Starting your own bank is laborious but profitable (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wealthmanagement.com/practice-management/you-can-open-bank <comment><USER2> It feels like there's a growing split between what borrowers and depositors want from banks.

Conventional wisdom says small businesses benefit from a personal relationship with local bankers who know market conditions and can sign off on loans and lines of credit that a national bank might see as too risky or too small to deal with.

But as a depositor, I don't want a personal relationship with my bank at all. I want a reliable IT system with low costs and great tech support if something goes wrong, which is something the scale of a national operation can best deliver.

<comment><USER3> Things I value in a bank as a consumer. Loans that are serviced by a single entity for the life of the loan. Not ordering transactions in an attempt to drive the balance below zero in a day. Ease of ATM access. Customer service. I have all of these at the CU I use.

I don't keep large liquid in my CU, instead that is in higher yeild accounts, but that was true with Chase or BoA as well.

The reliable IT system has to be there, but you might be horrified about the beast of systems (human and computer) that make our banks/ach/transactions/etc function.

I don't worry much about loosing money in the bank due to FDIC/ NCUSIF. I can't audit their internal process so I instead depend on insurance. It kinda removes worry about their IT infra from my mind.

If you are above FDIC value, you should be banking with multiple banks and putting your money to better uses.

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered what rich people do when their savings/investments vastly exceed the FDIC/SIPC maximums of 250k per institution, because past a certain point, splitting among multiple banking institutions becomes logistically infeasible.

Do they tend to get some kind of private insurance against institutional failures for their entire balance? Or do they just not worry about it?

<comment><USER5> FDIC protects cash at (fractional reserve) banks. SIPC protects securities at (non-fractional reserve) brokerages. A very rich person isn't going to have enormous quantities in cash; most of it will be invested. But the risk of a brokerage losing your stock is way lower than a bank losing your cash deposits, and even that is very low. If they wanted to buy insurance against it that wouldn't be very expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The word on the street in the credit union industry is that you need $500 million in assets to be long term viable. It could be lower for a bank, but you'd need a laser focused niche.

[edit] source: I sit on the board of a credit union. This is a concern driven by the regulatory burden and cost to maintain a competitive IT infrastructure

<comment><USER7> Has there been any talk of credit unions pooling resources on some of the IT stuff? Everyone expects a mobile app nowadays, but it doesn't make much economic sense for every single credit union to build their own.

<comment><USER6> There is an active market for vendor software, as indicated by the other replies. The real expense driver isn't necessarily that "you need an app" but that "you need an app that is either very hardened or safely quarantined from your core infrastructure". And more generally, yeah the front-end stuff is kinda crappy, but it's because the back-end has to connect to a bunch of different systems with weird proprietary protocols and it has to work 100%. Every. single. penny.

And if you're a $100-$200 million in assets credit union, you may have an IT team of 2-3 people (that's a swag, but it wouldn't be > 5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can open a bank, and then this might happen to you:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus:_Small_Enough_to_Jail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus:_Small_Enough_to_Jail) (an excellent documentary)

<comment><USER9> That's messed up. Injustice, and maybe racist? So many other Banks down the street that casued malice...I thought it was bad enough that non of the big banks got in trouble for ruining the global economy...but to prosecute a small bank, which has default rate of 1/10th of other banks is infuriating, which fired the one employee that casued trouble...

Though they were cleared of all charges, I'e the stress caused onto the staff of 19 people was great.

<comment><USER10> The only reason they brought the charges on "low hanging fruit" was to be able to point at why it is basically impossible to prove crimes against an individual or corporation in nuanced financial matters to a jury.

The point was to show how this is a negligent use of public resources unless the laws changed, which they won't.

Maybe it backfired because the jury felt it was unfair by that point, the result is still the same and it solidifies the case law itself raising the bar for prosecution even higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since this article is 9 years old, I was curious about follow-up. Checked LinkedIn and looks like this guy is still with the firm he was with in 2009:

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael- wagner-60a65b116/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-wagner-60a65b116/)

So I guess you...can't open a bank?

<comment><USER12> In fairness to him, the OCC (the national banking regulator in the US) has had a practical moratorium on new national bank licenses for most of the past 10 years. You can get a new state bank charter, but not a national one. I can't blame him for not wanting to start a bank in the US lately.

<comment><USER13> Can you expand on why one wouldn't want to start with a state bank?

<comment><USER14> The problem is not the start with a state license, but expanding to a federal license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'll join you if anyone is starting a bank.

<comment><USER12> I can't tell if this comment is in jest or not, but we actually are starting a bank in the UK to be a platform bank for fintechs across Europe and beyond. Happy to chat.

<comment><USER16> He's real

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think its interesting to see fintechs trying to bypass the traditional banking model entirely. They are trying to move up the chain with a UX advantage while larger players are trying to defend themselves. Square and Venmo both offer debit cards which covers the majority of banking needs for an average person.

<comment><USER12> We've actually started a new bank explicitly to provide the banking infrastructure to companies like this that are good at owning the UX advantage. Our conviction is that in the long term banks will be disintermediated from most of their customers and there will be a general unbundling of banking services - you won't get your mortgage / small business loan / checking account all at the same bank.

<comment><USER18> Heads up your beta signup form is broken

<comment><USER12> Broken how? I got a bunch of signup pings off this thread - Bug report welcome email@example.com

<comment><USER18> On submission of my email it redirected me to an error page. Can't remember what it said, only that it was an unstyled html page with one line of error text. Just tried again and works now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i'd start a bank with the following principles:

0\. don't tell the customers that we can do anything we can't do

1\. cap profits at a low percentage of the capital base to discourage being irresponsible with customer money; enforce corporate austerity to keep costs very low

2\. any profits over the cap are returned to customers

that's it, i think. the idea is to have a bank that is rock solid (even when compared to other banks) and profitable for customers. maybe only offer one type of account, and have no minimum deposit. no fees, and offer ATM cost refunds. no personal loans. no credit cards. maybe offer a mortgage package, but probably not. no branches, obviously. customer service would be top priority.

the corporate side of the bank would ride on austerity. no advertising beyond what is necessary to start the bank in motion. no luxuries for the c-suite. maybe enforce a max disparity in pay between the lowest rung and highest rung of employees to something outrageously constrained like 10 or 20k. maybe only have five or six job titles in total, if possible. fill those jobs on a first (somewhat qualified) come first serve basis and a 20 minute interview. advertise the jobs only as necessary.

is this idea crazy? maybe in the banking sector it might be, but you can't trust them. they're drunk on chasing money, and they're reliably unreliable in the long term-- the article even mentions how many banks have gone under.

but there are a lot of great examples of other kinds of companies (i am specifically thinking of the food wholesaler called aldi) which make their money by offering what the customer needs and nothing more. you don't need to go crazy profiteering to make robust profits...

<comment><USER20> > maybe enforce a max disparity in pay between the lowest rung and highest > rung of employees to something outrageously constrained like 10 or 20k

A simple multiplier makes more sense. Top position shouldn't be making more than 10x the bottom position (or something like that). A janitor, for instance if full-time and more than just sweeping floors, is making $20-40k/year (big spread, but that's starting at $10/hour and going up to $20/hour which is a reasonable rate in much of the country for that work). So that means top brass is making $200k-400k (on a 10x multiplier between top/bottom incomes). If the big boss wants a pay raise, they have to move at least the bottom of the pay range up with them. If you add a constraint on the mean/median income, they have to bring everyone up with them.

<comment><USER19> i see where you're coming from.

i think using that framework the ideal constraint would be something like 1.2X or maybe at the very most 1.5X. this leads to overpaid janitors and underpaid execs, which is the desired result of the policy. it sucks having to find a new janitor because things get dirty in the meantime, but there are a billion execs out there and most of them should be doing very little other than keeping the ship stable most of the time.

holding people's money safely is not an occupation for people who can afford to treat money carelessly in their personal lives.

i know that these are "stupid" and petty things, but i think little petty things like this add up into a corporate culture if you have enough of them. the corporate culture of this hypothetical bank would do a lot to add to its branding and also its credibility.

honestly i wouldn't even be proposing extreme measures like these (or advocating that the execs should be doing very little) if i didn't think it was necessary for the concept, which i've now put far too much effort into :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Monzo started the first new bank in the UK for a while. It appeared laborious and they are losing £30m/year but I think they will be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER22> There was a prominent builder in India called DS Kulkarni. He just tried doing that. Collected almost 1250 crore INR from almost 2000 investors as FD's promising returns. Then demonization was implemented in late 2016 and all his investors were duped by him.

Now, both he and his wife is in prison.

</comment><comment><USER23> You legally need something like $10 Million in reserve capital to start a bank. Pretty much any business is profitable if you can afford to start with 10 million in savings plus have enough money to run the business.

<comment><USER24> > Pretty much any business is profitable if you can afford to start with 10 > million in savings plus have enough money to run the business.

This is non-obvious to me. Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER25> I think the idea is that there aren't any problems in business that cash in the bank can't solve. It's just a question of whether you have enough money to throw at the problem to make it go away. $10 million is enough to make any problem go away. Basically you just hire a consultant and they get it done.

Finance is high wizardry, treating literally every single problem you have in dollar terms, but it built the modern world. Us software developers exist in what's basically the frontier of business. $10 million is just getting started for a software company. But it's enough to push through to profitability in every single other sector.

<comment><USER26> Bullshit. Hire a bunch of consultants without any ability to judge which are worth the ticket, and you'll spend a measly $10 mil in no time.

<comment><USER25> Knowing which consultants to hire and when is presumably the domain of the finance guys. You can buy competence, it's just expensive. $10 million is enough to hire a full turnaround team.

The key is you have to have it as cash in the bank. You can't finance a turnaround, the better move at that point from a financial perspective is to just fold up the business, but if you have it, you can use it as collateral for a more aggressive expansion.

That way if you run into enough problems, the money guys can 'foreclose' and use the reserve capital to enact a turnaround plan, and eventually earn their money back. It's an extra form of security.

<comment><USER26> lol, how do you hire the right finance guys? You didn't address the central paradox.

<comment><USER25> The finance guys are running the company at that point, so presumably they already have that knowledge. And most companies do retain a finance guy in a senior management role as the CFO. So their perspective gets heard and in some cases actually listened to. It's just that running a company purely with safety in mind generates far less profits than aggressive investment in a business model.

If a finance company is running a business, it's because the industry people that started the company managed to run it into the ground, finance people never seek to start businesses in any other space than the finance space. It's just not interesting to them. When they wind up running companies, they mostly just delegate all the decisions to the consultants they have a working relationship with.

It's simple, you go to a lender who demands you keep $10MM in the bank as a contingency fund. You run the company into the ground, and the lender has to foreclose on the loan, taking control of the business. They then use the $10MM to turn the company around, eventually recouping their investment over the long run.

You're bringing the $10MM in collateral, not the bank, so the bank doesn't have to use their own money for the turnaround. It's a hedge against risk, not some kind of magic bullet like you seem to think. No paradox needs be invoked, the finance company simply runs the company differently than you would, from a purely financial perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe Stripe will surprise us with a product that makes this easy to do.

<comment><USER12> Certainly possible now that the OCC has opened the door to a "fintech banking charter". In the past I'd have said this was impossible as Stripe has little interest in finding itself regulated as a bank or in becoming a bank holding company.

<comment><USER16> The lack of the ability to take deposits kills the FinTech Charter DOA

<comment><USER12> Ah I hadn't heard that. If that's the case then I agree 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When most people were busy with startups in the early 2000's I knew a group of people who started a bank. Boring as it gets, lots of red tape, but once it got going it was profitable.

<comment><USER12> Fundamentally, banks are scale businesses (much like most technology companies). Expensive to start, but once you've got the product / regulatory infrastructure in place your marginal revenue is really low-cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems there is a huge opportunity for someone to "disrupt" our banking system beyond saving fractional dollars and cheap trading. A simple, online only (or mostly, like Schwab) credit union could find a big audience.

It could be marketed as low fee, community-centered banking. Offer no ATM fees and low mortgage rates without the typical profit motive.

<comment><USER30> There already are such. One example is Alliant Credit Union, which is where my main US account lives.

<comment><USER29> Wow, this is right in my town and I had no idea! Kind of re-enforces my point as I am their prime market and not familiar with them at all. On second glance, it looks like I don't qualify, which is probably a barrier for larger market share.

<comment><USER30> Anyone can join them - like many credit unions these days, they've hacked the statutory rules restricting credit union membership, and one of the ways to join them is to allow them to pay $5 to a charity once on your behalf:

[https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/help/who-is-eligible- to-j...](https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/help/who-is-eligible-to-join- alliant)

I'm not sure about who their primary market is now, though - they grew out of United Airlines as their primary employer group, and now have many others (I joined through Google). I think they're among the largest credit unions in the US.

Regardless of the primary market question, they meet the needs you outlined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I got interested in this after reading about Andrew Beal. He opened one with around $10 million decades ago and now has a net worth over 10 billion. It's a super cheap source of funding if you have a good use for funding.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seeing as this comes up every so often, what in your opinion are the elements missing in todays current banking system - either as a consumer or a developer - that you would like to see?

<comment><USER33> I'll bite :)

* Quick and customizable bill pay for onetime or recurring payments * Integration with peer-to-peer transfer systems (Zelle, Venmo, Paypal, etc.) * Simple budgeting tools and analytics. Doesn't have to be mint, just have something. * No ATM fees * Easy and fast transfers to other banking institutions * API to allow for devs and other apps to integrate basic functions * Good customer service - let me talk to a real person * All the functionality available from an app. Don't make me log into a desktop browser to access certain features. * Clear descriptions of different types of accounts * Credit reporting

That's all I can think of right now but there are probably a ton of other issues we hit daily that could be solved. Though I have no idea of the regulatory hurdles of implementing these and other solutions.

<comment><USER20> Regarding APIs: Let us use access keys that limit what the API can see/do. I don't like that Mint can do almost anything to my account by virtue of having a password. I just want to be able to reliably collect transaction and/or balance information, nothing more (which is already a lot, but I manually or semi-automatically collect this at the moment rather than using an API).

Let the user generate an API key that is (somehow) transmitted to the application with limited access. Then the user, at the bank's site, can revoke these authentications at any time. Stopped using YNAB? Revoke its key. Stopped using Mint? Revoke its key. Started using gnucash? Add a key.

<comment> y-c-o-m-b I was just thinking this exact thing. It's reckless to provide a third party your direct banking credentials. I feel unsafe entering those credentials into my browser as it is - but to share it with a third party product gives me the creeps. It's so stupidly easy to generate an access token that can be shared with third parties and restrict access to read-only. Why they didn't think of that is beyond me; the tech has been available for a very long time.

<comment><USER20> Want to know something really annoying? I bank with multiple banks. One institution uses access tokens. I can link them to my primary bank (the primary has a better "whole picture" view). But does my primary bank offer access tokens of their own? No. _They understand the concept, but don 't use it themselves._

Of course, I know why. Different teams. There's no cohesive vision to their IT work, same as every other enterprise out there.

EDIT: Cleaned up language. Removed some info I didn't really want here but really botched the posted version when I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> IIRC, a guy at a hackerspace bought a charter from a failing/ed local bank to complete some transaction that would otherwise been impossible/ridiculously expensive.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some companies (not just car financing) did this i. The past as a cost savings feature.

Think big retail stores or insurance companies with high cash flow coming every month through the bank.

</comment><comment><USER36> Bobby Axelrod paid wags pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER37> >The events that literally shook the foundations of the financial system

Was there an earthquake at the NYSE?

<comment><USER38> It seems that the word literally is literally never used in its literal sense.

<comment><USER39> Literally has never really been used in the actual definition. Writers have used to it show how important and foundational some event was. Or just to create some excitement in the readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just imagine if that labor went to something that created wealth instead of leeched it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes, it is quite hard but may make lots of bucks with the proper plan.</comment>


Darling: macOS translation layer for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.darlinghq.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion from 2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854895) (265 comments)</comment>


Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118358476840657463.html <comment><USER2> "But on the other hand, when a child calls an adult Mr. or Ms., it helps him recognize that status is earned by age and experience. It's also a reminder to respect your elders."

The absurdity of reading how young people feel so entitled from an article written by someone who thinks age influences status in mind boggling.

Status is a function of achievement. Experience is a rough proxy for achievement, so I can accept that they might be referencing the same thing here.

But if you ask me how your earn status, age doesn't factor in. I don't care how many hours you've put in on this planet. You earn my respect by doing things, and the best way to earn my highest respects is by doing something great.

<comment><USER3> Among adults, what you're talking about makes sense. But I don't know many children who have earned much status.

<comment><USER4> I know three, one aged 16 now and two aged only 11, they impress the hell out of me.

The one holds his own in a community where the average age is at least three times his own and half the people there never clued in to his age, he's been there since he was 12 or so, the other two are so smart and wise for their age that the adults around them look like they're the children.

Here's to Angus, Jeremy & Raffi, if you find this comment in 20 years or so, know that I'm insanely proud of you guys, I'm pretty sure you will go very far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Because everything is child-centered today, we're depriving children of adults," he says. "If they never see us as adults being adults, how will they deal with important matters when it is their world?"_

My parents always kept the 'adult' things to themselves (usually in Spanish, which they neglected to teach me or my siblings). It was basically a disaster and I've been spending the years since high school educating myself on tons of those adult things that I never learned from them. I just hope I can avoid the same mistakes with my children.

</comment><comment><USER6> Black kettles and pots come to mind.

While I cannot be sure that Jeffrey Zaslow is a Boomer or Gen Xer (the fuzzy dates around those eras makes it difficult to decide), this accusation of entitlement seems to be a Boomer message.

We're talking about a generation that, although its members had much less material amenities than us, they had an easier time getting ahead. Try buying a house as a young person now. When my dad was my age, he could support a family on his salary.

And given that the Boomers (and early Gen Xers) have just wrecked the world economy, I think there's more than a little hypocrisy here.

If the later Gen Xers and Gen Yers have a sense of entitlement, it's because they do as their elders do.

<comment><USER7> I'm sorry but this...

We're talking about a generation that, although its members had much less material amenities than us, they had an easier time getting ahead. Try buying a house as a young person now. When my dad was my age, he could support a family on his salary.

Is a myth.

First, mortage rates haven't gone up they've been going down for 28 years (though in fairness they shot up before that): <http://mortgage-x.com/trends.htm>. If you're a Gen Xer your father was having to contend with rates double what you'd pay today.

As for career you could probably move up the ranks faster but that's because it was a much steeper climb. Think about it. You're talking about an era where there was no Excel. There had to be people who actually did those calculations by hand.

As for money the average income of an American household has not only gone up but has gone up sharply...

[http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/average- incom...](http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/average-income-in- the-united-states/)

(The graph is in inflation adjusted dollars)

While the cost of goods has gone down due to technology improvements. The cost of a Gallon of Milk in 1967 was double what it is now ([http://www.census.gov/Press- Release/www/releases/archives/fa...](http://www.census.gov/Press- Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/007276.html))

The average house size has doubled since 1950 (<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283>). Yet the average price only went up about 60% ([http://www.lesjones.com/2008/11/25/inflation-adjusted-us- hou...](http://www.lesjones.com/2008/11/25/inflation-adjusted-us-house- prices-1975-2008/))

The reason most people have less money these days is because there's so much more to spend it on. VHS didn't even exist until 1976 much less computers, xboxes, iTunes, etc... U.S. population went up around 46% between 1967 and 2006 yet the number of new car registrations grew by 139% ([http://www.census.gov/Press- Release/www/releases/archives/fa...](http://www.census.gov/Press- Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/007276.html))

Gen Xers and beyond have a much higher quality of life, even in a recession, than their grandparents did and to say otherwise is an example of the very self involvement that's being criticized here.

Oh, and P.S., Jeffrey Zaslow was born in 1958 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Zaslow>) so there's no chance he is a Gen Xer and it has nothing to do with fuzzy dates and everything to do with you being too lazy to do a simple Google Search

<comment><USER8> _Gen Xers and beyond have a much higher quality of life, even in a recession, than their grandparents did and to say otherwise is an example of the very self involvement that's being criticized here._

Humans readily adapt to changed circumstances [1]. It's not "self involvement", it's just human nature.

Also, above a certain threshold[2] absolute wealth is less important to people than relative wealth in terms of happiness. Hence "having more stuff than their grandparents" doesn't make people feel any happier because their peers all also have more stuff.

[1] For example, people who win the lottery are really happy at the time but six months later have reverted to the baseline level of happiness they had before the win.

[2] ie: having enough to survive reasonably well.

<comment><USER7> Self involvement is human nature. It's our nature to be concerned with ourselves because it was an evolutionary imperative to our ancestors. That's why we, as evolved people living in a modern society, have to force ourselves to put things in perspective.

The very existence of the phrase "put things in perspective" proves the point that our instinct is to over inflate those challenges that we face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Correlation is not causation :P. Mr. Rogers is more likely just another symptom of the "everybody is special" culture underlying this. Personally, I think it's less to do with upbringing and "positive self-esteem" and more to do with a (globalised western) culture of celebrity and narcissism. Less Mr. Rogers than American Idol, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER10> If it's because of Mr Rogers, how do you explain the same phenomenon in countries which didn't have Mr Rogers?

<comment><USER5> In my experience of traveling to many non-US countries, I didn't really encounter the same kind of attitude. Which countries do you find also have the 'same phenomenon'?

<comment><USER10> Seems reasonably prevalent in Australia and the UK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All of these articles bemoaning "kids these days" are starting to get really tiresome.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if every generation of youths / young adults promise to themselves that they wont spout these pointless truisms "kids these day" when they are older.

<comment><USER12> They do, and then they forget it later and start ranting about how kids today are so screwed up.</comment></comment>


Interviews with John Carmack [~1997-2008] [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/fd_proxy/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf <comment><USER2> The Ray Tracing part (page 247) is really interesting. John Carmack describes the NVIDIA RTX architecture there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Post Masters of Doom.

<comment><USER3> Recently re-listened the audio book version of Masters of Doom. Really recommended.</comment></comment>


PERL is dead. Long live Perl. - <AUTHOR> http://www.catalyzed.org/2009/04/perl-is-dead-long-live-perl.html

<comment><USER2> Perl is far from dead. All web pages on Amazon.com are perl... del.icio.us, BBC, Slashdot... but more important is it's non-web use in engineering, finance, and bioinformatics... love Catalyst!

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, he's right. We are a perl shop, we have tens of thousands of lines of _maintainable_ code, we love the language, but we are almost ashamed to say it.

I think the perl community did contribute to this with all the dithering about perl6. Perl6 sucked a lot of perl brains out of the language and what was the higherst profile outcome? Parrot running Python. Hurrah.</comment>


Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2008/06/stopping-the-exodus-of-women-in-science/ar/1 <comment><USER2> I think the truth is that science is an activity that chews people up and spits them out. When I got my physics PhD, the APS said only 2% of my class would get permanent jobs in the field.

Because people are concerned about attrition of women more than the attrition of men, any women who run the guantlet that far had some possibility of getting a tenure track job. The men just went to Goldman Sachs.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, the problem is the workplace is too masculine because there are too many men in science and engineering.

Except if you do a search for "women leaving workforce" you'll find it's a trend for middle-aged women across all fields.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is an exodus of women in other fields beyond science except for sectors/industries where a majority is female. I think that if you are a minority then issues like these are more noticeable.</comment>


Disqus Launches New Version of Blog Comment Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/disqus-blog-comment-replacement-version-2

<comment><USER2> [http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/12/disqus- version-2-addresses...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/12/disqus- version-2-addresses-concerns-and-improves-capabilities/)

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting to watch ycombinator disqus battle techstars intensedebate.

<comment><USER4> The battle is already over: [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/disqus.com+intensedebate.co...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/disqus.com+intensedebate.com/?metric=uv)

<comment><AUTHOR> not an accurate comparison - since disqus launched they have been taking pageviews that should have went to the blogger/content creator and leveraged them on disqus - let's see what that chart looks like in 6 months from now.

<comment><USER4> It is an accurate comparison. Because Intensedebate does the same thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CouchDB 2.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://docs.couchdb.org/en/2.1.0/whatsnew/2.1.html <comment><USER2> I was looking really hard at using CouchDB 2.0 for an offline-first progressive web app. The biggest asset in my opinion of CouchDB is actually PouchDB [1] PouchDB is really great and nicely designed.

However, the showstopper that I hit was that CouchDB still does not support permissions on a per-user basis (even though PouchDB encourages this explicitly [2])

What this means is that if you have a typical system with users and logins, who can only access their own data, and you require some sort of aggregated view where you can view all users data behind some sort of permissions (admin user, etc), you are forced to create a new db for each user in Couch, and then run replication for those users to a separate master.

Think for example if you wanted to store images in CouchDB, and then have some sort of global feed (like instagram)

So, systems with many users (tens of thousands -> millions) would be stuck replicating an equal number of couch databases constantly. Each replica in 2.0 was an erlang thread, and each database is a separate file. Apparently some of the performance issues were fixed in 2.1, but it still requires a physical file per db and continuous replication.

Some promising solutions like envoy [3] from Cloudant, which were based on Mango [4] have been worked on, but don't seem to have much support in the core Couch community and feels to have been abandoned.

Another problem is that you can't really throttle or manage pouchDB <-> couchDB replication very well. Eg, if you have a large-ish database that's out of sync, it's just going to try to download itself as soon as you sync, which isn't very mobile friendly, or "PWA" friendly IMO.

Net result for me was that I just stuck with my Postgres DB, Rails API, and a bunch of Redux/React code to accomplish what I needed.

Still a fan of Couch/Pouch but wouldn't recommend it if your system requires any kind of serious per-user or role-based permissions or aggregated views.

[1] [https://pouchdb.com/](https://pouchdb.com/)

[2] [https://pouchdb.com/2015/04/05/filtered- replication.html](https://pouchdb.com/2015/04/05/filtered-replication.html)

[3] [https://github.com/cloudant-labs/envoy](https://github.com/cloudant- labs/envoy)

[4] [https://blog.couchdb.org/2016/08/03/feature-mango- query/](https://blog.couchdb.org/2016/08/03/feature-mango-query/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > So, systems with many users (tens of thousands -> millions) would be stuck > replicating an equal number of couch databases constantly

I also ran into this when using `continuous: true` to create persistent replication, which suffers from this 1-to-1 resource problem. I now use a single listener on `_db_changes` and fire one-off replication to the aggregate db. I'm also keeping an eye on spiegel[1]

I'm curious on how you handle offline support, sync conflicts, and multiple devices. I started with CouchDB 1.x and have been through enough growing pains to wonder how things would have been to stick with SQL, but I think the future is only brighter. CouchDB 2.1 looks great, and I hope the entire erlang ecosystem continues to see growth and adoption.

[1] [https://github.com/redgeoff/spiegel](https://github.com/redgeoff/spiegel)

<comment><USER2> I know that it is a common trope that Couch / Pouch seems to think that SQL databases don't work for offline replication and you need their "batteries- included" solution. However, it's not the only solution and every app in the app store that works offline has had to deal with it. Most of those are using SQL databases.

In truth, what Couch does is force you to handle conflict events which gives you a convenient platform level place to put some of your automatic conflict/merge code. A lot of merge code is UI however and Couch does not help with that at all.

Detecting conflicts is a subtle thing, but it's not necessarily a one-size- fits-all problem as couch would have us believe. I

It also gives you versioning for free (which is pretty easy to implement in SQL)

However, at the end of the day, every developer must make application level decisions on how to handle merge conflicts. Couch/Pouch does not obviate this - it just forces you to deal with it and lets you think about your application a little differently. Once you have to deal with merges and conflicts in your application code, it's more a matter of designing your application to have fewer conflicts (either through better merging, vector clocks, pessimistic locking, etc)

I wish I could have used it but all my other data is in a battle-tested Postgres db, being nicely backed up regularly on Heroku without fail. My CouchDB was on a Google Cloud server, using a brand new replication framework as backup.

I don't really mean to rag on Couch - I think it's a promising idea. But I ended up wasting several weeks going down this path only to throw it away because I didn't feel like it was production-ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> In production, I have a horribly designed schema running couchdb 1.6 and node. It is serving a few thousand users, but has serious architectural issues.

I started in freelance php web development, then switched to Ruby/Rails in 2006 and haven't looked back. I'm now thinking mobile access, unreliable networks, and global connectivity so it was time to re-survey the land. My MVP was with Node.js and CouchDB 1.6, but now I'm almost ready with a much more robust and well defined rewrite in Phoenix 1.3 and CouchDB 2.1

I agree that the 2.0 release was subpar. I actually needed to beta test against master because of a bug in the 2.0.0 release. But even with the rough patches, cutting Node.js and going all in on BEAM/OTP - I'm hoping will pay off for the next decade and then some.

As far as CouchDB, I agree nothing is a magic bullet, but after better learning the entire CouchDB API surface, I was much better off at schema design and where to put logic in _design files vs application layer. I actually run a conflict-free schema now, and still benefit from master-master sync and first class offline support. I'm not saying the concepts are trivial, but when done in the correct CouchDB way, and getting all the benefits that come with that, I cannot imagine what it would take to manually handle sync logic with Ruby and SQL, which is why I asked.

<comment><USER3> Any parts of the project open source and/or have you written any detailed blogs on the development process?

Would love to read more about the challenges you encountered and how you solved them.

Even moreso the move to Phoenix is enticing for a project of mine. Any tips there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> no Per Document Authorization is still my biggest issue with couch that keeps me from using it [https://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/PerDocumentAuthorization](https://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/PerDocumentAuthorization)

<comment><USER5> The answer I got to this problem was "design middleware that handles this for you" which has to be a joke

<comment><USER6> > The answer I got to this problem was "design middleware that handles this > for you" which has to be a joke

It's not a joke.

The couch security model doesn't match the requirements of multi-user untrusted clients typical of internet distributed applications. But then most database have a similar limitation, it's only more visible in CouchDB because you can read/write documents directly from a browser without an application server, so the next logical step is to just let clients read/write directly to CouchDB over the internet without an app server.

If your data is in postgres, you will need an application server handing access control, business logic, and serialization.

If your data is in CouchDB, you need a proxy server that handles access control, whitelisting certain URL patterns and body content based on user entitlements.

<comment><USER7> Can you not write validation functions in design documents that handle the security (to a degree) for you? I seem to remember being able to do this in CouchDB 1.6 and, while it seemed like a pretty crude method, it was easier than managing an interposing proxy server.

<comment><USER8> Can you fake a reasonably indistinguishable 404 response for content that exists, but should not be publicly discoverable?

In the validation function docs [1], there is an example of HTTP errors being thrown, I'm just not sure if there is something like a `throw({notFound: null})` option.

[1] [http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/validation.html](http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/validation.html)

<comment><USER7> The only validation function I've written contains this:

        throw({forbidden: 'Only administrators can write changes'});

IIRC, it raises either a 401 or 403 HTTP error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why use CouchDB instead of Couchbase?

<comment><USER10> Full RESTful HTTP/JSON API

<comment><USER11> I presume the parent was talking about couchbase's SyncGateway offering, but maybe not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone tried out rxdb on the client with couchdb as server? I'm affraid mostly about the scaling issues when you sync with many clients

<comment><USER13> Currently using this. Haven't tested heavy scaling though because our app doesn't have huge scale needs. BUT, will say things are looking promising. Theres are some[1][2] improvements to replication and general speed landing/landed.

As far RxDB, in our limited tests, using only the query-sync feature speeds up everything a ton, not to mention optimistic updates. Overall it's been pretty great, and developer is very active.

[1] [https://github.com/apache/couchdb/pull/495](https://github.com/apache/couchdb/pull/495) [2] [https://github.com/apache/couchdb/pull/470](https://github.com/apache/couchdb/pull/470) [2]</comment></comment>


Clause in free WiFi contract obliges thousands to clean music festival toilets - <AUTHOR> https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3013892/clause-in-free-wifi-contract-obliges-thousands-to-spend-1-000-hours-cleaning-music-festival-toilets <comment><USER2> I think their takeaway is wrong. The takeaway is that we should do away with ToS and ToU contracts. This is already partially the case since no court would ever enforce this part of the contract so you can more or less safely ignore it.

<comment><USER3> > This is already partially the case since no court would ever enforce this > part of the contract so you can more or less safely ignore it.

At least in US law, that doesn't necessarily invalidate anything else in a contract. Also, the enforceability of any clause in a contract is subject to local laws, jurisprudence, and whether the plaintiff can make a reasonable argument for why precedence might no longer apply.

Additionally, everything is in question when there is a binding arbitration clause. The ToS company usually pays the arbitrator (far more than any one defendant) and the arbitrator may not be bound by local laws to decide if a clause is enforceable or not. Also, you may have no legal civil recourse if an arbitrator judges that a clause is enforceable and you suspect it isn't.

I don't know if I agree that "we should do away with ToS and ToU contracts", but I think they should be trimmed back from what they are now. And I certainly don't think it's "more or less safe to ignore" a clause unless you discuss with _your_ attorney.

IANAL</comment></comment>


Software developers prioritize happiness over high salary - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2017/02/09/developers-dont-care-how-much-you-pay-them/ <comment><USER2> And the rule number 1 is that you don't get happy developers with crappy salaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be careful or you'll end up with neither :)</comment>


8 Ways to Raise Startup Capital - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newhaircut.com/raising-startup-capital/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=raisingcapital

<comment><USER2> As per the guidelines (1), I suggest you crop the leading number, making the title here on HN be, "Ways to Raise Startup Capital".

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


I'm 17 and I'm decent. Just decent. - <AUTHOR> http://getonstage.tumblr.com/post/27677080048/im-17-and-im-decent-just-decent

<comment><USER2> The author defines "kiasu" as the fear of losing (out) which leads to avoiding risk, but I've always thought of it as the fear of missed opportunity which leads one to _take_ risks.

I grew up in Singapore, and among many excellent things I can say about its education system I have but one criticism, which is that it tends to encourage students to think of themselves as a point along a continuum between a loser and a winner. This system quantizes an infinite combination of possibilities of achieving meaningful success into a few, e.g. doctor, lawyer, banker; and this article presents a perspective that is a typical product of that system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps. But I was thinking of kiasu in the sense of going to a good university, instead of striking it out at an intership or picking a stable job over doing what you really care about. I was trying not to emphasize the success points but maybe I gave one too many examples. I was trying to explain that what the education system gives is a very pointless, bland experience that leads to decency but no real significant learning or satisfaction. Pointlessness. I think that if we did do what we cared about, then we'd be beyond that spectrum you mentioned, because you'd be passionate about and enjoying what you did, instead of aiming to be a defined "winner".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Someone will always be better than you.

There's never going to be a point in your life when you are objectively the greatest.

Once you realize that, its freeing. Unshackling yourself from the world means you can get back to being happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this really reflects on how bad a writer I am. I wasn't trying so hard to compare myself to others, but rather to show that in my opinion, I'm not doing anything but the standard stuff, that's pointless in my opinion, while other people are doing things they care about and are interested in. It would lead to decency, but not satisfaction, contribution, or change of any sort. Might have missed the point a little while writing the piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dude, you never get anywhere by comparing yourself to others. Just do what you like and what you're interested in, and everything else is noise.

<http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-am-nothing.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe, I don't get it, but why not simply do something?</comment>


The Free City of Danzig Timeline - <AUTHOR> http://www.freecitysourcebook.com/timeline.html

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, this is not just European history, it is family history. There is a lot I did not know about the city my mother is from.

Enjoy.</comment>


This equation will change how you see the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"The logistic map connects fluid convection, neuron firing, the Mandelbrot set and so much more."</comment>


PCIe 4.0 will be twice as fast as today's slots - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/09/pcie-4-0-twice-as-fast/ <comment><USER2> Can someone enlighten me on what is the bottleneck for the transfer speed from hardware point. Is it the material used in the wire, or the transistors or some other thing? And, also since the transfer speed is continuously increasing, what are the improvements in the hardware over, say, last 10 years.

<comment><USER3> Take a look at slides 9 through 15 of this presentation: [https://pcisig.com/sites/default/files/files/PCI_Express_Ele...](https://pcisig.com/sites/default/files/files/PCI_Express_Electrical_Basics.pdf)

PCIe signals are generated by transceivers -- devices within chips that are specialized in signal conditioning e.g echo cancelling, emphasis/de-emphasis, dynamic impedance matching. These transceivers and the analog and digital techniques they implement get better with time. This is easily measurable by looking at the Bit Error Rate of data or by looking at eye diagrams (see slide 15). As data rates increase things like drive strengths, impedance mismatches, and a number of other properties of silicon will "close the eye" meaning the transmitted "0"s and "1"s are not different enough for them to be distinguished by a receiver enough of the time to successfully decode a packet. (PCIe is packet based, it's surprisingly somewhat similar to Ethernet). But essentially as our understanding and processes for manufacturing semiconductor devices increase, we're able to "open the eye" more, at which point the industry decides to increase data rates.

<comment><USER4> Would these problems persist if we switched to optical signaling instead of rf? Can we expect an optical PCIe equivalent one day?

<comment><USER5> No mostly because the wavelength of light is large, and therefore has poor information density compared to electrons.

<comment><USER6> I doubt this be true as HF is also modulated onto wire ... it's not the electron per se which wander but modulated HF. Sure, the carrying device is the electron buts it's not like a stream of water

<comment><USER5> Basically in the optical regime it won't be possible to propagate the E field in a conduit smaller than the wavelength. This is because a small conduit doesn't have the right boundary conditions to support fields (like trying to fit waves into a didgeridoo). So you're always going to have these massive, massive 1um structures compare to state-of-the-art nm scale semiconductors.

There are advantages of optics including that light moves faster than electrons (important for HPC where the figure of merit is latency in us between nodes, etc) and typically has higher fidelity. But the size of these structures is orders of magnitude larger than conventional semiconductors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Engadget reporting is so … underwhelming for a site with such financial backing.

The associated graphic is some random "Maximum PC Magazine via Getty Images" thing. You mean they have nobody that can take a photo of the inside of a PC?

Then the source of the article is not PCI-SIG itself but a TechReport article: [https://techreport.com/news/32064/pcie-4-0-specification- fin...](https://techreport.com/news/32064/pcie-4-0-specification-finally-out- with-16-gt-s-on-tap) which, frankly, is much more packed with info and deets. In contrast to Engadget there's a nice info-graphic showing the evolution in bandwidth over the years _plus_ there's a table with PCI specs 1 through 5. Finally the source there is PCI-SIG itself: [http://pcisig.com/](http://pcisig.com/) and from there you can root through the spec revisions: [http://pcisig.com/specifications/review- zone](http://pcisig.com/specifications/review-zone) – being as someone else pointed out here "PCI Express Base Specification Revision 4.0, Version 0.9" and "PCI Express Base Specification Revision 5.0, Version 0.3"

I mean I do like Engadget, I've been going there years, but sometimes I ask myself why I do. Their tech event live-blogs are pretty damn decent I guess but I wish their articles had more meat on them like ArsTechica or AnandTech or TechReport or …

<comment><USER8> And they got the reason why manufacturers are going to move to PCIe 4 wrong. It has nothing to do with bottlenecks to video cards and everything to do with freeing up lanes. Pretty awful article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Imagine what a video card could do with that.

Last time I checked, even very high end cards are far from being bottlenecked by a 16x 3.0 bus.

<comment><USER10> True for graphics, though it would be nice for HPC. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508928)

Though it may be that expensive high-end VR could be the luxury home theater of tomorrow, and you put 4 GPUs in a box to get 90FPS 8K seamless VR. Faster PCIe could be nice to have in that case.

<comment><USER11> Multi-GPU doesn't exist for anything other than ML or HPC.

While Vulkan fully supports it. Metal and DX12 don't.

The real issue for real time AR/VR/144FPS+ is knowing what you can/can't offload, what's the transfer latency, etc. this will change based on cards, generations, CPU's, library versions, Driver versions, vendors.

It is a nightmare.

Even SLI/XFire when you know there are identical cards, and drivers. You still see ~10-20% pref gain for 50% more resources.

<comment><USER12> I've wondered if it would be possible to design a dual GPU setup to handle VR applications more efficiently? VR tends to be kind of hard on current GPUs due to needing to render the scene from two viewpoints. With a dual GPU setup you could effectively dedicate one GPU per eyeball.

<comment><USER13> That's actually not true. I believe with the latest generation of Nvidia cards (10 series) they made rendering multiple similar viewpoints dirt cheap by tweaking the hardware and the rendering pipeline.

From the arstechnica review on the 1060: "GPU Boost 3.0, Fast Sync, HDR, VR Works Audio, Ansel, and preemption make a return too , as well as the ability to render multiple viewpoints in a single render-pass."

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/nvidia- gtx-1060-revi...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/nvidia- gtx-1060-review/)

From my limited understanding, VR is difficult because of the tolerances required. For regular gaming, slight frame drops were annoying, but didn't break the experience. Thus, it was reasonable to ship a game that was able to hit 60fps 99% of the time, and just write off the remaining 1% of the time. For VR, not only do we need to hit at least 75fps, the tolerance for frame drops is much much lower (a stutter while you're watching a monitor is annoying, the same stutter in VR could make you lose your balance). To aim to hit 75fps and guarantee that you'll hit that 99.9%, 99.99%, or 99.999% of the time is where the difficulty lies. I'm sure most of the HN audience has experience with just how difficult it is to tack on an additional 9.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eh... for the everyday use PCIe 3.0 x4 is aplenty. If you wanted to help the everday user then make these new PIO slots standard [https://world.taobao.com/item/535467249119.htm?spm=a312a.770...](https://world.taobao.com/item/535467249119.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.T1USiR) and once you have the GPU parallel to the MB, make the coolers user replaceable so that you can put a tower cooler on your GPU. What lunacy is that we have 12-16 cm edge cubes containing like a kg of metal and two-three fans in a push-pull to cool ~150W CPUs but the 250W GPU cooling system struggles for air. x4 is enough in practically all cases just don't forget to feed 75W into it...

Once that's done add a few more x4 slots. Even consumer CPUs have enough lanes for it, no need to waste x16 on the GPU. TB3 is x4, U.2 is x4, everything big and useful is x4 so more of that is helpful. The only thing that needs x8 is like HPC and 40Gbps+ Ethernet both of which are clearly server land.

<comment><USER15> 4 3.0 lanes may be enough for a GPU, but if you're using a 3.0 capable GPU on a 2.0 system, you'll need 8 lanes. So my guess for why GPUs have 16 lane connectors is for backwards compatibility. What motherboard manufactures could do is use open ended x4 slots. But from what I've observed, people don't seem to know that you can put an x1 card into an x4 slot

<comment><USER14> Not really. 2.0 x4 is already enough. [https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_...](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/25.html) PCI Express 1.1 x4 is shouting distance within 3.0 x16. 2.0 x4 and 3.0 x16 has no noticeable difference.

And the future is actually _less_ bandwidth requirement:

> Performance doesn't even drop with newer DirectX 12 and Vulkan games, > including titles like "DOOM," which are known to utilize virtual texturing > ("mega textures," an API feature analogous to Direct3D tiled-resources). If > anything, mega textures has reduced the GPU's bandwidth load on the PCI- > Express bus.

So: 3.0 x4 will be plenty for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So it took 6 years to not yet release PCIe 4 and they're saying they will have PCIe 5 out in two years?

Have they fixed some problem with the development process that will make it take 1/3 of the time?

<comment><USER16> 4.0 and 5.0 are developed concurrently, 4.0 being at revision 0.9 and 5.0 being at 0.3.

<comment><USER17> So why would anyone use 4.0? Or 4.0 is more like a stop gap for HPC, Network applications? Where the need for higher bandwidth interconnect is urgently needed. Intel don't even plan to have 4.0 on selected CPUs until late 2018. And AMD are moving to 4.0 until 2019.

They might as wel wait a year and have 5.0

<comment><USER18> "If PCI-SIG hits its target goal of a 2019 standard finalization date, PCIe 5.0 could be in-market by 2020 or 2021"

[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/250640-pci-sig- announc...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/250640-pci-sig-announces- plans-launch-pcie-5-0-2019-4x-bandwidth-pcie-3-0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be interesting if the new standard was just multiple USB-C connectors for the cards. One, two, four or eight of them depending on the bandwidth requirements.

<comment><USER20> The alignment issues of multiple on-board plugs would just be a headache waiting to happen. Even with SMT components typically aligning themselves during solder flow, there's always discrepancies in manufacturing and components go ever so slightly out of whack. On the GPU side, those would probably be straight because they'd be laid flat against the board, perpendicular to the motherboard. The motherboard mountings would be the problematic ones.

<comment><USER21> You could plug all the sockets into a large retainer (mimicking the role of a GPU) during soldering to ensure they're spaced correctly.

Doesn't sound as solid as a socket though, they support some weight of the card in addition to carrying data. I'd be concerned about USB sockets getting torqued off if you looked at them wrong while installing a card, or if you took out the mounting screws without having the card properly supported.

<comment><USER19> USB-style sockets could require less force to insert than a typical card, so they're less likely to break, but that's also a function of design. A plastic sleeve to guide the card into place and ensure a good fit isn't that hard a concept.

<comment><USER21> Force to insert it isn't what I'm worried about, it's snapping it off with perpendicular force. Double height GPUs are heavy and most of that's supported by hanging off the socket.

<comment><USER19> Any heavy-weight CPU would have 4 or 8 sockets holding it up, so that shouldn't be an issue.

If all that weight was hinging on one socket an accommodation to have some kind of flange wouldn't be too hard to incorporate.

<comment><USER21> True, you could still run the PCB footprint out to the edge and have a support socket on the motherboard to grab it.

Then we could eliminate the cost of the USB components by building contacts into the support socket that connect to pads on the PCB!

I dunno, ease of inserting and removal just isn't on my list of desires for a GPU. I install one maybe every 2 years, and I don't want to worry about it falling out and smashing around inside my case if I pick up my computer or something.

Whatever mounting shenanigans are necessary to lock it in place with weaker connectors feels like a solution looking for a problem. The somewhat high force of PCIe slots is a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm actually more interested in any latency decreases and improvements to direct CPU/memory access that may be included in the new standard.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would this, or current technology, be fast enough to have a (professional grade) Oscilloscope as a PCIe card? It's my understanding (I don't work around top of the line so I'm probably wrong) that even the best scopes don't have particularly amazing interfacing with regular PCs because of low data bandwidth with their interfaces.

<comment><USER24> Todays top of the line osciloscopes (in the $250k+ range) are basically a Windows computer with some custom hardware -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx596o8t_TY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx596o8t_TY)

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

<comment><USER25> But Agilent had Win98-based oscilloscopes more then 15 years ago.

<comment><USER26> I have a DOS-based LeCroy oscilloscope with an embedded 386 and an IDE hard drive. The 'oscilloscope' part is hooked up through an ISA card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this possible? I assume GT per second is transfers not bits. You can't do any kind of handshake at that rate over more than a centimeter or two. Do they allow multiple requests to be issued before the first transfer is complete? The speed of light is definitely coming in to play here as an upper limit.

<comment><USER24> In this context, a transfer is almost the same thing as a bit. For each 8 bits of useful payload PCIe sends 10 bits of encoded payload. The GT counts the total number of sent bits, which include this 20% overhead. So actual userful bitrate is 0.8 * GT.

<comment><USER28> That's true for pcie 2. Pcie 3 is 128/130b encoding, so it's much, much more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would seem to me that 2x is not such a huge jump to warrant 6 years (compared to USB 3 => 3.1) and that it is not the bottleneck anyway. But we might be approaching the speed limits on PCIe (as in transistor size).

<comment><USER28> It is the bottleneck. This is why Nvidia invented nvlink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> PCIe 5.0 will be twice as fast as tomorrow's slots...</comment>