Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition review - <AUTHOR> http://www.jx0.org/2013/12/dell-xps-13-developer-edition-review.html <comment><USER2> I've been using one of these with the HD screen since the spring, here are some thoughts:

Nice: \- Good battery life. With screen on full, wifi on I can get between 3-5 hours depending on CPU utilization. With screen brightness turned down, wifi off, low utilization, ~6 hours

\- Keyboard and mouse pad are great

\- No issues with unsupported bits and pieces from ubuntu, with exception of video output via usb

\- the battery strength indicator on the side is handy for quickly checking if i need to grab my power cable without having to turn the machine on as well

\- Display quality (minus the glossy finish) is great, wide viewing angle, vivid colours

Naughty: \- Glossy screen is a pain in the ass. Forget about using in sunlight, I also need to adjust mine to avoid getting the overheads in our office.

\- Temperature management is pretty poor - the air vents on the bottom don't have much clearance even on a flat surface, and don't seem to move enough air. I worry about the long term lifespan of this machine because it regularly operates > 70c. When I can, I sit the machine on a laptop platform with a fan.

\- (minor) the function keybind for adjusting the volume requires 2 hands - the fn key is on the lower left, while the volume up/down are on f11/f12.

\- only 2 usb ports and no SD card reader.

Overall I've been happy with it.

<comment><USER3> 3-5 hours is good battery life in 2014?

<comment><USER4> It's the one thing that hasn't improved over the years.

<comment><USER3> My laptop goes easily to 7-8 without changing my usage significantly, 9 if I'm only doing email. I hardly carry the power brick outside the house anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi A laptop targeted to developers should have a TrackPoint to move the cursor without taking the hands off the keyboard, a non-shortscreen monitor to see more lines of code, a matte screen to read the code better, and a numpad to, well, type numbers. OK, I guess I'm asking too much for today's standards, even if all these things were common ten years ago (sigh...), but when I saw "developer edition" I thought I would see at least two of these four features, and I see none.

This is just a standard high-end laptop. Disappointing.

<comment><USER5> Serious question: aside from data-entry people and accountants, who uses numeric keypads anymore?

As a developer, I don't exactly type a lot of numbers. And they're too far away from the home position of the hands to make the numpad efficient to use for numbers in mixed alphanumeric text.

It really seems like they are rightly turning into a very niche input product, like Wacom tablets, instead of a general-purpose one.

<comment><USER6> I dislike the trend of putting number pads on laptop keyboards. It moves the entire keyboard to the side.

<comment><USER7> For me it's a complete and utter deal-killer. Any laptop with a number-pad, regardless of any specs and price otherwise, is a laptop I will not buy.

Numpad = No deal.

I still curse the trend of putting them on laptops. May it soon pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have one of these and think it's pretty good. I am really happy to have been able to give my money to someone selling me something with Linux on it.

<comment><USER9> Hi David,

I have one of these too! But which one, that is the rub. As far as I can tell there are now three versions of project Sputnik. I too am so happy to throw my € in Dell's direction. I have the second because I bought mine just before the recent Haswell refresh, gah :(

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Original version ... November 2012 1: [http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed- introd...](http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/29/sputnik-has-landed-introducing- the-dell-xps-13-laptop-developer-edition/)

Brings 1080p (after much clamour and feedback) ... February 2013 2: [http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here- xps-13-...](http://bartongeorge.net/2013/02/18/spuntik-2-is-here- xps-13-developer-edition-goes-1080p-and-launches-in-emea/)

Brings Haswell ... November 2013 [http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing- sputnik-3-and...](http://bartongeorge.net/2013/11/15/introducing- sputnik-3-and-its-unofficial-big-brother/)

Not sure which version the original poster is reviewing, I always meant to review mine and haven't done so yet. I upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04LTS to 13.10 and had to futz about a bit with backlight keys. Wifi drivers kept glitching out until recently. I had to add TRIM support myself (I had thought it was there, it wasn't!)

Might be an idea to set up a Sputnik User's site unless one exists :) as opposed to a Dell forum or employee's blog.

tip o' the hat ...

<comment><USER10> How did you resolve your WiFi issues? Quite often I've found the laptop unable to connect to random hotel WiFi (with no useful indication of why in logs/dmesg) and I have to connect via my S3 and share the connection via USB.

<comment><USER11> For a while I had terrible (in the 800msec - 4000msec range) RTT pinging an AP right next to me, running:

        sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off

did the trick for me (issued after every boot or through an UDev rule such as [https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible- playbooks/9dc40c75cf...](https://raw.github.com/lvillani/ansible- playbooks/9dc40c75cf8579665c80fe73cc0faf30fd98e93c/roles/power- save/files/udev/powersave.rules))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 6 hours isn't great, it's shitty for a 13" laptop with Haswell.

<comment><USER13> Very true, although seeing your comment made me realize how awesome it is that people consider 6 hours to be shitty for laptops nowadays. It doesn't seem that long ago that 90-150 minute battery life was pretty standard.

<comment><USER14> You mean ten years ago?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great laptop. I got mine over Christmas and I have no complaints. I hope Dell continues to support Linux.

</comment><comment><USER16> The real issue here is battery life. Only 6 hours? The new X1 carbon from Lenovo can get 9, the T440s can get up to 17 (with extended battery), and the MBA can get 12 right out of the box.

<comment><USER17> The Lenovo X1 carbon has a 1600 x 900 screen though... I needz my linez of code ;)

<comment><USER16> Not the new one! It's up to 2048xsomething-or-another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The first thing I noticed from the picture is that the keyboard looks _exactly_ like the keyboard on my MacBook Pro. I haven't really looked at Windows laptops in a long time, so maybe this is a common layout now. It just seemed notable to me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had one of these for some months and I'd say the only culprit is that there are only 1 mini DP and 2 USB ports and nothing else: no SD card slot, no Thunderbold or Firewire. Even a third USB port would have been nice. There isn't any kensington lock port, either.

The screen is glossy but for some reason, it's not actually catching too many random reflections (so it's much better than my MacBook which can hardly be used when sitting back to the window).

The touchpad feel isn't as good as a MacBook but it's large and much better than those from most other PCs I've tried. Overall a nice machine.

<comment><USER20> Hasn't the PC world moved on to USB3, ignoring Thunderbolt? And even Apple has dropped Firewire at this point.

<comment><USER21> Thunderbolt is seeing some take-up on the high end; it solves a different set of problems to USB3.

<comment><USER20> I don't disagree... on a Mac.

On a PC, I'm not sure what else there is to plug in to a Thunderbolt port other than storage.

<comment><USER22> The thing is, Thunderbolt manages to be this amalgamation of miniDP and PCIe x4. It is actually entirely possible to run PCIe devices on a thunderbolt connection, which means things like external graphics cards are now again viable (since almost no consumer computers have expresscard slots now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have one of the first-gen (non Sputnik) systems. I simultaneously love it and hate it so much that after one year I had to put my (mixed) feelings in writing here: [http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell- xps-13-l321x-the-r...](http://lorenzo.villani.me/2013/08/19/dell- xps-13-l321x-the-review-one-year-in-the-making/) (this is little more than a pondered rant, unlike OP's thorough review).

However, I think this year I'm probably going to bite the bullet and buy a 13" Retina MacBook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm conflicted about the price being in the range of MBPs and Dell competing with Apple, supposedly, based on quality and design. I think they would be much more competitive if they were to price this laptop significantly cheaper than MBPs without sacrificing too much quality. I think Dell has the resources to do this. It's difficult for me to ignore brand image and I guess this makes me a fan boy. Although, I really do want a decent Linux laptop. I will keep an eye on the XPS13 in case I make the switch.

<comment><USER24> Thinkpads make rock solid GNU/Linux machines. I highly recommend the X220. It has some issues such as not being Coreboot compatible and needing nonfree firmware to drive the wireless chip. The former has no fix, but the latter can be fixed with a little hack and an Atheros chip.

<comment><USER25> As an X220 it's a very nice machine but it's no in the same realm as the XPS or the Air/rMBP.

It has a great keyboard and underlying hardware. But it's also stuck with a low-resolution screen with terrible viewing angles, and is also as thick as a brick. The touchpad also leaves a lot to be desired but it does have the TrackPoint which is great.

The X240 will supposedly have a 1080p IPS screen but I'm not sure what the holdup is.

<comment><USER26> Does the x240 have the same screen dimensions as the x230? If so I wonder if you can use it to upgrade the 230 panel.

<comment><USER25> Chassis is quite a bit different, so probably not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I owned one of the early 2013 1080p versions for about a month, but had serious issues with backlight bleed. After having it replaced twice it became clear that the issue was inherent to the hardware.

Aside from this, it seemed like a fantastic machine, but beware of the potential backlight issues if you spend a significant amount of time with dark or black windows / backgrounds. For me, this was 90% of the time between terminal windows and Sublime Text.

</comment><comment><USER28> > If the laptop is turned off (or sleeping) and the battery is charging, > there's no way for you to tell whether the batter is full or not based on > the color of the LED. It stays white.

This isn't entirely true. While the color of the charger LED doesn't change, the LED at the middle of the bottom/front edge (below the trackpad) goes from orange to white when charged.

My biggest gripe with this (very nice, portable) laptop is that the wireless card is a bit flaky with 802.11n under (x)Ubuntu 13.04 - 13.10. I find that in some rooms of my (relatively small) flat I can't connect without disabling 11n (sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1). I get a very high "Tx excessive retries" value in iwconfig otherwise and the network connection is unusable.

It's not a failing of the laptop, but rather the bundled Intel wireless card and the drivers that ship with Linux 3.11.0-15. My Lenovo T430s has the same issue (it has a Centrino Advanced-N 6205).

I've seen numerous bug reports and kernel patches but haven't had much success in resolving the issue.

</comment><comment><USER29> I own this laptop, had it for almost a year. I love it except after a while I noticed random hard freezes, basically the display freezes in place and the system doesn't respond. I would have to hold down the power button to force an unexpected reboot (in the words of Moss). It would happen after a day, or a week of use.

Turns out it's a problem with the kernel in 12.04 and the Intel 4400 chipset. The only solid fix is to simply update to a non-LTS release. Since updating to 13.04 I've been okay. I shouldn't have to wait much longer for 14.04 so I should have an LTS release soon with the updated kernel.

The only other problem I've had is some updates deleting my firmware for the wireless, I've had to re-download it. But I did not have this problem when upgrading Ubuntu.

Despite these issues, otherwise it's been a very solid laptop.

<comment><USER30> You can use [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack) to get a newer X server and kernel while otherwise staying on 12.04 LTS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think it should be cheaper compared to a MBA with Linux.. anyway the competition is good

<comment><USER32> I just did some comparisons, it is indeed cheaper than a MBA in similar configuration. In terms of price, the 13" retina MBP is a way better deal than both the Dell and the Air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Warning: Ubuntu on this laptop does not support video output on USB 3.0 docking stations.

<comment><USER15> I am guessing you are referring to the USB 3.0 DisplayLink Docking Station. Yes, DisplayLink has issues with supporting Linux. We can only hope that Dell and other PC manufacturers will put pressure on them to support Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Notebookcheck has a test of this laptop:

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook- La...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-13-Ultrabook- Late-2012.87006.0.html)

I love their review because they go into very much detail and some of the information is hard to found elsewhere, like real measurements of screen contrast and brightness, the one parameter that already eliminates 95% of laptops every time I look for one, and of loudness.

<comment><USER35> This is not the haswell/HD screen version though.

I'm currently looking for a laptop and it will be either the XPS 13 or a rMBP 13 inches. I'm currently favoring the rMPB a little bit because it seems it get less hot than the XPS. It kinds of scare me when the review says the laptop gets somewhat warm while surfing and I've had really bad experiences with overheating Dell laptops.

What's your experience XPS 13 owners ?

<comment><USER36> I use and love Apple hardware, but if you're not going to use OS X, does it make sense to pay the price in driver potential wonkiness?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How is the multi-monitor support on the XPS 13 running Ubuntu? I googled, but could not find much useful information.

How many external monitors can be connected?

I found some information here: [http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm](http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-031040.htm) , but it looks as if most of the info applies to Windows.

<comment><USER11> I have the first-gen XPS 13 with 1366x768 internal display. No problems at all in a multi monitor setup. I have a Dell S2409W, 1920x1080 at home and a NEC 1920x1200 at work.

<comment><USER37> Do you use both the internal display and external monitor?

Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor?

<comment><USER11>
        > Do you use both the internal display and external monitor?

Yes

        > Have you tried connecting more than one external monitor?

Never tried. This laptop has only one mini DisplayPort output. I heard that there are splitter cables/adapters which should allow for that but I haven't found an affordable one yet. An alternative would be a display that supports daisy chaining (the only one which I am aware of is Apple's Thunderbolt display which doesn't even turn on for me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sort of funny, but it looks like their Linux developer laptop keyboard has a Windows key. Licensing issue, or just an unfinished project?

</comment><comment><USER39> I bought a refurbished ASUS Vivobook X202E and put Linux Mint on it. I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (touchscreen, multitouch trackpad, wifi, etc). It's still important to have manufacturers standing behind Linux on their PCs, but hardware support on Linux is always getting better.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice, I'd consider getting one. Wish it was a bit bigger though... I have an XPS 16 which isn't very heavy and don't want a smaller screen.

When I use the wife's Mac I'm always fumbling around the keyboard shortcuts. However, the screen is amazing. If this Dell had a bit more DPI I'd be sold.

</comment><comment><USER41> About the low battery time I am pretty sure it is a linux problem and not so much a hardware. Battery is really one of linux weaker spots. However I read that the optimization ubuntu is doing for phones will help the overall battery situation. I guess we can just cross our fingers that its true.

</comment><comment><USER42> I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga a month ago and installed the alpha of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it. The only thing that didn't work out of the box was the lock button and scrolling in Firefox using the touch screen (install the Grab and Drag Addon). Features: matte screen, TrackPoint, Pen Input.

<comment><USER39> Thanks for turning me on Grab and Drag. Firefox is one of the few things I want to touch scroll on Linux.

<comment><USER43> Seconded! Only used it for about 30 seconds and this is already one of my favorite add ons. :) I kind of wish it was only enabled for the touch or pen cursors, anyone know if that is possible?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was debating getting this laptop or a Thinkpad T440s and a Chromebook Pixel. For me the Pixel just doesn't have the storage capacity I want, and the T440s isn't quite as portable.

I've made a deal with myself to get this once I've paid my loans off. C'mon, baby, just two months..

<comment><USER45> Then maybe the new Thinkpad X1 Carbon is for you: [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/)

I would seriously love to buy it but the new keyboard changes put me off (see comment on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016535)). It's a shame, because otherwise it is really a nice machine - will as well go with T440s.

<comment><USER44> Oh god, it has Haswell now!! Damn the loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Not sure why anyone would get one of these. The new MacbookPro 13 inch is the sweetest laptop deal out there right now (if you can do with 13 inch and only 2 cores).

<comment><USER47> Because they want an Ubuntu laptop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Right now I have Lenovo w520 and I approached 3 times to configure ubuntu with external screen, no luck.

Does Dell XPS 3 DE work fine with external monitor on ubuntu ?

</comment><comment><USER49> does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ?

Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though.

Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display attached etc.

<comment><USER19> No DPI scaling, but it's OK for me. I always loved small fonts in term windows anyway :) 6 hours is a minimum for quite a heavy use; I myself found that mine easily does 8-9 hours when programming (Flash is a terrible battery and CPU hog).

<comment><USER50> how does it do with video playback?

<comment><USER19> Video playback is fine. And Ubuntu manages perfectly hot-plugging external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> could use a 15" brother with a bigger screen -> lets you see more lines of code and run side-by-side editors more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does the WIFI LED flash a different colour when it uploads directly to the NSA?

What am I going to do with 8GB of RAM? My mom has 8GB of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER53> > First boot: Ubuntu animation, __Dell User Agreement __, then the standard > Ubuntu installer.

Seriously?

<comment><USER54> FWIW, I picked up on that, too. Why would a new piece of hardware running a FOSS operating system need proprietary legalese from Dell? Not saying there aren't reasons for it, but anyone who's interested in buying a Linux laptop in the first place might want to know what they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm not sure I trust anything from Dell anymore after the DER SPIEGEL releases.

</comment><comment><USER56> Two wishes. They supported 16GB RAM. Dell Australia would sell them.

</comment><comment><USER57> No matte screen though :(

<comment><USER29> You don't need one, it's got gorilla glass, it's basically the same screen you'd get on a high end tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> how does it compare to a macbook air with linux installed?

<comment><USER59> Hardware-wise, the main differences are a better display (that is, more dense), and a slower SSD (non PCIe) and slower graphic card (HD4200 vs HD5000). Trackpad is probably worse as well, but I would suppose you can't see much of a difference under Linux where the experience is suboptimal even with the Apple one. You also don't have Thunderbolt connectors, though I doubt is a problem for most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Good might me next laptop series... Hm.</comment>


LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365 - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/3014654/open-source-tools/libreoffice-as-a-service-offers-alternative-to-google-docs-office-365.html <comment><USER2> From the demo I saw, it worked as well as watching 1080p YouTube in a third world country. Someone figured it was smart to do server-side rendering and load your document as tiles using a technology designed for maps (the same as used in OpenStreetMap, and there it works well, because that's _actually a map_ and not a document). The person argued WiFi was bad, but when typing on a 100mbps symmetric connection there was still a noticeable delay between my keystroke and it appearing on screen.

Edit: to everyone saying they also can't watch YouTube 1080p without lag/buffering/whatever: perhaps it's not perfect _anywhere_ outside the third world, but I could imagine that there it would suck even more. It's just a comparison, not a research paper.

<comment><USER3> > implying that watching youtube in 1080p is not easier in third world > countries compared to first world... (looking at you Europe).

<comment><USER4> I though Europe had much better access to fast and cheap Internet compared to USA? Lowest offering from my ISP is 100/10 for around $16. No problems with HD video. Especially not with Youtube's interpretation of HD.

<comment><USER5> Europe is made of many independent countries with different regulations and different operators.

In France it's €30 for triple-play, €20 for Internet only, but less than 50% have access to optical fiber. For more than half it's still ADSL. It works great if you live close to the telephone exchange, otherwise it can be very slow.

<comment><USER6> Grouping is a habit common by Americans, that I am still not able to grasp. They say Africans, Arabs, Asians, poor countries, third-world countries, Europe, Asians, etc. I specially hate it when they say I went Africa and now "The Muslims" all thrown together in politics, ugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true.

My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one.

What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint).

Browsers just aren't fast enough to handle web apps that large (not picking on Office 365's web apps, anything that big just sorta murders browsers), and I don't think they ever will be. This isn't something you can solve when your only tools are HTML, CSS, and JS.

<comment><USER8> +1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully.

Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone.

I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied by The Document Foundation into using open standards, and are now locked in to using one vendor - Collabora - and their proprietary fork of LibreOffice.

<comment> martin-adams Documents in emails for you to review is devastating. I have a client who keeps doing it. The first thing I do is download it, upload it to Google Docs and turn on Suggestion Editing. Collaborative cloud based document editing is such a life saver.

<comment><USER9> How do you know if the sending party is okay with you uploading their document to a public cloud service?

<comment> martin-adams A valid point. In this instance, I know because we use Google Apps and store most other things in it. The email is in Gmail, so the difference isn't really that great when you think about it.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of documents via email. SMTP might be used rather than SMTPS and you don't always know what servers handle the email when in transit.

<comment><USER10> > The email is in Gmail

> As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of > documents via email.

Well, if neither of you forwards to an external account, gmail->gmail email should be pretty "secure" (against other adversaries than Google, those that have hacked one of your Google accounts, and those that Google cooperate with (if any)).

It's not clear by what you write if firstname.lastname@example.com is emailing email@example.com (And so should know that Google knows all the things), or if you meant that you both use Gmail - or if _you_ use Google Apps, so you already give all your emails to Google, but not in a way that is transparent to the sender (however, if the sender doesn't use any kind of end-to-end encryption...).

Not meant as a nitpick -- just pointing out that for some values of "secure" using a single provider for email can be "more secure".

I suppose the "enterprise" alternative would be to have accounts in cross- trusted AD with client-certificates and use S/MIME for client-client end-to- end encryption. In which case (AFAIK) by default, there'd be the possibility of keeping an escrow key.

(The open alternative would probably be to just use Gnu Privacy Guard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is wasted effort IMHO. The killer app of Office is Excel and NOTHING has come close to replacing it.

In India, almost all laptop manufacturers give the option of preloaded Ubuntu. Yet people choose to pay for Windows - for either Excel or Photoshop.

I would pay a large sum of money for a compatible spreadsheet. It is well worth doing a startup around.

Everything else - Word or PowerPoint already has reasonable substitutes. Even if it is as simple as a PDF doc.

But there is no substitute for Excel.

<comment><USER12> Although you're not wrong. Excel is the killer app. Word is ALSO the killer app for heavy lifting writing papers etc. It's the program I suffered the least in during my uni years, and I tried them ___ALL___.

As an investment analyst for VC, I also need to make A LOT of powerpoint presentations. Not a lot of slides, but I need to convey complex points in a short amount of slides. This makes me push Powerpoint to its limits and it also comes with no REAL competition elsewhere, I've tried __every alternative__. Nothing comes close to the robustness of MS Office, unfortunately.

<comment><USER11> Hmm interesting. I have had people switch over to keynote.

What do you think about that?

<comment><USER12> It sure is good :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there _still_ not a reasonable quality, open-source browser based 'office' app? Open Document is all XML right, so it's not like a browser _can 't_ read/write the format because its some binary blob..

<comment><USER14> There is WebODF, which is 100% pure client-side JavaScript.

[http://webodf.org/](http://webodf.org/)

[http://webodf.org/demo/](http://webodf.org/demo/)

<comment><USER15> I never knew about this until now. That looks pretty amazing and I can see all sorts of potential.

There's all sorts of debate above about office 365 (some reads more like slick advertising astro-turf - people really shouldn't bite at that stuff) but this could be great for many web based business automation apps. I can think of a few things I've done in the past this would have been great for. I see it's already being built in to Zafara and Roundcube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In principal I like this idea a lot. Office as a Service but in freer...sign me up.

As an aside I use LO as sort of a middleware for document conversion via PyOO (start headless LO, convert/load/creat documents etc. via Python script). I think UNO is rather complicated to use at least I struggle everytime I try to read the documentation (possible that I'm too dumb). I hope LO as a service helps make this use case more interesting and thus leads to more documentation and PyOO like libraries. I feel like there's some potential to get LO into more widespread use by improving/advertising the "headless LO" more.

Oh I'm building this webservice...yeah sure upload your files as Excel or Calcs...we can use that and create nice Calc documents from either one. Powered by LO.

<comment><USER17> If you are interested in document conversion using LO and python you can give it a try to [https://github.com/xrmx/pylokit](https://github.com/xrmx/pylokit) which is a python cffi wrapper for the stable api of LibreOfficeKit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I quit using Microsoft Office over a decade ago. The last few years, I relied on LibreOffice but couldn't stand the regular crashes, bugs and overall frustrating user experience.

I gave Google Docs another go and I must say I was surprised at how much better it was from 3 or 4 years ago. It was good enough for me to consider using Google Drive; me and my team are now using it for everything and couldn't be happier. We actually ditched Dropbox in the process.

Box, Dropbox, Microsoft and other players in this segment of enterprise productivity software should be worried. I'm happy to pay for it and wouldn't run a company without it.

I think a LibreOffice SaaS would have a hard time competing on features with Google Docs, let alone price.

<comment><USER19> Does Google Sheets offer the data analysis tools that Excel does? Or do you have no need for that?

<comment><USER18> I know it does formulas and charts. We use it for various things; some accounting, budgets, cash forecasting, marketing metrics...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are already WebODF ([http://www.webodf.org](http://www.webodf.org)), used in ownCloud Documents, and OnlyOffice ([http://onlyoffice.org](http://onlyoffice.org))

</comment><comment><USER21> My company did this back in 2000 using StarOffice which was the precursor to LibreOffice (via OpenOffice). Some screenshots[1]. What's interesting is that the numbers don't add up - it's hard to make a profit even at high subscription rates when you have to pay for all the hardware involved. Anyway, I hope they know what they're doing.

[1] [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/officemaster/#content](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/officemaster/#content)

<comment><USER22> Previous news reports posit this work as part of Collabora's deal with .gov.uk.

The thing they're offering up is a downloadable VM for you to play with. Something you could actually set up an in-office version of; something that people can use _and report bugs on._

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be cool if they made a client side version of this using Emscripten.

<comment><USER14> It's coming. [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Emscripten](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Emscripten)

<comment><USER17> Don't hold your breath, i think that emscripten port development is stalling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a Linux user, I really like the web versions of the Office365 apps. The functionality is good for situations when I need to work with other people's documents and not taking up disk space for installed apps is a fine feature for the new world of SSD storage on laptops.

I also find Google docs handy to use, even though I use markdown stored in the cloud for writing my own content, managing research notes, etc.

I like the idea of being able to self host cloud services but ownCloud and LibreOffice face stiff functionality competition.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant.

It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by.

[Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

<comment><USER26> Which market are you referring to?

I still crave for a really nice word processor, spreadsheet, and easy database app (in the style of Access). I've always found *Office a bit rough around the edges.

My partner recently brought home an iPad from work. Word failed to play well with other (MS Word) Office documents, so file exchange and formats are still a complete pain in the neck. I will be using plain text until something better comes along.

<comment><USER25> I think we can all agree that you're not representative of the market, and to be honest, I'd guess (with no data to back it up) that the majority of readers here aren't as well.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't say I was representative of the market. But I would like a good product. How do you define the market?

<comment><USER25> People who would like a product/service and are willing to pay enough (in the required scale) for that product/service to exist.

The current core market for office productivity suites are business, followed by consumer. And I'd bet only a very small minority of those are sticking with plain text files until something better comes along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't stand LibreOffice, it's so slow compared to Office.

So I don't have high hopes for this thing.

<comment><USER28> I use both, how is LibreOffice slow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> And I thought it couldn't be possible to make LO any more infuriating to use. Well done guys, trebles all round.

</comment><comment><USER12> Besides dude. Referring to poor countries as belonging to the third world implies that a second world exist. The second world collapsed with the Soviet Union and does not exist any longer. The preferred nomenclature is developing countries.

<comment><USER30> > The preferred nomenclature is developing countries.

This term has always reeked of over-euphamism to me. I'm not arguing that "third-world" is any better, but what do I call countries that _aren 't_ developing? Right now, "developing countries" is used both to refer to countries that are actually developing (Kenya, for example) and as a polite way of saying "poor countries" (e.g. Somalia).

Seems like we should have a term that doesn't confuse the two. When I hear "developing countries", I mentally substitute an image of the most impoverished areas of our world.

Sorry if off-topic...

<comment><USER31> also, "developing countries" tries to establish an absolute rank and a division between countries. What are you taking into account when you say "developed", money? health? happiness? depending on what you use you'll get way different groups of countries

<comment><USER12> I would be happy to deep dive on this one, as I several of my 1000-level poltical science courses covered what we think of and how we classify and rank countries.

The most basic thought is to begin at the lowest common denominator. What is it that all countries will agree to when placed into comparison. That is the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). It contains Life expectancy at birth. Education index: Mean years of schooling and Expected years of schooling. A decent standard of living: GNI per capita (PPP US$).

Now from here you could rank GROSS DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, but that is a garbage index if you ask me as a political scientist and a champion of the free world. The top grossing country on that list is a country that imprisons and tortures.

But I gather it makes sense to triangulate the facts from the CIA World Factbook, Heritage Foundation Freedom Index which covers press freedom and the extent of freedom of speech, and a sprinkle of transparency thus the Corruptions Perception Index from Transparency International. Now whether you're east thinking or west thinking you might also want to include another sprinkle of Amnesty International and quantify or qualitatively add its reportings to the mix.

What you will find that the initial HDI gives a pretty darn clear and precise estimate of where you would want to live and where in the world could be deemed as "developing" as in not yet reached the top-end of the list.

This is a scientific endavour, and it is not meant to hurt anybody's feelings.

Also: You can downvote me or upvote me as much as you want. This is how the real world approached this problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cats, dogs starve as web-connected chow chute PetNet plays dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/27/petnet_outage/ <comment> pi-rat I'm afraid we're going to have a couple of really bad years with products like this pumped out every week. Hardware that's turned to bricks when the company goes bankrupt, has server issues, or simply abandons the product in favour of focus on the next big thing(tm).

This pet-feeder is simply a motor on a timer. You have to make some hilariously bad design choices to make it 100% dependent on the internet for scheduling.

<comment><USER2> Looks like they applied the CueCat model to actual cats.

A pet feeder that needs Internet access? Come on. This is something that's a job for a dumb timer, or, at most, a simple microcontroller.

<comment><USER3> I understand the benefit of creating a pet feeder with Internet connectivity. It allows you to provide a web portal to your customers so they can update their feeder timings or view food reserve quantities while they're in the office or on holiday.

But making it so the pet feeder _needs_ to be connected to dispense food?? That's insane. The internet connectivity should be to upload new timings. But if a connection can't be made, the old timings should continue to be used.

Write failsafes into your models!

<comment><USER4> "But making it so the pet feeder needs to be connected to dispense food??"

I suspect it will be someones bright idea to generate recurring revenue.

<comment><USER3> It always is. When will business people learn that money is literally the least valuable thing in the world?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can understand having the _option_ to control/monitor something over the network being useful, but making it deliberately dependent on Internet access is IMHO horrible design that could only be good for vendor lock-in, forced obolescence, or other anti-user measures.

</comment><comment><USER6> Had to double check if this was not from The Onion.

Don't know about dogs, but don't cats feed themselves? Mine certainly does, when we leave for holidays (or even sometimes during the year) we just leave a lot of food and it just eats what it needs everyday.

<comment><USER7> Cats are opportunistic feeders: if food is available, they will eat. This was a fine adaptation for cats' EAA, as for wild cats, food was much scarcer and would run away unless stalked and caught!

But leaving more than enough food lying around to be eaten _ad libitum_ is a recipe for a fat cat, as they _will not stop_ when they've had enough.

<comment><USER8> When it comes to dry food, many cats _do_ stop when they've had enough. My cat is given 1 cat of wet food a day and then unlimited dry food, and she's 10 lbs; 9 would be ideal but 10 isn't worth worrying about for a cat her age. My ex's cats are both allowed access to unlimited dry food; one is in a similar position to mine, slightly pudgy but not worryingly so, and the other is perfectly fit.

A dog would eat until it weighed 500 lbs, but some cats will actually pace themselves.

<comment><USER6> Ah, maybe that's the explanation: we indeed only use dry food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who would design a feeder that only worked if the server was online? Wow.

<comment><USER10> Someone that has never heard of cron?

I mean presumably they might have had some web-ui functionality to change feed-settings - but why that wouldn't just update a cron-tab is beyond me.

<comment><USER11> Cause that's probably outside the scope of the request tht was given.

This is absoultely speculation, but my guess would be that the way this product came to life is as follows:

1\. Company saw a niche for IoT products with pet owners willing to splurge on their pets (an aside, pets owners are very happy to spend...)

2\. Requested IoT software for already existing auto-feeders to be written up as fast as possible

3\. IoT part written and works, product is rushed out without designing an offline mode (either not interested or to be patched later) [1]

It was an imagined race to be first with the product and get _the_ pet feeder IoT device on the market first and build up a brand name. The end result is this silliness.

Basically, I don't think they envisioned an issue where the servers would go down - if the customer's own net went down, obviously they're to blame for Sharik and Musya not being fed.

I sure this sounds overly cynnical, but as was mentioned by someone else, this is just the first of many such things to come with shoddy IoT devices. The practical consideration of "well, what if the servers go down?" just doesn't seem to be on people's minds with IoT.

[1] From their twitter, I was right - they didn't bother with an offline sync in the firmware, and had to build it out: [https://twitter.com/petnetiosupport/status/75838081375903334...](https://twitter.com/petnetiosupport/status/758380813759033344)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> AMAZING!

Everything should be in the cloud, just to make sure it can fail when your internet connection is down or some server has hiccups or whatever.

Those are strange times.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, instead they could have built a digital timer into the device like in the 80s.

Even though this would be more reliable, you couldn't control it from your phone, which seems to be a selling feature for all of these badly designed IOT devices.

Somebody should design a timer module that can be controlled via bluetooth and (optionally) via Wifi.

Then you could program the timer from your iPad or whatever, but if connectivity is lost, the local controller would retain the settings and continue to work until connectivity is re-established.

<comment><USER14> Exactly, it's nice to be able to change the frequency of the timer remotely via the web, but the device should cache the latest settings offline. This is definitely an instance of malice/greed rather than an oversight...

<comment><USER15> How often do you need to change your cat feeding frequency? Once per 10 years?

<comment><USER14> Well and that's the other thing, exactly. The offline caching is more important for other appliances that need to happen on a timer and you might alter the frequency more often (e.g. a thermostat or something).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rather than each individual company cobbling together systems like this with massive security/ privacy/ ... issues, it might be better to establish an Internet of Things operating system, no? That way, some common standards could be established and one company/ organisation would be in charge of patching things.

<comment><USER17> > _one company / organisation would be in charge of patching things_

That company would also be the one that gets all the surveillance data and would be the one that gets to make all of the money.

This is part of the problem of IOT: lock-in is critical to the business model.

<comment><USER16> So let's say Amazon comes up with an IoT operating system. Then the question is: do you want a cat feeder/ home security system/ teleporter that is made by Amazon, according to their standards of quality and reliability, or one made by a random company you've never heard of? Then it comes down to privacy and who gets to use what data. I.e. Amazon would have a motivation to use your data sparingly (otherwise nobody would use the system). Or it could even be a freemium model, where you pay in exchange for not giving access to your data.

Many questions to sort out.

<comment><USER17> Amazon are one of the few companies that could make this work, as an extension of AWS, and people suspect the 'Dash' button is an initial foray into the space. However all their Kindle Fire incompatible Android systems haven't exactly been a roaring success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't wait to see this happening to a web-connected human baby feeder.

<comment><USER19> Internet-connected insulin pump.

<comment><USER20> the Powers That Be who regulate and approve such medical devices would surely have one or two things to say about a device whose functionality is _dependent_ on connectivity to the internet.

<comment><USER21> Thank god for strong regulation of medical devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why does this have to be web enabled!?

If it has enough power to connect to the web, it should have enough power to "serve" up it's own web form so that you can adjust the schedule. Why does _everything_ have to go back to someone _else's_ computer!?

Edit: Well at least we know who NOT to hire, they conveniently supplied photos! [http://www.petnet.io/about](http://www.petnet.io/about)

</comment><comment><USER23> According to their Twitter, they're working on a firmware update to eliminate the reliance on network connectivity for scheduled feedings.

[https://twitter.com/petnetiosupport/status/75838081375903334...](https://twitter.com/petnetiosupport/status/758380813759033344)

It's still pretty ridiculous that this kind of logic made it into a product that is relied upon for feeding.

</comment><comment><USER24> For that price I would expect build-in battery as a backup for main power supply. This thing does not even work without internet.

</comment><comment><USER25> Obvious Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat metaphor is obvious.</comment>


How to play with people who are better than you - <AUTHOR> https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/Xc6GEBEAACgABJG_ <comment><USER2> Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing.

Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill.

Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty much any subject from now till the end of time. Deciding when to get off the treadmill is just as important as deciding to stay on.

> Games of skill are less appealing if you know a certain person will always > win.

I disagree. I will always lose to Magnus Carlsen in Chess. I will always lose to my friends in (insert any FPS game here, I'm bad at all of them). I will always lose to Mew2King in Super Smash Bros: Melee.

My inability to defeat the greatest players of a subject does NOT make the game less appealing. Indeed, I often times seek out the challenge of stronger players, especially when I'm explicitly trying to get better at the game.

Losing constantly by playing vs players who are better than you provides a learning experience. You should find other players you can win against of course: you'll never learn to win if you keep losing. But losing teaches you what bad-habits you've formed from playing vs weaker players.

I think that's the key: losing all the time is unfun. But I can definitely take "losing for a whole week" or "losing for a whole month" in a row, especially if its for training. Finding players of lower skill, equal skill, and higher skill, is important.

<comment><USER3> > If you want to get better, train up.

This doesn't mesh with why lots of people play things. It's play. It might just be a nice way to pass the time. I would rather play basketball against someone my level than Steph Curry playing all out. I'm not playing to win or even to get better (getting better is fun, but isn't the point). I just want to have fun.

For many kinds of play, if you have to train for it, you may as well play something else.

<comment><USER4> And I don't find some games fun anymore if you or anyone around the table goes in for the kill; simple example that most people will know; monopoly. There are strategies to almost surely win but it makes the game boring and even annoying for everyone involved. So we usually added rules to prevent those strategies. If someone 'is better at that' it means he/she is a boring/non-fun player and no-one will play anymore after 1-2 games. In general; there are a lot of games really not fun at all for people who always want to win no matter what.

<comment><USER5> I thought the point of Monopoly is to learn that monopolies are not fun, or fair

<comment><USER6> The point of Monopoly is to make money for the owner of the trademark, and condition people to buy games based on inertia, advertising, and nostalgia rather than complexity, balance, or fun.

<comment><USER7> Fortunately we have a plethora of much better games now. I think monopoly will be a quirk of history soon. How many boomers have never played monopoly (and hopefully never will) because they have so many other games to play.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand. Boomers? People born between 1946 and 1964? I think most Boomers in North America and Europe have played Monopoly at least once. "Monopoly has been translated into 47 languages. It's played in 114 countries. It's sold more than 275 million copies. Hasbro prints $30 billion in Monopoly money each year, and well more than $3 trillion has been printed since 1935." -CNN [https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/living/feat-monopoly-80th- ann...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/living/feat-monopoly-80th- anniversary/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself.

It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group, but judge your own performance by a different set of rules that you keep in your own head. Maybe try to beat your own previous score, or set yourself a personal challenge -- something like "take one of my opponent's pieces" or "make the longest word in the game".

It's entirely possible to enjoy playing a game that you have little chance of winning, it just requires some creativity.

<comment><USER10> Many boards games attempt to make things fun even if you're losing.

One of the best games for this is Concordia, where you don't count up the points until the end. You always feel that you have a chance. Once you get fairly good however, you can scan the board state and do some rough guesstimating to see who is in the lead.

Other games can be quite brutal. You make one wrong move and you know you're in for 2.5 hrs of pain and there's nothing you can do about it.

<comment><USER11> > You make one wrong move and you know you're in for 2.5 hrs of pain ...

I mean, why continue at that point? That just sounds silly.

<comment><USER12> Not a _Settler of Catan_ fan, then?

<comment><USER6> I'm not aware of any move that makes it impossible for any one player to win _Settlers of Catan_ , while still extending the game to 2.5 hours. There are at least four basic strategies that work to win, and it's nearly impossible to block all of them to the other players while still pursuing one yourself.

I have seen people win without ever building a third settlement.

<comment><USER13> i think the point of the parent is that the settlement phase at the start of the game can be pretty decisive. E.g. some people always choose crossroads with numbers that have low probably (like 11 or 3) or with only 2 aligned fields (instead of 3). Of course, you might still win the game but you're problaby too annoyed about your decisions in the first 5 minutes of the game than playing and having fun (and having a chance at winning). Especially in games where you collect ressources to gain victory points, making the wrong choices at the start can be very devastating (because of the runaway effect).

<comment><USER6> If you choose a weak starting position, it's not going to take 2.5 hours for your opponents to win in _Settlers of Catan_. But if you do have an obviously weaker board position, no one will put the robber on your 2, 3s, 11s, or 12, except in rare situations. That's part of the built-in handicapping for those with obviously stronger board positions. Those 5/36 rolls don't actually produce 5/36 of the time, because most of the time the robber is blocking one of them.

If you choose a weak initial position, the expansion-first player gains an advantage over the city-first player, especially in a 3-player game. And they will both know that your only option is a card-first stealth victory. The latter is usually only viable in a very balanced 4-player game.

If you don't understand probability for 2d6 dice rolls, yeah, you're going to have a bad time in a lot of games, some of them lasting 2.5 hours or more. And if you haven't bothered learning that, why would you learn from the stronger opponents that you play?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Years ago i used to go bowling with a few friends, i would get like 80 or 90 points and they would get around 225ish. Several months later i was up to getting around 200 points per game. Granted it was all for fun, but just playing with them made me a better bowler (i have not been bowling in a decade now so i would probably be getting around 100 points again).

So yeah i lost, but it made me better. As long as you are aware of your skill set vs. someone else's and you wont let it consume you i don't see it as a bad thing (assuming the other player is not a complete jerk).

<comment><USER15> How do you know your increase was specifically because of them and not practice only?

<comment><USER16> Likely observing how they handle specific situations, how their technique is etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's about game balance and design.

If I was to play tennis against a professional, it wouldn't really be tennis, it would be a game of 'can I get anywhere near to returning their first shot'.

I'd have to play that 'mini-game' for a long time before I could play proper tennis with such a person ( where tactics of the rally come in ).

Obviously in reality the professional player would ease up - cos actually just hitting balls and watching me pick them up isn't fun for them either.

Some games are more naturally balanced that others - computer game designers often put huge effort in this area.

Really successful games like football ( soccer to some ) have great balance built in. That's why the FA cup has small teams occasionally beating big teams - to score a goal, you typically have to win a _series_ of reasonably balanced encounters - even Messi can be tackled by me.

<comment><USER18> You think you can tackle Messi without committing a foul? Keep in mind he's a stereotypical small striker, very high speed and acceleration, he dodges world-class athletes routinely...

<comment><USER17> By no means every time, but actually sometimes yes.

If you look at professional teams, most of the time defenders win the 1:1 battle. That's why in 90 minutes a win of 3-0 is a good score!

Obviously in an actual game, it's more complex than that - a lot of defending is about denying opportunity to shoot rather than out and out tackling.

I reckon I could get in the way on occasion...

Remember the attacker has the disadvantage of having to move the ball, not just run, while the defender is free to move without the ball.

That's, in part, what creates the balance.

<comment><USER19> This reminds me of that viral survey that went around not long ago asking people if they thought they could win a set against Serena Williams and the result being a huge amount of responders saying yes.

Unless you played soccer at least semi-professionally in some small league team for at least some part of your not so distant past, there is just no way you are gonna win a 1v1 with Messi, either by committing a foul or not.

If you watch some scrim games during the off season, you can find games were a top tier team plays against minor-er league teams, and you can see the difference in skills. It's like they play two different games.

<comment><USER18> Yeah exactly, the pride of this person is just silly. Unless he played at a top D-I school and did very well, there's no way he could successfully tackle the ball from Messi in 100 tries...I'd give a solid D-I defender a couple of tackles on Messi in all of those 100, the rest Messi would just easily dodge away, control the ball, create space, and then burn them or pass away from the inevitable double team.

It's like me in my 5th year of coding claiming I could out-code Linus Torvalds...like what?!?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bananagrams is a word game based on scrabble which has a really elegant catch up mechanic which comes so naturally out of the rules you barely notice. If you are behind you will tend to have more free tiles which don't require large rearrangements, making it easier to see new words. (This breaks down slightly with big skill differences or if you are way way behind but in most cases works perfectly)

<comment><USER21> Bananagrams is a great game, especially for people who want to improve their word-generating skills for a slower game of Scrabble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In grad school, I had access to a pool table and played nearly every day with a classmate who was already highly skilled. We were very competitive, and soon equally matched.

A couple of years later, after going separate ways, we met up at a pool hall. After a few games, it wasn't even close.

Neither of us had played much for a few years. The difference was my friend's sharp skills had deteriorated, whereas my advantage had often been from taking "creative" higher-risk/higher-reward shots—a "skill" that didn't suffer as much from lack of practice.

</comment><comment><USER23> People who can't play games against people who are better than them are over- competitive and lazy! It's more fun when you play against skilled players, you learn more! I've never understood that personality trait, and I love losing at Dominion!

<comment><USER24> It really depends on how good the player is. I have played people in smash where the skill gap was so wide I could have just put my controller down and it wouldn't have made a difference. I literally lost a match in a tournament where I didn't, _couldn 't_, touch the enemy once. I was probably the lowest seed in that tournament, he was the #1 seed, and was one of the top 5 players of the game.

I normally like playing better players because it forces me to learn and stop using lazy habits that work on worse players, but it's hard to learn anything useful when I'm getting crushed so bad like that. Instead, reflecting and continuing to play with people near my level until I improve enough to revisit that player is a better option for personal growth.

<comment><USER25> Which version of Smash was that?

<comment><USER24> Super Smash Bros. Melee

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Starcraft is an incredibly challenging game. I've been playing SC:RM, that's a remastered version of Brood War, the original expansion for SC1. The MMR system is not great because there aren't many players with which to find an even match, so I often get SPANKED in 3-4 minutes, especially by Protoss, with me playing Terran.

Still, there is nothing so instructive as a spanking in a balanced game. If I played 100 games vs that guy... There are little roadblocks the whole way that I can learn and conquer, which would RARELY be exposed by another bad player on my own level.

Here's all the ways you need to play in a TvP gasless expand build: can you scout their base with an SCV? Can you identify it's ranged-dragoon 2gate (and not reaver drop or early 3rd or DT rush or air rush)? Can you get your bunker up in time to prevent the goon rush? Can you repair the bunker constantly with the right number of SCVs? Can you do all this while teching to siege mode and tanks? Can you keep those tanks alive if Toss dives with 4 goons to pick the tank? Can you then get your third base up, which is just as technical as holding the initial goon rush?

Playing vs way better players than you is the fastest way to improve, but it's also the most ego-crushing, so you simply need to leave ego at the door and acknowledge your skill-set is lower and your experience is lower. Great lesson for life!

</comment><comment><USER26> The handicap in Go [1] works amazingly well. I have had enjoyable games with dan-level players despite being at best conversant at the game.

That said, I've also enjoyed such games immensely with no handicap, despite no prospect of winning at all. In most games you can have some partial success and psychological reward despite losing the game.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(go)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_\(go\))

<comment><USER27> The thing that makes go fun for me _even while losing_ is that if you lose the whole game you've still got a lot of smaller skirmishes that you've either won or learned from. Losing a skirmish in go makes it very easy to go "Well what should I have done differently here?" and come up with a good answer.

It's different from a game like risk in that way. If you lose a skirmish in risk there's basically nothing you can learn from that since the amount of random involved just obscures any influence you have yourself. At the end of a game of risk I'm sat there having no idea what I did wrong, and no idea how to do better next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I always thought that was one of the nice things about golf. The handicap system means you can have a wide variety of skill levels playing in the same competition with everyone having a reasonable chance of winning.

<comment><USER29> Personally, I find that stupid. If you want a chance to win, do not play against Tiger woods but play against your peers at your club and have different tiers so that the better players seek to not play in the games where the not so good ones play.

<comment><USER30> Well, sometimes a local league just isn't that big.

Like I remember when I was in a bowling league as a kid that was just whoever signed up to be in it at that one bowling alley.

We had a guy in the league that eventually went Pro and I remember watching him score his first perfect 300 game in person way back then, but there was people like me that were just ok. I think the highest my average got up to was around 130, but i can't really remember. I know I had a 197 game once. In contrast, the future Pro's average was something like 230 (I think), a full 100 points difference.

But my team would sometimes play against the future Pro's team. I'm pretty sure his team always creamed us, even with the handicap, but the handicap at least made it so we were able to beat other teams that were significantly better than us. And if we consistently played well enough we were beating other people our handicap would change.

It made it so there was actually some tension from both sides, and a desire for both sides to play as best as they could, instead of the obviously better player to maybe let things slip a tiny bit or for us to get frustrated and just toss the ball down there without trying.

It also made it so you didn't have a teammate that got too sore if your skill levels were significantly different. Like if I was actually terrible but was paired to be on a team with someone decent, they wouldn't hate me because I would always make us lose a matchup. Instead my handicap would make it so we could still be somewhat competitive.

Granted you were ultimately always competing with yourself, trying to get a better score, but it's another layer that adds to the fun of the game. I haven't been a part of a league in at least 25 years, but sometimes I miss it.

And even in this setup there's still tiers. Like it's not like anyone ever said "yeah, let's send this average for a kid player to a professional league championship and see how well they do!", but there's different skill levels for the players in every tier as well.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I play on a couple APA pool leagues and the handicap system for 8-ball and 9-ball makes it so pros and beginners can play against each other and mostly have a good time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> (disclaimer I am not a good chess player)

In high school I was playing chess with someone better than me and my plan was to trade equal pieces as much as possible because I am bound to make worse/stupid mistakes than more he does and because of that I wanted to move end game as fast as possible.

It actually worked and it ended in tie! I still remember the end game, it was amazing

[http://prntscr.com/q5z36e](http://prntscr.com/q5z36e) (it was roughly like this, can't remember exact positions)

I was white, I think the last move was I moved my pawn and declared tie

<comment><USER33> This is closely related to the chess strategy of 'simplification'.

If you are 'winning' (here this works for your idea of winning), it's good to trade pieces to get to the end game quicker while retaining the advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> As an aside, if you play games competitively and you want to get better you should _always_ seek better players to play against. That's how you improve your game: you set the challenge just above your current level. The "just" part sorts itself out because players significantly more advanced will not find it very challenging to play against someone much weaker, so you 'll get fewer games against them anyway.

Another thing is to play people you don't know and find new playing partners often. That helps you avoid getting stuck in a rut.

</comment><comment><USER35> "With 'fairness' built in, everyone has an equal chance of winning without compromising their playing style."

This must be a joke, right? What's the point of playing games? To feel good about oneself?!

<comment><USER36> The point of playing is ... playing. :) It's the journey. Not the win or loss.

<comment><USER35> So if I use a random number generator as an "advisor" for my part, am I guaranteed to win regardless? Like a social club where everybody gets to win and with it their own medal and certificate? In other words, playing = socializing, performance, tricks, effort being meaningless?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Seems out of the scope of the article which was mostly about constructed board games, but I would have loved a mention of the most fundamental and ancient form of game... wrestling, aka rough housing or rough and tumble play.

[https://cognitioneducation.me/2013/07/25/a-time-and-a- place-...](https://cognitioneducation.me/2013/07/25/a-time-and-a-place-for- play-part-2/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Everything else aside, Welcome Collection is an awesome place! If you're art/architecture nerd, make sure you visit to see their kinda famous stairs, they can look like that from certain angles: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/149993730@N05/32374727987/in/d...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/149993730@N05/32374727987/in/dateposted- public/)

</comment><comment><USER39> "Snakes and Ladders requires a level of manual dexterity"

This seems an odd thing to say. The only "manual dexterity" you need is to be able to throw the dice.

<comment><USER30> I design board games and play a ton of them, and this threw me also. I don't see how the author thinks there is manual dexterity to Snakes and Ladders.

A Dexterity game is a category of board games, and they all involve your ability to physically manipulate components in a way where you could potentially screw it up by misjudging the action you take, is my understanding.

There's no way to throw dice in a way where it doesn't give you some sort of result, even if it's not the result you want. If that's all it took to be a Dexterity game, than tens or hundreds of thousands of games with dice in them are now Dexterity games (and currently on sites like BoardGameGeek, they're not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting take! I know a bunch of people who don't like to play games because they think it's stressful and put too much pressure on themselves to win, therefore games aren't "relaxing." But I always think playing with people who are better than you make you smarter even if you're losing. And though it all, at least you're still learning and bonding.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is an interesting topic that came up recently. I like playing the board game Othello. Whenever I get the chance I will try to teach people the game.

I don't let them win. I of course tell them what good moves are (and why). Perhaps I should lose on purpose to get them hooked?

PS: One of the cool aspects of Othello is that it looks like if both players play a perfect game, it ends in a draw.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is probabley a bit off topic, but for me, the James Carse book, "Finite and Infinite Games" is the last word on all games!

[https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James- Carse/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James- Carse/dp/1476731713/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Dang, that game Yogi sounds very fun, but doesn't seem to be available in the US.

</comment><comment><USER44> you need to be crushed in order to know what is possible. but you should also go against people who are similar/worse than you. ranking systems are good at that.

jiu jitsu is a good example of this. the belt rankings indicate experience/skill and give you an idea of where people are in training. if i just steamroll day-ones it is helpful to a degree. people of similar experience will give me a good fight that will allow us both to make mistakes that we can both capitalize on. but if i get manhandled by higher ranks i can see the possibilities and get ideas for piecing together holes in my game.

</comment><comment><USER45> I find that it is more relevant for people to learn how to play with people that are worse than them. Not everything needs to be a competition and the goal is't inherently to get good at things that are for fun.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Non-orthogames do tend to involve certain skills that players need to have > or share in order to play (Snakes and Ladders

This confused me for a bit. Snakes and Ladders is an orthogame; one selects a winner based on agreed-upon rules.

</comment><comment><USER47> One feature i like in go (weiqi , baduk) is that you can have an handicap system so it is possible to enjoy a game with a weaker or stronger adversary.

</comment><comment><USER48> the author is focused on finite games, which are games that you play to win. but it's interesting to think about applying the same logic to infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing forever.

For instance, capitalism is a game that most players assume we'll just keep playing. How do you deal with some players having an advantage? Currently, the advantage only compounds (literally, ie compound interest). What if instead, the game became more difficult for those players, as discussed in the article?

<comment><USER49> To continue the game theory tilt, the problem with making the game harder as the player advantage increases is that it disincentivises the player from seeking advantage at all.

In the theoretical game of "capitalism" this sounds like a good idea, but in the real world a government that imposes these kinds of game restrictions through something like taxes only forces the advantaged players to pull out of the "game" completely (a nett negative for those reliant on their advantage long term) and move their advantage to another "game".

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, so long as the vast majority of players still in the game have enough resource to continue playing comfortably.

<comment><USER50> > but in the real world a government that imposes these kinds of game > restrictions through something like taxes only forces the advantaged players > to pull out of the "game" completely

Given that there is plenty of evidence that relative deprivation is a major source of disutility, getting them to exclude themselves from the social milieu in which other people exist would be a net win, though less than that of them staying and complying. But, objectivist fantasy novels aside, there's not a lot of evidence that that's a significant effect in the real world.

The people that are actually most successful in modern society understand the role society plays in the utility they derive from success a lot better than some of the wannabes that imagine how they would deal with similar success.

<comment><USER49> I largely agree, but would just clarify that the players in any economy, capitalist or not, can be both people and companies/legal entities. The more globally oriented modern society means that any player of sufficient resource can implement multiple, compartmentalised strategies for various aspects of that resource (eg. various taxes, corporate structure, government incentives) under differing rulesets.

If a ruleset becomes too onerous (which there is evidence for in modern settings like Zimbabwe or Venezuela) then a player may decide that the utility of the society is not worth the loss in resource and remove themselves from a game which enforces such a ruleset. In all other cases though I agree completely with your insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> No mention of go and it's handicap system. I once watched 12 year old Japanese girl wipe the floor with an Australian friend with ranking in the Australian go scene, in a go club behind Tokyo station.

<comment><USER10> _Maybe you decide not to care about starting at the same level. That's usually an easy fix. The strategy game Go, for example, gives weaker players extra stones on the board to start, allowing both players to try their hardest and feel like they have a chance of winning._

<comment><USER51> Before posting I tried word search in my tablet browser and missed it. I guess in the game of criticism I just.. lost.

<comment><USER52> But why would you even try going for criticism of an article before even reading it?

<comment><USER51> I speed read. I didn't see go. I went word search for go, didn't find it. But, a fair comment. Critique demands care.

<comment><USER53> Is speed reading just skimming?

<comment><USER24> Speedreading is something used by delusional people who think that reading is just inputting words as fast as possible. Slowreading (taking your time to fully understand and reflect on what you read) needs to become a thing. But that isn't as ~distinguished~ as saying "I can read at X words/min" or "I read Y novels/year".

Skimming is useful, because you don't necessarily want to read an entire page if you're looking for one thing. Wikipedia pages are an example of where you might want to skim until you find the relevant section you're looking for.

In fact I skim many articles on HN to decide if they're worth reading or not. If they are, then I go back and slowread the entire thing before making a comment.

<comment><USER51> I originally wrote skim. I changed it to speed. I therefore lost again since speed reading is less worthy than skimming which is less worthy than slow reading.

But, I am winning at losing. Nobody can take that away from me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New York hotel fines guests $500 for bad reviews on Yelp - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/04/new-york-hotel-fines-guests-500-for-bad-reviews-on-yelp/

<comment><USER2> A lot of the reviews now are purely trolling. Streisand effect in full swing, but I expect many of these will be removed by Yelp since they aren't from people who were actually guests. I'm sure that violates Yelp's TOS as well.

      The owners stole one sock from every single pair I brought with me.
      When I complained the manager showed up at my door with all my socks
      stapled to his body and said I was being delusional.

      Also none of the rooms have beds.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible anymore to control India's unemployment problem? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For some reason the Indian government feels a suffocating and wasteful Soviet style beurocracy provides all the jobs they need. In fact, their beurocracy makes the Indian economy suffer the death of 10,000 cuts as these myriad small tasks,(permits, fees etc) drain the blood of the economy to the earth. Try and eliminate one and a furor of gored private interests arises - those who gather these fees and exert control of their little turf. This is just what the USA threw off with independance in 1776 - and soon the USA took part in their industrial revolution, and so did the UK when they also freed part of their economy from the bemeath royal foot. India is going to descend into a morass of unfed and uneducated masses unless they find a way. There are glimmers of hope as segments gather freedom. They should copy China and do China 10 better - will they?

</comment><comment><USER3> Unemployment is there because people are there. So should we not control population? There are so many people in India it scares me as to what will happen when there will be a recession? It's good that India has good family values. People will help each other out. I think the answer is to control population growth and innovation. Maybe create new cities? Last time i visited Pune and Mumbai i was shocked at the state of traffic.

<comment><USER4> Assuming the most benign meaning of "population control", the best way to decrease the birth rate is to increase quality of life. Birth rates go down as quality of life, financial/food security, and female workforce participation go up.

That's why most developed nations have the opposite problem: they'll eventually not have enough babies to maintain growth and pay for the care of the elderly.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The government has no plan/vision regarding fighting this issue. Even none of the parties fighting the 2019 elections is bothered. Instead everyone is concerned about Hindu vs Muslims and Pakistan. India's democracy's weakest part is its citizens who are so easy to manipulate.</comment>


Show HN: Sketch 3 plug-in for automatically generating html page and CSS styles - <AUTHOR> http://www.gitlogs.com/repos/tudou527/marketch <comment><AUTHOR> Just found this trending on Gitlogs but it was never posted on HN before. Actually noticing a lot of Chinese Repos trending on Github lately. Most likely launched on their on their own version of hackernews ;)</comment>


How we served 20k IPython notebooks for Nature readers - <AUTHOR> https://developer.rackspace.com/blog/how-did-we-serve-more-than-20000-ipython-notebooks-for-nature/ <comment><USER2> That's fantastic, but are there security concerns?

I was thinking about setting up a similar IPython-as-a-service thing, but 5 minutes on Google suggested that it would be difficult to do it securely.

This isn't just limited to data security, but also DDoS concerns. I.e. making sure that each user doesn't take up too much CPU/RAM/HDD.

On second though, I'm sure its possible, but it certainly wasn't trivial.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be better to look at rkt with a kvm backend if you want/need real isolation and resource limits. Maybe docker will provide isolation/security at some point, but the core differentiating thing about Docker vs OpenVZ etc is _ease of use_ \-- explicitly forgoing much of the security and isolation possible in the underlying technology.

From what I've seen, trying to bolt security and isolation back onto Docker is generally a bad idea.

That said, when people have done the work to make microservices deployable under Docker, they have in general laid the groundwork needed to run these services in a truly isolated environment. So in that respect Docker is great; the effort to run something that works in a minimal Docker container in a jail/chroot/vm should be much less than starting from scratch; a lot of the assumptions about resources/dependencies should already be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> SageMathCloud ([https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com)), which was mentioned in the first line of the rackspace post, had 850 concurrent users at some point yesterday. Our typical load is that high now. I don't think we've exceeded 1000 simultaneous users, but will likely do so in the next week or two.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a weird bug - when I click it to go fullscreen it does for a second, but then it reverts to just the left side of the screen.

[EDIT] - screenshot of bug: [http://imgur.com/kXoMtvM](http://imgur.com/kXoMtvM) [/EDIT]</comment>


Show HN: Phonebook.js, a lightweight API wrapper to clean up your $.ajax soup - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mtrpcic/phonebook

<comment><USER2> I have done something similar in my SPA, amplifyJS provides a nice request abstraction too, however I found it lacked promises.</comment>


Toxic fumes from idling cruise ships are still a problem in New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/nyregion/cruise-ship-exhaust-shore-power-nyc.html <comment><USER2> Pleasure boats spewing heavy particulate matter into tenement complexes where asthma occurs at 2x elevated rates, while shore power plugs twist in the wind, unused, and the mayor spends $200mm on political advertising. This reads like scene-setting for a Warhammer 40k battle.

<comment><USER3> While Bloomberg oversaw the shore power project while mayor, he hasn't been mayor for years. It's deBlasio's admin now that is overseeing this. So I don't see how you get to connect those dots like that.

<comment><USER2> Fair point. My mind classifies all NYC mayors past and present as being the same entity, except for Giuliani, who gets a special category as "the 911 guy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never understand why the problem of "the X largest ships contribute a shocking amount of pollution" hasn't been solved. It can't be that hard given the limited number of ships, right?

<comment><USER5> People who own or travel on boats are rich and the people most affected by the pollution they spew are not

<comment><USER6> ....this article is about NYC, one of the richest places in NYC. Air pollution doesn't spare the rich.

<comment><USER7> NYC is not uniformly rich at all. It is only the astounding wealth of the richest New Yorkers that makes it appear so. Who exactly is affected in NYC depends on the dock and wind direction. I have read (somewhere I forget) that air quality is in the mean worse in the Bronx; by no means is the outcome of this affecting all classes uniformly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for marine vehicle electrification. There are many candidate battery technologies which seem well-suited for this application.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Cruise ships ought to be the first candidate for a luxury tax to pay for > marine vehicle electrification_

Tax burdens are tough to pin down. For something like cruise ship docking, the fear is losing the docking business to a neighboring port. That can change ground economics for voting families, a problem for policy makers.

State or national-level regulation is probably needed.

<comment><USER7> In general, yes, but New York is uniquely privileged as the most glamorous east cost destination and should just act decisively. This isn't the freight business moving to NJ and Oakland. This is bougie tourists who want to disembark straight into their destination.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _tourists who want to disembark straight into their destination_

Hoboken, New Jersey and Red Hook, Brooklyn are roughly the same distance from the city.

<comment><USER7> Fair that's true, but note how the article mentioned many docking in Manhattan too. And at least in Red Hook you can truthfully say it's NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As soon as someone puts a price tag on the human cost, diesel engines will go extinct in no time at all. The alternatives are nearly there technically (for practically most use cases) and once that excuse is removed from the table, operating diesel engines will become very expensive and legally risky very quickly. As soon as people wake up to the notion that smog kills a rather large amount of people (affecting the smallest and weakest first), the notion of going after people that produce, operate, own, or otherwise are associated with them might gain popularity. Think very expensive class action suits followed by expensive inspections, heavy fines, area restrictions, damages payed, etc.

Right now the status quo seems to be that we pretend everything is fine even though we already know that it is not. All it takes to change this is to stop pretending it is fine and just say no. It will make diesel engines extremely expensive and will cause people to get rid of them as soon as they can.

If you think about it, parking a continuously running ginormous diesel engine anywhere near where people (or anything for that matter) lives seems to border on criminally insane. Then if you consider that the sole purpose of these things is to sustain and transport a population of tourists the notion becomes ludicrous.

</comment><comment><USER7> > If ships were required to plug in, Mr. DeMeo said, then they would just go > across the harbor, he said, and dock in New Jersey.

When the race to the bottom augment involves not nations half way across the globe, but two sides of a river, sigh.

Also, that's just ridiculous. No bougie cruise ship passenger wants to be dumped in NJ any more than mayor LaGuardia wanted to land in Newerk.[1]

[1]: [https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-laguardia- crown-j...](https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-laguardia-crown-jewel- airport-bears-article-1.787753)

</comment><comment><USER10> The reporting on this is very weak. I'm not a genius, but my guess is that cruise ships contribute a tiny proportion to the pollutants people are exposed to on a day to day basis in NYC. Most of the pollution is from automobiles.

The article mentions (and can be entirely summarized by):

> Idling ships release potent diesel air pollution — similar to diesel exhaust > from automobiles but in much larger quantities, and laced with harmful > metals — that is linked to cancer, asthma, heart disease and other serious > health problems.

The author states "in much bigger quantities", which is probably true when you compare a ship to an automobile. However there are no details on the relative quantities involved when you compare all polluters combined. I'm guessing the article would be much less dramatic if you did.

<comment><USER11> Cruise ships totally outclass cars as a source of pollutants.

An example from across the pond:

"The results show that the luxury cruise brands owned by Carnival Corporation & PLC emitted in 2017 in European seas alone 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide than all of Europe's 260+ million passenger vehicles."

[https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one- corpor...](https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corporation- pollute-them-all)

<comment><USER12> > 10 times more disease-causing sulphur dioxide

That is one specific pollutant. Cars produce more pollution when you look at all forms of pollution.

Ships are a problem, but cars should not be let off the hook for the massive amounts of pollution they produce.

<comment><USER13> They're not, it's just a reminder that vast amounts of the world's pollution is also being caused by large sea vessels, of which cruise ships are a variety.

It's an oft neglected point in the global climate discussions because it's hard to associate their scale with a direct human impact like with cars. Tying it to a cruise ship around a populous city helps people bridge that mental gap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cost seems to be the thing, and the reporting doesn't drill deeply enough into this. The cost of the electricity is mentioned, as well as some sensitive ports where shore power is used. Does the Regal Princess fit the apparently- fixed arrangement that the QM2 uses? How much time would the ship be hooked to shore power compared to how long it is berthed? Does it take costly shore personnel hours to hook up the power?

<comment><USER15> if they cannot afford the price of operating cleanly, then they shouldn't operate at all imo

<comment><USER14> I'm not passing judgement. But I know from observation, and TFA confirms, that in most other ports they use shore power, so I suspect that it is unusually inconvenient or the laws are weaker than CA or AK. Cruise lines do watch costs and some were avoiding Antarctica just because Ushuaia was charging more (compared to today) for the special fuel required for Antarctica.</comment></comment></comment>


How Many Data Centers Needed World-Wide (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2017/04/how-many-data-centers-needed-world-wide/ <comment><USER2>
      ...don't believe that Oracle
      has, or will ever get,
      servers 2x faster than the
      big three cloud providers.

      ...also would argue that
      "speeding up the database"
      isn't something Oracle is
      uniquely positioned to
      offer.

Why is that so unreasonable? I can definitely imagine Oracle engineering a different kind of cluster, that could optimize for better throughput, and more efficient storage.

An RDBMS company is going to attack problems differently, and supply different services. They aren't hosting video content to support properties like YouTube, or photo sharing. They aren't virtualizing compute environments like Amazon. They aren't running Xbox gaming networks like Microsoft.

They operate business platforms, and SQL DBA tasks often optimize for high normalization of data. They run a proprietary network stack:

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

So, take all of this together, and a lot of bloat is trimmed from computing demands.

Their spend being 1/10th of other providers probably has a lot to do with who they deliver for. Consumer computing is pretty wasteful, in ways that business operations are not.

Sure, Oracle can't operate systems that exceed the speed of light, and probably doesn't have access to CPU architectures radically different from the rest of the industry, but based on those broad sweeping statements, it doesn't seem impossible that Oracle operates in ways other providers don't.

<comment><USER3> > a different kind of cluster, that could optimize for better throughput, and > more efficient storage

It doesn't even require all that much imagination, considering how anemic the storage IO choices are under AWS. Until recently, EBS was connect by 10Gb/s ethernet. Now, I believe the best is 40Gb/s ethernet, but even that's not ubiquitous and is only equivalent to single 4-lane SAS3 connection. Local (to the node) storage options are extremely limited.

The typical cloud provider model seems geared toward scaling "out", even _before_ scaling "up" (while price:performance effective), which, of course, is a great way to maximize revenue. For a user/customer, it's terrible for cost and for performance, but this doesn't seem to bother VC-funded startups, for example.

Whether Oracle has the knowledge already or is able to hire that knowledge to create such a different offering is an open question, as is if there are enough customers who care enough to pay for it.</comment></comment>