How AMD Gave China the 'Keys to the Kingdom' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tried-to-stop-china-acquiring-world-class-chips-china-got-them-anyway-11561646798?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I have worked for certain major semiconductor companies. At least two of them.

The question is not "Why did AMD hand over all its IP to China," the question is "Why did our incompetent government allow this to happen and why did they turn a blind eye to the strong arming that was going on?"

A further question is: "Why did only some (always smaller) tech companies fork over the IP while very large ones did not?"

Let me tell you a story about a fab in a distant country that begins with a C. The rumor was that it was a very expensive server fab. One day, the wafer (the thing that the server chip is produced with and is extremely valuable, multi billions in the case of a server chip) went missing. They locked down the factory for 48 hours and brought in a search team, scoured the building from bottom to top and then found nothing.

Then, as if by magic, the wafer appeared three feet away from where it went missing. Industrial espionage. And that is what you get when you are big.

What happens when you are small? They put a gun to your head (metaphorically) and say "Split off a company and hand it over to entities controlled by the Chinese government. All your IP will be shared with them. They will own the market in China and send you a royalty check and have the ability to modify your IP to build custom products. If you don't like it, fuck off, no China for you."

What lazy, incompetent and useless western journalists have been shockingly non curious about is why certain companies like Microsoft and Apple magically don't seem to get this treatment.

It is almost as though....some other arrangement was getting made. No lazy western journalists to my knowledge have yet bothered to investigate why it is that Intel, Microsoft etc have not been forced to do these IP sharing agreements while AMD and others have.

One day, Lazy western journalists might be curious and get off their asses from Covering trump but somehow I doubt it.

Blaming AMD for "handing over the keys" is fucking stupid. It is the United States government's lack of a spinal cord that is the problem. These companies had no choice. Either play the game or get shut out of the market.

Bad journalism, everywhere along with a lack of curiosity.

<comment><USER3> _> Microsoft etc have not been forced to do these IP sharing agreements_

Microsoft regularly shares Windows source code with foreign governments for them to inspect.

From 2003 [https://www.infoworld.com/article/2681548/china-gets- access-...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/2681548/china-gets-access-to- microsoft-source-code.html)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps Apple too.

"Apple hasn't provided any information on the matter and did not respond to requests for comment. But analysts said the most likely interpretation is that the company is giving Beijing access to its operating system source code in return for being able to continue to do business in China—arguably Apple's most important market, but one that has been imperiled by regulatory obstacles"

[https://qz.com/332059/apple-is-reportedly-giving-the- chinese...](https://qz.com/332059/apple-is-reportedly-giving-the-chinese- government-access-to-its-devices-for-a-security-assessment/)

<comment><USER5> Darwin is already open source, albeit Apple does a code dump every few years iirc: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_\(operating_system\))

<comment><USER6> Darwin doesn't even remotely resemble MacOS. It's the kernel and open-sourced user-land components. It resembles(but is not at all) a very old FreeBSD-ish system if loaded.

<comment><USER7> Just out of curiosity, what else if not the kernel would be interesting to copy from MacOS? I use a Mac but just don't have the inclination to learn about it under the hood (unlike Linux). Besides the various apps they include and the graphical / window system, I can think of LaunchD, drivers, but not much more that would be worth a lot to China.

<comment><USER8> The Darwin kernel is worthless because any free Unix is better. The graphical stuff is the whole reason macOS exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _> The partnership with the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker was a game changer for China, which has long been unable to match the U.S.'s supercomputing power because of its inferior chips, one product the country has so far struggled to master._

Author forgot about Sunway TaihuLight, the top supercomputer in the TOP500 at the time the transfer happened, using a completely domestic CPU architecture.

 _> The AMD deal gave China access to state-of-the-art x86chips, which are made by only two companies in the world: AMD and Intel Corp._

Author forgot about Zhaoxin. The new LuJiaZui in particular is really interesting.

<comment><USER9> > Sunway TaihuLight, the top supercomputer in the TOP500

It can be traced back to DEC's ALPHA chips.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say that invalidates their achievements though. It's not like they took a 20+ year old architecture, built it on 14nm to bump up clock speed and were done. Improving something existing still requires you to thoroughly understand the technology. There wouldn't really have been a point in starting completely from scratch (why not even reinvent electricity while you're at it), other than some additional street cred.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author also omitted that China has no bleeding edge foundries (like TSMC & Samsung's 7nm fabs) and it is unlikely they will be able to build one any time soon.

Both Intel and Global Foundries are trapped on older nodes, and China is in a slightly worse position (with their most advanced node being 14nm).

All of AMD's new cores are built on TSMC 7nm, and with outdated nodes & 3 revision old designs, China is unlikely to be able to significantly improve on the designs they licensed from AMD.

Arguably, China doesn't have the homegrown talent to do chip design. Allwinner yeets barely altered SOC designs from ARM into existence, and Hygon's chip design talent is in large part not China based.

<comment><USER11> The Chinese govt is pouring huge amounts of resources into training homegrown chip designers. They're doing it based on RISC-V.

<comment><USER5> China can train chip designers just like Israel does, but they are on a path to end up in Intel's predicament, where they don't have the ability to fabricate competitive chips as their foundries are one to two generations outdated.

<comment><USER12> I actually occationally worry about them invading Taiwan...

<comment><USER13> You and several major governments.

Not a coincidence the US usually has a carrier battle group somewhere between the two.

Cross straight relations is a definite hotspot, China (PRC) maintain Taiwan is still their territory.

The US has traditionally sat as a buffer to prevent China asserting that militarily but with the US becoming more isolationist and the Chinese rapid expanding their blue fleet capabilities it's only a matter of time until things get...tense.

<comment><USER14> > Not a coincidence the US usually has a carrier battle group somewhere > between the two.

The USA hasn't sent an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait since 2007. Barring some major geopolitical shakeup, it is fairly likely it will never do so again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Given the number of bad articles regarding China lately (NYT,Bloomberg,WSJ), It seems that the journalists of the land of freedom have the same level of integrity than the Chinese journalist.

Simple question: Chinese money saved AMD in 2013 when the stock was less than 2.5$ and the company almost dead. Why did the USA not pay for their own technology, rather than complaining 6 years later when this investment is now becoming fruitful?

<comment><USER16> I remember wondering if AMD was about to die back then from Intel strangling it to death. They totally did this out of desperation, and I'd imagine they were not the only Western company that were faced with choosing between impending doom or fire sale to China.

<comment><USER17> qualcomm also did this recently (search for qualcomm HXT). A lot of companies prolly do this to get access to china.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's probably worth remembering that WSJ is a Murdoch property.

> _Three weeks after getting the top job, Ms. Su, a Taiwan-born New Yorker, > jetted to Beijing to meet officials at China's Ministry of Industry and > Information Technology. A Chinese vice minister urged her to partner with > China "to achieve mutual benefits based on AMD's technological strength," > according to a ministry press release at the time._

I assume the message is: ZOMG, foreigners are giving away US technology!

<comment><USER19> Which is true. These dual venture deals are very stupid to make long term. China is being very smart here, while the groupthink towards outsourcing and the stock market demanding Chinese access has created their own doom.

<comment><USER20> A good subset of HN commenters defend union-busting ("right-to-work" laws), outright regulation breaking (Uber's "greyball", Airbnb) and poor domestic working conditions (Amazon fulfillment centers), if it results in "value for the shareholders" and "frees companies to innovate".

Of course, since this involves selling chips to a CCP-adjacent entity, it's no longer a story about how AMD saw a 10x boost in its stock and brought competitive new products to the market.

<comment><USER21> I'm in favor of right to work, only because I don't want to be required to join a union. Of course, I'm also in favor of much greater restrictions on Corporation "Freedom" and bringing IP legislation back to something reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> China made investments in AMD when they weren't doing well. If they wanted to, they could have hired away AMD's team instead. Maybe people miss the notion that this particular strategy had likely kept jobs in the US in the longer term. It is a similar strategy to Geely's ownership of Volvo.

But of course you can expect the WSJ to spin it this way.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps some might have gone, but the majority in Silicon Valley would have just stayed there, going to Intel, IBM, Apple, and other ARM makers. People don't change countries randomly (and so drastically) because they lost their jobs.

<comment><USER23> and they don't need to if they don't want to but switch employers, branch offices are a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > How AMD Gave China the 'Keys to the Kingdom'

Or: how China invested in AMD when its stock price was at historical low, so in return AMD gave China its x86 secrets and Zen architecture.

<comment><USER24> AMD was about to go bankcrupt in 2012-13. CEO Rory Read laid off a large number of non-engineering staff and sold off real estate to stabilize the financial situation and managed to stave off imminent bankruptcy. When Dr Lisa Su took over in 2014, AMD was desperate for a cash infusion to plow into R&D for the Zen architecture.

There was no U.S. investor willing to make a $300 million investment in a company that held key CPU and GPU technology and world-class engineering expertise. Apple, Google, Microsoft could have benefited from AMD's CPU/GPU tech but they would rather make multi-billion dollar offers for companies like Groupon and Snapchat or Dr Dre's Beats.

An American company was saved by this joint venture with China while Wall Street was gleefully shorting AMD.

<comment><USER25> Abu Dhabi did more to keep AMD alive than China. They ploughed $600 million into AMD in 2007. Mubadala had built up a 13% stake in the company.

<comment><USER24> Yes that is correct. Abu Dhabi investment kept AMD alive for a while but by 2012-13 AMD was at rock bottom and needed more cash to implement a turn- around. There was a lot more financial jugglery going on but to go into detail would be off context to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This just smells like a rat like some others said. It's probably true that the deal while might not be essential probably did help Chinese cpu development. But it's unlikely that US govt. at the time didn't understand the implication or couldn't have stopped it if they really wanted it. And it's not like reporters are finding out about this just now.

I don't know the financial situation for AMD was at 2014 and they might have ceased to exists for all I know. But the article writes as if the money itself turned the company around. It's the R&D and design of a new chip that heralded a new era for AMD. And if I'm reading correctly the deal actually ended up being done in 2016 by which time most of the work on Zen was already done I presume.

As someone else said in another comment it is kind of shameful how investment works. Forget about China/US thing, chip development is important work and no one invested in it properly. For big cloud companies simply the pressure over intel (with a competitive AMD) should have been worth it by itself.

</comment><comment><USER27> The fact that this submarine hatemongering keeps surfacing to the top of this site is rather concering.

If only this article had substantial content... but, as other commenters pointed out, it doesn't even pass the basic smell test.

<comment><USER11> I'm also confused why it's even a problem if China has top class fabs. There'll be more competition, so it's better for us. Are we worried about Intel's profit margins?

<comment><USER28> A decent chunk of US's success in the past 70 years has been reliant on the US having no real competition.

By real competition I mean someone with both the same skill level and the same heft/weight.

If you look at how the US reacted when Japan was rising, it wasn't a pretty view. It only died down because Japan stagnated 2 decades ago.

China's kind of the same story, but if it stagnates at about the same level at Japan, the Chinese economy will be 2-3x the US economy.

That's super scary if you haven't competed on equal footing for more than half a century.

Obviously, China being an autocratic regime doesn't help either, or that China's national interests in the region directly conflict with the US interests there (Taiwan, South Korea, etc.).

I'd bet dollars to cents that even if China had the most pristine Swiss democracy, the US reaction would be 99% the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Was this written by the advertising department of Intel?

<comment><USER30> That was my first thought, along with Nvidia.

<comment><USER31> I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this is being published in multiple outlets now, when AMD is kicking Intel's butt, instead of when it was originally known. Why would anyone suspect otherwise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > That technology is helping China in its race with the U.S. to build the > first next-generation supercomputer—an essential tool for advanced civilian > and military applications.

Are we entering a space-race with China for supercomputers or something? Did I miss the memo?

<comment><USER33> "Red danger" does indeed seem to be the narrative that western politicians, the US in particular, are pushing today.

There always has to be _some_ fear-based narrative involving the boogeyman de jour - the Russians, the Chinese, Islamic extremists, cyberwar whatever. Any one will do, anything to deflect from real problems at home.

God I _detest_ the politics of today :(

<comment><USER34> The fear of Islamic terrorism is mostly BS, and the cyberwar stuff is a manageable risk.

However, the "red danger" of the Soviets was (IMHO) an existential risk to freedom--just as the Poles why they fought for free multi-party elections. The rising influence of China, a totalitarian state, is a cause for concern. Why would you think a dictatorship growing more powerful is a good thing?

> _Any one will do, anything to deflect from real problems at home._

As a society/civilization, I would think it would be possible to walk and chew gum at the same time: raise concerns about bad actors abroad _and_ try to solve domestic problems.

<comment><USER35> China is neither totalitarian nor is it a dictatorship. It _is_ an authoritarian single-party state, but let's not play fast and loose with classification here.

<comment><USER36> Single party state == Totalitarian

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism): > Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This whole story of later years, maybe it will bring more attention to the lack of progress in commercial hardware design tools, their ridiculous price, and existing efforts to create modern open source alternatives, like SymbiFlow [1], Chisel3 [2]/FIRRTL[3], The Open ROAD[4] project, etc.

[1] [https://symbiflow.githib.io](https://symbiflow.githib.io)

[2] [https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3](https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3)

[3] [https://github.com/freechipsproject/firrtl](https://github.com/freechipsproject/firrtl)

[4] [https://theopenroadproject.org/](https://theopenroadproject.org/)

<comment><USER38> You spelled github wrong in your first link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> :') oh noes, china also has business men and women with money who want to invest in things. lets find any reason to be negative about it and try to get it back in our western hands

</comment><comment> chao- The strategy summarized as "introduce a foreign technology to the market, absorb it, and then innovate to make China a leader" is doubtlessly true, and I am for re-leveling the economic playing field (so-called) between the US and China as much as the next person, but this article over-sells and under- informs in a few ways.

For starters, there is a throwaway graph (in that it is not directly addressed in the article) of the Top500 over time. As Patrick Kennedy at STH has rightly complained on over recent years [0], there is a rising issue with taking the lower-to-mid ranks of Top500 to mean anything at all. A lot of the systems are actually web hosting platforms, being temporarily leveraged to run an HPC benchmark for marketing purposes. Most recently he called out two Chinese companies (Lenovo and Sugon) as among the largest offenders.

My other nitpick is more core to the article: it is not as if no one in China knew anything about x86 chip design before talking to AMD. Though I will admit I am underinformed on the NatSec legalities, to my knowledge there has a similar x86 license-and-joint-venture structure between Zhaoxin and VIA for many years.

The article goes on to say:

> _Chinese versions of AMD chips already have been rolling off production > lines._

Which brings up some ominous analogues to displacement of other American products by Chinese manufacturing. That may be inaccurate imagery, though, as it isn't clear which manufacturer's fabs are being used for the Dhyana chips. I am no industry insider but from what I can tell Hygon is fabless (as is Huawei's HiSilicon, for that matter) and I could not find any clear information as to who is actually manufacturing the chips [1]. Does anyone here know?

I'll keep my uninformed speculation to myself, but knowing whose fabs and whose process technology actually led to working Hygon designs being realized in silicon is an important detail to fully tell this tale.

Now I have no doubt China is working to catch up in this area as well, but it seems that the entire fabrication ecosystem (including companies like ASML, not just Taiwanese and American fabs) represent technology gaps equal to x86 chip design. It takes many actors to put on this play, and laying it all at AMD's feet, or using phrasing like "gave away the keys to the kingdom" feels like a solid overstatement.

[0] [https://www.servethehome.com/top500-june-2019-our-new- system...](https://www.servethehome.com/top500-june-2019-our-new-systems- analysis/)

[1] [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/hygon](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/hygon)

</comment><comment><USER40> People with Intel stock are not happy.

<comment><USER41> Yeah I can't decouple articles like this from the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why do I think this is FUD?

<comment><USER43> One clue might be the scaremongering about "this might help China develop nuclear weapons," as if

A) they didn't already have nukes

B) making your own x86 processors were a prerequisite to nuclear technology

<comment><USER44> They already have low yield nukes but to develop high yield, compact warheads without much nuclear testing (which can be easily detected and would undoubtedly draw critics from other countries) precise simulation on super computer is necessary. Also to solve fluid dynamics problems (for example to develop advanced jet engines or silent submarine propeller, which the Chinese desperately need), detailed simulation on super computer is absolutely a must. Now running LinPack to show off some nice PR numbers is one thing but actually writing an own efficient (and correct) simulation) on massive parallel systems is a thing of another level. It surely helps if one can draw on the massive highly optimized numerical libraries built for the x86/64 instruction set. It certainly will not hinder either in case one has stolen properties software and code from western companies!

<comment><USER45> China demonstrated a 4 megaton explosion in 1976. Tsar Bomba was in 1961. You really don't need modern computers for this.

<comment><USER44> But you can not put a tzar bomb on a rocket, that can be fired from a silo or even from a submarine. And to threat America and Europe your rocket need to flight 10000 miles or more and reach Mach 5 or even faster. All possible only with high yield, compact warheads and advanced rocketry, which the Chinese do not have yet.

<comment><USER45> The DF-5 can carry those 4Mt warheads, has a 12k+ km range, and has been around since 1981.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The focus on supercomputing seems odd. x86 is not nearly as dominant in supercomputing as it is in servers. A quick look at the TOP500 shows many other architectures (top 3 aren't x86). Is there something a homegrown x86 chip would give China over top of the line Intel silicon? Does Intel have secret IP on the die that only the US govt can access?

</comment><comment><USER47> If Chinese manufacturers infringe on patented technologies, then it will be easy to ban import of their products. If they don't infringe and make something innovative then there is no problem. Having more competition is better for consumers.

Also, as AMD entered the deal voluntarily, it means that it was considered profitable despite the risks.

And I don't see the problem with building a supercomputer. Is it a privilege that shouldn't be available to developing countries?

</comment><comment><USER48> Feel like there is excessive scaremongering about "China" from US based media publications off late, with a "and this is how China ffukkd us" twists.

Perhaps it would be wise for people to keep that filter in mind (as this is how mass manipulation works folks).

</comment><comment><USER49> there is a flood of anti-china articles because china threatens the US' monopoly on high-tech profitmaking, and the US companies and rich people are laying the basis to protect their profits with war.

</comment><comment><USER50> Maybe this is because I'm not a US citizen, but why do Americans dislike China so much?̊̈

I just cannot understand why China building it's own jets is a problem. US already builds it's own jets and nobody hates that to the point 'Let's not partnership with US to not leak any info'.

Why is this particular dislike to China?̊̈ Is it just the 'Communism is bad...' thing?̊̈ Or is it something much more?̊̈

<comment><USER51> I dislike China for running concentration camps for Muslims, organ harvesting, social scores, no free speech, and having made Xi a dictator for life. I'm pretty sure Americans have a lot of other reasons like job losses, real estate money laundering, etc.

<comment><USER20> The US supports numerous regimes guilty of the exact things you're describing, with financial aid, military security guarantees and arms sales. What's your stance on those?

<comment><USER51> I wish we'd cut support for all of them, but none of those countries are the economic threat that China is.

<comment><USER20> China's economic threat has magnified several fold because the US has spent the past 2 decades mired in conflicts that have been stoked by its allies in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, China has had a free hand in developing trade relations with its neighbouring states and African countries, further weakening the US' position there.

Whatever billions the US has earned selling weapons to KSA are a drop in the bucket compared to what it's spent in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Pakistan. These are all countries where KSA has funded extremist political movements that continue to destabilize the region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Tl;dr: AMD turned itself from a domestic $5b company with 2,000 employees and no capital into a global leader in semiconductors while simultaneously enduring 30 years of crushing (and illegal) anti-competitive practices by it's primary competitor of 25 times its net worth and 50 times it's workforce strength. Now that AMD has managed to take those 2,000 American workers and push back against 80k American Intel workers + 20k Israeli Intel workers the US has decided it's not fair for "AMD to license it's highly proprietary, highly impressive, highly competitive products to undemocratic nations."

 _cough-Israel-Wintel-lobbyists-cough_

</comment><comment><USER53> Seems strange to me that China was able to manufacture processors but they couldn't manufacture ballpoint pens domestically until 2017.

<comment><USER3> _> China was able to manufacture processors_

The actual manufacturing is done in Taiwan (TSMC) and South Korea (Samsung). USA can do it too (Intel, Global Foundries) but these are either not leading edge or only for private use.

SMIC in China are up to 14nm: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13941/smics-14-nm-mass- produc...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13941/smics-14-nm-mass-production- in-1h-2019)

Everyone uses equipment from the Netherlands (ASML).

 _> they couldn't manufacture ballpoint pens domestically until 2017_

They were already producing 38 billion ballpoint pens a year. Just the tips had to be imported because domestic steel was too low-grade.

Since they weren't given assistance in learning steel production techniques it had to be rediscovered. Chinese steel is now high-quality enough to produce the ballpoint tips, but building up R&D is important for reasons beyond pens; the responsible state-owned-enterprise developed several new techniques, and is (apparently) the only company in the world able to produce e.g. [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/24/WS5cbfc4a9a31048422...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/24/WS5cbfc4a9a3104842260b7fc5.html)

<comment><USER54> > Everyone uses equipment from the Netherlands (ASML).

This is funny, because besides ASML, Europe is very light on the chip manufacturing. Sure, there's ARM, but they don't have foundries. All this talk about geopolitics and computing, chips, foundries, and every single company and thus country is dependent on this one equipment vendor from a tiny and otherwise unimportant country, and nobody seems to bat an eye.

It makes me wonder whether maybe all this geopolitical scheming and fearmongering is way overblown. Why does it matter if country Y can make chips themselves or buy them from country X? What is this, a world full of little soviet unions? I mean, we have trade, and trade works! I think in the long run trade will always win over protectionism.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What improves Developer Happiness? - <AUTHOR> This has become a recent trend in companies. Usually they do this to decrease turnover without increasing pay. Is it true that most developers do not care about money and if yes then what do they care about? <comment><USER2> To put it slightly differently, these are the things I get in my current job, but I know I wouldn't get in many other better paying ones:

remote work, flexible hours, socially conscious company/management, freedom to choose / purpose work (within reasonable limits), recognition.

I don't think you can really slap any of those on an existing company though - they really come from the culture. On the other hand, you could probably pay me more and drop some of those... but it would have to be a significant increase.</comment>


React Native is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/react-native <comment><USER3> The first thing I do now on each Facebook open-source reveal, is to check the PATENTS file for the toxic second paragraph, to see if they've changed it. Sadly, no. I can't imagine being able to use this at any decent-sized company with lawyers. :-( [https://github.com/facebook/react- native/blob/master/PATENTS](https://github.com/facebook/react- native/blob/master/PATENTS)

See for example the discussions at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849) (eg. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113515))

Full disclosure: I work at Google, where many are sad to not be able to use recent Facebook code.

<comment><USER4> What would you suggest as a solution to this? What should Facebook do?

<comment><USER5> It's a near-certainty that any tech giant is going to have patent issues with any other tech giant, not bundling the consequences of this with their open source licenses would be a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember this day, because React Native is going to be a game changer (patent clause stuff aside). Others like Phone Gap tried to make it so you could build native apps using HTML/Javascript but they failed because they focused on running said HTML/Javascript within a performance limited WebView and not the other way around.

This weekend I am going to try and get a working application built using React Native. Facebook are absolutely killing it in regards to their open source contributions. The learn once, write anywhere paradigm is smart as opposed to what others have done via their write once, deploy anywhere approach which just doesn't work for web and native applications.

<comment><USER7> I think there's a lot of proof that it does work, given there's 300,000 Ionic apps, tons in production.

I downvoted you not because I don't agree that Native will be compelling but because I hate to see all this hate that's come out against hybrid apps in general that's even been propagated by React Native devs.

Webviews will get there. WKWebView is already a huge step forward. I think Native is great, but it's not a clear winner in many cases. I even like "learn once apply everywhere" (though it doesn't really go against the web in any way), but I would say the mountain of hybrid apps out there actually disprove that it "just doesn't work".

<comment><USER8> Webviews have been "getting there" for like 5 years now

<comment><USER7> They've only existed for 8. We the rest of eternity. I get downvoted but I'm just refuting your unbased claims with facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool to see this. By my count we now have, in no particular order:

\- React Native from Facebook ([https://github.com/facebook/react- native](https://github.com/facebook/react-native))

\- Appcelerator's Titanium and Alloy Frameworks ([http://appcelerator.com](http://appcelerator.com))

\- Telerik's Native Script ([http://telerik.com/nativescript](http://telerik.com/nativescript))

\- Xamarin ([http://xamarin.com](http://xamarin.com))

As I understand it, all three of these frameworks have a JS (or C#) runtime that is compiled along with the app. This JS runtime is what drives the app and uses the native features of each platform (iOS / Android).

I've been building on Appcelerator for the last 4 months on some basic apps, and it works pretty well.

I look forward to trying out some toy apps on the other platforms.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget [http://robovm.com/](http://robovm.com/) (basically java for ios).

<comment><USER11> Thanks for remembering and mentioning us. We don't have as huge a marketing budget as the other folks, so I'm going to shamelessly piggy back on your comment here.

We also do Scala, Kotlin, Clojure etc. and we are OSS as well (we started out as OSS). You can build unlimited apps without paying us a dime. You can also compile the entire compiler plus Eclipse/Idea/Maven/Gradle integration yourself so you aren't locked in.

We expose all iOS APIs and have a custom bridge besides JNI to make binding and subclassing of Objective-C APIs and C APIs as seamless as JNA or p/invoke, but without performance overhead. We use LLVM to compile JVM bytecode to native code directly, so performance is excellent and on par with Objective-C.

At this point you can write apps for iOS and Android, using the native UI APIs, and share business logic between them and your backend, if that's also JVM based. I personally think that using native UI APIs is best. However, for CRUD or enterprise apps you may not care about shininess, which is why our next focus will be on a cross-platform UI toolkit for Android and iOS.

You do have to pay for debugging support, interface builder integration and SLAs/hotfixing. We hope that's a fair way of supporting our OSS work.

Now I feel dirty...

<comment><USER12> So if I have a common business logic library in Scala, could I build that into both my app and my server side? Write once, run in 2 environments?

<comment><USER11> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://facebook.github.io/react-native/](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/) or [https://code.facebook.com/posts/1014532261909640/react- nativ...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1014532261909640/react-native- bringing-modern-web-techniques-to-mobile/) would probably be a better link here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hi, technical question from a long-time iOS developer here, i hope you can put my concerns at ease:

How, when you're running JS on a different thread to the iOS main thread, do you avoid race conditions? A simple example:

* Say a button's event handler pushes a new view controller onto the navigation stack, what's to stop the user from tapping the button twice very quickly before the JS thread gets a chance to service the first tap, eg it may be garbage collecting or busy elsewhere, and once it's free again it runs the handler twice and pushes two view controllers onto the navigation stack?

Looks great by the way, i'll certainly check it out.

</comment><comment><USER15> Should someone learning iOS development stick to vanilla iOS while learning, or would it be feasible to use React Native from the outset? I already have some React experience, and I have some React-based web app that I'd like to turn into native iOS app.

<comment><USER16> If you're learning iOS development, stick to learning iOS development. A framework, no matter how cool and neat it is, will not replace pure iOS development for serious apps.

Also ask yourself a question, do you really think you can call yourself an iOS developer when the only way you truly know how to create apps is with React?

<comment><USER17> > for serious apps

Like Facebook's Groups app and Ads Manager app, which both use React Native?

<comment><USER18> How much code is React Native and how much code is hand written Objective-C ? can you answer that question ? "Use" doesn't mean 100% without a single line of Objective-C written.

<comment><USER19> Groups is a mix of native code and React Native, but Ads Manager is pure react native. The app is completely written in Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> DevOps guy here, new to both JS and iOS, forgive the naive questions :

What proportion of iOS UI elements are available through React Native ? Is there a 1:1 mapping somehow, but how are discrepancies between platforms (Web/iOS/Android) handled then ?

Could a complex app's views realistically be built entirely using this or would you have to resort to native UI elements in some cases ? How well would they mix with React Native code ?

<comment><USER21> Components are listed at [http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting- started....](http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting- started.html#content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Want to get your hands dirty writing iOS apps with React Native? Start here: [http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/tutorial.html](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/tutorial.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks like it's iOS only right now? Can't see any mention of Android in the docs?

<comment><USER23> "We are also working on an Android implementation which we will release later"

<comment><USER24> It's taking them a long time since the announcement of the new framework at React conf. They said they would release an Android compatible version soon and still we're waiting for any updates beside the usual cliche.

<comment><USER25> It's been about a month since the world even knew React Native existed. You consider that a long time?

<comment><USER24> A month ago:

'We'll release an Android version later'

A month later:

'We'll release an Android version later'

You consider this progress at least in terms of PR & communications?

<comment><USER26> HN entitlement never ceases to amaze me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm very excited about this, but it's worth highlighting this from the FAQ:

Q. Can I submit my own React Native app to the App Store?

A. Not yet, but you will be able to soon. If you build something you want to submit to the App Store, come talk to us ASAP.

<comment><USER13> Oops, this was left over from our private beta. Removed now!

<comment><USER27> Ok now I'm even more excited!

Thanks! :-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> React Native is the most promising cross-platform UI toolkit I've thus far encountered. Congratulations to the team that built / launched it.

The reason I'm excited for it: Java promised write-once-run-anywhere, which means you are always serving the least common denominator. React Native promises learn-once-write-anywhere, which means a single team of engineers can realistically build high-quality apps using the target platform's UI paradigms.

Really exciting stuff!

<comment><USER11> WORA is pretty much a pipe dream, to different are the platforms and UI toolkits. One of the reasons why we heavily focus on enabling the same language(s) on multiple platforms while using the native UI toolkits with RoboVM.

Funnily enough it's a different matter for games, see Unity, UE4, libGDX, Cocos2D-x etc.

<comment><USER29> I think many people dismiss this recommendation right away nowadays, but here it goes:

Adobe Air comes pretty close to "WORA". For 2D games it goes almost without saying, but throw in the excellent Starling + Feathers framework and it is great for Apps too. A drawback is of course that you do not have native UI, but if you can get passed that it works really really well.

I evaluate cross platform technologies quite regularly and my opinion still is that Adobe Air is the best (just make sure you stay away from Flex ;) For everyone who gave up on Adobe Air some time ago I highly recommend to take another look. The Eco system did not stop to evolve at all and it provides a really good development environment.

<comment><USER11> I can see the appeal of Adobe Air and its ecosystem. I guess on mobile the only problem is binding to system services & ad providers. IIRC most of that is already covered by 3rd parties, but it's a bit involved to do it yourself.

Funny you mention Flex, still gives me the shivers, still used by a lot of enterprises around here. Pretty much on par with applets in terms of badness.

<comment><USER29> Hey.. actually I also just got the task to integrate an Ad provider in out game and made a little research. As far as I can see almost all big companies are providing Adobe Air SDKs for integration. For Example:

[https://www.adjust.com/](https://www.adjust.com/) [http://www.mobileapptracking.com/](http://www.mobileapptracking.com/) [http://www.appsflyer.com/](http://www.appsflyer.com/) [https://www.kochava.com/](https://www.kochava.com/) [http://www.fiksu.com/](http://www.fiksu.com/)

Alright.. I am done with promoting now, I think ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great news! One question: since FB just announced React+Parse, I wonder how's support for Parse in React Native? Or put it a better way, if I want to write an multi-platform app based on Parse, should I consider using React Native? or it's still better to developer separate apps for each platform to get the best of Parse (especially for features like push notification)?

<comment><USER31> You can `npm install parse` and run it as usual within a React Native app

<comment><USER30> Great! I guess it wouldn't be a problem for common operations like data creation and fetching, since underneath it's all implemented through REST APIs. But what about push notification? Parse's JS library doesn't support it, but its iOS library does support it through platform's push notification mechanism. Does this mean using Parse in React Native, I can't get Push Notification to work on iOS? or I still have to write native iOS apps to get push?

<comment><USER19> We built the F8 app with parse, including push notifications

Take a look here: [http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/pushnotification...](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/pushnotificationios.html)

<comment><USER30> Super! Hopefully React Native + Parse will become my "one ring to rule them all" for app development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm interested in this primarily because I don't find it appealing to invest in (basically non-transferable) iOS platform skills. I want to build native mobile UIs for my projects, but not with a dead-end language and tools.

<comment><USER33> Precisely, every time I go to learn Objective-C/Swift and iOS dev, I feel like I am totally wasting my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone else really want to see a version of Elm that compiles to React Native? Since Javascript is the de facto intermediate language of the 21st century, frameworks like React Native open a lot of doors.

<comment><USER35> If you can't wait for it, you could use PureScript and fork Thermite [1] to add react-native support :)

[1] [https://github.com/paf31/purescript- thermite/](https://github.com/paf31/purescript-thermite/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Incredible on iOS. Android support... coming soon!

This seems to be the case with a lot of cross-platform development kits. One or the other of the platforms is a second-class citizen.

It seems that all of us are salivating at the idea of having true cross- platform tools that actually work really well on all environments so I will keep my fingers crossed that Facebook can pull it off.

<comment><USER37> FWIW it won't be cross platform, it will be a separate implementation for Android. The goal is the model, not the write once pipe dream.

<comment><USER38> True, but if you can write once at least the business logic, is is already a win

<comment><USER39> I am also wondering how much scope there is for writing generic interfaces that delegate to UI specific components as needed. I haven't done any native mobile development before so I'm not sure how possible this will end up being, but seems plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is React Native for iOS able to take advantage of JavaScriptCore's JIT compiler on any version of iOS? Or can it only use the interpreter?

If the latter, I wonder if the React Native developers have considered using Duktape rather than JavaScriptCore. Duktape might be better for memory usage, since it uses reference counting, with mark-and-sweep GC only being necessary to break cycles.

<comment><USER19> Duktape looks quite nice!

Because we built React Native around an asynchronous batched bridge, we can plug it into any JS execution environment. For now we plug it into JSC, which is available on iOS 7 and 8. We also use websockets to execute the JS in chrome so we can utilize the debugger.

Without much difficulty, we can make the bridge work over a WebView (if we want to support older iOS versions), or Duktape.

</comment></comment><comment> T-A Cross-platform, as long as it's iOS? ;)

</comment><comment><USER41> But why React Native? Reactjs for web makes sense as browsers struggle with DOM manipulation.

Native apps rendering capacity is sub-micro seconds. Hoping for Appcelerator's dreaming Hyperloop that give us native JS capabilities.

I still plan to use ReactJs (web) within web-view.

<comment><USER42> Fills the same niche as Cordova/PhoneGap or Xamarin. It's kinda the best of both. Intuitive dev process for web developers not needing to learn new paradigms. Fully native compilation for better performance than WebViews.

<comment><USER11> Are you sure they compile to native? IIUC they use JavaScriptCore on iOS, which currently doesn't JIT. Probably good enough to drive UI and you can implement performance hungry stuff in native code.

<comment><USER42> Not sure, but it's native UI at least. The demos they showed prior to release were far more responsive than any WebView based solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A little typo on the code example on the ListView docs page ([https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/listview.html#c...](https://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/listview.html#content)):

        new ListViewDataSource

should have been:

        new ListView.DataSource

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm curious, can somebody talk about the differences between using React Native vs ComponentsKit?

It seems ComponentsKit is a very specific to iOS as opposed to React.

[https://github.com/facebook/componentkit](https://github.com/facebook/componentkit)

<comment><USER45> With React Native you write your apps in JavaScript, in a React.js style.

My understanding is that ComponentsKit has you write your iOS apps with ObjC/Swift or whatever, but it gives you a way of structuring your apps that is similar to React.js

<comment><USER46> ComponentsKit is Objective-C++ only (no Swift).

<comment><USER47> I think they've said they are working on a Swift port (at the end of that F8 video talking about it).

<comment><USER46> Yes. I think it will be worth the time to rethink it for Swift, because Swift is much better suited for this style of programming than Objective-C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Please see this image:

[http://facebook.github.io/react- native/img/chrome_breakpoint...](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/img/chrome_breakpoint.png)

I am really confused. Why is this easier - this looks extremely buggy and complex?

<comment><USER49> Looks like the chrome debugger. I just built a react native app, and for the basic Ajax + list view, it is far easier than the usual drag'n'drop/imperative iOS we are used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> well, there goes my weekend

</comment><comment><USER4> Hallelujah!

I've been checking my Twitter obsessively today and yesterday for this.

<comment><USER51> I'vs been obsessively checking too, but for React Relay :(

<comment><USER43> It's the server-side GraphQL for me :(

<comment><USER52> Someone wrote a GraphQL query parser. [https://github.com/madjam002/graphqlite](https://github.com/madjam002/graphqlite) There aren't any GraphQL servers yet though. Pretty hard to write too in a generic useful-for-all manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How does this compare to Qt project QtQuick, which supports far more platforms then react native. Both use javascript and both are reactive programming systems...

<comment><USER54> It's personal preference, but I prefer React ATM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I know what I'm doing this weekend!

<comment><USER56> FlappyReact?

<comment><USER57> 2048 - <USER2>

<comment><USER19> I think we beat you to it:

[https://github.com/facebook/react- native/tree/master/Example...](https://github.com/facebook/react- native/tree/master/Examples/2048)

<comment><USER57> I'm the one who wrote that ;) Didn't know it made it into the repo!

<comment><USER19> Oh! We need an internal integration with HN so we can identify each-other on here :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Can someone point me to the added value by react native? Why so much hype? I just don't see it.

</comment><comment><USER59> After figuring out how to deploy to device (see AppDelegate.m), I tested accessibility and it seems there is virtually none. At least in the Movies example app, VoiceOver reads practically nothing.

How would one go about making the Movies sample accessible, or is that even possible?

</comment><comment><USER60> All the SF people, want to meet up casually on this new shinning toy?

[http://www.meetup.com/SF-React-Native-Meetup/](http://www.meetup.com/SF- React-Native-Meetup/)

</comment><comment><USER61> I am excited for the possibility of "Scala Everywhere".

Scala -> Scala.JS -> React Javascript -> Native code

I'll have to try this out on a small project and write about it.

</comment><comment><USER62> I am seeing something like this in Native code

var { AppRegistry, Image, ListView, StyleSheet, Text, View, } = React;

is this ES6 feature?

<comment><USER63> Yes, that's an ES2015 (formerly known as ES6) feature called destructuring. It's just one of the great features of ES2015. You can use ES6 today by transpiling to ES5 with [https://babeljs.io](https://babeljs.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Isn't this just appcelerator? Except appcelerator has android support and has been around for longer.

</comment><comment><USER65> This does not make sense to me: var { ScrollView, TouchableHighlight, Text } = React;

It gives an error in Console.

<comment><USER66> This is destructuring (a new feature in ES6, the upcoming version of JavaScript). There's a great in-depth read on how it works here: [http://www.2ality.com/2015/01/es6-destructuring.html](http://www.2ality.com/2015/01/es6-destructuring.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does it support android as well?

<comment><USER68> No support for Android (yet?)

<comment><USER67> Is it possible to at least run the app in a webview then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So is the UI 100% core Ios or does some widgets live in a Webview ie html widgets ?

<comment><USER69> No webview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Any one did code through of this? Would love to know some highlights

</comment><comment><USER62> How can we manage the Asynchronous parts like Ajax for example?..

</comment><comment><USER70> Now waiting for the React-Native for the Android :)

</comment><comment><USER56> Is this node/ES5 only or can we use io?

<comment><USER13> Your apps run in JavaScriptCore (like Mobile Safari) on device, but our packager includes a transpiler set up so that you can use most ES6 features already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Will It support OS X Applications as well?

<comment><USER72> They've stated in the past that they're focusing on iOS then Android first but that the system could be used on other platforms like Windows/Mac/Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Where is @grellas when you need him most?

</comment><comment><USER74> How can i use Sqlite with react native?

<comment><USER19> There is currently no native module for SQLite, but you can build one if you want. :-D

[http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/nativemodulesios...](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/nativemodulesios.html)

We use a key-value store for most of our client-side persistence:

[http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/asyncstorage.htm...](http://facebook.github.io/react- native/docs/asyncstorage.html)

<comment><USER75> I've built a basic wrapper for SQLite for React Native: [https://github.com/almost/react-native- sqlite](https://github.com/almost/react-native-sqlite)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> can we use Babel over the top of it?

<comment><USER18> Is babel compatible with JSX ?

<comment><USER39> yup, plastered right on their front page :)

[https://babeljs.io/](https://babeljs.io/)

<comment><USER18> Is JSX compatible with Typescript ?

<comment><USER35> There is a fork that is: [https://github.com/fdecampredon/jsx- typescript](https://github.com/fdecampredon/jsx-typescript)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> omg...I'm so excited

still wish there was a way to develop for iOS on windows platform but I guess I will have to purchase a mac now if I want to build mobile apps

<comment><USER77> With RN, you really only need XCode to build the initial app and the final build for submission - everything in between can be done on any platform that can run the packager with a phone for actual testing. So if you have a friend with a mac, you're good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> _"...Native ... based on JavaScript..."_ \- facepalm.</comment>


Ask HN: Need Mobile Beta App Testers - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I'm the owner of Streetread.com - you may remember reviewing the site on here about a month ago. If you don't, Streetread is an innovative, ajax-driven, news aggregator for Wall Street - collecting news from over 20 of the leading financial sites as well as all of the stocks you choose to follow. The interface and data available are very complex (jQuery - Drupal).
In lieu of user-demand and general sense I've decided to roll out a mobilized version of the site - with surprisingly no loss in features or convenience. Even more surprisingly was that I was able to complete the mobile development and design in two days. Like the rest of the site, it's built completely on Drupal (first complex mobile drupal app?).
I'm coming here for the great help and intelligence that defines this community. If anyone is interested in helping to test out this service - I would greatly appreciate it. It seems all of the coding is completely functional; my main concern is device compatibility.
To participate simply visit streetread.com via a computer and register a free account (takes 15 seconds). Add a comment to this thread saying "username: <insert user name here>". I'll enable mobile access to the account and reply to the comment once completed. You can then visit streetread.com/m/login via a mobile phone to login and begin testing. Please provide as much feedback and information as possible.
Thank you very much to anyone willing to help.
Mike <comment><USER2> One more suggestion as I continue to play. The service as-is is awesome for checking out 'your' stocks, but adding functionality to search for a company by name rather than only symbol would be great in the mobile app (and the standard website as well for that matter). If I hear about a company while on the go, it would be cool to have a one-stop shop where I don't have to hit Google or some other mobile site to identify the ticker symbol before I can do some reading on StreetRead.

</comment><comment><USER2> username: zacharye

I've enjoyed the site a lot, definitely willing to check out the mobile version.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry for the delay.

enabled - navigate to streetread.com/m/login on your mobile device

thanks!

<comment><USER2> No worries. Looking really good so far on my Nokia E71. Loads very fast over 3G. I'll play with it plenty more over the coming days but my only suggestion so far would be an option to click on the charts to enlarge them a bit. They're way too tiny to be useful as-is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. This was a concern of mine. I knew making it too large would be a problem on some devices - and theres no such thing as too small as long as the data is legible. I haven't been able to find any data regarding average mobile device screen resolution. I'll try making the images a bit larger and see if it works fine.

<comment><USER2> In this day and age, I think using a width that will accomodate 240p-wide screens will likey be safe. Having the small pre-click size will take care of any old smaller displays.

<comment><AUTHOR> meaning the browser will auto-shrink any images that are too wide?

<comment><USER2> Depending on the browser/OS, yes. Most popular phones these days have at least a QVGA display though (240x320 or 320x240) so if the enlarged size is < 240 wide it will likely fit on most screens.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Obtains U.S. Patent For Human-Aided Search Ranking Method - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/yahoo-obtains-u-s-patent-for-human-aided-search-ranking-method/ <comment><USER2> I'm not an IP expert, but I think there's a SERIOUS problem here, and it's called "the US patent office." Patents should be issued for real INNOVATIONS that a 6th grader can't come up with in 10 seconds.

Yahoo now has a patent for human-assisted rankings? Wow. What does this mean for sites like mahalo.com?

Amazon was issued a patent for one-click ordering system [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click>] allowing a user to use a predefined address and credit card number to purchase one or more items. Seriously!?

Cendant has a patent (& sued Amazon over it) for a "System and Method for Providing Recommendation of Goods or Services Based on Recorded Purchasing History"...

What's next? <http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130></comment>


Clayton Christensen on Religion and Capitalism (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A

<comment><AUTHOR> While I don't agree with him on the necessity of religion, I do believe this highlights the need for teaching kids ethics, character, honesty, self- discipline, etc. in school--arguably the most crucial things to success as an adult. Ideally, parents would teach their children these things, but this isn't an ideal world.</comment>


Hillel Wayne: Are we *really* engineers? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3018ABlET1Y <comment><USER2> Strange that there's seemingly no mention of licensure, which to me seems to be the main difference between software and other disciplines of engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you didn't actually watch the video?

[https://youtu.be/3018ABlET1Y?t=502](https://youtu.be/3018ABlET1Y?t=502)

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, I gave it a skim. I still feel that's a pretty big difference and deserves more time than just a few seconds out of a 30 minute video.</comment></comment></comment>


Double Tap - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/04/double-tap/

<comment><USER3> I respect the honesty of this post, but I didn't like that dig at The Four Hour Work Week!

4HWW is about putting systems in place that remove _you_ and thus allow your company to scale. Until you remove yourself you don't have a real business. Of course when you walk away it dies.

Ironically, that seems to be the existential problem Refer.ly had/has - <USER2> only compelling content is the founder's blog.

<comment><USER4> First of all, that's not at all how I interpret the 4HWW book. That's subjective, of course, but I personally didn't like the book or find it useful.

Second, I challenge you to find any founder/hacker of a fast-growing, successful startup who lives out the philosophy in that book. They aren't compatible. Look for blog posts about when Tim Ferriss spoke at RailsConf a few years back (spoiler alert: it wasn't well received).

<comment><USER5> _Second, I challenge you to find any founder/hacker of a fast-growing, successful startup who lives out the philosophy in that book. They aren't compatible. Look for blog posts about when Tim Ferriss spoke at RailsConf a few years back (spoiler alert: it wasn't well received)._

You aren't really addressing his point though.

Dmor made a dig at the 'idea' of a four hour work week (that is, the idea that you can just succeed as a founder without putting in massive hours.) The comment to which you're replying is that, hey, Four Hour Work Week isn't saying that its an obvious instant option -- it's a goal to which you can work towards.

<comment><USER6> I think, that you're actually missing the point. 4HWW (at least to me) is about finding a business you don't necessarily care about, that can be easily automated, and provides an ongoing income stream. That's it.

I don't read it as a story about founding a successful company, I read it as a story about finding a income delivery mechanism that lets you spend your time on things you'd rather be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really empathize with you Danielle, but this:

"If you stop working on your startup, it dies."

Is certainly not applicable to certain types of startups. If you provide a valuable tool, such as one that positively impacts a businesses' bottom line, they'll keep using it (and keep paying you) regardless of whether or not you update your site or email them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I should say it dies _eventually_?

<comment><USER8> Maybe you should avoid generalizations that need to be carefully qualified just to become less wrong. This is such a broad statement about a type of business that can be almost _any_ business that even before you try to make a statement about it you've almost certainly made yourself incorrect.

You have an experience that's valuable and you're presenting it to people; that's good and helpful. Stick with that. There's no need to try and apply it to a much wider audience than is actually relevant.

<comment><USER9> >Maybe you should avoid generalizations that need to be carefully qualified just to become less wrong.

But that's what 90% of startup blogging is about! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious - Why would a startup, that apparently was struggling, acquire another company just two months ago?

"YC-Backed Referly Acquires LaunchGram, Eyes Ramen Profitability"

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5251196>

<comment><USER9> Because a lot of decisions in Silicon Valley aren't rational, despite what people would like you to think– it's mostly political based on who's buddy with who.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll disagree with the top commenter - I enjoyed the four hour workweek dig.

Regardless, as a fellow founder with a startup of a roughly similar age and an office literally across the street from Referly this post makes me profoundly sad and more determined. I can't imagine what it's like to walk into an empty office with cleaned-out desks. I walk through our office late at night sometimes, so happy to see the standing desks filled with monitor mounts and noise-canceling headphones and post-it notes and Mac power cords snaking over cheap Ikea particle board. On my more morbid evenings, I wonder if I'll ever have to walk down the aisle and stare at a pile of empty desks...and it makes me double down and work harder than ever before.

Hats off to @dmor for sharing so candidly. I don't think I could do it if I were in her position.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't mean to pile on, but just one point about the data representation: I wouldn't add the cumulative lines to any of these graphs. It's almost never the right way to visualize data concerning growth, and just makes the data look better than it is.

<comment><USER13> Thank you. It took me sometime to go beyond the initial "up, to the right, better than linear" impression which the glance at a nice redline gives you

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _It's all spam._

The scary thing is you could have easily continued Refer.ly, exited, sold it, and it would then turn into someone else's zombie problem. As much as we all hate spam, there is a simple reason that it exists - it works. Kudos to the founders for "doing the right thing" instead of just another pump 'n dump.

@dmor - remember this convo a couple of months back :) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4655905>

<comment><USER15> Define exited/solid it? Selling to a medium-sized or big company or selling it on a marketplace like Flippa? Depending on the value of your site and company, selling it might be more troublesome or costly in time and money than it's worth to the potential buyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gotta respect that kind of biting honesty. Thanks, dmor.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not even close to universally true.

About 4 months after we launched our first SaaS, we fell off the face of the planet for months (long annoying story). It didn't grow… much. But it also didn't shrink. It was pulling in several grand a month on idle. We did it again a couple years later when it was a 5-figure amount, although we (mostly) kept answering support emails this time. No big deal. Now in the last 18 mos, for 6-9 mos we had total coverage on customer support, but zero new features and just one marketing push etc and again, it grew, but slowly.

Would I RECOMMEND it? No. I'm not telling you this story to encourage you to make the same mistakes we did (and no longer do). But did it kill us? Hardly. We still grew, except at the very end, and the "contraction" then was miniscule… a few hundred dollars out of $20k+/mo. (Now >$30k.)

Social startups require more more more more more more more more more more, always more. They're baby birds forever, mouths open, shrieking. Startups delivering measurable value to even the tiniest of businesses are not, do not. Business value is self-perpetuating. Your app is not less valuable next month if there are no new features; it is just as valuable as it was last month.

You get to choose which path you take.

</comment><comment><USER18> hi dmor, i know you catch flak from neckbeards on here, but one thing i noticed two weeks ago was the revenue numbers you post in your header. i find that so brave -- if it were to reopen as a communal blogging platform i would be MORE likely to sign up, not less, due to that openness.</comment>


Google response to personalisation: It is a myth that we personalised each query - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1070027261376491520 <comment><USER2> How can it be a myth when it's been documented several times? The myth is that Google is following their own motto of Don't Be Evil.</comment>


Firefox Discontinuing the Tab Groups Feature - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal <comment><USER2> Hopefully, they will maintain the Tab Groups add-on indefinitely then.</comment>


The Nintendo Switch and Gadget Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/nintendo-switch-review/ <comment><USER2> Quote from the article: "This console, made for shooters and runners and jumpers, could become something much greater than Nintendo ever imagined, because anyone who wants to can build the software and hardware to improve it."

Is this true? Is it no longer necessary to be an approved Nintendo developer to write software for it?

I recall back in the day it was difficult for an indy to get a Nintendo dev licence. What's changed here?

EDIT: For those who care - this is what I just found...

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/292788/Becoming_a_Nintend...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/292788/Becoming_a_Nintendo_Switch_indie_dev_will_be_tough_early_on.php)

According to above article, it will be tough getting onto the platform as an indy. Pity, I was excited for a moment...

</comment><comment><USER3> The worst thing from a hardware perspective on the switch is their proprietary dock. They could have used open standards for docked mode, then people could use existing things (like my Apple HDMI dongle, or any of the other third party USB-C power/HDMI ones) as a portable docking solution.

Personally I'm not going to buy a second dock, because it is unnecessarily bulky for traveling, when some thing dongle sized could do the exact same job. Taking my switch and plugging it into a friends TV shouldn't be as much of a hassle as it is, being that it is a portable console. Yes, it is smaller than other consoles even with the dock, but it still requires its own bag to carry it all.

<comment><USER4> According to [http://plugable.com/2017/04/26/plugable-products- unofficiall...](http://plugable.com/2017/04/26/plugable-products-unofficially- compatible-with-nintendo-switch/) they are using a standard, just they are using the uncommon MyDP standard instead of the more common HDMI alt modes.

But there are alternative docks available - Nyko makes a much smaller, more portable dock, for example.

Charging, input, and network adapters are all common, standard USB-C & Bluetooth, so that's progress at least.

<comment><USER5> Not using HDMI alt mode isn't really that uncommon. Apple's products output DisplayPort rather than HDMI.

<comment><USER4> Specifically it's that MyDP is uncommon, not that DP is uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Switch has a huge amount of potential, but it lacks the games still. None of the big releases so far use the platform to its fullest: they're really good video games, not necessarily good _Switch_ games. BOTW, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8, and Mario Odyssey all seem like they are just Wii U games with better internal quality, only sparsely interfacing with new Switch features.

Nintendo also shed beloved handheld features like Streetpass, didn't include obvious features like Bluetooth audio, and are really messing up their online services ... the internet Splatoon fanbase seems to roundly regard the Switch online experience a failure for the context of 2017

<comment><USER7> i have a really weird and contrarian opinion, which is that Splatoon online is good because it's bad. I swear I actually believe this, though, not just trolling.

voice chat is difficult and terrible, so nobody really uses it! that's a major plus in my book. most people will never run into more vile people than when gaming online.

the multiplayer is unbalanced, issues with lag and disconnection often mean that the outcomes of matches just aren't fair. this is good, because it sort of limits how seriously you can take the game. just relax and have fun instead of a hypercompetitive 3-hours-a-day online sport.

the inconvenience of parties/team up is good, it means it's hard for people to get an us-vs-them mentality or want to just dominate weaker players.

i'd be really shocked if this is all intentional on Nintendo's part; it's probably just hubris and not-invented-here syndrome.

but in practice it feels almost like all the online inadequacies are a kind of traffic calming -- like putting trees and islands in the middle of a busy road to get people to slow down. it makes things more welcoming for people like me who normally loathe online games.

<comment><USER6> I totally get that. That theory's interesting and I agree the game shouldn't aspire to have the same sort of player experience/base as those of CoD or PUBG.

The lack of voice chat is no problem for me, though the app is terrible at what it tries to do (voice chat with your own team) which is something I'd want to do with casual friend players. Instead I just end up using Skype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the TurboExpress had most of these killer features. I wanted one soooooo bad when I was a kid

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a Switch and enjoy it a lot - but "future of gadget design" seems like an overstatement.

The docked mode works great (though the performance at 1080p is a bit sluggish in some games), the split-multiplayer mode in games like Mario Kart is friggin genius. I love that the Switch has brought back local multiplayer.

But its actual portability is kind of marginal. Unlike the DS/3DS, it doesn't fold up in a way that facilitates putting it in a bag. The scratchability of the screen means you really don't want to carry it bare in a bag bouncing around with your keys, and the protruding thumbsticks on the controllers make it something of a pain to fit into your default backpack/bag compartments.

It really demands a dedicated carrying case, which is something I thought we got past in the 90s in the Game Boy era.

Overall still really enjoying the Switch, but I carry it around a _lot_ less than I used to carry around a Nintendo DS.

<comment><USER10> > I love that the Switch has brought back local multiplayer

Sort of. I was really disappointed to find that Splatoon 2, one of the biggest games for the Switch, does not feature splitscreen multiplayer. The original Splatoon, on the Wii U, had awesome local multiplayer: one player used the TV, the other used the screen on the Wii U GamePad. Each user got a full screen. How splitscreen wasn't possible with better hardware is a little confusing, to be honest.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was completely sold on the Switch as the best couch co-op console till Splatoon 2 came out. Nintendo's biggest new franchise...and you have to use our crappy online service to play with friends (Or everyone has to invest $360 to play locally.)

Throwing salt on the wound is having the co-op mode being only playable when they want you to. I actually haven't played it since the first time I went to play Salmon Run and it was blocked off.

Splatoon 2 is a really fun game, but they really did a botch job on the end user experience.

<comment><USER11> Nintendo wouldn't be Nintendo without doing a whole bunch of stuff that just doesn't seem to make sense.

Come to think of it, my 'relationship' with Nintendo is very similar to the one I have with Apple. I sometimes feel that they intentionally do stuff that is unfriendly to their user-base, but ultimately they can get away with it by doing a whole bunch of stuff _right_ in a way that others don't.

(And come to think of _that_ , this description applies to most of the closest friends I've had throughout my life. Odd, that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The Switch is the first gaming system that works anywhere and everywhere.

Uhhhhhhh, what happened to all of nintendos past handhelds, sonys psp, the countless older handhelds that never gained traction?

<comment><USER13> Guessing the author means that you can dock it and play on a TV/monitor in your house in addition to being portable for taking around.

<comment><USER14> But it's not the first to do that. There's a cable that allows you to connect your PSP to your TV.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I had the same thought. However, the Switch actually makes that convenient, by design. I would play my PSP on TV all the time. It sucked. Getting the screen full size required your TV to have that option (and crappy cheap TVs didn't). Fumbling with the wires was annoying. It didnt have a stand.

The Switch has the same feature, you're right. But its designed (and marketed) around it. That's the difference.

<comment><USER16> Too small because of underscan? I'm baffled why with HDMI and the 1080p standard it's now the other way round - I need to disable overscan to get the full image and games still have to prompt me to choose a safe area to display UI elements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It really isn't, its just another timely gimmick and a walled garden.

<comment><USER18> Aren't all consoles 'walled gardens'? If not, what is it about the Switch that makes it more of one?

<comment><USER19> Looks like you're trying to creatively reinterpret the comment you're responding to into something that's easier for you to take down.

I don't see where QAPereo says the thing that you say they're saying. (In fact, I see the opposite, but that's beside the point.)

EDIT:

Three people (strictnein, nicky0, EpicEng) show up to point out the comment I'm referring to said it's "just another [...] walled garden". Er, yes. That's my entire reason for commenting. I can see the words that were written. Which is why I'm calling out the person I replied to for asking a question that suggests those words say something else.

Here's a breakdown of what has just occurred:

Person A suggests it's no different from any other walled garden that's come around before.

Person B asks Person A to defend the stance that it's different from other walled gardens.

I point out the contradiction between what Person A has said and what Person B apparently wants Person A to have said. Then you all show up. Why are we here?

I'm gonna leave HN for a while.

<comment><USER20> I see them say "it's a walled garden"; what do you see?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing the Fan – simpler container networking - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1471

<comment><USER2> I don't know WTF is wrong with docker guys and everyone implementing this crazy redirects.

Have you heard about ipv6? every container can have own address or even 10! there is enough for everyone.

No crazy mappings/iptables redirects needed.</comment>


Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis (1984) - <AUTHOR> http://www.researchgate.net/publication/2805500_Pessimal_Algorithms_and_Simplexity_Analysis

<comment><USER2> This is an April Fool joke that I enjoyed busy beavering away at.

Too often my Perl code could be described as "pessimal".</comment>


Show HN: RorVsWild – Free monitoring for small Ruby on Rails apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.rorvswild.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I built it for myself to monitor my rails apps. I am aware several tools already exist, but not the one I was looking for.

I wanted a simple tool to pinpoint the slow SQL queries in my code. A tool that helps me taking care of my cron jobs and background jobs. A tool that does not send emails for errors I am already aware of.

If you have some time to give it a try, I would really appreciate your feedback. Thanks!</comment>


Lessons learned from a failed idea at Startup Weekend - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/11/10/startup-weekend-lessons-learned/ The team is more important than the idea. Leadership and clearly defined roles are a must. Strategy and value proposition should be decided and communicated. <comment><USER2> _Pick a startup based on the team not on the idea. Make sure the team has a good dynamic. Make sure the team is composed of people who can actually build the product._

The team I was in at StartupCamp Melbourne also learned this lesson: [http://www.inquisitr.com/4560/melbourne-startup-camp-the- goo...](http://www.inquisitr.com/4560/melbourne-startup-camp-the-good-the-bad- and-the-vc/) .

Invest in teams, not ideas.

<comment><USER3> It's funny, these are exactly the same lessons I posted on my blog from my experience at Atlanta Startup Weekend 2: [http://sarpcentel.com/wp/10/lessons- learned-at-atlanta-start...](http://sarpcentel.com/wp/10/lessons-learned-at- atlanta-startup-weekend-2/)

Don't choose an idea, choose a team!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> actually skribit.com came out of startup weekend 1 in Atlanta and it is successful.

<comment><USER5> agreed (skribit co-founder here.. been working on it for a year). just posted this yesterday about skribit's status:

[http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/11/10/whats-going-on-with- skri...](http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/11/10/whats-going-on-with-skribit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do Startup Weekends ever generate anything else?

<comment><USER7> As an attendee of the SF startup weekend, I can say that it's mostly just an exercise for large group management and not actually product development. It's probably a great event for anyone who wants to show off their leadership skills, and not very useful for a top coder that wants to show off his production capacity. The stuff produced in the SF startup weekend could have easily been done by a single person under 24hrs without interruptions from "product managers" who want to change the direction of the product every 10 seconds...

If you want proof, just compare the startup weekend final products with those produced by 1 day contests like railsday or mashupday.

I remember the SF startup weekend, they had programming team and a database team that didn't really consult each other... the programming team went off and did a few simple data modeling and developed some interfaces and the database team went and created this huge database schema that nobody could conceivably develop for in 24hrs. They had all these fields for special case scenarios that were all basically neglected in the final product. I'd say there were probably at least 100 people in the SF weekend... all to produce one simple facebook app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great writeup. As an outsider, it seems to me like Atlanta has a thriving startup scene. What are some other cities like that?

<comment><USER7> As someone who once lived in Atlanta, I can say the startup scene is not as thriving as you might think. Startup weekend travels around the country doing an event at each major city so it's nothing too special that one was held in Atlanta.

<comment><USER9> Actually Atlanta is only one of two cities to hold more then one Startup Weekend event. Last year about 70 people participated. This year over 100 showed up and there were 70 people still standing on Sunday night.

I see lots of startups. Two of those that emerged from this weekend have the potential to be YC type quality startups.</comment></comment></comment>


Big Data Could Sink Europe's 'Right to be Forgotten' - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/europe/why-big-data-could-sink-europes-right-to-be-forgotten/ <comment><USER2> The problem with this law from the beginning was:

1) It assumes companies like Google/Facebook have full control of users' data. This is untrue: anything you post on Facebook is already out of Facebook (or it amounts to that: there is no control over what your 'friends' will do with it).

2) It is paternalistic: look, we the lawmakers (who are NOT the people of Europe but a bunch of guys and gals in an Ivory Tower) know that you the people are unable to restrain yourselves and will make things public of which you will later repent, so we want to grant you this power to 'erase' all of your data.

I know it is way more complicated than that but it boils down to those two ideas (dealing with specific data such as forms or automatically collected data -as phone calls, location via triangulation etc.- is quite different: these are data the Companies are not allowed to share in the first place).

As a Spaniard I am quite fed up with paternalism from Brussels.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is great way to tax companies like Google and Facebook. 1 million fine for each day they wont comply, or ban in Europe. It's very simple, Watson.

<comment><USER2> They would go away from Europe to Bermuda (Google there?) or elsewhere, that would be much cheaper. Engineers would be happy to emigrate.

Which, come to think of it, may be even good for the European users of those services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The writer is exploiting the "could sink", "possibly doomed", angle; I'd say that a competent agency is doing properly its job, by explaining technical difficulties to be either overcome or accepted.

Just the act of disallowing data from having a certified source (even if some unreliable versions are inevitably available), would do much to uphold personal rights.</comment>


Quickly create a nested folder structure via Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://robservatory.com/quickly-create-a-nested-folder-structure-via-terminal/ <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about:

        {A..C}{0..3}

"This sequence creates every combination of A to C and 0 to 3—i.e. A0, A1, A2, A3, B0, B1, etc."

And:

        echo {a..z..2}
        a c e g i k m o q s u w y

"The ..2 bit tells the expansion to only output every second letter."</comment>


C64 / VIC20 / C128 PSU Open Sourced - <AUTHOR> http://www.retro-commodore.eu/2019/01/15/c64-vic20-c128-psu-open-sourced/ <comment><USER2> For those wondering why this exists: the original C64 PSU has a (common) failure mode after a few decades, where it will output power in such a way that will destroy the C64 (and its irreplaceable MOS ICs). If you find an old Commodore and you want to test it, don't plug it into the original PSU without testing that first with a multimeter!

<comment><USER3> The VIC20/C64/128 PSUs have standard 5V DC AND also have 9V _AC_ pins to power the SID chip (among others). Which means it's not that easy to just pick up a standard transformer and wire the right connector onto it.

A lot of the new Commodore and Amiga Hardware being developed these days is open source, which is 100% a great thing, enabling us to keep these classic machines running for many years yet.

<comment><USER4> It seems like it would be pretty easy to just have a step down transformer from 120VAC to 9VAC. Also wire up the 9VAC to a bridge rectifier to get 9VDC to then convert down to 5VDC with an LDO or buck regulator of proper current rating. It wouldn't be the cleanest power supply but the C64 board should have proper filtering for each rail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice job finding a good source of parts for this. I might as actually build something like this.

There are few things in the PCB design that I might want to change. The live and neutral are precariously close to each other near where live connects to transformer. Also the mounting screw is very close to mains voltage. Maybe I'm just paranoid about mains voltage, but I'd increase the clearances, considering that there is plenty of board space. While we are changing the board, I'd also bump the trace widths on the low-voltage side, although I don't believe that being really a problem now.

Then comes the parts I know less of. Would it make sense to add some filtering to clean the power? I'd imagine it works perfectly fine without, but maybe to improve audio/video quality? Also the fuse is on the "neutral" side, is that good? Although the plugs around here are unpolarized anyways, so the distinction can't be very significant.

<comment><USER6> The output is produced by a Meanwell power supply, it's like a wall wart with through-hole legs: [https://www.meanwell-web.com/en-gb/ac-dc-single-output- encap...](https://www.meanwell-web.com/en-gb/ac-dc-single-output-encapsulated- power-supply-irm--10--5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can remember my C64 being out of action for weeks at a time (months even?) due to the power supply failing and having to wait for - I don't know what; repairs? parts? It happened more than once. This was in New Zealand in the 80s. It was a much more isolated place than it is now (and it's still pretty isolated!) so very slow to get things like this sorted (and service culture then was very poor - only slightly better now). All dealt with as warranty issues if I remember correctly, but the time it took was agonising for a socially awkward 13-year-old!

</comment><comment><USER8> The power supply is one of the trickier aspects of getting a working C64 rig, and it's not uncommon to spend as much on it, as on the C64 itself. You'll see a lot of "no power supply, untested" C64s on eBay because of it...in my experience those are all just actually dead (and maybe known to be dead by the seller, but the well-known problem with power supply availability gives them plausible deniability...but, maybe they also tried with a PS that kills the computer, which also happens sometimes with the original power supplies).

In short, necessity is the mother of invention and what not. The Commodore power supply was a unique beast, so there are no off-the-shelf replacements, so there's been an aftermarket for them for a long time and schematics of the old power supplies have also been available for ages, though having one that doesn't have a dangerous failure mode is an improvement.

</comment><comment><USER9> I bought one of the bare bones power supplies from here: [http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/custom%20ps.html](http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/custom%20ps.html) it is indeed bare bones and two wall warts, but it is very nice. His site contains all relevant technical info and then some.

</comment><comment><USER10> Open sourced ... with schematics files for a proprietary CAD program.

</comment><comment><USER11> Removed comment - does have OVP

<comment><USER12> hmmm, that's troubling. since you seem to know what you're talking about and what would be needed to fix it, can you open an issue on the github project? i'd like to see whether the designers have a response.

[https://github.com/Retro-Commodore/C64-PSU](https://github.com/Retro- Commodore/C64-PSU)

<comment><USER11> I have removed my comment as that particular Meanwell unit DOES have OVP included. No issue necessary!

I shall crawl back into my power supply paranoia hole now :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Softwaremodelcanvas – Calculate ROI for your app idea - <AUTHOR> http://softwaremodelcanvas.com <comment><USER2> Wow, this saved me a shit tons of time. But Im wondering if they will add ofshored prices for development.</comment>


Muqaddimah - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah <comment><USER2> Seriously. We are still living in a world where such stupidity is entertained. Just read last line in the article about the islamic belief of African Americans as well as the outrageous statements against non-muslims.</comment>


Open Source Challenger to Dropbox and Box.net: ownCloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/12/open-source-challenger-to-drop.php <comment><USER2> Here's the demo: <http://demo.owncloud.org/index.php>

Very interesting. Their community page says encryption is in the works, so this might just end up being a great product.

Yet again, it might fail miserably. We'll just have to wait and see.</comment>


Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/happiness-is-not-a-disease/

<comment><USER2> Yet another example, I think, of why people who have no experience with drugs or drug users should write like they understand what drives people to drug use. Hell, this sounds like it's written by a guy who's never used _weed_ , let alone anything that has a serious effect on the brain.

While it's true that people get addicted to placebos that stimulate artificial happiness, that's an issue that goes way deeper than fast food. We have to start asking us what counts as a placebo for happiness. Does listening to shitty pop music count as a bad way to achieve happiness? Even if it's just the worst godawful music and it doesn't encourage anything other than listening to it on repeat and buying albums? What if we're listening to more sophisticated music? Or listening only to Beethoven concerts? What about watching films? Reading books? Attending lectures? Having friends? Where does happiness start being earnest and stop being a disease?

Like, I'm uncertain if he's saying "you shouldn't let eating make you happy if it will also make you unhealthy" or if he's saying "don't rely on _anything_ to make you happy unless it's somehow a completely authentic reaction". The fact that he takes the swipe at "drugs" as a blanket category suggests he's less worried about drugs' side effects than he's worried about the possibility that people will rely on drugs for happiness, simply because they're an artificially induced stimulus. But everything's artificially induced in that case, really, or at least the line isn't clearly drawn.

I feel it's worth saying: some of my favorite people use drugs to force their mind to think in ways it doesn't usually think, and then use their experiences to gain a deeper knowledge of themselves, which brings them what I'd call legitimate peace and happiness. I resent the suggestion that they're somehow cheating. I also resent the idea that this article had to talk about drugs _at all_ , seeing as it's not exactly the most informed source of information.

<comment><USER3> Great point all around. The author also didn't take into account that poverty drives obesity arguably more than his happiness theory. Unhealthy food is much cheaper than healthier food - look at the menu of McDonalds vs the price of fresh vegetables, breads etc. You can mitigate this to a point with bulk foods, however that requires an initial investment which is often not possible for a poor family.

<comment><USER4> I'm interested to know where you live that this is true! The only reasons I can imagine poverty would lead to poor food choice is lack of education or lack of facilities to prepare meals (ie. those living in transient conditions).

I come from Australia and can whole heartedly say that if you know the basics of food preparation and have access to a kitchen eating healthily is like a fifth of the cost of eating McDonalds!

<comment><USER5> Urban areas are noted for their lack of quality grocery stores: [http://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=lack+of+grocery+sto...](http://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=lack+of+grocery+stores&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=lack+of+grocery+stores+in+urban+areas)

When you factor in travel costs and time, the price inequality between cheap fast food and good quality food is exacerbated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As outlined in other comments, a pretty dreadful article.

 _This literally just dawned on me while watching TV 5 mins ago and I felt compelled to step in here and write it up…_

It shows.

</comment><comment><USER7> As said in the other comments, this is a really, really bad article by someone with apparently zero domain knowledge.

"I don't believe that [obesity is a disease]". Can we get over this already? Obesity is _very much_ a disease like diabetes. In fact, it's closely related to it, in that in both cases, the insulin system is not functioning correctly. It's too much to explain in a comment, but I urge the OP to read "Good calories, bad calories" by Gary Taubes.

On drugs, want to know what really happens when drugs become legal, in real life? Wikipedia can help: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#decrimi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#decriminalization)

Signed, a thoroughly skinny guy ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> kilian, the article was about addiction and abuse in search of happiness. I am sorry you missed that.

<comment><USER7> Nevertheless, throughout the article assumptions are made that are certifiably untrue. I hope you agree with me that that's not a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If harder drugs find their way onto the legal market that means greater accessibility."

[Citation needed]

</comment><comment><USER9> Bad analogy: everyone has to eat something, not everyone has to get high.</comment>


Storing lots of files - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for ideas on storing millions of small files. I want to build out a system, for uploading images. I am planning on resizing the images and storing thumbnails as well as the original image.
Originally I was planning to store the images on a shared file system, where the webserver and app servers could access the images. I was planning on creating a dir structure based on the user id uploading the image and breaking the long into /xxx/yyy/zzz/image.png. Then storing the photo info into the db.
The problem with the file system approach, is that I can see moving this file system with millions of files can be unwieldy.
Then I started to think about storing them in a database either mysql or mongodb. Using a Master slave setup where the writes are stored to the master as blobs and then then read by an app to serve out the image. I was thinking of using caching in front of the db, either a memcache setup for the thumbnails or creating a cache by writing to the local disk for serving up the image.
I am soliciting any other ideas on how to best handle this situation, Any ideas. Thanks <comment><USER2> Not enough information: what are access patterns like? How often do we add new files? Can we tolerate a disk read most of the time? Are we going to see zipf distributed popularity or even popularity?

BCC has happily chugged through a few million GIFs and PDFs using nested directories, on a single VPS. (Low concurrency requirements and all files being accessed less than ten times in a lifetime makes it easy.)

Anyhow, so the simplest thing that works, rearchitecture when you become Facebook. (You probably won't need to. But spend your resources to achieve success, nit to guard against the problems of successful people.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd go with the db + filesystem approach. It's listed here under "best of both worlds": [http://www.hashmysql.org/index.php?title=Storing_files_in_th...](http://www.hashmysql.org/index.php?title=Storing_files_in_the_database)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been keeping millions of files in single directories on XFS without problems. The big upside is that you won't need to learn any funky/new management tools.</comment>