could be ramped up 10-100x if need be. The Quora source you cite actually says 48 months for modern reactors so I'm not sure where >7 years came from.

> 3\. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future > generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years.

There is no waste storage problem. This is a myth that should have died a decade ago. Vitrified nuclear waste is inert and harmless. Modern reactors are also able to consume most of current waste. We already tolerate far worse waste products from e.g. the coal industry where it's a non-newsworthy occurrence for toxic tailings to completely destroy river systems.

> 4\. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to > be wasted.

The energy (not power) storage problem is unique to unreliable peaky power sources like solar and wind. Nuclear power plants provide a consistent and diallable power output. Energy storage is also a big impediment to large scale rollout of renewables because energy storage costs are superlinear with respect to demand.

> 5\. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient > over time).

Increase in efficiency does not lead to decrease in consumption. It does the opposite. Look up induced demand.

> 6\. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely > under-reported.

Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than anything else that exists including renewables.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys- deathprint-a-price-always-paid)

This comment is entirely misleading and the author is seriously misinformed about nuclear power. This should not be top comment on any discussion of nuclear power. This is just perpetuating FUD and myths that have all been deconstructed years ago.

<comment><USER18> _Your_ comment is entirely misleading, based on outdated data, and whitewashes the hell out of nuclear power. The fact you're trying to claim the parent post is bad is not cool.

1\. Please look at actual data for power plant construction times. [1] provides an overview. Estimates are useless - if we look at how long things actually take to build... "The mean construction time of 441 reactors in use today was 7.5 years."

3\. Are you actually serious right now? Radioactive waste sitting in temporary pools that will be an environmental catastrophe for hundreds of years if they leak isn't a problem? No, just because we tolerate other ecological disasters doesn't make this one ok.

4\. This is no longer true, and will _definitely_ not be true in another 5 years. Battery costs are decreasing at a reliable rate year over year. Power plants are already being built making use of them. Here's one going up now with 300MWh of storage [2].

5\. No, _you_ look up per capita demand. Here: [3]. It's been dropping for a decade.

6\. Your link does not report solar farm deaths because as far as I can tell there haven't ever been any. Unless you count birds. Rooftop solar is "dangerous" because installers fall off roofs.

[1] [http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a- nucle...](http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear- power-plant/)

[2] [https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/10/08/the-sun-shines- only-a...](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/10/08/the-sun-shines-only-at- night/)

[3] [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212)

<comment><USER17> > Radioactive waste sitting in temporary pools

Spent fuel is sitting in _cooling_ pools because it emits enough residual heat to melt if not in water. Spent fuel will typically sit in these pools for around a decade. At which point the residual heat is low enough to process it via vitrification (turning it into chemically inert glass) and then moving it to a permanent storage site. Vitrified spent fuel is radiologically and chemically safe. The only way it can become a danger is if somehow liquefied or aerosolised. The volume needed to store a century worth of all humanity's spent nuclear fuel is less than a single large landfill site, of which we have hundreds of thousands.

> that will be an environmental catastrophe for hundreds of years if they leak

If what leaks? Do you actually know what's in those pools and why? Spent fuel pools are harmless. You can go for a swim in them and receive a lower radiation dose than background. There's nothing to leak. The only failure mode is if water is not supplied to them and eventually evaporates.

> This is no longer true, and will definitely not be true in another 5 years

Cite this. Show that at any point in the foreseeable future the cost of energy storage with regard to total capacity is not superlinear. China would love to hear from you since they're stuck unable to use renewables at large scale because of this issue.

> No, you look up per capita demand. Here: [3]. It's been dropping for a > decade.

Per capita is not a relevant number, The number that is being discussed is total demand. The number that matters, since power sources need to supply a total demand not a per capita demand, whatever that would even mean. The number that's rapidly increasing.[1]

Actually take the time to read up on induced demand, then you will understand that it results in a per-capita decrease in consumption (since higher efficiency) and a paradoxical higher total consumption, since now there are more consumers who were previously priced out.

GP post is bad and your post is bad. Sorry. If you don't understand the very eli5 basics of nuclear power like the purpose of cooling ponds (and the fact that most modern reactor designs don't need them), then be aware that you're perpetuating a bunch of myths every time you talk about it. Energy science is not a topic where all opinions are equal.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Trend...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Trends)

<comment><USER18> Here we go again, downplaying risks and ignoring facts that aren't supportive of your argument.

What do I think is in the pools? Radioactive waste that will have a mini meltdown if the pools leak enough water to expose the waste to air. You know, the kind of leak that can result from a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or just plain old maintenance negligence [1]. But that's ok, we'll just pretend Fukushima never happened, I guess.

I already provided a link to a renewable power plant that's going up, backed by battery storage for non-generating hours. Perhaps you didn't like it? Here's a report on how costs of batteries are dropping fast enough to make them cost competitive with traditional sources [2]. You probably won't like that, either, since you're hung up on the whole "linear with demand" thing, which no one actually cares about. What they do care about is total cost per reliable kWh, _taking into account all negative externalities_. But I guess we'll just pretend nuclear accidents don't occur, especially small ones [3], and that the whole long-term storage problem doesn't exist because that whole Yucca Mountain thing is just needless worrying.

I like how you focus on total demand globally because if you look at total demand in the West, it's been flat for years. You conveniently don't point out that the places demand _is_ increasing are in the developing world, which is _the last place we should build nuclear plants_. Do you want more accidents due to poor maintenance or operating procedures? Because that's how you'll get them.

And I understand induced demand perfectly - my whole point of showing per capita consumption is to point out that it's bullshit in this case. Electricity has been plentiful in the US and EU for decades, but per capita use peaked 9 years ago. Induced demand is only relevant in developing markets where there is latent demand, which again is back to the developing world where I will never agree we should build nuclear.

You like nuclear, I get it. It's a good power source. It's just not the best one anymore and it's time to recognize that. But it's clear you have already made up your mind on the issue, so I won't be engaging in any more discussion with you on this.

[1] [https://thebulletin.org/2017/08/pushing-the-storage-horse- wi...](https://thebulletin.org/2017/08/pushing-the-storage-horse-with-a- nuclear-waste-cart-the-spent-fuel-pool-problem/)

[2] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report- levelize...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelized- cost-of-energy-for-lithium-ion-batteries-bnef)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/09/indian- point...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/09/indian-point- nuclear-plant-close-new-york)

<comment><USER17> > Induced demand is only relevant in developing markets where there is latent > demand

...Yeah. And since the topic of this entire post is climate change, the developing nations and induced demand are all that matters. No one gives a fuck about per capita energy consumption in the US, the question is about the total energy demand of the planet and how it's supplied.

What the developed world does from here on out is irrelevant in terms of first order effects on climate change. It's already done the bulk of the damage it was going to do. Switch all of the developed world to fairy-powered zero emission fusion overnight, or anything else you want, it won't make a difference.

The deciding factor for climate change is how China and India will power themselves, and if the answer isn't nuclear, then we're all screwed. Just like TFA states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nuclear power suffers from piss poor economies of scale. If you want your country to invest into nuclear then it should be prepared to build dozens of identical plants at the same time. Of course this will require at least a trillion dollars of funding but the upside is that costs per plant will go down significantly after the learning phase.

<comment><USER20> Exactly, its to efficent. Switerland for example has a couple of plants, and once you build them you don't need to build more for like 40-50 years.

And because nuclear is so country-by-country you don't get global economics of scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately, nuclear is just too far away from being a popular option for it to be considered by politicians, policy-makers, or anyone else that makes important enough decisions. Politicians will continue to silently approve the creation of new nuclear centrals (because they know we need them) but won't publicly push for them. Public opinion has been biased so much against nuclear that no one of those people sees a benefit _for themselves_ to solve the environmental crisis with nuclear.

Which brings me to the core point of this post: a lot of people care about the environment, and would like to help as much as they can, learning what's best to pursue. But politicians, policy-makers, and public personalities in general are not among the ones that really want to help the environment. For them, being an environmentalist is just a _mean_ to capture some votes, some money, some power. _That_ is what the seek. Paradoxically, I think they will attempt to delay the solution to the problem as much as they can, because that would mean they lose their power.

<comment><USER22> At least one presidential candidate does support some form of nuclear,

[https://www.yang2020.com/policies/nuclear- energy/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/nuclear-energy/)

but yes, it's a rare position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's been my view for a long time that Green Party has been unreasonably stupid being generally so hard core anti-nuclear that they can't even think about logically anymore. Like it's one of the best clean energy sources out there, works in any climate and location and the waste is quite trivial to store away for time being - until we find out a way to use it. But no, they rather stoke fear with doomsday scenarios scarier than another and advocate building expensive wind turbines and solar panels in places where they just can't support the energy demands of the whole country.

It's just dumb. They are too stuck emotionally with their idealism on "non- polluting" things. Everything pollutes, nuclear waste albeit worse than the normal garbage can be taken care of quite easily. I'd rather have that than coal plants. Sure it would be nice to not to have even the nuclear waste, but sometimes you have to be pragmatic. That's what engineering is about.

Here's a fun story I heard about the woefully famous Finnish Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant. As some of you might know it was the most expensive building in the world for a while costing 8.5 billion euros (it seems some hotel complex in Mecca is now more expensive with 12 billions). Why you might ask? Well Olkiluoto 3 is a nuclear plant with 1600 MW output consisting of only a single reactor, unlike no other plant. Commonly nuclear plants are built in sets of 2 reactors, so that they are easier to maintain (one is still running when the other is offline) and in general easier to build than one massive reactor. But why only 1 reactor you ask? Well, as some Nokia engineer told me in sauna, the administration at the time consisted of multiple parties one of them being the Green Party. And Green Party was terribly afraid of nuclear energy, and the decision to build a new nuclear power plant really didn't sit well with them. Everybody knew that Finland needed a new power source and nuclear power plant was the only viable option. But Green Party just didn't. want. the. nuclear. plant.

So a compromise was made. Green Party agreed to allow the building of a new nuclear plant _but only_ with one reactor. Dumb idea, but I guess they thought that 1 nuclear reactor was less scarier than 2. What the other parties then decided to? Well in order to supply the energy demands Finnish industry required, they said "hey let's build a reactor that in fact has the power of two reactors". Which was never done before, and the results are now well- known.

In the end, what Green Party gained from this? A nuclear power plant with only a one reactor, but which is double the size of regular one and whole thing billions of euros over-budget and everyone generally unhappy. But hey, only one reactor.. I'm not even sure does it produce the same nuclear waste as two reactors would. A major success nonetheless.

<comment><USER24> > Well, as some Nokia engineer told me in sauna

That sounds like a very reliable source. Thanks for enlightening us.

<comment><USER23> So you think he was lying then? Jesus christ what an attitude, do you want me to find some news to support my claim? Should I put disclaimer marks around my text that I have not researched this with a notebook in my hand? I can't believe how arrogant one can be, to write-off my whole reply while subjective, well explained, because that I couldn't verify the sources of what somebody said to me and which is only a story to validate my original point - <USER4> Green Party doesn't seem to be capable thinking about nuclear power rationally.

EDIT: Really, downvotes? It's easy to disagree but to do so without contributing anything constructive is just worthless. I'm not changing my mind, frankly it's doing the opposite. It's a fact that Green Party was in the administration at the time the Olkiluoto 3 was decided, but I'm not going to research it any further than that.

It's just so low-effort for you to press down or just write a two sentence snarky reply. Should I then return the favor and do the same for any reasonable anti-nuclear comment that I just don't disagree with? That is what a petty person would do, but I'm fine with my downvotes. I think it's just reinforcing my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Uranium is the most energy dense material on this planet, check out energy density of various fuels on wiki. Uranium like any fossil fuel ie crude and coal has waste issues, its also, due to its energy density, more of a hazard that a tank full of coal or gasoline. Saying that in the 50's nuclear aircraft were built and tested but the risk of fallout from any number of potential aviation incidence put paid to that idea becoming common place. Smaller nuclear reactors are still used in secure trusted locations though, like submarines, ships and even the US embassy in London (you'll need to analyse metadata to find that out). I do sometimes wonder if the eco warriers are Nazi's hiding under the green banner, wanting to send everyone back to the stone age or whether they just like acting as the brake on technological developments that could otherwise rush off into the sunset. Any country would be sensible to have a range of electrical power generation technologies, the isotopes from nuclear fuel can be used in medicines, depleted uranium in military armour (tanks) and ballistics. In fact when the US dropped the nukes on Japan, the ensuing scientific knowledge gained spawned the radiotherapy developments in cancer treatments, after it was observed that nuclear radiation killed stem cells in bone marrow and the spleen. Doctors even worked out the minimum amount of stem cells and spleen cells to kick start the immune system as a result of the WW2 nukes.

So its hard for many to quantify the benefits of nuclear power and military experiments, but the problems still remain, how to deal with the waste. Robots need to be made nuclear proof, there is a spill over into space technology here as space is highly irradiated, so solving things like Fukashima and Chernobyl will benefit space exploration even more. And there is the attainment of knowledge which gets us closer to understanding and importantly, controlling fusion.

Besides waste disposal could be made into the fastest fault lines of two plates of the earth crust, effectively sending the radation back into the earth's core. If people are worried about radiation, they should look up Radon and granite rocks. That kills more people than uranium waste.

</comment><comment><USER26> Imo, the fact that the world didn't put a huge dent in global warming by building lots of nuclear plants is one of the saddest "misses" of our recent history.

This I feel is due to irrational, emotional public opinion. Nuclear is the safest cleanest and most stable energy source we have so far but it's also "scary" because radiation is spooky and invisible. Coal is simple and local and it just silently kills millions through pollution. It's similar to the common fear of flying vs the common non-fear of driving.

Even today when people talk about the "cons" of nuclear power (spent fuel management, risk of catastrophe, terrorist target, etc) they are usually oblivious to the fact that there are 450 active NPPs today, and they are supplying 10% of the worlds energy and things are going great.[0] So even if these were acute concerns (and they're not) we would only have needed to increase them by a max factor of 10 to get 100% non polluting energy. That's not a lot, and definitively worth the "hassle". Even in Chernobyl (which was the main reason for the doom the nuclear effort) the number of casualties due to radiation, including long term effects, are estimated to be in the thousands, not millions as most people assume. [1] In Fukushima that number is 1. [2]

The number of NPPs were growing exponentially until suddenly plateauing globally since 1987 til today [0]. This is because building a new NPP is very expensive, time consuming, and since Chernobyl, headline-grabbing. Keeping an existing one running on the other hand is almost free, and a non-issue.

The other culprit is the fact that it seems that NPPs are not dominantly cost- effective as of now [3]. If they were, then maybe savvy entrepreneurs would have found a way to circumvent the public opinion and convince governments to build them. But as it stands, no one has the incentive to push this agenda: Not businesses, and not politicians who couldn't stand the backlash (on the contrary, France, who leads the world with 75% reliance on nuclear power, wants to reduce that number to 50% by 2035 because that's the will of the people [4])

In a (better) parallel world, the people would demand _more_ nuclear power and get the governments to subsidence the costs to make it cost effective and removing the reliance on coal. Instead we're building wind turbines and solar panels that are so unreliable they stop producing energy when there's no wind or it's cloudy/night. I think it's quite clear that these green technologies can't really be effective at a large scale (at least without some major break- throughs), but it's what the people demand, so it's what we do while we continue to burn coal.

[0] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current- an...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future- generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties) [3] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537816/why-dont-we- have-m...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537816/why-dont-we-have-more- nuclear-power/) [4] [http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron- clarifies-...](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-clarifies- French-energy-plans)

</comment><comment><USER27> Brian Eno's full name: Brian Peter George De La John Sieur LaBaptiste Roger Farfisa Schweppes Lea Bernard Fancourt Richard Peter Loonhouse De La Salle Eno

</comment><comment><USER28> But is he willing to live next to a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste storage facility?

<comment><USER29> I'm willing to live moderately close. I don't really want to be in the shade of a cooling tower; I wouldn't want to be next door to a coal-fired power plant or a gas turbine, either, or even really a wind farm.

But if you want to put it in an industrial area a few blocks away, sure, I'm good with it. I'm not sure we have a great source of cooling water here, though, except up in the hills which is really not a wonderful siting for a nuclear plant.

<comment><USER30> I want to live outside the leak permanent evacuation radius. Unfortunately that can be pretty huge and I think my city is already in one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nuclear power plants are not safe, never have been, and never will be. That's because no matter how great your technology and redundant safety systems are, it's all still run by humans who are fallible, often stupid, and _very_ often greedy.

If you can make a buck by cutting corners and shirking security regulations, someone will.

Air travel is nowadays pretty safe, but this has been achieved over decades of trial and error, with each major error costing dozens if not hundreds of lives - not something we can affords with nuclear technology. And as the 737 MAX and its insights into Boeing company culture and the FDA shows, people can and will piss away already gained safety improvements.

<comment><USER29> Maybe not, but we can bound the number of people they kill at much lower than other forms of power generation.

<comment><USER31> WTF? That is pretty much the _exact opposite_ of reality.

<comment><USER29> _Electricity Generation and Health, Markandya & Wilkinson, The Lancet, 2007._

It finds a death rate of 0.074 deaths per terawatt-hour for nuclear, compared to 24.5 for coal, 18.4 for oil, and 2.8 for gas. The edges of the nuclear and gas confidence interval get somewhat close to each other but do not overlap.

While there was not enough data for the author to estimate the rate for solar and wind, subsequent estimates are about 2 for solar and 10 for wind.

Of the 0.074, 0.003 deaths are non-occupational from accidents; 0.022 are total deaths from accidents. The vast majority of this 0.022 is not radiological, but instead ordinary industrial and mining accidents where people are in traffic accidents, asphyxiate, are killed by hot steam, or crushed to death.

The rest is from various kinds of air pollution impacts in the nuclear fuel and transportation chain. Even if we have a horrid accident that has 1000x the impact of previous accidents, we will not reach the death rates associated with other sources of power.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which Country Would Win in the Programming Olympics? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerrank.com/which-country-would-win-in-the-programming-olympics/ <comment><USER2> Proud to see South Africa made it onto the list.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like Java isn't very popular in Asia.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the newest jobs you know of? - <AUTHOR>

My brother works as a Graphic Facilitator, a job/discipline that did not seemingly exist before 2008 (according to google):
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=graphic%20facilitation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_facilitation
I also recently heard about the field of Knowledge Mobilisation, seemingly born in 2010:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=knowledge%20mobilization
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/mar/09/introduction-to-knowledge-mobilisation
I find this fascinating, and am curious to find more, so I put this to the brilliant people of Hacker News:
What are the newest jobs/disciplines that you know of? <comment><USER3> One of the coolest things I had come across was an old watch repairman in town who pivoted his business to fixing Apple products when the iPhone came out. Now he fixes cracked iPhones, replaces MacBook motherboards, etc. He had all the tools and the fine motor skills from his years of watch repair. He still does watches, but I'd say from the looks of it 95% of his business is now fixing Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of these new titles seem to be rehashes of existing and less exciting titles.

 _"Business Analyst" = > "Data Scientist"_

 _"Customer Acquisition" = > "Growth Hacker"_

 _"Generalist Programmer" = > "Full Stack Engineer"_

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a product optimization specialist. I'm responsible for my company's product split testing efforts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Chief Digital Officer - <USER2>

Digital Archivist

Director of Fan Experience</comment>


Results from being #2 on Product Hunt (on a monday) – Venture Assembly - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2w7ghc/results_from_being_2_on_product_hunt_on_a_monday/

<comment><AUTHOR> Posted this since I thought just the raw numbers were interesting: 60 conversions @ $99.</comment>


How winners win: John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious organizations - <AUTHOR> https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/03/how-winners-win-john-boyd-and-the-four-qualities-of-victorious-organizations/ <comment><USER2> Having read the The Halo Effect, I always worry about selection bias with these types of observations. How many unsuccessful organizations also had these four qualities?</comment>


Load JavaScript with IsInputPending() on Chrome 74 Proposed and Used by Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/developer-tools/isinputpending-api/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also related: Chrome Origin Trials: [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/OriginTrials](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/OriginTrials)</comment>


Trees cocooned in spiders webs after flooding - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5571181942/ <comment><USER2> Would love to see a close-up of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this size: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5571181942/sizes/o/in/phot...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5571181942/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

It requires scrolling to see the trees.</comment></comment>


Coming to a doctor's office near you: Live-streaming your exam with Google Glass - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/medical-scribes-track-doctors-examinations-from-thousands-of-miles-away/2016/09/27/2c269f54-7c23-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html <comment><USER2> For doctors. Hm. I'd been expecting this to appear first for cops. Cops don't like wearing body cams, but if the body cam and support systems did most of their paperwork, cops would like that.</comment>


Scott McNealy: To have a successful start-up, be careful who you marry - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10051295-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 <comment><USER2> I...don't really like this article, frankly.

Other than being fairly light on information to begin with, the title brings up (what I believe is) the least important part of the article. I can't really speak to being married and trying to run a start-up (still in college), but from what I've read, it is entirely possible. The major thing is having kids -- not being married, or even who you are married to (at least, not nearly as much). If the "married" thing is a metaphor for some of the other rules, such as #2, then they're really stretching it.

I do agree with numbers 1 through 4, though they really could have beefed up the article with some more information and detail. For example, one sentence for #3 gets the point across, but leaves me hanging a bit.

On my earlier note though, can anyone speak to being married/having kids and trying to...start...a start-up? I'm curious what the experience is like, as opposed to being single and/or just having a girlfriend.

<comment><USER3> I'm part of a team of 3 guys with an idea, at prototype stage. With a wife, 3 kids and a mortgage, the first concern if/when we all commit full-time, is continuing to keep up with all of these responsibilities. My wife's supportive of what we want to achieve, but we'll see what happens if/when reality bites. It's an extra hurdle to leap, but it's manageable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Look for the counter-intuitive idea and go after it._

 _The hard part is, you have to be right._

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought this was going to be about cofounders...

<comment><USER6> I expected it to be about the startup marrying a technology stack (i.e. committing to Microsoft products, or Apple, or open source, or Sun, for that matter)

I agree with the post saying it was light on content. It would have been nice if he used some great open source technology to record his talk and put it online. :/</comment></comment>


MapQuest Will Use OpenStreetMap Data in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.mapquest.com/2010/07/09/mapquest-opens-up-uk/

<comment><USER2> This is very exciting for people who know about and contribute to OpenStreetMap. The UK version is very details and leaps ahead of the US version, but in time I can only hope it catchs up. I would be interested to see if MapQuest has any thoughts of using OSM in the US if the quality is improved...

<comment><AUTHOR> They already support the US (the regular map features work when you pan across the Atlantic), they just aren't marketing that fact.</comment></comment>


Apple, Google Just Killed Portable GPS Devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/06/gps-devices-are-dead/

<comment><USER2> One big reason to keep using a dedicated GPS is offline support—as far as I know, both iOS and Android require an internet connection to calculate a route, so if you don't have cell service, you're out of luck. Since dedicated GPS devices have everything locally, they just do all that work without having to talk to a server.

<comment><USER3> The upcoming Maps update for Android will have offline support so you can pre- cache a selected area.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/6/3068113/google-maps- offline...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/6/3068113/google-maps-offline-for- android-coming-soon)

<comment><USER4> Will it support offline navigation? Map caching has been available as an experimental feature for quite a long time.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine that navigation will work offline. Currently the directions and rerouting are calculated by Google's servers, not on the client device. Obviously trivial routing can be done on the device, but proper routing would need a lot more data to be present, and cover the whole route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Boats. Airplanes. Backpackers. Campers. Adventurers. People who need routes anywhere the network isn't real or good enough.

But mom? Yeah, she's not going to struggle with a Garmin or try to get the piece of shit in her car dash to work.

Thank you Google!

</comment><comment><USER7> And yet, standalone GPS systems are still absurdly expensive. I was looking at a handheld system with topological map support for hiking this summer, and the Garmin options basically _start_ at $250 - and don't even include the maps, which are $100 on their own.

Motorcycle GPS? $700 please.

None of Garmin's standalone GPS products are remotely as capable as a free-on- contract Android smartphone, but they cost as much as an unsubsidized high-end handset. And you have to keep paying every year for updated maps.

<comment><USER8> It may be that they feel they can charge more due to offline capabilities of dedicated GPS devices.

<comment><USER7> Could be. It's definitely possible to do everything offline with a smartphone, but it isn't easy yet. I ended up buying a couple of topo map apps on my iPhone, and they did everything I needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Convergence happens when an available device is good enough to replace a purpose-built specialized device.

<comment><USER10> "Good enough" being a compound factor. The best common smartphone (e.g. GS III / iPhone 4S) still pale compared to a decent P&S, but the convenience of being able to share/upload/utilize those photos overcomes the imaging deficiency.

Just thought it was worth mentioning that. I love my T2i, but most of the time I leave it sidelined simply because it's such a PITA -- relative to a smartphone -- dealing with the photos.

<comment><USER11> I think the smartphone has effectively killed the P&S for me and other folks in similar ages in my circles.

It used to be a) DSLR for events + b) P&S for hiking/casual/video. But now the (b) slot is completely replaced by my iPhone. I haven't replaced the DSLR since 2004 (O.G. rebel + nifty fifty), but will probably replace that before I ever consider getting another P&S camera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've got both an Android phone (Galaxy Nexus) and a Garmin in my car. The Android has a smaller screen and more up to date maps. The Garmin shows the maps better (spatial awareness) and its instructions are better, plus more complete when roads do things like fork. Additionally I can actually read the Garmin in sunshine while wearing sunglasses - something that is considerably harder for the Android.

But another generation or two of displays and they'll no longer be an issue. I don't hold out much hope for the friendliness of Google's map display and instructions, but suspect most people won't care, and certainly won't care enough to fork our for a PND.

It is interesting to see how companies are responding. Garmin are now letting their devices cooperate with your phone with SmartLink: [http://gpstracklog.com/2012/06/garmin-smartphone-link- review...](http://gpstracklog.com/2012/06/garmin-smartphone-link-review.html)

Also interesting is the Parrot Asteroid. The concept is great - a head unit running Android - but the implementation is truly awful. [http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/bluetooth-hands-free- car-...](http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/bluetooth-hands-free-car- kits/parrot-asteroid)

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Well... the article focuses on the car nav units. I've started using my phone with Waze for car navigation and it works great. So much better than the Nuvi I used prior. But "Portable GPS Devices" are used for more things than car nav. As much as I love my phone, it is no where near as rugged as my DeLorme GPS. When I'm out in the woods hiking or looking for a geocache, I'm not reaching for my phone.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the Navigation app on my Android, but I can use up my monthly data allotment in one day. Until I get unlimited data or Navigation stops overriding my low bandwidth settings, I'll continue to use my TomTom (terrible UI by comparison, but good enough directions).

</comment><comment><USER13> I've only ever used a gps device in a rental car, and that hasn't changed since owning an android phone, so I imagine that as long as these gps manufacturers continue close ties with rental agencies they will continue to live on.

</comment><comment><USER14> and nokia had killed the alarm clock in late 90s for me.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are still GPS applications out there the phone isn't so great. Number one on the list is fitness. Number two I'd say is precision. My Garmin owns the phone in that regard, but really who cares except for mappers and cachers, and half the cachers will just use their phones anyway.

"Just killed" is a bit extreme. How about "have been killing for the past three years and are continuing to kill now"? But, yes, the standard GPS is going the way of the standard PnS camera.

</comment><comment><USER16> No, they have killed them years ago but maybe this wasn't obvious up until now. It takes time to work out deficiencies and for the market to react. Remember this when the next time someone is arguing that even though Product X is looking less and less relevant, "it's far from being dead, in fact, it's selling more than ever."

</comment><comment><USER4> Will ios6 support offline navigation? Thats one of the killer features currently missing on Android as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> This will work fine in Europe as long as we stay in our own country. The prohibitive rooming costs make us all turn off data when we cross the border. Long life to GPS devices over here!

</comment><comment><USER18> Android's Navigation app first came out a year or so ago and since them I've used it during travel in regions where a network is available. Odd that this is still considered news.

</comment><comment><USER19> Funny, I just said the same thing here a few days ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079010>

</comment><comment><USER20> 1) Offline support 2) Devices, maybe, but companies, no. In iOS 6, in very very small print, it says "data provided by TomTom"</comment>


UAF vulnerability in the Menu Management Component of Window Manager - <AUTHOR> https://xiaodaozhi.com/exploit/117.html <comment><USER2> The french elections don't use any form of electronic voting system. The interference is given a passing mention with no source whatsoever, what is it talking about?

<comment><USER3> There's still some electronic voting system in France but it's only a minority at the moment: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_%C3%A9lectronique#France](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_%C3%A9lectronique#France)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pD_H4c...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pD_H4c4i_vAJ:https://xiaodaozhi.com/exploit/117.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> To be clear: the allegation is that this was used to try to hack Macron's campaign, not the election process itself. French election results are totally hand-counted; a "hack" isn't possible.</comment>


The Ultimate Wallboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.ultimatewallboard.com/entries/89095

<comment><AUTHOR> They've got a pretty impressive setup there at Voda. This is a video of their scrum wallboard in action for a sprint. They use physical cards to represent stories and have task completion tied into their PM system, allowing them to project a burn-down chart across the board.

There are some other neat wallboards in the contest, but I found this one particularly cool.</comment>


Re-using Backbone.js Models on the server with Node.js and Socket.io - <AUTHOR> http://andyet.net/blog/2011/feb/15/re-using-backbonejs-models-on-the-server-with-node/ <comment><USER3> I wanted to cross post this here as I already posted it in the comments.

\-----

I am glad you wrote about this, but I feel you are missing the real 'magic' that can be done with node.js and Backbone, or any client code you choose. Socket.io is great, fantastic even, and I think it is something that really shows the power of node.js; there is something built on top of socket.io that is even more wonderful, and it is called dnode[0]. It is really simple to use, but has a lot of potential for server process to server process and server to client communication. It is in effect RPC, and I really can't do it justice.

For the example you give up here, you could easily overwrite the Backbone.sync function and have it instead send the appropriate objects you need to fetch models on the server, while having the server call back to the client with said models. Not only that but you could easily remotely invoke the model changed functions in Backbone directly from the server. There is so much more you can do, but I lack the knowledge at this point to put it in play just yet.

[0]: <https://github.com/substack/dnode> & [http://substack.net/posts/85e1bd/DNode-Asynchronous- Remote-M...](http://substack.net/posts/85e1bd/DNode-Asynchronous-Remote- Method-Invocation-for-Node-js-and-the-Browser)

<comment><USER4> How's this different than JSON-RPC, for example?

<comment><USER5> You can pass functions around in your JSON.

<comment><USER4> That's pretty cool. Like an asynchronous functional version of Cocoa's Distributed Objects.

Are there ever problems with one side referencing objects that no longer exist on the other side?

I've run into these kinds of problems due to the lack of weak references in JavaScript. Hopefully a future version of JavaScript [1][2] will fix that.

[1] [http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:weak_referen...](http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:weak_references)

[2] <http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:weak_maps>

<comment><USER5> Referencing objects isn't a problem since dnode doesn't do replication, it just makes copies, but referencing functions when the client disconnects can occasionally be bothersome. You do get a hook when the client disconnects:

        conn.on('end', fn)

so that helps. At browserling.com all of our backend and frontend spanning lots of processes over several servers is tied together with dnode, and we haven't had any big problems tracking references that I can think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Symmetry between code on client and server has long been the promise of server-side JS. I'm working towards a similar goal of reusing Backbone's model/collection structure server-side. It does not attempt to pub/sub events to all clients with an instance of a model/collection, at least not yet.

My project simply proxies client fetch/save/destroy calls via Backbone.sync to the server. Through a RESTful URL convention and Express.js the model and collection of the client's request are recreated, any transformations applied and persisted, then sent back down the pipe. Server-side, models and collections extend their client-side bases and introduce additional functionality (i.e. per-user access control). Models and collections are not kept in memory server-side beyond the duration of a request.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I've been using a similar approach. Not as fancy as using DNode or Hendrik Joreteg's approach, but it's closer to traditional web app development and thus easier to wrap one's head around. If real-time isn't a requirement, that little bit of extra simplicity can mean a lot when testing, debugging and scaling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very interesting look at things. I'm currently building a backbone- based frontend in a very similar way, only without the node.js counterpart - yet.

One problem I immediately see in this hybrid approach is the requirement to keep the state for all [active] users in memory on the server. This does not scale well - which is why conventional web development tries to be as stateless as possible.

It's not hard to remedy this _partly_ by adding basic lazy-fetching and cursor capabilities to Collection. But you lose some of the most interesting features in the process (push-notify on changes), and preserving those at the same time becomes much more tricky then (bordering on classical ORM problems).

There's also still ground-level stuff missing in Backbone, i.e. the support for recursive updates of nested collections (e.g. from one big, nested json blob) is just not there yet. A few approaches have been discussed, but afaik not implemented yet. The models need to be beefed up with some sort of schema (e.g. json-schema) to truly solve this one.

However, none of that is insurmountable. All it takes is some more of the smartness that the Backbone developers have already demonstrated. And elbow grease.

For example I'd love to see backbone paired with 'dnode' or a similar RPC approach. That might open amazing possibilities.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for your feedback. I've just been playing with this stuff and wanted to put it out there despite its warts.

Regarding the scaling issue. Yes. This is definitely a weakness (I actually mention it as a weakness in the last paragraph or so). We're working on a solution for that using redis as a sort of shared memory. But it's just not ready for primetime and I just figured I'd write up what I had going so far.

Regarding recursive updates of nested collections, the "mport" function in the post works well for re-inflating the entire state. But not quite as well for updates, but for this type of thing, I prefer piecemeal updates anyway, so we don't have to send as much data each time.

I'm definitely gonna check out dnode some more as well. Cheers.

<comment><USER8> _I've just been playing with this stuff and wanted to put it out there despite its warts._

And thanks for that!

In hindsight my first reply came out more nitpicky than intended; all my concerns are aimed at (still to be fixed) shortcomings in the backbone/node ecosystem, not at your particular implementation.

Major kudos for not only coming up with (at the very least) an intriguing Proof Of Concept but then also writing a great blog post to describe it. This will be learning material for myself and many others.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. No offense taken :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All the hubbub about the hashbang URL system got me thinking about sharing client/server javascript just this morning, and then lo and behold, a post about it pops up a few hours later.

Instead, though, I was thinking that perhaps controllers and views could be re-used across the server and client. When a request comes in to the server, it renders a page just like a typical MVC framework would, but also directs the client to download the view/controller javascript. Any links the user follows could then be rendered client-side. When the framework is running server-side, the model layer talks directly to the database - when it's running client-side, it talks to the server through JSON.

It could give you the best of both worlds - an initial request returns a quick, fully-formed HTML page, so it's speedy on the first load and crawlers will know what to do with it. Later requests use AJAX, so things are responsive and the server isn't weighed down with HTML rendering.

<comment><USER11> Take a look at liftweb. <http://liftweb.net/> Its Scala which I don't know, but I've got some very intelligent friends trying to get me to back it at our company. (Scala is a lisp that runs in the JVM. - Someone's going to hang me for confusing what lisp is.) Its a framework that can leverage websockets/comet/longpoll to extend your classes to work client side.

Think message passing between client objects (in js) and server objects (in scala). You can do jqueryish things server side to the client side pages. (That blew me away when I saw it in action.) Your submit even can pass params to the server object. It's really simple and strait forward. I'm looking for lift for NodeJS.

Check out the ubiquitous "chat server" example in the simply lift book. <http://simply.liftweb.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it me or is this proposing, for the sake of symmetry, that you expose server-side implementation details on the client? Unless you have client-only and server-only versions of the models, I would think that's what you have to do. It seems like that's exactly what's happening when you have, in client- side code, a boolean called "server" that indicates whether it's running on the server or not.

Now, off the top of my head I can't think of a particular way that this could screw you. But I can't say that it looks like the Right Thing to do either.

I don't know how far the Asana team got with Luna, but I think their approach for a unified client-server model is much closer to how I'd want things to work: <http://asana.com/luna/>

<comment><USER8> _that you expose server-side implementation details on the client?_

This particular impl does it with javascript conditionals, but there's no reason the client _must_ see code that it never executes anyways. The equivalent of an #ifdef (ideally buried under a framework rug) goes a long way here.

Moreover a function does not even need to resolve to the same code on the client and the server. For example a model-validation function could evaluate to the actual validation logic on the server (incl. DB lookups etc.) and to a mere ajax RPC (calling that function on the server) on the client.

I could very well see a smart node serverside-library that let's you write _one_ js file and then transparently mangles it as necessary before sending it to the client. The trick is to keep the magic down to a sane amount (slippery slope!) so that the end-result remains always predictable.

 _Luna_

Yes, it seems luna is basically taking this approach.

What I don't like about luna is that it's not javascript and that it's, for my taste, taking the abstraction too far. It claims:

      the client-side JavaScript, the server-side SQL, and everything in between

That's too much. Sure, for the developers it's comfortable to sidestep a whole cascade of hard problems simply by assuming control over everything ("My way or highway"). But this approach has not proven very successful in the javascript-world. We love small and pluggable components like jQuery or Backbone. The monoliths like Dojo or ExtJS tend to be too limiting on the _My_ part of the way.

<comment><USER12> I agree with your comments about Luna. About the #ifdef proposal, I think a better solution might be that your server-side model object has a method like getSlaveObject() that gives you a version of the model that is acceptable to be seen on the client side.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you are probably right, my examples were just meant to deliver the rough idea, not fully shaped solutions.

Lots of room for experimentation and exploration in this space - <USER2> times ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I _really_ could have used this tutorial a few months ago. I made a bit of a toy node/backbone app. My first iteration attempted to unify the models across frontend and backend, unit testing them, etc, but it ended up being so kludgy and hard to debug that I went with frontend only and just stored the JSON on the backend. The benefit of the OP's strategy however is that its much safer to have the parsing and validation on the backend so people can't put bad stuff in your database as easily.

In the end I ended up redoing the project as a CLI app in Haskell.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's quite the course correction, going from backbone/node to CLI/Haskell.</comment></comment>


Got an extra Android device? Sell it on Swappa... - <AUTHOR> http://swappa.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Swappa has just been launched as a better way to buy and sell gently used, fully functional Android devices. Thank you for feedback...

</comment><comment><USER2> Please don't make me login with facebook. I do have a facebook account but I don't feel comfortable using Facebook connect (like many others).

I won't mind twitter or plain old OpenId though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, this was a big decision I went back and forth on. And I've read all the HN threads discussing whether or not to use it. I ended up going with Facebook connect because it's so easy to get a name and profile picture, and from what I can tell, the average user doesn't mind. I've also tried to state clearly what information is and isn't used.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good startups to work for in Amsterdam? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HNers,
I am looking to change jobs and would prefer to make a move into a startup in the Netherlands(after > 9 years in "traditional" companies, I can't handle the slow pace anymore).
I would love some recommendations for startups in the Amsterdam/Rotterdam area to start hunting.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> No one hurry up in Amsterdam :)</comment>


LXD 2.14 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxd-2-14-has-been-released/157 <comment><USER2> Can anyone give an overview of what LXD offers, and compare the experience of working with LXD to Docker? I've tinkered with BSD jails, Docker, and KVM, and I'm curious about LXD.

<comment><USER3> The simplest explanation I like, is that these give you "machine containers" as opposed to docker "process containers". It's designed to deploy a full image, running Ubuntu (well, any linux distro) system with it's own init system, ssh, etc. In many ways it feels much like a Virtual Machine, though you do have some restrictions you don't in a VM (mostly with regards to use of in kernel services, such as mounting filesystems or using in kernel stuff like the iscsi target).

For most purposes and running most applications, you can create an LXD and login to it and it feels just like a VM but with no VM overhead and you can see all the processes inside container from outside the container ("on the host"), e.g. in top.

<comment><USER4> Can you pass through a graphics card in anyway or would it need to be installed on the host? I'm thinking about making my main workstation a proxmox host, with the desktop environment a container.

<comment><USER5> There is still only one kernel, the host if you will. Since graphics drivers are kernel mode, it has to be loaded into the kernel. So VM style pass-through of PCI devices doesn't really make sense.

However, GPUs are increasingly supporting virtualisation and multiprocessing. For example, nVidia supports multiplexing a single GPU across multiple VMs for VMWare View. I'm not sure if there is special driver paravirtualisation magic happening but I suspect so. But there is at least some GPU process control and resource scheduling now, and I expect this technique will be accessible to linux in the near future.

At present you can map through the host devices created by kernel drivers into the container, and then access them via userland libraries. You are still dependent on the library versions and the driver version matching. This works for CUDA and OpenGL. [https://blog.simos.info/how-to-run-graphics-accelerated- gui-...](https://blog.simos.info/how-to-run-graphics-accelerated-gui-apps-in- lxd-containers-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/)

<comment><USER5> Relevant talk from GTC 2017. Note that a special GRID driver is required, and it must match the driver on the host (VMWare Horizon). [http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/presentation/s7349...](http://on- demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/presentation/s7349-tony-foster-getting- started.pdf)

Also, the nVidia GRID licensing makes me vomit in my mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you click the link, there is a demo service to try out LXD through your browser. It creates a shell and has a tutorial to follow with this new shell.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know how "lightweight" LXD is compared to Docker in terms of memory and disk footprint required for each type of container?

<comment><USER8> I've tried Alpine Linux on both docker and LXD. Memory usage is the same, however startup time is much better on LXD.

If you Google it, they have a benchmark that shows hundreds of containers being launched on Docker and LXD as a benchmark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was a heavy user of lxd and ended up switching to systemd-nspawn and never looked back. It was much more intuitive tp me, files were easy to access etc. Networking in particular is much easier (for me at least)</comment>